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Pricing POD Books

Robert Brenner writes: "How did you do your comparison?"

I, quite literally, picked up a stack of "same page count" fiction and non-fiction trade paperback formate titles from several of the New York houses and looked the prices imprinted on the covers. -- I've been reviewing books (and my reviews always include the prices) for almost three decades now. For some reason, the pricing differentials between these New York houses and the various POD houses just leaped up and grabbed my attention to the point that I was moved to make my little posting on the subject. I've been very gratified by the numerous and well thought out responses.

> Did you evaluate
> comparable POD books? I understand that the larger
> publishers can use economies of scale (if not in-house
> POD printing). I'm wondering how we can best use this
> pricing intelligence in our own companies.

I review for pretty much every POD publisher around. If there are any who haven't submitted titles to the Midwest Book Review, I'm simply not aware of them. The Midwest Book Review has a fairly high profile reputation in the small press and POD press community. In fact, for the two largest (iUniverse & 1st Books) I have a first name basis relationship with their head publicists who have both agreed to accept our tear sheets for their respective titles and then forward that information to their client authors.

For what its worth, Infinity.com seems to be the least expensive in terms of cover price averages. The others seem to be all over the map, but uniformly and significantly higher than their traditionally published competitors.

> Perhaps all of us who are small independent publishers
> should re-visit the numbers in our own book cover costs
> and find ways to become more competitive in price.

This is profoundly excellent advice for every publisher regardless of size or preferred publishing technologies and/or venues.

It had never occurred to me to do the page count math in my original post:

> Tom Wedderburn's Life $0.097/page $0.063/page
> Outsourcing the Amer 0.093/page 0.082/page
> Only the Determined 0.108/page 0.078/page

My thanks to Robert Brenner for running the numbers. I found this fascinating.

Jim Cox
Midwest Book Review


James A. Cox
Editor-in-Chief
Midwest Book Review
278 Orchard Drive
Oregon, WI 53575-1129
phone: 1-608-835-7937
e-mail: mbr@execpc.com
e-mail: mwbookrevw@aol.com
http://www.midwestbookreview.com


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