Mistakes Authors Make: #8 - Overproducing on an Initial Book Launch to Lower Per Unit Cost

We’ve seen it time and time again, especially with new authors getting a book published for the first time. They become so consumed with getting the lowest possible unit cost on the printing of their new book they order 5000 copies right out of the gate. So instead of paying $3.98 or $4.98 per book they get the unit price down to $2.98. Hooray, they saved a dollar or two per copy.

What happens next? 100 cases of books weighing 40 pounds or more each arrives at their home. They get stacked in the corner of the bedroom or in the garage, and there they sit, month after month after month. Sure, a few cases may be opened and some books shipped, but you’re constantly stepping over and around boxes and cursing yourself for ordering so many books. You’ve tied up potentially thousands of dollars in inventory that you hope you can sell someday. And, in many cases, someday never comes. But hey, you saved $1 or $2 per book.

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“Unless you have a proven track record and can accurately

predict how many books you can sell, you’re better off spending

more per unit and having a lower quantity produced initially”

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Unless you have a proven track record and can accurately predict how many books you can sell, you’re better off spending more per unit and having a lower quantity produced initially. Print on demand services such as Create Space, 48 Hour Books, or Lulu can be invaluable until you’ve got your marketing channels fully working and generating regular sales for you. You can conceivably tie up tens of thousands of dollars in production for books you hope you can sell — all because it saved you some money on the up front printing cost per book.

And, if you’re working with a fulfillment service you’ll end up giving a lot of your “savings” back in storage charges for all your pallets of books. Fulfillment house storage charges can vary widely, but let’s be conservative and say it costs you $15 to store a pallet at their facility each month. If you have 5000 books printed and shipped to your fulfillment house then, depending upon the size of your book, you might have 7 pallets being stored. At $15 per pallet that’s $105 out of your pocket each and every month. 7 pallets sitting for a year at a fulfillment house is $1260 in direct costs to you. So much for the money you saved on the per copy costs. You’ve given all or most of it back in the storage charges.

But what do you do if you sell more product than you expected? In these print-on-demand days in the publishing world it’s really not so much of an issue. In just a few days you can have more books printed. But you do need to have a plan in place to deal with your customers in the event your book launch is more successful than you anticipated. A nice problem to have but one that you must be prepared to deal with.

Let’s say you have 500 copies of your book on hand, whether it’s at your house and you’re doing your own order shipping or whether you’re working with a fulfillment house such as Bret and Bryan’s own Speaker Fulfillment Services. If you do a book launch and sell 800 units you’ve created a potential problem you’ll have to deal with to keep your customers happy.

It’s primarily a matter of managing customer expectations. If you keep your customers informed about the status of things proactively, you can significantly reduce any possible negatives that can result from having customers in a back order scenario. Maybe you can give them the ebook version of your book to get started with until the physical copy arrives in the mail.

It is best to under promise and over deliver in most cases. If you tell your customers that their book will ship in three days and you ship it in five days than you’re a bum. You didn’t live up to what you had promised. But if you promise three days and ship it in one or two than you’re a hero—you over delivered. It really is all about communication and managing customer expectations.

If you’re working with a fulfillment house their system should be able to generate an email to your customer notifying them when their book order has shipped out the door, including tracking information if appropriate. egin call out box>

For more information on Bret and Bryan’s fulfillment services visit SpeakerFulfillmentServices.com

When you go beyond your book and get into the production of home study courses and higher ticket items the minimization of your initial risk becomes even more important. Now, instead of talking about $2.98 or $3.98 to print a book and trying to save a buck or two you can be talking about $25 or $35 or $50 or $100 or more to produce your product depending on what all components make up that product.

So, your initial out of pocket cost to produce some larger quantity of your home study course can be really significant and until you’re sure your marketing is working well you’re far better off doing a smaller quantity run and paying a higher cost per unit.

Book printing costs are very quantity sensitive. A large portion of the cost is in what they call the setup and, obviously, the greater number of units you can amortize that setup cost across the lower your per unit cost will be per book. Until you are absolutely, positively sure you’re able to sell all you are going to get printed, don’t get seduced by those lower per unit costs. We have a client who produced a beautiful full color cookbook and had 15 pallets of books shipped to our warehouse. Now, three years later 15 pallets of books still sit in our warehouse. A very painful and expensive lesson.

Should you have high expectations? Of course. We all want to have the greatest of success with our publishing efforts. But, as all businesses do, you need to carefully watch your cash flow and be aware of how much money you have tied up in inventory. Remember, your book is a business.

Editor's Note: This article is excerpted from the Amazon Bestseller "Mistakes Authors Make" by Rick Frishman, Bret Ridgway and Bryan Hane. Can't wait to read it a chapter at a time? Pick up your copy at your favorite online bookstore.