> We are going to charge $50, which even if I sell thousands of copies, will be pennies on the hour for everyone.... This is a rip-off? The part that is missin

> We are going to charge $50, which even if I sell thousands of copies, will be pennies on the hour for everyone.... This is a rip-off? The part that is missing in the equation: How much value will this give to your readers? The answer is probably different for each individual reader of your book. For some those $50 might be a great investment and I certainly wish you and your audience that there are many such cases. But there is probably also a long tail of people who will not benefit enough to warrant the 50$ price tag - potentially because there's only parts of the book that are actually relevant to them or because they thought that the book answers some important questions that they had but it actually doesn't. And then there's also the individual financial situation of the readers. Especially grad students are not exactly known for being rich. 50$ might be a lot of money to them. While it is possible that they will derive a value greater than 50$ from buying the book, it is far from guaranteed and can be a risky investment, especially when there are also other expensive books that they need to buy.