After putting your sweat and maybe a few tears into your book, you arrive at a finished product of which you can be proud. You should understand that, in some senses, the journey has just begun. If you're doing this on your own, now is when you'll need to plan distribution, social media marketing, traditional marketing, press releases, review requests, a blog tour, setting up your own blog if you don't already have one, and more.
But before you engage in any of this marketing activity, your book needs to be made available for order and you need to set a sales price. Consider this process for conducting your own research, so you can best price your book.
First, check out the competition. This is important because you'll want to see the average price point for books like yours, both in print and eBook format.
Snoop around the Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Borders websites. While you're there, look for those books that are most like yours. Find your genre of book, as well as books that have similar themes, page counts, and overall appeal. Those are the books that are going to be the ones against which your own will be competing.
But don't stop there. Now find the top titles in your genre and look at their selling prices. If you're not sure which titles are at the top of the lists, check out the USA Today, The New York Times, or Amazon's bestselling lists. (Amazon's is actually updated hourly.)
You might have to click through a couple pages to find something similar to your book. If you get through the list and don't find anything even close to yours, you might want to consider why. You might have to rethink your target market or at least how you're going to approach the market.
Be sure to note the way the prices vary, in both hard or soft copy format, as well as in the eBook format. You can see the scope of the products and the differences in their pricing.
With this information you will learn who your real competition is and so be able to make a calculated decision on your book’s price.