"In the Trenches" with Rachel Lynn Episode 37

I love seeing when an author shares their wins.

And something I've been finding myself really enjoying lately is the financial vulnerability of what it takes to write these books.

Because I think...

With Trad, we're kind of spoiled in the readership space, right? Because we don't question if the book is $32.99, we're going to buy it.

We don't question if the paperback is $19.99, we're going to buy it.

But the audacity of an indie author to put their paperback at $19.99, like how dare they? That's very sarcastic, by the way, everybody.

Don't be panicking.

You know, we questioned the indie authors on why are you pricing this at this price point? That's ridiculous.

Why are you pricing these pieces? So I don't know where we found the audacity to question authors in that capacity, but we have found it.

So whenever I see an author that says, hey, listen, I don't even...

Even when it comes to like the years that it took writing or the months or the hours, even if we don't talk about that, if we talk about... hey, it costs me $5 to print the book.

It costs me $3 to ship the book.

We're already at $8.

Okay.

Now to ship it to you after ship to me is another $5 to $6.

All right.

So now we're at this price point.

So if I sell you the book for $5, I have now lost $15.

Correct.

And that's not even counting like

I ship out of my apartment.

Like I started a TikTok shop.

So like that doesn't cover the cost of labels, materials, the bookmarks, the stickers, the artwork, the commissioned artwork.

If you're paying somebody to do your cover, if you're paying for somebody to design your interior, if you're paying for an editor, like there's so much cost associated and so many people operate at a loss for a really long time.

And I think one of the things like to add to this is audiobooks.

I love seeing when an author shares their wins.

And something I've been finding myself really enjoying lately is the financial vulnerability of what it takes to write these books.

Because I think...

With Trad, we're kind of spoiled in the readership space, right? Because we don't question if the book is $32.99, we're going to buy it.

We don't question if the paperback is $19.99, we're going to buy it.

But the audacity of an indie author to put their paperback at $19.99, like how dare they? That's very sarcastic, by the way, everybody.

Don't be panicking.

You know, we questioned the indie authors on why are you pricing this at this price point? That's ridiculous.

Why are you pricing these pieces? So I don't know where we found the audacity to question authors in that capacity, but we have found it.

So whenever I see an author that says, hey, listen, I don't even...

Even when it comes to like the years that it took writing or the months or the hours, even if we don't talk about that, if we talk about... hey, it costs me $5 to print the book.

It costs me $3 to ship the book.

We're already at $8.

Okay.

Now to ship it to you after ship to me is another $5 to $6.

All right.

So now we're at this price point.

So if I sell you the book for $5, I have now lost $15.

Correct.

And that's not even counting like

I ship out of my apartment.

Like I started a TikTok shop.

So like that doesn't cover the cost of labels, materials, the bookmarks, the stickers, the artwork, the commissioned artwork.

If you're paying somebody to do your cover, if you're paying for somebody to design your interior, if you're paying for an editor, like there's so much cost associated and so many people operate at a loss for a really long time.

And I think one of the things like to add to this is audiobooks.