When setting your Suggested Retail Price [SRP], there are three things to consider, each of which effect the royalties you will earn:
- your actual book price,
- the print cost (determined by number of pages, paper quality and book size)
- and the retailer discount (what the various “middle men” take)
This article will investigate how retailer discount can effect your book.
As you may have noted already, the higher the retailer discount (i.e. the more the retailer takes), the lower your royalties will be. At Tellwell we offer two strategies for setting your discount as shown below:
Maximize My Royalties
For this strategy we will set the discount on each channel we distribute to, to the lowest amount allowed (for print books this is 40%).
This means you will be offering online retailers the least amount and getting paid the most royalty per book sold.
For the vast majority of online retailers this is acceptable and they will list your book.
Note: We unfortunately are unable to guarantee that any specific online retailer will list your book. Just like with any product, listing any one book is entirely up to each individual seller.
Enroll In Book Returns Program
In order for physical book stores to consider stocking your book, you either need to make your book returnable (book store can destroy unsold copies) and increase your discount to 55%, or deal with bookstores yourself on a consignment basis. We strongly recommend the consignment option paired with selecting one of the Maximize My Royalties distribution strategy above. However a few authors do enroll in the book returns program. There is an additional cost for doing this and your royalties will be held until you exit the program (to cover liability for unsold stock). Your Project Manager will contact you if you select this, and you can read more on this option here.