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You get what you pay for. How true that is. But a high price doesn't necessarily lead to a high-quality publication. You need to consider all price factors.

The Price Trap

Start by getting an idea of the price books something like yours are selling for. In general, books by an M.D. author can command a higher price than other books. The safest path to learning prevailing book prices is to look in bookstores for prices of books with similar or related content and the length and publishing style you prefer.

One way to learn the total cost of book production is by sending out multiple proposal requests. Be sure to set up a strict resistance to sales experts who will call you over and over again in utter amazement that you haven't sent them your book (and your money) yet.

We follow a procedure at Griffith Publishing that keeps us from leaning on the benefits of a single printing company. Our procedure is to study the printing and binding capabilities of various firms and choose one that produces books like the one you want at the most economical prices.

Pre-press services such as editing and page design can throw obstacles in your path. I know a publishing firm that will pay about $4 per day for heavy editing of thousands of words. What kind of quality will you get for that price? (They are not located in the United States.) For light editing, you shouldn't pay less than $2.00 per 300 words, and for extensive rewriting and editing, no less than $4.00 for 300 words, about the same as a printed page.

Market prices are the maximum price a customer pays. A good way to find a market price for your book is to visit a bookstore and see what similarly packaged books sell for. You may command a higher price for your book if you are well-known as an expert, or a lower price if you want to sell more books. Many authors like to print the price of their book on the cover. You or the store owner can offer cents or dollars off to customers, but it is illegal to ask for more money then the price on the cover, usually embedded in the bar code as wel.

Production prices are based on the costs of printing and binding a book but may include writing and creative design as well. Pricing your book this way can cover all of your costs, if you're lucky. Or you may find it hard to sell the book at a price high enough to pay you for the time it took to write it.

Break-even pricing uses a simple mathematical formula to determine how many books you need to sell to pay for your production and other costs. Add up all the costs that go into preparing your book for sale and divide that number by the price of one book. If it cost you $3,000 to produce 1,000 books, and you're selling them for $10 each, you reach break-even when you've sold 300 books.

Click on another type of physician publishing trap: Knowledge traps, Reader Traps, Time traps.

Physician Publishing represents a line of editorial and design skills in association with Griffith Publishing, offering custom-only book publishing services since 1988.

Choose what you need

You can choose from a wide variety of top quality design services associated with our physician publishing services. These include web design, brochure and poster design, book and newsletter design, and logo design. All design projects are one-on-one with an award-winning West Coast designer. We never use templates.

We also offer custom-designed packages for virtually every communication need, including CD and DVD production, audio tapes, group presentations, and business reports.

We don't try to do everything ourselves, and neither should you. We choose the best, and you receive the benefits.

Call Joyce Griffith at
800 359-9503