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What determines the price a book sells for?

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I've heard it's the publisher, or the author if it's self-published, but what elements go into deciding on the price? It's weird because I have a book that cost more than a longer one, even though it was smaller and shorter. What determines the price and what percentage would the author get?

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  1. With traditional publishing the author may either get one time set fee or royalty fee as a percentage of the books sold.  I understand this is often 8-10%

    As far as the final price, most retailers have a standard mark up from wholesale.  Often they make about 40% of the final retail price.   There are of course discount retailers that mark up less and any retailer may reduce or increase this depending on the market.  The wholesale is of course driven largely by production costs.  

    When self-publishing, you may set any mark up you wish, this will of course influence the end retail price which in turn will influence the demand for your book.

    One of the issues with self publishing using  a print on demand service is that your production cost will likely be more than a traditional publishing company that commits to thousands of copies.   It' s certainly something you should consider when decided whether or not to self publish.     To address this with my self-published book, I need to take a very low mark up when selling it wholesale to retailers, but can take a much higher percent when selling it direct.  Most of my sales are to the retailer, not direct.


  2. I'm guessing the estimated gross on the book. Which has alot to do with popularity.

  3. Book prices will depend on a lot of factors - just like the cost of any product. For publishers also want to recover the cost of book making, so obviously one factor will how much did they spend in making the book. The cost of paper, the cost of publishing, fees and salaries of editors and other staff. These are the costs a publishing firm will expect to incur and all these need to be recovered from the books (all the books) they publish.

    Then for individual books there is the writer's fee. Famous and popular writers are usually more costlier to afford - in the sense that they charge higher fees and higher royalties. New writers will not be getting that much.

    So, the short book you have can have a higher price I have no doubt. Whose the writer? The publisher (Note that branded things are always costlier than ordinary ones- so are the book of big publishing companies, usually)? The paper quality? And the binding (hardbacks costlier than paperbacks)?

    Authors usually get a percentage of sales of the book. This %age depends on the writer and the book. Textbook writers, I have geard, get higher royalties than novelists and others.

    Hope I helped.

    TW K

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