Addicted to Scarcity—Book Publishing’s Retail Price Problem

The retail price of a book has gone up $3 in the past 30 years, but we're not supposed to talk about how that impacts an industry that many claim is "broken"

I recently sat on a publisher panel for PubWest’s annual boot camp where the final question to all the panelists was: What would you change in the publishing industry if you could? As is often the case when you’re put on the spot, I managed a feeble response about better distribution options for indie-published authors or some such thing. But I’ve since been chewing on the question, and I’ve realized that while there are many things broken about publishing, one solution to some of our biggest problems lies in everyone involved making more money.

Last year, Publishers Weekly published an article titled “Is the Publishing Industry Broken?” that defined some of the industry’s worst problems and grievances, centering primarily on the lack of possibility for job growth, low wages, and too much work with too little support. And that’s on the industry professionals’ side of the equation. On the authors’ side, the possibility for earning out advances is shockingly low, as is breaking even when you’re self-financing. It’s expensive to produce books, and yet we continue to sell them for so little!

Even if I’d wanted to talk about the retail price point problem on the PubWest panel, I couldn’t have. They have strict antitrust policies in place, and for good reason. By law, groups of industry professionals are not allowed to get together to talk about price fixing. But something other than price fixing is happening in book publishing. It’s instead as if the entire industry suffers from a trauma mindset common to artists who don’t charge what they’re worth. We propagate an idea—together—that books should only cost $17 for a paperback and $27 for a hardcover. Amazon, too, keeps us locked in these price points by effectively forcing ebooks to stay at $9.99 or less due to their KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) policy with self-published authors, where they take 30% of your royalties if you price at $9.99 or lower, but 70% if you price over $9.99. (But apparently that’s not price fixing?)

Book publishers raise the cost of books at a comparatively glacial pace to other similar products. In 2018, when I wrote my book Write On, Sisters!, I looked at the price increase of hardcover books over time compared to movie tickets. Here’s what I found:

1991: Scarlett, by Alexandra Ripley, retailed for $24.95, and the average movie ticket sold for $4.21.

2001: The No Spin Zone, by Bill O’Reilly, retailed for $24.95, and the average movie ticket sold for $5.95.

2018: Less, by Andrew Sean Greer, retailed for $26, and the average movie ticket sold for $9.10.

How well do you think we’ve fared since 2018? Let’s take a look:

2023: Chain Gang All Stars, by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, retails for $27, and the average movie ticket sold is $17!

Something is not making sense here.

Last week, I bought a croissant at my local bakery for $6. I paid $5.49 for a gallon of gas. I spent $9.10 on a gallon of milk, and ordered my son a six-piece combo at Wingstop for $13.

We can bemoan inflation all we want, but costs are going up. Two of the most noticeable cost hikes impacting book publishing are paper and shipping (due to fuel). And yet, my press, and many presses, have only raised our retail prices by a single dollar over the past year—and that was after holding steady at the previous price point for literally a decade.

You know what else is expensive? The cost of living in places where creative professionals tend to congregate—places like New York and LA and Chicago. Publishers contract with designers and editors who want to make more money, but sales volume cannot be the only place where publishers are expected to make up these sky-rocketing costs.  

We’re all vying for crumbs and wondering why this is such an upsetting industry. Books are already-small pies whose ingredients and effort to make costs more than the product retails for. One way big publishers offset this reality is by printing more volume. Printing is an economies of scale business, so it makes sense to pay less per unit if you really can sell through the books. But smaller publishers and unknown authors won’t benefit from these discounts unless they buy into the idea that they’ll “save” money by printing more. Of course, they’re not saving money down the line if they’re saddled with unsold inventory. But this is a place where big publishers have a clear advantage over indie publishers, and where indie publishers need big publishers to lead the charge when it comes to what should be the accepted retail prices for our products. You can have a cool, indie t-shirt company and get away with charging $100 per shirt while GAP charges $20, but that’s not the case in book publishing. Cool, indie presses have to charge what the pack is charging, so even if we’re not allowed to price fix, we are by default, and the rest of us are waiting for the Big Five publishers to make their incremental moves so we can follow suit.

Because of the nature of my work as a hybrid publisher, I talk openly with authors about money all the time. I’m comfortable talking about money—what authors can hope to earn, and not earn. Publishing is expensive, especially when you do it well, but the reality of what authors can hope to make (in the long run) when they’re earning such a small percentage from a single book sale is sobering. The silver lining here is that publishers and authors alike have other ways to make money—notably from selling rights, and things like products, swag, or classes. Authors make money from leveraging their expertise as published authors by doing things like speaking gigs, writing articles, and teaching.

Still, we shouldn’t all be so squeezed when the cost of everything is going up all around us. This is not a call for price fixing, but a call for the industry to value our products for what they’re worth today, in 2023, with the context of the world around us and real costs. That we determine our products are worth only three more dollars today than when was when I was in high school strikes me as sad. Charging more supports publishers and authors alike. We’re not allowed to talk about it together as industry leaders, but I am poised and ready to be part of a change that insists we’re not content just scraping by.