How much does it cost to self-publish a book? Part 2

How much does it cost to self-publish a book? Part 2 – The majority of the people reading this article most likely fall into a group which I call the “Serious Hobbyist” type of self-publisher. This group needs to be especially careful navigating the self-publishing minefield because most of the “misinformation” out there on the Internet is aimed directly at you. Put your checkbook and credit card away until you have read this article.

The “serious hobbyist” type of self-publisher covers a wide range of writers as well as subject matter. This group includes professors and other teachers, historians, attorneys, money managers and other consultants. The serious hobbyist has most likely had experience in some sort of entrepreneurial venture or work experience outside their main means of support, like Mary Kay, Amway or some other type of direct sales. Teachers make good “serious hobbyists”. First, they are probably qualified to write about what they are publishing and second they have the time to take on the part time position of publisher. Retired and semi-retired business professionals also make great “serious hobbyists”. The casual self publisher only needs to please family and friends. The serious hobbyist’s audience extends well beyond this into either specific professional groups or to the general public. An once you are going to this extended audience, you need to realize that there are a different set of rules that apply. Let’s look at a few of these elements and what they cost.

ISBN: With the casual self-publisher, it didn’t make a bit of difference who owned the ISBN, or if you even had one. The serious hobbyist realizes that while writing is a love, publishing is a business. The ISBN identifies the publisher .The serious hobbyist knows the importance of not allowing anyone to own the ISBN to their book except them. The serious hobbyist IS the publisher. A single ISBN costs $125 and a block of ten, $240. Consider this your starter kit for entering the publishing business.

Final ISBN Price – $125 or $240

Editing: The casual self-publisher doesn’t worry too much about editing. Their book is only going to be read by their family and friends, and they will never say anything bad about their writing. On the other hand, the serious hobbyist understands the importance of a well edited manuscript. The trick comes in how you go about finding a good editor and how much does it cost. At www.selfpublishing.com we offer an editorial analysis which costs $149. For this small investment, the writer receives a detailed analysis by a neutral party, as to what level of edit is needed to bring the manuscript up to commercial standards. If you choose to follow the advice of the analysis and continue with the recommended edit, 100% of the money spent on the analysis is applied towards the rest of the edit. We charge between a penny and four cents per word for the edit based on the complexity of the edit. This would be between $600 and $2400 for a 60,000 word manuscript (approx 256 page final book). Of course there are plenty of other qualified editors out there, many of which are listed in the publishing related sites section of my other website, www.BooksJustBooks.com. Try to avoid open ended “hourly rate” based editors or “per page” pricing. Price per word is best because it’s the easiest to verify.

Final Editing Price – $600 – $2400

Layout and Cover Design: The casual self-publisher can get away with the “do-it-yourself” method of book design. At selfpublishing.com we offer free text templates for the casual self-publisher. Our unique “hybrid” design service combines do-it-yourself text layout and template driven cover design. It’s perfect for the casual self publisher because it’s easy and only costs $149. The serious hobbyist needs to step it up a bit and spend some money on custom layout and cover design. Yes, you can judge a book by it’s cover but don’t make the mistake of taking this concept to the extreme. Do you need to spend thousands of dollars with a “big name” designer? While these high paid designers may argue to the contrary, I personally don’t believe you need to spend more than $500 and certainly not more than $1000 on both text layout and cover design. At www.selfpublishing.com we charge $250 for text and another $250 for a custom cover, as long as you print with us and $350ea if you don’t. Another item that gets bantered around the message boards is file ownership. You absolutely want to own the final files, free and clear. Don’t just assume you own them just because you pay for them. This is a HUGE strike against pretty much all of the POD publishers. Some are more up front than others but with none of them do you own the files. Let companies keep you as a customer with good work and good customer service, not by secret legal strings attached forcing you to use them in the future. Again, you don’t need to use my service. There are dozens of good designers out there. Just be careful.

Final Text Layout & Cover Design Price: $500

Printing: This is the point where the casual hobbyist and the serious hobbyist really part ways. Digital printing has enabled publishers to buy low quantities and fairly competitive pricing. The casual hobbyist only needs 100 copies or so and more than likely, these copies will be given away, not sold. Digitally printed copies cost $5-$6, on average, which is pretty good in small quantities so the out of pocket expense is pretty low. As a serious hobbyist, your plan is to make publishing work as a business. The only way this $5 unit cost works from a business standpoint is to sell retail. If you are a speaker and plan to sell your book in the back of the room at the retail price, fine. Same thing goes if your book is aimed at a narrow enough market that you can sell, at the retail price, through your website. It also may work if your book is outside the commercial market and the information in the book is so “In demand” you can charge a retail price higher than the normal. Where it doesn’t work is if you expect to sell through retail channels where you need to offer large discounts. The math just doesn’t work. The serious hobbyist needs to look into printing a quantity high enough to insure a printing price low enough to make money at trade discounts. That same $5 book at 100 to 200 copies, drops to $3 per book at 1000 copies, $2 per book at 2000 copies and $1.50 per book at 3000. Over the course of the thousand or so titles printed per year through www.selfpublishing.com, , the average print run is 2000 copies.

Final Printing Price: $3000 – $4500

Distribution: The serious hobbyist may or may not be ready to work with a traditional distributor like Biblio or IPG. Before a traditional distributor will agree to carry a title, you must demonstrate a demand for the title based on your marketing plan. There is not time to go through all the pros and cons of traditional distribution in this article so I’ll just mention a “starter” program that works for most hobbyists, casual or serious. While I am not a big fan of POD (Print on Demand) due, primarily, to the high unit costs, it works well as a supplement to traditional printing. My Thor Distribution program places your title in the Ingram database which feeds Amazon, BN.com and other online bookstores as well as most retail outlets. At the end of the day, this system is good for selling to Amazon. The program costs less than $70 for the first year and the author earns about $3.50 per book sold (256 page – $14.95 retail). The POD system is vastly over rated by it’s pundits when it comes to retail sales which is why it is only offered as a supplement.

Total Thor Distribution Cost: $69.80

Baker & Taylor Wholesale distribution: Ingram used to work with small publishers until they bought a printing company, Lightning Source. They found that the best way to build printing customers for their printer was to force small publishers to come through their printer to get to them. Today, if you want to get listed with Ingram, you either get accepted by a traditional distributor, or you buy from their printer. The Thor program that I mentioned above is Lightning Source, at a discounted price. The other large wholesaler is Baker & Taylor. In the old days, Ingram used to handle book stores and Baker & Taylor handled libraries. Today they both handle both. The good thing, as far as the small publisher is concerned, about Baker & Taylor is concerned is they don’t own a printer so they will still deal directly with small publishers. A program that works pretty well is Thor (Lighting POD) as a non-returnable source for the online bookstores and Baker & Taylor, set up using your printed copies, which you bought at a significantly lower price, on a returnable basis. Most of the retailers you are going to run into buy from both places. Retail stores aren’t interested in buying the non-returnable POD book but will buy from Baker & Taylor. You get the best of both worlds with this system.

Final Cost of Baker & Taylor setup: $295

Marketing & Publicity – Sorry but, I have pretty much gone over my word count at this point so I won’t try to cover all the marketing opportunities the serious hobbyist should become involved in, so I’ll just mention a few. I will cover marketing programs in more detail in future articles by myself and others. Let me say one thing though and I am very serious about it. There is NO marketing program worth more than $500 and all programs should be judged by sales.

1001 Ways to Market Your Book – The best place to start is to spend $25 on John Kremmer’s revised book, 1001 Ways to Market Your Book. I don’t know about 1001, but I guarantee you’ll get enough ideas to justify your $25.

Final Cost: – $20.95 plus shipping

Develop a website – Another must, which can be done for under $500 is to set up a good website. For more on this, please click here.

Final Cost : $500

Display your book at BEA – Book Expo America is the largest show of it’s kind in North America. Virtually every publishers of any size is represented at this show. Individual booth space fairly expensive so I have decided that this year I would allow any publisher who buys their printing through www.SelfPublishing.com or www.BooksJustBooks.com between now and show time to display their title in my booth for free. The author will also be given a day pass to the show. (More details to follow)

Final Cost – $0

Join a Book Marketing Platoon: Never heard of a book marketing platoon? Didn’t think so. Come back next month and I’ll tell you all about them. Beyond this, you need to look at ideas one by one. Be careful. For every $500 you spend, you need to sell 75 to 100 books to stay even. Remember this is only a hobby, at this point. Have fun. See you next month.

Last 5 posts by Ron Pramschufer

• ATTN: Vets…Don’t leave it to the historians. Have a story to pass on? - July 20th, 2010
• How did Book Expo America work out this year? - June 30th, 2010
• How did that Publishing Basics Seminar, in New York, work out for you? - June 30th, 2010
• Do you have any plans for Book Expo America this year? - March 19th, 2010
• Self-Publishing and the New Millennium plus 10 - January 14th, 2010