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"
Excellent article as always, Brooke. It got me thinking how publishers of technical and text books seem to have no fear of raising prices, but I guess that's possible because students have no choice but to buy what they must for class.
Yes, and because they're selling their books primarily to libraries, too. I think that authors who publish their trade books on U presses do suffer for this, however.
During my eighteen years teaching English at some community colleges, I saw absolutely unconscionable price-gouging. With one of the survey courses, the "editors" would simply remove a couple of stories, poems, and plays and substitute comparable works (e.g., *Antigone* might replace *Oedipus*) and raised the price 25% for the "new" edition. I would be rather surprised if they paid Sophocles any higher royalties...
I used to work in educational publishing and I witnessed pretty much the same thing when there were new editions. You're right that it is unconscionable. I was in technical publishing and the price of those textbooks couldn't in the least be justified.
Thank you for your comment. As I'm sure you realize, I "like" the fact that you replied, although I certainly do NOT like what both you and I have reported about textbook prices. Perhaps substack should add some options, including one for "angry"!
I agree with you to some extent about the prices on paperback and hardcover, although the argument would be stronger if we had some hard data. For example, how much do sales actually diminish for each added dollar of list price?
As for digital books, I am less convinced, in part because I had the reciprocal problem as an author working through a digital publisher. I edited and revised an unfinished novel by my late mother, and an early (digital-only) version enjoyed remarkable success during a promotional weekend in late 2012. Under Amazon’s broad category of “Music/Biographies” (which included historical fiction as well), Charlie Brown’s book on Wiz Khalifa finished #3, and Andrew Morris’ volume on Justin Bieber took the #2 slot. Topping the list was this Paganini novel! How often does a 19th century classical violinist finish ahead of a rap artist and a pop icon?
One might have assumed things would get better from there, but while the book had sold consistently in the $2.99 to $4.99 range, the publisher got greedy and hiked the price up to $9.99. Sales virtually screeched to a halt, eventually necessitating a “buy out.” Suffice it to say that we had a rather unpleasant parting of the ways.
*Paganini Agitato* has recently been released by Fomite Press in both digital and paperback formats. With fresh revisions and new scenes interpolated, the new title lists at $4.99 on Kindle, and I am perfectly happy to see it priced there (and reduced for promotionals as the publisher sees fit).
That said, I agree that Amazon should not slash royalties above $9.99. Moreover, I remain perplexed when I see authors list their e-books at $11.99, at which lofty price they give up a large number of sales to garner ten cents more than they would at $4.99.
Good point on breaking out the actual numbers. But for every dollar more you add onto the price of a book, the retailer takes .50 cents. That's at issue here—that the retailer is taking at least 50%, and Amazon is selling books at severe discounts, oftentimes undercutting their own profit. So they're to blame here as well. But I agree that the digital books are not really the issue. Our authors make a good return on digital books and that's in part because retailers take a fraction of the percentage of what they take for paperbacks and hardcovers, and because you strip away the shipping costs. Still, my point about Amazon's KDP program is just that it's an example of price fixing. So maybe that all got a bit conflated.
I agree. Amazon will also change prices on e-books as well. At $2.99, an author should expect roughly $2.03-09 per book (depending on the digital considerations), yet I have received considerably less when Amazon decided to discount further. It's no different on paperbacks, from what I understand...
In the indie world, there's a marketing ploy to offer a free book in return for permission to add someone to your email list. While I completely understand what's behind this tactic, I deplore it. Free? You want my book for free?!? It took me years to develop my craft, nearly a year to write the book, hundreds of dollars to get it formatted and have a cover designed, more $$ on various marketing efforts. Then there are the costs of maintaining connections with other authors through various means. And you want my book for FREE?!? I don't think so.
This is fascinating and I hadn't realized that prices of books have changed so relatively little compared to other products. As an indie author, I think Amazon's KDP pricing policies are highly problematic. What I don't see readers complaining about is the cost of books. There are enough free books (plus the library) available for people to get plenty of reading material for a low cost if they don't want to pay (I count myself in this camp. I use the library for almost everything I read). Everyone else is happy to pay whatever is asked for books by their favorite authors. Some readers will pay many times that for special editions. Why not let them pay more if they want to?
Great article that pushed me to think in a totally different way. I appreciate how you break down events of the publishing world, using specific examples. Thank you!
Your argument makes total sense, Brooke. Interestingly (or perhaps, ironically), I've heard authors complain that their books are so expensive, people are balking.
I'd be curious to know, either here or via DM, what those books are and what they're price points are. We are pretty much locked in for paperbacks at $16-$18, and for hardcovers at $26-27. If you go higher than that, the idea that readers "balk" I think is true, because comparative to other books, anything more than that would be too high. This is why the whole idea of price fixing is complicated in publishing in ways it's not in fashion or food. People charge what they want, and the quality drives the purchases. But in publishing, it's all things equal, and if you're a few dollars above your competition, two things—your distributor will tell you to bring the price point down, or it's seen as gauche. Like University Presses charge a lot more for trade books because they don't really care about trade sales. But for presses that do care about trade sales, I think we're pretty hemmed in.
Brooke is right, yet so are the complaining authors. People are thinking twice about discretionary purchases. They're comparing the price of a book to their groceries in their bag, not a movie ticket. My author friends are writing more books than I, an author myself, can afford to buy. And with all the great TV I'm now watching, I've cut way back on movie tickets. What a conundrum.
Yes, and books can still be loaned from libraries, and people can still purchase ebooks for far less than a paperback. I definitely understand that some people will find books to be discretionary purchases, but I don't think the difference of a couple dollars is going to impact whether or not they buy the books, especially since Amazon discounts them so much. So our $17 books are for sale on Amazon for $13 most of the time. Amazon, too, is devaluing authors' intellectual property.
Most of the author complaints I hear are about Amazon's price-setting policies. Is it true that Amazon can re-set book prices without an author's consent? Upwards, it seems, not downwards. I'm not an expert on any of this, but I've heard dismay on this score more than once. I can't provide specific examples.
Yes, Amazon can sell the book for whatever they want, but it doesn't matter that much because they have to pay the author based on the retail price, not the sale price. The bigger issue is how much Amazon pays publishers or authors for their books, the discount they subject us to. It's higher than bookstores.
Excellent article as always, Brooke. It got me thinking how publishers of technical and text books seem to have no fear of raising prices, but I guess that's possible because students have no choice but to buy what they must for class.
Yes, and because they're selling their books primarily to libraries, too. I think that authors who publish their trade books on U presses do suffer for this, however.
During my eighteen years teaching English at some community colleges, I saw absolutely unconscionable price-gouging. With one of the survey courses, the "editors" would simply remove a couple of stories, poems, and plays and substitute comparable works (e.g., *Antigone* might replace *Oedipus*) and raised the price 25% for the "new" edition. I would be rather surprised if they paid Sophocles any higher royalties...
I used to work in educational publishing and I witnessed pretty much the same thing when there were new editions. You're right that it is unconscionable. I was in technical publishing and the price of those textbooks couldn't in the least be justified.
Thank you for your comment. As I'm sure you realize, I "like" the fact that you replied, although I certainly do NOT like what both you and I have reported about textbook prices. Perhaps substack should add some options, including one for "angry"!
Agreed, we need a wider range of emotional expression here! :)
I agree with you to some extent about the prices on paperback and hardcover, although the argument would be stronger if we had some hard data. For example, how much do sales actually diminish for each added dollar of list price?
As for digital books, I am less convinced, in part because I had the reciprocal problem as an author working through a digital publisher. I edited and revised an unfinished novel by my late mother, and an early (digital-only) version enjoyed remarkable success during a promotional weekend in late 2012. Under Amazon’s broad category of “Music/Biographies” (which included historical fiction as well), Charlie Brown’s book on Wiz Khalifa finished #3, and Andrew Morris’ volume on Justin Bieber took the #2 slot. Topping the list was this Paganini novel! How often does a 19th century classical violinist finish ahead of a rap artist and a pop icon?
One might have assumed things would get better from there, but while the book had sold consistently in the $2.99 to $4.99 range, the publisher got greedy and hiked the price up to $9.99. Sales virtually screeched to a halt, eventually necessitating a “buy out.” Suffice it to say that we had a rather unpleasant parting of the ways.
*Paganini Agitato* has recently been released by Fomite Press in both digital and paperback formats. With fresh revisions and new scenes interpolated, the new title lists at $4.99 on Kindle, and I am perfectly happy to see it priced there (and reduced for promotionals as the publisher sees fit).
That said, I agree that Amazon should not slash royalties above $9.99. Moreover, I remain perplexed when I see authors list their e-books at $11.99, at which lofty price they give up a large number of sales to garner ten cents more than they would at $4.99.
Good point on breaking out the actual numbers. But for every dollar more you add onto the price of a book, the retailer takes .50 cents. That's at issue here—that the retailer is taking at least 50%, and Amazon is selling books at severe discounts, oftentimes undercutting their own profit. So they're to blame here as well. But I agree that the digital books are not really the issue. Our authors make a good return on digital books and that's in part because retailers take a fraction of the percentage of what they take for paperbacks and hardcovers, and because you strip away the shipping costs. Still, my point about Amazon's KDP program is just that it's an example of price fixing. So maybe that all got a bit conflated.
I agree. Amazon will also change prices on e-books as well. At $2.99, an author should expect roughly $2.03-09 per book (depending on the digital considerations), yet I have received considerably less when Amazon decided to discount further. It's no different on paperbacks, from what I understand...
In the indie world, there's a marketing ploy to offer a free book in return for permission to add someone to your email list. While I completely understand what's behind this tactic, I deplore it. Free? You want my book for free?!? It took me years to develop my craft, nearly a year to write the book, hundreds of dollars to get it formatted and have a cover designed, more $$ on various marketing efforts. Then there are the costs of maintaining connections with other authors through various means. And you want my book for FREE?!? I don't think so.
Good for you for not participating! I think a lot of authors feel they should, or that they have to. But we don't! We can certainly be discretionary.
I am so loving these essays you are writing.
This is fascinating and I hadn't realized that prices of books have changed so relatively little compared to other products. As an indie author, I think Amazon's KDP pricing policies are highly problematic. What I don't see readers complaining about is the cost of books. There are enough free books (plus the library) available for people to get plenty of reading material for a low cost if they don't want to pay (I count myself in this camp. I use the library for almost everything I read). Everyone else is happy to pay whatever is asked for books by their favorite authors. Some readers will pay many times that for special editions. Why not let them pay more if they want to?
So well argued, Brooke!
Here! Here! Such an insightful article!
Great article that pushed me to think in a totally different way. I appreciate how you break down events of the publishing world, using specific examples. Thank you!
Your argument makes total sense, Brooke. Interestingly (or perhaps, ironically), I've heard authors complain that their books are so expensive, people are balking.
I'd be curious to know, either here or via DM, what those books are and what they're price points are. We are pretty much locked in for paperbacks at $16-$18, and for hardcovers at $26-27. If you go higher than that, the idea that readers "balk" I think is true, because comparative to other books, anything more than that would be too high. This is why the whole idea of price fixing is complicated in publishing in ways it's not in fashion or food. People charge what they want, and the quality drives the purchases. But in publishing, it's all things equal, and if you're a few dollars above your competition, two things—your distributor will tell you to bring the price point down, or it's seen as gauche. Like University Presses charge a lot more for trade books because they don't really care about trade sales. But for presses that do care about trade sales, I think we're pretty hemmed in.
Brooke is right, yet so are the complaining authors. People are thinking twice about discretionary purchases. They're comparing the price of a book to their groceries in their bag, not a movie ticket. My author friends are writing more books than I, an author myself, can afford to buy. And with all the great TV I'm now watching, I've cut way back on movie tickets. What a conundrum.
Yes, and books can still be loaned from libraries, and people can still purchase ebooks for far less than a paperback. I definitely understand that some people will find books to be discretionary purchases, but I don't think the difference of a couple dollars is going to impact whether or not they buy the books, especially since Amazon discounts them so much. So our $17 books are for sale on Amazon for $13 most of the time. Amazon, too, is devaluing authors' intellectual property.
A professionally produced book’s value is at least that of a bacon cheeseburger, steak fries, and ice tea.
Most of the author complaints I hear are about Amazon's price-setting policies. Is it true that Amazon can re-set book prices without an author's consent? Upwards, it seems, not downwards. I'm not an expert on any of this, but I've heard dismay on this score more than once. I can't provide specific examples.
Yes, Amazon can sell the book for whatever they want, but it doesn't matter that much because they have to pay the author based on the retail price, not the sale price. The bigger issue is how much Amazon pays publishers or authors for their books, the discount they subject us to. It's higher than bookstores.