How Much Should a Book Cost?

If you’ve ever shopped online for a book, you know that the price of a book can greatly vary depending on genre, if it’s a new release or not, and format, other other things.

When I self-published my two books through Amazon, one of the harder choices I had to make was what price to list my books at. Currently, I have my ebook versions listed at under $5 and my paperbacks at about $11-12.

In general across the industry, ebooks will usually be the cheapest, followed by paperbacks and then hardbacks or special editions. This makes sense, as ebooks are usually the cheapest to create and paperbacks or hardbacks take more resources and time to make. Special editions cost more for the fact of being more rare.

When deciding how much to either pay or charge for a book, I think it’s important to consider several factors. Below are the things I consider the most when I buy a book:

Is the price listed for the format fair according to genre and competitors?
How much work was put into this format/edition? (Generally, I’m willing to pay more for books that are special editions, have added content, have photography or charts, etc.)
How much do I NEED to read this book now, at this price?

It’s worth shopping around for new releases to get the best deal, but if you’re an Amazon Prime member, sometimes paying a few dollars extra is worth getting the book on the day it releases. That said, I do judge books (and their authors/publishers!) off of their list price.

If a Kindle edition is way pricey, I’m going to ask why that is. This is typical for fresh, new releases but a Kindle priced beyond about $12 is going to raise my eyebrows. I understand paying more for a hard copy, but you don’t ever quite fully own an ebook, in my eyes, because you don’t have the ability to re-sell it. I believe publishers should take that into heavy consideration when pricing ebooks.

I also have seen a trend lately where TikTok famous books or authors start charging more for their paperbacks than competitors selling similar books. They are, of course, allowed to do that and they do it because they’re trying to make the most of their book’s popularity.

If you want to save money in those cases, I highly recommend waiting a month or so and see if the prices lower as their popularity eventually declines. You can also look into buying the book secondhand, as tons of people try to make money off popular books in the secondhand market after they’ve read them.

Do you think books are priced fairly these days? What have you done to save money online?