Money, money, money

For the past two years I have tried to get my book to market without ever facing the cold, hard facts of how much it costs to print and ship books, and how much a new author can charge for his book. I didn’t want to seem like a greedy, money-grubbing person who only wrote the book to make money.

Would I turn into a money-grubbing author?

Money: that dirty word. Filthy lucre, they called it in the Bible. The love of money is the root of all evil. Money has always had a bad rap, just as in the lyrics of this hit song by Pink Floyd.

The Pink Floyd song “Money” was a major hit about greed

“Money/Get back/I'm alright, Jack, keep your hands off of my stack

 Money/It's a hit/Don't give me that do goody good bullshit”

But eventually, reality has a way of making its presence felt. In the final analysis, books cost money to print, and books featuring lots of color pictures cost much more than black-and-white books. I suspect this is the reason major publishers typically limit the number of pictures in their books. The book market is tough. People will only pay so much for a book. If it costs too much, it just won’t sell.

I had been hoping that through some miracle, the re-designed book would not cost much more than the first edition, even though the page count seemed to be climbing inexplicably week by week. My book designer gave me the final page count this week for the re-designed book: 540 pages! Wow. I almost fell off my chair. I had crammed the same content into just 366 pages, 50% fewer pages. But my book looked like crap and was hard to read. Bookstore managers took one look at it and said no. It was a nightmare.

My first edition was a poorly-designed product

So, it was time to allow a professional designer to turn an unprofessional-looking book into a much more professional looking one. I just had no idea how much it would cost when he was done.

But I still hoped for a miracle, until the moment I calculated how it would cost to print the new book. This disabused me of my childish belief that books were somehow magically exempt from the pressures of the marketplace. Color ink costs a lot, and color printing requires heavier paper stock.

A professional layout by an artist also incorporates lots of white space, which makes the book look nice. It is also easier on the eye to read, but curiously, in the end, the empty white space costs more.

Most of us prefer to read text that has adequate white space

Finally, I went onto the Ingram website to calculate the expected cost of the book. I was stunned to find out that I would have to charge at least $55 for the book to cover printing, shipping, and taxes. However, The book market will not bear a new author charging $55 for his first paperback book.

So, I faced a dilemma: should I break the book in two, in order to be able to sell each book for a reasonable cost? Or should we roll back the design changes and cram the contents of the book into 366 pages again? I told my designer it made no sense to abandon all of his hard work on redesign.

Splitting my book was almost like splitting a baby

But, if I split the book, HOW would I split it? Online experts caution against splitting a book. There are many pitfalls. Readers may think the author is just trying to charge them twice for it. If the book is not split in the right place, the first book may end badly, or the second book might start out oddly.

It seems like a surgeon facing the challenge of trying to separate conjoined twins (turns out that we don’t call them Siamese twins anymore). Where do you make the cuts, and how do you make them ?

Chang and Eng were the original “Siamese” conjoined twins

It was fortunate in the sense that the First Century ends decisively. It was a convenient place to cut the book in two. The Second Century is available to anyone who isn’t sick of my life at that point.

I spent a good deal of time pondering over whether to split the book in two, and now feel convinced that it is the only viable option at this point. The simple fact is that people do not want to buy huge print books with hundreds of pages anymore. The days of the 1,225 page War and Peace are over.

War and Peace was over 1,200 pages long…

I’m not Tolstoy. My life is no epic.

The good news is that, considering the number of color pictures, maps, and illustrations, the two books will be available for a reasonable amount, The even better news is that I can offer the e-book version for a very modest amount, because there is no need for color ink or for heavy paper stock.

It turns out that by giving readers less, the author and the publisher can make more money. With no pictures, the book costs less to print, and the profit margin is higher. I thought the best idea was to give readers everything I could, including pictures and music, with no idea what that would cost.

Oh, the things you learn when you decide to write a book and publish it yourself.