Comments on: Self-Publishing Your Book – 6 Tips for Print on Demand Publishing

By: Eero Sorila

Eero Sorila — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 18:28:22 +0000

Thank you for your informative advice Laurie and Gang.
I’m a Vancouver based freelance photographer and writer. My second adventure travel book through Xlibris, SWEET PAIN global adventures of a frugal photographer has just been published.
Because I have the copyright for the book do you think I can now transfer the manuscript with 87 photos to Outskirts Press and have them print the book and take over the marketing from Xlibris.
Thank you in advance for replying at your convenience.
Eero Sorila

By: Gang Chen, AIA, LEED AP BD+C, Author of books on various LEED exams, architecture, and landscape architecture

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 15:13:01 +0000

Here are my responses to your questions:
1)Does OP arrange for the books to be printed and sent to the on-line stores like Amazon, or do you have to get them to the on-line stores yourself (or make the arrangements).
Response: OP arranges for the books to be printed and sent to the on-line stores like Amazon. I do not do anything.
2) You said that “the 100% profit is the difference between my books’ wholesale price and the base price that OP charges me” so how does that translate in terms of a % of the book’s retail price. The way I have set my retail price works out so I receive a little over 20% of the bookstore retail price. What is the % of the retail price you receive?
Response: This is a good question. The advantage of using OP is: the base price is fixed, so you can actually control the percentage of your royalties by setting your wholesale price, i.e., by setting your own retail price and the percentage of your discount to the wholesalers. OP allows you to set your wholesale discount from 20% to 55%. I discovered for POD books, the best thing you can do is to set the wholesale discount at 20%. This is the minimum percentage that you can use to get your books to bn.com and amazon.com. Most of the books are sold at amazon.com and bn.com anyway. I am not crazy about getting my books into a physical book store. So, as long as bn.com and amazon.com and other similar online retailers carry my book, I am perfectly fine.
I simply find out what the prevailing price of similar books is, than I set the retail price so that it’ll match the prevailing price after 10% discount from Amazon.
So, the percentage of your royalties varies for each book, but you can do some simple calculations and find out for yourself for your own books with the info in this post.
See link below to OP, you can find the OP base price calculator and other useful information there:
http://outskirtspress.com/agent.php?key=11011

By: Gini Grey

Gini Grey — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 22:23:44 +0000

Thanks for your response to my questions Gang. I totally relate to you not wanting to sell books individually – I’m the same. That’s why I love that self-publishing companies like AH hook up with a distributer to get them to the stores that sell them for me.

I have a couple of clarifying questions.

1)Does OP arrange for the books to be printed and sent to the on-line stores like Amazon, or do you have to get them to the on-line stores yourself (or make the arrangements).

2) You said that “the 100% profit is the difference between my books’ wholesale price and the base price that OP charges me” so how does that translate in terms of a % of the book’s retail price. The way I have set my retail price works out so I receive a little over 20% of the bookstore retail price. What is the % of the retail price you receive?

Thanks

And Laurie, to answer your question about whether it was worth going the self-publishing route – I’m not sure (but can give it some thought for an interview if you like). At first it seemed great, but then something changed: the wholesale price to bookstores went from a 30% discount off retail to a 15% discount. Neither AH or Ingrams would tell me why (or who was getting the 15% because it wasn’t me!).

Bookstores have since been reluctant to purchase my books (except for on-line stores, they don’t mind). I’ve had people contact me to say that their local bookstore wants to add on an extra charge to bring the book in (except for Indigo Chapters, they sell it at the regular price)so these people hope I will sell it to them (which I only do at workshops) – so I have to redirect them to Amazon etc.

I think I’ll try the e-book and kindle route and see how that works.

Gini
.-= Gini Grey´s last blog post ..Life =-.

By: Gang Chen

Gang Chen — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 17:04:20 +0000

Gini,

I do NOT sell my book at my site, because I do NOT have the desire or the time to do handle the package, shipping for each individual book sale. I want others to do these for me.

I depend on bn.com and Amazon.com and other Amazon sites (Amazon.fr, Amazon.de, Amazon.ca, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.co.jp) to sell my books. I just set my book’s whole sale discount at 20%, whoever is willing to help me to sell the book with this whole sale discount will be able to sell it. Most of the time, Amazon will keep 10% for themselves and then sell my books at 10% to the readers. I even find my books at Target’s website.

The 100% profit is the difference between my books’ wholesale price and the base price that OP charges me.

I set my own retail price: so I control the whole sale price and in turn the royalties that I will get.

The startup cost is pretty low, depending on which package that you choose. It ranges from a few hundred dollars to about $1000.

I always pay extra for editing (about 1.4 cents per word) because it is very important. I can control the content of the book very well myself, but editing is essential. English is my third language (not second) and I want a professional editor to editing it for me. You book will be read by thousands of people, every error that is not corrected during editing WILL be discovered by someone at some point.

My POD books sell much better than my e-books, but I still want the e-book option so that people have one more choice and my e-books are available anywhere people have access to internet.

Gang Chen, AIA, LEED AP BD+C, Author of books on various LEED exams, architecture, and landscape architecture.

By: Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen

Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 14:45:50 +0000

Gini,

Thanks for your insights into self-publishing — would you do it differently, if you were to do it again? Was it worth it? Maybe we should do an interview!

I’m excited to self-publish my e-book, but I don’t think I’ll go the print route. But, we’ll see…

Anyway, I’ve let Gang Chen that you asked this question, and hope he responds!

Laurie
.-= Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen´s last blog post ..How to Create a Strategic Writing Plan – Tips for Organized Writers =-.

By: Gini Grey

Gini Grey — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 00:51:13 +0000

Thanks for this article Laurie and Gang. It’s good to know there are self-publishing companies that give you 100% of the profits. I’ll have to explore the company you mentioned further to see what the start up costs are etc. as I self-published with AuthorHouse and I receive 20% of the retail price (which I set) from book store sales and 40% from their website sales. I understand that this is because they are hooked up with a distributer (Ingrams) that receives a cut and so does the bookstore, so once the book has been printed (and POD books cost more to print in small runs)there is only 20% left for the author.

Do you sell your book mostly from your site, and do you have to arrange for Amazon and other bookstore sales (rather than through a distributer) in order to recieve 100% profit?

Thanks,

Gini
.-= Gini Grey´s last blog post ..Life =-.