Hello gentles all, welcome to me squeaking this entry in before the end of the month!
First a pretty little Pride graphic….
Though every month is Pride Month here. And Black History Month. And AAPI, and Women’s History, and and and… minority awareness rocks!
This month has been so busy, I hardly know where to start.
My grad school program started, so I’m officially elbow deep into that. With the rest of me, I’m working on Quills and Cosmos. This month has included reading some amazing submissions, and other such things that I can’t talk about yet. BUT there might be a press release in the next few weeks, and I’ll gush about everything then.
With that fun news on the horizon, I’ve been narrowing down things like printing, distribution, production. All that fun stuff. What does that entail, you ask? LET ME TELL YOU
So we’re weighing out between two different ways to get a book printed. First is offset printing. This means they print up a bunch of books at the same time, and the cost per book is cheaper the more books you buy. (think $5.50 down to $1.50, that area, for purchasing 250-1000 books) Great stuff, BUT they want their money up front. Before you’ve sold anything. Not the best when you’re just starting out. You also have to store all those books before they’re sold. Say this is a 30% of cover price cost.
The other option is Print on Demand. A conference I went to recently (and talked about here) gave me the info that any publisher just starting out should do POD. Let me explain what that is. POD means that you upload your book digitally to the printer’s site, and then as each book is ordered, it’s printed then. This seems ideal, right? BUT the cost per book is higher. ($6.75 and up, depending where you go). There’s also not a ton of places to do POD, so pickings are a little slim. Pros- you don’t have to store the books, or decide how many books you’re going to need before you have any clue what you’re going to sell. Cons- higher price per book, the shipping takes a day or two longer, and you don’t have as many options for your printing specs.
Okay, so you’re thinking, $17.00 book, minus $6.75, and you don’t have to pay storage or a distributor, so that’d leave you with a profit of $10.25. Sounds great!
Except that’s not the whole story.
Retailers buy the books from the publisher. But cause that’s wholesale, they ask (demand and receive) a huge discount. You sell your $17.00 book to them for $8.50—about 50% most of the time. So they’ve paid you 8.50. Now you take out your $6.75, leaving you with $1.75 per book. Not so nice now, right?
(NOTE: if people buy the book directly from the publisher’s website, the publisher does get the $10.25!)
So $1.75 per book. This has to pay the author’s royalties (about 15% of net profit), and the rest goes to the publisher. The publisher who has already paid to have the book edited multiple times and ways, a book cover created, the book interior designed and cleaned up, as well as the marketing/advertising.
People don’t make books to get rich. It’s not possible. We do it because we love books. I specifically do it because I believe diverse books should be available, and diverse authors should be heard.
Now, call to action time. If you can, buy directly from a small publisher’s website. The profit they get from the book is definitely more than they get if you shop from Am*zon. If you can’t do that, shop from Bookshop.org—some publishers have a special site there where you can buy their books and a percentage goes back to them. If you can’t do that—shop at your local indie bookshop! If they don’t carry the book you’re looking for, ask them to order it for you. OR go to your local library and request they get the book. This is a great way to support indie publishers.
Now, it’s not the worst thing in the world to buy a book through Am*zon. (far from the best option, but understandable). Around 45% of books sold go through the big A. It’s nearly impossible to avoid selling through them. (Joe Biel, of Microcosm Publishing manages, and he’s definitely the goal.)
But with just a little more patience, a bit of sleuthing maybe, you can really make a huge difference to indie publishers and their authors.
That's it for now poppets. Happy reading!
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