What about a $.50 club?

[Marti Talbott]

We've been told that anything ending in $.99 tricks the reader. I disagree. When I see $.99 I automatically round it up. That theory makes us raise or lower our prices by a dollar each time. What if we raised our price by $.50. Would the reader round up or down, or find the price confusing?
Example: $4.49

[Eric Thomson]

I price my books $4.99 in US dollars and $6.49 in Canadian and Australian dollars because 6.49 is close to the actual currency conversion number without having the price end in a jarring, Walmart style figure.

[Marti Talbott]

Do you see a change in sales?

[Crystal]

The conventional marketing wisdom is customers round any price up to the nearest dollar. Anything from .01 to .99.

I live in a state without sales tax. Most local restaurants and shops end prices at whole dollars. It looks classier. I wonder if online pricing will ever trend this way, to whole dollar numbers? Or if this is already the case for some high end items?

Do any of the rings at Tiffany end in .99?

I have no idea!

I have been thinking about pricing something at .69 for obvious reasons, but I think I'd still go with .99. Better to not give the reader any potential confusion.

But you never know until you try.

[LilyBLily]

I haven't been in a physical bookstore in so long things may have changed, but trade paperbacks always used to be round number prices: $10.00, $12.00, etc. Historically, mass market paperbacks started at .25, moved up to .50, then .60, then .75, and after that they never to my knowledge were any kind of round number again. They were $1.95 and $5.95 until some publisher decided to cash in on the extra four cents and went to $5.99 or so. I forget which one it was but I remember it happening. That was about thirty years ago.

We're publishing trade paperbacks, not mass market, so our paperbacks ought to be round numbers, too, but somehow we're adding ".99" to the end of every price. Not as classy as one might like, but I've always understood that people often ignore the .99 and thus think the price is lower than it is. That's why it's to our advantage to stick with .99, and to heck with being classy.