The Publishing Industry Prices Itself Out of Reach (And Why I Won't)

May 26

I read a lot of research papers. Marketing ones, psychology ones, intercultural ones, publishing ones. More than is probably necessary for someone who describes herself as a one woman business with no Avengers.

And after all of that reading I am ready to tell you my publishing strategy. It is simpler than you might expect.

I keep the prices as low as I can. And I make sure everything else is done by professionals.

The cover illustration for Parenting Unpacked was done by Francine Marcondes. The coloring book illustrations were done by Janyne Azevedo. The design, the layout, the production — all of it goes through people who know what they are doing. I do not cut corners on the product. I cut corners on the margin.

Here is why.

I buy books myself. I have always bought books. And I know what it feels like to look at a price and hesitate. To want the thing and do the mental calculation and sometimes put it back. Books are not like videos. You do not consume a book in an afternoon the way you watch a series. You read it, you sit with it, you put it down and pick it up again, you underline things, you think about it in the shower three days later. It takes time. It deserves time. And that time is something the reader is already giving.

The financial barrier should not be something they are giving too.

The publishing industry is made for everyone in theory. In practice it prices itself out of reach for the people who need it most. I am not interested in that version of the industry. I want the mother at 2am in a country that is not hers to be able to buy the book that was written for her without doing the mental calculation first.

Premium content. Accessible price. On purpose.

That is the strategy. The research papers confirmed it. The bookshop receipts convinced me first.

Jessica Gabrielzyk

Jessica Gabrielzyk

Jessica Gabrielzyk is a Brazilian writer living in Switzerland. She moved there with her husband and daughter, who was three months old at the time and had strong opinions about the whole thing even then.

She writes about change.

The visible kind and the kind that happens inside a person, while everything on the outside looks fine.

Her first book, Maternity Abroad, explored what it means to become a mother far from the system you trusted. It has reached readers in more than fifteen countries across five continents. Parenting Unpacked, her second book, follows the experience of parenting through major life disruption, whether that's an international move, a career loss, a new baby, or a life that simply stops responding the way it used to. My First American Coloring Book was created to help toddlers engage with daily life in the United States through play and familiar imagery.

She is a member of SIETAR, the Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research, and the International Academy of Brazilian Literature.

She writes for the parent who is still inside it, getting through the day, and wondering somewhere underneath all of it who they are becoming.

When she is not writing, she is walking forty minutes uphill with a stroller, telling herself the exercise is the point.

The Publishing Industry Prices Itself Out of Reach (And Why I Won't)

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