Boost Your Finances: Analysis
Boost Your Finances by Karsten Bech Nielsen – Lessons learned from writing and self publishing / INDIE.
It started at a dinner with some friends. Just ended my engagement with my employer and after a closer look at my financial situation, I realized that I could stop working. Of course, everyone wanted to know what I planned to do and number one on my list was a financial cookbook. No one moves from their parents without a cookbook in their luggage. However, a proper and complete introduction to personal finance could make an immense difference compared to being able to boil an egg, so why didn’t such a guide exist?
My reason for not starting was a need for support from a finance expert. However, later that evening and after a little too …show more content…
Then a friend, who is a journalist and editor, had her say, which again resulted in major rewrites. After that I went through several beta reads, which revealed that the book had become much too academic, again rewrite upon rewrite, until I only got positive feedback from the beta readers! Never underestimate the rewrite process. In my case it took almost a …show more content…
In addition, most publisher aggregators will also steal a share of your royalties. In most cases you will be better off if you publish directly via e.g. Apple or others.
The next step was print on demand (POD), a comparably easy task. However, color print is expensive with the global POD providers. In Denmark, you only pay for color on the actual color pages, in US you pay for either black and white or color on ALL pages. This can make a huge difference in price adding an extra cost of between 2.5$ and 11 $ for a 200 page book depending on color and paper quality. A cost that probably mostly end up as POD provider profit! Color print is expensive, avoid it if you can.
However, I learned a lot about pricing during this process. It might surprise you that the retailer profit for POD books are quite low. One of our local bookstores let me have a look at their price an profit list, and in the worst cases their profit margin lies as low as 12.5%. Compare that to Amazons HUGE profits of up to 70%. Consider if you want to substitute these online retailers war against normal bookstores, is this in our
It started at a dinner with some friends. Just ended my engagement with my employer and after a closer look at my financial situation, I realized that I could stop working. Of course, everyone wanted to know what I planned to do and number one on my list was a financial cookbook. No one moves from their parents without a cookbook in their luggage. However, a proper and complete introduction to personal finance could make an immense difference compared to being able to boil an egg, so why didn’t such a guide exist?
My reason for not starting was a need for support from a finance expert. However, later that evening and after a little too …show more content…
Then a friend, who is a journalist and editor, had her say, which again resulted in major rewrites. After that I went through several beta reads, which revealed that the book had become much too academic, again rewrite upon rewrite, until I only got positive feedback from the beta readers! Never underestimate the rewrite process. In my case it took almost a …show more content…
In addition, most publisher aggregators will also steal a share of your royalties. In most cases you will be better off if you publish directly via e.g. Apple or others.
The next step was print on demand (POD), a comparably easy task. However, color print is expensive with the global POD providers. In Denmark, you only pay for color on the actual color pages, in US you pay for either black and white or color on ALL pages. This can make a huge difference in price adding an extra cost of between 2.5$ and 11 $ for a 200 page book depending on color and paper quality. A cost that probably mostly end up as POD provider profit! Color print is expensive, avoid it if you can.
However, I learned a lot about pricing during this process. It might surprise you that the retailer profit for POD books are quite low. One of our local bookstores let me have a look at their price an profit list, and in the worst cases their profit margin lies as low as 12.5%. Compare that to Amazons HUGE profits of up to 70%. Consider if you want to substitute these online retailers war against normal bookstores, is this in our