The cost of producing a book

 

There was an interesting article about costs of producing a book in The Author. It cited  figures for a print run of 3000 books from one publisher. They reckoned on a profit of between £0.46 to £0.21 per unit profit. Print per unit was costing them £2.50 - £3.00

 

The latter surprises me as I’d always thought that as we use print-on-demand our print per unit is higher.  However, my own Natascha’s  Story  is £2.78 per unit though a heftier book like Face to Face with the Führer is  £5.15. We do however have a better-looking profit margin.  If you study for example Natascha’s sales sheet, the sale of ten copies has made £8.15 for the company and £8.15 for the author.  So, 81.5p per book. Remember, on manual orders we have to pay shipping and a print run fee. Face to Face with the Führer on twenty books made £17.03, so about 85p for the company and the author per book.

 

Also remember my OH, aka our designer and I don’t take a fee. We take what is left after we have paid other costs. Natascha so far has cost us £77.4 and all bills aren’t in yet – we may be asked for five books for the Legal Deposit Libraries. For some books we commission a cover. This generally costs about £250. And sometime we pay editor and this can cost up to £1000 though averages £498. In fact the company owes us £666.96.   

Nevertheless, it all looks quite respectable.