How many books should I order?

Unsold Books = $$$ Lost

How many books should you order?

You don’t want to end up with boxes of books you’ll never sell. Aside from the cost, it’s depressing to see them. So be realistic. Most books sell less than five hundred copies over their lifetime. You won’t need anywhere near that many! Many or most people will end up buying your book online, where you’re not the one collecting and reporting sales tax. You’ll just get royalty checks. However, there are times you may want to do direct sales.

Questions to ask:

• How many people have requested signed copies from you? Make sure you charge enough to cover postage and your time.

• How many book signings have you set up and how many people can you expect to show up? If it’s a venue where they regularly host signings, ask for a typical number of sales, not attendees.

• Ask who’s doing the advertising. If you are a skilled self-promoter, you’ll sell more books than the person who leaves it up to the venue.

• How much money can you afford to tie up in copies, for how long?

One of the many nice things about true POD operations is that you should pay the same price per book no matter how many you order. (Shipping cost per book will go down with larger orders because that’s how shipping works, but the printing cost should stay the same.) If the company you’re using gives you great discounts on large quantities, it's a predatory company. Get out if you can as soon as you can.

It’s better to have people see your book as a sought-after item than see boxes of leftover books. If you run out of copies, have cards with the link to purchase on them and take names and addresses if they want to get signed copies directly from you. (This also builds a contact list.)

So, order just a few books more than you know you can sell.

The one exception to this is if you’re going with traditional printing, where they have to do runs of 500 or 1000 books. If you’ve set up your marketing ahead of time and know you’ll sell that many books – great! You’ll pay less per book than those of us using POD. But most books don’t sell that many copies, so POD is a great option for most of us. If you end up with a best seller, if you are the publisher and you haven’t signed a predatory agreement, you can do a traditional print run and give the buyers a discount.

So back to doing your research. Keep all rights to your book – your copyright, your ISBN, you as publisher – so whatever company you use, they are simply the printer and distributor.

Deciding How to Publish your book

When you are deciding how to publish your book, it's important to do your homework.

Traditional publishing is still an option, but you’ll need an agent unless you manage to connect with an editor through friends or at a conference. In any case, they want you to have a platform with an existing, involved audience who will buy your book.

If you already have a platform, you may decide to self-publish to keep control of cover and other choices – and to keep a larger share of profits. However, remember, most books sell less than 500 copies – even those traditionally published – so don’t spend more than you can afford to self-publish, expecting to have a best seller that will get you out of debt. Traditional publishers only make money if your book sells. Look for a POD operation where YOU are the publisher, and they are the printer/distributer. They should make most of their money when you sell books.

When choosing a company to help you publish your book, one of the largest red flags is a requirement that you order a hundred or more books. Thirty years ago, when traditional publishing required type be set for runs of 500-1000 books, vanity presses would require a purchase of hundreds of books to cover the cost of the run. That was reasonable to cover their costs, but most authors ended up with boxes of books gathering dust in a garage or attic. These "publishers" make most of their money selling authors services.

Today, with print on demand technology, this sort of requirement is not reasonable. Whether you are printing one book or a hundred, when you are using POD technology the cost per book is about the same.

Espresso Book Machine at Sacremento Library's I Street Press

If you have a chance, go see a POD machine in action. It’s really cool. You make one .pdf file for your cover and another for the interior of the book. The .pdf for the interior includes title and copyright pages, all your chapters, and any material you include after the story – every page that will be inside your book. Both files are uploaded into the machine – through a USB port, just like loading them onto a laptop. Number of copies is set and the book comes out in its final form.

On Demand Books introduced the Espresso Book Machine in 2007 and the publishing industry is still adapting. POD has made it affordable to self-publish. Unfortunately, there are many predatory companies who claim to help you self-publish when they are really operating like the old vanity presses.

The Authors Guild and Writer Beware warn against current scams. The Alliance of Independent Authors has a watchdog list rating services for self-publishers. (This includes some that masquerade as Amazon’s KDP.)

Do your research, analyze, then make your choice.