The Cost of Quality Entertainment

Beyond the Rail and Other Nightmares, Coming June 28th!

If you’re on my mailing list, you already know I have a new book coming out. Beyond the Rail and Other Nightmares is a collection of Horror and Dark Fiction stories, thirteen in all, and will be available for pre-order soon.

One of the things I labored hardest over is the price point for my paperback. There was only one non-negotiable factor in my decision, and that was that I wanted to be able to see my book on store shelves, and that meant not going Amazon exclusive. Though there are options, I opted for IngramSpark to print the actual book. They have a calculator, which you can find here, where you can add in your constants and it will figure out printing costs, and tell how much you will earn.

I aimed to price my book under $10 American dollars, and with a 5in x 8in book at 306 printed pages on cream paper with matte cover, per the calculations, this seemed doable. I wouldn’t make a ton on each book, but that’s not the point.

Unfortunately, that was before bookstores got into the mix. It turns out they take a 55% discount in order to shelve your book. At a sales point of $9.99, that discount means they only pay $4.49 per copy, and I’m paying $5.09 just for printing, so I lose $0.59 per copy sold. Not a stable business practice.

I considered changing book size and paper weight, as well as printing companies, but nothing I could do would bring me below the $10 threshold I was looking for without losing money. And I was increasingly unhappy with the quality of the product.

It was time to accept that this price option had gone the way of $6.00 matinees at my local theater ($11.14 at time of writing).

The price I settled for is $13.99. This may seem like a lot for a self-published book, and before I educated myself, I would have balked at the price. The cost to print is still $5.09, but after retailers take their 55% cut, I will make $1.19 per sale.

So, is a high-quality book worth the cost of a matinee movie and a small soda (hold the popcorn)? Just consider the twelve+ hours of entertainment versus the hour and a half you’ll get at the local theater. If it’s still not worth it, the $3.99 e-book may be for you.

Or, given that $12.80 goes to printing and shelving, is $1.19 more than I should expect for over a year of work, with professional editing and cover design? That’s for you to decide. If it comes down to the writing for you, and you don’t know the quality I offer, you should definitely join my list just to get the free novella, Between Bloom and Decay. Emily Singer would have fit quite comfortably between the covers of Beyond the Rail and Other Nightmares, except I committed to it remaining exclusive and free for list members.

If you have any thoughts on the subject, please drop me a line. I would love to discuss it with you.

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