Paperback and Full-Color Hardbacks
Published on December 31, 2024
Talk about discouraging. I WANT to do a full color hardback. But doing it through Ingram Spark, ridiculous! A full color hardcover with a dust jacket of a 360 page book has to be priced at $79.95 for me to make $1.38 in royalties. That’s after I give the industry preferred 55% discount to the retailer. And if I select that the book is non-returnable, it is less likely that any store will order it. Through them my printing cost is $33.16 but there is still taxes, shipping, and I have heard terrible things about customer service as well as varying quality. 50 would cost me at a minimum $2000.
Now, I can do full-color on Amazon but the printing cost is $29.17 and with their cut I would have to price my book at $54.95 to make $3.92 in royalties. To break even and make zero money the minimum I would have to price it at on Amazon is $48.42 and this is hard case laminate but they don’t offer dust jackets. So 50 would cost me about $1700.
I’ve researched some other options and the minimum order is 10, which isn’t bad. But I want at least 50, like I said, so that would be $3000 from them with lots of extras, shipping, and taxes. And that would put the cost at $60 per book MY COST with all the bells and whistles. I would have to charge $69.95 not including shipping for orders off the website and $65.00 for in person purchases.
I still think I’m gonna offer a full-color hardback version. It’s just so pretty, I can’t not. What to do, what to do?