When I was a kid, a paperback book cost about £10.
Now? You can buy a No. 1 bestseller for £4.50.
What changed?
https://video.nostr.build/08e471760da05aa42d66f500f74a3eb2594c6c14693a25ce3252dc2ea6c3b875.mp4
You’d expect the price of a book to increase.
£10 in 1993 is equivalent to £21.20 today
(even using the Bank of England’s laughably low inflation calculator).
Books are not cheaper to write. Quite the opposite.
Bigger teams are required to ensure a high-quality product.
Authors need computers, digital tools and subscriptions.
Paper and distribution costs are higher.
So why are holiday paperbacks so cheap?
The publishing industry ate itself.
Amazon ran bookshops off the highstreet.
Publishers could only turn a profit through mergers and acquisitions.
They bought up indie publishers and fired the staff.
Now, the Big Five publishers squeeze every drop of value from authors.
Most new novelists receive no advance and around 7.5% royalties
(34 pence per book before agent’s fees, taxes and other costs)
The Big Five (just like the big Hollywood studios) focus on a few major releases.
These books receive almost all of the marketing budget.
Publishers beg retailers to buy copies at costs so cheap they are making virtually 0 profit.
Prominent display in Tesco or Sainsbury’s means the book might become a best-seller.
(Yes, supermarkets are the biggest physical retailers of books in the UK).
Even the 0.01% of superstar authors are making a pittance on each book sold because of a broken system.
Not to mention that most writers face years of rejections before even signing a deal.
If you are a film-maker, an artist, or a musician, you’ll recognise this broken model.
Creative people have been corralled into the walled gardens of big tech (even worse than the Big Five publishers).
I used to dream of seeing my book in a bookstore with the Penguin logo on the cover.
Now, that thought disgusts me.
There are still some indie presses fighting the good fight, but they won’t last.
If you write, the value you offer is linked directly to the audience you build, not just the content you create.
I’m not saying this to tell you where to buy books or whom to support.
Just trying to explain the book industry and my place in it.
I’ve self-published books and had wonderful support from three indie publishers.
Writing careers are never linear.
Who knows what the future holds for my words?
With that said, I won’t be begging agents to read my manuscript.
I’m not aiming to be on the shelf in Tesco for £4.50.
I’ll focus on building an audience and delivering value to them.
And I'll be doing it here on nostr.
