Total Transparency: Book Pricing

If you're the impatient type, the TL;DNR on this is Amazon forced my hand with the pricing structure, and I maintain the same prices in my Books.By store so it's fair, no matter where you buy from.

When I first started thinking about pricing for "The Strangest of Places," my goal was to make it available for the lowest price possible to ensure it's accessible to the broadest possible audience. I was originally thinking I'd like to set the price around $5.99. As publishing costs started to accumulate, I upped that target price to $9.99, thinking that might be sufficient to recoup costs and still turn a small profit.

Reality, however, is rarely in line with what you think it will be.

Now that I have the manuscript and cover artwork loaded into Amazon's publishing tool, I'm able to play around with their pricing calculators to get my first concrete look at different pricing vs. royalty scenarios. As it turns out, not only would Amazon not allow me to sell below $10.58 per book, selling that low would mean I'd only make around $0.25 per book. As much as I'd love to believe that the sheer volume of sales I can expect will mean that's an acceptable return on investment, I just don't think that will be the case for a debut novel from an unknown author.

I'm not going to break down the full cost for each phase of development, but suffice it to say that I did hire a professional editor and cover designer, and neither of them were cheap. Beyond the monetary investment, I've also invested countless hours in writing, proofreading and editing it on my own -- zero AI was used during any phase of this book's creation -- as well as researching all I could learn about self-publishing as an independent author. For as much as has gone into this, I do have to be practical when it comes to pricing. For the sake of full transparency, here's the breakdown, so you know why the book is priced as it is.

NOTE: Pricing is based on page type, ink color and number of pages -- I'm using the most inexpensive option of the first 2, but the latter just is what it is. All of the screen shots below were taken from Kindle Direct Publishing, showing the paperback cost (hardcovers are pricier to produce; you can extrapolate the info below to understand why that cost is what it is).

Here's what it looks like if I were to sell at $10.99 -- I'd earn $0.25 per book:

Here's what it looks like at $14.99 per book -- I'd earn $2.65 per book:

Here's the $19.99 list price I will be using -- of that, I will make $5.65 per book:

I know you're probably wondering why I'm using Amazon, when they're going to take such a large cut (and they're sucking the soul out of America). The truth is, I was originally going to go with another publishing platform, which also would have distributed my book to several other platforms beyond Amazon. That option, however, would have meant several thousand dollars more in publishing and printing costs. I've also been networking with other independent authors to learn what their experience has been, and of those that used those other multi-distribution platforms, most say that 95%+ of their sales come from Amazon alone anyway, so it wasn't really worth it to use the other platforms given the increased costs.

I'm not a fan of Amazon, so though using them is a matter of necessity, I wanted to give those who vote with their wallets another option that wouldn't cost me several thousand additional dollars. After extensive research, I settled on an Australian company that offers independent authors a print-on-demand bookstore similar to KDP, but their royalties are appreciably higher...yay! If you are anti-Amazon -- if you just want to support this indie author with the highest possible return on investment -- you can pick up my book at my Books.By store.

I originally set out with the goal of offering the book at the lowest possible price. Now that I've gone through the process to get it right to the finish line, I now know what that lowest possible price is. I wish it were $5.99, or even $9.99, but the printed paperback copy has to be $19.99. That said, ebook versions are always cheaper, given that there are no printing costs. If you have a Kindle, you can get that version for just $9.99, and it's free if you subscribe to Kindle Unlimited.

So, now you know why my pricing is what it is -- I hope you feel it's worth whatever price you paid for it!