Explanations Re: Print Edition Books

Greetings,

Print editions are an issue, I know. Before Ingram bumped us with a massive price increase and a minimum discount of at least 10% higher than what we used to have, my plan had been to do forced edge editions through Ingram and blank edge through Amazon. Amazon was easy; I set up, launched, and they charge reasonable fees.

As a general rule, my novels, when priced on Amazon, range between $16.99 to $19.99. I have some more expensive, I have some cheaper. Very few more expensive, and those are the big bad tomes of doom. And honestly, I tend to take a smaller royalty on those to keep the prices reasonable.

Ingram, on the other hand, has been charging $26+ (in some cases $35+) for the same book… and the quality is not better, not anymore. If anything, there have been notable quality issues as of late. (And Ingram makes it kinda tricky to return books.)

Now, Amazon has its problems, but for individual POD sales (which is what both companies are), Ingram is falling short, especially for the price we’re paying per copy.

It simply isn’t sustainable.

So, here are the numerous problems I’m contending with.

1: Ingram was where I was doing the forced edge fancy things. Realistically, I just CANNOT justify the price for this. For not much more, I can literally do a hardback OR paperback run out of China with sprayed edges and fancy interior stuff.

2: I can do hardbacks, which DO cost more ($45.99 to $69.99 has been my general estimates so far), but at least they’re hardbacks, yanno?

3: I had to discontinue all sizes that aren’t 6×9; the price to print them is significantly higher, and I CANNOT justify having to charge $35-40+ per book for a 4×6. It just isn’t at all reasonable nor is it sane.

I know that really, really upsets those who like having everything all the same trim size. I’m sorry. I refuse to be a fiscal predator like that. It costs ME a ridiculous amount of money, and however much I love my books, it’s NOT worth having to charge that much for a pocket sized book.

When I first did the mass markets, I did them because they WERE affordable. (They were only $1-2 more than the trade editions.)

That has changed.

Why has that changed?

Costs. Shipping costs have gone up a ridiculous amount. Paper costs have gone up. Labor has as well. Everything has become more expensive.

And here is a brutal truth about the publishing industry: there are never any rewinds. These prices will NOT drop even if shipping, labor, and paper costs decrease.

So, here are my choices:

1: Pull the plug on Ingram, move everything over to Amazon. At least that way, the print editions are there for those who want them, my sanity is preserved, and the quality is good enough for a fair price.

2: Only do hardbacks over at Ingram. This is a possibility, and I’m chewing on it. The books would be expensive, but they’d be accessible for those who want shelf princesses. (Probably won’t do this, because there’s a LOT of investment involved in making hardbacks for Ingram… and it is not worth it at this point.)

Hard truth: ever since the price increase, people AREN’T buying them. We were forced into the price increases, and now I make $5-25 a month over at Ingram. I used to be making $100-300 a month, which at least made it somewhat worth the while.

For the amount of work involved, $5-25 is NOT worth it. It’s just not. I cannot justify a whole vendor for 1-5 sales a month. People are not buying at the more expensive rate… so there’s really no point in selling.

That sucks, don’t like it.

Even libraries, for the most part, have stopped purchasing my books in print after the price changes. They moved to eBooks. Which is fine. The eBooks are FAR more affordable for them and reusable.

3: Chinese printed books (Special Editions): this is the path I’m probably going to take, doing boxed sets of 3-5 books grouped together so they can be happy shelf princesses with sprayed edges, foiling, and so on. These books will be more expensive, print runs will probably be limited to preorder count plus fifty or 250 total. (250 is the minimum number of copies needed to make the print run worth my while.)

All books will be signed through a presigned insert sheet that the Chinese printer will glue into the book for me.

In reality, it’s very unlikely there will be 250 people who want my specialty print editions.

You can sign up to be notified of special editions here.

MY PA would be handling all shipping / receiving / distributions of these books.

Yes, the Art of Keeping Dangerous Books will have a special edition version, but that won’t happen for at least six months following the eBook and general print release. No, I will not be doing a kickstarter for any of these because I’m still trying to dig out of the last one, which got way too big for one person to handle. It’s getting done, it’s just getting done slowly.

Am I upset about this? Yes, absolutely. I loved the forced edge. But I can’t justify x2-4 times the cost for having them on Ingram. The price I have to pay to get them into market and get any royalties at all is ridiculous, and people aren’t paying it.

I directly see that with the drop of my earnings from Ingram.

Ingram has done the one thing I hoped would never happen: they have priced me completely out of the market. It’s not fair to me, it’s not fair to my readers… and well, life just isn’t fair sometimes.

And as such, Amazon is now the place to go for print editions unless I do special editions from the Chinese printer I’ve been in talks with. Cindercorns (which will be the three Bailey novels combined into one big one) will be done for certain. We’re working on it.

I will very probably do Lowrance Vampires next because that series is done. I probably will only foil and spray edge the covers that are already there and call it a day. I might hire my artist to do duplex printing, but we’ll see.

All of these books will come signed via inserts into the book. It doesn’t add that much to the process. (The printer prints the page, ships the page to me, I sign them, ship it back to China, and they glue it into the book. Everyone is happy.)

Ribbons and fanciness, too.

So, that’s where we’re at. If you missed the post with all the links to the current print editions, you can find it here.