I Am a Book Buyer: What Will Make Me Want to Buy Your Book?

blog ask I Am a Book Buyer: What Will Make Me Want to Buy Your Book?

Here are top book promotion tips to make your book mega-sellable.

People buy books for all kinds of reasons.  There is no single way to tell how they are buying them, but I can give you tips on how to make yours stand out from the pack.  What makes me an expert?  I love books; I buy books and I handle authors’ books every single day.  Some sell like hotcakes and then some don’t make that bestselling status and the author wonders what they are doing wrong?

Word of mouth is the foremost top way people buy books, but what makes them talk up a book that everyone must have?

I was on one of my many favorite social networks promoting one of my author’s books recently and a book that someone was offering for review caught my eye.  The subject matter was something I was very interested in, the book cover was eye-catching and even though my TBR pile is a mile high, I thought I’d at least check it out on Amazon and purchase the book myself only I wanted the ebook version as it will download immediately into my Kindle e-reader. Plus, it would be cheaper.  I mean, how much can an ebook cost these days?

I headed over to Amazon and I stopped in my tracks.  They were offering the paperback copy for $11.99 and the ebook copy for $9.99.  I wasn’t interested in the paperback copy; I wanted the ebook copy.  If the ebook was only $2.99 as most are these days (you can even get quite a few free ebooks online), I would have bought it on the spot.  But $9.99?  Are they insane?  Why would I pay that much for your book when I can find something else for $2.99?

I walked away and the author lost a sale just because of the price.

Pricing your book to make it affordable is one of several ways to make sure people will buy your book.  Because there are so many ebooks on the market at the price of $2.99 or below, pricing it well above that is creating ebook suicide.

I cringe, too, thinking about all those months of writing my book, getting it published, dealing with the promotion end of it and I’m going to let it go at $2.99?  Yes.  Yes.  Uh…yes.

Before an author writes even one word, she has to ask herself if this is a book she is writing for enjoyment or is this something she wants to make money off of.  You can combine the two but if the latter is apparently true, then you have to think of your book as a business and think of the customers who are going to be finding your book and debating whether they want to buy it.  Will they buy a $9.99 ebook or will they buy a $2.99 ebook?

Pricing probably is the most important thing you need to think about.  There are other important things – book cover design (yes lots of people are attracted to the book by the book cover), book description, the excerpt you put up at Amazon and, amazingly, the title.

I’ll break it down for you with this particular book I was interested in buying to give you an example of how this works.  Actually it was the title that caught my eye and then the book cover.  I hadn’t even read the description at that point before I was heading over to Amazon to see how much the ebook version was.  I saw the price and I backed off.  I don’t think even a catchy description and excerpt could have convinced me so bottom line, it’s how you price your book that will make the biggest difference between zero sales and mega sales.

Think about this when you’re ready to publish your next book.  Put yourself in your buyer’s shoes.  Is the title catchy?  Does the book cover make your eyes bug out (in a good way)?  Does the description and excerpt make it a done deal?  But more importantly, is it a price that makes it sellable?

Dorothy Thompson is CEO/Founder of Pump Up Your Book, an innovative public relations company specializing in online book promotion, virtual book tours and social network marketing.  You can visit us at www.pumpupyourbook.com.


2 Responses to “I Am a Book Buyer: What Will Make Me Want to Buy Your Book?”

  1. Wow. This is pretty powerful. If this is true, the price on my books is too high. Time to drop the price. Thanks for the info.

  2. Sometimes, the publisher is the one that dictates the ebook price and the poor author has no control. If self-published and if they’re not well-known yet, definitely, they will have to start at the 99 cent price and they should.