In a recent blog, I looked at some of the advantages of investing in a print run of your book, including things such as being able to give away signed copies, taking the copies to any panels or talks you attend and the additional marketing advantages you might gain. In this blog, I will be looking at the flip side of this – the disadvantages of having a print version of your book.
Firstly, one of the main disadvantages of having a print version is the cost for you as a self-publisher. In traditional publishing, the publishing house will organise the printing and assume all the costs associated with this. As a self-publisher, these expenses will be your responsibility.
Of course, you can price the print version of your book higher than the ebook, but this means that you have to sell all the copies at the required price. Also, the cost of printing will have to be paid upfront by you before you sell the books, so this can be a problem for cash flow. Likewise, you will need somewhere to store the books until you sell them.
Following on from this, you will need to organise and pay for this storage, if necessary. This will depend on how many copies you have, but this can be very expensive for a large number of books. This is especially true if you will need to store them over a long period of time.
You will also be responsible for the distribution of these books – or you will need to hire someone to do this for you, incurring more costs. Wherever your books are headed – a different distribution centre, bookshops, direct to your reader’s homes – you will need to organise this.
Obviously, there will also be posting or dispatch expenses from this. You will need to think about how you will charge buyers for postage and whether to include the cost of distribution to shops in the cover price. Work out what you will need to charge to still be left with a profit you are happy with per book.
One way around some of this is to have your book as a print-on-demand version, but this then means that people can’t find your book by browsing shops, so you would still need to do most of your marketing online. Also, this may not add the prestige that some people want from a print version.
Another disadvantage of having a print version of your book is the extra work required and the added difficulty of this. Preparing a print version needs a lot of things you don’t for an ebook. For example, you will have to consider the measurements for your book – not just what is required, but also what size your book will look best in. This is especially true for non-fiction books where you have a lot of diagrams or graphs. You will need to consider how big your book will have to be for these to be fully readable.
On a similar note, you will also need to plan out the formatting more. If you have a photograph referred to in text, this can be on the same page or on the opposite one. You could also have a chart that spans two pages in a print version but will have to pay extra attention to making sure it lines up.
In addition, having a print edition means that your book will need to have a back cover and spine designed. While ebooks often only have a front cover design, this is not really an option for a print copy!
This will mean higher costs for the design and writing a blurb, as well as requiring you to consider what you want it to look like and choose any taglines or reviews you want on the back. You will also need to pass this on to the designer and be available for queries. Of course, you can design it yourself, but you may not have the right skills and it will take more time than hiring a professional designer.
If you have a print run rather than a print-on-demand service, the cost per unit will be lower, but you will need to consider how many you are likely to sell. Any that you don’t sell will effectively increase the cost per unit and will need to be kept in storage somewhere, ready for distribution. There will be a minimum required number for a print run, making it even more important to calculate predicted sales.
Another disadvantage of a print book comes if you only have the print version, without an ebook edition to go with it. This can limit your sales as new readers may only be able to find your book in a bookstore. This can work well for some types of book, such as those focused on local history. However, for a lot of genres, this can make your audience much smaller. Of course, you can still list your book on online platforms such as Amazon, but readers may be less likely to buy it if they can only get a print copy.
Wrapping Up
Whether you decide to have a print version of your book comes down to your own preferences and what you think is likely to sell best with your target audience. Of course, you could always decide to have a print copy made later, as you don’t have to release it at the same time as the ebook. Next time we will be looking at the advantages of ebooks over print versions. Thanks for reading!
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