Lightning Source Books on Demand Cost and Profit — Part 1

I pre­vi­ously dis­cussed how we used Light­ning Source to pub­lish our gluten-free cook­book called Gluten-Free with Love.  In this series of arti­cles I want to go into more detail about Light­ning Source fees and how to determine:

1. How much it will cost you cre­ate your title (i.e., the book that you will sell)
2. What your ongo­ing books costs will be
3. If you can make a profit from your book
4. How much you can charge for your book and still make a profit
5. How much peo­ple might be will­ing to pay for your book

After you sign up for Light­ning Source, an account rep­re­sen­ta­tive will con­tact you and send you a price list of their pub­lish­ing fees.  Some of their com­mon one time fees for include (all prices as of 2009):

• Title Setup Fee (for book text): $37.50
• Title Setup Fee (for book cover): $37.50
• Scan Cover Fee: $75
• Scan Text Fee: $.25/page
• Proof Fee for paper­back books: $30
• Proof Fee for hard­cover books: $35
• Optional Cat­a­log Fee (To get listed in Ingram Pub­lisher Cat­a­log): $12
• Revi­sion Fee: $80/hour (billed in 1/2 hour increments)

Light­ning Source will scan an exist­ing book and charge you the Scan Cover and Scan Text fees listed above.  So, if you have a book that you own the copy­right or find a book in the pub­lic domain that you would like them to scan, they will do it for you.  Here is an exam­ple of the one time fees you would pay for a pub­lic domain small paper­back book that has 200 pages:

• Scan Cover Fee: $75 plus
• Scan Text Fee: 200 x $.25 = $50 plus
• Cat­a­log Fee: $12
• Proof Fee: $30
• Total: $167

We cre­ated our book with Microsoft Word and gen­er­ated the PDF file for the text of the book using MS Word 2007 “Save As PDF” func­tion.  (It worked quite well and we did not have to buy any addi­tional PDF gen­er­a­tion soft­ware like Adobe to do this).

We had a desk­top pub­lisher cre­ate our book cover that matched Light­ning Sources’ spec­i­fi­ca­tions for cov­ers.  You’ll need to sup­ply your book’s ISBN to your desk­top pub­lisher so they can cre­ate a bar code on the back cover for you.  More on ISBNs below.  The desk­top pub­lisher charged us $300.  In my opin­ion, it is worth the money to pay a pro­fes­sional to do your cover since it is impor­tant fac­tor in attract­ing peo­ple to buy your book.

We trans­ferred both the PDF for our book text and the PDF that the desk­top pub­lisher cre­ated for us directly to Light­ning Source via a file transfer.

Here are the one time fees we paid to cre­ate out title:

• Title Setup Fee (for book text): $37.50 plus
• Title Setup Fee (for book cover): $37.50 plus
• Proof Fee for paper­back books: $30 plus
• Proof Fee for hard­cover books: $35 plus
• Desk­top pub­lisher fee: $300 plus
• Optional Cat­a­log Fee: $12 plus
• Revi­sion Fee: $40 for 1/2 hour of revi­sion time (we had to revise our title and sub­mit it twice)
• Total: $492

There are a cou­ple of non-Lightning Source fees that you need to be aware of as well:

• Copy­right Fee (www.copyright.gov): $35
• ISBN Fee (www.bowker.com): $275 for 10 ISBNs (so each ISBN costs about $27.50)

While you are not required to reg­is­ter your copy­right, we decided to do so since it gives you more proof that the copy­right is yours and it is eas­ier to defend your rights in court.  ISBNs are required if you want to sell your book in any major book store or online at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, etc.

So the grand total of one-time fees to cre­ate out book, Gluten-Free with Love was:

• Total from above: $492 plus
• Copy­right Fee: $35 plus
• ISBN Fee (per book): $27.50 plus
• Grand Total: $554.50

That sum­ma­rizes the one time costs for set­ting up a book with Light­ning Source.  I part two I dis­cuss ongo­ing book costs.  In future arti­cles in this series, I will fill in more details about pric­ing your book and cal­cu­lat­ing profit for your book.