Why Publishing Costs So Much

This week I'm presenting a series of posts on Why Publishing Costs So Much.

A respected colleague of mine, who has been in the book business a bit longer than I, and who has seen times change dramatically over the years, wrote this and gave us permission to use it on this blog.

Dave Young is an editor living here in Rochester, NY. If you would like to connect with him, after reading this excellent article (to be presented in three parts), please visit the RPCN website and click to his name. His contact information is there. If he gives me permission to, I will include his email address in the second part of this series.

Now, let's see Why Publishing Costs So Much...by Dave Young:

There are four ways to get a book published: sell the manuscript to a traditional publisher, use a vanity press, work with a print-on-demand publisher, or print and sell it yourself.

When an author approaches a traditional publisher, and finds that the publisher wants to buy the manuscript outright, then award the author only a tiny percentage of the sales re­ceipts, there's often the urge to go elsewhere. What could possibly make a publisher want to take such a large percentage of the sales reve­nue?

Come to think of it, what could be so hard about self publish­ing? The manuscript file is in your computer, all you have to do is format it, get copies printed, and sell it.

Over the years several companies, called vanity presses, have offered to help authors. They'll professionally print, bind, and deliver to your garage hundreds of books (for thousands of dollars). "Surely," you're probably thinking, "I can sell the books via the internet or at meetings where I'll read and promote my book." Then again, what if you don't?

Other companies point out the high up-front costs of printing books in quantity and offer printing on demand (POD) as an alternative. They prepare the book for printing and, when you need ten books, they print ten books. Twen­ty years ago, you couldn't do that, but today's digital printing and binding equipment makes on-demand publishing possible. When you contact a POD publisher, you will discover it will often cost from eight to ten thousand dollars before the first book gets printed. Why? We'll talk about that tomorrow.

Of course, there's the option of doing it all yourself. You've got a computer and a printer, why not?

Before you choose, let's look at some of the details that get swept under the carpet when you make broad, general statements like those I've made in the paragraphs above.

Johann Gutenberg invented moveable type in 1455; that made book publishing practical. His invention started what has become traditional pub­lish­ing. Authors sold their manuscripts to publishers who had the skills and capital needed to manufacture and sell books. It's worked for 550 years.

The introduction of computers in the 1970s changed a lot of things, but traditional publishing is still alive and well. It's what the big publish­ers use to produce and distribute books.

The costs of publishing

When a traditional publisher produces a book, there are several costs involved. Some costs occur only once per book. These are fixed costs such as editing and cover design. Other costs vary as the quantity of books varies. Print­ing, binding, packaging, and distribution are examples.

Tomorrow we'll cover a quick overview of the fixed and variable costs associated with publishing any book, regardless of who publishes it. Stay tuned.