When the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and author David Mamet released his last book, “The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture,” with the Sentinel publishing house in 2011, it sold well enough to make the New York Times best-seller list. This year, when Mr. Mamet set out to publish his next one, a novella and two short stories about war, he decided to take a very different path: he will self-publish. See the rest of the article.
Your reasons for self publishing may include: keeping creative control of how the book looks and reads. Maintaining ownership of the book. Getting the book to market quickly. Choosing to self publish may be based exclusively on Author Profit – what you’ll make whenever your book sells at a bookstore. Let’s begin with Author Profit and how it’s determined.
1. Profit to the author: when self publishing with Dog Ear Publishing the author’s profit is easy to calculate. Here’s the formula we use to determine an author’s profit when books are sold through Distribution. Distribution simply means bookstores.
Formula:
Retail Price – Wholesale Discount to Bookstore – Cost of Printing = Author Profit.
So, let’s use some real numbers and fill in the formula. Let’s say that you have a paperback that’s 150 pages. The interior is black and white and the cover is full color. The cost of printing at Dog Ear Publishing is $4.28. (Our printing formula is $.02 per page plus $1.28 for the cover = $4.28.) Now, you need to decide on what “Wholesale Discount” you want to give to the bookstores to sell your book. Let’s just use a standard discount of 40%. This is an average and respectable discount that bookstores will accept. Now, let’s decide on a good, competitive retail price for a fiction paperback. I recommend a retail price of $10.95 to $14.95. So, let’s use $12.95 for this example. Now, plug in the numbers to determine the Author’s Profit.
$12.95 (Retail Price) – 40% (Wholesale Discount) – $4.20 (Cost of Printing at Dog Ear Publishing) = $3.57 (Author Profit.)
That’s the basic formula for determining what your “Author Profit” is when selling a book at a bookstore. Of course, this is if you self publish using Dog Ear Publishing. Also, the 40% Wholesale Discount can be lowered to 20% for greater profits. However, by doing this your book will become undesirable to “Brick and Mortar” bookstores. Determining where your book is most likely to sell will help you decide where to set your Wholesale Discount. A Dog Ear Publishing representative will be happy to provide information.
Want to see how we explain Author Profit at Dog Ear Publishing?
Next time, I’ll provide other reasons why self publishing makes sense.
In the meantime, take a look at the new marketing services at Dog Ear Publishing. I’m proud of our latest offerings.
Dog Ear Publishing is a leader in self publishing services. Dog Ear Publishing provides copy editing, print on demand, book order fulfillment and worldwide distribution of books. 866-823-9613. www.dogearpublishing.net. Contact: Miles Nelson at milesn@dogearpublishing.net
Miles Nelson at Dog Ear Publishing 