Why are you ordering 1000 books as an author? Have you heard of print on demand?

Jul 17, 2012 by admin

I’ve spoken to several authors recently who still seem to think they need to order a 1000 copies of their new book to get a good deal on print costs.  Did you realise that as an author utilising Createspace you can order as little as one book at a time if that’s all you need!

Createspace operates on a print on demand service.  What this means is that your book is only printed when someone actually orders it.  If your reader has purchased your book via Amazon they’ll never notice.  The book shows as in stock because it’s printed as soon as its ordered and can even be delivered next day depending on the delivery option your reader has opted for.

So what does this mean to you?

• It means that your book will never go out of print.
• It means that you don’t have to order a box of 500 or 1000 copies of your book and find somewhere to store them
• It means your book will never end up for sale at the discount book store in the shopping centre
• It means you can order just as many copies as you need be that 1 or 50

When I talk about this print on demand option a lot of authors think it must be an expensive option.  I have to say having received quotes from a local printer,  that even including shipping from the USA, it is often cheaper for me to order books from Createspace than my local printer.

I’ll give you a rough example of a project we were talking about today.

A 5×8 book with a black and white interior and 126 pages will cost you approximately $2.36 a copy so if you order 50 copies thats $118.00

There are three speeds of postage on offer from Createspace: Standard $57.99 for 31 businessd days, Expedited $68.49 for 8 business days and Priority $78.49 for 2 business days.  These postage costs are for a quantity of 50 of the book we’ve just discussed shipped to the UK.  (I suspect the business days quoted are the time it takes for the book to be printed and leave the USA as I have always found the delivery to be slower than quoted).

So even if we order 50 books at priority delivery then we’ve only spent $196.49 which at todays XE.com rate comes out at £125.74 and is therefore approximately £2.52 per copy of your book.

The print costs do vary according to the number of pages in your book and the figures quoted above are just an example.  It’s also worth bearing in mind that adding colour to the interior of your book will increase your print costs.  In the example shown the new print cost would be $9.67 per book so do ask yourself if you really need that colour interior.

So whatever the reason you’re looking to order copies of your own book, and whatever the quantity you’re thinking of, it’s probably no where near as expensive as you thought!