Price is not the same as value.

This is the second installment in a brief series about marketing for novelists. In the last entry I discussed writer’s resistance to marketing. Now it’s time to talk about putting a value on your work.

Choosing a dollar value for each novel, each story, each page, each word you write isn’t easy. All the hours you spent thinking, writing, thinking about writing and writing about what you thought, are what make a book valuable from your perspective as a novelist.

But the value of your book from your point of view is not necessarily the value of your book from a purchaser’s point of view. A reader is taking a risk on your story. She doesn’t know how brilliant you are nor does she know if she will even like the story until she tries it out.

One way to get a sense of perspective is to check other author’s prices. If you price your newest oeuvre higher than a recent release from a well known and beloved romance author, for instance, only your mother will buy it.

Your goal is not to sell ten copies to your mother at an ego gratifying price.

Your goal is to sell one hundred copies at a humbling but more effective price.

The common wisdom online is to price low or to give away for free the fruit of your labor. This makes sense from a marketing standpoint if you are looking to impact on great numbers of people. It makes more sense if you are looking to impact on the algorithms which are the basis for ratings.

Better “sales” rates can mean better placement on the vast online book shelf stacks which are Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc. The books which have the most traffic in a library are often the ones on eye level which makes them more likely to be chosen.

Rose Grey has written three romance novels and is hard at work on a fourth. If you liked this post, come visit the rest of the blog at www.rosegreybooks.com. Hot Pursuit and Not As Advertised are available as ebooks and as paperbacks online.