Price Points and the Self-Published

I've faffed around a fair bit deciding on a good price point for my ebooks, weighing how much people are willing to pay for an untried unknown without the 'seal of quality' implied by a publisher vs the 'you get what you pay for' argument.  Given how expensive books are in Australia, dropping mine to very low prices does scream "bargain basement remainders" to my "buyer self", but obviously pricing myself the same as a known author is not the smartest move.

Today I settled on an approach which, like so many aspects of self-publishing, is almost the exact opposite of how things work in 'mainstream'.  I'll start out with my ebooks at $2.99 (which is the lowest I'm willing to go), leave them at that price for 6 months, and then raise them to $4.99 (barring specials, etc).  To me $4.99 feels like an eminently reasonable price for a good book, and the 6 months at $2.99 a reasonable marketing strategy.  Of course, in theory $0.99 is where it's all at, but that just feels too low for me.

I've set the changes in motion - already accomplished on Smashwords, should hit Amazon tomorrow, and will slowly hit other distributors at the speed of slow mud (I can't for the life of me understand why all these electronic databases take so long to update).