Saturday, October 03, 2009

Publishing: Book Trade vs. Print on Demand

Here is an interesting side note on my book publishing activities.
In 2006, I published 40 Hour Man, written by Stephen Beaupre and drawn by myself. We pressed about 1400 copies. To date about 800 have been sold. I worked hard to promote it, sending out 100 press copies, traveling to to the San Diego Comic Con, the Bay Area, Chicago and NYC. I did seven or eight radio interviews and left no stone unturned. The book was distributed by a book trade distributor. To date, it has not broken even. I'm pleased that it sold as much as it did, but would like it to sell more.
This week, I published Self Employment For Bohemians as a print on demand title. No traveling, no promo copies, no print run. Just viral marketing and manufacturing on a per order basis by a reputable POD house. So far one book has sold. I realize a profit of about three bucks plus from this. So the book is in the black.
Draw your own conclusions!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey, Steve Lafler. Back in 1986 or 1987, I picked up a couple copies of your Dog Boy comic book in a used bookstore in the Haight-Ashbury district, and I thought they were fantastic! So much so, that over twenty years later I'm remembering to Google you up.

How would one go about getting the complete series, if they even exist anymore today? I only got two or three issues but thought they were fabulous.

Anyway just wanted to leave a compliment to the author. Better two decades too late than not at all, right? ;)

Jim

Steve Lafler said...

You can get Dog Boy back issues from cosmic monkey comics in Portland Oregon, I left them a stack, they might have to pull them from storage but they got 'em!
Here is their URL

http://www.cosmicmonkeycomics.com/

Last Gasp might have some too, not sure.

If that doesn't work, send me a message and I can sell you some, but it's a bit tough as I live in Mexico now.

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