Are you ignoring customers who want hardbacks? Find out in today's episode of Serve No Master Podcast.
Printing hardbacks are complicated. This is the reason why many authors still have not dabbled in the world of hardback books. Amazon has no option for hardbacks on their website, so if you want to actually print hardback book you have to switch to different websites such as Ingram.
But once you overcome these steps it will be worth it. Printing hardback books has its own benefits. It has the ability to change the authority and price of the book. Hardbacks also change your customer's perception, when they see you sell kindle version, PM3 CD and hardback books they think it's a major publishing company that ultimately adds value to you and price to your book.
Find out where and how you can start printing hardback books today, in this episode of Serve No Master podcast.
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Resources mentioned:
Leave some feedback. We would love to hear from you!
Connect with Jonathan Green and Serve No Master:
The post SNM164: Are You Ignoring the Customers Who Want Hard Backs? appeared first on Serve No Master: Be Your Own Boss - Live Free.
Connect with Jonathan Green
Are you ignoring customers who want hardbacks? Find out in today's episode of Serve No Master Podcast.
Printing hardbacks are complicated. This is the reason why many authors still have not dabbled in the world of hardback books. Amazon has no option for hardbacks on their website, so if you want to actually print hardback book you have to switch to different websites such as Ingram.
But once you overcome these steps it will be worth it. Printing hardback books has its own benefits. It has the ability to change the authority and price of the book. Hardbacks also change your customer's perception, when they see you sell kindle version, PM3 CD and hardback books they think it's a major publishing company that ultimately adds value to you and price to your book.
Find out where and how you can start printing hardback books today, in this episode of Serve No Master podcast.
▶️▶️▶️▶️
Resources mentioned:
Leave some feedback. We would love to hear from you!
Connect with Jonathan Green and Serve No Master:
The post SNM164: Are You Ignoring the Customers Who Want Hard Backs? appeared first on Serve No Master: Be Your Own Boss - Live Free.
Connect with Jonathan Green
speaker 0: 0:00
are you ignoring the customers who want hardbacks? Find out on today's episode. Today's episode is brought to you by King Burkett. Your email list is your greatest asset. Put your business in the only hands that I trust at serving master dot com front slash market. Are you tired of dealing with your boss? Do you feel underpaid and underappreciated? If you want to make it online, fire your boss and start living your retirement dreams now then you've come to the right place. Welcome to serve no master podcast where you learn how to open new revenue streams and make money while you sleep. Presented live from a tropical island in the South Pacific by best selling author Jonathan Green. Now here's your host. I had a conversation earlier this week with author right, very much respect where I mentioned that I'm dabbling with hardbacks and moving into the space where I want to offer another format for my books or people who want that format. And he sells thousands of books a day, and he said, I've never even thought about it, and I said, We're leaving a lot of money on the table. You leave a lot of opportunity of leaving a lot of customers on the table. So let's start with understanding hardback world. The main we're using people don't sell hardbacks is because create space an Amazon. Don't do it. If you want to sell hardbacks, you have to go through another website. You can't just use Amazon and click make another format to print hardback books. You have to go a different route in the main two platforms to use our Ingram Spark and Lulu there, the two places that print. Now you can go to other places. Other companies and there are dozens of them. Most of them just resell Ingram's products. That's why. Don't mention the competitors, almost anyone you name. If you look at the fine print, you'll find out all they do is prepper types at your book, and then they send it to Ingram, and they take a taste for being in the middle. What a waste of your money. Uploading Ah, booked another platform conceal a little bit overwhelming. So it's the technical aspect. Could go. Oh, I don't know. People want. I don't know this process because I could tell you this doing my first book with Ingram, it's really annoying to figure it out. You have to do all these percentages. They really are a distributor. And so you have to look at distributor math. And I got no fight with the other chat reps because it didn't make sense. What they said I'd make per book. Who and I filled out the survey before I joined the website was different than what they showed me afterwards. And I actually think this is a little bit dishonest. I'll call it out on this. Your calculator should be the same for before and after people join. She was Oh, well, that calculator doesn't include distributor fees. And I said, why wouldn't it? How dare you? You know, if you're gonna charge me one price inside one side outside membership, that the little a little not cool in my book. So I'm gonna be honest about that. The price is actually 30% more than what they said. They said, Oh, well, we also have an additional fee, and then Amazon has additional units. L book for them. And I said, Why wouldn't you tell me that before I started went down this path for pretty my heart back. I want to do a hardback edition of Circle Master, and the book is foraging 22 pages long and six by nine inch format. Now, with a hardback book, there are two different sizes. You could do six inches by nine or a little bit bigger for what you're more used to seeing is our back in a bookstore. Now. When I went to print the larger size, it didn't offer distribution. Amazon for some. For some reason. If you're the largest, ice it, then you can't do it on Amazon. But I went through the pre formatting process and I got to prices for Lulu. It's at all. It's gonna cost $21.50 to copy of your book for each copy. Ingram for the same book, said it'll cost $11. So I said, Well, that's what I'm gonna go with. I'd love to be able to lower my prices Now. Then, I discovered, was a little bit misleading, and the real cost is closer toe 17 or $18. So it's not that big of a difference because they give part of the money away for the purchase price of the book. They pay 30% to Amazon off every sail, up to 55% you get to choose, I said. Put the lowest. Give me the lowest. Now, if I sell my own stuff to EMS on the charge of 30% fee anyways, so you get banged with that. Be no matter what, and that's a normal distribution fee. There's really no way to avoid having to pay these Amazon peas. So I was able to create my first hardback book, had to redesign the cover a little bit. That took me about an hour, just had to resize it and use their formatting tool their way. They want the cover design sent to them. And because the hardback cover the size is a little different than a paperback cover is its ticker. The interior is the exact same interior file for both books because the page size is the same. So the process wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. There were a couple of starts and stops. The other challenge to the hurdle is in the world of the eye. ESPN, ESPN is your library number to sell a book, have to have a nice being. If you want to sell a book from Ingram on Amazon, you have to have a nice bien. Now you combine I ESPN from England for $85. You can go to the official on Lee Company in the world allowed to sell I SP ends. It's called about her. They have a website called my identifiers dot com, and they charge you, I think $99 for your 1st 1 Then if you want to buy 10 I think it's 1 75 to 75. If you wanna buy 100 I SP ends its 5 75 they'll have to buy another pack soon. It's a big investment. It's very expensive, and this is other reason people hesitate. So the cost to launch a book and Ingram can be prohibitive. You have to buy an eye. ESPN. That's 85 to $100. If you're just buying one by one, it does make sense to buy a pack. But if it's your first book you're going, I don't know if I'm gonna do 10 books. I don't want to do a lab in books. I need to do more. Where's the value for me. The second thing is that England charges you $49 toe, put your book together. They charge a typesetting fear, whatever they want to call it. The good news is I found a coupon that I used to eliminate that $49 fee and for my test printing. I'm not using a nice being because I don't want distribution. It's just a test printing to see how the book looks at like and I shipped went out this week to one of my followers is gonna take a bunch of pictures for me. Let me know how it looks. It's all good. Then I'll buy and some ice because I'll sign. I spend in this book and then I'll add it to Amazon and you'll see a new format soon. But this extra layer of complexity that I've just described to you is what holds a lot of authors back from entering into the hardback space. But let's think about if it's worth it now. We talked about about that difficulty isn't worth the effort is worth. The process is worth the time of the money. There are people out there. There are customers who only liked to read hardback books. I know several people like this For a long time, my father was this way. He would never buy a paperback book from a bookstore. He likes to read and bad sitting up with a couple of big pillows behind him, and he likes being able to hold on to that hard back. Now he's since shifted and becoming can't a guy just like me. But for most of my life he was hard back on Lee, and they're people who like hardbacks for posterity who like hardbacks for how it feels on their hand for the durability. Hardback makes a lot of sense for libraries because the last longer and the cool thing about Ingram is that you can do different types of hard backs. You can d'oh like a leather or cloth, or even what I did is like a plastic type cover they called case laminate, where you have a design that's built into it, as opposed to a dust jacket. I'm not a big fan of cloth with the dust jacket because it wasn't a blues in the dust jacket anyways, and it's just I don't need to look like it's 18 hundreds book. It's cool for posterity, but I'm starting off with the case. Limited idea. They're people that want that type of book. Additionally, even if you never sell one, even if I never sell hardback book when I look on Amazon, the more formats of book has, the more I respected. If I see a book and it says a book only and then says 12 99 No kin, a limited I go. No way I'm gonna pay too much for an author is any good was I with a real publisher who's not even good enough to have other additions? I almost never buy a Kindle only book. I would never pay for its Kindle on Lee, and I don't notice it, but I'm buying it from my Kindle, and I'm doing a Kindle limited thing that I might acquire it that way. But I'll never actually pay money for it, because I don't think it's worth any money. That's just how perception works, and you probably feel the same way. Most customers feel the same way, but we see a book. We see that it's got a paperback form. Okay, all right, there's a little bit going on here. My peen. Okay, book. When we've seen audiobook version, we go. Okay, This is a real book. Something going on here, It's worth having a check. I'll respect it when we also see a hardback version. And then we see MP CB CD version. We start to really think this is someone with a major publishing house. It changes perception that changes the value of the book, and it also changes the price. So for me to sell a hard back, it's gonna cost 24 99 because of the length of the book so thick the cost of printing and everything, anything below that price point is no profit. I can't sound in 1999 it'll lose money with shipping and everything. At 24 99 I make about $6 a sale at the end of the day. And if I have my pay back in 1999 and again, I can't lower the paperback 14 99. I wish I could, cause it's too long. That's why I'm moving a little bit shorter books. Secondly, the price point on future books. When people see my book on Amazon, they see the price. Right now. It's his 1999 with a slash through it free on Kendall Limited. Now it's gonna have 24 99 with a slash through it because they always show for the price dropped the most expensive to the least expensive and will also increase the perceived value. The paper. But I'm saving five bucks just like no paper at that school. We want Thio, add authority, add perceived value so you make more sales. So not only do we give the hardback customers what they want, we also give the other customers what they want, which is a justification for the purchase. They feel more comfortable spending the money because they feel like it's a real product and you know what you're doing. All of these are very good things to Dio. I'm in the business of selling books, and so are you. If you're listening this episode, if you're thinking about being an off everything, we're gonna ride. If you've got a book you want to sell, adding an additional formats is a smart way to increase your revenue. Now the other reason I like to be on multiple formats is other people who Onley enjoy specific form. It's their people on the audio, but people only do e book people do Chin Unlimited people only. D'oh paperback and I want to reach each of them. I'm trying to reach a wider audience. There are people who will only buy a hardback that we'll buy a paper bag to go. It doesn't interest me, so I'm not that kind of guy. I'm not a paperback guy hardback guy, and now I can start to reach that audience. So you're thinking about expanding your distribution. You're thinking about doing other platform. When you're thinking about ways that you can diversify your income stream without spending a lot of money, this is a great one. So the total cost for me up front for launching a hardback version of my book is the cost in time. It cost me about an hour to form at the new cover and go through the entire process of designing the book and answered all their questions and copying, pacing all the information, and that includes the time I've spent fighting with their chat rep trying to figure out why I'm not making $14 a book. Instead of six. The other cost is the price of a test printing. Now I don't know why, but everyone in print on demand it ideal always wants to bang me on the shipping. So they give you these choices in the first choices for shipping your book. Your task print in the test printing is like 11 $12 then they go. The shipping is going like four bucks. So throughout Set, I think 16 or $17 I spent to get the book ship to me. But they try and get you to pay for all these additional up cells that I always avoid because it just feels like a sucker's game. They already want to get it printed three days instead of five. Sexual 10 bucks, one extra four bucks. Forget exactly what it was, but a little bump. And then they go to the shipping and shipping. They have about 10 shipping options that after you go past the basic low level, they make it look like it's dirt shipping, so it's gonna come with a bullet hole through it. It started $17 goes up to $200. You pay $200 to get like overnight shipping five days after it's printed. It's absolutely ridiculous because I was looking at Well, what if I just get 1000 of these made and the money you save on the cost of printing for getting 1000 you merely lose on the cost of shipping to ship 1000 books was like at the lowest levels, like three or $400 Now again, if the hardbacks was heavy, but I don't think the shipping should be $20. That seems a little ridiculous to me, and it just seems like a fool's game to kind of get invested in that shipping is always where you run into trouble and complexity, and that's why I'm only gonna sell hardbacks directly through Amazon. I could sell hardbacks directly through my website and say, Hey, you want a hardback edition of certain Master? You'd send me the full fee out of to share any minute Amazon, and now I do make like 12 or $13 per sale instead of six. But then I have to go into the Ingram thing and placed the order manually and goes to that whole process. What a nightmare I think part of reason to make it hard is for all that stuff. Now when you shipped through Amazon and when I sell you the book through Amazon, they handle all the shipping stuff of the packaging. I don't have to worry about that. You see no Amazon, this great packaging all of these little worries that we have that it's so hard to hard backs that there's so much complexity. I've always felt that way. I've been doing big stuff on Amazon for three or four years now and on Lee this week that I start playing around hardbacks. And it was because one of my consulting clients told me that she was thinking about printing her book through Lulu. And so I looked at Lulu and that I've ever heard about Ingram. And it turns out I didn't even know that already had an account with Ingram. I never done anything what I had created a log in years ago. I'm excited to see how this plays out, have a good feeling about it, that it will look nice and everything will be good because it has a good reputation and I'm going to do more things I may use Lulu for some other printing things. I'm going to d'oh! So not hating on them. It was just for this particular project. The right decision was Ingram. The next project Blue might be a better price put. It also helps to get paid by different people to have money coming in from different places. So have money coming in from Create Space. Kendall, A C X. I get paid three different ways for books, and I'm gonna pay by England. Whenever I sell hardbacks, it opens up this additional revenue stream. It doesn't have to be hard. It's also it's often based on the assumption to talk about the previous episode about friendships. Sometimes you have bad information with bad assumptions. Is a classic example of that is a classic example of us thinking it's gonna be so hard. I've heard so many people tell horror stories about the complexity of Ingram on forums and different place that looked. I thought I'd be super hard turn. That's not if this experiment goes well. I have a strong feeling it will. I will add a hardback version of all my books. It's one of the first things I'll d'oh diversifying your product offerings we talked about that a few episodes ago means offering different products. But I'm from different ways of engaging and consuming your different products. Some people want an audiobook, someone digital books are paid back, and now some who want a hardback and also get it. I'm also looking at the idea of a spire amount. That's what I'll look at next. I'll probably do Lulu for Spiral Bound. That's what I'm thinking about. And that's amore of what I'll do for journals. I've looked at whether I should do like a leather bound journal or a spiral bound type journal, and I'm really looking at the cost comparison and the value for my customers. What's the best thing to give people? So that's the next experiment. But I have going on my mind. So I'm always looking for new ways to experiment. Hardbacks, I think, is a great area to enter into because you don't have to do anything special. I don't even have to reformat my books, the hardback paperback of the same size pages so I could send the exact same file. I can't wait to see exactly how it turns out to see how this experiment plays out, and I can't wait to share hardback books with you, and you should do the same thing with your audience. Don't let hesitation hold you back. Don't leave money on the table and don't fail to use your audience exactly what they want. Give them the hardbacks. They've been dreaming as usual, even at four in the morning. People outside think it's okay to shout. I know if you heard a little bit of background noise, but even at four in the morning, people like to come outside and shot around here. Sometimes you're a little bit at island color. Don't has it. Tate to give people what they want. If people want hardbacks, give it to them. There's no up front cost, so now there's no reason to leave that money on the table. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Serve No Master. Make sure you subscribe, so you never miss another episode. We'll be back next Tuesday with more tips and tactics on how to escape that rat race. Head over to serve no master dot com forward slash podcasts. Now for your chance to win a free copy of Jonathan's bestseller Serve No master. All you have to do is leave a five star review of this podcast. See you Tuesday. Now working is critical to growing any business or indoor black belt with my free trading at served master dot com front slash black Belt.