Pricing & Profit

Profit & Royalties

Royalty, ‘net sales’, page count, trim size, cover price, discount, printing cost – there are a dozen ways to calculate it, but the bottom line when considering self-publishing is this:

How much money will I make when someone buys my book on Amazon?
Most of your sales will come through online retailers like Amazon.com, BN.com, and others, so if a publisher can’t give you a straight answer on this question, look elsewhere.

First, it’s important to understand how online sales work.

Do I have to pay for books up front? Do I ship them myself?
The answer is No. All that cost is borne by the buyer when they buy the book. Here’s how it works.

Publishers don’t actually sell books at retail. We sell them wholesale to distributors, namely Ingram Book Group, the world’s largest book distributor. They, in turn, provide them to thousands of retailers. When someone buys your book, whether from Amazon or BN.com or any bookseller, that order passes electronically from the retailer to Ingram to the printer, where your print-on-demand book is printed and shipped immediately, usually in 24 hours. This is often faster than books stored in a warehouse can be shipped. The distributor’s system notifies us of the sale, and your royalty is credited to your account. No action is required on your part at all and there’s no cost to you. That’s the beauty of print-on-demand publishing.

Can retailers change the price of my book?
Retailers – Amazon’s a good example – can, and often do – sell books at a discount. Like any store, they sometimes have ‘sales.’ But your earnings are not affected. The amount you earn is based on the regular retail price and remains the same no matter what discount the store offers.

So how is my profit figured?
Your profit is based on your book’s retail price. Many companies try to give the impression that you’re getting a 50% royalty when they say ‘50% of net sales.’ Then they offer you a formula with several variables and leave you to figure it out yourself. Others let you ‘set your own royalty’ then simply keep raising the price of your book to make up the difference – effectively killing sales.

At WingSpan Press, we work to keep the retail cover price of our books as low as we can in order to make them more attractive to readers. A couple of our larger competitors want you to sell your book online for as high as $21.95 for a 300-page book. Buyers will balk at paying that much for a softcover book.

Then we made the process simple and transparent so you’ll know what your costs will be and how much you stand to earn before you sign anything. With WingSpan, you earn 20% of the recommended retail cover price of your book on every sale. Bottom line, it’s one of the best self-publishing royalties available anywhere, not a hypothetical percentage based on some arcane formula.

NOTE: if you think your book will sell for more, then you’ll earn more. Many ‘niche’ books sell for up to $29.95. Distributor costs go up as the price of your book goes up (see below), but if you sell your book for more, then for every dollar you choose to raise your price above the recommended minimum retail, you’ll earn an additional $.50.

The table below lists the minimum retail pricing for standard-size black & white books and the profit you make on every online sale.