Lesson 34

Printing. Lesson 34
 Welcome back for another week. I hope you found the last seven days extremely productive. Today I want to take a break and just talk, so here we go.
Publishers used to have to buy books in lots of 1000 to keep the cost down. I don’t see why it makes much difference if you set up and print ten books or 1000. One book costs $3.60 to print, but the more you buy, the price goes down. This stands true for a lot of things, such as puzzles, calendars, pens, pencils, business cards, and a-like.

Publishers used to have the expense of warehouses to stock all of those books, so I can see why they kept ninety percent of the sale. But now they use Print on Demand just like everyone else. They will give you an author discount, which by my calculation, they make two dollars per book profit just to place a phone call or send an email.
It is so confusing how you see books in stores with buy one for $10 get one free, or by three for $10. Better yet, new books for ninety-nine cents in the ninety-nine cent stores.
I’m writing on a full-size 10.5 by 8.5 college legal notebook. There are 100 sheets, that’s 200 pages with ink printed on both sides, a red line, and a bunch of blue lines. If you cut this tablet in half then you are up to 400 pages of printed paper. It has a hard board back cover and a durable plastic front cover. It is all bound together with thirty-three holes and a metal coil spiral, which cost more in the print world than a glued spine. On the front is a half sheet of card stock printed with the description in English and in Spanish. If this was your book and you bought 100 copies, it would cost you anywhere from $6.90 per book and up plus postage for delivery. But this tablet only cost me ninety-seven cents. $.97!
The ninety-nine cent store has tablets printed with cute flowers, or puppy dogs and kittens on a hard stock cover usually with seventy sheets inside the notebook. Guess what, they are ninety-nine cents, sometimes on sale for seventy-nine cents.
I wanted to make calendars with my characters in poses for each month. The cheapest I could find was $11.00 each in a lot of 100. Walmart sells calendars for four dollars on up to six dollars. The ninety-nine cent store always has calendars for sale, shouted out, $.99 cents. And that’s only sixteen sheets of paper.
So don’t be fooled. A full notebook with a metal spiral and also a pocket page. Wait, did I forget to mention that? It has a double pocket page behind the inside cover. All for the low price of ninety-seven cents priced right on the cover by the manufacturer as the retail cost. This means they made a profit after they delivered it to all the discount warehouses, which in turn was reloaded and delivered to the stores across the country. And guess what? After all that, Walmart makes a profit from the sale. But our printers want $3.60 per book plus postage for delivery, and they print thousands of books every day for thousands of authors. Yet very few of our books are for sale in stores.
I’m just venting my mind, and if just one of my books would make me millions or more, I would probably buy one of those $200,000 print machines and print books for authors, maybe as cheap as two dollars with no postage, and if they would send a ream of paper based on how many pages a ream will make, maybe I would print them all for a dollar each.
I’m just saying that we authors make everyone else rich. Remember, JK Rowlings made over $1 billion, but her publishing company made over 9 billion. This was from her book sales alone, so they have said.
So for us, we have to spend a lot to try and make a buck. Thank goodness for e-books. Now, how to get people to buy them, find them, and to continue buying your books. That is the question.
Until next week, let my mind ramble and don’t give this another thought. It was pointless, anyway. We can only do what we must for ourselves, whatever that may be. Enjoy your week and,
 
Happy Writing from rickkurtisbooks.com