A talented young woman recently told me she wanted to self-publish a children’s book and she was sure she could peg the cover price at a number that fit in with the story. She felt sure of her strategy because she had priced the print production of the book and believed the difference between printing and sales would be her handsome profit. Whoa Nelly! She was going to price herself into debt. I saved this author from going bankrupt with a dose of publishing reality I want to share with you.

The end of production is only the first phase of what it costs to get a book into the hands of readers. If you want your book in bookstores and libraries, you need a distribution service such as Ingram or Baker & Taylor; their fee is 15% of the book’s cover price. Bookstores take a 40% cut of the cover price of your book. Amazon, which acts as distributor and bookseller, takes 55% of your cover price.

If you need help creating or running your website, assistance with marketing and publicity, or travel to book signings and other sales venues, you’ll need to dip into your pocket to fund those efforts. (If you go with a traditional publisher, all these costs plus overhead will be deducted from the book’s sales price before you see any royalties; those royalties will be much smaller than you expected.)

To price a book correctly, it’s important to understand all the cost factors associated with a book’s journey from the start. To keep the cover price competitive in its genre and format while preserving a profit for yourself, you need to make smart decisions at every step. The scary thing is that you don’t always know what you don’t know.

Fortunately, there are many resources to help. They include professional associations, writing groups, college programs, magazines, books and the internet. While the internet offers easily accessible free, current information on every topic, caveat emptor: carefully investigate any services that require payment or promise the moon on a shoestring budget; you get what you pay for … which may be less than you need.

Develop your networks. Be generous in sharing what you’ve learned with others because they will remember and repay the favor when they can. Click on the “For Authors” category from the Categories list on this blog site to see my previous posts. Several are specifically about self-publishing and many others will add helpful knowledge for your journey.

Next time someone complains about the cost of a book, you can explain why.