Part 3: Surveying your book landscape, the book planting business. Guest Blogger: Kevin Cullis

Kevin Cullis-Author

 Third: Can I make a profit?
As with any endeavor, I’ll be spending time and money to hopefully make a profit. Can all of my expected costs: editing (#1 critical issue), graphics, book design (typography, leading), time to produce it, marketing, and copywriting be recovered once I begin selling my book? It can cost hundreds to thousands or tens of thousands of dollars to get a book ready for production. If it costs me $3,000.00 to finally produce my book with the above required tasks, selling my book at $14.95 with a profit of $2.25 (your publisher needs to be paid), it will take me 1,333 book sales to cover my costs: My break-even point. I’ve earned enough to cover what I’ve spent getting it ready to sell. After I have met this break-even point, I need to have an additional 1000 book sales to make $2,250.00 in profit income. Total sales of 2,333 in books to make $2,250.00 for my hard efforts (And don’t forget taxes on that income). That’s 47 books sold in each of the 50 states. If I don’t “break-even” I’m at a business income loss. Now imagine if this was a national rollout of my book, costs would be much higher and so higher book sales need to cover it.

Lastly:  Is there a market?
As I take a look at the books in my genre, how am I different? Am I a one hit wonder? Most large book publishers look to see if my book idea or writing “has legs,” is there potential for more than one book or is there a large enough audience they can make money on it? Soon, as authors, we’ll have to prove ourselves by selling thousands of copies of our POD book before larger publishers will even consider our book. They’ll want to see results before investing in something with more money.
  For me, I crunched the numbers. Apple sells about three million Mac computers every quarter, about 12 million computers a year. About 15 percent of them are to businesses. I have the potential of selling that many books, but it is only potential, not real sales numbers. Yet.
  What other aspects would make my book different. On one hand there are tons of books about business subjects. On the other hand, there are tons of books about Macs. How am I going to be different? I decide I’ll combine both subjects into one that most computer users have not seen: business and Macs at the project management and business level. A “How To” for entrepreneurs.

I’m still excited about my writing. It is still flowing from me and this keeps me going. I did some research and found out that my idea has merit and I can potentially make money at it. Now, I need to finish the book.