PRICING THE BOOK

After getting the final quote from the printer the news is not good. Let me explain.

The first edition of the book was priced at $11.95. This is a pretty good price. But the problem was, bookstores get a 40% discount when they purchase my book. So I get 60% of the price of the book. Well that sounds dandy! But then there's the cost of paper and printing. Take that out of the 60% and I get a whopping ¢55 a book. That is not good.

Now please don't think I plan to make millions from the book. That is not why I made the book. I needed the book myself. But after all the work I put into it, it sure would be nice to at least break even. Not to mention my editor (who is also the CFO, who is also my wife) would like to see some income coming to the family from me as well. I can't just run around to 151 playgrounds just for fun. :)

So with the addition of Newbury, Newburyport, and West Newbury and 20 extra pages for the second edition, I definitely needed to increase the price. So I calculated and cringed with the extra paper and printing that $14.95 would pay for the increase AND give me $1 in return for each book.

Well, that $14.95 price was prior to getting the final quote from the printer. Once I got that, things were looking really poor. After deducting the printing and paper charges, I now made a really big whopping ¢0. That's right, after printing I was making EXACTLY nothing. Zilch. Not a penny. And that was just the price of paper and printing. That doesn't include the cost of other "supportive" book supplies like boxes, packing tape, mailing, etc.

Now let me back track a moment. After printing 1000 copies of the first book, and selling them (or giving comps to the media and libraries because I LOVE the libraries), I made <-$1000>. That's a negative sign behind that dollar sign. So, I didn't even break even. But I knew this would be the situation going into this project. I needed to print and sell something around 1500 copies to break even. Well, the 500 second edition printing puts me into the 1500 copies. But that means I must make a profit selling the books.

With the second edition and the $14.95 pricing, it pretty much determines I will make nothing and the CFO will sigh. That's not good. So, I have agonizingly finalized the price at $15.95 and returns me to the ¢60 a copy range. Which, out of all honesty, is really not that good for a self-published book. I read in one of those "Self-publish your book and make millions!" books that you should be pricing your book at 50% profit after all the production. 3% is close isn't it?

After all my grumblings and moments of giving up, my wife, editor, and CFO never gave up on ME. She has encouraged me to finish the second edition even if it makes nothing and we have to eat wood chips ground cover for dinner.