The short answer
For a stand-alone romance shelved near 4.99 dollar books while chasing sales, open launch week at 2.99 and step up to 4.99 for month two. The 2.99 launch keeps the 70 percent royalty band and pays about 2.09 per sale before delivery fees, while the 4.99 settle price pays about 3.49 per sale in the same band. A 0.99 opening would pay only about 0.35 per sale at the 35 percent rate, which is a steep cost for a book with no later volumes to recover it. Series book one chasing rank is the exception this planner endorses for a 0.99 open, because later books at full price absorb the thin first week. Profit goals skip the discount entirely and launch at the full post-launch price so every early buyer pays the higher royalty. All conversion and click figures used anywhere on this page are illustrative planning assumptions for arithmetic practice, not measured platform data and not predictions of what your book will sell.
How the planner computes your prices
The tool takes four inputs and returns three prices plus the per-sale royalty at each. Genre tells the planner which shelf you compete on. Series position tells it whether later books can carry a cheap doorway. Goal tells it whether week one should chase buyers, visibility, or margin. Competitor price anchors the post-launch level to the neighborhood readers already accept.
Post-launch price starts from the competitor figure you enter. For romance, mystery and thriller, and science fiction and fantasy, the planner holds that figure as entered, bounded between 0.99 and 14.99. For nonfiction it adds 2.00, because nonfiction shelves tolerate higher list prices and the planner should not drag your settle price down to a fiction neighborhood. A 4.99 competitor entry therefore settles a romance at 4.99 and a nonfiction title at 6.99. This shelf adjustment is an illustrative planning assumption, not a market measurement, and you should replace it with your own shelf check whenever your category behaves differently.
Launch price depends on goal first and position second. A rank goal always opens at 0.99, since the entire point of that goal is maximum week-one velocity and the planner treats the lost royalty as the budgeted cost of the attempt. A profit goal always launches at the full post-launch price, because discounting under a margin goal contradicts the goal itself. A sales goal splits by position: stand-alone opens at 2.99, series book one opens at 0.99, and series book two or later opens at 3.99. Each of these is capped so it never exceeds the post-launch price; a sales launch whose computed open sits above the settle price simply opens at the settle price instead.
The royalty arithmetic uses two public program facts about Kindle Direct Publishing: books priced from 2.99 through 9.99 earn a 70 percent royalty, and books priced outside that range earn 35 percent. The planner multiplies list price by the applicable rate and rounds to cents, before any delivery fees. So 2.99 pays about 2.09, 3.99 pays about 2.79, 4.99 pays about 3.49, 6.99 pays about 4.89, 9.99 pays about 6.99, and 0.99 pays about 0.35. Delivery fees are excluded, which means real payouts land slightly lower, and the comparison across prices still holds because every option is shown on the same before-fees basis.
The discount schedule then places the two computed prices on a calendar with a third event. Launch week carries the launch price. Month two carries the post-launch price. The first promo is a single 0.99 day scheduled later, paying about 0.35 per sale, whose purpose is a short burst of new readers after the book has reviews and a settled page. The three-column comparison beside the schedule shows 0.99, 2.99, and your post-launch price side by side with the royalty and band at each, highlighting the column that matches your launch price so you can see the neighbors of your decision.
Worked numbers: what each price pays
Take the default case the tool opens with: romance, stand-alone, sales goal, competitor price 4.99. Post-launch settles at 4.99 because fiction adds no shelf adjustment. Launch opens at 2.99 because a stand-alone chasing sales protects the 70 percent band while still offering a visible week-one reduction. The launch royalty is 2.99 times 0.70, which equals 2.093, rounded to 2.09. The post-launch royalty is 4.99 times 0.70, which equals 3.493, rounded to 3.49. The step up from week one to month two therefore recovers 1.40 per sale, and every hundred month-two buyers pay about 140.00 more in royalties than the same hundred buyers at the launch price would have. That 140.00 gap is the concrete cost of extending a discount past its planned week, which is why the schedule moves the price up instead of leaving it.
Now change only the goal to rank. Launch drops to 0.99, paying 0.99 times 0.35, which equals 0.3465, rounded to 0.35. Against the 4.99 settle royalty of 3.49, each launch-week buyer contributes 3.14 less than a month-two buyer. One hundred launch-week buyers at 0.99 produce about 35.00 in royalties where the same hundred at 4.99 would produce about 349.00. The planner still recommends it for rank because the goal being optimized is reader count in a short window rather than cash, but the arithmetic makes the trade visible: velocity purchased at roughly nine-tenths of per-sale royalty. Whether that purchase is worthwhile depends on what those extra readers do next, which no planner can know, so the page presents the subtraction and leaves the judgment to the author.
Change the goal to profit instead. Launch equals post-launch at 4.99, so all three schedule rows except the later promo day pay 3.49 per sale. There is no week-one gap to compute, and that absence is the point: under a margin goal, each of the first hundred buyers pays the full 349.00 instead of the 209.00 those buyers would have paid at a 2.99 open. The 140.00 difference is retained rather than spent on conversion. The later 0.99 promo day still appears in the schedule, paying 0.35 per sale, as an optional volume event you can accept or skip once the launch has established the book.
Move the same romance to series book one with a sales goal. Launch opens at 0.99 paying 0.35, and post-launch settles at 4.99 paying 3.49. The week-one gap per buyer is 3.14, identical to the rank case, but the justification differs: book one is a doorway, and buyers who continue to books two and three at 4.99 each contribute further 3.49 payments that a stand-alone never sees. If half of one hundred book-one buyers continue to book two, fifty further sales at 3.49 add about 174.50; if three-fifths of those continue to book three, thirty further sales add about 104.70. The combined downstream of roughly 279.20 against a doorway cost of 314.00 across the hundred is the read-through arithmetic the planner assumes when it prices book one low. These continuation shares are illustrative planning assumptions you supply from your own series history, not measured averages, and small changes in them move the conclusion more than small changes in price do.
Place a later series book in the same neighborhood with a sales goal. Launch opens at 3.99, paying 3.99 times 0.70, which equals 2.793, rounded to 2.79. Post-launch settles at 4.99 paying 3.49. The week-one gap is only 0.70 per buyer, or about 70.00 per hundred, because readers arriving through earlier books need less price persuasion and the planner protects margin accordingly. The promo day at 0.99 remains available for a later spike, and its 0.35 royalty is inexpensive in this position precisely because the series page keeps converting after the spike ends.
Run the nonfiction variant: nonfiction, stand-alone, competitor price 7.99, profit goal. The shelf adjustment adds 2.00, so post-launch settles at 9.99, paying 9.99 times 0.70, which equals 6.993, rounded to 6.99. Launch equals post-launch at 9.99 under the profit goal, so the full 6.99 per sale applies from day one. Had the goal been sales, launch would open at 2.99 paying 2.09 while post-launch held 9.99 paying 6.99, a gap of 4.90 per buyer that shows how expensive a deep discount becomes when the settle price is high. That gap is the reason high-settle books should discount shallowly or not at all.
Illustrative hypothetical launch plans
The two plans below are hypothetical scenarios with invented figures, included so you can watch the arithmetic behave in context. They describe imaginary authors and imaginary results, and no outcome stated here predicts any real book.
Hypothetical plan one: an imaginary debut romance author, illustrative example only, launches a stand-alone at a 4.99 settle price with a sales goal. She opens week one at 2.99, collects her early reviews at the friendlier price, and steps to 4.99 on day eight. Suppose, hypothetically, she sells eighty copies in week one and one hundred twenty copies across month two. Week-one royalties come to eighty times 2.09, about 167.20. Month-two royalties come to one hundred twenty times 3.49, about 418.80. Combined early royalties total roughly 586.00 before delivery fees. Had she opened at 0.99 instead, those eighty week-one sales would have paid about 28.00, a difference of roughly 139.20 surrendered for whatever extra conversion the deeper cut might have bought. Had she launched at the full 4.99 with no discount, week one might have converted fewer of its browsers, and the planner cannot say how many fewer, because conversion response to price is an illustrative assumption in this model rather than observed data. Her decision rule is therefore comparative rather than predictive: the 2.99 open costs about 139.20 against the 0.99 open in this invented volume scenario while keeping every sale in the 70 percent band, and she accepts that cost deliberately.
Hypothetical plan two: an imaginary fantasy author, hypothetical scenario only, launches series book one at a 4.99 settle price with a rank goal ahead of a rapid release of book two. He opens at 0.99 for velocity, then settles at 4.99. Suppose, hypothetically, the 0.99 week moves three hundred copies and month two at full price moves one hundred. Week-one royalties are three hundred times 0.35, about 105.00. Month-two royalties are one hundred times 3.49, about 349.00. The doorway cost is visible: those three hundred week-one buyers paid 3.14 less each than full-price buyers. The plan only balances if continuation carries it, so suppose, hypothetically, one-third of the three hundred week-one buyers later buy book two at 4.99. One hundred downstream sales at 3.49 add about 349.00, doubling the early total before book three exists. If continuation instead runs at one-tenth, thirty sales add about 104.70 and the cheap open looks costly. The author cannot know his continuation rate before book two exists, which is why the planner shows the doorway cost separately from the downstream hope: the 314.00-per-hundred gap is arithmetic, while the recovery is an assumption he must supply from comparable series or accept as unknown.
Edge cases and failure modes
A post-launch price below 2.99 is the sharpest edge in the whole planner. Any permanent price under the 2.99 floor earns 35 percent on every sale for the life of that price, so a 1.99 settle pays about 0.70 per sale indefinitely. The tool raises a warning in this case, and the warning is structural rather than stylistic: the lower band is a program rule, not a conversion hypothesis, so the thinner royalty is certain while any compensating volume is not. A short stay below the floor during a rank chase is a bounded cost; a permanent settle below the floor is a royalty ceiling you chose. Authors who keep a low settle price should do so because their volume assumption is written down and owned, not because the cliff went unnoticed.
A post-launch price above 9.99 is the mirror edge. A book settled at 12.99 also earns 35 percent, paying about 4.55 per sale, which can still exceed the 6.99 available at 9.99 in absolute terms but surrenders the 70 percent rate on every unit. The planner warns here as well, and the corrective question is whether comparable titles sustain that list price with real buyers. Nonfiction hardcovers with professional audiences sometimes do; debut fiction almost never does. If the shelf does not support the premium, the price above the band combines the worst of both regimes: fewer buyers and a lower rate on each.
Competitor prices at the extremes deserve skepticism about the input rather than the output. A 0.99 competitor entry usually means the shelf is in a promotion window or the sample mixed permanent prices with temporary discounts, and anchoring a settle price to a sale price bakes someone else's brief event into your long-term royalty. A 14.99 competitor entry usually means box sets or omnibus editions entered the sample, and matching a three-book collection with a single-volume price confuses buyers. In both cases the fix is resampling: collect five to eight comparables of the same format and similar length, drop the highest and lowest, and enter the middle of the remainder.
Series position errors cause quieter damage. Pricing a stand-alone like a series book one, opening at 0.99 with no downstream books, spends the doorway cost with no doorway behind it. Pricing a series book one like a stand-alone, holding 4.99 from day one with no audience, protects a royalty on buyers who never arrive. Mislabeling book two or later as book one discounts readers who were already converted by the earlier volumes. The planner trusts the position you declare, so verifying it before reading the recommendation matters more than fine-tuning the competitor figure to the penny.
Goal mismatch is the behavioral failure mode. Authors who declare a profit goal and then extend the 0.99 promo day into a month have quietly switched to a rank strategy while keeping profit expectations, and the royalty statements will not reconcile with the plan. Authors who declare rank and then flinch at the 0.35 week-one royalty, raising the price mid-week, destroy the velocity the low price was buying while keeping the thin royalties already earned. The schedule works when each phase is allowed to do its job for its full duration: one week of conversion, then the settle price, then an optional single promo day. Blending the phases blends their costs while canceling their benefits.
Genre-specific guidance
Romance moves fastest and discounts deepest, so the planner's defaults fit it with the least adjustment. Readers in this category buy in volume, follow rapid releases, and respond to price cuts, which makes the 2.99 stand-alone open and the 0.99 book-one open both ordinary choices rather than aggressive ones. The risk is staying low too long: backlists that never climb past their launch prices train their own audiences to wait, and the 1.40 per-sale gap between 2.99 and 4.99 compounds across hundreds of units. Romance authors should therefore treat the day-eight step up as part of the launch rather than a later decision, and should schedule the first 0.99 promo only after the series has at least two full-price books ready to catch the overflow.
Mystery and thriller readers are slightly less price-elastic but heavily review-dependent, which shifts the emphasis from the depth of the discount to its timing. A 2.99 open during the review-gathering fortnight converts curious browsers while the page is still thin, and the move to 3.99 or 4.99 lands just as social proof accumulates. Series behave like slow-burn assets here: book-one discounting works, but continuation runs slower than in romance, so the doorway cost should be modeled with smaller continuation shares and longer payback windows. A stand-alone mystery settled at 3.99 paying 2.79 is often the durable equilibrium, high enough to earn and low enough to stay impulse-friendly.
Science fiction and fantasy carry the longest series and the most patient readers, which makes book-one pricing the most consequential decision in the category. A five-book series with a 0.99 doorway can amortize the thin open across four downstream volumes in a way a trilogy cannot, while a stand-alone epic at 4.99 or 5.99 needs cover, page count, and reviews to justify the premium against 3.99 comparables. Price the volumes first with this tool, then evaluate any later bundle as its own product with its own band check.
Nonfiction follows different rules and the planner's 2.00 shelf adjustment only begins the adaptation. Buyers compare against the cost of the problem remaining unsolved rather than against other novels, so specificity and credentials move willingness to pay more than small price differences do. A focused professional guide settled at 9.99 paying 6.99 needs only a third of the buyers of a 4.99 book paying 3.49 to match royalties, and it attracts fewer casual purchasers who leave disappointed reviews. Discounting nonfiction below the 2.99 floor is usually destructive: the 0.35 royalty guts the margin while the bargain audience it attracts is the least likely to implement the material or buy consulting, courses, or the next volume. One legitimate exception is a deliberately free or 0.99 lead volume whose measured purpose is list growth for a backend business, in which case the book is acquisition spending and should be budgeted alongside advertising rather than judged as a royalty product.
Literary and general fiction, memoir, and other categories not listed in the tool map closest to whichever listed shelf matches their buyer behavior. A commercial memoir with a platform behaves like nonfiction and can hold the higher settle; a quiet literary novel without one behaves like mystery and should stay impulse-accessible. The honest procedure is the same regardless: sample five to eight true comparables, find the middle of their permanent prices, confirm the 70 percent band contains that middle, and let the planner's goal logic place the launch price relative to it. Category labels matter less than the underlying question of whether your buyers compare your book to entertainment or to expertise.
Questions authors ask next
How soon after launch should the price rise. The planner's answer is day eight for the standard schedule, and the reasoning is arithmetic rather than superstitious: each additional discount week replays the per-sale gap with no new justification, while the review base that justified the discount keeps improving on its own. A book with fewer than a handful of reviews at day eight may hold the launch price one further week, but that extension should be a dated decision with a written trigger for the rise rather than an open-ended drift. Drift is how temporary prices become permanent bands.
Whether to match a competitor's 0.99 permanent price. Matching puts your settle price in the 35 percent band alongside theirs, paying 0.35 against their 0.35, which is parity of the least rewarding kind. The stronger response is usually differentiation: hold 2.99 or above, keep 2.09 or better per sale, and compete on cover, description, reviews, and category placement instead of surrendering the band. Price matching makes sense for bounded promo windows where both books spike together; as a permanent posture it converts a competitor's possibly temporary tactic into your permanent royalty ceiling.
How reviews interact with price moves. Rising from 2.99 to 4.99 as reviews accumulate is the normal direction, because social proof substitutes for discount as the conversion mechanism. Cutting price when reviews stall is the riskier direction, since it spends royalty to compensate for a listing problem that cheaper entry rarely fixes. Before discounting a stalled book, the higher-return checks are the cover thumbnail at small size, the opening lines of the description, the category placement, and the first pages of the sample. Price is the most visible lever and seldom the binding constraint.
Whether wide distribution changes anything. The band facts modeled here belong to one retailer's program, and wide authors aggregate royalties across stores with different splits. The practical adaptation is to keep the direct-store price inside that store's higher band wherever the store publishes one, and to treat the planner's schedule as the calendar while substituting each store's actual per-sale figures. The strategic content is unchanged: brief low windows for velocity, durable settle prices for margin, and a written distinction between the two.
Tracking these numbers over time
A launch price is a starting position, not a final verdict, and its wisdom only shows in the months that follow. Keep a simple log of each price change with its date, the royalty band it sat in, and the units and royalties that followed, so later decisions rest on your own history instead of memory. Author Desk at /author-desk is the place to track these numbers ongoing, keeping launch prices, settle prices, promo days, and per-sale royalties in one view across the catalog. Review that record each quarter and let observed continuation and conversion reshape the next launch plan.
How to run the tool and read the schedule
Choose the genre shelf, the book's position in its series, the single goal that matters most for week one, and the middle of your comparable titles as the competitor price. Read the launch price and post-launch price first, then the per-sale royalty under each, then the three-column comparison that surrounds your launch column with its neighbors. Confirm both durable prices sit inside the 2.99 to 9.99 band unless a warning explains why one does not. Then follow the schedule rows in order: launch week at the open, month two at the settle, and a single 0.99 promo day later that you may run or skip. When the arithmetic across the three columns is clear and the tradeoff is one you chose on purpose, the plan is finished.