From proof sheets to royalty reports: what a self-published book can earn
A client just asked what she could plan on making per copy of her book — she’s trying to put together a budget, which is always an excellent idea. Well, I talked earlier about the costs of preparing a book for publication, but hey! We know your book is going to sell, right? So what should we plan on in the revenue column?
I thought it might be helpful to share my response to her, to give you an idea of what a book might actually bring in (per copy — how many copies sell is entirely up to you).
The numbers I gave her are based on these assumptions:
The book is going to be self-published (so the author will the person going to Amazon’s KDP and Createspace subsidiaries, and to Ingram’s Lightning Source or IngramSpark)
The book in question is going to run approximately 350 pages (black ink on white paper), will have a trim size of 6″ x 9″, and will be “perfect” bound (the standard paperback binding)
Here’s my response:
For ebooks, you earn about 70% at most bookseller sites. Amazon (which sells something like 75%-80% of all of the ebooks in this country) pays 65%, minus a fee based on the size of the ebook file. Full-length ebooks typically cost between $3.99 and $9.99. So you’d earn between $3.00 and $7.00 for each copy sold. (If we go over $9.99, Amazon only pays a 35% royalty — very odd.)
For print books, the answer depends on whether the book is in the Createspace/Amazon zone or the Lightning Source/Ingram/Everyone Else zone.
Through Amazon/Createspace —
For Createspace, the equation is comparatively simple. We set a price — let’s say for the point of argument $14.99. The cost of production per copy of the book is deducted from that — somewhere around $5 per copy for your book (I’m assuming that your book will run something like 350 pages). If a copy of the paperback is sold on Amazon, they deduct a further share of 40% of sales price — around $6. Which would leave you with a net royalty of about $4.
So on sales through Amazon.com:
Sales price: $14.99
Amazon’s share: $6.00
Production cost: ~$5.00
Gross Royalty: $ 4.00 (approx.)
If the book were sold on Createspace’s own website (which is what I link to from mine), Amazon “only” skims 20% off the top, leaving you with closer to $7 per copy of royalty.
Sales price: $14.99
Amazon’s share: $3.00
Production cost: ~$5.00
Gross Royalty: $ 7.00 (approx.)
Ingram/Lightning Source
Going through Lightning Source, we get to control not only the list price, but the wholesale discount. Traditionally, bookstores get a 55% discount on orders, but we can set it anywhere from that down to 20%.
At Lightning Source, that same book (according to my calculations) would cost closer to $6.00 to print. If you decided to offer the standard 55% discount, that would leave you with a net royalty of about $1.75. (Now you see why books are so expensive!)
Sales price: $14.99
Wholesale discount (55%): $8.25
Production cost: ~$6.00
Gross Royalty: $ 1.75 (approx.)
We would have the ability to play with all of those numbers — Lightning Source’s discount rate and most importantly the list price — at any time. I can also control the page count in a number of ways, squeezing a bit more text in per page, which would lower the production cost, but make the book a bit less pleasant to read.
The other way to increase the (potential) royalty is to have the book offset printed, and distribute it ourselves. To be cost-effective, however, you’d need to print at least 500 copies of the book or more — and we’re still only looking at a savings of 25% to 50%, with additional costs (and headaches) for storage, fulfillment, and shipping. Plus there’s a large outlay of cash up front.
By the way, I only talked about Lightning Source here, not Ingram’s new self-publishing platform, IngramSpark, because I’m already on Lightning Source. If anyone’s had any dealings with IngramSpark, I’d love to hear about them!
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