Jonstown Compendium - some print costs go up next month

[Nick Brooke]

Heads up: print costs for some Jonstown Compendium print-on-demand titles will increase in March. This won't be as bad as last summer's "premium colour" price hike, but you may see prices going up once the new rates come in.

OneBookShelf told us: "Price increases are never welcome, but given the established worldwide supply issues (particularly with printing paper), the following increases are not unexpected. Our printed book supplier, Lightning Source/Ingram, has announced their annual price adjustment. Beginning in March, the price of B&W and Standard Color books will increase approximately 6-9% depending on format and page count. The price of US Premium Color printing will not change, but UK Premium Color will increase about 3%."

[Nick Brooke]

NB: although my post mentions a 6-9% price hike, it should be less than that for customers: this is a print cost hike. For my books (at least), I usually set things up so the print cost is about half the print edition’s cover price (and roughly the same as the digital cost), so if I choose to maintain margins the sticker increase will be 3-4.5%.

Example: let’s say my book costs $15 to print, so I sell it for $15 digital / $30 print. Print cost goes up by 10%, so I now sell it for $15 digital / $31.50 print. The selling price in print has only gone up 5%, and the digital price hasn’t changed.

In the real world, it’s trickier than this (e.g. books are printed at two different sites - US & UK - with different print costs, maintaining margins is “nice to have” but not essential, and my appetite for tweaking prices is limited). But that’s the ball-park.