Going For Traditional Printing

Last year I wrote a guest post for the Travel Writers Exchange about the differences between traditional printing and Print on Demand (POD), and my experiences with both.
In the last few months, I have had to deal with this subject again, when I re-published the paperback of the English Time Zones and prepared to publish the paperback version of the Dutch Time Zones.

I chose the road of POD with Createspace for the English Time Zones, as they have a very good international distribution network, while still giving the author a good return on the sales.
For the Dutch Time Zones, however, I decided to go with traditional printing, instead of POD. This might not actually seem like a good choice, as there are some drawbacks. For one I need to cough up the money in advance and run the risk that the books don’t sell. Secondly, I need to do the distribution myself, which could become a bit of a pain if the book does start selling well.
Even so, I have chosen for traditional printing. The reason for this is simple – I earn more money.

But does earning more money per book sold outweigh the hassle of having to do the distribution myself and the risks I take? I think it does and let me explain why.

I made some calculations and came to the conclusion that if I choose POD I would earn about 10% per sold book. With traditional printing this is about 50%, rather a large difference.
So is it all about the money, then?
Well, to be honest, yes. Of course I write because I like writing, but about five months ago I made the decision to go freelance and try to earn my keep. However, the money I will earn by using traditional printing, won’t be used to pay my rent yet. As any starting business, I need some capital. In my case, capital to keep publishing books. So the money I will earn, will partly go to re-printing that book when it’s sold out and partly to save up for future print costs of new books. The money for the rent will, for now, still have to come from part-time work.

I love having a business and I like taking risks. But I also love to see people reading my books and be happy they bought them. This means I will have to keep writing and publishing.

The Dutch Time Zones will come out in about three weeks time and I am really excited about this publication.

Related post: Publishing my paperback with Createspace

(Picture via subscription to iClipArt)