HOW TO CALCULATE THE RETAIL PRICE OF YOUR TEXTBOOK

Your textbook - Your way!

How is the RETAIL PRICE of my textbook calculated?

Your retail price is a function of three items - the per unit cost of printing your book, the wholesale dkscount you want to offer distributors and retailers, and the competitive space in which your textbook exists.

You can see your cost to print books by looking at the table to the right.

Determing the retail involves appraising the needs of your target audience, and includes the value your product provides to the student, as well as the price poins of similar or competitive titles within your target market.

As a starting point, your textbook retail price should be at least 2.5 times the single-copy printing cost. This ensures that there is enough margin to offer trade discounts to bookstores and our distribution parnters.

The retail price will also affect your profit from each sale.

Here's an example of determing the retail price of a textbook.

Sample Textbook Specifications:

7X10, paperback, 256 pages, black & white interior

Your book costs $8.76 per unit to print (see chart to the right: 256 pages X $0.027 per page + $1.85)

Your campus bookstore wants to carry the book, so you decide to offer a 40% wholesale (the wholesale can range from 20% to 55%)

You divide $8.76 by .6 (100 - 40% = 60%) and get $14.60 as your break-even point

This is a marketing textbook, and the Prentice Hall bestseller Kotler / Principles of Marketing, 12th Edition in hardcover is going for $184. Surveying the category, even in paperback the average retail price for a marketing textbook is $93.26.

You decide to be generous to your students and save them 50% over the large-publisher titles - so you price your book at $46.95.

It really is that easy... after all, it's your textbook - your way.