Readers, would you pay more than $9.99 for an indie ebook?

R. S. Breed · 2026-07-15T12:31:00+00:00

Over to the readers for this one. Amazon now lets indie authors price ebooks up to $12.99 and still get the higher royalty rate (there's a thread about it in industry news). So some indie ebooks are going to creep up. Would you pay more than $9.99 for one? If yes, what would it take? An author you already love, a big fat book, a whole series bundled together? If no, is it the money itself, or is it something about the word "indie"? For context, an Authors Guild study in June found only 25% of th...

R. S. Breed Founder

2 months ago

Over to the readers for this one.

Amazon now lets indie authors price ebooks up to $12.99 and still get the higher royalty rate (there's a thread about it in industry news). So some indie ebooks are going to creep up.

Would you pay more than $9.99 for one? If yes, what would it take? An author you already love, a big fat book, a whole series bundled together? If no, is it the money itself, or is it something about the word "indie"?

For context, an Authors Guild study in June found only 25% of the print and ebooks people had read in the past month were bought new or through a subscription. So most readers are clearly getting books some other way already.

And if you read mostly through Kindle Unlimited or the library, would you even notice?