[scribus] Printing Books

[John Jason Jordan]

On Sat, 16 Aug 2008 09:50:48 +1000
Roger <hovergo at net-tech.com.au> dijo:

> Would you care to please elaborate on what books you print, and subject matter.
> Do you write the books and then assemble and print or are there other writers 
> involved.
> Would you be able to give us a bit of a run down on how you go about the process 
> from writer to sales.

Marketing is the locomotive that pulls the train. In any commercial venture the first step is to make sure there is a market for your product, and that you will be able to reach the market (advertise) at a rate reasonable enough to ensure a profit after costs of production.

In my case I refuse to publish any book that is not a textbook. That's all I do. I work alone. I do not have a sales staff who can spend all day on the phone calling bookstores and pleading with them to stock my books. And if I did have such a staff the salaries I'd have to pay them would kill the possibility of making a profit.

The textbook market, however, is completely different from any other book publishing market. The normal way textbooks are marketed is by sending free examination copies to those who teach the subject. Then you just sit back and wait for the phone to ring. If the textbook fits the instructional criteria, the phone will definitely ring. Not only that, it will continue to ring at the start of every term as the school has to order more for the next class. 

My niche is subjects that have low enrollments, yet are taught repeatedly. Subjects such as "History of the US" will attract large publishers who expect to sell a million copies. I choose to let them do so. Instead, I select a subject that is taught to only a few thousand students each year. Teachers of such topics have a problem because the big publishers won't touch the subject. Their development cost for each new book is so high that they cannot come out profitably unless they sell tens of thousands of copies a year. But I can do exactly that. I can be profitable because my costs are negligible. I work out of my house. I have no staff to pay. I can print a 550 page book for about $5 actual materials cost, and such a textbook will easily command $50 in the bookstore. Bookstores expect a 40% discount, so I wholesale it to them for $30. Even if I sell only a few hundred copies a year I am doing well.

I write all the books myself, so I do not need to pay writers. I have tried publishing works written by others in the past and it has always been a disaster. If I don't know the topic well enough to write the book off the top of my head I do the research necessary. If corrections or updates are needed I will hear about them from the instructors. Each book also has a blank errata sheet for the student to fill out and mail in. Not many do, but enough do to enable me to fix errors quickly. Note that I only print a couple hundred copies at a time, so corrections make their way into the inventory pretty quickly. 

I hope that clarifies how I manage to be profitable in the book publishing business.