Readers and book buyers in different countries have varying reactions to ebook prices. Prices that seem unreasonable in certain countries might be perfectly acceptable in other countries. And this is why it is very important for authors to have a comprehensive ebook pricing strategy for international markets and territories.
Unfortunately, many authors don’t understand this so they set up the price of their ebook on Amazon KDP, Kobo, Apple, etc. for their resident country and the US, and allow the book retailers to automatically generate the ebook prices for the other international markets or countries.
When authors do this, they ignore a wonderful opportunity to build a fanbase in other countries. After all, many readers wouldn’t buy their books because of the automatically generated ebook prices. In this article, I will show you the ebook pricing strategy that will help you optimize for sales in other countries or international markets like Australia, India, Canada, New Zealand, etc.
Factors to Consider to Determine the Value/Price of your Ebook
Before you start thinking about the international market prices for your ebook, you need to set the base price for your ebook.
The question now is: how do you determine the value of the book?
1. Royalty Rate Conditions
The first thing to consider when choosing your ebook pricing is the royalty rate. Let’s use Amazon KDP as an example here.
Amazon KDP only pays the 70% royalty rate on an ebook if it is priced between $2.99 – $9.99. If you price your ebook below $2.99 or above $9.99, you will only earn 35% royalties on your ebook.
Therefore, you need to find a reasonable price for your ebook between $2.99 and $9.99 if you want to make money with it.
2. Your genre & categories
You don’t want your ebook to be more expensive than other ebooks in your genre, except you are a very popular author. Buyers will likely ignore your book for a cheaper ebook in the same genre if it’s too expensive.
So when setting your price, you need to research the prices that other writers in your genre or categories are charging.
3. Your goal
Another factor that determines how you decide the pricing of your ebook is your goal.
Do you want to make more money or get your book into the hands of more readers?
If your goal is to make more money, you can price your book at similar prices to the more expensive books in your genre.
If your goal is to get your book into the hands of more readers while making some money, you can price your ebook at the price most readers in your genre expect.
4. Cost of Producing the Book
Another thing that determines the pricing of an ebook is the cost of producing the book. And if you’re a self-published author, this cost can add up very fast if you don’t find a way to make money from your books.
5. The eBook Retailer
This is only relatively important. But you should probably know that book buyers on Amazon KDP are much more particular about book prices than book buyers from other retailers.
Yes, all book buyers are always happy to buy your books at discounted rates. But while Kobo or say Apple buyers can stand buying relatively higher-priced ebooks from new authors, many Amazon KDP book buyers may not be able to.
The Perfect International Ebook Pricing Strategies for Fiction Authors
After you have chosen your ebook’s base price, you can now apply these international ebook pricing strategies:
1. Add .99
Automatically generated prices are usually funny prices like 2.49, 2.27. 2.00, etc. based on changing currency exchange rates.
You don’t want your book price to look like that.
Studies have shown that book buyers are more likely to buy books that end in .99 than books that end in other decimals. That’s why most books in online bookstores are priced at 0.99, 2.99, 3.99, 4.99, etc.
So add .99 to the end of your international market ebook prices.
2. US & UK Pricing
According to my research (gathered from authors asking authors in the UK), UK readers don’t like it when you price your ebooks in the UK more expensively than in the US.
So don’t do that.
Just give them the same price whether USD is higher in currency exchange rates than GBP or not.
$2.99 book should also be £2.99, except you want to price it at £1.99. If you do, your UK readers will definitely appreciate the reduced price.
3. Euro Ebook Pricing
Just like in the US and UK, leave your euro ebook pricing at the same figure as the US.
If your US price is $2.99, upgrade your Euro ebook pricing to 2.99 as well.
4. Australia & Canada Ebook Pricing
For your Australian and Canadian ebook prices, all you need to do is raise the price by a dollar.
This is roughly the exchange rate difference between USD and AUD & CAD.
What is important here is that your price ends at .99.
E.g.
- USD 2.99 = AUD 3.99
- USD 3.99 = CAD 4.99
5. India
India is a relatively populous country and you could find many readers there. However, at the exchange rate of the US dollar to Indian rupees, your Indian readers may not be able to purchase your ebooks if you price them at the direct conversion price of USD to Indian rupees.
So here’s where your goals matter. If you want to sell more books, price your Indian books at a lower price.
On Amazon KDP, authors can only earn 35% on books sold in India so my advice is that even though your goal is to make money with your ebook, you should still price your ebooks at a lower price in the Indian ebook market.
An ideal pricing for your Indian readers is 99-150 rupees.
6. Japan
According to research provided by PublishDrive’s course on International Pricing for books on Reedsy, Japanese readers love books so regardless of the price of your book, they will buy your book if they like it. Just make sure to price it reasonably.
7. New Zealand
For New Zealand, the ideal price is $4.99.
This means that:
$2.99 = NZD 4.99
$3.99 = NZD 4.99
$0.99 = NZD 1.99
8. Pricing the rest
For the remaining countries, simply round up the price to .99.
Final Thoughts
The ebook pricing strategy of optimizing your ebook pricing for international markets is a FREE organic marketing strategy that allows authors to build a healthy fanbase that is not focused in one country alone. So take advantage of it.
