I started out trying to produce the Gnome-sized Books for a retail price of $4.95. Nice thought but no way. So I raised the price to $5.95. Again, no way. Ok I tried $6.95, $7.95, and then $8.95. Again, it couldn't be done. Not and provide enought profit to pay the expenses and profit margins required by the industry. So finally, I seem to have settled in at $9.95. I dare not go any higher than that. The budget balances out at that price, but there is one cavet. Quantity. In order to bring it in at that MSRP, the quantity has bto be high enough.
So, using one Gnome-sized book as the Standard (in terms of pricing) a minimum quantity, likely 25k, will be required. And that is only on one book. There are seven that make up the whole story of "Zach and Zebby's Grand Adventure". The other stories of "The Gnomic Tales" make up five more stories, which are ultimately connected to "Zach and Zebby..." and may or may not be published.
The end price of $9.95 MSRP is of course at the discretion of the retailer and their determination to discount or not. At the Wholesale level, there is no room for price reduction unless the Distributor is committing to significantly higher quantities, but that won't change the MSRP. If anything, that will only increase the discount they choose to offer. But the increase in quantity needs to be substantial.
That leads us to the Big People Books. initially I had hoped for $14.94, quickly that went to $16.95. After a short time it went to $18.95, then $19.95, and then $21.95, followed by $24.95. Based on the Hand-stitched Binding it was clear that none of those MSRP numbers worked. Dare I increase the price to $29.95? I had no choice. Advisors told me the thought even $34.95 wasn't too high a price for books of this quality.
I felt that going over $29.95 was just too much to ask of people for one book of, more-or-less 110 pages. But then the other books in the series, that were upwards of 150 pages had to be amortized into the cost as a whole. And so the MSRP of the Hand-stitched books settled in at $29.95 and completion of the publishing layout advanced under that assumption.
Introduce into the mix two types of book-bindings; Hand-stitched and machine binding. Well, all the test marketing that has been done indicates very high approval of the hand-stitched books and a strong opinion that the books must be hand-stitched. That was a dilemma. The cost of binding the books by hand is half again as much as printing the books, even more.
So that introduces new challenges. What if the price is too high for a significant portion of the potential buyers of the books? How do you solve that. Well, one way is to offer the Gnome-sized books as a less expensive alternative. But what if a person doesn't want the Gnome-sized book? What then? A less expensive version of the Big People books. Well that would be a book bound by a machine. But the machine cannot reproduce the aesthetics of the hand stitched version.
So, the machine bound books become The Standard Edition, with a squared off spine that is glued as so many paperback books are these days. Doing that reduces the price of the book by a significant factor. Then the MSRP can become $24.95 . That number was derived after $19.95 did not quite make enough to cover all the costs. Again, moving into Machine Bound books also increases the required quantity in order to setup and publish those books, not to mention a different aesthetic appearance.
Well, in order to retain the preferred aesthetic appearance, the hand-stitched books now have become The Custom Edition with an MSRP of $34.95, which is sufficient to cover on-demand publishing.
An additional series of Signed and Numbered Limited Editions is also being published with price of $49.95 per book.
Further, the book series is being published in Three Volumes (with prices to be announced in the future) as well as Boxed Sets of both the Gnome-sized and Big People Books.
All of this is being planned and will be offered via a Shopping Cart page, once the releas schedule is confirmed.
I offer this analysis for your reference, whether you are an individual, a distributor, or a retailer.
The budget numbers on don't lie, as they say. And so, these are the anticipated MSRP of the books (as it stands now). If that changes I'll certainly post that info here or... It will be reflected on the shopping cart/order form page
That's all for now.
AG
