You’re so right. What we’re giving readers is much more than a collection of pages - it’s an experience, a chance to live in a different world for a while, to feel something new and wonderful. It’s worth giving all we’ve got to create that experience.
You make an excellent point about not undervaluing our work. There's an enormous amount of good writing and even a lot of great writing on this platform.
That said, at the risk of being presumptuous, I'm going to play the role of heretic for just a moment.
I'm a relative newcomer to Substack, having only been here since March. But I'm not a newcomer to publishing, having published my first book in 2012. (And finishing writing a book, still unpublished, 1981--went the trad route on that one, with zero success.)
I've interacted a lot with other authors from 2012 on, and the conversation about pricing is, as you know, not new. The same issues have been debated for more than a decade. Why has pricing been controversial for so long?
Short answer-- because there are a lot of variables involved in pricing, and one size does not fit all.
I know people who charge what they believe their writing is worth and others who charge lower in an effort to grow their user base. Each group has people who succeeded and people who failed (speaking in objective terms about earnings, not about creative quality).
I went through a period when I tried increasing my book prices. Let's just say that didn't go well, and leave it at that.
To be clear, I'm not saying people shouldn't charge or should charge low. There are many great writers here. Charge as much as the market will bear. Never be embarrassed by that.
But I'm also not condemning people who charge low. They shouldn't be embarrassed, ether. (Full disclosure: that's me, at least right now).
I know that sounds wishy-washy, but there are certain general principles I would adhere to:
First, don't let your worth be defined by how much money you make. I think the real problem is not so much that we're afraid to value our own work but that we immediately think money when we think value.
I was a teacher for thirty-six years. Did I make what I was worth during that time? Of course not! Would I have liked to make more? Absolutely! But I didn't for one minute think that my value was how high my salary was. My value lay in what I did for my students. The worth of a lot of jobs is best measured by what the people in them contribute, not what the people in them are paid.
Yeah, I know, I sound like a hippie. (I wasn't one, even when that was a thing.) Separating our value from what we make is important--but feelings of positive self-worth don't, by themselves, pay the rent.
Hence, second, people need to try to price in ways that reflect their goals. Want to quit your day job? Experiment with pricing strategies to find which one fills your coffers fastest. (Sometimes, a lower unit price is justified by higher volume, sometimes not.) The same strategy works for people who are looking for ways to supplement their income. On the other hand, if you're just on a journey to see what happens, and your primary goal, at least for now, is to find an audience, then pricing is not as urgent a consideration.
I've said this often, but there are a large number of greater writers here. It's a rare day when I don't read at least one pieces that makes me say, "Wow!" That's the virtue of Substack for readers, but it's also a challenge for writers--and yet another reason not to let your self-worth rely on how many people are willing to pay you, and how much they're willing to pay. I've also said this often, but if I were a billionaire, I'd be paying hundreds of thousands a year in Substack subscriptions to support all the fine writers here. I don't of hundreds of thousands, though. Neither do most of us. The increasing economic turmoil, including high inflation, only increases the difficulties. If someone doesn't pay for your work, it's not necessarily a comment on its quality. It's more more likely to be a comment on the budget constraints of potential readers.
So just remember--strive for your goals, unapologetically make what you can, but never let your sense of self worth rest on how much you make.
I had my hand held up throughout. I'd love for you to write with similar riled-up passion about middleman book discount outfits like Bookbub. They seem to create reader value whilst destroying a writer's worth.
As a typical example, they will offer a popular novel for $1.50-2.00, even when the AMZ price is $7-9. Many books are offered for free, with the author or publisher paying to be featured.
"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."
I wouldn't be surprised if his deals are 7 figures. (I wonder if he does make royalties. In trad pub, it's an open secret that some big name authors are given huge advances that never earn out so the author actually never earn royalties. I kinda wonder if that's by design, like someone crunched numbers and found it'd save the publisher money in the long run. I dunno. Wouldn't surprise me though with some of the stories I've heard about trad publishing.)
I've been wondering lately if we authors shot ourselves in the foot with the Kindle revolution back in 2012 (or whenever it came out) by pricing so many ebooks at 99 cents and having the 99cent millionaires. We trained ourselves AND readers to expect dirt cheap books.
Good thoughts and very encouraging! A lot of what you say is spot on.
But I would say that if we're benchmarking this against anything, it's trad pub, right? And for that $35 hardcover, a lot of the cost is wrapped up in the materials and the marketing. The author gets what? $2 per sale? I think a trad author would be ecstatic then to make $10 over the lifetime of their average reader (five books sold per reader would be great!). So I don't feel bad about $30/yr at all. That's a way better ROI than your average author (even when you factor in all the expenses and extra work a self-published author has to handle).
But either way, I'll experiment with the elasticity between price and sign-ups. If I have an offering with very few variable costs (love digital products!), what matters isn't price per sale. It's the overall profit. $2 for a 1,000 people is way better than $100 for 2 people, etc. That's the market reality of it that we all have to consider if profit is our main goal. To be fair, profit isn't my main goal, but it is a motivating factor. Writers gotta eat, right?
Based on what you've written, I'd be really curious to know how your perspective on this interacts with my two thoughts here.
My only point to make there is that $2/person at 1,000 people would be amazing, but you need the 1,000 people first. When I consider what I’m most likely to get: 2 people willing to pay $120/yr or 1,000 people willing to pay $24/year (factoring $2/month) I’m easily going to get 2 people but might take my lifetime to get 1,000 people who are all willing to pay even $1! When I do that math and follow those odds, it’s simply not worth it, to me, to devalue my work in the hopes that doing so will grow my paid subscriber pool. I’m betting on the opposite, that valuing my work will grow my paid subscriber base and so far it has. Sure, I don’t have 1,000 paid subscribers but I don’t need that many. At the end of the day the dollar amount does matter to me insofar as it pertains to my self worth and less what I feel someone else might be willing to spend. If that makes sense.
Well said. And there is something to be said in online sales for the idea that once someone has pulled their credit card out, it's much easier to get them to give more than it was before the credit card was pulled out. So I do agree that it should be easy with most conversions to get more than $2.
Spot on. It's not a walk in the park to try to take the mind of the reader and bring colour and experience to it. It just isn't. Thank you for this great insight.
Oh this sang to me. Everywhere I look, people are trying to either explain their pricing or justify lowering it. I'm like, it's your work, not a pack of 9 toilet rolls.
I had previously wanted to make the same argument with people always comparing their paid subscription price to “less than a cup of coffee” as if I’m worth something that is forgotten almost immediately after purchase and consumption. But I wasn’t sure that would resonate as much. The cup of coffee approach being the most relatable thing that anyone can understand. I just wish we could say something else, like “better than one ticket admission to your favorite movie!” Or something like that.
Again, and as usual, spot on, Erica. I took my paywall down while we went away for a vay-kay, and I’m putting it back up when I get back home in a couple of days. I’ve only got 20 paid readers, but the quality of what I have to offer them hasn’t diminished. I took the iPad and edited what I could of my serial, not only to reassure myself, and reacquaint myself with the story, but to remind myself that it is worth paying for. High adventure during the days of King Arthur? Sex and violence? Political intrigue? Tell me that’s not worth paying $30/year? If they don’t want to pay, that’s not on me. That’s on them. I’m giving my novellas away for free, and those are worth more than what I’m asking. I’ve worked and written my entire life, and now that I want people to pay me….I should what, feel bad about it? I don’t fuckin’ think so. They don’t have to pay if they don’t want, but I’m not about to feel guilty asking them to pay me what I think I’m worth.
You’re so right. What we’re giving readers is much more than a collection of pages - it’s an experience, a chance to live in a different world for a while, to feel something new and wonderful. It’s worth giving all we’ve got to create that experience.
You make an excellent point about not undervaluing our work. There's an enormous amount of good writing and even a lot of great writing on this platform.
That said, at the risk of being presumptuous, I'm going to play the role of heretic for just a moment.
I'm a relative newcomer to Substack, having only been here since March. But I'm not a newcomer to publishing, having published my first book in 2012. (And finishing writing a book, still unpublished, 1981--went the trad route on that one, with zero success.)
I've interacted a lot with other authors from 2012 on, and the conversation about pricing is, as you know, not new. The same issues have been debated for more than a decade. Why has pricing been controversial for so long?
Short answer-- because there are a lot of variables involved in pricing, and one size does not fit all.
I know people who charge what they believe their writing is worth and others who charge lower in an effort to grow their user base. Each group has people who succeeded and people who failed (speaking in objective terms about earnings, not about creative quality).
I went through a period when I tried increasing my book prices. Let's just say that didn't go well, and leave it at that.
To be clear, I'm not saying people shouldn't charge or should charge low. There are many great writers here. Charge as much as the market will bear. Never be embarrassed by that.
But I'm also not condemning people who charge low. They shouldn't be embarrassed, ether. (Full disclosure: that's me, at least right now).
I know that sounds wishy-washy, but there are certain general principles I would adhere to:
First, don't let your worth be defined by how much money you make. I think the real problem is not so much that we're afraid to value our own work but that we immediately think money when we think value.
I was a teacher for thirty-six years. Did I make what I was worth during that time? Of course not! Would I have liked to make more? Absolutely! But I didn't for one minute think that my value was how high my salary was. My value lay in what I did for my students. The worth of a lot of jobs is best measured by what the people in them contribute, not what the people in them are paid.
Yeah, I know, I sound like a hippie. (I wasn't one, even when that was a thing.) Separating our value from what we make is important--but feelings of positive self-worth don't, by themselves, pay the rent.
Hence, second, people need to try to price in ways that reflect their goals. Want to quit your day job? Experiment with pricing strategies to find which one fills your coffers fastest. (Sometimes, a lower unit price is justified by higher volume, sometimes not.) The same strategy works for people who are looking for ways to supplement their income. On the other hand, if you're just on a journey to see what happens, and your primary goal, at least for now, is to find an audience, then pricing is not as urgent a consideration.
I've said this often, but there are a large number of greater writers here. It's a rare day when I don't read at least one pieces that makes me say, "Wow!" That's the virtue of Substack for readers, but it's also a challenge for writers--and yet another reason not to let your self-worth rely on how many people are willing to pay you, and how much they're willing to pay. I've also said this often, but if I were a billionaire, I'd be paying hundreds of thousands a year in Substack subscriptions to support all the fine writers here. I don't of hundreds of thousands, though. Neither do most of us. The increasing economic turmoil, including high inflation, only increases the difficulties. If someone doesn't pay for your work, it's not necessarily a comment on its quality. It's more more likely to be a comment on the budget constraints of potential readers.
So just remember--strive for your goals, unapologetically make what you can, but never let your sense of self worth rest on how much you make.
I had my hand held up throughout. I'd love for you to write with similar riled-up passion about middleman book discount outfits like Bookbub. They seem to create reader value whilst destroying a writer's worth.
I’m familiar with bookbub though I’ve never done much research into them. I will take a look!
As a typical example, they will offer a popular novel for $1.50-2.00, even when the AMZ price is $7-9. Many books are offered for free, with the author or publisher paying to be featured.
YES!
"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."
I wouldn't be surprised if his deals are 7 figures. (I wonder if he does make royalties. In trad pub, it's an open secret that some big name authors are given huge advances that never earn out so the author actually never earn royalties. I kinda wonder if that's by design, like someone crunched numbers and found it'd save the publisher money in the long run. I dunno. Wouldn't surprise me though with some of the stories I've heard about trad publishing.)
I've been wondering lately if we authors shot ourselves in the foot with the Kindle revolution back in 2012 (or whenever it came out) by pricing so many ebooks at 99 cents and having the 99cent millionaires. We trained ourselves AND readers to expect dirt cheap books.
Good thoughts and very encouraging! A lot of what you say is spot on.
But I would say that if we're benchmarking this against anything, it's trad pub, right? And for that $35 hardcover, a lot of the cost is wrapped up in the materials and the marketing. The author gets what? $2 per sale? I think a trad author would be ecstatic then to make $10 over the lifetime of their average reader (five books sold per reader would be great!). So I don't feel bad about $30/yr at all. That's a way better ROI than your average author (even when you factor in all the expenses and extra work a self-published author has to handle).
But either way, I'll experiment with the elasticity between price and sign-ups. If I have an offering with very few variable costs (love digital products!), what matters isn't price per sale. It's the overall profit. $2 for a 1,000 people is way better than $100 for 2 people, etc. That's the market reality of it that we all have to consider if profit is our main goal. To be fair, profit isn't my main goal, but it is a motivating factor. Writers gotta eat, right?
Based on what you've written, I'd be really curious to know how your perspective on this interacts with my two thoughts here.
My only point to make there is that $2/person at 1,000 people would be amazing, but you need the 1,000 people first. When I consider what I’m most likely to get: 2 people willing to pay $120/yr or 1,000 people willing to pay $24/year (factoring $2/month) I’m easily going to get 2 people but might take my lifetime to get 1,000 people who are all willing to pay even $1! When I do that math and follow those odds, it’s simply not worth it, to me, to devalue my work in the hopes that doing so will grow my paid subscriber pool. I’m betting on the opposite, that valuing my work will grow my paid subscriber base and so far it has. Sure, I don’t have 1,000 paid subscribers but I don’t need that many. At the end of the day the dollar amount does matter to me insofar as it pertains to my self worth and less what I feel someone else might be willing to spend. If that makes sense.
Well said. And there is something to be said in online sales for the idea that once someone has pulled their credit card out, it's much easier to get them to give more than it was before the credit card was pulled out. So I do agree that it should be easy with most conversions to get more than $2.
Spot on. It's not a walk in the park to try to take the mind of the reader and bring colour and experience to it. It just isn't. Thank you for this great insight.
Oh this sang to me. Everywhere I look, people are trying to either explain their pricing or justify lowering it. I'm like, it's your work, not a pack of 9 toilet rolls.
And even those rolls cost 5$ a month...
I had previously wanted to make the same argument with people always comparing their paid subscription price to “less than a cup of coffee” as if I’m worth something that is forgotten almost immediately after purchase and consumption. But I wasn’t sure that would resonate as much. The cup of coffee approach being the most relatable thing that anyone can understand. I just wish we could say something else, like “better than one ticket admission to your favorite movie!” Or something like that.
Again, and as usual, spot on, Erica. I took my paywall down while we went away for a vay-kay, and I’m putting it back up when I get back home in a couple of days. I’ve only got 20 paid readers, but the quality of what I have to offer them hasn’t diminished. I took the iPad and edited what I could of my serial, not only to reassure myself, and reacquaint myself with the story, but to remind myself that it is worth paying for. High adventure during the days of King Arthur? Sex and violence? Political intrigue? Tell me that’s not worth paying $30/year? If they don’t want to pay, that’s not on me. That’s on them. I’m giving my novellas away for free, and those are worth more than what I’m asking. I’ve worked and written my entire life, and now that I want people to pay me….I should what, feel bad about it? I don’t fuckin’ think so. They don’t have to pay if they don’t want, but I’m not about to feel guilty asking them to pay me what I think I’m worth.