Why are Indie Books so expensive?

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Why are all of the indie self published authors that are selling their books on. Hi, friend. Self published author here, Alison Spooner, author of the Lost Girl: A Neverland Story. And I would love to try to answer this. I know you’re asking from a genuine place, so I want to answer from a genuine place.

Indie authors pay for everything. So when someone has a book published traditionally, like through a publisher, the publisher covers a lot of expenses. They cover the price of the COVID editing, formatting, they do all of that for you. They cover every cost. They buy the books.

When you have a print book, you have to actually buy the book. Any other costs that you can think of associated with the book, most likely the publisher is going to be doing that for a traditionally published author. So when you see an indie author’s book on Amazon or Ingram, or here on the TikTok shop, or when you’re buying it directly from them, it might cost a little bit more, because that author has put in so much more money to producing, shipping, and getting that book out there. Shipping is also another thing if you see a book. So my book is actually priced a little higher on my website than it is on Amazon.

Because when you buy it directly from me, I will sign it, but that means I have to pay for shipping, and Amazon covers that. So me personally, I think my book is probably pretty fair market value. My book is $14.99 on Amazon. When you buy it from my site, it’s a dollar more. But we need to make a profit, right?

We don’t get, oh my gosh, I can’t think of the words. We don’t get any payment up front in advance from a publisher to cover the cost or anything like that. Most likely, we’re taking time away from our day jobs, or we’re taking time after our day jobs, or taking time away from our families, our friends to publish this. And I know, I know, I know that traditional people who are traditionally published do that as well. So I’m not taking away their effort or their work or anything.

But. So that is hopefully a quick, succinct answer to why are indie books more expensive? Because indie authors pay for everything, whereas those who are traditionally published get a lot of their costs covered by the publisher. So please, please, please keep in mind that when you buy an indie book, that money goes to the author. It’s not going through a chain of people, it’s going back to the author so that they can continue to pay to put more bucks, more books out.

So thank you for asking this question, because I think it’s important for people to know.

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