Why Fiction Writers are Worth More Than We Ask For

A revelation on my own self-worth

“I’d turn on Paid Subscriptions but only if I can charge $3/M or less.”

I hear this A LOT. No matter what platform I go to. I could blame Patreon for giving us the ability to value our worth as low as $1, but I think the problem starts within. I’m going to use myself as an example here but if any of this sounds like you, sit back and listen and hopefully find a bit more of your confidence back when I’m done.

Is a novel really only worth $30 per sale?

We’ve all been there, standing in the bookstore, a wall of bestsellers with their fancy covers all vying for our attention till we land on the one we’ve been searching for, grab it, and immediately open it to the inside cover (I picked up a hardcover with a jacket…) to see the “full price” is usually something like $30+. Our eyes bug out of our heads. I know mine used to. I flip it over in my hands for inspection purposes. Okay, it is kinda heavy. I do a quick scan of the pages. Yeah, nice paper stock. I glance at the last page; 632. It is a lot of pages for one fiction story. Then I quickly pull out my phone and go on Amazon to see how much they are selling this behemoth for…searching…searching…scroll…AH! More than 50% off the price in the store. I promptly put the book back on the shelf and smile, walking away pleased that I’ve not only purchased the book but I got it for far less than had I purchased it just now. For context, I’m likely in a Barnes & Noble where they would’ve offered me 40% off the full price and a Starbucks located inside, for my troubles. I avoid the coffee and make a swift exit, knowing I saved a few bucks instead of spending a fortune. I know I should be “shopping indie” and all that but, I’ve gotta be honest, sometimes I just can’t afford to pay that full price.

Why am I sharing this boring story? Because too many fiction writers use the example of that full price of the book to explain away why they can’t fathom asking any one person to pay them $5/m or more for a subscription to their email. This was me. The idea of it made me sick to my stomach. I felt like I was some con artist trying to fool people into giving me their money! Why? Because my subscription would have someone paying around $120/yr (my current regular tier is $10/m)! OMG! The disparity! Would I be called out on what I was doing? This forced me to turn on my paid subscriptions but tell NO ONE and NEVER promote this. Or, if I promoted it, be real slick and sly about it. How foolish I was!

Sure, a book on a shelf in a bookstore at full price is worth “whatever bucks.” But that book on that shelf is just that: bound paper with words in it. When we buy that book we aren’t paying for the words on the page. Any book of that length, using that kind of paper, would be worth the same amount regardless of the topic contained within. We are paying for the cost of the production of the book; NOT THE WORK INSIDE OF IT! The mark-up that we would be paying, were we to be charged “Stephen King” prices would actually be UN-AFFORDABLE! His book deals are likely six-figures, not to mention whatever royalties he makes on top of that.

Which brings me to advances in a traditional contract world.

Now, not everyone gets a lucrative advance. Actually, everyone probably gets a pretty lousy advance and like 0.001% get that banger contract boasted about in entertainment media. It’s there that the writer makes compensation for the story they produced. If it’s a sure-fire hit, the contract will likely be HUGE because the publisher knows they will make that back ten-fold when the book sells. The contract is where the value of the work is really made, not when I’m standing in the story looking up at the tall bookshelf of books trying to decide which one to buy. That price is NOT valuing the writer AT ALL. As further evidenced by the boxed set.

In the Harry Potter world there are about a dozen different boxed sets of the 7-book series and depending on which one I don’t have (I own them all by the way) I’m paying NOT for the value of the work the author put into the story but I’m paying the printer/publisher for the cost of it being printed and put into a fancy box. In truth, I’m not even paying for the fancier covers they had illustrated or the fancier box they encase it in (the more of them produced that drives the cost of the box down considerably). The artist and boxes are paid for ahead of time because they know it’s a banger sale regardless of what the artist or the boxes cost. The cheapest Harry Potter boxed set I own was $49.99, which is what I paid for it (and it might’ve been discounted, it was so long ago I can’t remember). Now, that’s 7 books! Does that mean I should be writing 7-books a year in order to justify asking someone to pay me $120 a year? HELL NO!

It’s time to change our thinking about how to value our work, and especially our worth.

I’m sure I’ve echoed this sentiment before a thousand times but I think it bears repeating over and over and over again. And I have to admit that even I need to hear it again cause I so easily forget: We are putting in countless amount of hours, days, months, years, into our work. Waking up early, staying up late. Missing meals. Staying in when our friends want us to go hang out. All for the love of our fiction worlds. So, when we are now given an opportunity to do more than just produce our work into a book to then be faced with Amazon KDP suggesting what price our book should be, where the base value starts at their cost-to-print the book, why do we immediately value ourselves to that of a printing machine? I have to ask myself HOW ON EARTH we arrived at this conclusion? Even Amazon doesn’t give a shit what our book is about. All they care about is how much it will cost them to print our words (good or bad) on the page and then spit it out to then mail it directly to a person anywhere in the world. Sure, they care a little bit about an algorithm and making sure our book (whatever it’s about) reaches the right audience so they can take their cut on that sale. But at the end of the day, they don’t value our work so why do we to take their metric and apply it to our self-worth?

I’m gonna have to stop you there! I won’t have it or stand for it. We are all here busting our butts and I’m not going to then turn around and have us agree with Amazon that we are worth no more than the cost of printing and binding a book.

Let’s, instead, try charging for the experience we can give our readers.

Raise your hands if you do more behind-the-scenes work on each episode/chapter you put out of your serial that no one will ever know or see? (I’ll wait…)

Ah, I see plenty of you have raised your hands. I thought as much. Now, keep your hands up if aside from sharing your episodes/chapters of your work you are also sharing other fiction or even non-fiction stuff with your audience? (I’ll wait…)

Ah, even more of you are now raising your hands. Good. Excellent. Now, keep your hands raised! I didn’t tell you to put them down yet! Sheesh! Okay, keep them up if you have paid subscriptions turned on, but your terrified, or don’t have them turned on for the same reason? (I’ll wait…)

Hmm, I think all of us have our hands raised this time. Look around. All of you reading this have your hands raised. Okay, okay. You can put your hands down now. You don’t have to glare at me, for heavens sake, I’m trying to make a point and drive it home!

For all of you who have behind-the-scenes work that you’re not sharing, why not share it? I’ll bet your audience would love to see it. Give them that experience they can’t get from just holding your book in their hands that they’ll likely pay discount for on Amazon some day. Give them more!

This is our one chance to really connect with our audience in ways authors like Charles Dickens and Alexander Dumas would’ve loved! Back then, they received letters from fans who loved their monthly installments and couldn’t wait to receive the next one. Back then, Dickens and Dumas (and others) were actually paid for their worth because the publishers knew they had a goal mine and paid handsomely for it. Somewhere between then and now the paradigm shifted. The publishers became the ones getting all the “value for work” money while the writers were being valued at the cost of print-on-demand prices! I swear my head spins a full 180 every time I think about this. I would do the raising hand exercise again but I won’t. You’ve suffered enough.

What I will say is, and excuse my screaming, YOU ARE WORTH MORE THAN A PRINT ON DEMAND PRICE!

You’re creating an entire world goddamn it! You’re not regurgitating something that happened in the news or telling me about crypto coins or some other non-fiction topic that seems to never need justification for why those newsletters can and do charge so much. You’re creating characters, writing dialogue, putting them in scenes that seem real to the reader! That is fucking amazing! That is some real killer shit! That experience is worth WAY more than $1/m, yo! Seriously! It just is! And anyone who makes you think creating something out of thin air and then building an entire experience around your imagination is jealous or has absolutely no clue of the kind of work and effort and time it takes to do this kind of work.

What we are doing here today as fiction writers is awesome and we all have a chance to change the narrative around our value. We are not print on demand prices. We are worth box office smash hit prices. We are worth millions! But guess what? We’ll never get there by charging $1 admission at the door.

I’m on a personal mission to change the narrative, so, whenever I see you trying to devalue yourself or your subscription price, expect me to be right beside you to yell in your ear STOP THAT! YOU ARE WORTH MORE THAN THAT!

How can we expect others to believe it if we don’t believe it in ourselves. So, if you don’t want me screaming in your ear at any given moment…DO THE RIGHT THING!