You know the cost of a book – do you know its value?

With the self-publishing of my cancer memoir to Amazon came the conversation of price. How much should I charge? What would be a reasonable cost? Is there a standard charge for paperbacks and eBooks? Do self-published nobodies like me charge less than well-established, highbrow authors?

These are especially difficult questions to answer in the face of a perhaps growing opinion that books are too expensive. 

That’s an opinion that really does bother me. Perhaps the number of people holding it is growing thanks to this YouTube generation of ours (and I’m not identifying only the young as this generation. We are all being influenced and moulded by on-tap information, instant data…), which seems to have forgotten the concept of labour.

Because it is a labour, writing a book. It took me a year to write Making Pearls From Grit, and, if I’m going to be facetious, a year to research. (Well, ten months, from initial cancer diagnosis to end of treatment.)

I’d like to be paid for that labour. I’d like to be paid for my experience and my story, and how I have shared it. And I’m self-published! What about a traditionally published book that requires the input of agents and editors, designers and publishers?

Chocolat author Joanne Harris has said on Twitter: “On average, a paperback represents: several years’ work by the author, plus: editors, copy editors, designers, cover artists, printers, booksellers, publicists, reps. Thousands of hours’ work (and at least four hours’ entertainment for the reader) for the price of a takeaway pizza.”

That last point is a complex one that need a bit of unpicking. It seems odd to me that the same person who criticises the cost of a book will also happily spend upwards of ￡4 on a chocolocofrapucappucino, a drink I’m sure can be sacrificed for the long-term joy of a novel.

But, I am also uncomfortable with that concept of “sacrifice”, especially if it has to be made by those who have less money to spend. Books shouldn't be an elitist purchase. They should be accessible to all. 

Which is obviously why vendors such as Amazon are championed for their discounts.

BUT. 

Don't the discounts devalue books? Devalue authors and the work they do? Make them seem unimportant?

Here’s Harris again: “The knock-on effect of heavy discounting is: a) the writer earns less overall; and b) the public gets used to books being cheap, thereby making it harder and harder to sell them at a normal price.” 

And why should books be sold at normal price? Because the author deserves to earn a wage by writing.

Marketer Steve Prior said on Twitter: “I went to my first writers’ conference a month back. And when I was told that an author gets 61p from a ￡7.99 paperback, I thought I misheard. I didn’t. And having slaved over 100,000 words, that’s a disgrace. But that’s capitalism. Everything becomes worth nothing to everyone.”

Typically, a traditionally published author will receive 7% of the sale price, and if a book is heavily discounted, the author’s royalties will be literally pennies. Not only that – and this is something that, as a self-published author, I hadn't realised – authors do not receive any royalties at all until the initial advance given them by the publisher has been clawed back in full, and a heavily discounted book means that will never happen.

I follow several independent bookshops on Twitter, and it’s frightening the number of times they report that a customer has looked at the price of a book they wanted, then told the bookseller, “I’ll just go and get that cheaper on Amazon.” Such a statement is, to be honest, hugely insulting. The only people benefiting from this are the Amazon bosses. The author won't be paid; the bookseller won’t make any money; and the customer, while thinking they have got themselves a bargain, will unwittingly be driving the final nails into creativity’s coffin.

As Prior also pointed out: “[Amazon] benefit from practices which aren’t available to independent bookshops with bricks and mortar. But most consumers don’t get it. So they don’t understand why a book is more in a bookshop. And it’s simply because it costs more to sell, that’s all.”

(Which does beg the question, why on earth have I charged ￡8.99 for a book that does not have to finance bricks, mortar or several people’s careers? Ah yes – because it took me two years to produce, and I have no idea how many will sell, and I don't know when I’ll get the next book out, and my pension is looking… bare.)

How do we solve this problem? How do we make sure that books aren’t so discounted that the author earns nothing, yet they’re affordable enough for everyone to be able to buy them? 

Bring back the net book agreement, said Harris. Which is something, I’m sorry to say, I didn’t even know had existed. (This is because I am commercially inept.) Fortunately, this 2010 Guardian article explains it. 

The net book agreement (NBA) was established in 1899, and allowed publishers to set the price of books. This meant nobody could sell at a discount and undercut the opposition, which seemed to work for everyone, especially the authors.Then, in 1997 the head of the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) had the agreement declared illegal at the restrictive practices court.

“Since then, the demise of the net book agreement has been regarded as a fait accompli. Who would want to argue with our justice system, after all? Even if the man who led the case for the OFT was Sir Bryan Carsberg – who won the ‘Sir’ in 1989, largely for services to Thatcher’s privatisation policies. Even if the judge at the case was Sir Francis Ferris, who had previously been the leading counsel for, erm, the OFT,” said The Guardian’s Sam Jordison.

And since the NBA disappeared, so have 500 independent bookshops. “The real story of the industry is the slashing of lists, mergers, collapses, buy-outs, sackings and losses on a scale never before witnessed,” said Jordison. The irony, of course, is that the NBA was seen as a “price-fixing cartel”, and now we’re left with Amazon, which so undermines pricing as to utterly devalue and destroy the industry of producing and selling books.

The really sad thing is that Amazon, while undercutting and sabotaging publishers and booksellers, makes publishing books so much easier for authors like me. It’s a cut-throat world out there, with so much competition, and agents and publishers saving their marketing budgets for the big gun, sure-fire bestselling writers. Amazon provides an incredibly easily navigated and affordable way for self-publishing authors to get their work out there. Which makes this article one long exercise in biting the hand that feeds me…

So. How do we persuade readers that paying a reasonable price for a book – and understanding just how much work has gone into it – is no different from paying a lawyer, a surgeon, an accountant, etc etc for their time and efforts? How do we encourage customers to value art and creativity just as much as they do science and practical thinking?

Ah. I’m afraid that leads me onto the subject of what subjects are being financed and taught in schools, and the dismissive effect of government policy on the arts… Which is an entirely different article.

Suffice to say, I am comfortable with and defensive of the price point of my book. I’ve donated a copy to my local library for those who would rather borrow, but, in this capitalist world, I have no intention of diminishing my efforts with a 99p price tag. And that is why I will never be a millionaire…