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Write the Damn Book Already
Writing and publishing a phenomenal book doesn’t have to be ridiculously complicated or mind-numbingly overwhelming. From myths and misconceptions to practical tips and sound strategies, Elizabeth Lyons (author, book writing coach, book editor, and founder of Finn-Phyllis Press), helps writers feel more in control of and comfortable with the business of book publishing. Her interviews with fellow authors discussing their writing processes and publishing journeys aim to help you untangle YOUR process so you can finally get your story into the world.
Write the Damn Book Already
Ep 83: Self-Publishing Cookbooks and Children's Books
Click Here to ask your book writing and publishing questions!
The time has come! We're finally able to move on from the days of traditional offset printing to print-on-demand options when it comes to children's books and cookbooks. Whether you're contemplating watercolor illustrations for a children's book or publishing a mouthwatering cookbook, this episode is for you!
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS
- Managing the balance between print quality, profitability, and the different book distribution methods at your disposal.
- The nitty-gritty of offset printing vs. the economics of self-publishing
- The pros and cons of overseas printing
- The real costs of self-distribution
- Demystifying the printing process to ensure your images pop off the page.
RESOURCES MENTIONED
>> Publish A Profitable Book discount: For a limited time, we're celebrating the updates to the Publish A Profitable Book course with 15% off! Use code PUBLISH15 at checkout (applies to pay-in-full AND payment plan options!).
>> Which publishing approach is best for you? Click here to find out!
>> Click Here for spreadsheet detailing considerations to prioritize when publishing a cookbook or children's book
>> Click Here to listen to podcast detailing Elizabeth's Threads PR Crisis of 2024.
>> Scaredy Cat by Erin Thorburn
Let's get you published!
PublishAProfitableBook.com/Publish (use code AUTHOR25 for 25% off!)
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Welcome to the Write the Damn Book Already podcast. My name is Elizabeth Lyons. I'm a six-time author and book editor, and I help people write and publish powerful, thought-provoking, wildly entertaining books without any more overthinking, second-guessing or overwhelm than absolutely necessary. Because, let's face it, some overthinking, second-guessing and overwhelm is gonna come with the territory. If you're anything like me, I believe that story and shared perspective are two of the most potent ways we connect with one another, and that your story, perspective and insights are destined to become someone else's favorite resource or pastime. For more book writing and publishing tips and solutions, oh and plenty of free and low cost resources, visit publishaprofitablebookcom and for recommendations of fabulous books. You've possibly never heard of book writing inspiration and the occasional meme so relatable you'll wonder if it was created with you in mind. Follow me on Instagram at Elizabeth Lyons. Author. Well, hello. Okay.
Speaker 1:Today we are going to talk about something that I always hoped we would be able to talk about, but wasn't sure that we would, and that is how to create high quality cookbooks and children's books through Amazon or IngramSpark, in other words, without having to go through a traditional house. If you don't want to or if that's not an option, for whatever reason. Cookbooks and children's books are quite challenging to sell to a traditional house for all the reasons you can imagine, and so more often than not people end up wanting to take those into their own hands. But there's been a problem with them in the past because while the print quality for nonfiction fiction, memoir, just text-only books through KDP and IngramSpark has come such, such, such a long way, I can put two books next to one another, one that I've had printed offset, because that used to be the way that we had to do it, and for anyone who's listening who doesn't know, offset essentially means that it's not print on demand. So you hire a printer to print large quantities of your book, usually 500 plus copies of your book and it used to be back in the day that we had to do that. For everything there was no print on demand.
Speaker 1:So for my first, second and third books I had them printed by an offset printer in quantities anywhere from a thousand at a time to, in one instance, 5,000 at a time, and then had them shipped to me. The third one is the one that I had printed 5,000 copies of, and that was really fun because it arrived in a truck on a pallet and they had to deliver it to a business address. I will never forget this. I have pictures of it somewhere. If I can find them I'll try to put them in the show notes or something. But so I had them deliver it to my kid's school because that was a business address. So, as I'm picking up my kids, it was a really small school, so it worked. But this truck pulls up and they bring out the ramp or whatever you call it that goes up and down off the back of the truck and they lower this pallet.
Speaker 1:And it was a pallet of, I mean, many, many boxes of books and I thought I've made a critical error because I didn't think about the fact that not all of this would fit in my car with my children. So I think people followed me home and they were like multiple. I left some in the office. I mean it was a whole thing. But that's what we used to have to do across the board.
Speaker 1:If you wanted to be an independent author, self-publish your book, you had to go with an offset printer and then you'd have to ship the books to Amazon or direct to consumer or whomever you're using for point of distribution. Thank God we don't have to do that anymore. But even when print on demand first came on the scene, the quality, in my opinion, just wasn't there. I wanted to be able to put that book next to the book that I had had offset print and have them be comparable in paper quality, in print quality, all of it, and it wasn't there. Finally, in my opinion, it's there. Now you can talk to a lot of different people who have different opinions on that.
Speaker 1:There are endless debates going on online about whether IngramSpark's print quality is better than Amazon's, and one of the things that I think is so funny about that is that in many cases they're using each other's print services, so you don't even really know who's you're getting, because IngramSpark is the printer for Amazon's expanded distribution program in most, if not all, cases, and then also, books are printed from various printing locations depending upon who ordered the book. So you're not really comparing apples and apples when you say, well, ingram Spark is consistently better or KDP is consistently better, but people like to have a platform to stand on sometimes, so they'll die on the hill of which one is better. What was inarguable for some time was that cookbooks and children's books were really challenging to do through print-on-demand because the quality there just really hadn't risen to the level that we all hoped. So I can put you Cannot Be Serious which is that third book that I printed 5,000 copies of. I can now do it print on demand through Amazon. I can print a copy of it, print on demand, have it arrive and put it right next to the copy that was offset print and I can't tell or feel the difference. It's negligible at best. So cool, but it wasn't like that for a product with full color. In short, I think I've figured this out, but the longer story I wanted to talk through because it's not as simple as oh, you can now do it, cool.
Speaker 1:So if you're familiar at all with my Publish a Profitable Book course, that's the first course I ever created and it walks you step-by-step through self-publishing your book and for years it has only tackled fiction, nonfiction and memoir, because my goal when I started publishing back in 2004 was that nobody would be able to tell that I was a self-published author. So I had a professional cover design, I had the interior professionally done, all of that stuff, so no one could tell the difference. And once I really streamlined that process and had done it for several other people it was like, let's just put the process out there. So that's why I created the course. I could not, with integrity, include children's books, cookbooks, even poetry at that point books of poetry because while books of poetry might not contain color, there's a different formatting, there's a different size and at that point IngramSpark and certainly KDP just weren't at the point yet where the gatekeeping was still there, the barrier to entry, I should say, was still there. So where, like, the gatekeeping was still there, the barrier to entry, I should say, was still there. So that course has been around for several years now and I'm doing a big upgrade and overhaul on it right now, because not only have some of the processes and the recommendations on self-publishing changed over the years, but also now I've got this method for doing cookbooks and children's books.
Speaker 1:But we still have to talk through some of this because really publishing is a pick two or pick three or pick four of X number scenario, like anything else in the world. You've got to figure out what your priorities are, because everything you want you're probably not going to be able to get. So what's the most important? One, two or three things to you, and then what are you willing to give up in order to get those things? That's the question that I spend time walking people through. So publish a profitable book? Just if you're listening and you're like, oh my gosh, I need something like that.
Speaker 1:In celebration of the launch, the course itself is 15% off with code publish 15. So I will put that down in the show notes. But you can go to publishaprofitablebookcom to the programs page, scroll down till you see publish a profitable book and when you enroll, if you enter code publish 15, you'll get 15% off, whether or not you pay in full, upfront or do the payment plan. And my payment plans just split the total amount by the number of months it's. I don't tack on an interest. I'm not saying there's anything at all wrong with doing that, but I just like to create a way that feels good for everybody. I don't want anyone any more anxious than they already are when they're in these programs.
Speaker 1:So what happened was I received a connection to two cookbook authors who I won't name because I don't have their permission to do so, but lovely, lovely people who have cookbooks on the market that they hybrid published. So it wasn't a traditional deal in the sense that there wasn't an upfront advance, but it was a traditional deal in the sense that there was no cost to them upfront. They got actually a pretty good revenue split profit share off the backend and it was a good situation. They were less than happy because one of the restrictions which I now fully understand, having really dug into it was and is that they can't sell the book through Amazon or booksellers. The book has to be sold through the company through whom they published. And the reason for that having dug deep, I believe I haven't talked to the company, but I'm 99.2% sure for that, having dug deep, I believe I haven't talked to the company, but I'm 99.2% sure that I'm correct about this is because the profit margin would be cut so significantly were the publishing company to add in a middleman like Amazon or IngramSpark that the numbers wouldn't make sense for anybody not for the authors and certainly not for the publishing company.
Speaker 1:So I received this connection and we hopped on a call and they're really wonderful and, honestly, these two individuals are selling a lot of cookbooks. So in just one month last year, one of these authors sold over 20,000 copies of their cookbook. That's significant. So certainly understand, number one, why you would want your cookbook. That's significant. So certainly understand number one why you would want your cookbook to be available via Amazon and booksellers. This particular individual has Barnes Noble begging them to be able to do a signing. This person has a very large Instagram account that's continuing they both do. That's continuing to grow and they have to keep saying no because they can't. They don't have access to those avenues. So even though they sold that many in a month, the question is well, my God, how many could I sell in a month were I to be available via these other methods and also just help reach new people via these other methods?
Speaker 1:So we had this conversation and we started digging in, and I'm also working with another author right now who's writing a children's book and has some really strong opinions on print on demand, which I've absolutely taken into account for this conversation and within the publishing course itself. Again, just to help you make a decision about what's the best route to go, like what are your priorities. I have summarized all of this up in a spreadsheet, which is something I never thought I'd say. I mean, I love spreadsheets, but I know people who just run for Excel when they're trying to figure out what their morning cleaning routine is going to be. I'm not one of those people, but I've put it together in a spreadsheet because, again, that way you can see it, and I've put the link to the spreadsheet. It's in a Google Drive so you've got view access in the show notes so that you can go look at it. You don't have to remember everything that I'm saying right now.
Speaker 1:Essentially, even if we're talking about nonfiction, fiction, memoir, you've got to pick two or three. So I was writing down briefly, if we're talking about nonfiction and memoir, what are the four areas that you need to consider in terms of what's most important to you? And I also cover this. I've got a blog post that I'll link in the episode notes. That kind of walks you through the same thing, like how do I decide which publishing approach is best for me? And it asks you some yes and no questions. And if you have more yeses than noes, then you should go this way, and if you have more no, then you go that way. And it just helps you understand what you actually get from each approach.
Speaker 1:And this is not to say you know one of the big. I'm going to do a little side. It's not going to be a tangent. But I'm going to do a little side thing real quick and say one of the big points of discussion right now on threads. If you're on threads as an author, you may have noticed that you know somebody like every week there's a new thing, if not, every two days there's a new thing that authors are talking about, either in the writer threads or the author threads communities, and someone, either purposely or not, says something and then it starts, it goes like wildfire and everyone chimes in and it becomes this massive back and forth and it's lots of times it's filled with rage and don't ask me how. I know I may have inadvertently been the subject of one of them several months ago. Did not mean it. That's a whole other episode on that. I'll put that in the show notes too. It was pretty fun Hear my sarcasm.
Speaker 1:But one of the big discussion points right now is someone had posted that traditional publishing houses don't do anything for their authors and to break this we could do a whole episode on this. So I'm going to be very careful to get there quickly. Essentially what they were saying was, I think, if we broke it all down, traditional publishing houses don't typically do a lot of marketing for their authors. Because then what a lot of traditionally published authors chimed in with on the back end of that was, wait a minute, yes, they do, they do a lot. They edit, they design a cover, they do the interior, they walk you through, they take the full investment, they make the full investment, they take the full risk. There's a lot that goes on. They're underpaid, they're overworked. Please don't discount what these folks are doing, and I don't disagree at all. So what was unsaid, what was thought but unsaid was okay, wait. What I meant was that they don't do a lot in terms of marketing, and my take, elizabeth's take on that is that the reason they were saying, the only reason that someone would say my publishing house didn't do very much for me in the area of marketing, is that they expected their publishing house to do so and that expectation was not fair to begin with.
Speaker 1:I do not know of a traditionally published author who has explicit marketing promises in their contract. I have no doubt that it happens. I have no doubt that at the upper echelon the top 1% of the top 1%, that's in there we're going to send you on a tour, we're going to do this, that and the other, no doubt, but in most cases it's not in there. And the reason it's not in there is because the market changes so fast. It's usually two to three years from the time a book is signed to the time a book actually comes on the market. So there's turnover at the publishing houses. Oh my God, new social media platforms. Can you imagine saying, well, yeah, we're going to do a big blast for you on Periscope, and then fast forward seven months, let alone three years? Periscope doesn't even exist anymore, so it's just not there. Or you say, we're going to do a big tour for you, and then, what do you know? A pandemic hits, or something like that?
Speaker 1:One of the biggest issues in the traditional publishing space is that authors think that a traditional publisher will do all of their marketing, ie all of their sales and we confuse and conflate publicity, marketing and sales, and they're different things. So this is the big conversation right now and it'll change tomorrow. But if you can know right out of the gate that in all likelihood you are not going to be able to rely on your publishing house for marketing, if that's something that put the traditional house as a number one for you, well, now, all of a sudden it's not a number one anymore and you can make a much more educated and intentional decision about the direction that you want to go as an author. Knowing that that's the case, you also can ask much more intentional questions of your agent and of your editor, of your publishing house, to say, hey, if I take this deal right, what will you do for me? And in all likelihood they're going to be honest. I mean, I pray and say we don't know, or not a hell of a lot, because that's the truth. And it's not because they're bad people, it's because they're spread way thin. They have a bajillion authors and they've got to put their marketing. It's a business. They've got to put their marketing dollars toward the authors that they are expecting to bring in. Like keep them in business, keep them afloat, because that's what allows them to take a risk on an unknown debut author.
Speaker 1:All right, so tangent, like rant on that over. But if you're new to me, please know I'm not anti-anything. I am anti stuff that's not in integrity, which I refer to as a vanity publisher. But that's a whole separate topic too, because a lot of people refer to a hybrid publisher as a vanity publisher and we're talking about two different things, but calling them the same thing and that gets dangerous. So I am not opposed to traditional publishing. I am not opposed to hybrid or publishing services companies that authors hire to put together a great book for them and I am certainly not opposed to self-publishing. It's all I've ever done.
Speaker 1:But when it comes to not only fiction, nonfiction memoir, poetry, cookbooks and now children's books, there are some different questions. So in the area of fiction, nonfiction memoir, the four that come up the most are do you want to make an? Are you willing to make an upfront investment? Do you want creative control over your content, so your edits what you ultimately keep in, and don't your cover design, your title, things like that. Do you want a shorter time to market or are you okay waiting two to three years? And the fourth one is do you want people assigned to take you know? Do you want someone to just say this is your editor, this is your cover designer, this is your cover design, this is your release date, et cetera, or do you want to have a little bit more of a say in that? Do you want to hire your own editor and cover designer? Do you want to build your own team. So you've got to kind of rank those and in most cases you pick two. The only case where I can come up with where you would pick three is self-publishing, and the three that you would get are control over creative content, a shorter time to market and you get to assign people to your book. But in most other cases it's pick two because you only get two.
Speaker 1:So let's talk cookbooks and children's books. There are six categories that you need to rank in terms of what's most important to you. The first one is upfront printing costs to you. Are you willing to spend any money upfront to have the books printed? The second is the distribution process how the books are distributed. Again, is it just through a publishing house? Is it available everywhere? Do you just want to do author to consumer? What is your hope and goal there? The third is the paper and the print quality. So the color printing and then also the paper quality for your interior and for your cover. The fourth is your earnings. So what's the percentage of earnings that you'll make off the back end?
Speaker 1:The fifth is really not. We could remove this as a category, but it's extra features. So do you require a sewn binding? I don't know many authors coming out of the gate who are like, yes, I want a sewn binding. So one of the things that when I was chatting with these delightful cookbook authors they said is we'd love for the cookbooks to lay flat. Understandably, right. But if you go into any bookstore and grab any cookbook, they're all perfect bound for the most part. They don't lie flat unless they're spiral bound and you can do an upscale spiral bind. But it's not common. You don't really see it in bookstores, right, because? But it's not common. You don't really see it in bookstores, right, because there's no spine, so it's difficult to display unless it's a runaway bestseller for some reason. But then the next.
Speaker 1:So the sixth or, if you're removing extra features, the fifth category is acquiring author copies to sell direct to readers. Do you have a strong desire, slash need to be able to easily acquire large numbers of books to sell at events, to have at signings, and do you feel like you want to be able to get those for the most reasonable price possible? You don't want to have to jump through hoops and pay two or three extra dollars per copy to your publisher because that's how they make their money and wait for a print time and all of that. So those are the things that you really need to look into, and the categories that I broke out your options into are traditional publishing, so something like HarperCollins Chronicle Books, that it doesn't have to be big five, but just a situation where they're paying you in advance and taking care of doing all the legwork for you. Or you can go with an offset printer, so essentially you're self-publishing but you're printing in large quantities, or you're doing print on demand. So you're going you're self-publishing and you're going with something like KDP and IngramSpark, or even another print on demand like BookBaby or Lulu, which typically doesn't end up being the best bet because their cost per unit is quite high. So I would ask you to rank those let's make them five categories.
Speaker 1:Are you willing to do an initial print run? How do you want to distribute the books? What type of paper and printing quality do you feel good about? What kind of royalties do you want? And what do you want when it comes time to acquire books to do? Do you see yourself doing signings and events and back of the room sales, anything like that? If you are a cookbook author or children's book author and you have like a Shopify store. Do you want to be able to sell direct through something like Shopify? That's kind of become a big thing and there are authors out there selling courses on how to do that and do it well, because they figured out that process.
Speaker 1:If that's the route you want to go, none of this is a magic bullet. All of it requires commitment, consistency, persistence and, like a lot of coffee, or maybe something even stronger on occasion. So, as I say with anything, the idea that you can just come out of the gate and buy a course even mine and automatically have success, can you have a great published book at the end of publish a profitable book? Yes, but then you gotta sell it. You don't have to do anything, but most people want to get their work out into the world. It is not an if I write it or if I publish it, they will come situation. I don't know if it ever was, but it surely is not now.
Speaker 1:So if we're talking about upfront printing costs to the author, there are two ways to not have an upfront print cost. The first is to be with a traditional publisher. The second is to use a print-on-demand service when the issue arises. Right now, instead of going through again. I'm going to put the link to this spreadsheet because to read this all out will be. I don't know about you, but if I were listening to that on a podcast I think I might lose my mind, because I just get really confused.
Speaker 1:So what I will say is the biggest concerns when it comes to publishing, cookbooks and children's books are number one. How can you retain a high profit margin and a short time to publication so you're not waiting three years to get an agent and then get a book deal and then have the book come out? So, same with a children's book, how can you get it on the market more quickly than otherwise? How can you ensure that you have wide distribution so you're available through all the major portals and channels and platforms? How can you ensure that you have the highest possible profit margin and how can you make sure that you feel good about the product that is being created? That is essentially what everyone wants. The challenge is that in one of those areas, you will have to make a small compromise.
Speaker 1:I'm working with an author right now who's working on a children's book, and one of the areas where the print quality is not quite there for full color books is if you are working with an artist who is using, say, watercolor, are working with an artist who is using, say, watercolor, if it's literally art that has to be scanned in not digital art but physical art. They have painted a watercolor on a piece of watercolor paper and then it's got to be scanned in the quality on that. If you're doing, print on demand is not going to be, it's not going to be awful, awful, but you probably paid money, extra money, for this watercolor artist because you wanted that feeling and you're going to lose a good bit your work. My dear friend, erin Thorburn is a children's book author and her book Scaredy Cat one of her books, scaredy Cat is available everywhere and it's amazing, by the way, so go grab a copy. She does her own artwork. She paints and or does colored pencil. She does a bunch of different mediums. It's not, I don't think she's done watercolor, but she uses a very, very high quality scanner to scan her artwork in and it prints really well. She's never had any concern about the quality of the printing and she's someone who absolutely would were it not good.
Speaker 1:But for some reason, when you have what I would call more delicate art, such as watercolor, where there are just really subtle variations in hue and such. If you're spending that much money out of the gate on the watercolor and it can be many thousands of dollars for those illustrations obviously you want it to be really crisp and lovely, and so in order to do that you are probably going to need to work with an offset printer, meaning you're going to have to be ready to make an investment upfront to have 250 or 500 or a thousand or more copies of the book printed, shipped to you, and then you either distribute, you sell direct to consumers, or you go fulfilled by Amazon and you ship to Amazon and then people can order through Amazon. It will be very difficult in that instance, if not impossible, to distribute to major bookstores because they will want to order through Ingram. And unless you're loaded with IngramSpark, there's no way to do that unless you're working with a distributor who has a contract with Ingram. And unless you're loaded with IngramSpark, there's no way to do that unless you're working with a distributor who has a contract with Ingram. And once you've done all that, you've got so many middlemen in the mix on a color book that you're making about nothing on your book if not losing money on the book.
Speaker 1:So with a book like a cookbook or a children's book, your highest profit margin is going to come, for the most part, if you're selling direct. However, one piece of the equation that sometimes people forget to take into account is you're shipping the books to you, you're storing them that's just a mental cost, right but then you've got to purchase envelopes, you've got to pay for shipping to ship them out, all those sorts of things. So make sure that you add that in, because in many cases then the difference between fulfilling it yourself and fulfilling it somewhere like Amazon ends up being negligible. And if you're selling 10,000 books, it makes a difference. If you're only selling 50 books, it doesn't make enough of a difference to take on all the work unless you really want to of being in charge of your own distribution. But to go back to this amazing cookbook author over 20,000 copies in a month, that is a more than full-time job for more than one or two or even three people probably to get those shipped out.
Speaker 1:So this individual was like there's no way I'm doing fulfillment by myself, at least not at this time and not under the current parameters of what's available. But what the question became was how do we get it into a situation where the book can be available via Amazon and available to bookstores, but you can keep your profit margin pretty good, and the answer ended up being you can't. So where the risk has to be taken in that case is on the profit margin. My argument playing devil's advocate was okay. So you sell I'm making up a number but you sell 10,000 cookbooks and you make $5 a cookbook. That's great. If you go through KDP, you only make $1.50 a cookbook and that stinks. However, is it possible and we won't know this until it happens that in the end, you will make the same amount of money, if not more, because you will actually sell more books? So then, not only your income hasn't taken a hit, and you're getting out to more and more and more people, which allows you to create other income streams if you so choose.
Speaker 1:I mean, there are all these different ways to look at it, but scaling comes at a cost in some way, shape or form. I mean you got to bring other people in or something Within the offset printing world. Right, you can offset print. There are many companies in the United States. If you're in the United States and I am where you can offset print. And then there are also offset printers overseas. Specifically, there are a lot in China and there are a lot overseas that are not in China. The challenge with that so the benefit of doing an offset print run overseas and this is the case for fiction, nonfiction, memoir, like anything as well is that you do get the best price, typically per unit, so the best price per book printed.
Speaker 1:The challenge is that then you've got to get those books from Asia to the United States. So, number one, there's an expense associated with that. That's usually decent. And then the second thing is you are usually sitting in a container on a ship with a whole lot of other containers, and in many cases you're not the only item in that container. You're sharing a container with other businesses and other products. If that container gets delayed in customs, if it doesn't ship out like if there's a whole delay, I mean the number of delays, especially during the pandemic that we saw with books and printing, was huge, because not only were there supply issues but, as we all know, there were supply chain issues, and so there were books that were scheduled to be released during the pandemic that had to get pushed back quite a bit, because we couldn't get them. The publishers couldn't get the books physically here to the States, so that's the risk you take if you go that route. So yeah, you can save some money and you can have a bigger profit margin, but you might have to invest a lot of that money into therapy to get yourself through multiple panic attacks when your books are stuck in customs or just stuck in a boat or on a boat overseas.
Speaker 1:The biggest hiccups when it comes to traditional publishing is first, just getting the deal. Lots of times people think, well, I'm definitely traditionally publishing, I'm going to get a huge advance, which is not necessarily true. They're going to take care of everything for me distribution, printing, all of it and I'm just going to collect checks. Well, first of all, it's not exactly how it works. I mean it is, but it isn't, especially the advance part. And also they're making the assumption that they're going to get a deal. So first you've got to get an agent who's willing to represent the book, then you've got to find a publishing house that's willing to buy the rights to the book and then you've got to get into the queue to actually be released. So we're talking years and many people are willing to wait on that and that's great. But many other people are absolutely not. So that's the biggest drawback when it comes to traditional publishing, especially once people find out that the advance is usually not very big for cookbooks and children's books because they don't know that they're going to make that much money themselves off the back end.
Speaker 1:It's paid out in thirds, minus 15% to your agent, so it's not allowing anyone to quit their day jobs Again, 99% of authors. We all have second jobs, we all have other things that we do. We don't just pay all of our bills through book sales. Yet I like to say that because I'm putting it out into the universe and they're not going to do all your marketing for you. They might do a little, they might you know some more than others, but in most cases you're going to have to go do it yourself.
Speaker 1:And then people get a little resentful, like I'm doing all biggest issues and challenges with offset printing. It's the upfront cost to you. It can oftentimes be four figures or low five figures, sometimes even mid five figures, depending on how many books you're ordering. And then just the hassle of distribution when you've got all these books in your garage or in a distribution center whatever, and then bringing in a middleman. If you don't want to have them in your garage and you want to hire a distribution partner to ship for you, you've got to pay for that.
Speaker 1:And then with KDP and Ingram Spark, the biggest challenge and issue is, I would say, people are oftentimes a little bit disappointed with the profit margin that they end up with. Because for print books as a self-published author that don't have full color, your profit margin is pretty good. It's 60% minus the print costs and that's compared to like a 10% royalty with a traditional house. But keep in mind you've gotten usually an advance up front. But the bottom line is they've taken the whole risk. So they I mean it's a business they should get like what? I don't understand what people are thinking. When someone takes that risk and then wants to split the reward, it doesn't make a ton of sense to split it 50-50. But with full color there are two paper options standard and premium and from what I understand and I've got several cookbooks here now that have been printed by KDP and they are absolutely on premium paper and I think they look great and I am extremely critical, so I think they look really good.
Speaker 1:The thing is, again, if you've got artwork in there, if you're using photos and it's a cookbook, you can absolutely do this through KDP and IngramSpark, without a doubt. There are huge photos in these cookbooks that I've ordered to check out and they are very crisp. They've gotta be high res images, but that's easy to do. These days Some people are taking better quality photos with their phones than with a $4,000 camera. I don't know how it's just what it is. So it's doable if you're using photographs but again, if you're into art, you might feel differently.
Speaker 1:The other thing is we have in our head of like a vision of what a cookbook or a children's book size should be, and lots of times, especially in the children's book category, people say I don't want a paperback children's book, I want a hardback with a dust jacket and these other bells and whistles. And once they figure out how much that's going to cost because that will be an offset print thing you can do a hardback cookbook, you can do a hardback children's book, but you won't have a dust jacket. If you go through KDP or IngramSpark To get a dust jacket, you're going to have to offset and the cost of it it definitely, you know, really ups the cost of it. So once people know that, they think maybe I'll come out of the gate with my first children's book and not have to do it in that way and we'll graduate up to that over time Invest back in and republish it as a hardback with a dust jacket later on through an offset printer. You're slightly restricted not nearly as much as you used to be but you're slightly restricted on sizing. So some of the most common sizes for cookbooks are 10 by 10, or you'll see eight by 11. But some of the sizing that you might see in a bookstore will not be available through IngramSpark and or KDP. But more and more, especially as the cookbook market and the children's book market, as people start putting out books through KDP and IngramSpark good, high quality, put your best foot forward books we'll start seeing more and more of those and I hope, as a consumer, I hope we don't see less and less or fewer and fewer of the hardbacks with the dust jackets, because those are really great lifetime things to have.
Speaker 1:I still have some of the children's books that you know my grandparents gave me when I was one or two, so they're really nice like memento pieces and sometimes it takes a minute for us to convert our brain from what we thought our book was going to look like to another option. It doesn't mean that you have to settle. It just means that you have to change up your perspective a little bit on. Okay, well, the alternative is I don't release it at all, and also remember that with a cookbook, the other option you have is to release it, not just as a physical book but also as an ebook, and the reason I say that is because I often have my iPad on my kitchen island and I have my saved recipes and stuff from Instagram and I open them up on my iPad.
Speaker 1:So, where you may or may not choose to do, you can, but you may not choose to do an ebook for a children's book. You can definitely do one for a cookbook and your highest profit margin is going to come. Choose to do an ebook for a children's book. You can definitely do one for a cookbook and your highest profit margin is going to come from an ebook sale through Amazon. Or, if you do it directly but from another partner, it's going to come through Amazon because you make 70% and there is no printing cost. So if you have a $10 ebook, you're going to make $7. So if you have an audience that you either already have or can put together over time and sell the ebook version of your cookbook for people to have on their tablet or on their phone, sitting on their island, on a stand or whatever people do, they're like recipes popping up in refrigerators now, apparently, I mean modern family. My God, their refrigerator talked to them.
Speaker 1:So don't discount that, especially when the alternative is you just don't do it at all. It does not have to be all or nothing, and please don't let it be all or nothing. We can figure out a solution to what your concerns are, and lots of times those concerns end up boiling down or being boiled down to. You're afraid that if you do it this way, it's not real. People won't perceive it as real. You'll look like a crazy person for having released a cookbook that's 10 by 10 and not hardback and doesn't have a dusk jacket and when you open the page doesn't say welcome to my cookbook. That's crazy. So we have to talk through that sometimes and get to the bottom of that before people can say you know what? Right, I'm just going to go and experiment with this and see what happens.
Speaker 1:So I'm really excited to be adding all that into the Publish a Profitable Book course how to format it, how to get your photos correct, how to lay everything out, the printing, how to price it, what your distribution options are, all of that. And if that is of interest to you, I encourage you to check out again. It's publishaprofitablebookcom. Forward slash publish. That's the publishing course. And then down below in the show notes I will absolutely include the link to this spreadsheet, to the articles that I've got and the blog post about deciding which publishing approach is best for you.
Speaker 1:And please know that if you decide that traditional publishing is the route you want to try, for however long, I am with you all the way, like I will cheerlead on the side and if that works out, I will buy the book and I will even cook something out of it. Or I will read it to a young child or to my older children, who sometimes still behave like young children, or to myself. And if you decide I don't want to do the traditional thing, I want to just do this myself. Or I've tried the traditional thing and it's been a while and I don't want to wait anymore, I want to do it myself. I would love to chat with you more about what your options are in the area of self-publishing, not from a position of selling you on anything that isn't right for you, but helping you to just truly understand how all these processes work so that you can say that's the road I wanna go down and do it with confidence and conviction and excitement.
Speaker 1:We have such a fun group right now in the Write the Damn Book Already community. If you're not already a member of the Facebook group, we would absolutely love to have you. We are incredibly supportive of one another's works, whether they're works in progress or they've just been released or they're getting ready to be released, and that's really what this whole industry is about for me the words, the community, the stories, even when told to four-year-olds, and through measurements that involve copious amounts of cheese. I hope this has been helpful. If you have any questions whatsoever about this part of the process or any other part of the book writing or publishing process, please do not ever hesitate to email me, elizabeth, at elizabethlyonscom, or DM me over on Instagram at elizabethlyonsauthor. I will get back to you just as soon as I figured out what we are having for dinner that night.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much for listening, everyone. I'll talk to you again soon. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, this is your friendly reminder to follow or subscribe, leave a quick review and share it with someone you know has a great story or message, but isn't sure what to do next. Also, remember to check out publishaprofitablebookcom for book writing resources and tips and to see all the ways we can work together to get your book out into the world. Again, thanks so much for listening and I'll talk with you again soon.
