PRINTED BARCODES
Printed barcodes you'll see on the back of any professionally-produced book. One of the printed barcodes refers to the price, and the other (larger) will be the ISBN. How do you get these barcodes for your book?
Both will be supplied by the POD company if you take this route. Otherwise, if self-publishing, the ISBN barcode may be supplied by the ISBN agency, leaving you to produce a price code for the price. In fact you can find many companies on the Internet that will supply barcodes for pricing and ISBN. Typically, you pay the small fee, type in the ISBN and price details, and then download the barcode as a graphics (usually TIFF) file. Or you can buy the fonts/software if you'll be using barcodes frequently.
Barcodes are best printed with the book cover, but if you forget to do so, or want to change the details later, you can order self-adhesive barcode labels.
ABC. Bar-code fonts from $20.
Bar Code Graphics. ISBN and UPC: $10 per code.
Barcode-US. Labels and software (from $225).
Film Masters. Wide variety of barcodes, plus information: p.o.a.
IDAutomation. Bar-code creation software.
Fotel. Supply barcodes, labels and barcode-reading equipment.
Morovia. Bar-codes for most requirements.
General Graphics. Wide range of barcodes and labels: p.o.a.
Barcode Software Center. Truetype barcode fonts from $35.
BarcodeIsland. Extensive list of bar-code providers, etc.
Pricing Your Book
What's the best price for your book? What you can get away with is the usual reply, but in fact you have to balance profit margin against numbers sold. $12.99 is obviously the preferred price in the example below:
price |
profit margin |
no. sold |
total profit |
$9.99 |
$2.99 |
25,400 |
$75,946 |
$12.99 |
$5.99 |
18,300 |
$109,617 |
$18.99 |
$11.99 |
7,800 |
$92,820 |
Anticipating sales is anything but easy, of course, why is why the traditional publisher doesn't let you fix the price — and many POD publishers won't either.
If you're self-publishing, these suggestions may help:
1. Much depends on supply and demand. If yours is the only decent book on Indian native coinages, and there are thousands of collectors out there, you can charge much as you please. Scholars accept that books on specialist areas will be expensive, and companies pay tens of thousands of dollars for one-off marketing studies.
2. If demand is uncertain (fiction and poetry) then you'll price as similar books are priced. Slashing the price won't turn the book into a bestseller, and overpricing will kill it.
3. A handsome edition (illustrations, slightly better layout and paper) may work if the book is going to be treasured — a town history, short stories based on local characters. Nonetheless, don't overdo matters: many small POD companies have gone out of business supposing customers will pay extra for individually crafted editions.
Royalties
If you're not self-publishing, your financial rewards come in the form of royalties, and here you have to scrutinize the contract. Suppose your book retails at $12.95, and the POD company pays royalties at 75%. If royalties are based on the gross cover price, you'll get a handsome 0.75 x $12.95 for each book sold, i.e. $9.71/copy. Very probably, however, royalties are based on the net revenues. From $12.95 are first taken publishing costs, say $4.50 per copy, leaving $8.45. Then, if the book is sold on Amazon, the bookstore commission comes to 55% of the retail price, i.e. $7.12. Take that away from $8.45 and you're left with $1.33. Royalties at 75% of the net revenues are therefore 0.75 x $1.33 or $1.00/copy, a fairly typical figure.
Online bookstores give your productions useful exposure, but may make a nonsense of profits. If you've self-published the $12.95 book, for example, you may well have got costs down to $4.00 per copy. But after Amazon have taken their 55% commission, your profit per book is $12.95 - $4.00 - $7.12 or $1.83. Even if you sell 5000 copies the resulting $9,150 is not a huge sum for the months of writing, publishing and marketing the book. You'll need to consider other bookstores and outlets.