Recommended Retail Price (RRP)

This is the price at which the book is sold and includes the following.

Cost to produce + the royalty to the author + the distributor & retailer margin and in some cases shipping.

Our authors decide what royalty they would like and we let them know the effect it will have on the sale price.

The combined margin the major distributors & retailers require on hardcopy books can be as high as 60% of the sale price (not the cost price). As an example:

A book cost price is £5 and assuming an author royalty of £1. When the retailer margin is added to the £6 the resultant RRP will be approximately £15. The retailer then has the ability to apply discounts within their margin. In the case of Amazon, they also insist the publisher pays the delivery cost to them so this needs to be included in their price.

It is therefore important the cost price is reduced to a minimum and this generally depends on the quantity in each print-run. ShieldCrest provide high print quality at the most competitive prices and can even retain this competitiveness at low quantities.

AUTHOR WEB PAGE OPTION

By providing an option to our authors to have their own web page it means that while marketing their book, they can offer a special price to early purchasers. As there is no retailer margin, purchasers only pay the cost price plus author royalty. So, using the previous analogy.

When purchased from the author page, the purchaser will pay £6, providing a very competitive price for single copies and still provide the author with a royalty of £1. If the web page price was set at £7.95, the author’s royalty could increase to £2.95 (less any fees). Payment is made using any debit or credit card and the delivery cost is added automatically at the payment stage.

ROYALTIES & PAYMENTS

The royalties paid by the big publishing houses are typically 5 – 8% of the book price. We endeavour to achieve a minimum of £1 per book for our authors when sold through retailers and much more than this when sold from their web page. The royalties are paid every 3 months. We can do a direct transfer to our author’s bank account or from our PayPal account to the author’s.

More about author web pages here.