Price testing your books is something I recommend authors do is to test different prices with your books. You may find a higher price yields fewer sales, but still gives you a similar profit to pricing your book lower and selling more books. However, if you use CreateSpace to create and distribute your books, my guest in today’s episode, Derek Doepker, stumbled upon a little-known way for you to get higher royalties paid to you, even though your book may sell for a lower price.
Derek stumbled upon this hack when he decided to price one of his books higher than previously listed. He noticed that Amazon listed the old price with the new, higher price crossed off. But when he checked what he made from the book, he found he was being paid higher royalties.
The reason for this is because even if you change the price of a book in CreateSpace, it takes a while for other sellers, like Barnes & Noble, to reflect that change. Amazon keeps a lower price, even though the higher price is listed and then crossed off. However, the author receives a higher royalty, based on the new listed price.
Even though Amazon got the notification right away that the price had gone up, they would still sell it lower because they were price matching and pay the higher royalties.
Derek reached out to CreateSpace to make sure this was ok for authors to do, which it is. It’s within CreateSpace’s terms of service. However, while this is a cool hack for authors to get paid more, it should be used with ethics in mind, such as making sure the price you’re setting your book at isn’t astronomical and still leaves your sellers with a profit. Take into consideration the length of the book, the size, and other factors to help set your pricing.
This is also something to remember if you’re planning on changing the price for a specific date and letting your email list know about the change. While you may change the price on CreateSpace and send out an email campaign with the new price, the new price may not be available right away. Amazon also price matches with other retailers, so while they may update their list price, they’re going to make sure they aren’t undersold by another retailer that still has the lower price.
Even if you choose not to use this tactic, it’s important for authors to know how pricing works within CreateSpace and Amazon. If you’re planning on doing a sales promotion, for example, this information will give you some insight into how pricing works. But if you do plan on using this tactic to sell more books at a lower price while getting higher royalties, be sure to be fair when setting the new price.
Bio of the Author in the Case Study:
Derek Doepker is a former rock guitar player turned seven-time best-selling author, a speaker and a coach on mind, body and business success. His books have sold more than 50,000 copies, and his book “The Healthy Habit Revolution” won the 2016 Readers’ Favorite gold medal for motivational books.
Derek’s goal is to help busy professionals break through their BS and amplify their productivity, profit and performance by sharing clever mind games, life hacks, wellness breakthroughs and the secrets of success found in music.
Resources Referred to in this Episode:
- Derek Doepker’s Amazon Author Page
- Get his free book “Why Authors Fail”
- If you’re interested in creating your own Audiobooks, be sure to check out his course Audiobooks Made Easy
- CreateSpace
- CreateSpace Member Agreement
- Book Marketing Show Marketers & Coffee: Audiobooks and Should Authors Sell Them?
- Kindle Direct Publishing 
Really useful podcast, appreciated the ethical way that you spoke about it. Would you be able to give an approximate time it usually takes for the price to change, is it days or just hours? This is in regards to what you said about doing a price promotion.
Many thanks
Usually 1-2 days at most.