Publishing Your Own Book: eBook or Traditional Print Format?
The following is a guest post from David at MoneyNing, who recently published his own budget travel book. He graciously wrote this post when I asked about this entrepreneurial pursuit. If you like what you see, I encourage you to check out his personal finance blog for more.
In the good ole’ days, only the most common and commercially viable books saw the light of day since publishers carefully pick and choose what they believe the market will digest. As a result, many would-be best sellers don’t even get a chance to reach the marketplace because those authors either didn’t have the connections nor the reputation to get editors to even turn to the first page.
Luckily, those days are over. With the rapid advancement in publishing, inventory and printing technologies, it isn’t a question of whether to publish a book but whether the book should be published through print or digital. When I wrote The Little Budget Travel Book, I chose to go through print even though I was primarily doing business online. Below outlines the reasons why I chose that route.
The Case for eBooks
Whether to publish it as an ebook was a question I pondered long and hard because it seemed like the more natural route. As an internet marketer, I was very familiar with the online buying process. Without a physical product, the lack of shipping and handling also allows more control of the whole sales funnel from advertising to delivery. The entrepreneur in me is saying “the simpler the better”. In addition, ebooks are:
- Trivial to Reproduce - Unlike a printed book, there’s no need to print a physical copy every time someone buys.
- Free to Distribute - As I already have a website, putting a section up for distribution is easy and free.
- Easy to Update - As easy as changing a word file.
- Instant Payment - Since you control the payment process, you receive your payment as soon as someone makes a purchase. With a printed book, it takes at least three months before a sale’s revenue gets to your bank account.
Furthermore (and this may sound counter-intuitive), I actually found that the market is willing to absorb self published ebooks at a much higher price. With less overhead and higher revenue per book, the financial aspect heavily favors an ebook.
The Case for a Printed Book
The path to a printed book is much more complicated. I need to communicate with the printing company who needs to make money, and adhere to the strict rules about specifications of book sizes, margins and fonts used. Then there’s the bookstores. They need to hold inventory, catalog the book and take another cut from sales, and there are other charges that just aren’t necessary in the digital world. On the surface, it doesn’t look like a good option at all, but there are a few tangible benefits. A printed book gives you:
- Credibility - Having your book printed improves your reputation amongst your peers online and off. Forever and ever, you can tell everyone that you are “a published author”. In addition, the book will help my blog and vice versa.
- New Marketing Channel - By having a printed book, I’m able to tap an otherwise untouched market. With it on sale at websites like Amazon and Barnes and Noble, my name is out there just that much more.
- Hands Off Customer Service - When you sell an ebook, you are handling all customer inquiries. When a printed book is sold, customers generally deal with the bookstores for any customer service questions. For someone who’s time is valuable, this advantage cannot be taken lightly.
- A Bigger Sense of Accomplishment - It’s hard to describe the excitement of holding the printed book for the first time. In fact, you can see my reaction when I first got the book in the video below.
The Cost of the Printed Book
As I mentioned earlier, a printed book comes with many charges. Need to make a change? $30 dollars please. Need some more copies? Pay up. It doesn’t stop there…
Setup Charges
- Digital Catalog Fees - $12 a year. The are fees to catalog the book within the online retailers
basically. So it’s a surcharge by the printing company so they will help
you get the book listed on major retailers. - ISBN Number (a barcode for book catalog purposes) - I bought 10 for $275 (works out to $27.50 a book), but you can get one for $125
- Proof - $30 for the first printed copy after you submit the digital files
Each Printed Copy
- Printing - The printing company charges by pages, but you can expect it to be no less than $2 to $3 per copy.
- Bookstores - You actually set wholesale pricing, so you can theoretically control how much the bookstores make. However, if you don’t give them at least 20%, they will not catalog your book. In addition, online stores like Amazon will split the wholesale discount with their customers. For example, if you see a book that is on sale for 12% off, it means that the publisher has set a wholesale discount of 24%.
I’m Thinking of Publishing a Book. When Will You Start to Make Money?
With editing, cover page design and all the costs I discussed, it takes about 100 copies for me to break even. Much of the ROI will depend on the wholesale discount and the actual price of the book, so don’t take this as the rule but a starting reference point.
Will I Do it Again
Publishing the first book was amazing, because the experience was worth all the effort I put in. While many of the benefits aren’t present the second time around, I suspect I will do this again based on the reader feedback I’ve already receive for the book. If you are thinking of writing a book as well, you can contact me through my blog at anytime and I can answer any questions to the best of my ability.
Find more in Entrepreneurial | 8/31/09, 6:27am | Trackback
August 31st, 2009 at 10:38 am
Fabulous post!
I’m in the process of writing a book as a part of a course I teach about stock trading. The first step is to finish writing the @#$% thing, but this is a great perspective from someone who is a few steps ahead of me on the path.
August 31st, 2009 at 11:02 am
Very intresting post,what was the printing company you ended up using?and why did you prefer them?
August 31st, 2009 at 12:04 pm
Why don’t you use lulu.com to self-publish? It costs nothing to setup a Lulu marketplace homepage. It’s all on-demand printing, so there’s really no cost other than your time writing/editing the book.
August 31st, 2009 at 12:06 pm
I also recommend Scribus as a Desktop Publishing application for writing the book. It’s a free download… just Google it.
September 1st, 2009 at 10:06 am
Actually, the route I chose is a no-fee option as well. The ISBN numbers are standard and separate from the self publishing charges. Basically, you must have an ISBN number if you want bookstores to catalog your book.
lulu.com is a great option but the per book cost is way too high for the book I wrote. When I went to use their calculator, the printing cost was $4. Mine is almost half.
I also picked my option because one of my friends used it and recommended it. This meant that if I ever had any questions (which I had lots), he could help answer all of them.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:53 pm
Thank you for posting this! I am a real-estate investor and have been for over 8 years. I am writing a book on property management (how to select the right one before you go broke) and have been trying to decide the format to print in e-book or published book.
Thank you!
Ouida
September 1st, 2009 at 5:06 pm
Ouida: I got your message as well so I will reply here so everyone can benefit.
Q: How many units did you have to buy when you ordered copies of your book to be printed?
A: I didn’t have to buy any. As another commentator mentioned. These are on-demand publishing companies so you can order 1, 10, 100 or even 1000 (of course none too).
Q: How did you get your book into the book stores?
A: The publishing company will handle the interaction between bookstores and them. For online ones like Amazon or B&N, it’s automatic (it literally shows up days after you submit you final proof). Brick and mortar ones are a little trickier, as there are people who will pick for each store. They can provide you with contact information so you can pitch your book to them however.
September 2nd, 2009 at 5:01 am
Thanks very much for sharing your story. I’m stuck on one major technical point and would very much appreciate your advice. Once the book is written how do I go about finding the technical means i.e. software for the download portion? I’d like to set up a mechanism for a customer to pay for the book online and then be able to download it right then and there. Ideally I would like to set up a separate webpage for the book and integrate the download mechanism.
Can you recommend any software programs or websites that will do this for me?
Thanks in advance.
September 2nd, 2009 at 5:52 am
Marcel,
Check out lulu.com. You can setup a “Marketplace” or distribution channel for all your books here at no cost. However, in exchange for hosting this site free for you, you agree to give 20% of your profits (after costs) to lulu. I don’t think it’s a bad deal considering you really don’t have to pay anything upfront and if your book doesn’t sell you are really only out your time. Everything is on-demand printing, so you don’t have to carry any inventory.
You can use OpenOffice or Microsoft Word to write your book. If you want something more sophisticated, try Scribus.
http://www.scribus.net/
Tom
September 2nd, 2009 at 8:49 am
Marcel: lulu.com is a great option if you would like a hands free method of letting your customer buy your e-book.
If you’d like more control, then you should setup a web page and use a service like Paypal or Google checkout to handle payments. This way, you have more control of the whole buying process since most of the process is within your web page where you have complete editing capabilities.
September 3rd, 2009 at 5:49 pm
MoneyNing: one of my concerns with publishing an ebook is the ease at which files can be transferred as opposed to how long and tedious it would be for someone to photocopy a book. Basically, how can you prevent people from stealing/sharing digital files when you are offering it for sale?
September 6th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
Interesting article. I tried writing and ebook a few years ago. It turned out ok but I found that it is harder than it looks.
I’ve never considered writing a ‘proper’ book though. Well done to you.
I’ll have to consider if this route is for me in the future.
September 6th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
What is the company that you used?
September 11th, 2009 at 1:06 am
Great information! My partner and I are looking to publish a book in 2 sizes (pocket book and full size) and also sale it as an ebook. I would also like to know which company you used. I am looking very hard at lulu.com but if some place else can do it for half the cost it is very much worth checking out even if it entails a little more work on my part. Please let the cat out of the bag
September 23rd, 2009 at 3:48 am
Hi,
First of all thanks for this thread. I have been searching for this kind of post from so long.
Am also planning for publishing books (very new to this) but have few doubts.
1) Do we need to take any copyrights for the book which we have written.
2) Shall we have to print the book and then go for distribution or the reverse. I heard that if we give the copy of the book to some publishing company, they will take care of printing, distributing and give us some share in profits or else we can directly sell the book for some amount and wipe off your hands, and the remaining will be taken care by them. Is this true ?
3) If its like as mentioned above.. I mean if we publish and distribute by ourselves, what is the benefit. Where is the profit coming from. I am totally confused.
4) For online sales, is it enough if we just distribute the soft copy in .pdf format or shall we have to take something like ISBN…
September 23rd, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Sowmithri,
I have some answers to your questions.
1) Copyright law is automatic in the US. You just need to notate it somewhere in the book. Copyright XXXX, John Smith. All rights reserved.
2) I think this really depends on what you’re trying to publish. Sometimes established publishing houses have better distribution channels available; but they take more of the profits.
3) The benefit of self-publishing is that you keep the majority of the profits. One of the cons though is that you have to market it. Lulu.com, one of the self-publishing houses, has some marketing services available for a price.
4) If you want to sell your book to libraries or bookstores, I believe an ISBN # is required and lulu.com offers a service to obtain an ISBN. I have mixed feelings about publishing books as PDF… on one hand someone could pirate your work. On the other hand, if your book is popular and becomes viral; it could result in more book sales because someone was able to preview it for free before committing to buy.
September 23rd, 2009 at 9:26 pm
Hello Tom,
Many thanks for the clarifications.
one more small clarification. Am not a citizen of US and I am from India. So. .. do I need to apply for Copyrights or is it also automatic like in US.
Do you have any idea how much it costs to purchase copyrights ?