How many books should I print on my first printing?
This is probably the number one question I get from the first time publisher. There is no easy answer, although the answer is certainly not “none”, as espoused by the POD publishing industry. If you are publishing a book, you need books… period. It’s just a matter of how many.
The POD publishing industry has done their best to convince authors they don’t need physical books to be successful. Demand driven, I believe is the catchy phrase they use. IE: Don’t print a book until you sell a book. Using that logic, why don’t they just extend that right on back to “don’t edit” or “don’t format and design” a book until you have sales. Or why even write the book until you have sold the book. Truth be told, I can guarantee you that the second your book is ready to be printed by any of these POD places, your little personal “Helper” is on the phone trying to get you to buy copies at their inflated price. But this is not going to be one of my POD rants. (Not today)
For today, I’ll assume that you have already gotten over the POD thing and are truly self-publishing your book. The answer to the question above actually comes from deep inside you.
I was on a panel this past weekend with an author who printed 100 copies initially and came back for a reprint for 300 copies the next day and a reprint for 20,000 the next week and within a few short years signed a contract for $300,000+ with a major publisher for a future book. I had one of my own authors who came into my office trying to buy 10,000 copies of his book and I talked him into only printing 3000 initially and use some of the extra money to help with the marketing. He promised he would be back in two weeks with a substantial reprint. Two weeks, to the day, he was back with a large order, followed by several additional large orders and he also went on to sign a contract with a traditional publisher for his next book for well over $100,0000.
Years back, a man and his wife came into the RJ Communications’ offices with a stack of pictures and a pile of copy and a fist full of rejection letters from traditional publishers. He printed a few thousand books to get started and reprinted, and reprinted and reprinted and reprinted until he eventually sold 2 million books (non returnable) and was on the New York Times best seller list for 30 plus weeks.
On the other hand, I have done hundreds of books where the first printing was 100 copies, followed by another hundred, followed by another hundred, followed by another hundred. I have had other who started with 100 copies and I have never seen them again.
My advice to all is to take a good look in the mirror and have an honest talk with the person in the mirror. Be realistic with yourself. If your main goal in publishing is to simply be published, and you don’t want to put a lot of effort into selling books, buy a hundred or two. You’ll have plenty for your friends and family. For slightly under $70 you can even be listed on all the large websites, like Amazon and BarnesandNoble.com.
Before going further let me talk briefly about the unit cost of printing your book. A standard 256 page book costs about $6/book at 100 copies and is printed digitally. 500 copies of the same book costs about $5.50/book and is printed on an offset printing press, the standard of the publishing industry (see related article). From here is where the pricing starts to get interesting. At 750 copies the price drops to $3.91/book, at 1,000 copies to $3.15/book, at 1,500 copies to $2.38/book and at 2000 copies to $2.00/book. The industry average of 3,000 copies would be $1.39/book, 5000 would be $1.27/book and at 10,000 copies the price would drop to $1.05/book. It might be noted, on the industry average of 3,000 books, virtually every wholesale discount plan works just fine using a standard $14.95 retail price.
With that said, lets look at your book. If you only print a couple hundred at a time, you will not be able to sell through most wholesale channels and make any money. In Dan Poynter’s, “New Book Model”, he suggests 500 – 750 copies to start if you are serious about selling books.. Looking at the costs above you can see why. Anything lower than that either forces you to raise the retail price well above the market price, which rarely works or forget the bookstore market completely.
If your book is non-fiction and you are an authority in the subject, and teach or participate in seminars on the subject, I would not be afraid of buying the higher quantity. If you feel you can sell 500, I would have no problem recommending you buy 1000 at the lower unit cost. It’s only 13% more cash out of your pocket for double the amount of books. The same thing goes if you look into that mirror and know that the person you see will go the extra mile to sell books. Here in New York, I have local authors selling thousands upon thousands of books in the streets and on the subways. Two of these are mentioned in the beginning of this article.
If you are not 100% sure of yourself, there is no problem printing a hundred copies, with the knowledge that it is just a test and the only way you are going to make any real money is to print higher quantities. Most poetry books as well as all novels should start this way. It’s easy enough to reprint. This also gives you a chance to make changes, if needed.
Rarely would I suggest that anyone print over 3,000 copies on their first printing. As you can see above, the unit cost is fine at 3000. If the book is going to be successful, you are going to come back and reprint 5,000, 10,000 or 20,000 later anyhow. Buying 10,000 books and finding a typo on page one the day after the books are received from the printer can be a little unnerving, to say the least. The exception to the 3000 rule, of course, would be if you have managed to presell a large quantity of books. Over the thousands of titles and millions of books I have printed through either www.rjcom.com, www.BooksJustBooks.com or www.selfpublishing.com, the overall average for first timers is 2000 copies and a huge percentage of them come back and reprint so they must be doing something correctly.
One last thought which I pass on to nearly everyone that I talk to on this subject, “You will never sell them (copies of your book) faster than I can print them” so concentrate on sales. I’ll make sure that you never run out of books.
Last 5 posts by Ron Pramschufer
- What do you think about Amazon’s announcement that small publishers need to print with their printer in order to be listed on Amazon? - April 17th, 2008
- What are the steps are involved in Self-Publishing a book? - March 24th, 2008
- Do you know any good book printers? - February 11th, 2008
- What do you think of Facebook as a marketing tool for self-published books? - December 5th, 2007
- Did you change your mind about authors buying a single ISBN? - October 22nd, 2007
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May 5th, 2006 at 2:36 pm
I am a new author and am publishing my own book. I find your advice to be accurate and invalueable.
May 5th, 2006 at 6:59 pm
Ron:
I am an absolute beginner but I can not see that now, almost 200 books later, that I should have printed quantities other than my original 30, followed by 5, 10, 22 and 50. Meanwhile, Amazon sold about 75. Now I have a distributor an am seriously considering an offset order. By the way, I own my own ISBN numbers and am simply using a POD printer to print small lots as I need them.
The reason is that I had no idea of my market in the hobby, craft, and jewelry trade. The above numbers represent initial review copies that I sent out in both a perfect binding and a comb-bound version for the shop. A small order of 6 shop versions to a jewelry tool supplier led to an introduction to a distributor to the jewelry trade and an entry to large jewlery tool and suppliers. After about 50 books had gone out, I made modifications to the cover and book block. After 200 were out the door, it made sense to remove an appendix to make the book more attractive to the jewelry and educational markets.
I am about to break even in actual printing costs vs. sales and I don’t see how I could have found my way through this learning process without using a digital printer. If I had Initially ordered a few hundred copies, I would have still have many of them left and would have been doing all the retail mailing until I found my way onto Amazon.
Since I am such a small operation, I am considering using LSi with an initial order of 50 just to get into the Ingram list. By the fall I may move to a modest offset order since I understand a review of my book is scheduled for the September issue of a Jewelry Arts magazine.
It seems to me that demand printing was the perfect way for a beginning publisher to get his feet wet without risking a significan initial chunk of money. I may sound like a sales man for one of the POD printers, but this approach seemed to work perfectly for me.
Just my thoughts.
Regards,
Fred
Woodsmere Press
http://www.woodsmerepress.com
May 6th, 2006 at 1:06 am
nice article - appreciate it. thanks.
May 6th, 2006 at 11:18 am
I have a good retirement plus a good paying job. I have written two fictional novels. I sent one to many publishers years ago and got rejected because we would never be at war with a weak Moslem country.
POD printing was not available then. I have lots of published government documents, but no fiction and know nothing about selling or printing novels. I see that first book coming true little by little and would like to have a few copies to send to some high rollers and some friends.
Sure, I would love to sell a million copies and I think that there are millions that would like the book, but I really can’t afford to print 1,000 copies. I can afford $500 but not $1500. Maybe 50 - 100 to get the novel to those key people. It is over 400 pages.
The other novel was just a fun science fiction novel that takes place in today’s world.
Not sure what to do next. Does POD printing make sense in this case?
May 7th, 2006 at 2:56 am
nice advice
May 7th, 2006 at 10:00 pm
I receive you emails. Do I have an account with you? What
communications have you received from me?
If I choose to publish through you (I have several other self-publishing sites), I must know apriori that you have no royalty claims with the contracted party.
May 8th, 2006 at 10:14 am
Once again another question I had you’ve answered. I have written a childrens book and am curious how you market something you do not have yet. I am wondering how to go about selling my book before it is finished by the publisher. I am considering you in doing the publishing but I have an amazing amount of colors in my book and am concerned about the cost mailing from you to me and etc. It is about 36 pages, 1448 words, and the same amount of colored pictures as well. Please advise
May 8th, 2006 at 12:12 pm
In support of printing a certain amount of copies of a self published book, when it came to deciding how many I should print, I had to look at the genre of Use Cash To Buy It!. This is an evolving self help guide for people in credit card debt. I knew it would change rapidly. I also knew that I wanted to republish a second edition after it received local attention and feedback from readers that were helped by it. This is now starting to happen with my first edition, as I just completed my very first newspaper interview this morning!
I started with only 500 offset copies of Use Cash To Buy It! Another reason for this small amount was I knew myself well enough as a writer and realized that I would revise and perfect it for the second edition.
Thanks for all the great information on Publishing Basics. I look forward to it every month.
May 8th, 2006 at 2:22 pm
Hello,
Good information. All I need is money to self publish. Maybe someday. You article was very helpful.
Milton
May 8th, 2006 at 4:12 pm
Dear Ron - I hope this email finds you and yours happy and healthy. I know the last time we spoke you were not very happy with me. However, I want you to know that I read your newsletter religiously every month and I have learned so much from you. Ron, I know I’ve made mistakes in the past, out of ignorance and bad advice, but I want to continue working with you. You’ve been the most honest man I’ve come across in all these years. My second children’s book is done; my picture book is presently being illustrated, and I have two novels to sell. I would love for you to be my guru and take over the printing, or publishing of these books. My novel, THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY received rave reviews, but I have 22,000 copies that need to be sold before your publishing company takes over. I hope we can work together on all these books. Just tell me what to do, and I know we will both make a lot of money, as the novel is about exactly what is happening in America today. May I send a copy to you? I look forward to hearing from you soon. Thanks, Bruce Schwartz
May 8th, 2006 at 7:34 pm
Ron,
Thanks for being so clear and concise about the number to print subject. You make this nerve-wracking process much easier to handle. I’ll be in touch with BooksJustBooks soon.
Dennis
May 10th, 2006 at 9:42 am
Interesting.
I’ll remember your tips when I am ready to do some serious selling; since.. ..for now, I find hard to do both authoring and sales/promotion.
May 10th, 2006 at 1:16 pm
I have recently had my firts book dealing with a possible terrorist attack on the Panama Canal.
I would like to know about how many of my books should I acquire from Authorhouse, to put on sale at the Panama Canal reunion, this coming july.?
The number of persons at this reunion will bring about two thousand persons. Half are ex employees of the Canal, the other half were too young to remmember much about the former Canal Zone.
Thanks,
Roland Basmeson
May 28th, 2006 at 9:54 pm
I have written a book “Perfect Assurance” the subject of which is Bible Prophecy.It is approximately 116 pages (5.5 X 8.5) and is almost ready to submit for printing. I have not received my ISBN numbers as yet altho I have ordered the ten. I don’t know how well religious books sell. I will give away any books I am unable to sell.
You have been a lot of help to me in providing information and pricing etc; mainly through your book “Publishing Basics”.You have been more helpful than others with whom I have been in contact.
Thavk you and I will be in contact. Newt
July 5th, 2006 at 8:12 pm
Would you email me more info. on your book Perfect Assurande.
I am a Christian and I write poems insipired by God. I have 17
written so far.
Thanks and have a great day.
Karen
December 7th, 2006 at 6:01 pm
Great article. But I wonder how applicable your example is to my own application.
I own and operate an on-line art gallery and have been contemplating publishing an art book.
Let’s say we take your 256 page model and I say we are going to have 200 high quality images of full color art sprinkled throughout. Naturally, we want it produced on nice smooth paper - typical of a fine art book. Could something like that be produced economically in low numbers? Or because of the imagery involved am I forced to consider higher numbers due to the need to print on an offset printer?
To summarize, in my specific case (as described - Fine art book) what would be the practical minimum printing volume and how would the volume/cost curve look (ie: as volume increases cost drops, etc)?
Thanks