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This
week Debbie writes:
Hi there,
I'm trying to sell my Print On-Demand
book to book stores, fulfilling my orders
myself so that I can give them a bigger
iscount than my POD company is willing to
offer. The books cost so much to ship that
I'm losing money. Bookstores want a huge
discount, which doesn't leave much money for
me - the store makes money, my POD company
keeps their cut and I'm left without a profit. There must be a better way.... Frustrated,
Debbie
A.
Hi
Debbie,
The answer is to cut out as many middle men as possible.
Why concentrate on getting your book into bookstores,
when what you really want is to get the book into the hands
of your readers? Without that big discount demanded by the
stores, the only people collecting the profits are you and your
service provider. (ever wonder why people sell things by mail
order or on TV?) Where do your readers hang out? What do your readers read?
What do they like to do on weekends? These are all questions
that will help you target your audience and figure out how to
talk to them directly. Then, get them to order directly from the
source - your POD company (call it your 'fulfillment service' and
assure people of its trustworthiness with their credit card info) -
and you don't have to give a discount to anyone. The bookstore distribution model is set up to work with books that
are printed in high volume at low prices (that have room for big
discounts). Print on-demand does not work well within that model,
because it is the exact opposite idea. I love book stores, but if you
want to make money with print on-demand, you're going to have to
sidestep them.
Julie
***
I’d love to hear
your comments on this article: was it helpful? Have a
question about getting started with
self-publishing? Is there
anything I missed that you would
like to know about? Send
your comments to
.
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