Book Pricing Quotes

I'd say that about 82 percent of what I write is bad, but don't go by me; I'm as bad a judge as I am a writer. Look, if it were all good, you'd be paying twice as much for this book.

At present, however, I don't think the Net is a very good medium for books, books should really be inexpensive lightweight paperbacks you can bang around.

Hemingway hated me. I sold 200 million books, and he didn't. Of course most of mine sold for 25 cents, but still... you look at all this stuff with a grain of salt.

I don't like it when I see my books sold cheaply.

The price of an e-book is a lot less than the price that we're charging for a hardcover book. It's about the same as we charge for a paperback. And that means a different revenue stream.

Higher ebook prices only benefit one group: publishers.

People seldom read a book which is given to them; and few are given. The way to spread a work is to sell it at a low price. No man will send to buy a thing that costs even sixpence without an intention to read it.

Publishers should use the paperback side to leverage the ebook side.

The publishing industry has always wanted to make books as cheaply and as ephemerally as they could; it's nothing new.

I've been saying for years that readers want inexpensive ebooks.

You could buy my book in a paperback edition for a dollar, and in hard covers for $3.50. And for fifty cents extra, I come around to your house personally and wet your finger while you're turning the pages.

The mass-market paperback, for one, is too expensive.

I am an author, and like many in my profession, I am also a traveling salesman, going all over in an attempt to persuade people to spend twenty-five dollars on a hardcover book by me.

If the government ever imposes a tax on books - and I wouldn't put it past them - I'm in dead trouble.

The cheaper books become, the less money is spent on books.

I must say that books in India are not only underpriced but are also undervalued.

The royalty any author gets is dependent on his track record and marketability and often on the price of his book, too. The higher you price a book, the more comfortable your publisher will be in paying you a higher royalty.

What I've discovered more recently is copies of books that I didn't represent, but that my boss represented when I assisted her on the dollar pile. I won't mention any names, but it is this profoundly bittersweet time of realizing, "Oh, I had a wonderful time working on this book and now it is a dollar relic on the side of the road."

I expected higher prices for some books, but [there would be] flexibility for other books.

I love the look of books published by the firm of Rupert Hart-Davis: They strike me as handsome, elegant, and inviting. I'll pick up almost anything with that imprint, especially if it's in a jacket or priced low.

Authors need to decide if they want to keep forever to themselves, or share forever with a publisher who takes over half the cover price.

I know how to sell books.

Barnes & Noble is able to publish price-reduced non-copyrighted works not so much because it saves the 10 percent to 15 percent of revenue that would go to the gruel-eating authors, but because it saves the 50 percent that would go to the publishers.

Selling books is hard to engineer.

I priced my books at what I would want to spend on an electronic book.