Why you MUST have a paperback version of your Kindle Direct Publishing book and how to get it shipped next day

Why bother?

I launched the first edition of Your Craft Business: A Step by Step Guide back in October 2012 and, of the many thousands sold since then for every paperback I’ve sold via Amazon I’ve sold four Kindle ebooks. Desktop-publishing the book, registering the ISBN, designing the cover and getting it onto the systems of print on demand firm Lulu.com was a pain in the backside. All of which might suggest it wasn’t worth the effort – but when I came to publish my next book Learn to Program Your Raspberry Pi (I’m a techie who likes to make candles!), I’d decided from the beginning that it would be offered in Kindle and paperback forms. Why?

There are three main reasons for creating a paperback version:

1. To give readers an alternative format to purchase
2. To increase credibility across both formats
3. To reinforce the value offered by the ebook

Let’s look at these one at a time

An Alternative Format

I love ebooks but even I will sometimes (albeit rarely) buy a print version of a particular book, and there’s a massive audience for traditional books despite the meteoric and wonderful rise of the ebook – particularly championed by Amazon. This desire for paper is particularly true of non-fiction and new-release fiction by established and popular authors.

It’s perhaps a little unfortunate that the more useful the paperback version is likely to be (because it has complex layouts and pictures, for example) the longer and more complex the desktop-publishing job but, on the other hand, those books that are less likely to be purchased in paperback (fiction, for example) are very easy to prepare for print so you might as well simply do it.

In my view, if you have an ebook that is selling moderately well (in the top 20,000 on Amazon.co.uk, for example), you are turning down additional sales by not having a paperback version available. I would expect non-fiction books will benefit most but fiction is so simple to convert, it seems crazy to deny yourself the extra sales. Yes, it takes a little time but, assuming the ebook is selling well, there are few other activities so likely to generate more money in your pocket than creating a print version.

Credibility

Many readers still have a prejudice against self-publishing and so they’re tuned to sniff out any traces of amateurism. Too many self-published authors who spend hundreds of hours on their words then think it’s fine to foist truly criminal covers on readers. From a selfish point of view, this is fine because it weeds out competition but aside from having a professional cover made, you can also increase the impression of professionalism by offering a paperback. Why? Because most self-published books exist only in electronic form so the presence of a paperback suggests traditional, quality, publishing.

Value

Pricing for print follows a completely different model to that for ebooks. With Kindle Direct Publishing, you can make a straight 70% of the sale price (after VAT is taken into consideration) minus a few pence download fee. When using a print on demand (POD) publisher such as Lulu or Ingram Spark, you pay them a small production fee when the book is sold but the biggest chunk goes to Amazon and the author ends up with closer to 25% of the cover price (still better than the royalties from traditional publishing, however).

This means that, in order to make any money at all, you need to charge significantly more for your paperback compared to its ebook equivalent. And this is a good thing because it shows what fantastic value the ebook is – typically a paperback might cost £15 and the Kindle book £3. A potential reader who might baulk at paying £3 for a Kindle book under normal circumstances is more likely to do so if they see it’s the equivalent of a £15 paperback.

Does it work?

I am more than prepared to accept that drawing conclusions from a sample of one is dangerous (the second title has only just launched) but sales of my craft business book significantly rose on release of the paperback – partly because people were buying it in that format but also because Kindle sales rose at the same time. I was also able to raise the price of the Kindle book, thus making more money on each sale, without hurting sales. It’s too early to say whether the same effect will be noticed with my programming book or the forthcoming marketing and fiction titles in the pipeline but I fully intend to publish all of those in paperback form.

Next day delivery

Here’s the caveat – I only think this will work if the book is available for next day delivery (even if the customer ends up choosing a cheaper option). Again, I can only speak from personal experience in that I never buy books if they’re not available for days or weeks (except for pre-orders). POD printers do exactly what they say but this would mean a delay of a few days before the reader would receive their book. What Amazon seems to do is that as soon as the book makes its first sale, it calls up several copies rather than just the one needed to fulfil that single order. This has the effect of enabling next day delivery when those extras arrive.

Here’s how to make this happen as quickly as possible:

1. Enable Global Distribution (or its equivalent) with your Print On Demand publisher – they will tell you it takes 6-8 weeks to appear in the catalogues of the various sites. This is not true of Amazon.
2. After about a week, begin checking whether your paperback is showing. If it is, you will probably see it listed as “currently unavailable” with an invitation to order and they’ll ship when it gets in. Order it now!
3. After another week, you’ll probably get a delivery day some weeks in the future – don’t worry. Amazon has now placed the order for your copy and some extras with the POD firm. If you look at the book on Amazon at this point, you’ll probably see it listed with a shipping date of “between 1-3 weeks”.
4. A few days later, you should receive an email from Amazon revealing that your order has arrived more quickly than expected and is ready to ship
5. Go to the listing on Amazon and you should, at this point, see the book listed with next day delivery.

I’ve now run through this process three times with two books I’ve published myself and one that was traditionally published and it has worked each time.

By the way, make sure the book shows up in your Author Central account – if it doesn’t you need to claim it. Also make sure the Kindle version is shown on the Amazon book page – if it doesn’t, email Amazon from within Author Central to ask them to link the editions together.