by Jay Hartman
Q: Amazon announced they were raising printing charges. What does it mean for paperbacks I release through KDP?
A: It’s time to revisit your pricing.
It’s surprising Amazon hasn’t had to raise their printing costs before now, what with the cost of paper pulp going through the roof since COVID first reared its ugly head. Amazon was able to resist price increases for a long time, or at least absorb them internally, but they’re not willing to shoulder that responsibility any longer.
One thing you’ll need to determine is which is more important: making royalties from your paperbacks or selling a lot of copies to increase your visibility. With the increase of production costs for paperbacks, you won’t be able to have both. If you raise the cover price to cover the printing costs to net you a certain royalty, it’ll undoubtedly reduce the number of copies you sell. If you keep your cover prices closer to what they are now, you’ll sell more copies, but you’ll make far less money.
There is a third option that is a bit more daring, and one I’d highly recommend to everyone. Raise the price at Amazon for the KDP edition. Then, order author copies at your printing cost plus shipping and sell them through your own website for 25% off cover. You’ll have a ton of margin, you’ll undercut Amazon’s everyday price, and you’ll come out ahead on royalties. Driving traffic to your own site for sales is a big win across the board on a number of levels. You’ll know exactly who your readers are, you’ll be able to market directly to the folks who care about you and your books, and you’ll keep a lot more money in your pocket.
Q: Is it true ebook sales are on the decline?
A: Well, yes and no.
Ebook sales in the United States are down. As of February 2023, ebook sales were off 4.8% from February 2022. It may not seem like a lot, but it’s a significant number.
So, why the decline? There are a few factors at play here.
One major reason was the change by both Amazon, and Barnes and Noble, where you could no longer purchase titles through their respective apps to avoid them paying Google and Apple a percentage of the sale for allowing the purchase on the platform. This added steps for people to purchase ebooks and made things unnecessarily more complicated. Many readers decided not to bother.
Another change is the demographic reading ebooks. In the early days of the ebook industry, the format was widely adopted by the 50+ crowd, due to the ability to resize fonts for aging eyesight. That audience has changed over the years, so the main consumer of ebooks is now the 18-29 age bracket.
There’s only one problem with this. This younger age group is discovering the old adage “everything that’s old is new again.” Media such as LPs, CDs, and cassette tapes are making a resurgence in the marketplace in a big way. As a result, this age group is beginning to eschew the technology of reading electronically and going back to the familiar paperbacks and hardcovers of yesteryear.
Outside the United States, ebook consumption is more or less stable, but the U.S. does make up some of the largest dollars earned for sales of ebooks. If the trend continues, it’ll be even more critical for authors to be as diverse as possible in the ways they offer their titles.
Looking to get The Publisher Perspective? Send your questions to jhartman@thejayhartmanagency.com with TPP in your subject line. If your question is used, we’ll send you a free ebook from Untreed Reads.
Jay A. Hartman, founder of Untreed Reads Publishing, promotes ebooks with an emphasis on independent authors and publishers. He’s written about the ebook industry for fifteen years and previously served as content editor for KnowBetter.com, one of the internet’s oldest sites reporting on ebooks and epublishing.
