From Obsecurity to Top Seller

Sorry I've been quiet lately. I have been heads down editing Nathan Lowell's Full Share to make sure it is ready for the upcoming Balticon.

But I did want to share a success story. Ridan's two big sellers have been Michael J. Sullivan (husband) and Nathan Lowell (sci-fi author extraordinaire). Marshall Thomas has a six-book sci-fi series that really wasn't moving much in the way of sales.

I wanted Marshall to get the exposure his books so richly deserve, and being tied up with other things at the moment, I did the only "quick fix" I could and changed the pricing. I put his Soldier of the Legion and March of the Legion at $0.99, his next two books, Slave of the Legion and Secret of the Legion at $2.99, and list last 2 books, Cross of the Legion, and Curse of the Legion at $3.99. Well sales skyrocket and he now occupies 6 of the Top 100 Best Sellers on the Amazon Kindle List (Solider #8, March #24, Slave #65, Cross #72, Secret #75, Curse #100).

His first book has shot up to surpass both Michael's and Nathan's best sellers and he sold more than 1,200 copies of that book alone in just a few weeks.

One of the reason I took this move, is in his genre there is a very high concentration of indie authors in the lower price range dominating the top 100 list. So I was not pricing his books consistent with the market.

Now, that's not to say you should just carte blanch lower all your prices. Nathan will sell about the same number of books as Marshall in April and his are $4.95 and only 2 titles as compared to 6 titles of Marshall, but I've done more work promoting Nathan's works. So...the bottom line, at least in this case. If you do a lot of marketing you can maintain the $4.95 price point and be successful. But the $0.99 and $2.99 definitely has a place and gets books noticed as a quick fix.