Some publishers publish paperback originals if slow hardback sales are anticipated. If brisk sales are anticipated, a hardcover edition of a book is typically released first, followed by a "trade" paperback edition (same format as hardcover) the next year. Hardcovers are frequently protected by artistic dust jackets, but a "jacketless" alternative has increased in popularity: these "paper-over-board" or "jacketless" hardcover bindings forgo the dust jacket in favor of printing the cover design directly onto the board binding. Hardcover books are marginally more costly to manufacture. Hardcover books are often printed on acid-free paper, and they are much more durable than paperbacks, which have flexible, easily damaged paper covers. Following the ISBN sequence numbers, books of this type may be identified by the abbreviation Hbk. Modern hardcovers may have the pages glued onto the spine in much the same way as paperbacks. It has a flexible, sewn spine which allows the book to lie flat on a surface when opened. The people who watch it a year later are less excited and want to see it cheaply and don’t care that it is lower quality.A typical hardcover book (1899), showing the wear signs of a cloth cover over the hard paperboardsĪ hardcover, hard cover, or hardback (also known as hardbound, and sometimes as case-bound) book is one bound with rigid protective covers (typically of binder's board or heavy paperboard covered with buckram or other cloth, heavy paper, or occasionally leather). The people who are most excited to see the movie want to see it in higher quality and don’t care that it is $15 per ticket. It is available about a year after the hardcover and is marketed to readers who are either less enthusiastic than the hardcover readers, or more budget-conscious.Īn analogy for this in movies is the way that a movie is released in 8K quality for $15 per ticket at the cinema on day one, and then a year later you can watch the same movie in 2K quality on Netflix as part of your $10 monthly subscription. The thick cardboard is replaced with thin cardboard, the thick paper with thin paper, the color illustrations with black and white, and so on. It is cheaper because it is primarily designed to be cheap. The paperback version is the cheap version of the book. It’s designed to be prestigious and enduringly rugged. It is sold on the first day the book is available and marketed to the most enthusiastic readers who are willing to pay full price, and who typically want the prestige and ruggedness of hardcover. The hardcover version is the full version of the book. So it seems to me that if we assume that marketing and distribution costs are roughly the same for all types of books, the production costs would account for a good part of the price discrepancy. With casewrap binding, the cost was US $15 per book and including a dust jacket bumped that up to US $16. The manufacturing cost on that came out to US $6.50 per book.įor a hardcover, I used the same parameters except for binding. I ran their manufacturing price calculator on roughly the same parameters.įor a paperback, I used 100 pages of standard paper, black & white printing, US Trade size (6" x 9"), bound with the "perfect bound" binding. I wasn't able to find a detailed breakdown of the costs involved in making a paperback, so I looked at - a self-publishing service - to get a ballpark figure. The Salon article goes into more details, though, and there is also some interesting information from the desk of Jane Galt about hardcover pricing if you look past the political bent of some of the comments. There are other considerations in book pricing, but they seem to have more to do with how the bookselling industry works than with the book format, so I'm omitting them here. The author also gets a cut - typically around 10% or 15% of the price. The rest covers the publisher's other costs (editing staff, promotions, etc.), distribution costs, and booksellers' profit. That accounts for about 20% of the book's final price. According to that article, the physical cost of the book comes from the quality of paper, the printing, and the binding. also has an interesting post on what makes books cost as much as they do. This leaves $12.58, Money magazine calls this the profit margin for the retailer, however when was the last time you saw a bestselling novel sold at its cover price. Also the author will be paying a slice of this pie $2.80 - Wholesaler - The take of the middlemenīestseller like Grisham will net about 15% in royalties, lesser knownĪuthors get less. $2.00 - Marketing - Book tour, NYT Book Review ad, printing and shipping $3.55 - Pre-preduction - This amount covers editors, graphic The article Breakdown of book costs shows an example of the costs involved in making a hardcover book:
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