Unit Costs

Just in case Dan's last post gave readers the idea that the 'cost' of a paperback book to us is only 53p...
The 'unit cost' discussed in his last post is only the print cost.
By the time you add in typesetting, proofreading, jacket design (and cover image purchase), you're up to well over £1 a book (depending on print runs). If you add in fancy things like spot-uv, embossing, foils, or metallic or fluorescent inks, that all adds more expense. Of course, if you print a longer run, the costs come down - but then, if they don't sell, that doesn't really help.
Of course, the total unit cost is sadly only one cost. The 'discount' - the amount the shops charge to sell a given title - is usually around 50% of the cover price, and then we have sales and distribution costs to add in, too (not to mention any press and PR work we pay for).
As we've said before, being a publisher is (sadly) a licence to print books, not money.

We're about to start offering a 'try before you buy' service on our website, where potential readers can download a pdf of a sample chapter to see whether they like it or not. Not sure how it's going to work yet; I wanted to upload a pdf onto the blog for starters, but I don't know how to do it. Does anyone know if this is possible with Blogger?

Finally, Inspector Gadget of Perverting The Course Of Justice fame got a decent namecheck in the Observer's piece about Nightjack at the weekend: 'This is the reason why I am blogging,' says Nightjack. 'Probably the most-read and best-known police blog in the country. There's a reason for that: Inspector Gadget tells the truth and he tells it very well.'

You can read more Gadget here.

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Posted by Sam