Today’s post is excerpted from the forthcoming book The Artisan Author: The Low-Stress, High-Quality, Fan-Focused Approach to Escaping the Publishing Rat Race by Johnny B. Truant. You can get your hands on an early copy through the Kickstarter campaign.
Here’s a choice for you. You can have one of two things: Something good, or something that’s crap. Which do you choose?
Quality always matters. Always. Even if you’re an author who practices rapid release (where quantity takes priority), quality is still a thing. The definition of “quality” might change from instance to instance, but it’s pretty much universally true that given a choice, people want something good more than they want something bad.
Authors can successfully put quality first, or flip the script so that better-than-average books are able to command better-than-average prices. Right now, though, your head might still be stuck in the old world. You might be thinking that taking the time to make better books would be awesome but pointless. In that old world, you can make the greatest books in the world … but good luck finding people willing to pay more for them.
I promise you, those people exist. You just have to stop thinking like a rapid release author before you can begin to see them. You have to stop using that same old pool of readers—the one that 95% of self-published authors try to attract—as your frame of reference. Because true: Those readers won’t pay more for quality beyond a certain point. If you keep fishing in the same old waters using the same old techniques and lures, you’re going to keep catching fish who have only a middle-of-the-road bar for their books.
(Apparently these are smart fish, with their varied reading tastes. I’m going to stick with the metaphor anyway because the idea of fish reading books is hilarious to me.)
Learning how to fish in higher-quality waters is an article for another day. For now let’s just accept one simple truth: that in the real world, with all other things being equal, quality stuff is better than crappy stuff.
Artisan authors know this. We don’t just focus on making quality books because we want to—though as artisans, we do want to. Nope, we do it because our new fish demand it. They won’t accept garbage or slop, and if they care about quantity or speed at all, those cares are a distant second to greatness.
These are very smart and discerning fish, you know. They have little fish glasses and everything.
Price what you’re worth with your head held high
It drives me crazy to see authors work their butts off to make great books, then get skittish about pricing those books as if they were actually valuable. So they price their books for cheap or free, or they put them in Kindle Unlimited so readers can borrow them—not because it’s a good strategy for them, but because they have imposter syndrome and can’t imagine anyone actually paying for what they made.
There’s so much fear in pricing. I get it, but if I can be real with you for a second, I’d like to kindly ask you to knock it the f— off.
You’re an artist. You’re braver than most people. You dug deep inside yourself, dredged up your innermost thoughts and emotions, and put them on display in story form for the whole world to see. Who does that? Don’t you think you should be paid well, if someone wants to read it?
Your pricing should be proud. It should say to the world, “If you want this, here’s what it’s worth and not a penny less. If you don’t want to pay, that’s cool … but you don’t get to read it if you don’t.”
I know. That’s scary. You’re worried that given such a hardline stance, everyone will choose the latter and nobody will ever buy. That’s why artists flinch. It’s why they cave and discount their books without a win-win marketing reason to do so. But how does that look to a reader?
I think this paperback is worth $25.
Not interested? Okay, the ebook version is only $5.99.
Still not interested? Well, what if it was $2.99?
99 cents?
Okay, okay … will you please please PRETTY PLEASE read it if I make it free?
It’s undignified. It’s also a stupid business strategy for artisans like us, because we don’t have rapid release volume, speed, and personalities to make long-term cheapness work for us. As artisan authors, pricing cheap or free by default is a great way to end up losing.
Listen: You made something worthwhile, and you deserve to be paid for it. No matter what you charge for your book, unless you’re delusional, it’s going to cost less than your reader’s cell phone bill. Hell, it’ll probably cost less than their second mocha Frappuccino for the day. If readers balk at prices, an artisan author stands up tall and says, “Well, then go read something else.” You have to be willing to say no—not to individuals, but to the market.
The dirty secret that nobody talks about is that the indignity most writers exude has a stink to it that artisan buyers want nothing to do with. The best buyers out there see your desperation and lack of a spine as repugnant. If you come across as desperate and willing to sell cheap to make a deal, you’re more likely to ruin an artisan sale than to close it.
One thing to internalize as you embark on the artisan author journey is that artisan readers are buying something different than non-artisan readers. Specifically, they’re not just buying something to read; they’re buying a connection to the author behind it—something that’s true whether they ever talk to you or not. They want to spend more on what they buy, because they want to prove to themselves that they support artists, believe in handmade items, and prefer individuals to big businesses. If you cheap out—if you act like they’re doing you a favor by reading your book and price like an apology—you rob your artisan reader of all of those things. Suddenly, they’re not buying something that feels like quality. Suddenly they’re not supporting an artist … at least not very much. Suddenly, they might as well be a Walmart shopper looking for the next Blue Light Special.
(And yes, I know Blue Light Specials were a K-Mart thing [RIP] and that many readers won’t have any knowledge of them. But hey: I’m an artist and I’ll say what I want.)
The more you stand behind your book, the more artisan readers will want it. The more you act like that book isn’t worth much, however, the less they’ll want it.
Note from Jane: If you enjoyed this post, be sure to check out the forthcoming book The Artisan Author: The Low-Stress, High-Quality, Fan-Focused Approach to Escaping the Publishing Rat Race by Johnny B. Truant. You can get an early copy by becoming a Kickstarter supporter.
Johnny B. Truant is the bestselling author of Fat Vampire, adapted by the SyFy network as Reginald the Vampire. His other books include Pretty Killer, Pattern Black, Invasion, The Beam, Dead City, Unicorn Western, and over 100 other titles across many genres. Originally from Ohio, Johnny and his family now live in Austin, Texas where he’s finally surrounded by creative types as weird as he is.
Too true. I like to think of movies: an On Demand movie might go for $4 or $5, and in theaters it’s far more. And that’s just for a couple of hours of entertainment, compared to ten or more and the right to reread at will… so does an ebook’s best and most immersive wordsmithing have that much less value than watching actors and effects rush through a story? No it doesn’t,
And like Danny DeVito said in Ruthless People, “When they hear no, the first thing a bad salesman will do is drop his price. Bad salesmen make me sick.” And like a lot of DeVito’s lines, you’re not supposed to like him but you know he’s got a point.
I was with you until you disparaged Kindle Unlimited. No. KU is a fair way to get your book into the hands of readers and you are paid per page read. Some authors report making more through KU each month than in outright sales. Likewise, I like being in libraries, even though all the patrons are reading my book “for free.” But I do think your points about being proud of your work and feeling that you deserve to be paid fairly for your talent needs talked about more – a novel is not the same as a cup of coffee. It shouldn’t be a commodity.
Hi Maggie,
I hear you, and this is one trick about sharing excerpts out of a larger work — some of the context gets lost. My argument is not anti-KU. I don’t like it personally, for myself, but I know plenty of people who use it as part of a larger strategy without running afoul of some of the pricing woes I’m talking about here. I do make that point many times in the book … but again, we’ve only got an excerpt here. I even have an entire section making clear that KU is not the same as Rapid Release, and that I know many KU authors who are doing things very intelligently, for their unique business, readers, and personality.
I’d just ask you to consider the conditional I give in that sentence: “not because it’s a good strategy for them, but because …” The intent of that phrase is to say that if you’re using KU as an informed person with a strategy in place that works for you, then by all means go for it! But that’s not how everyone enters into KU, and MANY enter by default or for lesser reasons. You’re clearly have good reasons for doing what you do, but a lot of people don’t, or are going for what they see as the “standard” route without actually considering why, or giving it context.
The older and more experienced I become, the more I realize that quality matters far more than being prolific. Ignore the pundits who tell you to spend no more than a year writing a book (assuming you are not under contract to deliver before an agreed deadline). Write and rewrite every chapter, every paragraph, every sentence, every word until it is the best you can write it—whether that takes just one year or five. By re-examining and reworking the same material until you can find no faults, you gain deeper insight into what worked and what didn’t (and why). Make it your master class. In the end you’ll be a better writer and will have produced something people will remember and cherish. Having an in-demand masterpiece after five years of toiling is better than having five throwaways for the dustbin.
This reads like an article for the hobbyist writer – someone who’s doing it for their own satisfaction, not to make an income. If you’re going to “say no” to to the market, then you’re not lookiing to sell for profit. For an earning author, the old quality / cost / time triangle would absolutely be consideration. The choice is rarely between “something good” and “something bad” with all other things being equal – because the other things aren’t equal. It’s a choice between something 80% great published now (and start earning), or keep polishing (with no income from thisproject) for another 2 years till it’s 95% what you want.
Well, it’s not actually saying no to the market. It’s saying no to ONE market that most self-published writers spend most of their time trying to reach, which is the Kindle marketplace — ideally that “whale reader” that a lot of people talk about.
The market I sell to these days is far more profitable than that market for me in my own situation, and that matters because I’m not remotely a hobbyist writer. This is my career and has been for more than a decade. I want to enjoy what I do, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to profit from it. It’s my only income. Damn right profit matters.
If we’re seeing this differently, it might be because we’re reading the idea of “artisan” differently. The message isn’t “polish your precious art until it’s museum-worthy, ignoring the market’s needs completely and only actually writing for yourself.” It’s “don’t rush like everyone seems to be telling you to.” It’s “If you want to take your time and use it to create up-leveled products that (true) won’t appeal to very-price-sensitive readers but WILL appeal to readers who don’t spend all of their money in KU or on 99 cent books — or, ideally, the kinds of people who buy their eggs at farmer’s markets and collect vinyl and want a connection to the people who create what they enjoy — then consider this permission to do so.”
I was never a Rapid Release author, but I’ve been in this long enough to have sat through a lot of Amazon’s game-playing. Right now, my monthly sales on Amazon are under $200 for my enormous, 100+-book catalog. But I don’t care, because I make most of my money selling in person. I can go to a convention and make $5000-7000 in a weekend selling paperbacks. That’s pretty far from hobbyist thinking, and it’s only possible if you shift your approach to attract the enormous part of the reading market that almost no self-published authors are even trying to reach.
It’s a good essay.
It basically says the exact same thing that everyone who’s made their living from writing has been saying for 10+ years now, but it’s a good essay.
I mean – “Quality over Quantity?” That’s been a staple recommendation from every full-time writer I know for longer than I’ve been writing full-time. Of COURSE quality matters more than quantity. That’s a baseline standard of any art type business.
Even in the 20Books group, where ‘rapid release’ was first used for publishing (a term which means “release several books in a series over the course of a few months” and has nothing to do with total annual output), quality over quantity has always been the gold standard. Writing more books is awesome – but the main goal of each book should always be to delight the reader.
Likewise, every pro author I know has been saying “HEY! Price what you’re worth!” for *almost twenty years* now. Joe Konrath argued this back in 2008! Dean Wesley Smith was saying it in the early indie days, too. I’ve been pushing people to price higher for fifteen years now. Michael Anderle has pushed it for the past decade. There’s nothing wrong with using a free first in series if that’s a strategy to draw readers into a longer series, of course. Likewise, a 99c first in series is for Amazon what FFIS is for every other retailer. Both are strategies that can work well when used well.
But overall, the price of books that are actually selling has been climbing, not falling. When I started out, most indie ebooks were 99c or $2.99, with a VERY few at $3.99. Today? Most indie books in the top 100 of almost all sub-genres are $3.99 (which is the new $2.99) to $5.99, and sometimes $6.99 and $7.99 are showing up, too.
The essay makes very good points. None of these ideas are new, of course; they’re time-tested ideas that are as close to an industry standard as indie authors have! 🙂
It’s the same thing most experienced pros have been saying for decades, and it’s what almost everyone selling a lot of books today has been doing for years.
I thought I’d jump in here as someone who has been writing and publishing for an audience of writers for a couple decades now. If I only published material that offered new ideas that have never been voiced before, not much would be available at this site. And part of my job when I worked in traditional nonfiction publishing was identifying new ways to say old things. (It’s not all that different from commercial fiction—how many new structures or plots are there, really?) But there’s always another twist, or lens, or perspective to apply, one that has a chance of breaking through to people and helping them. I remember when the blockbuster EATS, SHOOTS AND LEAVES released in the mid-2000s, which is an entertaining grammar book, but it had nothing new to say about grammar, but it said it an interesting way that captured people’s attention and imagination.
New or old, I’d like to push a little on this idea that quality has always been important to indies: If true, that message is dramatically overshadowed by other advice about how to succeed in the market, particularly in the Amazon environment. The stereotype about indie authors is that they’re /less/ concerned about quality. It’s unfair but something indies have been fighting since the beginning. It doesn’t help when JA Konrath writes things that question the role quality plays, like this post. What he’s saying is nuanced but will mostly be remembered by writers as “It’s OK to be mediocre, don’t waste your time doing better.”
So I really appreciate what Johnny is saying here, new or not, because it can help serve as a wake-up call for people who’ve simply been following the crowd and not considering there might be other ways to go about running their business, if they have indeed been sacrificing quality for quantity. Or who haven’t been aware that other business models exist that don’t depend on certain types of pricing or certain retailers. There are always new writers coming onto the market who are getting up to speed who haven’t been reading the people you cite; there are always new things to learn, or old things to learn in a new way.
As a side note, I sympathize with writers who, typically without the benefit of a larger team, have to sort through a lot of loud voices and debates about the “right” thing to do. E.g., wide or exclusive? There’s a reason there’s a FB group called “Wide for the Win” – it had to be formed for those authors to have a place to go where they wouldn’t be picked apart by indie authors who don’t agree with that strategy. There’s a lot of “I’m right, so you must be wrong” mentality among all types of writers, but there’s more than one way to succeed at writing and publishing. So I hope that’s the message that comes through here, esp. for writers who are discouraged by the strategy of high volume and low pricing.
Like you, I’ve been writing and teaching other writers for a couple of decades now. I agree that there are few if any truly new ideas, mind. 🙂 The way an idea is expressed is what matters most, because then you can reach new people with the concept, or the same people but in a new way. The essay did that very well, which was why I said it’s a good essay!
What surprises me is your saying that you don’t think quality has been the primary focus for most folks. I firmly and completely disagree.
I literally cannot think of a single thought-leader in the publishing space who has ever espoused the idea that quantity matters more than quality.
There’s certainly been a few folks who have tried to become publishing gurus and claimed that quantity was the primary goal. But it has always been quickly revealed that those folks aren’t actually selling many books; they were making their money by being gurus, not by writing.
At this point, about 2/3 of all ebooks sold globally were written by indie authors, which certainly implies that indie authors are tending to produce most of the highest quality work, since readers rarely buy bad books, and basically never buy the sequel to a bad book. They buy books from authors whose work they love first, and authors whose work they like second, and everyone else not at all.
I appreciate what Johnny’s saying here, too. It’s the same thing that every successful author on the planet has been saying for at least the last two decades, but he’s said it in a his own unique style, and I hope that will help the message get to some new folks.
The watchwords of his book – quality over quantity, build connections with readers, focus on enjoying the journey of writing, price in a way that values your work, produce in a sustainable manner… These are all great lessons. They’re the same ones every long-term successful author of the past couple of decades has espoused, but that doesn’t invalidate what he’s saying; quite the opposite.
I’ve read the comments to date, and the article Jane linked to by J. A. Konrath (whose name was vaguely familiar, but I had to look up what he writes).
My takeaway from all of this is that one can put out books faster with less polish if they really know what they’re doing, so that their B-level book is equivalent to an A+-level from an author who hasn’t put in the time.
And that ability and discernment of “how much is enough” comes from creating… artisanal books. At least until you’re super solid on craft to the point where you do it almost automatically.
I think it would be rare for an author who starts out rushing to get meaningfully better. So regardless of where one ends up, starting with artisanal is likely the best way to get there.
And since pricing is a psychological exercise for the seller as much as for the buyer, one should practice that as well to become accustomed to the nuances of what it signals depending on how it’s expressed.
I wanted to add one more thing about the pervasiveness of this undervaluing/underpricing mindset.
I was on a live webinar discussion hosted by one of the very experienced authors referenced in one of these comments. The discussion was about adding print-on-demand merchandise to your author store.
The point was made over and over not to underprice. “You’re selling premium, branded merch to dedicated fans. They want to buy this, so they’ll pay. Protect your margins.”
Then the conversation drifted to selling their books in these same direct-to-reader stores. And the entire discussion was how to price their books for less than what they are selling for on Amazon without Amazon finding out by matching ISBNs and somehow impacting those sales. (I’m not clear on the technical concerns, but that’s not the point.)
Every single author there felt they were obligated to give their readers—dedicated fans who were seeking out their author website—a lower price when they sell direct since they are making a higher margin.
Right next to their high-priced merch that is based on the content of those books.
And the experienced host didn’t say a word about this dichotomy, as if books should naturally be the loss-leader for the merch. To me, this indicated that the mindset of “books = commodity and should be priced accordingly,” was deeply ingrained in the self-publishing psyche.
That call did cause me to think very deeply about the topic and do a ton of reading about pricing strategies. So, I got far more from that discussion than any tips about POD merch, just not what they were focusing on.
This is really interesting. I wasn’t aware of that particular strategy, so thanks so much for sharing!
Great point to underscore! I do not think it can be said enough, particularly about setting your price.
I’m in a few advertising groups on Facebook, and this pricing discussion comes up often. Many authors seem reluctant to A) set their price higher than $2.99 to begin with, and B) raise their prices (ever). I personally feel that an ebook priced at $2.99 (less than $6.99 or $7.99, really) screams “I don’t think my book is worth much / I think my book isn’t high quality.” Paperbacks priced less than $10 are mind-boggling to me – how is that possible? How can an author make any profit?
Especially to those running ads (particularly with little backlist), it’s so, so hard to make profit with a book priced so low. I am always (kindly) encouraging fellow authors to price their books higher.
I think of it this way: if I see a shirt priced at $5 in a store, I’ll think it’s cheaply made. I won’t think twice about buying a $20 shirt instead, because I know a quality shirt probably can’t be made at $5. My view – and clearly I’m not alone – is that books are valued similarly. What I fear is that the perma-$2.99 crowd is dragging down all book-buyers’ mindsets and getting people to believe that they “shouldn’t have to” pay more than $2.99 for any ebook.
As a small business owner, quality has always been a high priority, and that policy is included in my writing. I’ve heard of “rapid release” and AI generated books to build an author’s library and platform, but in the end, business basics still stand. Low quality stuff will not last on the market, and eventually the creator will be held accountable by the same market. Short-term thinking is risky.
All I have to say about this is that quality is VERY subjective. What’s quality to you might be crap to me. And it is. I’m a thriller writer and most of my books are always above 4 stars average. My most popular series has almost exclusively around 4.5 average ratings (the first, which is free, has a 4.4 average rate out of thousands of ratings/reviews, which is not just Amazon, but all the other vendors.) I just read a few of my competitors’ books. A couple of those authors are rapid release authors and they are KILLING it. Are the books good? No, they are absolutely awful. Probably it took the authors a week or two to write them. One of those authors is famous (among the reviewers, who still buy the books) for having tons of errors, which is to be expected when you rapid release. Yeah, it’s those kinds of books. Still, readers buy them and give them high ratings. So, yeah, quality is SUBJECTIVE. If you want to make money, you better release as often as possible and hit the genre tropes (actually not even that is necessary always, just be catchy and funny).