How much does a self-published book cost?

It depends on trim size, paper quality, hardcover or softcover etc.

40k should be about 160 pages I think. If it's a softcover standard novel size, the price should be somewhere between $2 - $3.50, depending on quantity.

Are you doing print on demand or paying a printer for a print run? If you're self-publishing and unless you know you have enough people lined up to buy a couple hundred units, your best bet is to use someone like Createspace who provides POD publishing. In other words, the books are printed when ordered. You can also order copies yourself if you go that route for conferences, etc.

I use Createspace and my non-fiction titles which are about 20K words cost me $2.15 per unit. A 70K or so novel costs me $4.25. And a 110K novel cost about $6 per unit. And then there's shipping costs on top of that which I assigned out at .35 to about $1 per unit when I ordered a big order that had about 150 books in it.

Using Create Space, my cost for coloring books are $2.15 for 90-108 pages 8.5" x 11". In my opinion the quality is okay, but not great.

Here is a link from Create Space where you can calculate how much your books would cost (without shipping). https://www.createspace.com/Products/Book/

Here is a link showing how royalties are calculated for paper back books. https://www.createspace.com/Products/Book/Royalties.jsp

There are other places that do print on demand, such as Ingram Spark. I have only used Create Space.

Minimum order is going to vary per printer. Then you're going to have to factor in storage costs, because you'll need to have somewhere to store all of those books.

I can't discourage you enough from using a conventional printer. Using CreateSpace lets them and Amazon handle all of the shipping. I'm not sure how you'd handle selling printed books like this on Amazon, and that's a big sales channel.

Kingpin said:

Bob, I don't think discouraging me from what I want to do when you don't even know my plan is very a wise move.

That said, you didn't even answer my question. I'm just looking for a ballpark figure on the minimum units a conventional printer requires.

Click to expand...

The difficulty is that it's a poor question. You're still at the point of research where you don't know what you don't know.

"Conventional printer" is a meaningless phrase. They're all conventional. Are you talking digital? Letterpress? Linotronic? Offset?

They all require different minimums. Moreover lintronic or offset printing will also require a setup fee, which means it's cost effective to order the largest possible print run you can, which will also result in lower costs per unit.

Other things to know in advance, besides pagination, is what kind of cover you'll want, in terms of color set up and print quality, as well as paper.

Binding will also make a difference.

The smallest print run I've done on offset was, I think, 200, but it was prohibitively expensive and only worth it because it was a limited high-end scholarly book with tipped in illustrations.

Finally, read The Newbie Guide to Absolute Write. We're serious about the respect your fellow writer.

You might be better off getting a rough idea of how many pages your typeset book will have, and start looking at printers' web sites. Call a few up and get quotes. Be honest and tell they you don't even know where to start. Be aware that there are great printers and really bad ones and some that are crooks. Check your local area first; you're more likely to find someone will to work with a customer who won't know how to prep the file for printing, etc.

Kingpin, perhaps you could share a bit about your plan, then you might get more specific advice. I am certainly curious about it. For one, I'm curious about why you want to print so short a book. From what I've seen, quick reads like this tend to do much better in digital. But perhaps it isn't fiction. I certainly don't know anything about non-fiction publishing.

By the way, I see you are fairly new here. Welcome. There are a lot of experienced folks here who can help you navigate through this, point you in a good direction, and help you avoid some potentially expensive mistakes.

Out of curiosity, can you share what you are planning to do? I can't add anymore information regarding cost because my experience is limited. Others have pointed out aspects that would affect price.

Printing is one thing. There are scenarios where it would make sense to do a print run in advance, but they're pretty specific. Like bob said, whatever money is 'saved' by not going POD is definitely lost by going with print run, because you've got to store them, ship them, and spend a lot of time doing stuff that Amazon normally does.

There's also costs regarding cover design, editing, formatting, etc etc