Publishing Smarts Means Being Money Smart

Do you know your breakeven number—the number of books that you need to sell to cover your book production costs? The savvy author tallies up everything from consultants, design, editing, layout, art, illustrations, printing and anything else spent to get his book into the format that is saleable. Take the gross number and divide it by the number of books printed, yielding your true first print per book cost. Any additional printings will be adjusted by costs not repeated (i.e. layout, cover, illustrations, editing, consultants—unless there are tweakings creating additional costs).
Next, determine how many books you need to sell to recoup your costs. Whether it’s a few hundred books or many, knowing the number of books that you need to “move” is a smart book business move.