#7: How to Price Your Self-Published Book
Or, "Why Jeff Bezos Makes More Money Than I Do"
This is part of a series I’m writing on the process of self-publishing my book, Spoilers. To start from the beginning, read my first diary entry.
Below is a real conversation that really happened, probably.
“Greetings, merchant! How much for your wares?”
“I beg your pardon? Whatever do you mean ‘how much?”
“I mean, your volume of literature, how much does it cost to purchase?”
“I do not know, good sir, for I am but a lowly poet without much knowledge of such things. Is there not a King or some other figure of import — a wealthy Duke, perhaps — who might determine the value of my wares for me?”
“Nay, the King no longer determines the cost of wares, for we are now in a ‘free market,’ and thus the price of goods is determined by what the market is willing to pay for them.”
“Ah, well then name your price my good man!”
“Nay, ‘tis not how the free market works. You, the merchant, must set your price, and then I, the consumer, shall decide whether to purchase your wares or seek them from a vendor with similar (if less humorous) volumes of satirical literature.”
“Aye, but is that system not inefficient, for it seems confusing and difficult to set the price for my wares without much knowledge of what the market shall pay?”
“Nay, ‘tis perfectly efficient. No better system shall ever exist!”
The merchant, unsure how to price his comedic volume, sets a price that seems…sort of reasonable?
Dialogue aside, that’s basically how I set the price for my book, Spoilers: Essays That Might Ruin Your Favorite Hollywood Movies. In fact, my thought process was even more rudimentary than that. I looked up (this is 100% true) the list price for Me Talk Pretty One Day ($17.99), and I set the price of my book to that price. Why? Mostly because I didn’t feel like I could, in good conscience, charge more for my work than David Sedaris. Sorry to disappoint you if you were expecting something more methodical. Who do you think I am, Janet Yellen?
I’ve been thinking about the price of my book recently, because, now that it’s on sale and I’m seeing just how much work it’s taking to sell copies of the book, the royalties I’m making per book are starting to feel…not so royal.
For every paperback and e-book I sell on Amazon, I make about $6.80. And for every paperback I sell through Ingram (which offers the book at a wholesale discount to bookstores) I get about $3.15. You make less money selling through bookstores than you do on Amazon? Yes, which sucks a little bit, but even so I’d MUCH rather you buy the book at your local bookstore. Seriously, please support them, they’re vital small businesses that do great work in their communities, plus they’re not evil mega corporations, etc.
And don’t get me wrong, I realize $6.80 is way more than traditionally published authors are making per book. But still, I WROTE THE DAMN BOOK, and yet every time a copy of Spoilers sells on Amazon, a silly bald man in a cowboy hat and space pajamas gets $11.19* to put towards gallivanting around Earth’s orbit in his giant penis rocket????
*Minus printing and shipping and operating costs, but, like, how much does that actually cost Amazon, let’s be real.
Also, as I’m now discovering, if I want the book to actually show up anywhere near the top of Amazon’s search results, I have to pay for ads, which means Amazon takes another big chunk out of that $6.80. So, depending on the cost per click of the ad, it is theoretically possible that Jeff Bezos could make as much money on a copy of Spoilers as I do. Which, I guess, is why he can afford to gallivant around Earth’s orbit in a giant penis rocket while I buy Tastee-o’s instead of Cheerios. Isn’t that objectively BANANAS?
Long story short, for a book to go from an author’s laptop into your hands requires a bunch of logistical steps, from publishing, to printing, to advertising, to shipping, to Jeff Bezos. So even self-published authors aren’t taking home the lion’s share of the revenue from their books.
To be clear, I’m not saying everyone else in the book industry is living off the fat of the land. Publishers and indie bookstores often operate on thin margins. A lot of the industry has it rough.
All of this is to bring up a simple question: should we be charging more for books?
I guess the free market short answer is that publishers already do this…sort of. It’s why new books come out as hardcovers first — you can charge a bit more for them so it’s a way to squeeze a little more margin than you can from a paperback. Then, if the book sells well, you can justify releasing the book as a paperback to try to catch the market segment that wasn’t willing to pay $28 for the book but is willing to pay $18.
I knew this was the industry standard but I went straight to paperback because A) doing both a hardcover and paperback version seemed like a lot of work, and B) I hate hardcover books and don’t wish them upon even my fiercest of enemies.
But should I have done a hardcover version? Honestly, this entire series could be called The Honda Civic Diaries: One Man’s Story Of Learning Why Things Are Done The Way They Are Done After It’s Already Too Late.
For now, I stand by my hatred of hardcovers (and the fact that I’m too lazy to bother with them).
That said, I do wonder if $18 is the right price for Spoilers. I won’t bore you with the math of how Amazon and Ingram determine royalties (their estimator tools are free to use if you want to play around), but basically they charge a fixed cost for printing and shipping and then a fixed percentage, so the higher the price of the book, the larger the overall percentage of royalties. For example, at $17.99, I make $6.80 or around 38% of the list price. But if I were to charge, say $21.99, I’d make around $9.20 or roughly 42% of the list price. Plus, I’d be making over $2 more per book.
But would a stranger pay $22 for my book?** Are there people who wouldn’t be willing to pay $22 but would gladly pay $18? What percentage of the market is that? I’d call Jermone Powell but he blocked my number.
**Especially now that the book has been named one of the Best Comedy Books of 2023 (So Far) by Vulture! Wait, why didn’t I open with that? Half of you aren’t even going to read this far. Goddamnit, Carlos, you lede burying idiot, you!
A few days ago, I checked the list price of Me Talk Pretty One Day and noticed that it’s gone up to $19.99. And, although I can’t prove it, I’m pretty sure David did it just to fuck with me.***
***That or inflation, but either way, what the hell.
While I don’t plan on changing the price of Spoilers to match the David Sedaris Consumer Price Index any time soon, I guess it’s nice to know I have some wiggle room for the next book****?
****IF there’s a next book. DO NOT get your hopes up.
I don’t know, this stuff is hard, man. To quote Karl Marx, “Capitalism is a big ol’ stanky bitch.”*****
*****Sure, it’s a very liberal translation from the original German, but we all know that’s what he was trying to say.
To read the next entry, click the link below:
Just bought a copy. From Amazon, the way God intended.