I thought I would give an update on the sales of my two books and the dilemma I now have. Having sold quite a few books on Sunday at our Berkeley Castle Gig, I decided to do a stock take.
My first book “Don’t Look at Me Like That” we printed 500 books and all the proceeds go to Farms For City Children. I have only 5 copies left and they have 32 left at Wick Court! Selling them for £5 we have raised over £2000 for the charity. Do I now do a reprint? If I do will we sell them?
300 books were printed for Pig The Legend but these books retail at £7.99 and the profits all go to Alzheimer’s Society. The publisher and book shops obviously take some money although every book I sell in person all money goes to the charity. So far almost £1200 have been paid into the charity.
Hi Bill, for what it is worth, it must come down to the likely demand (and can you find other ways of selling them?), current costs of production in relation to print runs.
At the museum where I volunteer, two people at the museum are about to launch a self published book for £12 with a print run of 200 (not too sure how many pages at time of writing). Setting up the print run earlier in the year we thought 200 would be a little ambitious, but already 160 are sold before it is formally launched. We may regret in time not raising the print run as the overall costs reduce. It is expected to raise a small surplus for the museum, but it was not the primary aim at the time. There is no intention of reprinting the book from the two people concerned. It is local history book and has been very time consuming and stressful, especially with regards copyright and all the photos used, but I don’t think you have that problem.