Why I Focused on Affordability When Pricing My Children’s Book

“You pay for what you get!” I read this in a comment today, which inspired this post. That comment was in regards to how to price your children’s books and the profit margins associated. Here’s the thing – to a certain degree, I do agree with this most of the time. I do believe there’s a middle-ground, but yes, typically when buying something, if you go with the cheapest option, it’s going to be the cheapest quality. However, I do NOT believe this is true for books, especially children’s books.

Firstly, I believe my board book is a high-quality book and it is more affordable than most. My board book is offset print and has a spot gloss finish on the cover. The illustrations are hyper-realistic (hundreds of hours spent illustrating), the formatting is professional and their was no use of AI. And I know I’m not the only one out there with a high-quality, lower priced book.

With that said, here’s some other reasons why I don’t think we should use the “pay what you get” mentality when pricing our books.

Pricing is a delicate part of self-publishing and it really is hard to choose what price to put your book at. The truth is, there’s a lot of self-published books out there that should be priced way higher than they are. When you look at the hundreds of thousands of hours authors put into their books, they deserve for someone to drop $20, $30, $40, right?

While that might be true…if you’re a parent, and you’re not wealthy, you’re probably thinking “well, I can’t afford that.” Because the idea of children’s books is to get children to read. And we want them to read lots of books. So how are average or low-income families supposed to afford books, if they’re priced high?

My thought is that if we price books too high, books will start to become less accessible and lower-income families will get priced out. There’s already so many families who can’t afford books at all, and they heavily rely on libraries and programs like Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library.

I’d like to argue that when it comes to books, we should be trying to keep prices low, without sacrificing quality. There are so many factors to consider, but we can certainly make sure we continue to put out well written books, with good illustrations (if applicable). And I think there are good and bad ways for us to keep costs low. AI is one way to cut corners, but, to me, that seems along those lines of possibly putting out a lower-quality book. However, print on demand (POD), might seem like lower quality production, but it is often much more economical for authors. And while it feeds the Amazon giant, it also gets the books out internationally, not just in your own country. My thought is if you have a well-written story, with great illustrations, who cares if the paper is slightly lower quality than a bulk printed book? (Note, my suggestion is to do a POD with a bulk print if you’re able! You can learn more in this blog post.)

When I priced my board book, I looked at these factors:

1. The price of other comparable books. When I researched in 2022, mass produced board books typically ranged from $6.99-$9.99. Self-published ones ran $9.99-$17.99. I priced mine at $9.99. I kept in mind that I can’t price as low as some mass produced books, because they get a better price per book since they print massive amounts. However, I tried to keep my price as close as possible, while still being profitable.
2. Profit margins. While I was in it for the love and just wanting my story to be shared with the world, I knew I needed to have wiggle room for things like wholesale pricing, and other costs like running my website. So even if you don’t want to “get rich”, you still need to have some profit margin, unless you truly want to loose money with sales.
3. My audience. My book is all about inclusivity and I wouldn’t feel right pricing my book at the higher end, that inevitably would exclude some families included in my audience.

Overall, my first goal was that I wanted EVERYONE to be able to have my book. So I priced it as low as I could within reason. And for families that can’t afford books at all, I do what I can, where I can, to give opportunities to have my book. It’s in a couple of libraries (hopefully more in the future). I am now a steward of a Little Free Library, where I often have one available for the taking. I have also donated hundreds of my books, and thanks to some printer mishaps, I have discounted books for sale too.

So when pricing your book, I don’t think we should feel the term “pay for what you get” should be our mentality. That will only increase the price of books, making them less accessible for everyone. Just because a book is priced low, doesn’t mean it’s low quality.

With that said, look at your own goals first. If your goals are based around making money, then pricing higher might be better for you. Look at other comparable books, profit margins based on your cost to print/distribute, and look at your audience.

We all have different goals and different reasons when we set our prices. My only hope that as a whole, we all try and do what we can to keep books affordable for the most part. I think there’s certainly a balance where we can get enough profit for self-published authors to continue making more wonderful, high-quality books, while still keeping books affordable.