Margins are too polite" is a great way to put it. A buddy of mine ran a small woodworking shop and had been charging the same rate for custom shelves for like four years, even though his costs went up and his work got better. His sister in law, who knows nothing about woodworking, asked him at a cookout what he charges and when he told her she just said "wait, that's it?" and walked away. He raised his rates the next week and didn't lose a single client, and the new ones he picked up didn't even blink. That one line from someone outside the trade got him to do what a year of his own math couldn't. It's like you need a person who isn't in it to hear how silly the number sounds.

My whole shelf would fail that test, every spine on it is basically pristine because I buy books and then let them sit there judging ME instead. The guy would take one look at my collection and figure out I've finished maybe a third of them. The one paperback I actually wore out was a beat up copy of The Stand that I read on like six different buses, and the cover finally fell off in my backpack. My wife wanted to toss it and I hid it in a drawer like a raccoon with a treasure.