Pricing

     It's no secret that authors, especially the self-published and e-published, are making less and less money for their writing efforts. E-publishers are feeling the pinch, too, and several have gone out of business recently. The amount of effort that goes into writing, perfecting, and publishing a book is vast, and after a while, no longer seems worth the effort. The day of putting book out there for ninety-nine cents and expecting to make a fortune by selling millions is past, though I do know people who only buy books prices under a dollar and simply delete them one after another when they are found unsatisfactory. Every once in a while, they get a good one and, I guess, are satisfied with that. They also scoop up freebies, the idea being give away the first book in the series and they will buy others. I can tell you from personal experience, that rarely works either.
     So, what is a fair price for an e-book that is well-written and edited and provides a good story? One of the presses I write for started off selling all their books for $4.99, the best price they thought they could get. The authors' royalty came to a dollar a copy. Then, the publisher decided lowering the price of all their books, whether 100,000 or 70,000 words or 40,000 words to $3.99 would bump sales. Nope, but now the author got eight-five centers for sale. Surrendering finally to Amazon which now pays by the pages read or gives the books away to their top members, I found my royalty for a 90,000 word book is now forty-seven cents per copy, scant reward for all that work and in my case hours spent on research.
     Fortunately, my primary e-press is still holding the line with shorter books priced at $4.99 and longer ones at $5.99. Their brief foray into turning all their new titles over to KDP for a short time resulted in lots and lots of unhappy authors, and eventually they backed out of that deal. I think these prices are fair for good reads well-edited and of some length. Of course, my royalties are not what they once were in the heyday of e-publishing. So many cheap books have glutted the market, it is hard to meet even the $25 required for them to cut a check in the case of the publisher mentioned in the above paragraph. I still get a quarterly check from my primary publisher whom I once asked what happened to my sales?  She replied, "You are doing better than most just to get a check each time." They, too, don't pay out if you ear less than $25 a quarter. At the end of the year, even the smallest pittance is paid out to balance the books. I know some of my fellow authors asked where their final check had gone.  The answer, they hadn't sold any books in a year's time. Some are getting out of the business altogether as their is no profit in it.
     As for me, I just keep writing because I enjoy it, have tales to tell, and time to put into a project that takes a year to complete for such small rewards. The irony is that I know my current books are better than those that sold so well when I started out as experience counts. I do hope a few people out there enjoy them.