Self-Publishers Print Costs

According to Mark Levine, a 200-page, 5.5 x 8.5 paperback, with a laminated, full color cover costs a self-publishing company about $3.90 (or less, given the volume of business they provide to printers). That includes $.015 per page and $.90 for the cover. In his book The Fine Print of Self-Publishing, Levine compares the cost to print such a book by six big publishers and calculates the profit they make on each book. iUniverse, Lulu.com, Outskirts Press, Trafford, Xlibris and Authorhouse pay $3.90 to print your book, but charge you, respectively, $10.37 (35% off retail price, for orders of 6-19 books), $8.53, $6.16 (when ordering publisher's $999 publishing package), $8.37, $13.19 and $9.71 per copy. Do you really think you could sell a paperback for the price it would take to recoup your cost? $8.99 is about the maximum the public will pay.

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