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The Price Tag For An Illustrated Fantasy Novel

neodoering

Minstrel
Good morning, MS members.

How much would you be willing to pay for a paper copy of an illustrated fantasy novel?

Neil Gaiman's book, The Sleeper and the Spindle, costs $16.06 on Barnes & Noble. The book is 64 pages and is meant for middle school kids.

Coraline, a graphic novel also by Neil Gaiman, costs $9.99 on Barnes and Noble. It has 192 pages and is meant for children 8-12 years old.

Writers of the Future vol 33 costs $13.05 on Barnes and Noble. It weighs in at 400 pages and includes both black and white, and color, images.

I just self-published an illustrated fantasy novel. It is 365 pages long and has color illustrations on half the pages. The cost of this novel is $70 per paper copy.

Normally self-published novels are competitive with traditionally published works. But CreateSpace really put the zap on me with this one. I can't imagine who would shell out $70 for a copy of a book from a writer they'd never heard of before. The paper book looks really good; I'm pleased with the product, but beware of going full color on your work!
 

pmmg

Myth Weaver
I doubt I would put out $70 for a Graphic Novel. Though, I may have paid as much as $40 in the past, I am not sure. $15.00 seems in the right range for me. But, if the graphic novel was from someone I highly regarded, or had some value beyond just art and story, then maybe. A first printing of Elfquest goes for $30-50.

If you cannot bring the cost down, it could be you get well known and later in life this becomes a collectors item.
 

TinyHippo

Scribe
If the book is on the shelf and I like what I see. Maybe I would pay 70$.. When I took my degree I usually paid 100-200$ per book.
Can I see some if the illustrations? You say it's good, let us see then :p
 

Insolent Lad

Maester
I looked into the costs of color illustration when I put out a pair of children's books. It was feasible for a very short picture book but made the beginners' chapter book, with pictures on every other page or so simply too expensive, so I went black and white for that one — the cost was no greater than a book with no illustrations at all. Even ONE color illustration meant the entire book had to be printed in color and shot the price way up.

$70 is a lot but about what I would expect from the costs I saw when I researched it. And I probably would not be willing to pay that much.
 

neodoering

Minstrel
Good afternoon TinyHippo.

I posted some images from my illustrated fantasy novel to another post, a few months ago. You can find that post here. I took the style directly off the painted pottery the Maya Indians produced about 1100 years ago. The link on that post will not work anymore; Amazon handles the paper copy of my book and will not allow me to give away free electronic copies.
 

TWErvin2

Auror
The thing is, the examples appear to be comparing your work too are:

--Shorter than your work and/or include black and white images instead of full color.
--Are probably not POD but used offset printing with a reasonably large print run to keep costs down.

As a self-published author, you're likely to struggle to compete in this arena with respect to cost. :(

It is unlikely that I would purchase such a novel for $70.00.
 

Steerpike

Felis amatus
Moderator
$70 would be a very hard sell for me, even if the work looked pretty good. I'd probably look for a cheaper digital version if I was interested.
 
Hi,

I think that CreateSpace may not be the right POD publisher for your needs. There are others your could try - Blurb or Lulu for example.

Cheers, Greg.
 
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