In one of my old series of blogs, we looked the pros and cons of both having a print version of your book and just having an ebook edition. This post and the next one will be reconsidering these with regard to some possible scenarios. You might decide to just have an ebook edition of your book, an ebook and a print version, or even just a print version, although this is increasingly uncommon for self-published authors. Nevertheless, just a print copy can be all that is needed or wanted in some cases.
Ultimately, what you choose to do will depend on a variety of factors, such as how much you can spend on self-publishing, what type of book you have written and what you would prefer or be happy with. It may well be that you are perfectly content for your book to only be available as an ebook, but others feel a print version is a necessity. It just comes down to personal preference! However, in these two blogs we will be looking at some fictional case studies to help you decide which option you and your book are best suited to and explore a bit more what the choice is.
First of all, if you want to go back to any of my old posts on this subject, you can look at the links below to have a glance through the initial upsides and downsides of each option I wrote about:
- Should I Have a Print Version of My Self-Published Book? – Advantages of Print;
- Should I Have a Print Version of My Self-Published Book? – Disadvantages of Print;
- Should I Have a Print Version of My Self-Published Book? – Advantages of Ebooks;
- Should I Have a Print Version of My Self-Published Book? – Disadvantages of Ebooks.
Hopefully, you are now familiar with some of the pros and cons of each method of publishing! Let’s take a look at our first case study.
Ben
Our case study today is Ben, who has a full-time job and has been working on his manuscript in the evenings and at weekends, so it has taken him a long time, but he is very pleased with the end result. He has now completed his book and is looking to self-publish it. However, he isn’t sure what format he wants it in or what would be best from a sales point of view. Some facts about the book:
- It is a fiction novel, in the crime thriller genre.
- He is planning to publish a sequel to the book and already has some ideas ready for this.
- It is quite a long novel, although this is fairly normal for the genre.
- It doesn’t have any illustrations or design elements like graphs or photos.
Some facts about Ben himself:
- He does not have much money available to spend on publishing the book and would like to keep costs to a minimum, while still getting good quality services.
- He has not written or self-published a book before and is unsure of what the reception will be to his book.
- He has no particular preference between printed books and ebooks and does not mind which his book is published as.
- He has some free time to devote to the book, but not much and would prefer not to deal with distribution.
Looking at all of these points, there are some benefits of having a print book for Ben. If a bookshop agreed to sell it, he would gain some marketing benefits as people could pick it up and look at it themselves in a shop. However, he would still need to spend some time marketing to the bookshop owner, so he would have to weigh this up against the possibility of some more “hands-off” marketing.
However, a disadvantage of a print book to Ben is that it may be less suitable for long books. If he used print-on-demand services, they usually have a maximum number of pages that the book can be, although it is unlikely that Ben has exceeded this. In addition, the page count would not be a concern with traditional offset printing, so this would still be an option.
There are other advantages to having an ebook for Ben, as there are no issues with ensuring illustrations and complex formatting will display properly. In addition, publishing electronically tends to be cheaper than print books, meeting Ben’s requirement for a low-cost option. There are no upfront costs for Ben to begin the printing process and he will not have to pay any postage or delivery for distribution.
This brings us to another benefit of ebooks – Ben would not need to spend any time on distribution. This would leave him with more free time to devote to marketing his book, therefore increasing sales. In addition, he is unsure of how well the book will sell, so it would be risky to invest in a traditional print run, as there will be a minimum batch size and he won’t know how many copies he would need.
One cost which Ben may have will be for formatting the novel. A book usually needs to be in either EPUB or MOBI format to be published as an ebook, so Ben will need to make sure that his novel is in this format and the headings and layout are as he wants them. He could do this himself, but it may be better to get a professional to do it to ensure it looks the best possible. This would probably not be a very high cost and Ben seems happy to pay for good quality services.
Conclusion
Due to all of these points, it is likely that just an ebook publication would be sufficient for Ben’s needs. He himself has no preference, so hopefully he will be happy with this option, which also requires less risk and financial investment on his part. Next time we will be looking at another case study, so come back in two weeks for that!
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