We here at Rebel Wrath believe ebooks should be cheaper than print books – there’s no printing cost, no storage if a larger print run is ordered instead of print-on-demand, no delivery cost, no need to support physical bookstores.
On the other hand, there are costs – art, editing, marketing, and the writer’s labour. It can take a long time to write a book.
Of course, once created, a book can theoretically be downloaded an infinite amount. In practice, this isn’t true though, and a lot of indie ebooks sell no more than 100 copies.
For consideration, the artwork for Attack of the 50ft Trans Woman cost £500. This is not something that will be repeated until sales are much higher – currently other published books are using covers created in Canva by Rebel Wrath. These covers are not as good, and one day will be replaced.
In sales, the break even point is the point at which the sales reach the expenditure to create the project. At Rebel Wrath, we aim for 100 book sales to be that point. In over a year since publication Attack of the 50 ft Trans Woman has sold 25 copies. It is far from breaking even. However, it is known that the more books are released, the more sales of each book there will be.
Market research has revealed readers are reluctant to spend too little as they think the book will be low quality, and reluctant to spend too much as they do not see the value.
Another factor is the book’s word count – shorter books take less time to write, cost less to edit, etc,
At Rebel Wrath we’ve currently set up a system for pricing books that reflects the book word count.
- Up to 10000 – £1.00 or $1.26
- 10001 – 20000 – £1.50 or $1.89
- 20001 – 30000 – £2.00 or $2.52
- 30001 – 40000 – £2.50 or $3.15
- 40001 – 50000 – £3.00 or $3.78
- 50001 – 60000 – £3.50 or $4.40
- 60001 – 70000 – £4.00 or $5.03
- 70001 – 80000 – £4.50 or $5.66
- 80000+ – £5.00 or $6.29
Attack of the 50ft Trans Woman is just over 50k words and will cost £3.50. Bigoted Book Burners Bloodily Bludgeoned by Badly Burnt Books is just over 60k and will cost £4.00. Noun of Noun and Adjective is 100k words, but is freely available on Wattpad and Tumblr. As such, it is freely available here.
As of May 2025, it will be priced at £5.00, so download a copy now if you want it for free.
YA books are priced differently:
- Up to 30000 – £1.00 or $1.26
- 30001 – 40000 – £1.50 or $1.89
- 40001 – 50000 – £2.00 or $2.52
- 50001 – 60000 – £2.50 or $3.15
- 60001 – 70000 – £3.00 or $3.78
- 70001 – 80000 – £3.50 or $4.40
- 80000+ – £3.97 or $5.00
The reason 80k+ books are £3.97 and not £4.00 is because we do not want to go over $5.00.
Clothed in Blood and Darkness is over 80,000 words, so is priced at £3.97.
Royalty Rate
Different distributors have different royalty rates. Amazons is the most well known. For ebooks priced under $2.99 or over $9.99, the royalty rate is 35%. For books priced between that, the royalty rate is 75%.
- Up to 10000 – £1.00 royalty is 35% – £0.35
- 10001 – 20000 – £1.50 royalty is 35% – £0.52
- 20001 – 30000 – £2.00 royalty is 35% – £0.70
- 30001 – 40000 – £2.50 royalty is 75% – £1.87
- 40001 – 50000 – £3.00 royalty is 75% – £2.25
- 50001 – 60000 – £3.50 royalty is 75% – £2.63
- 60001 – 70000 – £4.00 royalty is 75% – £3.00
- 70001 – 80000 – £4.50 royalty is 75% – £3.37
- 80000+ – £5.00 royalty is 75% – £3.75
You can see from this that it is better for Rebel Wrath to publish books with 30k+ words. However, due to length of time writing and editing costs, there are diminishing returns, once books pass the 60k word mark the expenses of creating them rise substantially.
As such, you can expect most Rebel Wrath books to cost between £2.50 and £3.50, though there will be more and less expensive outliers.
It is expected that there will be sales – in March, all Rebel Wrath books published so far will be discounted in Smashwords read an ebook week (except Noun of Noun and Adjective, you can’t discount free).
Prices are subject to change, especially as exchange rates fluctuate, and may increase each year in line with inflation, though we will always try to keep costs as low as possible.
Why are we telling you this?
Transparency is a good thing in a business. We believe in sharing all that we do. It is the best way to make a company grow.
But also, we are readers. We buy indie books. We know how infuriating it would be to shell out £5.00 on a 10k word 20 minute read, and we would happily pay more to spend longer in a good book with characters we love.
Now you know that if our book costs £1, it will be a short read, and if it costs £5.00, you will have hours of fun with it.