The Economics Of E-Book Publishing

When you consider the cost of marketing, publishing, shipping, and returns of printed materials vs. the cost of marketing and shipping an e-a course in miracles the two are just not in the same league.

To get your printed book sold you will need to market the book-to-book stores. To get in the bookstore you need a favorable review of your book. The review process works like this:

The author sends out press releases to book reviewers representing the genre of the book. If the reviewer becomes interested in the press release, the author will receive a request for a “review copy.”

The author digs into the stash of books, pulls out a copy, attaches a reviewer or a media kit, and pays for the postage. On a $5 book that may add another $5 in shipping materials as well as postage. Many reviewers will ask you to ship your books by overnight express. The author may find himself spending up to $18 – $25 per reviewer!

Experts in the self-publishing field, state that you must send between 300-500 review copies to target genre reviewers before your book has a chance to become a hit. If you send out 500 book copies at a minimum of $10 per book, you have spent another $5,000 of your money.

Now you have to market the book. It’s your job as the self-published author to get the books into the store, and it is your job to move the books from the store to your customers.

We will assume that you will want your own web site. It is possible to sell e-books without one, but lets look at all of the possibilities.

Let’s assume that you have a computer and word processing software. You will need that anyway to self-publish your book the traditional way.

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