How You Can Make Profit With Self-Publishing

Recently, Michael Hyatt listed what book consumers look at on his blog. They are as follows:

1. Title
2. Cover
3. Back cover
4. Flap (hardcover books or book with “French flaps”)
5. Table of Contents
6. First few paragraphs of the book’s content
7. Price

Notice that price comes last. This is important because potential buyers have already decided they want the book before they look at the price. They’ve already assessed the value and see something worth having and now they are asking whether that value is worth the price. This is actually very good news for those of us who have chosen to self-publish.

The POD printing process costs more than offset printing. It uses higher quality paper and the overhead isn’t spread across as many books. Because of this, most self-published and small press books cost more than books published by major publishers. We may choose to reduce the price of our self-published books to be the same as those produced by major publishers, but by doing so we may prevent ourselves from making money from the book. We can’t completely ignore price, but if we can persuade people that our book has value, they may purchase our book even though it is priced higher than a similar book.

Our primary concern should be that we write a book that has value. Assuming we have done that, we want to make the potential customer aware of the value of the book. We need a title that identifies the value of the book to the customer. We also design a book cover that helps the customer see the value of the book. Of course, we don’t want to spend so much on the book cover that we can’t make any profits from the book. (That is why you need to read Book Cover Design Wizardry.) The more the potential customer sees to convince him of the value of the book, the more likely he will willing pay the higher prices that self-publishers must charge.