I was shopping for greeting cards at Hallmark a couple of days ago.

It really got me thinking about book prices.

At first, I was thinking, “$3.99 for a greeting card? I have a book that I spent months on selling for $2.99.”

But then I realized that I had paid $3.99 for greeting cards long before I published my first book.

It’s not that greeting prices have gone up so much.

It’s more that book prices have come down so much.

A greeting card is basically a book cover.

So surely if we squeeze a hundred or more pages into that space, it should be worth more… Right?

99-cent books. Think about it. Are these books not even worth as much as a greeting card?

At least, old-fashioned printed greeting cards.

There are many free e-greeting cards.

When print-on-demand greeting cards become popular, I guess those prices will drastically drop, too. At least, if indie p-o-d greeting cards ever become as popular as Kindle e-books.

A more popular comparison is between an e-book and a cup of coffee.

But greeting cards left a stronger impression with me. It’s basically a book cover!

I know, book covers are worth a lot of money. Great book covers often cost $200 to $1000 to make. Even so, those books still often sell for 99 cents to $3.99, much like greeting card prices.

It’s almost like writing a hundred thousand words is worth nothing at all.

(Now just wait until some ‘author’ publishes a fifty-word ‘book’ on Kindle and markets it as a ‘greeting card’ that you can ‘gift’ to friends and family. I hope I didn’t just give anyone a ‘bright’ idea…)

Chris McMullen

Copyright © 2014 Chris McMullen, Author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers

• Volume 1 on formatting and publishing
• Volume 2 on marketability and marketing

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