When I think about whether to self-publish my work
on Amazon or look for other publishing routes, I often come back to a simple
truth: writing a book is an enormous investment of time, focus, and heart - but
once it’s written, sharing it costs almost nothing. In economics terms,
book-writing has a large fixed cost and low marginal cost. A print-on-demand
can be acquired with the touch of a few buttons, and a Kindle file can reach
readers anywhere in seconds. Given that the price will have to be at least average
cost, potential customers who value it at less than that but more than marginal
cost won’t end up buying it - and this is even more problematic with my epic
works, which contain so many words that to break even with self-publishing (say, on The Genius of
the Invisible God, which is currently a whopping 275,000 words) I’d have to
charge £30-£40 per book - which, even though it would be obviously worth it
once you open it and discover how scintillating every page is 😊- at that price, it is a hard proposition to sell.
And then we should consider deadweight losses, which are the loss of total economic efficiency that occurs when the equilibrium outcome (where supply meets demand) is prevented (usually through some tax, regulation or unnecessarily imposed cost - and in this case potentially caused by pricing constraints and cost structure). Because every potential reader is likely to have to pay the same price for a book, that price has to cover both the creation and distribution costs, meaning some readers who would have paid more than it costs to deliver the book but less than the average cost are left out. And as a result, the book might never get published. Obviously, when pricing can adjust to different consumers’ willingness to pay, as per price discrimination, creators can reach more people while still covering their total costs - but it’s probably not easy in self-publishing.
