As some of you said in the comments, I sort of left this on a cliffhanger talking about how to get the other 79 book outlets to make at least 100 book outlets for sales. Please go read Think Like a Publisher #7 if you have not, or some of this will make no sense. This sales series is meant to work as one large unit.
Alas, before I can go into how to get the other 79 plus sales outlets, I need to once again talk about pricing. I have done a number of major posts about this topic, so not going into it again here. Go argue price somewhere else if you have a problem.
Those of you who think you should price your novel for 99 cents on Kindle and that’s it, just stop reading now. You are a discount publisher and I am talking to regular indie publishers.
—Discount publishers, both traditional and indie, are a different entity and make money on vast numbers of sales with very tiny margins to a small number of outlets. Discount publishers have no regular distribution or bookstore sales.
—Regular publishers, both traditional and indie, make their money in regular sales at regular prices to a vast network of stores and outlets. Regular indie publishers are who this chapter is for.
Here is the price structure I suggest for indie publishers and that works in all the math you will be doing.
PRICING
Electronic Fiction:
…$2.99 for 5 story collections or short novels
…$4.99 for ten story collections
… $4.99 for novels.
(Nonfiction and other projects, including enhanced books are different.)
POD Fiction:
…$7.99-$9.99 for 125-200 page short novels or collections in trade paperback. (5.25 x 8 inch or 5.5 x 8.5 inch trim sizes)
(Note: Price would vary by page count costs. Check the calculators on CreateSpace.)
…$10.99- $14.99 for 200-300 page short novels or collections in trade paper. (5.5 x 8.5 inch or 6 x 9 inch trim sizes)
(Note: Price would vary by page count costs. Check the calculators on CreateSpace.)
…$15.99- $16.99 for 300-450 pages trade paper novels. (6 x 9 inch trim)
(Note: Price would vary by page count costs. Check the calculators on CreateSpace. If you can’t get your book under 450 pages with leading and font and margin issues, you might think of writing shorter books. I have no suggestion for you except to take the price to $17.99 or higher and hope. Large fantasy novels can go to that length and handle the doorstop-book price. And nonfiction can go that large and handle higher prices.)
Okay, we set on pricing? Good, because the above pricing structure works for everything I am about to talk about. Again, check the price calculators on CreateSpace with your trim size and page count to set your exact price. Always look to the Pro Plan number and try to keep the price at least in the 8% and up profit range.
Note: I am using CreateSpace for all POD. For hardbacks, you must go to LightningSource or elsewhere, but for the moment in the early days for trade paper, stick with CreateSpace unless you are out of the States, then go LightningSource and be careful. These calculations are CreateSpace. Make sure you check your own costs of each book.
Discounting
Besides setting normal pricing, now comes the most important element of opening up more outlets for your books: Discount schedules.
As a former publisher of Pulphouse Publishing, I knew the discount schedules that would allow independent bookstores to buy Pulphouse books. And over the last six months I’ve been talking with every independent store owner I could find to make sure these numbers are still valid. They are, and actually make many of the store owners happy. And WMG Publishing has already gotten orders, even though WMG has not started any catalogs, flyers, and only has three varied books in POD.
So schedule your discount as such:
1-5 books: 40% discount (of cover price) plus freight costs.
6-10 books: 45% discount (of cover price) plus freight costs.
11 books and up: 45% discount (of cover price) and free freight.
CRITICAL!! The bookstore must be able to mix and match titles.
(Put no restrictions on numbers of titles. Just overall order numbers.)
Critical!! Dealer Must Pay Ahead for Order at these rates.
Paying ahead and being able to mix titles in an order need to be your company policy. Trust me, you do not want to run an accounts receivable from bookstores, especially in these tough times. I shut Pulphouse down with a solid five-figure accounts receivable and never saw a penny of that money.
Examples
Say you have five books in a series. A book dealer or indie store (to make the best discount) can order two of each of the first four books and three of the newest one. That makes a total of eleven books in the order.
All books in the series are $15.99 cover price. Dealer would pay (11 books x $15.99 =$175.89 x .55 =) $96.74.
Assume your books are 6 x 9 inch trim, cream paper, all around 420 pages. Your cost to order the book would be about $5.90 per copy. (Will vary on page count up and down by a few cents.) So your costs for 11 copies are ($5.90 x 11=) $64.90. Shipping media would be around $10.00 making your total costs $74.90.
$96.74 – $74.90 = $21.84 profit. Or about $2.00 profit per book.
Or to put another way, a 12.5% profit margin.
That is the lowest you would make per book. On the highest discount you give. Period.
Example #2.
Say the dealer ordered five copies, one each in your series. That would qualify the dealer for a 40% discount and the dealer pays frieght. The dealer would pay (5 x $15.99 x .60 = ) $47.97 and pay the $6.00 shipping for a total of around $54.00.
You would have to pay CreateSpace $5.90 per book plus shipping or a total of (5.90 x 5 = $29.50 plus $6.00 shipping =) $35.50.
Your profit is ($54.00 – 35.50 = ) $18.50.
Or about $3.70 per book. Or a 23% profit margin. Wow!
If you sold the same book electronically at $4.99 and 70%, you would make about $3.50 per sale.
The correct discount schedule is critical to selling to bookstores.
Setting a correct price and knowing your costs allows you to set these discounts. Think like a publisher.
What Work Does The Publisher Have to Do to Make this Money from Bookstores?
I had one writer say to me one day, “But I don’t want to have to pack all those boxes.”
After I stopped laughing, I realized the writer, many writers, are still thinking in what is called the “Warehouse Model” of publishing.
Up until a few years ago, and with most publisher’s today, the warehouse model is still used. Vanity publishers make their living getting self-published writers to fall for the warehouse model.
Simply put, the Warehouse Model is when a publisher pays ahead for massive printing costs of a certain set number of books and then the publisher stores the entire print run in a warehouse waiting for sales. (Vanity self-publishers used to store the books in piles in their garages until they rotted and were tossed out.)
POD (Print on Demand) publishing is when the is book ordered and paid for AND THEN is printed and shipped from the printer.
There is no warehousing at all. None.
The book is only paid for by you and printed after you have an order and a check from a bookstore.
So when you get the order from a bookstore and a check, you deposit the check and then go to CreateSpace or LightningSource and order the copies.
You get the copies at your publisher discount.
And then you just change the shipping address of where the books are going.
That’s it!
Let me repeat: Once you get the order, you deposit the check, order the books online from CreateSpace, and change a shipping address.
That’s it! You need to do no more work for the order. You never touch the books or even see them. They go direct from the printer to the bookstore.
Of course, the real work comes first in getting the books available on CreateSpace or LightningSource. And then the work comes in letting the bookstores know about the books. And that’s the part I will talk about in the next chapter.
So I am afraid I have to do another cliffhanger and not yet talk about how to get the other 79 outlets. But you wouldn’t have gotten them if you didn’t first understand discount schedules and pricing structures. Stay tuned.
————————————————
Copyright © 2011 Dean Wesley Smith
Cover photo copyright © Vladimir Melnikov/Dreamstime
————————————————–
This series is part of the income streams for me. And, to be honest, donations keeps me going on these chapters. And anyone who donates a little to the Magic Bakery tip jar, I will send a free electronic book of all these chapters combined when I am finished.
And speaking of the Magic Bakery, this chapter is now part of my inventory in my bakery. (Confused on that, read the Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing post about making money with writing.) I’m giving you this small slice as a sample. I’m giving you a taste, but not selling any of the pie.
If you feel this helped you in any way, toss a tip into the tip jar on the way out of the Magic Bakery.
If you can’t afford to donate, please feel free to pass this chapter along to others who might get some help from it.
And I would like to thank all the fine folks who have donated over this last year. The donations and the comments both after the posts and privately are really keeping me going on this. Thanks!
Thanks, Dean
Dean, I’ve got one book out so far in POD. It’s a YA, a bit over 200 pages and printed by Lightning Source. I priced it low at $7.99 as an experiment, but gave it only a 20% discount, which I expected would result in it being sold only by Amazon and B&N. But it’s listed elsewhere, for example at Powell’s online, but Powell’s has it priced at $11.25, which surprised me. (It’s listed as being in a “remote warehouse,” not in the store, so I presume that means they’ll order it if someone buys it online.) Anyway, I thought this was an interesting way of getting around a low discount.
Linda, if you get the price adjusted, then you can contact Powells directly and give them a 40% discount or more. They clearly wanted your book to go to that much trouble. And funny how they feel the value of your book is more than you do. (grin)
Hello Dean,
I’ve been waiting & waiting to see your thoughts on this; now we know you’re not overly tolerant of returns, remainders, pulp. Homerun!
Off to InDesign, begin figuring out a catalog / flyer… and expanded contact list. Happy, -Steve
Returns are not needed with this kind of discount. If a bookstore wants to order your book on a return basis, they can go through the Baker and Taylor or Ingrams program and get a 32% discount, which most won’t. But if they feel they must, they can go that way. But on orders to your publishing company, cash up front and no returns.
Excellent. I ran the numbers with my CS editions, and it works flawlessly. Very cool.
I notice you don’t mention anything about returns – do these discounts include a “no return” policy? Return policy? Am I jumping the gun on future chapters?
You’re such a tease, Dean. I guess I can forgive you for the cliffhanger since you’re taking the time to give us such great information (grin).
Great to know my planned price for the upcoming POD version of my debut novel matches your suggestions. And thanks for the explicit information about discount schedules. That’s exactly the sort of information rising indie-publishers need these days.
Hi Dean. Thank you for the post.
However, I must disagree with you on the prices of POD. They’re too high, IMO. I wouldn’t pay so much for a book and I don’t actually pay that much. I’m talking as a reader now.
I bought some books last week and I paid 8$ for a 515 pages from NYT bestseller author and it was in a series I follow. And the other books I bought too. And $10 for 500 pages again by NYT best seller and series I follow. This I pre-ordered, but I did that to have the discount. (Plus that they were on free delivery from UK to Greece). So even for my favorite authors, and series that I follow, I don’t pay that much.
But I wouldn’t pay the prices you suggest on POD. And as a writer, I wouldn’t put those prices. Sorry to disagree
I agree though completely with the Electronic prices.
Jacqvern, walk into any bookstore and start studying the pricing and size of TRADE paperbacks. The price will range between $12.95 to $19.95 in fiction, depending on size. Not MASS MARKET paperbacks, but trade paperbacks. The normal price these days across trade paperbacks (which is the size you get out of CreateSpace) is $14.99 to $16.99. Young adult books, which are sometimes thinner, can drop to $12.99 as I suggested.
And again, I am not talking about discount publishers, which exist in regular publishing as well.
Again, folks, mass market paperback is the normal size you find in a grocery store. The slightly taller mass market paperbacks are called quality paperbacks. Trade paperbacks are the larger paperbacks that have trim sizes up around 6 inches by 9 inches, in essence hardback size only without the case binding. POD publishing only produces trade paperbacks for any real decent price. The market these days is going more and more toward trade paperback.
Prices of Mass Market have ranged lately between $6.99 to $8.99. (Standard grocery store paperbacks.) But I am not talking about those. I am talking about trade paperbacks that are the size of hardbacks without the hardback casing around them.
And Jacqvery, great for you for finding books that are discounted. Good luck making any money selling your own books that way. There honestly is a reason in paper books why the normal pricing is what it is these days.
Jacqvern, one more point or question for you. Have you even tried to put up a book in POD yet? You wouldn’t even be allowed to set a minimum price under $12 for a 500 page book of any size. And that would mean that if you sold a book, you would owe CreateSpace money at even $12.00. You clearly bought a mass market paperback or got a remaindered or discounted book. Nothing wrong with that, but not what I am talking about here. Sorry you feel that way. Might as well ignore what I am going to say in the next few chapters. But if you want to actually understand pricing, just get inside a bookstore and study pricing for most books. Get away from the discount table and make sure you are not looking at mass market (regular paperbacks) but at trade paperbacks.
Dean, Question: Is it a good (and your) practice to print the price of the book on the cover? Does it matter to the stores?
g….. Of course print the price on the back cover. Usually the price belongs near the bottom on the back cover. How else is a customer going to know how much your book is? So, yup.
Thanks for this. It’s so nice to know I was right when I figured out how you did that. (Let’s just ignore how long it took me to figure it out, m’kay?)
I do have a question, though… What font do you recommend for the innards? Is it worth paying the licensing fee for one of the “standards”, or is it okay to use a freeware font that looks fairly close?
That’s what’s giving me pause, right now.
Why would you use anything but the one of the standard fonts?? Make it easy for your readers to read. Too fancy and it gets impossible and readers will put the book down and not even know why. Garamond, Times New Roman, Minon Pro, are the normal and favorites for the most part, at least on the last survey I read. I think Minon was first, Garamond was second, Times New Roman was close in there.
Dean,
Why do you advise LightningSource for those of us living outside the US?
Edwin, because they have a different set-up of distribution. Especially into the UK. But honestly, there isn’t a great deal of difference except for the costs up front. Lightning Source can turn out to be a ton more expensive.
Lightning Source (who I’m using) work a bit differently to Createspace. Books are distributed through outlets such as Ingram and Baker & Taylor catalogues. The bookshop orders direct via that catalogue at the wholesale price (I’m offering 40% discount) without reference to the publisher. Lightning Source deducts printing costs and passes the balance (profit!) to the publisher. Shipping is free. But the discount remains at 40% regardless of number of copies ordered.
I am also offering returns (which, in truth, I’m a bit nervous about). Any returns from UK stores I’ve asked to be sent to me; for other countries, they are to be destroyed.
In the light of this, is there anything else I need to be aware of?
Will you be talking about getting books into chain bookstores as well as Indie bookstores? Because I don’t know of any indie bookstores which are still in business.
Jane…sigh…you missed completely what I was saying. OF COURSE Lightning Source and CreateSpace offer discounts through Baker and Taylor and Ingrams. Duh. That’s their normal channels and where your book goes and can be found by bookstores if they want to look through the tiny print. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE go back and read the last two posts in this series and make sure you understand the difference between Push and Pull that I talked about.
Sigh…
I am talking about something COMPLETELY different that just putting up your book, paying the extra for the catalog and then sitting back and waiting for the sales. I am talking about acting like a publisher. It’s fine to go through Baker and Taylor and Ingrams and Amazon. All good. But that’s not how 99% of books are sold. I am trying to show how to get show indie publishers how to think like a publisher and sell your books direct to stores. Not wait for the stores to find your book in the fine print of a distributor catalog.
So, to answer your question, Jane, you are missing EVERYTHING I am talking about. Please read all three of the sales chapters again.
And yes, I will be talking about getting into chain stores. But first you need to understand how to get into indie stores. And you have clearly missed my entire point. Or I clearly haven’t said it right yet.
WhooHoo!
I love y’all’s blogs. I learn more every time and often find that if I’m patient, you’ll answer questions that have yet to be asked.
-Dee
Hi Dean – no, I get it. I have to publicise my book to bookstores to get them to order copies. I’m there 100%.
Where I may have missed your point is… I had assumed that I would publicise my books to the bookshop and they would then order the books through the catalogues when they do their regular order. But you’re saying they would order direct from me, the publisher, not the catalogue?
I can see that this would enable me to offer the bulk discount you talked about and also not have to worry about returns. That makes sense. But why would the bookstore prefer to order direct from the publisher rather than the catalogue?
Have I missed something?
Sorry for the confusion – I am paying attention, honest!
Yes, just with any publisher (Back to the title of this series), the bookstores would order direct from the publisher. (Only difference between you and a big publisher is you don’t take financial statements and set up accounts.) Ordering direct from specialty publishers and indie publishers is normal for bookstores.
And the reason they come to you is because you give them large discounts and free freight for a large enough order, paid up front. Trust me, you can set your discount all you want with LightningSource and that doesn’t affect the catalog pricing and discounting. POD books go into the catalogs with a special symbol beside the book title that lets dealers know that the book is not available, but can be quickly. Thus POD. And the discounts are in the 32% area. (Cataloger must take their 8% cut. Nothing is free, remember.) So by you saying you agree to a 40% discount, you allow bookstores to order it at 32% or in that range. If you short discount, it doesn’t even get into those catalogs.
By offering to mix titles and giving 40-45% discount, and free freight if they order enough, you are making it worth the bookstore’s while to take some risks. And giving them enough room to discount down your book to sell it if it doesn’t sell after a certain time. And part of that risk is having your book on their shelves taking up room. That’s really the large risk for an indie bookstore. Otherwise you book can just sit in a catalog and if someone happens to know about it and orders it, they can get it. But how would any customer know about it.
In essence, it’s a ton easier to advertise directly to a few hundred stores and have your book there so customers can find it than it is to advertise to millions of potential customers.
And the ultimate goal is to make the 1,000 true fans. Sure, nice to have 1,000 bookstores, but tough to do. However, when a reader finds your book on the stands, likes it, and then buys it electronically, including finding all your other work, you win.
Bottom line. Having a book sitting on a bookstore shelf will not only make you money, but will advertise all your other products that are not on that shelf. Paid advertising. You get paid.
There are freeware fonts that look like standard fonts. Don’t have to go all fancy or hard to read.
Also, having the font on your computer doesn’t mean you have the rights to use it commercially in something that’s printed. I don’t have the Minon font on my computer, but here’s my license details for my copies of Garamond and Times New Roman:
“your use of this software is limited to your workstation for your own publishing use”
Does that mean it’s okay for me to use in a book? It sounds like it, but the link to read further license details is bad, and I can’t find the info on the creator website, to get the details and definitions. Thus my concern.
@Carradee:
As I understand it, you only really need to be concerned about the fonts you use on the covers of your ebooks / POD books. When you send an ebook to one of the distributor sites, the innards of the book (as you put it) are converted to whatever font the distributor sites and e-readers support.
In other words, you don’t need to worry about having to license Times New Roman yourself in order to upload an ebook to Amazon. You already have permission to use the font in your manuscript; it came in your word processing software (Microsoft Word or OpenOffice or Corel WordPerfect or whatever).
And when you upload your story to Amazon, you’re making the text available, not the font itself. The text will be displayed in whatever font each customer’s e-reader can support; the most common fonts are licensed by the companies which produced the various e-readers, and obscure fonts will just be ignored, the text displayed in whatever default font the e-reader uses. Or there’ll be an error and that section of text won’t display at all.
(This is why you probably don’t want to use obscure fonts in the text of your story. Optimus Princeps may look gorgeous, but it isn’t a common font, so scrap it and use Garamond or Times New Roman instead.)
As for POD, I have read that the printers purchase the licenses themselves. If you use a standard font, the licensing fee (divvied up by an estimate of how many customers the printer will get during the licensing period) is just one of many factors that go into the per-book fees you pay. If you choose a really obscure font, the printer might have to buy a license just for your project, and might pass the cost of that on to you, but you can easily avoid that scenario by not choosing fonts no one else has ever heard of.
Yeah… Only a week ago I got stumped by the same question. I suspect it shows.
Thank you, Susan. Spot on the money. And most people don’t know the fees are paid by the printer in licenses to owners of the font designs, not by the publishers unless they are buying obscure fonts.
Well said and thank you!!
Dean – thanks for that clarification – that makes a tonne of sense.
Edwin – I’m in the UK and found using Createspace would get my books into Amazon.com, but not Amazon.co.uk.
I also found postage costs for the proofs were really expensive because of having to be sent overseas. Transit times were longer, and there’s always a concern there could be a problem in customs.
That’s why I’m using Lightning Source. But you should do your own investigations, as this is just my personal experience.
Dean posted this link on this very subject some time ago:
http://zoewinters.wordpress.com/2011/02/13/why-i-still-recommend-using-lightning-source-over-createspace/
If you’ve not done POD before, I would suggest testing out your skills first using CreateSpace (or even Lulu, as their help pages are better and they have a Europe base (cheaper postage!)- just don’t use them for publishing your final book). Your mistakes will cost you less that way.
One slightly off-topic side note on doing covers with Lightning Source. Their printer demands a total ink limit of 240%. This is a problem especially for areas of black. If this makes no sense to you (like it didn’t for me), here’s a link I found super-helpful:
http://www.newselfpublishing.com/TotalInkLimit.html
Folks, stay away from Lulu until you know a ton more about publishing than I do. I have looked them over and ran screaming. Go find out for yourself and report in, but Lulu is after the warehouse model for most writers, so extreme caution if you go there. They were the big one at one point and people still swear buy them, but wow are they more expensive and like LightningSource, dangerous to beginners.
Okay, now I’m confused.
A point of clarification, please: are you saying writers outside the US should use LightingSource, or writers shipping to stores outside the US should use LightningSource. The latter makes sense, but I’m not sure how the company’s distribution system should affect the former.
Perhaps I’m just being dense (happens now and then) but I don’t see why I can’t simply change a shipping address as easily from Canada as from the States.
Edwin, see my previous post. Hell, I don’t know and I’m sorry I said that. Use either CreateSpace or Lightning Source and then report back in here on the reasons one worked or one didn’t. I retract that statement I made and very sorry for the confusion. I honestly don’t know.
Dean,
I don’t have the inventory to deal with bookstore orders yet but I will soon so I appreciate the post.
I reiterate the question that someone wrote above: Why LS for out of country? I live in Greece and I use CreateSpace and I like it a lot. I don’t see any problem and my print book is available not only on the US Amazon site but also the Amazon sites in the UK, Germany, France, Canada, and even Japan. Unfortunately it hasn’t made it to the Chinese site yet but who knows? The point is, that’s good enough international distribution for me for now. I’m happy. What’s the advantage of LS for out of US publishers?
Oh, one other thing that I wanted to mention. When I received the proof copies of my book I was surprised at the high quality of the printing and binding. I have ordered books recently from top New York publishers and none of them come close to the quality of CreateSpace. Some of the paperbacks from New York publishers are appalling in their cheap feel – like they will come apart in your hands – but you can be sure with CreateSpace that your book will be well-bound and attractive, at least as much as you have given it a good cover and layout.
John, I honestly don’t know because I live inside the States. I like CreateSpace for numbers of reasons. Amazon being the main one. Good quality being a good second reason. But Lightning Source does have more distributors overseas, if that is something you worry about as Jane was worrying about. That’s about it from what I can tell. But LightningSource is far, far more expensive to start-up in. So, to be honest, I’m going to stop saying that. I’ve just been listening to a few who live out of the States and now you are giving me conflicting information, so I return to “I honestly don’t know.” And I will stop saying that. (grin) Thanks.
Dean, I’m sorry my post offended, but that’s just the way life is.
I don’t have an unlimited budget for books, and since I’m reading between 2-6 books per week, between 400-700 pages each, it’s a lot of money I have to spend. Reading is like breathing to me, but life gets in the way. And I’m not talking about the discount table. Hard paperback doesn’t say anything to me. I don’t look at the package.
Quote:”Might as well ignore what I am going to say in the next few chapters.” Well, I liked very much your posts, and I still do. And I want to have the whole series.
I don’t know how to reply to that quote. It bothers me though.
Quote: “But if you want to actually understand pricing, just get inside a bookstore and study pricing for most books.” I respect your opinion, however, the fact that I’m an ex-auditor, having audited publishing houses, and that I’m a business consultant, might as well explain I’m not that ignorant regarding prices and markets.
However, respectfully I’ll refrain from posting any other comments in the future on this site, although I’ll continue to read your posts. It was not my intention to offend anyone. It was my opinion.
Take care
You didn’t offend me or anyone, Jacqvern. Not in the slightest. I am talking to publishers, not writers. As a consumer, you like discount books. Not an issue by me. I understand that, even though as an author, I seldom make any money on discount books when my publisher sells them at discounts you are talking about. And as an author, I tend to like to have authors making money. Just my bend. (grin)
But your comment fell right into that discussion about pricing that I didn’t want to get into here. And even though you claim to be a business consultant, but don’t know the difference between trade paper and mass market paper, and I needed to be clear to all my other readers. Mass market is the small paperbacks. Trade paper is the size of a hardback and thus priced between a paperback and a hardback. And in publishing, trade paperbacks is the only paper area of publishing actually growing. Hardbacks and mass market paperbacks are shrinking in sales. And when you go to CreateSpace, you produce a trade paperback.
So I was trying to be clear is all. You did not offend. I just wish indie writers would understand that when they decide to price a novel at 99 cents, or a large novel in trade size at the minimum price they can do, they are discount publishers. Again, nothing wrong with that at all, but not who I am talking to here. Discount publishers are a separate area of publishing and a valid one. Just not what I am talking about here at all. I am talking about oranges. Discount publishing is prunes. Not the same at all.
Sorry I was so harsh and clear, but had to be.
Thanks, Susan & Dean. That answers my question.
Dean, very informative post, thanks for the guidance.
On another note, I’m looking for a top-notch, detailed content editor, the kind of person who’s not afraid to rip a story apart without worrying about the author’s feelings. Any ideas how to find this person? Recommendations?
Michael, Why? Why not just trust your own voice and ability and get a decent copyeditor?
Dean, you suggested $4.99 for an electronic version of a novel. That can cover quite a bit of ground. I think technically a novel can be as short as 40,000 words. Do you think they should be the same price whether it’s 50,000 words or 90,000? Or maybe have the lower end at $3.99?
Terry, up until the 1950s most novels were under 40,000 words, actually.
Short novels, meaning books from 15,000 to 30,000 words I price at $2.99 electronic right along with short five-story collections. But anything over 30,000 words is a full novel and I like $4.99 for that. The $4.99 is under the five buck impulse buy and yet enough to be a valid amount for readers to pay, outside of the discount mold. And yet under what most New York publishers charge. And yet that amount will allow some of the ideas for distribution of electronic books to stores that I will talk about in future articles in this series.
Hey Dean. Love the post, you know I like seeing the math. And I know you’re already getting a lot of confused responses here. I’m not trying to add to that.
But I did spot one issue with your plan as stated above, and that’s the Createspace -> B&N.com channel. Not sure if you’re just planning to skip B&N.com, or if you have something else in mind there, but here’s what I saw:
CS demands a 60% discount for extended channel sales, that is, B&N, Baker&Talor, Ingrams. Not talking about the indie stores you mentioned above – that flows great, since they’re ordering through you. But none of the prices you set work with a 60% discount, so that means Createspace won’t even allow your books into the extended channels. No B&N.com listing. No Ingrams listing. No Baker&Taylor listing.
Math: at 85 cents plus 1.2 cents per page, a 200 page book costs $3.30 to print. You suggested selling 100-200 page books at $7.95. At a 60% discount, that’s $4.77, which is $8.07, too high. In fact, the largest page count CS will allow into their extended distro at $7.95 is 194 pages, and it’s break even at that point. At 150 pages, you make only fifty cents or so per book. The same is true of your other price points – the break even point is near the top of your page ranges, and the income from B&N.com sales will be very low through most of the ranges.
Wild suggestion here. While I know Lightning Source is less user friendly when it comes to errors, perhaps it’s time to put that 20% discount into play? Hear me out:
Set the book up on Lightning Source. Set the discount at 20%. You are now on Amazon and B&N.com at a 20% discount, making strong income on each sale there.
Step 2, continue with your plan as outlined above. Send catalogs to indie stores, offering books at precisely the prices and discounts you mentioned above. Do it *just* like you describe in this article, except that you’re ordering through LSI instead of CS.
Result? Your Amazon and B&N.com sales (and anyone else ordering direct through Ingrams or B&T) are at 20% discount, making you solid income on each. These will represent a lot of sales, potentially – so the short discount is advantageous. If the retailer will take it, give it to them.
Meanwhile, the indie stores with whom you are cultivating a relationship are buying from you – and you’re placing the orders for books direct from LSI, shipping them direct to the stores. Yes, at a higher discount, but that’s OK – it’s the price of getting in through the door.
Your method as described above gets you into Amazon at 40% discount and indies at 40-45% discount, but locks you out of B&N.com and any other online retailers big enough to make it hard to sell to directly.
If you can deal with the LSI fees for book changes and corrections, the LSI variant gets you into Amazon and B&N.com at a 20% discount, and still gets you into the indie stores at 40-45% discount. Same effort. Same output of work. Higher profits from Amazon sales, profits possible from B&N.com sales. Seems like a winner to me, IF you can avoid paying multiple fees for changes and corrections to your book on LSI.
Thoughts?
Weird, Kevin, and I honestly have no idea what you are talking about. Honestly, I couldn’t follow it. You see, the 144 page book that WMG has up for $7.99 through the extended distribution is in all three catalogs and has actually sold copies. And sure, WMG only makes about 62 cents per sold copy (which is a little over a 8% profit), but they are selling and in the catalogs. So not a clue what you are talking about with the extended channel sales. And also the $15.99 priced books are also selling in all three channels, including B&N. And we made just under $1.00 per book on those in those extended channels.
(And to be honest, I don’t much care about the extended channels. They are nice, but I don’t pay the $39.00 on CreateSpace to get into them, I pay the $39.00 pro plan to get much, much cheaper publisher copies for what I have been talking about in these posts.
So I think information is wrong and if I could follow what you were saying, I might be able to spot where it is.
And I do understand the 60%. Got that just fine. But my numbers work out just fine. How do I know????
Simple: CreateSpace has a calculator that tells me EXACTLY TO THE PENNY how much I will make per sale through each channel. That’s how I know. (grin)
The calculator to tell you exactly how much you will make per book in extended distribution, including B&N, Ingrams, and Baker and Taylor. Go to https://www.createspace.com/Products/Book/#content2. (When you get to the link, hit the “Distribution and Royalties Tab at the top.)
Then just plug in your page count (144 pages for our WMG book) 8.5 x 5.5 trim. $7.99 price. Comes up with about 60 cents per book. Yup.
As I said, I have no idea what you were talking about because I couldn’t follow most of it and even thinking about a 20% discount to any store is just not understanding the book business. Why do the extended channels require a 60% from publishers? Simple, they are in the returns programs.
As I said, I understand that my profits through those channels is down under 10% per book. I’m fine with that because it’s still decent and more than double what New York expects to make. And I don’t count on the extended distribution channels. And don’t much care. We are selling through them, but it’s a shrug. I made more selling to one bookstore than I made in two months extended distribution.
So my question back is why so many people keep caring about getting into the fine print in a catalog? Makes no sense to me. Just get your books there and forget them and take the profit that comes in.
Quote: ” And yet that amount will allow some of the ideas for distribution of electronic books to stores that I will talk about in future articles in this series.”
I read you saying that in a previous post too. Really caught my attention. I am eager to read what you have to say regarding this point.
Edwin – as you’re on the same continent as CreateSpace, you’re probably fine with CS.
And, yes, they will ship anywhere, so you don’t need to worry about that.
Just, for me, being in Europe, I went with Lightning Source. That’s not to say other Europeans might have a different opinion. I’m also on a learning curve here, so I may not be right in all things.
Go with CS and see how you get on. The only thing you “should do” is what seems right to you.
Dean, to answer your question, I really like having content editors look at my book. In my opinion, one of the problems with some indie books is they haven’t been edited, content or otherwise. There are so many advantages to indie publishing, which I have recently discovered, but one of the disadvantages is you are responsible for the cover, the editing, the formatting, and the promotion. I want my product to be as good as the traditional publishers, and therefore, I will pay for good editing. Editors see things that I don’t see, but many readers might.
Okay, I understand now. The shipping calculator on CreateSpace makes everything clear. Yikes!
One solution to the problem would be to use CreatSpace for Canada and the US first and LightningSource for the rest of the world later on. That way I’d be able to experiment cheaply and still hope for business from elsewhere later on.
Which brings me to another point: how do I set the cover price $1 higher in Canada than in the States?
Thank you for the help.
You, too, Jane.
OK, I’ll try again.
Your 144 page book is toward the LOW end of your $7.95 pricing range. The barrier happens at the high end (at about 194 pages for a $7.99 book). Anything over that won’t be allowed into extended distribution. And a book that is 190 pages will be allowed in – but you’ll make about six cents per copy. Your page ranges for the various prices were a bit off, that’s all. I think the cutoff for the $7.99 price should be around 150-160 pages, if you are using Createspace, but definitely cannot go above 194.
About the other… Here’s your book, via Createspace and LSI.
Math: For a 144pp book selling at $7.99, the printing costs $2.60, the extended retail takes $4.79, total: $7.39, so you earn 60 cents.
Same book, selling at 20% to the same chain at the 20% rate which they find acceptable: $2.77 printing (LSI charges more), $1.60 to retailer, $4.37 total. You earn $3.62 a book.
I get that you find short discounts to be an alien thing. I get that short discounts were not the norm for bookstores in general. I get that you cannot short discount for indie bookstores if you want to sell to them today.
Online retailers are a different story. Online retailers have basically zero overhead, so the 20% is very nearly pure profit. Online retailers are perfectly willing to take a 20% discount.
The bottom line: Amazon treats a 20% discount LSI book precisely the same as Amazon treats a 40% Createspace book. B&N.com treats a 20% LSI book precisely the same as they treat a higher rate (they don’t actually get 60%, some is lost in the middle) Createspace book. There is no functional difference to you, the publisher, when dealing with online stores – except that you get paid more.
The issue of having to pay for changes with LSI is still relevant, though. Unless you’ve had some practice making print books and know your stuff, Createspace might be a better place to practice in first, because the LSI costs for changes will quickly eat up any extra profit you make there and then some.
Kevin,
Got it, and I should have been clear on that point. Thanks. Of course, as the page count gets higher, up your price to keep your profit percent in the correct range. I looked back and realized I phrased that like finite limits and I have to stop doing that. And will go back here in a moment and fix that in the article itself. Actually, I would bump the price of a 200 page book up to $9.99. And I would adjust the $15.99 price upwards as it neared the price percent I wanted to make.
And again, this is through extended distribution, not through what I am talking about here. I never have much thought about the extended distribution except as a shrug…nice it’s there. I use the pro plan to get the cheap publisher’s copies to do the program I am talking about. Sales through the fine print in those catalogs is just great if you get them. They are counted as outlets, but like some online stores, I tend to not pay a lot of attention. I want my book there, just not changing much to get them there. Is that clear? You won’t make a living or support a publishing company off those extended distribution channels. But you will make some.
And you are still trying to tell me that a 20% sale discount through one store is worth getting rid of all extended distribution channels and sales to all other stores? Sorry, don’t think so. Online stores are important, but again, even the most recent numbers are to be believed, that’s still not going to 75% of all book outlets. My goal is to get to 100 or 1,000 outlets. I am not going to do anything silly like short discounts and cut out outlets purposefully. Sorry, just not what these articles are about. I’m trying to help people open up their minds to more outlets, not tell them to cut out outlets.
Kevin and everyone, pricing for POD fixed in the post so it is clear that you need to check and are within a range depending on page count and trim size.
Thanks, Kevin. And sorry, folks, that I didn’t make that clear the first time through.
Thanks, Dean. That’s about as clear as can be, now.
About the other – I’m not for a second suggesting you cut outlets to get more income from Amazon/B&N. You’ve pretty well got me convinced with these articles, and I’m reading them deeply to catch as much as I can from them.
What I *am* saying is that your plan as written involves publishing to Amazon at a 40% discount (Createspace locks you to this) and B&N etc. at 60% discount (again, locked to this). Then *outside* of those Createspace-managed distribution channels, you’re marketing to and taking orders from indie bookstores, shipping the books to them at a discount based on their order size, from 40-45% (plus free shipping for larger orders). So you’re already offering a bigger discount to indies than to Amazon, if they order 6+ books.
What I am wondering is, why not do the same thing through Lightning Source? Sell to indies at the same 40-45% rates you are suggesting, using LSI to ship to them the same way you’re saying to use Createspace. And set the Amazon/B&N discount to 20%, instead of 40%/60%.
Amazon is the biggest bookstore in the world right now. About a third of all books in the US are bought through Amazon, maybe more (and growing). You’re likely to make a decent number of sales there. Why not maximize the income on those sales?
Don’t cut out the indies. Keep offering the same 40-45% to the indies. Just do it through LSI instead of Createspace, and offer the big online retailers a “default discount” that’s more advantageous to you.
Aside from the costs to make changes and corrections on LSI (which is significant, and is why I’ll be using Createspace for my first attempts anyway), I don’t see a downside to this. What am I missing?
Kevin,
You can do exactly as I am suggesting and will suggest in coming articles with LightningSource. No issue that I know if, but I have not tested it yet.
But my point is that if you set the discount of Amazon and B&N to a short discount, that stops you from going into the Ingrams and Baker and Taylor catalogs (by my reading of LightningSource discounting rules) and getting some orders through the catalogs. And that’s why I would never do that. I’ll give the 60% discount just fine if I can get to everyone who wants to order a WMG book. Anywhere, any time, through any source.
So I think what you are missing is that by putting it through LightningSource and opting for the short discount, you cut out the catalogs, and thus stores that want to order one special order for a customer through the Baker and Taylor catalog. That’s why your idea does not work.
What I am going to talk about won’t get to ALL stores. It will get to some, and over time, maybe a few hundred will be ordering from you regularly which will make you very rich if you have enough product. But I still want those other thousands of bookstores to get a WMG book for a customer.
So I stand by my statement. Short discounting is just silly for a publisher to do unless you have a very limited product with high demand.
Zoe mentioned that using the 20% discount does get you into the catalogs (Ingrams, B&T, etc.), or at least that it had done so for her.
However, I could see that an indie bookstore might not want to bother with ordering a book that showed as having a low rate. I actually called my local B&N a while back, to see if I could order her book there. I could, but the guy I spoke with downplayed it. Yes, he could get it, but it was POD, and I had to pay in advance if I wanted it. Wasn’t enthusiastic about making the sale, sorta down on the idea.
Which was interesting, at the time. But now I’m wondering if his computer might not have raised a red flag, had the book been listed at a 40% rate instead…
Indie bookstores snort at 30%. They would just laugh at 20% plus shipping. In essence, even if I am wrong and it does allow the book to be listed, no bookstore on the planet is going to buy it. Yeah, that’s what I want. I want to turn bookstores away from my books. Yup, that’s a plan.
Thank you. I will buy your book when I have birthday money. I have felt like a complete welsher by reading and not tipping. I’ve taken your good karma advice, though, and posted links to your site for everyone I know who might write a book. A few are published authors. My joke as a student was that ” I brought the audience. ” I just never thought it would be all I could bring, past school.
Dean, Love your discussions and am learning a lot. A couple of things from my wife’s and my perspective. Short story and novel lengths are pretty malleable, so it seems to make more sense to price them according to word count. We’re looking at arranging short story collections into a fairly consistent word length, and pricing them at $2.99. That may result in some collections having more stories than others, but hopefully a consistency in length that the reader will appreciate. Of course we can then bundle even more stories into a larger collection and offer a lower price per word as an incentive to buy in bulk.
Not going to POD at the moment. My wife looks at the publishing world with a jaundiced eye to those doing things the traditional way just because everybody’s done it that way. Not to say you’re not ahead of the curve, but there will be even more drastic changes to come. Here’s a question, why shouldn’t the writer get a consistent return from each book sold? The price imposed on top of that, depending on the medium is just the overhead required for those customers who prefer a more expensive format or distribution channel. Seems radical at first, but why shouldn’t an independent book store charge more than the POD cover price for the convenience of being able to browse and feel the book, and take it home right away? Rather than requiring a discount from the author/publisher, the book store should charge the customer for the service they provide, which should also include good advice on what to buy if they’re a smart book store.
In the same vein, I disagree that the price should be printed on the book as well. It’s not like a book store always charges the price printed on the cover anyway. I think we’ve still got a lot of what Kris calls the produce model for books built into our brains. It’s not that we expect that we can force a new way of thinking on an unwilling group used to doing business a certain way, but I won’t be surprised if some book stores and authors start to do things the way we suggest. We’re in a very disruptive phase right now in literature distribution, and the future will belong to those who figure out how to make it work for everybody.
Thanks, Frank, for the comments.
As for trying to change the thinking of independent bookstores, good luck. I know many owners and was one myself. ID bookstore owners are a rare breed and are going to supply books to their customers, no matter where they come from, if a customer wants them, or the owner thinks a customer wants the book. So they are going to make their percentage and go with the cover price even if they could make more, and even if the price is not on the book. But by putting the price on the book, you save them the time of looking the price up when the book comes in and putting a sticker on it. They hate that kind of work.
Produce model has nothing to do with selling to stores. Produce model is a way to describe a book as an “event” and how the book must be sold within a certain time or it spoils. Pricing or discounting will not change that at all. But what will change it is the ability of a bookstore to order a book at a decent discount at any time over the years. So their customers can find and get the books they want when they want them instead of being sent to a used bookstore.
And your idea about formatting to length works great. That way your business pricing can always be the same. Good idea. Kris and I with WMG Publishing are selling stories to number of stories as I have said. Buy one story for 99 cents or get five for $2.99, which is saving about two bucks. WMG Publishing has a couple of ten story collections for $4.99 which is about 50 cents per story.
Thanks for the comments.
Just another (belated) point on Jacvrn’s post about price and affordability:
The thing about print books is that they can be resold. As long as there are print books — and Dean’s pricing and methods show us that we CAN get paper books out there — there will be a used market.
In the old old days, that’s what book prices counted on. Few could afford the cost of a new book, but the price could be shared by trading and reselling.
With ebooks, we can’t do that so well, but we can offer the books cheaper than a paper book. Still, it would be nice if we could still offer the variable price ranges that the used book market offered, so we could cover more audience.
Camille
Great insights! They made me want to jump up and down for joy.
I work in an indie bookstore and the honest truth is we need to turn over a book 5 times to keep it on our shelves.
I would love to see more indie titles on our shelves, but the price is a huge mountain for us to over come.
Customers balk at anything that is paper back over $14.00.
We need to have at least 42% discount and that’s shaving it really close to the bone for us. 45% is much nicer.
Brick and mortar bookstores indie bookstores like the one where I work (it’s been family owned and open for more than 30 years) have deep roots into the community, and we want to stay. We don’t want to fold up and disappear like so many others have all ready. By offering unique reads at customer affordable prices, we can make a profit and do just that.
And if you live near one of us, don’t hesitate to contact us for an event or signing. We can’t compete with the chain stores for prices and so we rely on in-store events and our amazing customers coming to them to keep us floating!
Dean, This is really, really good stuff. I’m sorry if you’ve already answered this, but are you planning to collect these posts and offer them either as an ebook or a POD book? I would really like to buy a copy . . .
Dean,
Thanks for all the great information and tutorials. I come from the independent film world and I’ve been looking into self-pubbing for a long time. I have two novels (both around 40,000 words) that I’m putting the finishing touches on with plans to release one of them in early-mid May, and the other in June. I’ll be writing a third novel to release by the end of the year and will hopefully be publishing works by at least 2 other authors by the end of the year.
I have come over to your site by way of Konrath’s (where I’ve been basking in (reading about) the goldrush glory for a month or more) and I have to say, these pages are a breath of fresh air. You write about real world distribution with real world goals, strategies and real world work. That other site talks about LUCK, hope, 99¢, lists and getting “found”. I’ve spent enough time in fantasy-land in the indie film world, it’s time to get down to real, sustainable business.
Like I said, I’ve planned on self-pubbing for awhile now (my motto: If I’m going to bet, I’m going to bet on myself.) and your site has put me on the right track. I’ll be learning to format and upload some short stories this weekend using your tutorial. I want to point out that I’ll be pricing them at 99¢ so after they get posted, I’ll just sit back and let the gold rush in. (grin)
Thanks man! Can’t wait for the next entry in the series!
Thanks, Nathan, for the great comments. Sounds like you have a background to really help your publishing work.
And Steve, thanks! And yes, the first three chapters are already up, the second three as soon as I get done with this workshop, then the third three or four or five in the sales series as a unit. Then when I am all done I’ll put them all together in a large book. At least that’s the plan. (grin)
Dean,
I just opened a publishing company and have found everything you have said in these 8 posts to be spot on. Thank you so much for taking the time to write this material down and share it with the community. I am *really* looking forward to finding out the secret to the 79 outlets. I think I know the gist of it, but I am sure you will have some perspective and views that will be helpful.
-David
Dean, any chance (I know it’s a longshot due to legal crap) that you are going to address contracting with other authors? I ask because if it takes 3 years to begin making profit on your own book it will take 3 or 4 times that long when publishing someone else’s work due to the splitting of net revenue. Also, how long should a contract be for? Just a few questions running through my head that I hope you might address in future posts. Thanks.
Thanks, Dean–I’m looking forward to having this as a reference. I very much appreciate you taking the time to lay all this out for the rest of us.
Okay Dean –
I will give your regular pricings a try… as an experiment of course.
And I will give it three months–
Yours, Cyn