Episode 031 - ebook Pricing with Tara Cremin
June 16, 2020
Tara Cremin discusses the factors to be considered for ebook pricing: the length and genre of the book; whether it is part of a series and, if it is, the length of the series; reader expectations regarding boxset pricing; the pros and cons of permafree; and the research needed for pricing in global markets.
Tara Cremin is the Senior Manager of Author Experience at Kobo Writing Life, responsible for everything from optimizing current features to looking for new avenues of growth with an aim is to make KWL the greatest and most user-friendly self-publishing platform available. Tara has worked for KWL since its inception and was previously responsible for Content Operations, and is an occasional guest host on the Kobo Writing Life Podcast.
Download | Android | Apple | Spotify | Stitcher | YouTube Part 1 (US pricing) | YouTube Part 2 (Global pricing)
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"In terms of pros and cons <of permafree>, the first con, and I think mainly the only one, you're not getting paid, But luckily there are many, many pros to <permafree>." —Tara Cremin, Kobo Writing Life
Matty: Hello and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast, today my guest is Tara Cremin. Hey, Tara, how are you doing?
Tara: I'm very well. Thanks. Thanks for having me.
Matty: It is my pleasure. To give our listeners a little bit of background on you. Tara Cremin is the Senior Manager of Author Experience at Kobo Writing Life, responsible for everything from optimizing current features to looking for new avenues of growth, with an aim to make KWL the greatest and most user-friendly self-publishing platform available. Tara has worked for KWL since its inception and was previously responsible for content operations. And she's also an occasional guest host on the Kobo Writing Life Podcast.
And Tara is getting more than her fair share of podcast exposure recently, because I'd invited Tara on The Indy Author Podcast to talk about international pricing-- how to price eBooks for an international market--and we had that conversation about a week ago and it was great and you'll get to hear it. And then I went to edit it and I realized that some of the things we talked about would make more sense if they were discussed in the context of already having some foundational information about pricing for one's own market, which in the context of the listener base for The Indy Author Podcast is largely US, so in the context of US markets. So I asked and Tara was gracious enough to offer to come back for a second discussion. This one focused on pricing for the US market. So, Tara, thank you again for agreeing to do that.
Tara: Yeah. Not a problem at all. Happy to chat.
Matty: Great. One of the things I wanted to start out talking about with pricing and eBooks generally is it seems as if traditional and indy are meeting up in the middle a little bit. It used to be that a lot of indy books were $0.99, $1.99, very inexpensive, and traditionally published eBooks were upwards of $11.99, $14.99, way more expensive. It seems like the traditional prices are coming down a little bit and the indy prices are rising a little bit. Are you seeing that from your perspective and, if you are, what do you attribute that to?
Tara: Yeah, we definitely are. When ebooks sort of went out, traditional publishers looked at them and just priced along the same lines as a physical book. You know, my physical book costs this much, so it is the same thing as an ebook, and I'll price that amount. But consumers didn't want that because it's not something that's as tangible and that you can keep as a physical book. So whereas then we had indies that were coming in and pricing super, super low, and there was a bit of a stigma at the beginning, I'm talking maybe 10 years ago or more, where indy books were just the $0.99 bargain books. And if you wanted a "real" book, you would go and pay a little bit more. But that's a very old-fashioned way of looking at things. Now indys are not afraid of pricing their books for what they're worth, and traditional publishers are realizing that they maybe came in a bit too aggressive. So what we're seeing is that the pricing is definitely starting to meet in the middle.
Matty: If I'm a new indy author and I finished my first book, I've done all the things that we recommend--getting the professional edit, the professional proofread, the professional cover design--and now I'm ready to put it out on Kobo Writing Life or the other platforms, where should I start my thinking or my research in terms of what price to attach to that ebook when it launches?
Tara: I'm very well. Thanks. Thanks for having me.
Matty: It is my pleasure. To give our listeners a little bit of background on you. Tara Cremin is the Senior Manager of Author Experience at Kobo Writing Life, responsible for everything from optimizing current features to looking for new avenues of growth, with an aim to make KWL the greatest and most user-friendly self-publishing platform available. Tara has worked for KWL since its inception and was previously responsible for content operations. And she's also an occasional guest host on the Kobo Writing Life Podcast.
And Tara is getting more than her fair share of podcast exposure recently, because I'd invited Tara on The Indy Author Podcast to talk about international pricing-- how to price eBooks for an international market--and we had that conversation about a week ago and it was great and you'll get to hear it. And then I went to edit it and I realized that some of the things we talked about would make more sense if they were discussed in the context of already having some foundational information about pricing for one's own market, which in the context of the listener base for The Indy Author Podcast is largely US, so in the context of US markets. So I asked and Tara was gracious enough to offer to come back for a second discussion. This one focused on pricing for the US market. So, Tara, thank you again for agreeing to do that.
Tara: Yeah. Not a problem at all. Happy to chat.
Matty: Great. One of the things I wanted to start out talking about with pricing and eBooks generally is it seems as if traditional and indy are meeting up in the middle a little bit. It used to be that a lot of indy books were $0.99, $1.99, very inexpensive, and traditionally published eBooks were upwards of $11.99, $14.99, way more expensive. It seems like the traditional prices are coming down a little bit and the indy prices are rising a little bit. Are you seeing that from your perspective and, if you are, what do you attribute that to?
Tara: Yeah, we definitely are. When ebooks sort of went out, traditional publishers looked at them and just priced along the same lines as a physical book. You know, my physical book costs this much, so it is the same thing as an ebook, and I'll price that amount. But consumers didn't want that because it's not something that's as tangible and that you can keep as a physical book. So whereas then we had indies that were coming in and pricing super, super low, and there was a bit of a stigma at the beginning, I'm talking maybe 10 years ago or more, where indy books were just the $0.99 bargain books. And if you wanted a "real" book, you would go and pay a little bit more. But that's a very old-fashioned way of looking at things. Now indys are not afraid of pricing their books for what they're worth, and traditional publishers are realizing that they maybe came in a bit too aggressive. So what we're seeing is that the pricing is definitely starting to meet in the middle.
Matty: If I'm a new indy author and I finished my first book, I've done all the things that we recommend--getting the professional edit, the professional proofread, the professional cover design--and now I'm ready to put it out on Kobo Writing Life or the other platforms, where should I start my thinking or my research in terms of what price to attach to that ebook when it launches?
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Tara: The first thing that you should consider is the length of your book, how many words, and then I would look at your genre, because genre pricing is still slightly varied. The pricing isn't exactly "it's this length on each ebook format, so therefore it's this price," and so those are the two main things that I would really take into consideration. Some people will say for you to investigate the different platforms, like you would price differently on one platform versus the other, but if you're publishing wide as an author, I think you should treat the platforms the same, because you don't have to worry about different price matching or things like that. So make a note of the length of your book and look at the genre that you're publishing in and really just look around and see what other authors are doing in a similar length and similar genre.
It's quite easy to do this on Kobo. On the main ebook page on any product page of a book, it tells you the number of hours that a book can be read and the number of minutes, so then it's easy to see where your book fits in. And you can look at your, "If you liked this author, you'd like this author, too," those lists on all platforms. I would do some investigation there. It can be hard to define who an indy book or who a traditionally published book is so I wouldn't be too caught up on that.
Matty: Kobo is a really nice resource for finding out how long other books are, because not all the platforms show the word count and Kobo does show the word count, so that's a nice resource to have. Can you describe what are some of the higher priced genres and what are some of those lower priced genres?
Tara: It's kind of the same as you would see in any old bookshop. Nonfiction tends to be priced a lot higher because they tend to be very long books, there's a lot of footnotes and more investigation that goes into them. And so those tend to definitely be the higher priced books. And then fiction being lower, and then within fiction itself, within the sub genres, there really isn't that much of a difference in the nuance prices. I'd be hesitant in saying this genre is lower than this genre, because it is always a bit in flux.
Matty: Is there a cutting off point in terms of word count or length that says that people who are reading a book under a certain number of words expect a price break under books that are over a certain number of words?
Tara: There's no rule set in stone for it. One of the great things about eBooks is that, your prices aren't forever. You really have the opportunity to be flexible with them. I don't know how much attention people spend ... thinking this myself, as a customer, do you go for a book that is getting the value that you're going to spend six hours? Or do you follow the author-- you're going to read whatever they're going to put out? So, I wouldn't stress too much about it should be this length. I would be more inclined to look at what's comparable in the genres that you're also working in.
Matty: On that consideration, now that we're still in the midst of the COVID pandemic, is that right after this hit and it became clear that there were going to be the serious economic consequences, in addition to the serious health consequences, a lot of people I saw started discounting their books on the theory that people who are perhaps furloughed or, you know, it was the bit they could do to make life easier for readers who were maybe facing some economic challenges. Did you see that in your own business and is it something that's continuing, or you hear about continuing?
Tara: Yeah, we definitely saw it at the beginning. We had these huge campaigns all over the world, we were calling them "Stay home and read," and they were in six or seven other languages. But we had "Stay home and read" campaigns that we ran with publishers and authors themselves that was offering discounted or free books to people that were affected in these areas. And not necessarily just people that were affected--basically to everyone.
I think in the first month, Kobo, we gave away 10 million eBooks, which is crazy. It was really nice to be able to help that many people while they're staying home and just give them something to keep their mind off of things. But we definitely did see then a pivot slightly back to normal after the initial month.
I do think it's wonderful to offer discounts and lowering your pricing for these readers. I would look at it as you would any kind of marketing campaign. I know that might sound a little bit heartless of looking at the COVID as a marketing campaign. What I mean by that is to let your readers know that your books are being discounted or that they're at a lower price, because they might not initially realize that. Something that people should really think about is what other ways can you hit a reader that maybe can't necessarily afford your book right now?
Libraries are a super resource for this, and I think that we've seen library sales have definitely skyrocketed during this time. You can easily opt your books into library distribution through Kobo Writing Life, and you earn 50% off of each library sale once you set your library price. So that can be a really good way of, if somebody's come to you and they're saying that they can't afford your book right now and you can let them know, "Hey, you can just ask for it at your local library."
Subscription programs like Kobo Plus has one available just in the Netherlands and Belgium, but that might be something that can appeal to readers instead of not paying full price for a book that they want to just have a more "all you can eat" model. I would explore what other ways can you make your books accessible without completely taking a dip on your bottom line.
Matty: You had mentioned libraries and it was pretty late in the game before I realized that you can charge more for a library copy than you can for a regular copy, because obviously you're selling it once and you're hoping that many people buy it. For the price scenario where a library is buying it once and they can loan it out as many times as they'd like, is there any advice you have about what people should be pricing their library price at?
Tara: For libraries, like you mentioned, your book can be loaned out multiple times. It can be kind of a confusing way to think about a digital book, but you should just think about it in the same way as a physical book that's in the library. One person is reading it, they bring it back and then one other person is reading it, so your book is getting loaned multiple times. This is why you want to increase your ebook price. You don't want to have the same ebook price that you would have normally because that's undervaluing how many times your book might get read. The rule of thumb that we advise people to go toward is to price along the same line as a mass market paperback that's a good benchmark to go for.
Matty: The amount that a mass market paperback would sell to libraries or would sell on the retail market?
Tara: On the retail market.
Matty: I found that I priced mine quite high. My normal ebook price is $4.99 and I priced at $29.99 for libraries, but I combined that with a very personalized campaign to particular librarians and I think that combination of the personal touch made the higher price palatable. But something that definitely people could experiment with and see what the library market will bear in that scenario.
Tara: Absolutely. And there's also the other option for librarians that's called a cost per checkout, and this allows them to purchase your ebook just once and it only gets read that one time. They purchase your book for 10% of the library price, so if you were saying there that your library price was $29.99, they could purchase it once for $2.99 and then it could go just for one reader, or they could purchase multiples for that price. It's a really great way for librarians to not be afraid to take a chance on an author that they haven't heard of before, that they can take the lower price. And if they keep getting people asking for it, then they can buy your higher price book as well.
Matty: Is that difference between whether the book is being sold for a one-time charge or a cost per checkout a decision that the author or the publisher makes or is it something that comes along with the platform they're loading their book to?
Tara: It depends which platform they're using. On Kobo Writing Life, once you enter your price, both options are available for librarians, but this might vary from platform to platform. But the choice of the purchase, that comes to the librarian specifically.
Matty: Is it possible on Kobo Writing Life, for example, to offer a book both as a onetime charge and as a cost per checkout model?
Tara: Ours are all defaulted in to include both models.
Matty: We had also touched very briefly on the concept of the series. What is your advice in pricing for a series and does it depend on how many books are in the series?
Tara: It absolutely does depend on how many books are in the series. If you're a relatively new author and you're on book two of your series, you're probably not going to be changing the price up too much between books. If you are on book 17 of your series, you might be wanting to reconsider the price of the first five books that you have. I'm always in awe of authors that are able to rise to a 17 books series, but we see it quite frequently. Authors tend to start playing around with the price once it hits book three of the series mark.
I think it's probably a good rule of thumb to know how long your series will be as well when you're trying to come up with your pricing plan. Are you planning on having a five-book series or is it something that you probably will keep going on forever? That will factor in to how you want to set your pricing for sure.
What I can tell you that we're seeing at Kobo that people are experimenting with is on different tiered pricing. Say, if you have your five books in your series, you would price your first book lower to entice your readers to in, and then you would tier up your pricing until you get to your steady price point. That can be a good way of hooking readers at the beginning and walking them up to your normal price.
Matty: I have two series. One is three and that's it, and the other one currently has two. The third one will be coming out, and that will be ongoing. My regular price is $4.99. It sounds like maybe I shouldn't worry at this point about pricing the first one lower. Is that true?
Tara: Yeah. I mean, it's completely subjective to each author, but because it's a third book, I would use this more as a promotional opportunity. So with say the free first in series, you could try it for a short period with a series that is just three books and we still see it as a really viable marketing tool.
Matty: Talk a little bit about the idea of permafree, let's start with the first in the series, and what you see as the pros and cons of that.
Tara: Whenever you set a book for free, one thing to consider first off is what's your aim of what you're doing with your book being free. Is your aim going to be to generate more readers or is it to generate more sales? Once you figure out which option is for you, you're going to have a better ability to plan your promotional opportunities. I just wanted to say that upfront.
But in terms of pros and cons, the first con is, and I think mainly the only one, you're not getting paid, you're putting your content out there for free. But luckily there are many, many pros to this. You're reaching readers that are taking a chance on your book that they may not normally take a chance on. The read through then for a series can be really, really great. It's a good way of attracting new readers.
There's a lot of promotional opportunities for free, especially on Kobo. We have a free page that we curate, and we have editors picks in our free, and we have lots of different genres, whether it's romance or sci-fi or thrillers or nonfiction. If it's permafree or only free for a certain amount of time, you can apply to be featured in these. The same with BookBub. It can be a great way of boosting your recognition and reaching new readers and getting them in that series.
It's going to be also a good tool if you wanted to build up your mailing list, which I really think is kind of the author's ... I was going to call it a magic wand, but that seems like a terrible analogy, but it's the main tool in your toolbox is your mailing list, because those are your diehard fans that are going to follow you. They've chosen to click onto your mailing list. You're talking to them directly. It's marketing that you can't pay for, but you might pay for, but that can be a great way to use free. We see people that do it with mailing lists. If you have a novella that's in between a new series or when your series are releasing, that can be a great way of just offering that to a mailing list.
There are many more pros than there are cons. The majority of authors that I talk to, the successful authors, never lose money on a free book. It really comes back to them. They're not that worried about it, which is something that traditional publishing is still scared of. They're still terrified of free. That's why I think indies are doing so well is because they're not afraid to experiment with this stuff.
Matty: Do you have a sense of the difference in response from readers between a free book and a $0.99 book?
Tara: It's very hard to quantify that. It's hard to gauge it. I think they would probably treat them the same. I think it depends on if the $0.99 book is on a promotion. You know, if that book's full price is $0.99, I think that has more of a negative connotation than a free book potentially. That's just my personal opinion on how a customer perceives the value of a book. But yeah, that could be a whole other podcast, I think, and another debate.
Matty: There are three reasons that I've shied away from free. One is just a general philosophical objection to offering my stuff for free. Another is the idea that people who are picking things up for free, as opposed to let's say $0.99 or a $1.99 or something like that, are more likely maybe just to be looking for anything they can get that's free, rather than seeing it as possibly an entree to the series. And then the third one is just the difficulty logistically of getting a book for free on Amazon and keeping it there. Can you talk a little bit about the logistical challenges on the platforms that you're familiar with in getting a book free and keeping it there if you want to use it as permafree?
Tara: Yeah. So on Kobo, there's no restriction to free. You can set it free at any time. We have a price promotion tool so if you want it to set free ahead of time, you can do that, and you can set it for just a specific period. I totally understand your concern about not getting your type of reader. You're getting those bargain hunters that are maybe just adding free books to the library and not actually ever reading them. That's where it comes back to the point of what you're doing with your free. If you're trying to get readers or you're just trying to tote up numbers, are you trying to get a hundred free downloads?
It can be very easy to hit that number, but if you're trying to gain readers, you might have to be a bit more thoughtful with it, which is why I think it's a good way to interact with the fans that you already have. I think that works if you have many books. I am thinking all of these conversations in my head with an author that has published probably at least 12 to 15 books or something along those lines. If your catalog is smaller, I think free can hurt you, and you don't want to be undervaluing your work as you're trying to get your name in this vast space.
Matty: Can you talk a little bit more about what you had said earlier about whether your goal is reaching readers or making sales. In what ways should people factor that into their pricing strategy?
Tara: That was specific to free itself, but with your pricing strategy, obviously you want to try and generate as many sales as possible. If you're trying to hit new readers, it can be good to have promotions that are in those areas, whether it's discounting your regular pricing, whether it's trying free or something like that.
But if you're trying to generate more sales, that's where I think that you should do your research into your book length, your genre. Something we're talking about next is how often you should reassess your pricing, and that lends into if you're trying to generate more sales, maybe reevaluate the pricing that you have set and make sure that you are being competitive. So, yeah, outside of free, that's how those sorts of ideas would work.
Matty: The last question I have about US pricing is can you talk about what consideration authors should give to the impact on the royalties on different platforms, based on the price that they assign to their book?
Tara: Sure. This can be quite tricky if you're an author that is wide and you're publishing on multiple platforms and you have to consider the pricing there. You want to keep an eye on what your threshold for your royalties are. On Kobo, if you price over $2.99, that's when you'll receive 70%. There's no higher threshold, so you can price to the moon and received 70%. This can be a really great thing for box sets, which we didn't talk about in series, but they can also be a really great way to entice readers. If you're pricing your box sets a little bit higher, you're still earning 70%.
But that can be quite difficult, say, if you're publishing on Amazon and there is a different price point to earn that 70%. So I would just say, think about that strategy within your pricing. We do see people that publish Kobo-specific box sets so they can take advantage of not reducing their earnings. That's something definitely to consider.
I would just research the market. You don't want to accidentally set a price in all of these platforms and actually hurt yourself and not realize it, have a little research on the terms that you're getting.
Matty: Do you have any advice on a formula to apply to determine the pricing of a box set?
Tara: I think this varies from platform to platform, because customers are different. On Kobo, we see that our customers look at box sets more as a matter of convenience rather than necessarily a bargain. So when your box set's full price, there's no rule where it's like, "All right, I'm going to halve the price of each book multiplied by the type of books I have." Do research on what similar box sets are. But one thing just to not undervalue your books and have a nice round price for your box sets.
We do a lot of box set promotions throughout the year, I think we do six or eight that are available through our promotions tab, and those are often 40% discounts on box sets specifically, and Kobo readers absolutely love them. So we find that as people price higher, then it's a 40% discount. The readers are getting a sale, but then you're also still earning the 70% and that could potentially still be over the $9.99.
That's speaking to Kobo specifically, but with box sets you'd have to be a bit careful about not hurting your earnings, and then just checking how readers respond to them on the different platforms. That's why we do see some specific to Kobo box sets. And then you don't have to necessarily worry about price matching or losing earnings.
Matty: Well, I think that provides a really nice background on US pricing specifically, and we'll get a chance in part two to delve into international pricing. So listeners should stay tuned for part two.
Matty: Our next topic is how to price eBooks for international markets. This is a topic that I actually found, when I first started researching this for my own purposes, was oddly difficult to find information on. And I had gotten in touch with our mutual friend, Mark Lefebvre, and asked him for advice on who might be able to speak knowledgeably about that and he recommended you. So I know you're the right person for this because of Mark's recommendation.
But before we dive into the details, just give our listeners a little bit of background on Kobo's international presence so they understand where you're coming from with the information you're bringing.
Tara: Sure. Kobo is headquartered in Toronto and based in Canada, that's our home turf, but we're owned by a Japanese company called Rakuten, which some people might be familiar with because they have touch points on lots of different businesses throughout the world.
With the digital reading business, Kobo is in its 11th year now, which, is sort of crazy when you think about how quickly things change in this area of business. So very quickly realized that to be successful you had to have a global reach rather than focusing solely on just Canada or North America. We have a lot of strategic retail partners throughout the world. For instance, we have FNAC in France and Portugal and Spain, and we just partnered with Booktopia in Australia. We have partners in New Zealand, in the Philippines, and different areas. It really allows us to keep readers reading all over the globe. I think on any given day we're selling books in 190 countries or thereabouts.
Matty: When I have gone on to ebook platforms to set my books up, normally after you've put in all the metadata and loaded your files, you'll get a page that gives pricing options. And in some platforms, at least, once you put in the price for your own market, let's say US and I'm putting in $4.99 for my ebook, one option is that the system will default other prices into the international markets that are available. Does Kobo do that? And if it does, how does it calculate that? Is it just a straight currency conversion?
Tara: Yeah. Kobo Writing Life is the self-publishing platform for Kobo. It allows authors that have their eBooks and audio books to publish directly to our website. We allow pricing in 16 currencies, which just goes to show where we're selling books, that it's in areas that necessitate 16 currencies. Your default currency is what you're getting paid in, so that's the price that you're putting in first. For example, your default would be USD because you're based in the States. So, it is sort of a guesstimate of the rough exchange between the USD.
And what we always recommend is that people try and actually just manually go in and update them to make them as attractive as possible. Customers are sort of preconditioned to respond really well to a 99-cent ending price point or a 49-cent ending price points. I would definitely make sure that in all of these currencies, that you're offering books around that price.
Matty: Let's say you put in your home market pricing and then under the international markets 5.47 appears. Is it legitimate just to go in and round it to whatever the next attractive price point is--i.e., ending in 49 or ending in 99?
Tara: I think that pricing is so subjective. There's a number of factors. It depends on the currency that you're talking about, the type of book that you're trying to sell, and the area where you're going to be selling your book. It's really important for authors to do their market research. I always recommend, if you're not too sure, take a look at the books that are selling similar to yours, what's the similar genre and what are those authors pricing? In Kobo, it's really, really easy to see the different storefronts throughout the world. On our website at kobo.com, there's a little flag at the top that indicates the geo that you're in, so you can see your American flag or your Canadian flag. And then if you click on that, you actually see all of our localized storefronts. It's a great opportunity for you to explore the different pricing options that are available throughout the world and see what other people are pricing too.
Matty: It does seem as if a straight conversion doesn't quite get to the price you want, because it seems to me that, for example, if I were to do a straight price conversion from US dollars to Australian currency, that I might come up with a number, but that the Australian market actually has a higher tolerance for higher price points. Whereas India, for example, has a lower tolerance than you might get if you just did a straight conversion. I liked the suggestion of going in and looking for what other authors are doing. How does an indy author find comp authors to use to model their pricing on?
Tara: Well, that's the beautiful thing about Kobo is that we don't differentiate between indy and traditionally published authors. They're all mixed in together from a customer point of view, you cannot really tell who is indy and who isn't. So for the purpose of this exercise, it's maybe not the easiest thing because you're trying to compare, but we do see, that's sort of a good point actually, that indy books are increasing in pricing while traditionally published books are decreasing, just to show how similar both are to our customers, that the pricing is probably really similar regardless of where the books are coming from.
Any of the books that you have, there's a "if you liked this, you'll also like this," and it's where our algorithms are trying to train our customers, to see buying behavior that they might've purchased your book and here's books that are complementary in the genre that you're in. I would explore that. We definitely have heard reports from authors that not all of their complementary authors are the same, so on Amazon they might be different to the authors that people are buying similar to theirs on Barnes and Noble. So it might be worth doing a little bit of research if you are publishing wide to see who your comparable authors are, especially within the genres.
And then I would look at different pricing. It sounds like a lot of work, but it really isn't, it's just something that you would do while you're browsing around. And it's also a great opportunity for you to potentially collaborate with somebody. Maybe there's someone that's in your authors that are similar to Kobo and it's a good opportunity to bundle up together or do some sort of promotion. It's good to keep an eye on, on who's selling where.
Matty: I think the tough part about doing research on this is that as a not yet terribly well-known indy author, I don't necessarily want to use Stephen King as my pricing model. And although I am sure that Stephen King's publishing house is doing lots of research and has a team of people who are focused on pricing for international markets, the people who are more comparable to me from a pricing point of view, it's hard to tell how careful they're being about their international pricing. I think my fear is that I'm modeling myself on someone who just took a guess. Is there a way to test out your assumptions? If I price at a certain level in India, should I be running tests at different price points to see which one gets the most traction?
Tara: Yeah, absolutely. That's the beautiful thing about having control over everything and especially the pricing is that you can experiment really easily. You can do your own little AB test and change the pricing of your books and see the feedback that you get from readers or even just in the sales numbers themselves. So that's definitely something that you can do. We actually have a price promotion tool, it allows you to set a price so you can either set a permanent price change forever, or just set a price change for a specific time period. And so, for example, if you wanted to test different pricing in India, you could go in and change the Indian price for a week and then explore and see how that affected sales. And you can set it up ahead of time without having to worry about changing the price and changing back. It's a handy little tool to have.
But I definitely would say to experiment with the different pricing and also take a look at where you're selling on Kobo in general, in terms of pricing. That might lead you toward the areas where you would want to experiment. Something that we find that users maybe overlook: we have a lot of customers throughout the world and some are publishing translations. We have some that are selling more books in French than they are in English, but they're based in North America. If you're publishing in different languages or if your audience is somewhere else, something to keep in mind is for French, for instance, don't just set the Euro price. You want to make sure that you're also setting a really good Swiss Franc price because there's a lot of French readers there. Tweak the areas where you're setting prices and make sure that you're reaching all the readers possible.
Matty: If you have a book that is in English, for example, and you're selling it in France and it's English format, and you also have a translation of that book selling in France, should the price of those books be the same, or are there different expectations between those two?
Tara: I think there's certainly different expectations. I think it goes back to researching the market, and with translations in general, you have to put a lot of research into things even beyond the pricing. Is your cover going to be different? Are you going to market differently? It would definitely be something to consider.
You also don't want to put off readers. French readers are also English readers a lot of the time. If they see that your book gets priced differently, that might not be a great customer experience. But, yeah, I think it's all part and parcel with the market research that you're doing.
Matty: On Kobo, if someone were to search for me on the French site and I had a translation of my books, would they see the English version and the French version right next to each other so that, that price comparison would be easy for a reader to see?
Tara: Our search is based on where the customer is. If I'm searching, English will be my default language, but if your account is set up like you're only purchasing French books, we're just going to show you the French books first. So it's harder to find the English books. We're always trying to give the customer what we think that they're actually looking for first. It wouldn't be as obvious that they would be one next to one another but it is possible with tweaking the filters in our search.
Matty: If someone is doing an international price promotion like through BookBub, and of course you then have to set the price at all the international markets that the promotion is going to, but there are many markets that are available to platforms like Kobo that aren't covered by a BookBub promotion, is it important to discount across the board or would you only really need to discount in the markets where you've committed to discounting it to BookBub.
Tara: It's a personal preference, I think. With our price promotion tool, you have the option of only selecting currencies that you want to discount, and you don't have to select them all. But I think it depends on the marketing strategy that you're doing. Are you sending a newsletter out that is going to people in all of these different regions? What promotion are you doing around that? That might be how you decide if you want to discount it everywhere. It might be easier to just discount it everywhere. And then if you were wide, you'll do all of your retailers the same.
But I know sometimes you might want to just target a specific Canada option and not discount the rest of them. It's completely up to the author preference. I'm trying to think of author behavior, what we're seeing people do, and I think it's probably 50 50 with doing all of them and only doing a little bit of them.
Matty: I'm always hesitant to make a change in pricing because I'm afraid that I'll type something in incorrectly. And I've had a couple of circumstances on Amazon, on KDP, where I've gone in and it's possible that I made a data entry error, or it's also possible that KDP just went and changed the price of my book on its own. It's hard to know where the oddity is coming from.
But one thing that I did, I'm a big fan of spreadsheets so here's my tip for people who are trying to manage entry of multiple market functions is that I have all the markets and the price I want to price my books at in each market. And then I have columns that are how those markets appear on the different platforms. In what order do they appear on Kobo, in what order do they appear on Amazon, in what order do they appear on Draft2Digital, for example, and then I can resort the list so I can bang through it because I found that I was more error prone if I was jumping around, if I was scanning a spreadsheet and having to jump around, whereas if I ordered it in the Kobo order, and then could just rip through the Kobo user interface to enter it, that I've made fewer mistakes. At least I hope I'm making fewer mistakes. That's my tip of the day for listeners.
Tara: This was terribly organized of you. I love it.
Matty: Yeah. Well you do it once and then you can save yourself hours of pain later on.
Tara: Absolutely.
Matty: How often should authors reassess their international pricing? If I look at the US market, I've set my first in series books at $2.99. I've set the rest of them at $4.99, and they've been like that for a long time. Is it necessary to reassess each market on some schedule?
Tara: That's a great question. I do think it is worthwhile. Sometimes people set their price and leave their books and then that's it. Kobo Writing Life is now eight years old, so if you set a book eight years ago, you might not be as competitive in the market anymore. I would definitely say to review your pricing, maybe once a year, maybe if you are doing your taxes, you could look at your pricing there because you're already in it and that might be a good time.
Say if you're launching a new series, compare it to your last series. How did they sell comparable to that and what is the pricing that worked well for that series? I also would also say sadly you have to keep an eye on things that are happening in the world, that the pricing fluctuates. So, in times of crisis, for instance right now, the currencies are affected in a particular way or people might be pricing differently, so this is probably a good time to reassess what pricing you're doing. And then, like I mentioned earlier with, we're seeing a significant rise in indy pricing and then publishers coming to meet us in the middle.
So I do think that there's room for one band pricing for eBooks. There are no real rules about how often to do it. But I would say if you're doing it once a year, to have a little look and see, and not in too much detail, but I think that's probably a good rule of thumb.
Matty: Great. Well, Tara, thank you so much for sharing that information. Let the listeners know where they can go online to find out more about Kobo Writing Life and about you.
Tara: Sure. We have a blog that's KoboWritingLife.com. We also have a weekly podcast that's called the Kobo Writing Life Podcast, where we feature tips and interviews for authors on all parts of their career.
Our platform is kobo.com/writinglife and you can find us there. And if you are interested in emailing us at all about anything, if you have any questions, you can reach us at [email protected].
Matty: Thank you so much. Tara, this was very helpful.
It's quite easy to do this on Kobo. On the main ebook page on any product page of a book, it tells you the number of hours that a book can be read and the number of minutes, so then it's easy to see where your book fits in. And you can look at your, "If you liked this author, you'd like this author, too," those lists on all platforms. I would do some investigation there. It can be hard to define who an indy book or who a traditionally published book is so I wouldn't be too caught up on that.
Matty: Kobo is a really nice resource for finding out how long other books are, because not all the platforms show the word count and Kobo does show the word count, so that's a nice resource to have. Can you describe what are some of the higher priced genres and what are some of those lower priced genres?
Tara: It's kind of the same as you would see in any old bookshop. Nonfiction tends to be priced a lot higher because they tend to be very long books, there's a lot of footnotes and more investigation that goes into them. And so those tend to definitely be the higher priced books. And then fiction being lower, and then within fiction itself, within the sub genres, there really isn't that much of a difference in the nuance prices. I'd be hesitant in saying this genre is lower than this genre, because it is always a bit in flux.
Matty: Is there a cutting off point in terms of word count or length that says that people who are reading a book under a certain number of words expect a price break under books that are over a certain number of words?
Tara: There's no rule set in stone for it. One of the great things about eBooks is that, your prices aren't forever. You really have the opportunity to be flexible with them. I don't know how much attention people spend ... thinking this myself, as a customer, do you go for a book that is getting the value that you're going to spend six hours? Or do you follow the author-- you're going to read whatever they're going to put out? So, I wouldn't stress too much about it should be this length. I would be more inclined to look at what's comparable in the genres that you're also working in.
Matty: On that consideration, now that we're still in the midst of the COVID pandemic, is that right after this hit and it became clear that there were going to be the serious economic consequences, in addition to the serious health consequences, a lot of people I saw started discounting their books on the theory that people who are perhaps furloughed or, you know, it was the bit they could do to make life easier for readers who were maybe facing some economic challenges. Did you see that in your own business and is it something that's continuing, or you hear about continuing?
Tara: Yeah, we definitely saw it at the beginning. We had these huge campaigns all over the world, we were calling them "Stay home and read," and they were in six or seven other languages. But we had "Stay home and read" campaigns that we ran with publishers and authors themselves that was offering discounted or free books to people that were affected in these areas. And not necessarily just people that were affected--basically to everyone.
I think in the first month, Kobo, we gave away 10 million eBooks, which is crazy. It was really nice to be able to help that many people while they're staying home and just give them something to keep their mind off of things. But we definitely did see then a pivot slightly back to normal after the initial month.
I do think it's wonderful to offer discounts and lowering your pricing for these readers. I would look at it as you would any kind of marketing campaign. I know that might sound a little bit heartless of looking at the COVID as a marketing campaign. What I mean by that is to let your readers know that your books are being discounted or that they're at a lower price, because they might not initially realize that. Something that people should really think about is what other ways can you hit a reader that maybe can't necessarily afford your book right now?
Libraries are a super resource for this, and I think that we've seen library sales have definitely skyrocketed during this time. You can easily opt your books into library distribution through Kobo Writing Life, and you earn 50% off of each library sale once you set your library price. So that can be a really good way of, if somebody's come to you and they're saying that they can't afford your book right now and you can let them know, "Hey, you can just ask for it at your local library."
Subscription programs like Kobo Plus has one available just in the Netherlands and Belgium, but that might be something that can appeal to readers instead of not paying full price for a book that they want to just have a more "all you can eat" model. I would explore what other ways can you make your books accessible without completely taking a dip on your bottom line.
Matty: You had mentioned libraries and it was pretty late in the game before I realized that you can charge more for a library copy than you can for a regular copy, because obviously you're selling it once and you're hoping that many people buy it. For the price scenario where a library is buying it once and they can loan it out as many times as they'd like, is there any advice you have about what people should be pricing their library price at?
Tara: For libraries, like you mentioned, your book can be loaned out multiple times. It can be kind of a confusing way to think about a digital book, but you should just think about it in the same way as a physical book that's in the library. One person is reading it, they bring it back and then one other person is reading it, so your book is getting loaned multiple times. This is why you want to increase your ebook price. You don't want to have the same ebook price that you would have normally because that's undervaluing how many times your book might get read. The rule of thumb that we advise people to go toward is to price along the same line as a mass market paperback that's a good benchmark to go for.
Matty: The amount that a mass market paperback would sell to libraries or would sell on the retail market?
Tara: On the retail market.
Matty: I found that I priced mine quite high. My normal ebook price is $4.99 and I priced at $29.99 for libraries, but I combined that with a very personalized campaign to particular librarians and I think that combination of the personal touch made the higher price palatable. But something that definitely people could experiment with and see what the library market will bear in that scenario.
Tara: Absolutely. And there's also the other option for librarians that's called a cost per checkout, and this allows them to purchase your ebook just once and it only gets read that one time. They purchase your book for 10% of the library price, so if you were saying there that your library price was $29.99, they could purchase it once for $2.99 and then it could go just for one reader, or they could purchase multiples for that price. It's a really great way for librarians to not be afraid to take a chance on an author that they haven't heard of before, that they can take the lower price. And if they keep getting people asking for it, then they can buy your higher price book as well.
Matty: Is that difference between whether the book is being sold for a one-time charge or a cost per checkout a decision that the author or the publisher makes or is it something that comes along with the platform they're loading their book to?
Tara: It depends which platform they're using. On Kobo Writing Life, once you enter your price, both options are available for librarians, but this might vary from platform to platform. But the choice of the purchase, that comes to the librarian specifically.
Matty: Is it possible on Kobo Writing Life, for example, to offer a book both as a onetime charge and as a cost per checkout model?
Tara: Ours are all defaulted in to include both models.
Matty: We had also touched very briefly on the concept of the series. What is your advice in pricing for a series and does it depend on how many books are in the series?
Tara: It absolutely does depend on how many books are in the series. If you're a relatively new author and you're on book two of your series, you're probably not going to be changing the price up too much between books. If you are on book 17 of your series, you might be wanting to reconsider the price of the first five books that you have. I'm always in awe of authors that are able to rise to a 17 books series, but we see it quite frequently. Authors tend to start playing around with the price once it hits book three of the series mark.
I think it's probably a good rule of thumb to know how long your series will be as well when you're trying to come up with your pricing plan. Are you planning on having a five-book series or is it something that you probably will keep going on forever? That will factor in to how you want to set your pricing for sure.
What I can tell you that we're seeing at Kobo that people are experimenting with is on different tiered pricing. Say, if you have your five books in your series, you would price your first book lower to entice your readers to in, and then you would tier up your pricing until you get to your steady price point. That can be a good way of hooking readers at the beginning and walking them up to your normal price.
Matty: I have two series. One is three and that's it, and the other one currently has two. The third one will be coming out, and that will be ongoing. My regular price is $4.99. It sounds like maybe I shouldn't worry at this point about pricing the first one lower. Is that true?
Tara: Yeah. I mean, it's completely subjective to each author, but because it's a third book, I would use this more as a promotional opportunity. So with say the free first in series, you could try it for a short period with a series that is just three books and we still see it as a really viable marketing tool.
Matty: Talk a little bit about the idea of permafree, let's start with the first in the series, and what you see as the pros and cons of that.
Tara: Whenever you set a book for free, one thing to consider first off is what's your aim of what you're doing with your book being free. Is your aim going to be to generate more readers or is it to generate more sales? Once you figure out which option is for you, you're going to have a better ability to plan your promotional opportunities. I just wanted to say that upfront.
But in terms of pros and cons, the first con is, and I think mainly the only one, you're not getting paid, you're putting your content out there for free. But luckily there are many, many pros to this. You're reaching readers that are taking a chance on your book that they may not normally take a chance on. The read through then for a series can be really, really great. It's a good way of attracting new readers.
There's a lot of promotional opportunities for free, especially on Kobo. We have a free page that we curate, and we have editors picks in our free, and we have lots of different genres, whether it's romance or sci-fi or thrillers or nonfiction. If it's permafree or only free for a certain amount of time, you can apply to be featured in these. The same with BookBub. It can be a great way of boosting your recognition and reaching new readers and getting them in that series.
It's going to be also a good tool if you wanted to build up your mailing list, which I really think is kind of the author's ... I was going to call it a magic wand, but that seems like a terrible analogy, but it's the main tool in your toolbox is your mailing list, because those are your diehard fans that are going to follow you. They've chosen to click onto your mailing list. You're talking to them directly. It's marketing that you can't pay for, but you might pay for, but that can be a great way to use free. We see people that do it with mailing lists. If you have a novella that's in between a new series or when your series are releasing, that can be a great way of just offering that to a mailing list.
There are many more pros than there are cons. The majority of authors that I talk to, the successful authors, never lose money on a free book. It really comes back to them. They're not that worried about it, which is something that traditional publishing is still scared of. They're still terrified of free. That's why I think indies are doing so well is because they're not afraid to experiment with this stuff.
Matty: Do you have a sense of the difference in response from readers between a free book and a $0.99 book?
Tara: It's very hard to quantify that. It's hard to gauge it. I think they would probably treat them the same. I think it depends on if the $0.99 book is on a promotion. You know, if that book's full price is $0.99, I think that has more of a negative connotation than a free book potentially. That's just my personal opinion on how a customer perceives the value of a book. But yeah, that could be a whole other podcast, I think, and another debate.
Matty: There are three reasons that I've shied away from free. One is just a general philosophical objection to offering my stuff for free. Another is the idea that people who are picking things up for free, as opposed to let's say $0.99 or a $1.99 or something like that, are more likely maybe just to be looking for anything they can get that's free, rather than seeing it as possibly an entree to the series. And then the third one is just the difficulty logistically of getting a book for free on Amazon and keeping it there. Can you talk a little bit about the logistical challenges on the platforms that you're familiar with in getting a book free and keeping it there if you want to use it as permafree?
Tara: Yeah. So on Kobo, there's no restriction to free. You can set it free at any time. We have a price promotion tool so if you want it to set free ahead of time, you can do that, and you can set it for just a specific period. I totally understand your concern about not getting your type of reader. You're getting those bargain hunters that are maybe just adding free books to the library and not actually ever reading them. That's where it comes back to the point of what you're doing with your free. If you're trying to get readers or you're just trying to tote up numbers, are you trying to get a hundred free downloads?
It can be very easy to hit that number, but if you're trying to gain readers, you might have to be a bit more thoughtful with it, which is why I think it's a good way to interact with the fans that you already have. I think that works if you have many books. I am thinking all of these conversations in my head with an author that has published probably at least 12 to 15 books or something along those lines. If your catalog is smaller, I think free can hurt you, and you don't want to be undervaluing your work as you're trying to get your name in this vast space.
Matty: Can you talk a little bit more about what you had said earlier about whether your goal is reaching readers or making sales. In what ways should people factor that into their pricing strategy?
Tara: That was specific to free itself, but with your pricing strategy, obviously you want to try and generate as many sales as possible. If you're trying to hit new readers, it can be good to have promotions that are in those areas, whether it's discounting your regular pricing, whether it's trying free or something like that.
But if you're trying to generate more sales, that's where I think that you should do your research into your book length, your genre. Something we're talking about next is how often you should reassess your pricing, and that lends into if you're trying to generate more sales, maybe reevaluate the pricing that you have set and make sure that you are being competitive. So, yeah, outside of free, that's how those sorts of ideas would work.
Matty: The last question I have about US pricing is can you talk about what consideration authors should give to the impact on the royalties on different platforms, based on the price that they assign to their book?
Tara: Sure. This can be quite tricky if you're an author that is wide and you're publishing on multiple platforms and you have to consider the pricing there. You want to keep an eye on what your threshold for your royalties are. On Kobo, if you price over $2.99, that's when you'll receive 70%. There's no higher threshold, so you can price to the moon and received 70%. This can be a really great thing for box sets, which we didn't talk about in series, but they can also be a really great way to entice readers. If you're pricing your box sets a little bit higher, you're still earning 70%.
But that can be quite difficult, say, if you're publishing on Amazon and there is a different price point to earn that 70%. So I would just say, think about that strategy within your pricing. We do see people that publish Kobo-specific box sets so they can take advantage of not reducing their earnings. That's something definitely to consider.
I would just research the market. You don't want to accidentally set a price in all of these platforms and actually hurt yourself and not realize it, have a little research on the terms that you're getting.
Matty: Do you have any advice on a formula to apply to determine the pricing of a box set?
Tara: I think this varies from platform to platform, because customers are different. On Kobo, we see that our customers look at box sets more as a matter of convenience rather than necessarily a bargain. So when your box set's full price, there's no rule where it's like, "All right, I'm going to halve the price of each book multiplied by the type of books I have." Do research on what similar box sets are. But one thing just to not undervalue your books and have a nice round price for your box sets.
We do a lot of box set promotions throughout the year, I think we do six or eight that are available through our promotions tab, and those are often 40% discounts on box sets specifically, and Kobo readers absolutely love them. So we find that as people price higher, then it's a 40% discount. The readers are getting a sale, but then you're also still earning the 70% and that could potentially still be over the $9.99.
That's speaking to Kobo specifically, but with box sets you'd have to be a bit careful about not hurting your earnings, and then just checking how readers respond to them on the different platforms. That's why we do see some specific to Kobo box sets. And then you don't have to necessarily worry about price matching or losing earnings.
Matty: Well, I think that provides a really nice background on US pricing specifically, and we'll get a chance in part two to delve into international pricing. So listeners should stay tuned for part two.
Matty: Our next topic is how to price eBooks for international markets. This is a topic that I actually found, when I first started researching this for my own purposes, was oddly difficult to find information on. And I had gotten in touch with our mutual friend, Mark Lefebvre, and asked him for advice on who might be able to speak knowledgeably about that and he recommended you. So I know you're the right person for this because of Mark's recommendation.
But before we dive into the details, just give our listeners a little bit of background on Kobo's international presence so they understand where you're coming from with the information you're bringing.
Tara: Sure. Kobo is headquartered in Toronto and based in Canada, that's our home turf, but we're owned by a Japanese company called Rakuten, which some people might be familiar with because they have touch points on lots of different businesses throughout the world.
With the digital reading business, Kobo is in its 11th year now, which, is sort of crazy when you think about how quickly things change in this area of business. So very quickly realized that to be successful you had to have a global reach rather than focusing solely on just Canada or North America. We have a lot of strategic retail partners throughout the world. For instance, we have FNAC in France and Portugal and Spain, and we just partnered with Booktopia in Australia. We have partners in New Zealand, in the Philippines, and different areas. It really allows us to keep readers reading all over the globe. I think on any given day we're selling books in 190 countries or thereabouts.
Matty: When I have gone on to ebook platforms to set my books up, normally after you've put in all the metadata and loaded your files, you'll get a page that gives pricing options. And in some platforms, at least, once you put in the price for your own market, let's say US and I'm putting in $4.99 for my ebook, one option is that the system will default other prices into the international markets that are available. Does Kobo do that? And if it does, how does it calculate that? Is it just a straight currency conversion?
Tara: Yeah. Kobo Writing Life is the self-publishing platform for Kobo. It allows authors that have their eBooks and audio books to publish directly to our website. We allow pricing in 16 currencies, which just goes to show where we're selling books, that it's in areas that necessitate 16 currencies. Your default currency is what you're getting paid in, so that's the price that you're putting in first. For example, your default would be USD because you're based in the States. So, it is sort of a guesstimate of the rough exchange between the USD.
And what we always recommend is that people try and actually just manually go in and update them to make them as attractive as possible. Customers are sort of preconditioned to respond really well to a 99-cent ending price point or a 49-cent ending price points. I would definitely make sure that in all of these currencies, that you're offering books around that price.
Matty: Let's say you put in your home market pricing and then under the international markets 5.47 appears. Is it legitimate just to go in and round it to whatever the next attractive price point is--i.e., ending in 49 or ending in 99?
Tara: I think that pricing is so subjective. There's a number of factors. It depends on the currency that you're talking about, the type of book that you're trying to sell, and the area where you're going to be selling your book. It's really important for authors to do their market research. I always recommend, if you're not too sure, take a look at the books that are selling similar to yours, what's the similar genre and what are those authors pricing? In Kobo, it's really, really easy to see the different storefronts throughout the world. On our website at kobo.com, there's a little flag at the top that indicates the geo that you're in, so you can see your American flag or your Canadian flag. And then if you click on that, you actually see all of our localized storefronts. It's a great opportunity for you to explore the different pricing options that are available throughout the world and see what other people are pricing too.
Matty: It does seem as if a straight conversion doesn't quite get to the price you want, because it seems to me that, for example, if I were to do a straight price conversion from US dollars to Australian currency, that I might come up with a number, but that the Australian market actually has a higher tolerance for higher price points. Whereas India, for example, has a lower tolerance than you might get if you just did a straight conversion. I liked the suggestion of going in and looking for what other authors are doing. How does an indy author find comp authors to use to model their pricing on?
Tara: Well, that's the beautiful thing about Kobo is that we don't differentiate between indy and traditionally published authors. They're all mixed in together from a customer point of view, you cannot really tell who is indy and who isn't. So for the purpose of this exercise, it's maybe not the easiest thing because you're trying to compare, but we do see, that's sort of a good point actually, that indy books are increasing in pricing while traditionally published books are decreasing, just to show how similar both are to our customers, that the pricing is probably really similar regardless of where the books are coming from.
Any of the books that you have, there's a "if you liked this, you'll also like this," and it's where our algorithms are trying to train our customers, to see buying behavior that they might've purchased your book and here's books that are complementary in the genre that you're in. I would explore that. We definitely have heard reports from authors that not all of their complementary authors are the same, so on Amazon they might be different to the authors that people are buying similar to theirs on Barnes and Noble. So it might be worth doing a little bit of research if you are publishing wide to see who your comparable authors are, especially within the genres.
And then I would look at different pricing. It sounds like a lot of work, but it really isn't, it's just something that you would do while you're browsing around. And it's also a great opportunity for you to potentially collaborate with somebody. Maybe there's someone that's in your authors that are similar to Kobo and it's a good opportunity to bundle up together or do some sort of promotion. It's good to keep an eye on, on who's selling where.
Matty: I think the tough part about doing research on this is that as a not yet terribly well-known indy author, I don't necessarily want to use Stephen King as my pricing model. And although I am sure that Stephen King's publishing house is doing lots of research and has a team of people who are focused on pricing for international markets, the people who are more comparable to me from a pricing point of view, it's hard to tell how careful they're being about their international pricing. I think my fear is that I'm modeling myself on someone who just took a guess. Is there a way to test out your assumptions? If I price at a certain level in India, should I be running tests at different price points to see which one gets the most traction?
Tara: Yeah, absolutely. That's the beautiful thing about having control over everything and especially the pricing is that you can experiment really easily. You can do your own little AB test and change the pricing of your books and see the feedback that you get from readers or even just in the sales numbers themselves. So that's definitely something that you can do. We actually have a price promotion tool, it allows you to set a price so you can either set a permanent price change forever, or just set a price change for a specific time period. And so, for example, if you wanted to test different pricing in India, you could go in and change the Indian price for a week and then explore and see how that affected sales. And you can set it up ahead of time without having to worry about changing the price and changing back. It's a handy little tool to have.
But I definitely would say to experiment with the different pricing and also take a look at where you're selling on Kobo in general, in terms of pricing. That might lead you toward the areas where you would want to experiment. Something that we find that users maybe overlook: we have a lot of customers throughout the world and some are publishing translations. We have some that are selling more books in French than they are in English, but they're based in North America. If you're publishing in different languages or if your audience is somewhere else, something to keep in mind is for French, for instance, don't just set the Euro price. You want to make sure that you're also setting a really good Swiss Franc price because there's a lot of French readers there. Tweak the areas where you're setting prices and make sure that you're reaching all the readers possible.
Matty: If you have a book that is in English, for example, and you're selling it in France and it's English format, and you also have a translation of that book selling in France, should the price of those books be the same, or are there different expectations between those two?
Tara: I think there's certainly different expectations. I think it goes back to researching the market, and with translations in general, you have to put a lot of research into things even beyond the pricing. Is your cover going to be different? Are you going to market differently? It would definitely be something to consider.
You also don't want to put off readers. French readers are also English readers a lot of the time. If they see that your book gets priced differently, that might not be a great customer experience. But, yeah, I think it's all part and parcel with the market research that you're doing.
Matty: On Kobo, if someone were to search for me on the French site and I had a translation of my books, would they see the English version and the French version right next to each other so that, that price comparison would be easy for a reader to see?
Tara: Our search is based on where the customer is. If I'm searching, English will be my default language, but if your account is set up like you're only purchasing French books, we're just going to show you the French books first. So it's harder to find the English books. We're always trying to give the customer what we think that they're actually looking for first. It wouldn't be as obvious that they would be one next to one another but it is possible with tweaking the filters in our search.
Matty: If someone is doing an international price promotion like through BookBub, and of course you then have to set the price at all the international markets that the promotion is going to, but there are many markets that are available to platforms like Kobo that aren't covered by a BookBub promotion, is it important to discount across the board or would you only really need to discount in the markets where you've committed to discounting it to BookBub.
Tara: It's a personal preference, I think. With our price promotion tool, you have the option of only selecting currencies that you want to discount, and you don't have to select them all. But I think it depends on the marketing strategy that you're doing. Are you sending a newsletter out that is going to people in all of these different regions? What promotion are you doing around that? That might be how you decide if you want to discount it everywhere. It might be easier to just discount it everywhere. And then if you were wide, you'll do all of your retailers the same.
But I know sometimes you might want to just target a specific Canada option and not discount the rest of them. It's completely up to the author preference. I'm trying to think of author behavior, what we're seeing people do, and I think it's probably 50 50 with doing all of them and only doing a little bit of them.
Matty: I'm always hesitant to make a change in pricing because I'm afraid that I'll type something in incorrectly. And I've had a couple of circumstances on Amazon, on KDP, where I've gone in and it's possible that I made a data entry error, or it's also possible that KDP just went and changed the price of my book on its own. It's hard to know where the oddity is coming from.
But one thing that I did, I'm a big fan of spreadsheets so here's my tip for people who are trying to manage entry of multiple market functions is that I have all the markets and the price I want to price my books at in each market. And then I have columns that are how those markets appear on the different platforms. In what order do they appear on Kobo, in what order do they appear on Amazon, in what order do they appear on Draft2Digital, for example, and then I can resort the list so I can bang through it because I found that I was more error prone if I was jumping around, if I was scanning a spreadsheet and having to jump around, whereas if I ordered it in the Kobo order, and then could just rip through the Kobo user interface to enter it, that I've made fewer mistakes. At least I hope I'm making fewer mistakes. That's my tip of the day for listeners.
Tara: This was terribly organized of you. I love it.
Matty: Yeah. Well you do it once and then you can save yourself hours of pain later on.
Tara: Absolutely.
Matty: How often should authors reassess their international pricing? If I look at the US market, I've set my first in series books at $2.99. I've set the rest of them at $4.99, and they've been like that for a long time. Is it necessary to reassess each market on some schedule?
Tara: That's a great question. I do think it is worthwhile. Sometimes people set their price and leave their books and then that's it. Kobo Writing Life is now eight years old, so if you set a book eight years ago, you might not be as competitive in the market anymore. I would definitely say to review your pricing, maybe once a year, maybe if you are doing your taxes, you could look at your pricing there because you're already in it and that might be a good time.
Say if you're launching a new series, compare it to your last series. How did they sell comparable to that and what is the pricing that worked well for that series? I also would also say sadly you have to keep an eye on things that are happening in the world, that the pricing fluctuates. So, in times of crisis, for instance right now, the currencies are affected in a particular way or people might be pricing differently, so this is probably a good time to reassess what pricing you're doing. And then, like I mentioned earlier with, we're seeing a significant rise in indy pricing and then publishers coming to meet us in the middle.
So I do think that there's room for one band pricing for eBooks. There are no real rules about how often to do it. But I would say if you're doing it once a year, to have a little look and see, and not in too much detail, but I think that's probably a good rule of thumb.
Matty: Great. Well, Tara, thank you so much for sharing that information. Let the listeners know where they can go online to find out more about Kobo Writing Life and about you.
Tara: Sure. We have a blog that's KoboWritingLife.com. We also have a weekly podcast that's called the Kobo Writing Life Podcast, where we feature tips and interviews for authors on all parts of their career.
Our platform is kobo.com/writinglife and you can find us there. And if you are interested in emailing us at all about anything, if you have any questions, you can reach us at [email protected].
Matty: Thank you so much. Tara, this was very helpful.
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