Self-Publishers, I need your help....

[trboturtle]

To make this short: I need to convice a company I do work for that they can self-publish novels for several gaming lines through E-Publishing and POD without losing their shirt in the process.

What I need from the Self-publishing authors on this board is a general idea of the expense to create an Ebook and a POD-ready book, and any problems the company might run into with both Ebooks and POD services.

Basicly, I want to show the company they can put of Ebooks at a reasonable price and not have to sink a lot of cash into the project.

Any help will be welcomed,

Craig

[LizW65]

As long as you do your own editing and don't pay for one of the in-house editing services, the only expense from CreateSpace (the POD company I've self-published through) is for the proof copy of your book--about $8.00 for a trade paperback last time I checked. You then have the option of selling as an ebook through Amazon at no additional charge. In-house editing starts at around $200 and goes up from there.

I've never used Lulu, another popular POD, but I believe their terms of service are similar.

[The Deposed King]

To make this short: I need to convice a company I do work for that they can self-publish novels for several gaming lines through E-Publishing and POD without losing their shirt in the process.

What I need from the Self-publishing authors on this board is a general idea of the expense to create an Ebook and a POD-ready book, and any problems the company might run into with both Ebooks and POD services.

Basicly, I want to show the company they can put of Ebooks at a reasonable price and not have to sink a lot of cash into the project.

Any help will be welcomed,

Craig

I spend about a month to 5 weeks writing a novel.  The brother and I spend 3 weeks to a month editing it, which involves sending it out to the betas which are all either fans or other indie authors (and frankly I get better help from most of the fans than I do most of the other indies) no professionals.  We've got an artist we pay about 250-300 bucks a month to work full time on making art for us here in the philippines.

Now I used to publish with a word file but we've since upgraded to .epub files which let you monkey with the .html a little more and make sure your margins and font and stuff are fine.  (not as hard as it sounds since my brother who's doing it has never done it before and learned in about a day or two.)

Frankly I have no experience with POD.  But if you've got the created, edited, file ready to rumble and a .jpeg cover to go with it that's all you need for e-pub.  You have to charge 2.99 or more to qualify for the 70% on amazon (other wise you are getting mere 35%).  And amazon will crawl the web to make sure it has the lowest price you are offering on the web world wide.  So don't plan on trying anything funny there.

Honestly if you have your own text file and cover in hand it takes about fifteen minutes to load it up.  Might take another fifteen to make the original account on KDP Select.  Then after its loaded it takes 12 hours for amazon to review and post it.  Amazon charges you 'nothing' for an e-book.  Literally nothing on the front end.  All they take is their 30% cut of the gross sales, as you go.  Everything you earned in April will be paid on May 30th.  Everything you earned in May on June 30th etc.  Have a bank account for direct deposit or a mailing address to receive your money by checks.

Any further questions let me know.  I'm not sure where the main hold up is?  No up front costs, except what you'd need anyways in order to create your e-book.  No fees to upload and publish on amazon.  ?  Reviews in hand help but I've only ever solicited from my early beta readers, if they like it I ask them to review when it comes up.




The Deposed King

[trboturtle]

I guess one of the things I'm asking is how quickly could the company in question see a return? Something like this would have a larger budget right off the bat, because I think the work would be a "Work for Hire," as the universes are not the author's own.

Assuming an 80,000 word novel, this is a cost of between $2,800 to $4,000 before editing, formatting, getting a cover, buying an ISBN, and the like. That's a steep hill to climb, as that makes the budget $5,000 - $7,500 per novel. That means it would take sales of between 800 and 1,200 Ebooks at $8.99 (At Amazon's 70% royalty rate) to break even. That doesn't include the POD, because I'm not sure of the royalty rate for something like that.

Am I missing something?

Craig

[The Deposed King]

I guess one of the things I'm asking is how quickly could the company in question see a return? Something like this would have a larger budget right off the bat, because I think the work would be a "Work for Hire," as the universes are not the author's own.

Assuming an 80,000 word novel, this is a cost of between $2,800 to $4,000 before editing, formatting, getting a cover, buying an ISBN, and the like. That's a steep hill to climb, as that makes the budget $5,000 - $7,500 per novel. That means it would take sales of between 800 and 1,200 Ebooks at $8.99 (At Amazon's 70% royalty rate) to break even. That doesn't include the POD, because I'm not sure of the royalty rate for something like that.

Am I missing something?

Craig

I have no experience with that high a charge rate.  I don't see any indie authors charging that much.  So if you're charging 8.99 you'd need to have an established label or universe.  Like dragon lance, forgotten realm, etc.

I put up book 3 of my Spineward sectors series april 23rd and at this point I have around 2500 sales, I put up book 4 on june 1st and I have about 1700.  If you're books did as well as mine did then you'd be at the top end of what I could expect to earn before we're just looking at residual sales.  At my 2.99 @ 70% with a top amazon rank of just under #1000 so what you're looking at probably out of my price range if I was looking at viability.  That said other guys, indie authors, both singles like the guy who wrote poor man's fight or the guy who wrote terms of enlistment got well bellow amazon ranking 600 (200-600) which means they doubled or even better the number of sales I had, they were at 2.99.  Guys like chris nuttal routinely charge 3.99 and get to 600, so again probably double the sales, of course those guys have a back list to help get more views.  I've never done any advertsing so maybe that's part of it.

If you've got a brand and a label, you could probably get away with charging what you are talking about.

Sorry I can't help more.



The Deposed king

[trboturtle]

I have no experience with that high a charge rate.  I don't see any indie authors charging that much.  So if you're charging 8.99 you'd need to have an established label or universe.  Like dragon lance, forgotten realm, etc.

I put up book 3 of my Spineward sectors series april 23rd and at this point I have around 2500 sales, I put up book 4 on june 1st and I have about 1700.  If you're books did as well as mine did then you'd be at the top end of what I could expect to earn before we're just looking at residual sales.  At my 2.99 @ 70% with a top amazon rank of just under #1000 so what you're looking at probably out of my price range if I was looking at viability.  That said other guys, indie authors, both singles like the guy who wrote poor man's fight or the guy who wrote terms of enlistment got well bellow amazon ranking 600 (200-600) which means they doubled or even better the number of sales I had, they were at 2.99.  Guys like chris nuttal routinely charge 3.99 and get to 600, so again probably double the sales, of course those guys have a back list to help get more views.  I've never done any advertsing so maybe that's part of it.

If you've got a brand and a label, you could probably get away with charging what you are talking about.

Sorry I can't help more.



The Deposed king

Two of the  brands are established -- One has nearly a hundred novels in DTF, the other forty novels. Both like have been around for 20+ years.

Craig

[The Deposed King]

Two of the  brands are established -- One has nearly a hundred novels in DTF, the other forty novels. Both like have been around for 20+ years.

Craig

Well best of luck.  I will say that if they're already dead tree.  Then it shouldn't cost very much extra to go digital but then you already said there would be fees.  So not entirely sure.  I will say e-books are the best thing to ever happen to my writing career and I'm doing better and better all the time.




The Deposed King