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I have two contemporary romance books (a four part series) available for sale currently.

Book sizes are 5x8. Both are around 300 pages. The cost to print these books for amazon.com is $7.34.

I currently have them for sale at $7.99 leaving me to make only .39 per book.

I don't get a lot of paperback sales since I'm an indie author. Most of my sales are digital.

I've had four sales in the last day and I've made a whopping $1.70.

I've spend a lot of time & effort into making my covers, writing my books. etc... But, these books will be out there floating around forever.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

How much are the books of a similar length for your genre?

They range from $4 up to $12...


Michael wrote: "How much are the books of a similar length for your genre?"

I wouldn't go higher than $10.00.

With a cost that high, I'd probably price at $8.99 or even $9.99. But, I do like to keep the prices low. Mine really short books cost about $2.50 so I price those at $5
The novellas cost about $4-5 and I've priced those at $7

I don't get many paperback sales but I figure if someone either likes the book so much that they want a paperback of it...or they prefer to not buy an ereader and always buy paper...then they will be comfortable paying up to $10 for a book.

More than that is ridiculous. When I see paperbacks for $14 or 16...I almost don't want to patronize that author all together. Like they are just being greedy (please don't send hate mail based on that comment...I'm just being honest. ;-P )

I'd look at the price of comparably-lengthed books of the same size (sounds like you've got a "trade paperback"). Trade paperbacks are more expensive than mass-market. A lot of traditionally published authors sell their trade-paperbacks at around $12-$17 a book.

Aria - I appreciate your honesty, but no offense, the minimum CS will allow me to set my price and still be eligible for every avenue of distribution available is $14.83. Sometimes it's not greed, sometimes you don't have a choice if you want to reach the maximum audience... I make a whopping $3 on each of my paperback sales through amazon (and an incredible 6 cents on those expanded distribution channels)... Through LSI, my book is priced at $17... which seems ridiculously high even to me... but I only make $1 off of every sale.

I'm not complaining, mind. My livelihood doesn't hinge on my writing career... but there is a disconnect in the publishing word from the way any other industry works. Not only do I, as an indie author, do all the work and assume all the risk, but I also get paid the least. As an agent at Lightning Source said to us when we were setting up my title through them, "Welcome to the world of publishing."

I'm not trying to convince you to buy books over $10... I'm just asking that you re-evaluate your opinion of your fellow authors and appreciate just a tiny bit what we're all up against (especially those who write longer novels, as often the price is linked to the page count).

I know what you both mean. I personally will stay away from "Published" Author books if they are too high. Knowing that the publisher makes the most money off those sales. If I like an Indie Authored book, I have no problem supporting them up to $10 depending on the size and make of the book. Hard covers are obviously more.

But, my books are your standard sized romance novels and as an Indie author, the price ranges are all over the place. Published books my size can go for as little as $4 and as high as $14...

I value everyone's input here and think I will do some playing around with my price so I don't feel cheated with only making cents for the paperbacks.

Thanks everyone!

Jenelle wrote: "I'd look at the price of comparably-lengthed books of the same size (sounds like you've got a "trade paperback"). Trade paperbacks are more expensive than mass-market. A lot of traditionally publis..."

I've mainly made my novel available as a paperback for those (currently very few) people who expressed interest and did not have an e-reader. It's priced at $12.99 and I make exactly £0.45 per book out of that, so I really couldn't have made it any cheaper without picking a weird price like $12.43 or something. As it stands, in the UK (where I live) the book is £8.56.

Is it expensive compared to similar size novels of established publishers? Absolutely, but that's what you get with print on demand, unfortunately...

Interesting. I had no idea that with expanded distribution, you are required to price higher. Do you get a lot of sales from those expanded markets?

Obviously, I haven't tried it so I didn't realize it was an issue but yes, that does make me feel better about those high prices that I didn't previously understand.

I wonder what my prices would be if I went that route. $25 seems 'cheap' to do the expanded disti. but I wonder if the "cost" is much higher in the long run?

Thanks for the info. ;-)

The pricing of a paperback copy of a book generated on Createspace is not always a matter of greed. If you write 'big historical' novels as I do, you have to price the paperback at the extreme high end of the market. But I do offer them, mostly for people who had read the ebook and want the printed version. And the ebook outsells the paperback 120/1. I would lower my print book's price if I could, but even if I reduced its price to make it virtually free, I could not get it low enough to market at $10.00. The solution for me to hit a reasonable price is to shorten my novels. My shortest The Midwife's Secret is 368 pages and sells a few books at $11.99 to get me any royalty over a dollar. My debut novel markets for $18.99 and on that, I make a royalty of way less than the royalty I earn on my $2.99 ebook versions.
Many debut novels are being offered for as high as $9.99 in Kindle versions, and I think pricing an ebook that high is a huge mistake. I like the $2.99 figure because it attracts readers and is the bottom threshold price on KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) to allow for the nice 70% royalty. But if it offends a writer to price a great novel at less than what Starbucks charges for a latte, then go higher. As for the expanded distribution, I have yet to write a novel that warrants the higher price I would have to charge to use that distribution scheme. It is not the $25. If you use the calculating royalties function on Createspace, you will see that expanded distribution may up the price of your book to place it way out of the market.

Aria wrote: "Interesting. I had no idea that with expanded distribution, you are required to price higher. Do you get a lot of sales from those expanded markets?

Obviously, I haven't tried it so I didn't real..."

No problem. :)

I don't make a ton of sales through expanded distribution... so I may change that in the future, but I do like that it is available to libraries and other bookstores through the expanded channels.

If you are close enough to completion to know your page count in whatever word processor you use and have not already done so, be sure to use the royalty calculator to see what expanded distribution would do to your pricing. If the book is substantially less than 300 pages it might not make that much difference. I agree that it is nice to have it available to the expanded sources. A $25 outlay is not that hard to recover if you are not required to jack your price.

Createspace has actually never charged me to opt-into the expanded channels...

Oh, and I checked, outside of expanded distribution they won't let me go below $10 anyway... such is the curse of writing longer stories :)

I would love to do a book the standard romance size of 4.25" X 6.875" (around 300 pages) without it costing (Before I get anything) $10.25 from Lulu. CreativeSpace doesn't even do this size. The smallest they have is 5x8. Anyone have any ideas where else I can go for cheaper?

Why do you want it that size? Why not just use the smallest createspace size? I print at 5.25x8. My friend who does the same size has 300-400 page books and her cost is about $7 so I'd suggest giving it a try. It's free to try. ;-)

Jill, one of the anthologies I did for clients is 342 pages and the cost on createspace is $4.95. If you need help formatting your book for createspace, I'd be happy to help for free. I'm curious to see what the difference would be from Lulu. Lemme know. [email protected]

Well a lot of people price in terms of the market, testing the market... I try to find the truth, what is the fair price, in terms of content and what merit in value the readers engage in, by your book. :) x

Jenelle wrote: "Createspace has actually never charged me to opt-into the expanded channels..."


Whether you are chared $25 as specified on the CS site or not may depend on when you sined on to the Expanded Distribution Program which was free when first offered as I recall.

Linda wrote: "Whether you are chared $25 as specified on the CS site or not may depend on when you sined on to th..."

Ah, that makes sense!

I have one novel published on CreateSpace. It's 4X6 with 326 pages. I sell it for $9.99 and I make about $1.23 per copy.

The eBook is obviously cheaper, but I wanted to offer a paperback version for those who prefer a tangible book. It's printed with a 12 point font, so it's pretty legible without being a Large Print version. I could have gone for a smaller size with a smaller font, but I thought this was a good size. My goal for pricing was to keep it under $10.

I recently purchased a book by a well known author. Her book was smaller, 270 pages, and cost $15. Books just cost more now. I still get sticker shock when I go to a bookstore and see the prices of paperbacks. $15 - $25 for a paperback sci-fi novel? Are you kidding?

I think my book is starting to look like a good deal...

So how much an author makes on each book sale is determined by the price setting, page count and size of the book?

If you're interested, go to this page.

Scroll down and you can experiment with different trim sizes, page numbers, and retail prices to see how much you would earn for that particular combination.

When talking about expanded distribution channels costing more, does that mean in addition to the $25 that the price per book is higher as well? Or that you have to factor in the $25 when calculating royalties?

Please keep in mind there are 2 kinds of paperback. The standard 4.25" x 7ish" are now known as "mass market paperbacks." These are printed in great quantity and although the quality has increased (there was a time when you'd be lucky to read one all the way through before it fell apart) they are meant to be cheap. These are the print books published by the big 6 for their listed authors whose books have already seen the light of day in hard cover. A few years ago they cost around $12. - $15. but as I understand it, paperback sales have plummetted while ebook sales have soared, so the standard price of these have dropped back below $10. For big 6 publishers, these are probably considered loss leader.

The paperbacks Create Space prints on demand are a whole different kettle of fish. Trade Paperbacks are of much higher quality than Mass Market paperbacks. The paper, ink, glue and cover stock is much better quality on these print on demand books that make self publishing doable.

A trade paperback wears nearly as good as a hard cover, so the pricing is not unreasonable. I've just reformatted the line spacing so what would have been a pricey 664 pages is now a manageable 500 pages, so I won't have to charge so much. Some people still only buy paper books for quite some time, so authors who want the widest possible distribution should make thier books available on paper as a customer service, even if it is expensive.

For myself, am not sure I'll opt for expanded distribution, since Create Space would penalize me since I use my own ISBNs they won't distribute my work to libraries.

Both my books went through Lulu's expanded distribution route in trade paperback version in the hope that libraries and so on might order in. Likewise assigning an ISBN in the UK this is an additional cost to publication. For my first book I produced hardback, paperback, kindle and epub versions 4 ISBNs for my second I have Kindle and paperback. My Lulu costs increased significantly to get wider distribution and this has resulted in zero new sales. As an indie author I was going to stick to just Kindle for my second book, but my own ego wanted to see my efforts in paperback. I would have used CS if they hadn't wanted US tax forms filling in which Lulu and KDP do not. My share of the sale price is almost nothing for a $15 paperback approx 20c. My share of my 99c Kindle is 35% I am interested in whether my sales would be impacted by setting a more realistic price of $2.99 or similar. Does anyone have any experience of increasing their price?

Depending on where you go or who you ask the price question can be answered in many ways.

I've read that a price of a book should be determined by how many pages it is, the length, the genre, but it really depends on what the author feels is reasonable.