368
Small press brings flexibility, but also means being a jack of all trades while sporting a fairly lean petty cash tin.
To be successful, a company needs to have a product range that will sell, know how to sell it, and also watch every dollar/pound/euro it spends.
One major expense is printing.
Every extra page in a book costs money, just as printing too many units results in cash being tied up in stagnant stock. The smart thing to do is to print books that only have the page count required, meaning not too many 'white space' pages to pad things out, and also not to have too few pages so as to see things squashed up making a book look too busy (that'll harm sales). Simply, there is a middle ground.
A good page count versus cost is around 368, which is actually the target we work to here. If the count goes above 450, it's no longer possible to have the book distributed through most third party channels (without raising the cover price). Having said that, if a book is published with 420 pages, that's also of questionable value as there are other expenses that have to be covered, and that margin is probably just not going to do it. Again, simply, it needs to be balanced so a product (and therefore the business) is viable.
On that note, The Fall of Ossard listed with 368 pages, while Ossard's Hope will launch with 384 (we targeted 368). The base retail price in the US will be $14.99 for the trade paperback, just as it is for The Fall of Ossard. At launch it is quite possible (and we hope) that some retailers will also discount it.
While Ossard's Hope will launch with 384 pages, the original printed proof copy from back in July 2010 (was it that long ago?) held 452 pages, so had to be reduced. While a good 40 pages have been saved with more rounds of editing, other space has been saved by carefully managing the white space throughout the tome.
Don't worry, Ossard's Hope is not printed in 8 point type!
The two books, compared by word count, measure as 125, 000 (FoO) vs 150,000 (OH).
While it won't look it, Ossard's Hope will be 20% bigger.
Some of you may be thinking that there are plenty of other books out there with 600 pages, and even some that hit the shelves at 1000 pages. Yes, that's true. Large publishers selling bestselling authors can spread the cost of printing through economies of scale. I don't know what the print run was for either Rothfuss' A Wise Man's Fear or what it will be for Martin's A Dance of Dragons, but I do know that both prints will easily and obviously dwarf the print runs for the Ossard books. Those titles would count their units shipped in the 100,000's, while The Ossard Trilogy is yet to break 10,000. Maybe that helps clarify things. Maybe it doesn't.
The end result will be a book, Ossard's Hope, that adds solidly to what came before for our readers and will also be viable not just for this business, but for those who choose to carry, support and sell it.
That's the middle ground we were aiming for.
To be successful, a company needs to have a product range that will sell, know how to sell it, and also watch every dollar/pound/euro it spends.
One major expense is printing.
Every extra page in a book costs money, just as printing too many units results in cash being tied up in stagnant stock. The smart thing to do is to print books that only have the page count required, meaning not too many 'white space' pages to pad things out, and also not to have too few pages so as to see things squashed up making a book look too busy (that'll harm sales). Simply, there is a middle ground.
A good page count versus cost is around 368, which is actually the target we work to here. If the count goes above 450, it's no longer possible to have the book distributed through most third party channels (without raising the cover price). Having said that, if a book is published with 420 pages, that's also of questionable value as there are other expenses that have to be covered, and that margin is probably just not going to do it. Again, simply, it needs to be balanced so a product (and therefore the business) is viable.
On that note, The Fall of Ossard listed with 368 pages, while Ossard's Hope will launch with 384 (we targeted 368). The base retail price in the US will be $14.99 for the trade paperback, just as it is for The Fall of Ossard. At launch it is quite possible (and we hope) that some retailers will also discount it.
While Ossard's Hope will launch with 384 pages, the original printed proof copy from back in July 2010 (was it that long ago?) held 452 pages, so had to be reduced. While a good 40 pages have been saved with more rounds of editing, other space has been saved by carefully managing the white space throughout the tome.
Don't worry, Ossard's Hope is not printed in 8 point type!
The two books, compared by word count, measure as 125, 000 (FoO) vs 150,000 (OH).
While it won't look it, Ossard's Hope will be 20% bigger.
Some of you may be thinking that there are plenty of other books out there with 600 pages, and even some that hit the shelves at 1000 pages. Yes, that's true. Large publishers selling bestselling authors can spread the cost of printing through economies of scale. I don't know what the print run was for either Rothfuss' A Wise Man's Fear or what it will be for Martin's A Dance of Dragons, but I do know that both prints will easily and obviously dwarf the print runs for the Ossard books. Those titles would count their units shipped in the 100,000's, while The Ossard Trilogy is yet to break 10,000. Maybe that helps clarify things. Maybe it doesn't.
The end result will be a book, Ossard's Hope, that adds solidly to what came before for our readers and will also be viable not just for this business, but for those who choose to carry, support and sell it.
That's the middle ground we were aiming for.
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