Here's a Crazy Thought: Charge What Your Books Are Worth

Instead of pricing your books for the Big Lots bargain bin, maybe you should actually get paid for your hard work for a change.

Anyone who can name the parody here gets a virtual cookie.

This is an excerpt from my upcoming book The Artisan Author.

Important note: If you’re a Rapid Release or KU-style author and have no interest in changing, skip this post. You’re playing a different game than Artisan Authors, and our pricing strategies won’t work for you any more than yours make a lick of sense for us.

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Pardon me while I take a deep sigh. This subject exasperates me. It’s sad and exhausting to see so many authors on bended knee, begging the world to read their books.

That’s what chronic, no-good-reason-for-it low pricing does: It begs.

If your book is cheap because you’re running a sale, fine. If your first book is free as a loss leader intended to get people to pay for the second, fine. If you’re pricing low to build your email list, or entice people through ads, or some other thought-out strategy, also fine.

But setting an everyday price of 99 cents?

Or bundling an entire series and selling that for 99 cents, without some greater strategy behind it?

Or cultivating a reader list who came to you on a free deal and will now only buy if you make books free or super-cheap again?

Not fine.

Not fine at all, my friends.

I understand why authors are insecure, which is what chronic low prices scream to the world. We’re not a bold bunch by nature, and chances are we weren’t Prom King and Queen, always adored by every one of our peers.

(Fun fact: I actually went to prom with the Prom Queen. She wasn’t remotely your typical Prom Queen and we went as friends, but it’s still fun as hell to say.)

Authors, on average, are introverts. We’re quiet. We vanish into crowds, drowned out by louder people. And then, atop all of that, we spend our time writing stories that come from deep within us — that sometimes make us feel naked when others read them. Many authors are so grateful to be able to publish in the first place that they take that ability as the reward. When you’re already so grateful to be able to express yourself creatively, it feels greedy to ask for money, too. What’s more, there’s so many of us these days. It’s not just our own reluctance that makes us want to practically (or literally) give our books away for free. It’s our sense of business as well, arguing that nobody will pay more for us if others are cheaper.

If you feel the way I just described, then with all the love in the world, I’d like you to get the hell over it. Stop allowing yourself to feel less-than. Stop letting the world make you feel like you don’t deserve to be paid well for your work, or that what you do doesn’t matter. Remember our talk about the farce of “normal”? Part of that is a truth that your unique kind of work is exactly what someone has been looking for. You don’t need to be ideal for everyone. You can’t be. You’re ideal for someone, though, and you need to let that someone pay you what your work is worth.

See, payment for anything is an exchange of value, and that value goes both ways. If you charge almost nothing, it feels like almost nothing to the person who receives it. I’d argue you’re being disrespectful and borderline cruel to your own perfect brand of weirdoes by denigrating your own worth. You’re exactly what they’ve been looking for, remember. Are you really going to turn around, look them in the eye, and tell them with your pricing that “exactly what they’ve been looking for” is worthless?

Come on. You’re better than that.

An Artisan Author Doesn’t Compete on Price

Using price as your primary sales driver helps nobody. Certainly not in the world of an Artisan Author. You’re not exploiting anyone. You’re not coercing anyone. The prices an Artisan Author charges won’t break anyone’s bank — or, if they somehow do, those people can get your book from the library.

You did good, difficult work and you deserve to be paid fairly. Period. End of sentence.

Your own pricing choices will (wait for it) depend on a number of factors, but as I write this in 2025, my standard-length ebook price is $5.99. I’ll drop to $4.99 for novellas, but that’s about it. Those are near the top of where most indie authors feel comfortable pricing, but I’m honestly considering pricing even higher on Amazon and the other stores. Why? Because I don’t sell too well on those stores anyway. Raising might lose me a few customers, but those who pay anyway will be more artisan readers (the kind I want), and they’ll make up for the drop-offs. Besides, pricing higher on stores lets me price a bit lower on my own site, to reward fans who buy direct.

(NOTE: Everything I just said is unique to me. Don’t use MY circumstances as a reason to change YOUR prices. Part of being an Artisan Author is forging your own path rather than blindly following anyone else’s, remember?)

The point is, price what you’re worth. Price what earns you a respectable profit. The way that Ingram physical book sales work, you have to offer bookstores a steep discount or they won’t buy. Plenty of indie authors find that after the discount and the cost of the book, their Ingram sales are earning them less than a dollar.

Knock it off, man. Get over yourself and raise that price until you’re making at least three.

A Different Paradigm, a Different Kind of Buyer

I’ll say it again: The kinds of buyers we want as Artisan Authors aren’t price sensitive, so using price as a lever won’t move the needle very much.

Discounting your book slightly to reward people who buy direct is a thank-you, not a move required by the market to make sales. People appreciate bargains when they come, but artisan readers don’t base their purchase decisions around them. If you price your books too low, you might even alienate readers who want a high-class experience, whereas you keep trying to give them a Walmart clearance experience. Raising prices seldom affects sales if you have the right readers.

To make this point, try a little thought experiment with me:

Imagine you’re considering a movie. It’s a must-see masterpiece, and all of your friends — who have your same taste in movies — have been talking about it nonstop.

Now, pretend that you go to a theater to watch that movie. You discover, while you’re at the box office, that there’s another movie playing, too: a deal-of-the-day situation where another film — one that’s sort of meh to you; one you could take or leave — is offered for a few bucks cheaper.

Do you go to see the movie you know you’ll love, that you’ve read up on and are interested in seeing?

Or do you instead say, “Meh, Ernest Goes to Camp costs $2 less, so let’s see that instead.”

Nobody does that. Nobody who’s interested in movies, anyway. Similarly, nobody that you want as a reader considers two books and chooses the one they’re less interested in just because it’s cheaper. Do you really want readers who buy on price? Or do you instead want readers who buy on interest?

When I sell in person, nobody even asks the price. Nobody. It happens so reliably that I’ve had to train myself to tell them the price before they tap their credit card, just so my conscience is clear and they know what they’re getting into. Not once have I had a reader interested in a book, then had them turn it down at checkout because it’s too pricey.

I’m not shy about pricing. My paperbacks average about $25 each — a good deal more than I’ve seen even other hand-selling authors charge. I have several that cost $35, and one that goes for $45. People routinely buy three books or so at once, and I ring them up for over $100. And does anyone bat an eye?

Nope. They walk away saying how excited they are by their purchase — how they can’t wait to start reading.

Price what you’re worth. Don’t be an ass about it, but price what allows you to sustain your author business, at whatever level (part time, full time, Adventure Time) you’ve set your goals.

If you decide to stop writing because you can’t earn enough to justify it, do you think your fans will be happy about it?

Of course they won’t. They want you to stay in business … and to make sure that happens, the right readers are happy to pay what’s fair.

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If you like the idea of building an author career where you can charge what you’re worth and actually get it, check out my book The Artisan Author. It’s more than just raising prices. It comes down to slowing down, chilling out, writing the books you actually want to write instead of what the market demands … and focusing on attracting the RIGHT readers instead of the MAXIMUM NUMBER of readers. Quality over quantity, people.