November 1, 2006
A SIDE BY SIDE PRICING COMPARISON
OF FOUR LEADING PUBLISHERS
They say hindsight is 20-20. They also say "...
If I knew then what I know now..." But what if you DID
know now what others wish they knew then? What if foresight
was 20-20? Imagine the decision-making prowess you would wield
if you could look into a crystal ball and see four different
futures for your book, after it was published.
Abracadabra!
Below is a pricing and profit analysis of an actual
book published by Outskirts Press, along with a comparison of
how three leading publishers would price the same book (based
upon pricing information available on their respective websites,
or in one case, pulled kicking and screaming from the clutches
of their customer service department).
Notice the higher profit, lower retail price,
and lower per-copy price. Even on the surface it looks good,
but dig deeper to understand just how valuable pricing flexibility
is for your book. The kind of pricing flexibility only
Outskirts Press offers.
Let's analyze this bar graph, box by box, starting
from the left:
The profit-per-book is the actual dollars-and-cents
received by the author for each copy sold from Amazon or Barnes
& Noble.
The middle box: The retail cover price is the actual listed price
for the book with Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Since Outskirts
Press lets authors set their own retail price, this 288 page paperback
is priced at $13.95 with us. Publishers U and X do not give the
author any choice, and their retail prices for a 288 page paperback
are $17.95 and $21.95, respectively. Publisher A offers some flexibility,
but in order for Publisher A to show up in the profit box, we
had set their retail price to match Publisher U.
- Hint: Don't price your book differently depending
upon where it is available, for example with a higher retail
price on Amazon than through the publisher's website. Amazon
and Barnes & Noble won't appreciate being under-cut by the
publisher.
- Hint: Pricing your book higher on Amazon than elsewhere
is self-defeating. Amazon spends millions of dollars in online
programming algorithms that help your book receive notice by
pre-qualified buyers. Do publisher webstores do that? No. Let
Amazon do what it does best -- sell books.
Third box: The author's copy price is the amount
the author pays to purchase copies of the book personally. Since
Outskirts Press and Publisher A allow the author to set their
retail price, the author's cost is based on the length of the
book. Publishers U and X offer the author a discount on the
retail price (which they also set). No wonder Publisher X's
retail price is nearly $22.
Other details about the book used in this comparison chart:
- Author selected a trim size of 5 x 8 (paperback)
- Author set a trade discount minimum of 20%
- Author published under the Ruby package.
- Pricing would be even more advantageous as a Diamond.
- If he had set his retail price at $17.95 to match Publishers
A and U, his per book profit would be $5.74.
Here's another chart you may find helpful, the publishing prices
for all four publishers for their similar publishing packages.
Publisher |
Publishing Price |
Outskirts Press |
$599 Ruby |
Publisher A |
$698 |
Publisher U |
$799 Premiere |
Publisher X |
$899 Professional |
Before asking which publishers these are, ask yourself this ...
does it really matter? And if you've already published with them,
you know who they are. You may want to do your own pricing case
study with our calculator
here to see if switching to Outskirts Press makes sense for
you.
Or if your choice now seems obvious, get started with your free
author's center here.
|
The
d'Arbenville Tales
Dolphina's
World
“I
would like to thank Chris, Director of Author Services and
Darla, my representative for taking an ephemeral dream of
The Crippled Prince and turning it into a published
book. I ordered The Crippled Prince from Amazon.com to see
how the POD process would work: a high quality edition was
sent to me in less than five days. Outskirts Press was presented
to me as an excellent publisher, and based on my experiences
I unequivocally recommend them to anyone who wants to see
their manuscript turned into a book.”
