Initially Blind To E-books, But Now Can See

Sept. 29, 2009 - PRLog -- We have not always embraced e-books, but with the new e-book readers (Sony, Kindle) and ever-changing technology, this is definitely the future of publishing. What you have to like are the possibilities. Maybe you're getting tired of lugging books around -- especially if they don't fit in your briefcase or purse. Sitting in a doctor's office, it's not always convenient to carry a laptop to read a PDF, nor is it comfortable carrying anything larger than a pocketbook if you've walked or taken a bus to that doctor's office. Kindle and the Sony Reader have made it so you can carry a book, read it any time, and not be weighed down by extra pounds of carrying material.

Print is so expensive, and it is not getting cheaper any time soon. It's so expensive, it makes it difficult for most people to afford publishing a book -- even traditional publishers. Every year, the paper stock list offered by printers gets smaller as some stocks get discontinued. The expense keeps rising on paper because of mill closings, fires, and shipping costs.

An e-book can still be professional, and it still can have an ISBN and Cataloguing in Print number. You probably don't need to spend a lot on layout. In fact, here is some number crunching.

For an average-sized printed book of 150 to 200 pages, layout and design of the entire book -- cover and text -- with a professional graphic artist that does not work in an agency might range from $2,000 to $3,000, depending on how difficult the layout is and if there are a lot of revisions. It could be more if there are illustrations, charts, and graphs. Minor revisions do not add up too much (changing a word here, finding a comma here...). Major revisions are those that require reconfiguring the layout.

Printing costs for the same sized book via offset can be about $5 per book for 1,000. That's $5,000. For 2,000 books, $3 per book or $6,000. Digital costs might be $9.00 per book for under 250 books and around $7.00 per book for 500.

Professional editing will vary, depending on the size of the book, but this is certainly something highly recommended, even if doing an e-book. If the words aren't professional, there's no amount of dressing up the outside that will make up for that. But on the average sized print book, editing is usually around $2,500, plus project management is $1,800. So add all that up and you're looking at over $10,000 for a printed book.

You can see the cost of a print book is quite expensive if you don't have a built-in market to sell it. For example, professional speakers will sell books either to the organizers that books them -- for all their guests, or sell them at the back of the room. In many situations, a print book is still a viable marketing tool and a preferred method. However, even corporations have cut back drastically on printing their annual reports. They may do a few hundred, but offer it online as an e-book for most of the shareholders. The layout files of the printed book are easily put into a downloadable PDF form as an e-book for no extra cost.

So in crunching the numbers of an e-book, here's what we came up with. A professional cover design and a plain basic formatted internal layout put in PDF form: $1,000. That also includes the (Canadian) ISBN and CIP applications and coordinating with the designer on the cover. For an average sized book, add another $2,000 for editing. And editing is not just a read-once deal. It's intensive and involves this:

Editing includes substantive/structural edits (clarifying or reorganizing content and structure for flow); stylistic edits (smoothing language, non-mechanical line-by-line editing); rewriting (reworking paragraphs that might be too long for direct quotes from other publications re plagiarism concerns); and copyediting (editing for grammar, spelling, punctuation, and other mechanics of style; checking for consistency etc.). They are proofed both electronically and in printed form. The manuscript is also flagged for anything that might be construed as libelous and plagiarism.  

So given that an average sized e-book is only $3,000 to produce with professional editing, that's over $7,000 difference from the cost of producing a printed book.

What makes this different than a Print On Demand book? The e-book process mentioned above is solely under the control of the author as is the printed self-published book. With PODs there can be lots of hidden costs and you may not be able to access the layout files, even though you paid for them.

The media and publishing industry is changing at breakneck speed. Every time you purchase a book, you might look at it as one or two massive spruce trees. Each book on a shelf represents a tree. Considering an e-book might not be a choice in the future. We might as well embrace it now -- although we still like the touch and feel of a printed book.

When you are planning your next book to produce, whether you consider the e-book or print options, we hope you'll think of us first.

For more information:
www.freelancepublishing.net
More tips on publishing: www.bookpublishing101.net

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As Canada's Publishing Expert, Freelance Communications provides book publishing support to royalty and self-publishers and is a member of the Association of Canadian Publishers.