I’ve been pondering this a lot recently because Linen Press is going to have to put up the price of its books. With three new novels about to go to print, I have had to decide on a RRP and, after taking advice and adding up sums, it is going to be £11.99.
I bet that will put off lots of readers.
But here’s the twist. I will sell the same books on my website for £7.99 or £8.99, even less if you buy two or three together, so the RRP means very little. However, it is all part of a cunning plot against Amazon who take 60% of my RRP plus £2 for postage. I can’t break even from Amazon sales. I lose money every time someone buys one of my books from them.
I have blogged about this before on Nicola Morgan’s website, but it needs repeating and repeating so people understand why small publishers go out of business and why we have to charge more for our books than the big comglomerates.
Here are the sums for the three novels that will be published by Linen Press next month:
All design work including covers and type-setting £3500
Copyediting £1335
Images for covers £375
Printing £6300 + carriage
So that’s £11510 for 1000 copies of each of 3 books + VAT
£3837 for each 1000 copies of each book
£3.84 unit price
That’s £3.84 per book + 7.5% royalties to the author.
Let’s call it a round £4 to produce and print a Linen Press book.
Of course the big guys can produce their books more cheaply because they do runs of hundreds of thousands and have in-house staff to do design and copy-editing. And they have a Publicity department. They can afford those places on the tables and the 3 for 2 deals. I can’t.
Supposing I priced my books at a regular £7.99.
Here are three scenarios:
1. You buy a Linen Press book from Amazon:
Cost of book to Linen Press = £4
Amazon takes 60% of RRP = £4.80
I pay postage and packing = £2
Total cost to LP is £10.80.
Linen Press loses £2.80 on every copy sold.
OUCH!!
2. You buy the same book from Waterstones:
Cost of book to Linen Press = £4
Waterstones takes 50% of RRP = £4
Total cost to LP is £8.
Linen Press covers its costs.
3. You buy the book from the Linen Press website:
Cost of book to Linen Press = £4
You pay £8 on the website.
Linen Press makes a profit of £4.
Remember these costs are for a run of 1000 books which I have paid for.
1. So if I sold all 1000 books on Amazon I would lose £2,800.
2. If I sold all 1000 books at Waterstones I would break even. Nothing left over to plough into the next publications.
3. And if I sold 1000 copies on my website, I would cover my costs AND make £500. One eighth of the cost of the next publication.
The only way of paying for one new publication would be to add £3.50 to the RRP and sell all 1000 books from the website. And pigs may fly.
And my salary? Don’t be silly!
The books in the photo range in price from £3.99 (SONS) to £37.95 on Amazon for the Oxford University Press textbook. Childhood’s Hill, published by Linen Press, was ludicrously underpriced at £8.99 with two sections of painstakingly restored old photographs. Breeze From The River Manjeera costs £10. The Maigret novels by Simenon cost £7.99 at Waterstones and are usually under 200 pages. What’s a fair price for a book? I know I’m not comparing like for like but even so…
The result of all these sums is a big headache for me and Linen Press.
But now you understand why the RRP on Linen Press books will be £11.99 in future, but you will pay less if you order from the website. And even then, the best I can hope for, realistically, with a mixture of Amazon and book shop and website sales is to scrape by for another year.
But let’s not end on a gloomy note. If Linen Press lands a best seller which is on Asda’s shelves and sells thousands in the mass paperback market and is translated into several languages and is made into a Hollywood film with Kiera Knightly and Colin Firth………….
What do I wear on the red carpet?
XXX
This needs highlighting over and over. Thanks for pointing these figures out.
Lynn, I feel like a heel. I just bought Colm Toibin’s ‘The Master’ from Amazon for £4.50 new! (Not that this was one of yours but still.) Of course I would have paid more but they offered…..
The trouble is where else do you get a range of books that you actually want to read and how, if you are not a Linen Press afficionado do you find your way through the interweb to find your site or that of any other small publisher?
I share your pain, I really do. Waterstones is okay and I do prefer to browse (or I did before my eyesight started to go) but the main reason I go to Amazon is for the choice. I don’t want to read a book just because it is 3 for 2, is being hyped up by its publisher or is written by some celebrity. I want to be able to buy things I might have missed when they were out years ago. Probably they weren’t best sellers in their day and are no longer considered worthy of self-space in the High Street. But somehow I’ve heard about them and I want to track them down. It’s a good bet I’ll find them on Amazon.
I know I’m selling out. I know it’s a dirty world. I know the day is coming soon when I will rue that other day when first I was seduced, but still it isn’t about price, not for me anyway. I’ll pay £11.99 for a book I want to read I assure you and if you want to take that back to Amazon, I give you leave to quote me.
As for the red carpet, I’d ask Helen Mirren not me. x
Ingrid, don’t feel guilty.
I confess – I order book from Amazon too. As you say, the choice is vast, the prices cheap and for me, living part time in France, it is my only option. The used English bookshop in my nearest town sells Maeve Binchy and Wilbur Smith. I needed a book about citrus trees recently, so Amazon it was. But I need to explain why a very small, indie publisher can’t charge the same as the big guys, and survive.
Helen Mirren? My body falls a bit short of such a role model.
Lynn
We have met before. I queried, you asked me to send, I was late and by then you werent accepting submissions…
Here am I again and reading your blog and enjoying every syllable. I have subscribed and added your link to my blogroll as well.
As to the topic here, I buy books by the dozen, as much as I can afford, but buy mostly from flipkart and Indian online bookseller online, which offers good rates to a budget buyer like me. I realise the importance of buying off the page for smaller publishers now.
Thanks for the pointer.
I am in India btw.
Suneetha
I remember reading on Nicola Morgan’s blog that you made a loss on every sale from Amazon, and it horrified me. I made it a point after that to buy at least some books each year direct from small publishers. I still buy from Amazon for the convenience factor, but only if it’s a top-selling book from a large publisher.
Hello womagwriter! Good to hear from you. Thank you for your comments.
My website will soon re-appear having had a total make-over and more links and interactive stuff. Please come back at the beginning of March – and tell your friends.
I have 3 fabulous novels coming out then too.
Lynn