Deborah Woehr

Published by deborah.woehr on 09 Oct 2006 at 12:27 am

Self-Publishing Through Lulu: Setting Your Price

The pricing screen automatically calculates how much your book will cost and how much of a cut Lulu will receive, based on the royalty amount you enter. With the “mock” novel, I experimented with the royalty, entering $5.00. That shot the book’s price up to $21.95. Here is a more realistic figure:

Print cost: $12.43
Download (ebook): $1.25
Your Royalty: $1.00

Pricing your book is the most trickiest aspect of self-publishing. You have to know what your audience is willing to pay. I’ve bought POD books in the past and wouldn’t pay more than $16.00 for a 6×9 paperback novel. I checked out the price on a book that was published by Del Rey. Their pricing was $13.95 for this book size.

Before you click “Complete Publish,” make sure your pricing is set at a reasonable rate and you have your license set (see the bottom of the pricing screen).

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4 Comments Books, Projects, Publishing with Lulu, Self-Publishing

4 Responses to “Self-Publishing Through Lulu: Setting Your Price”

1. John (Syntagma) on 09 Oct 2006 at 1:25 am #

   The standard royalty on a paperback is 7.5%, so if you’re going to be professional about it (and why not?) that’s probably the best number to enter.

   The price of the Anthology in Sterling is £8.63, which is broadly in the range of 9×6″ pbs.

   Can’t wait to get my copy.

2. deborah.woehr on 09 Oct 2006 at 5:11 pm #

   I hope you enjoy it, John. Yes, it’s important to take a professional attitude when pricing your book. I totally agree. Pricing it too high or too low will hurt your sales.

3. Karen Lee Field on 10 Oct 2006 at 5:41 pm #

   I was told long ago not to expect much more than around $1 royalty on each book sold, so your working sound right to me.

   $1 a book isn’t much, considering the amount of work we put in, is it? *sigh*

4. deborah.woehr on 10 Oct 2006 at 7:57 pm #

   I know. I read somewhere that an author (especially a first-timer) is lucky to sell 500 copies of his/her book. You can earn more money working at McDonalds, which means that you really have to love writing in order to tolerate such a paltry return.