A Common Sense Book Pricing Model

At Schiel & Denver Book Publishers, we want our books to have a retail price that accurately reflects what your readers are prepared to pay for the genre in a traditional bookstore like Barnes & Noble. One of the major complaints many independent and self-published authors have is that their book was priced too high in comparison to other books already on the market. This won't happen at Schiel & Denver Book Publishers because we believe it is counter productive to price a book at $20, when all the competition is selling on Amazon for $7.99.

We also believe book pricing is too sensitive to produce a vague table based on page count. Independent authors deserve a much more sophisticated book pricing system that will help and not hinder your book's success with readers. We want lots of readers to buy your book, and that's why Schiel & Denver Book Publishers has devised a common sense approach to calculating the prices of our authors' books, that is based on mathematical (mean) averages.

How does it work?

• During the book publishing process, your desk editor will request that you identify three already published books in your genre, that are currently selling in a proper bookstore like Barnes & Noble. These books might be published by great publishers like Random House, or small independent presses. It doesn't matter - as long as you are satisfied to identify these books as literary competition.

• Schiel & Denver calculates the (mean) average price of the three books you identified, using the math formula below.

• When your book is published and readers want to buy a copy, you can rest assured that your book will have a fair price they can afford. This ensures your book is not disadvantaged and won't be priced out the reading market.

Here's the easy math:

Let's say your book is a crime thriller set in 1930s New York that you've called Joe Detective. You search on Barnes & Noble's website to identify three rival books (Book X, Book Y, and Book Z) that you think will be comparable in literary competition to your book when it's published. The selling price of Joe Detective is then worked out as follows:

By giving your book a competitive list price, we believe that your readers will be more willing to try your work, especially if you are a new author, than if your book was disadvantaged with a high price. During an economic recession, what readers are prepared to pay for their reading material can be substantially affected, and with this proven method of mean averages, we have found more readers are prepared to try new talent.

If you are not satisfied with our book pricing method, you can purchase the Set My Own Price (SMOP) service, but please note there will be a lower limit on the price of your book, as we have to pay for the cost of printing each copy.

Here's some free advice for new authors...

When choosing a book publisher, look carefully at how they price their books. If they produce a strange 'pricing table' on their website that seems to be vaguely based on page count, this is a key sign that they're a low-grade 'self publishing' company that lacks relevant book publishing expertise and routinely prices books with very little market relevance.

Schiel & Denver's friendly book publishing professionals are available to help you choose the right mix of book publishing services and products for your book. Open a ticket with our 24/7 author support department to discuss your book publishing options.