99 Cent Books and Promotional Pricing - Is it Worth it?

I had planned to write this week about a few ways it’s easy to tell whether a book is self-published (so you can avoid them), and I will come back to that soon. But I’m fairly fresh off of a 99 cent sale of all my books and trying to work out whether I think it was successful or not and whether or not I’m done with reducing my book prices by that much for promotions. So I thought I’d share my results and my thought process with you, hopefully to help you determine your own promotional pricing.

I lowered all of my books to 99 cents at the start of June in preparation for the Summer Based Book Sale that took place mid-month. Only 9 of my books were actually featured in the sale — both of my trilogies and three of my novellas — but I let my subscribers and followers know that all my books were up for grabs at that price. I also waited until the end of June to change the prices back to normal instead of changing them back immediately after the sale ended.

The result? I sold 70 books in June, which for me is a really good number. Five were sold prior to the start of the sale, and then I saw a sharp spike on day one with 11 sales. It was up and down after that, but I sold something every single day of the week-long sale, totaling 52 books sold during (and presumably as a result of) the sale. Sales continued for the rest of the month after the sale, albeit at lower numbers, which I attribute to leaving the prices set to 99 cents combined with the visibility boost each book got from getting bumped up in Amazon’s sales rankings during the big sale.

Of course, as soon as I changed the prices back to normal, sales dropped off a cliff and fell to zero. So far this month, 10 days in, I’ve had one sale — of a book that’s always priced at 99 cents as a loss leader to introduce new readers to my work.

So how much did I make selling all those books for 99 cents? After Amazon took their cut, I was left with $29.59.

Of course, this is much less than I would have made if that many books had sold at the regular price. And this is the dilemma that we struggling indie authors often face — is it better to sell more books at a cheap price, or fewer books at a fair price?

Let’s step back for a minute and talk about how, for me, 70 books in a single month was pretty major. A few of my books even broke into the top 100 of books in their category. These numbers are nowhere near the neighborhood of actual best-seller status, and even if I had sold that many at full price, I would have only made enough to cover a week of groceries.

It’s tempting to compare myself to indies who are selling hundreds or even thousands of books a month and are able not only to support themselves but are actually making quite a good living from self-publishing their fiction. And if I’m being honest, I think I’m a better writer than some of these people, which makes it even more frustrating that I can’t even come close to matching their numbers.

But I have to step back and remind myself that most of those indie authors — apart from the ones like Andy Weir and E.L. James who got film deals that shot them to fame and riches — are either playing the rapid release game, churning out formulaic but highly marketable books each month, or they’re spending thousands of dollars each month on Facebook, Amazon and BookBub ads. Or both.

I don’t have the capacity to be a rapid-release author, and I don’t have the budget for big ad spending. And I don’t do a lot of free marketing activities outside of Substack, either, so most of my book sales are organic sales coming from people discovering me here on Substack, recommending me to their friends and followers, or via the recommendation algorithm on Amazon.

With all of that said, when something like this big group book sale comes up, I tend to view it as an opportunity for free advertising and to be introduced to new readers. Except it’s not just free promotion — I actually made a little money from the promo, which is more than I can say for any of my past experiences with paid advertising.

Would I call my performance in this book sale a success? If I focus on how much money I made vs. how much I would make selling the same amount of books at regular price, then no. It feels like I lost out.

But the truth is, it’s too soon to tell. And that’s because I have to remember why I went all in on this sale in the first place — not to make money, but to gain new readers who would hopefully convert to fans and future book buyers.

I can’t say for sure how many individuals purchased my books last month, since some of them may have bought multiple titles. But I know that 21 individual people bought Terror at Lake Eucha. Hopefully, that’s 21 people who will read it and then come back later to buy another one of my books at full price. And who may become fans who keep coming back and buying more of my books, and also telling their friends.

As indies, we have to focus on the long tail. It’s not always about a book’s initial performance — in fact, I’d say it’s never about that. It’s about how the book performs over time, and it’s the same with promotions. Hopefully, this book sale will have a cumulative effect over time that will more than make up for the money I “lost” by discounting my books.

Of course, there is a down side, and not just the lower royalties on each sale. If someone buys multiple books at 99 cents, it will likely take them a while to get around to reading them all. And at that price, they may not feel too bad about never reading my book, and it will just languish on their Kindle while they go on with their lives having no idea who I am or whether they would enjoy my fiction. Which makes me wonder, how effective are these 99 cent promotions, really?

Time will tell, I suppose. For the time being, I’m thinking that I want to wait and see what the long-term effect of this sale turns out to be before I enroll in any more of this type of promotion.

Have you participated in big group sales or run individual 99 cent book promotions? I’d love to hear about your experience in the comments.

Thanks for reading! If you’re in need of a budget-friendly editor, look no further. I offer editing and proofreading services at affordable rates and I’m happy to do partial critiques and edits and work with you at a pace that suits your available budget.

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Through a Glass, Darkly

Based horror, supernatural thrillers, paranormal fantasy and other dark speculative fiction informed by a Biblical worldview and the Divine Council narrative of scripture.

By Jean Marie Bauhaus