Devaluing writers? Thoughts on e-book pricing.

Jill Corcoran smart and hard-to-read article ON THE DEVALUATION OF WRITERS, BY WRITERS is already something I think about, especially in regards to my e-book series, The Spellspinners of Melas County. These books are cheap. Ridiculously so. $3.99 per book, or for the low, low price of $7.99 you can buy a “bundle” of the first three books. I’ve spent hours and days, weeks and months working on this series, yet a book costs less than my daily latte. In fact, my doctor friend commented he felt like he was “stealing something” after his purchase. 

Why is this? Well, Kindle customers are used to shopping cheap because many bestselling indie writers set their price at $0.99. Is ANYTHING ninety-nine cents these days other than e-books? I think a package of M&M’s costs more. 

Interestingly, over at Kobo, my contemporary novel SEA is selling like hotcakes and has been for a long time at a much higher price point of $14.99. The first novel of my fantasy series, WITCH’S BREW, is also selling really well on Kobo.

Why the discrepancy? First, it’s the sliding scale of free to ninety-nine cents thing over at Amazon that makes it hard to sell ebooks at a higher price, but also, if you’re used to getting something for free (perhaps your publisher lists your ebook for free quarterly) why bother paying for it?

The problem is, and I agree with Jill here, is that writers need to live. We need to eat, pay our bills, feed our kids, buy our coffee. Like many writers, if I didn’t have my spouse’s monetary support and supplement my writing career with teaching, I couldn’t write at all. At least not the kind of strict, professional, all-consuming writing that publishing a great book requires. We also need to feel like our work has value. This isn’t volunteer work, this is a job. We volunteer plenty. Selling our books is how we make our money.

Food for thought as you shop, dear readers. This opens up a lot of questions for me as well. Maybe if we work together, as Jill wisely suggests, we can fix this problem before it’s too late.