Lightning Source Books on Demand Cost and Profit – Part 2

In part one I dis­cussed how we deter­mined one-time costs to pub­lish our gluten-free cook­book called Gluten-Free with Love using Light­ning Source.   In this part I would like to go into more detail about how much it will cost to print each book.   Light­ning makes a dis­tinc­tion between:

• Print to Order — your book is ordered by a cus­tomer from one of Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, or one of Light­ning Sources’ other Ingram part­ner book­sellers.  They in turn request that Light­ning Source print your book and Light­ning Source directly ships to the cus­tomer address pro­vided by the book­seller.  Light­ning Source charges the cost for print­ing the book to you and credit you with the sale.  Your com­pen­sa­tion is paid out accord­ing to Light­ning Sources’ Pub­lisher Com­pen­sa­tion (your prof­its) Terms  described below.
• Print to Pub­lisher (you) — your book is either ordered and sent to you or ordered by one of your cus­tomers and drop shipped by Light­ning Source directly to the cus­tomer that ordered your book.  In other words, you take respon­si­bil­ity for order ful­fill­ment when the order does not involve one of the book­sellers pre­vi­ously mentioned.

The nice fea­ture about each method is that you do not have to phys­i­cally ship your book to your cus­tomer (if you don’t want to), although you might be able to make a bit more on each book sale with the Print to Pub­lisher model if you ship your­self since you save money on ship­ping costs if you buy books in bulk.  Keep read­ing to find out more about ship­ping costs.

Here are the ongo­ing costs for print­ing each small paper­back book (prices as of 2009):

Print to Order:

48 to 104 pages: $2.30 per book

108+ pages:  $0.90 per book+ $0.013 per page

Print to Publisher:

 

 

 

 

48 – 104 pages: $2.52 per book

108+ pages:  $0.90 per book + $0.015 per page

So, for exam­ple, our cook­book is a small paper­back that has 152 pages.  Here is what it costs to print each book:

Print to Order:

108+ pages:  $0.90 + (0.013 x 152) = $2.88/book

Print to Publisher:

 

 

 

 

 

108+ pages:  $0.90 + (0.015 x 152) = $3.18/book

Ship­ping Costs

With Print to Order there are no addi­tional ship­ping costs.  With Print to Pub­lisher, your ship­ping costs vary depend­ing on how many books you order.  Our ship­ping cost per book has var­ied from $0.48/book (when order­ing 25 books) to $5.33/book (when only one book was ordered).

Light­ning Sources’ Com­pen­sa­tion (Your Prof­its) Terms

Pub­lisher Com­pen­sa­tion (your profit) is paid within ninety (90) days from report end date fol­low­ing their month end close sched­ule.  They also have a min­i­mum check writ­ing bal­ance of $25.00, there­fore sales pay­ments are not sent until sales accu­mu­late to the min­i­mum $25.00.

Returns can affect pay­ment amount and will be noted on your sales reports.   For exam­ple, sales in July are not paid out until Novem­ber and only if a $25 min­i­mum in sales has been met.   The $25 fee is waived if you set up direct deposit with Light­ning Source.

In Part Three I will dis­cuss how to price your book to ensure you make a profit on each book.