My issue with pretty book covers and the complaints about book prices in SA?

 

My issue with pretty book covers and the complaints about book prices in the SA book market?

Here’s a rant if you have the stomach to read it…

So you want to become a writer/ you are a reader who wants pretty book covers to convince you to buy for a maximum of R250 refer this #SAPublishingSector link?

Here’s what I see as an example of an artsy cover as tweeted by Dr.Look earlier today, refer tweet. This is not a local book but a Zambian one by the way.

Here's my functional cover which cost me about R3.3k, and I sell this title for R170 as I am at least a light edit kind of writer.

For a self-published author here’s what you should look forward to as the costs that will result in you publishing that story you have written or want to write…

As per this website, https://www.voxate.co.za/freelance-rates-2018-south-africa/, you should expect to pay R0.9 to R1.5 for ghost writing, please note I did not use the quoted ghost-writing rate of R5 to R7 to accommodate a situation where you need help writing, so you write together with your ghost writer and because my example will focus on fiction.

*Ghost writing is usually used by nonfiction writers, who might not be writers, but have interesting stories to tell.

Let’s say your story is a standard novel length of 80k words, check here for general consensus on word count https://wordcounter.io/blog/how-many-words-are-in-a-novel/

80k words will result in a book of between 200 and 250 pages, the average length that most readers say they want, citing that thin books are not satisfactory and thick ones might be intimidating.

The writing will cost you 80k*0.9 (R72k), and here we are assuming that your ghost writer is an excellent writer who will only need light editing, so you will be paying about R0.50 per word, that makes editing cost of 80k*0.5 (R40k)

Next you need a proofreader, who might charge you R0.30 to R0.45 per word, so 80k*0.3 (24k)

Are you totaling so far? Well it is currently sitting at 72k+40k+24k (R136k)

Now you need a cover designer and a printing prepper😒, is there no end to all that you need to do just to get that one lousy book out there in the market!😭

For book covers refer to this site, https://www.rockingbookcovers.com/book-cover-design-prices-2017/, where I will reference the middle-end costing

Dollar as at now is R14.64, you can check Sharedata

So your cover will cost you minimum of $250*14.64 (R3660), a minimum high-end cover would cost you a minimum of $1000*14.64 (R14.6K)

Formatting is between R0.2 and R0.5 per word so you are paying 80k*0.2 (R16k)

Let’s say this is all the due diligence you do and you can send your proof copies to your proof reader who already proof read before this to help you take back some missed errors to your editor, so no additional charge for this

You now have your print files, yay!

As per this site, https://safacts.co.za/editing-and-proofreading-services-in-south-africa/, printing about 1k copies, for which if you can be bestseller in SA, you will pay R30 per copy so 1k*R30 (R30k)

What is the total now? 136k+3660+16k+30k (R185660)

So how much is reasonable price to sell to break even?

100 copies, 500 copies?

Let’s go with 500, and assume that you believe your book will be an SA bestseller 🤣🤣🤣

Minimum price for your book is R185660/500 (R371.32 per copy)😲😳, and this is when you have not used a cover that someone would consider beautiful enough to buy, and also taking into account that some have quoted R250 as the most they are willing to pay on a book

Please note that I have used minimum rates for each example👆

I will not go into the distribution and marketing costs as that will definitely cause you to faint, if you have not at this point.

So when you are denying writers, local & possibly self-published, your support on account of their ugly covers or whatever other politics you cite, don’t complain about the price without thinking about what it means to produce that beautiful cover you so desire.

*By the way if the person above goes with the artistic cover the cost per book goes up to (136k+14.6k+16k+30k) R196640/500 (R393.28 per copy), that's a difference of R21.96 per copy😣😖.

Let me also say this, this is the cost when writing in English. Writing in other languages attracts costlier editing and proofreading rates.

Thank you for reading to the end, it means you really want to be the difference you want to see and seek to understand some of the industry’s norms.

You can check out my books here and place your order https://payhip.com/BooksbyTumeloMoleleki

Alternatively email reubexg@gmail.com or WA https://wa.me/message/4Z6HUUYNMKDSJ1

You can also sample books here https://www.amazon.com/Tumelo-Moleleki/e/B00JQA8ILS

 Enjoy your day.