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The Insider's Guide to Self-Publishing

Why & When to Self-Publish

What to expect / rules

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How does AuthorHouse compare to Dog Ear Publishing?

To help you make a decision before you publish a book, and to let you compare Authorhouse and Dog Ear Publishing, we'd like to do a price and service comparison between us and Authorhouse. You'll see that in many cases Authorhouse is much more expensive.

Our research and experience has shown that a typical self-published author purchases and sell about 100 books in the first few months after publication. If you don't feel your book will sell at least 100 units (or that you will purchase that many over the lifetime of your book), Authorhouse may be the best publisher for your book.

I am trying to show that the COST of publishing your book doesn't just stop at purchasing a publishing package, but is truly significantly impacted by the purchase of additional books.

So - here we go...

The specs are pretty typical of the books produced in the trade category at any self publishing company. Self publishing costs are derived from the AuthorHouse web site and phone interviews with representatives.

- 6X9 trim size, 150 pages, one color interior, 4 color cover, 5 interior images
- Paperback or hardcover
- ISBN and bar code included, Library of Congress Control number
- Custom cover and interior
- PDF or laser proofs delivered to author,
- Available at Amazon and most major online retailers
- Available through major distributors like Ingram and Baker and Taylor
- Available for order at over 25,000 retail bookstores.

- 100 additional paperback units purchased

Let's start with the numbers... more in-depth comparisons will follow below. Here's how Authorhouse stacked up as of April 2008.

Dog Ear Publishing:

Every service outlined above is included in this package - no hidden fees or charges
Dog Ear Publishing is based out of Indianapolis, Indiana. All Dog Ear operations are based in the United States. Dog Ear Publishing allows authors the complete freedom to set their retail price and profit at any level. Dog Ear has the lowest per unit print costs of any publishing company. With Dog Ear, you receive 100% of your Net Sale (no other major self- publishing house offers that level of profit for authors.)

Basic Publishing Package - $1099 (hardcover or paperback)
Printing Services - $4.28 / unit (any number of copies) x 100 units = $428
Total Expenditure: $1,527

AuthorHouse:

Authorhouse is based out of Bloomington, Indiana and is the largest of the self-publishing companies that we discuss on our web site. Explore fully how your retail price is set - can you really pick any price point you want? Find out what level of expertise your customer service agent has in the book industry - and in helping you make decisions about your book.

Standard Paperback Publishing - $598
Hardcover set up - can't get it without going to the $1,198 pkg
Custom Back Cover Only - $100 for adding photo or content
Library of Congress Control Number - $75
Proofs - $75
Printing Services - $7.82 / unit X 100 units = $782
Total Expenditure: $1,630

Just over $100 more expensive than Dog Ear Publishing - and your book isn't even in the market yet. This actually doesn't seem too bad - until you realize it goes up from there if you sell more books. At Dog Ear Publishing, your author profit on sales is over $3.50 greater per book that it is at Authorhouse. Again - if you are looking at sales or purchases of 100 books or less, then AuthorHouse is the better choice. Check out our author profit comparison below.

Here are the 'post production' items that you must understand when comparing Dog Ear Publishing and AuthorHouse.

"Book Royalties"

We don't call them that, because we let you set your OWN profit margin - the only money we receive from sales of your book is the printing cost (and potentially handling & freight fees). You may price your books at any price you wish and make as much or as little profit as you like. That is NOT the case with ANY other self publisher - including Authorhouse.

An interesting item from the Authorhouse web site - and I quote: "The base costs for printing books for retail sales are higher, because a 40% discount to the bookseller is included." Authorhouse is using this logic to justify why the author payment calculations for sales through Barnes & Noble, etc have a much higher print cost component (which means your per unit profit is much lower.) The cost to print a book - whether it goes to Barnes & Noble or direct to the consumer is exactly the same and has nothing to do with the wholesale discount! This convoluted wording is used to extract more profit from YOU and return it to Authorhouse.

Author Profit Comparison with AuthorHouse

Here's an author profit comparison on the sample book we outlined above - we'll use a $13.95 retail (AuthorHouse' required retail price for this title at just a 15% royalty rate - at Dog Ear you may choose any retail you want)

AuthorHouse profit through Barnes & Noble (or any retail outlet) for the author: $13.95 x 15% = $2.09 to the author per sale.

Dog Ear Publishing profit through B&N (or any retail outlet) for the author: $13.95 X 60% (amount of the retail you get - see our page on setting wholesale discounts here) - $4.28 (your per unit printing cost) = $4.09 to the author per sale.

It doesn't take too many sales for that difference to become significant. Authorhouse and Dog Ear handle wholesale orders and accounts in the EXACT SAME MANNER - so why would you want to give up an additiona $2 per sale to Authorhouse?

Publishing Control

As you can see from our web site, we believe in giving you as much as possible within each package - and letting you have as much control and input as you'd like. No one else offers the absolute freedom that Dog Ear Publishing does...

Self Publishing Pros and Cons

Like any venture, self publishing has its pros and cons. It's a bit much for this page, so click here to go to our Self Publishing Pros and Cons page.

More ways to Compare Self Publishing Companies - and more detail on Authorhouse, iUniverse, and Xlibris can be found here.

Other items to consider about Authorhouse:

The "heavyweight" in the subsidy publishing / self-publishing industry. AuthorHouse has more than 30,000 titles in print. As you can see on our comparison chart their typical package starts at $598. Authorhouse claims to provide flexibility in designing your book. However, you will want to explore this fully before signing up if you have specific design ideas. Ask specifically what level of control you have within the package you've chosen. See my note below regarding the contract.

Though their contract is very strong in reinforcing the fact that you, the author, retain ALL rights to your book, so there is absolutely no concern of them holding your content... there is a big concern about who really owns your content - even if AuthorHouse decides to stop selling your book!

A clause in the contract does state that: "AuthorHouse will retain final discretion [emph added] over style and formatting of Work and its cover with Author acknowledging that Author may not utilize the formatted Work and cover with any other publisher, if AuthorHouse ceases publication of the work. [emph added]"

What does this mean?

First - AuthorHouse controls your book cover design... but more importantly - if a "traditional" publisher wants to come along and buy your work from you, they have to start over... you don't own the rights to the designed and formatter version of your book - so, if it looks just like you always dreamed, guess what? You can't have it. More importantly it means that if you want to re-publish your book elsewhere, you don't have any book production files to work from - AuthorHouse owns them. Even MORE importantly - if AuthorHouse decides to STOP selling your work -you STILL can't have the files to get it published elsewhere.

Royalties are paid on Retail Price - you have a choice of Retail Prices that correspond to a specific page count and Royalty percentage. AuthorHouse breaks the Royalty and Retail into two formats: true "retail" pricing for books sold in really bookstores, and pricing for books sold through the AuthorHouse web site.

For example - to sell to a real bookstore (or Amazon, Barnes&Noble.com, etc) a 6X9, 125 page paperback has a minimum Retail of $9.95 which nets you a 5% (of Retail) Royalty. Two more Pricing / Royalty levels are offered - $11.95 / 10% and $13.95 / 15%. The only way to receive the 50% Royalty is to sell your book through the Authorhouse web site for a retail of $15.75. This can work well if you can drive traffic to the AuthorHouse site.

Additional monies required: $150 to file a copyright, $1199 additional for "custom" cover design, and marketing gets hugely expensive: AuthorHouse offers a New York Times Book Review ad at $2650 - our opinion is that this is a good deal for the publisher (their name gets great exposure to potential clients), but in our experience very few sales ever develop from this sort of ad.

Other optional fees: $699 for a returns program, $250 for 1000 business cards, and many others marketing programs covering a full spectrum of services.

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