HOT TOPIC: There's Gold In Them There Pages - The Price We Pay For A Book

We’ve all seen them, the questions and statements on social media boards:

“How much is too much to pay for an eBook?”

“I just can’t see paying $1.99 for a 100 page book!”

“$6.99 for an eBook! Who the hell does this author think they are?”

Even authors asking how to price their books, “How do you feel about books that are 100 pages or more priced at $2.99?”

Yes folks, these are real posts!

A Few Items to Ponder:

Is the price we pay for a book directly related to the number of pages within?
Is there some real correlation between its price and the size of the author’s ego?
The countless facets that make up producing a book.
If there’s a true difference between a physical incarnation (paperback) or one we’ve procured through the cyber sphere (eBook).
Lastly — and most importantly — what we are actually getting when we purchase a book?

While pondering these questions myself, and researching for this article, I reached out to several self-published (indie) authors for their insight.

Look At This Run Down*:

Writing/Proofing:

First the author must come up with a story, an engaging plot, relatable characters, a beginning, middle, end, etc. and put it down in words. That can take anywhere from several weeks to several months and sometimes even years!
Once the manuscript is done most authors will have their book read by several betas. Individual readers who “test” the story. If it flows well, if the characters work, if sequences make sense, and more. This feedback can take a few weeks for the beta readers to compile and when that beta feedback is returned the author may or may not choose to do re-writes.
After that, authors usually send their book to an editor. As Beth Hill, of the Editor’s Blog, notes, “An editor polishes and refines, he directs the focus of the story or article or movie along a particular course. He cuts out what doesn’t fit, what is nonessential to the purpose of the story. He enhances the major points, drawing attention to places where the audience should focus.”** Because this is the editor’s area of expertise, their education, and the job they get paid to do, it usually comes at the sum of a few hundred to thousands of dollars. Once again this can take a couple of weeks. When the editor returns the manuscript, more often than not, the author may have additional re-writes to do.
From here many authors then send the book to a copy editor who is paid - you guessed it, a few hundred dollars - to check for grammar, writing style, possible errors, etc. Another couple of weeks pass, and perhaps another round of revisions.
At this stage some authors may or may not send it back to the betas for one last pass.

Overall the entire writing and proofing process can take upwards of a year, while racking up a price tag of about $600-$1500 (depending).

Presentation and Marketing:

Each variation of the book (print, eBook, etc.) must be formatted differently, and unless the author knows how to do this themselves, they will need to hire someone. Again, at a few hundred dollars.
Next up is cover art. Whether it’s a paperback, an eBook, or an audiobook, all books must have a cover. Unfortunately, this doesn’t come cheap either! Authors, like everyone else, must comply with copyright laws; meaning they aren’t able to simply pull a photo from the internet and slap their book title and name on it. They must hire a model or pay for a stock images to use. Then, if they have no graphic art skills, they must hire a graphic artist to design it. Photos can cost anywhere from hundreds to thousands of dollars while a graphic artist usually charges five hundred dollars or more.
Now that the author has the book complete, they must market it. Which may or may not cost them money. In order to reach a larger group of readers, they might hire a service to run blog tours, interviews, giveaways, etc. and/or they might do this on their own. Either way they choose, they spend countless hours getting advanced reader copies (ARC’s) into the hands of reviewers, as well as trying to reach their target audience on social media to announce their new book.

All in all - and this is on the low end - an author can easily spend upwards of $1,000 and perhaps a year’s worth of time, and they have yet to make one single dime.

Next? Sales!

Pay attention here folks because this is where it gets real. We pay your authors when we purchase. And when they get paid they can write more for us.

A Quick Breakdown of Price and Profit:

Amazon (Because that is where most of us purchase our books.)

Authors either make 70% OR 30% of their book’s cover price. The percentage is based on the cover price itself: If a book is $2.98 (or below) they are paid 30%, if it’s $2.99 (or above) they are paid 70%.

The Numbers:

On a $2.98 book, Amazon pays the author $0.89. However, the author must then pay business taxes (the IRS), leaving them a total profit of $0.62

If the book cost them $1,000 to produce, they would need to sell 1,613 copies just to break even.

That’s a lot of books for a self-employed author, who typically has a smaller market ability and relies heavily on word of mouth from happy readers like us.

So, now that we have the low down, let’s go back and reconsider those statements at the beginning of this article.

Think About This:

When we walk into a bookstore, unless we go to the clearance aisle, we are going to pay on average of $7.99 for a paperback and upwards of $24.99 for a hardcover book. Most times we do it without even batting an eye.

So why should we expect to pay less for a eBook? Is it perhaps the thought that we can purchase it with such an easy click of a mouse button - from the comfort of our recliner at home - and an eBook isn’t necessarily “tangible”? That eBook didn’t cost the author any less, or take any fewer hours to produce, than the one we can touch and feel. No, eBooks aren’t less than their paperback counterparts, they are simply easier for us to obtain.

The average eBook is FREE to $6.99. That is about the same price as a fancy cup of coffee that many of us purchase every single day. What do we get in return for that coffee? For the next 30 minutes we might enjoy a good aroma, the fabulous taste as it goes down, and when it’s gone we might have the lasting effect of extra energy for a few hours. But with a good book we might be taken on a great escape, meet some wonderful characters, and/or be touched so deeply we will remember it for days, weeks or even years to come. With either we are taking a risk: There might be a new barista that day who doesn’t make our coffee the way we like. Or the book might be a letdown.

What really is the gamble of one book? In the long run what are we losing if it does not live up to our expectations? An hour or two of our time, a buck here or there? Which just might be outweighed by a fabulous book we obtained for free, or $0.99, that should have been worth every penny of $5.99!

When we buy a book, whether it be physical or electronic, we should think about what we’re really paying for.

Someone’s time and expense. Someone’s blood, sweat and tears, which we now hold in our hands….to “judge”.

Imagine the risks our authors take financially and emotionally by putting themselves out there in the hope that they have given at least one person a wonderful escape from life for just a brief moment in time.