Why do print books cost so much? It certainly can’t cost that much for a bit of paper, ink, and cardboard.
No it can’t. And it doesn’t. But the price on the back cover of the book in your hand doesn’t just cover production costs.
Assuming you’re going the route of traditional publishing, here’s a rough idea of your book’s journey…
You, the author, spend hours over the course of years cranking your book onto the page. Before you can send it to agents for possible representation, you need to make sure your manuscript is as perfect as you can get it. This means hiring a professional editor to look over it, making any necessary changes and doing any necessary rewrites.
Then, you take it to your critique group and send it off to friends, family and trusted readers for feedback. Back to the drawing board to do some more rewriting and you’re ready to send it out to agents.
And more agents. And more agents. Some may offer feedback, sending you back to the manuscript to polish. Once you do get an agent, she will read your manuscript and send you a list of even more edits, which will continue until you’ve got it as perfect as you can.
Your agent will send your manuscript off to publishers and, once you finally get one interested, they will look over the book and give you even more edits until they feel it is ready to be sold.
Your advance from the publisher in addition to royalties once book sales have paid the publisher back for your advance earn you roughly 8-15% of the retail price. Agents typically take a 10-15% cut from this.
Once in the publisher’s hands, they will find and pay people to format pages, design front and back covers (and inside jacket for hardcovers), and take care of any necessary illustrations. Once all this has been done, editors and copy editors at the publishing house will have another go at your book.
The publisher will then have what are called galley copies printed. These are the copies sent to authors, experts, and reviewers to get some blurbs for your book. Everything will then get sent off to be printed (some publishing houses have printing presses, but not all).
But the publisher’s job is not over. They also send your book out to distributers and cover marketing costs. And they have to pay you your advance.
Publishing houses are expected to cover all these costs on just 45-55% of the retail price. If the book doesn’t sell, they lose money and must rely on their bestselling books to make up for the loss.
The distributor works on getting your book in stores. They distribute a catalogue of books to retailers, then take and fulfill those orders. Until your books get shipped out, they are kept in the distribution warehouse.
Taking 10% of the retail price, they are able to pay for packaging, shipping, catalogue production, distribution, rent, utilities, and staff.
Retailors sell the books. They need staff to stock shelves, manage the warehouse, and work the registers. They need to pay rent and utilities and cover marketing costs for the store.
Book stores take roughly 40% of the sale price. Books are also sold at general retailers like Walmart, Target, and Sam’s Club, where books are not the primary sales item. These retailers require a percentage closer to 60.
So all in all, though $25 may seem steep for a hardcover, considering everything that goes into getting the book into readers’ hands, $25 seems like peanuts.
Photo credit: Tim Ebb, courtesy Flickr
My initial reaction to this post is two fold. First, I think are we asking the wrong question by focusing on print books. It seems to me that digital books cost too much and too little simultaneously. Some are selling for $0.99 and others for $24.99. How can that be, particularly when the infrastructure to produce them is nothing like that to produce a physical book, as you have so beautifully described in this post.
Second, writers are being paid far too little. No matter what a book costs and in what form it is produced, too much of that margin is going to the production house for marketing and too little to the person who created the content and the manner in which it has been conveyed.
Tiffany, don’t forget the books that don’t sell are then (with covers torn and returned to distributors for “rebates”) destroyed . This also goes toward the reason for high prices.
Michelle, I am with you on the “authors are paid too little sentiment.” As far as the eBook prices, I think it is a learning curve. It may be nothing like a physical book, but there are ‘production costs” t consider. If you don’t have a decent cover, it is even harder to sell the eBook. So you need to pay for these. And most eBook publishers require all the production to be done on the book by the author. So, authors are then adding in these costs to their price assessments. (And yes, I believe many are over-pricing them.) But on the flip side, if the books don’t sell, they know they are too high and can adjust them. I, personally, have never priced my eBooks over $9.99 — and that was for an extensively researched, nearly 200 page non-fiction.
Just my 2-cents worth. (Which comes out to about two tenths of a percent of that $9.99 book. LOL!)
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I don’t think so that print books cost too much but I think it is depend upon to the publisher of the book of how much effort and money he/she spent. Just an opinion. Thanks for sharing!
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