A Speccy Man Has A Breakdown - day 7

Listen to me reading this

<< Day 6

A short, transparent note about money.

The first question was how many copies to print. When I first mentioned this book, I said 100. Then (sudden loss of confidence) 50. Now I’m saying 250.

That’s what happens when you think things through in public, which is more or less what these emails are.

The 250 came from a memory. The first time I gave a talk about this material in a workplace, it was at a large law firm in London, and 250 people came, including the senior partner. They stayed for the whole hour, despite being very busy, and that number stayed with me.

It feels like the right size for a first edition – not timid, not grandiose, but a room full of people who might find this useful.

Printing 250 copies in batches of 50 will cost £12.62 a copy, or just under £13. Delivering them to me works out at about 30p a copy. There will be other expenses along the way.

One happy additional cost: I decided to pay 15% to my agent, Jaime Marshall¹. He’s my agent for everything, not just books placed with conventional publishers, and I want him to care about this self-published book too. He sounds pleased. (I will find it quite funny and enjoyable to be the one who collects the money first then disburses it, rather than the other way around.)

Shipping will be charged at cost, no markup.

If I sell all 250 copies at £45 each, the gross is £11,250. Take away the cost of printing, delivery, ISBNs, art prints (see below), Jaime’s 15%, and other costs and I’ll earn roughly £26.82 a copy – or £6,705 if we sell the lot.

This takes no account of the work that went into making all the drawings, writing the emails this month, recording the audio, or building the shop. And it takes no account of the financial cost of living with depression for several years. I’m not complaining, just being transparent.

I’m throwing in as an extra for this limited edition an A5 art print (see below) that I normally sell for £35. I’m including it because it has an uplifting feeling and gawd knows that might be a good thing.

On page count: I had previously set myself a target of 128 pages, because that happens to be the length of a book by Maira Kalman – an artist and writer whose work has been important to me as a model of what’s possible when words and pictures work in conversation in a book.

But my own previous hardback, Psalms for the City, published by SPCK, came in at 108 pages, and I think 108 pages may be a good fit for this book too. Either number could work: I value the discipline of aiming for a page count and making everything work within it.

I’m also including a dust jacket. I love dust jackets. And I should mention – in the long and distinguished tradition of signed and numbered limited editions – that a copy which still has its dustjacket is worth considerably more than one without. I am therefore hoping to make you all terribly rich in the long term. You’re welcome.

Finally: each copy will include a signed, numbered A5 art print. This one, which was drawn in hospital immediately after I was taught the exercise it shows:

Do Your Tapping and Think of Something Pleasant (Anything)

I was nervous when I started sharing all this in these emails. I’m less nervous now because of the warmth and generosity of your responses. If any of this feels worth sharing, I would be genuinely glad. A book that might be useful to one person might be useful to more than one. That’s all I’ll say about that for now.

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👉 If you or someone you know is struggling, please reach out to a crisis line in your country. In the UK, Samaritans are available any time on 116 123.

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¹ Paying my agent Jaime. Got the idea from listening to another author who does this, the very successful Hugh Howie, in a podcast interview with Tim Ferris: “People hear me talking about self-publishing and they think that I hate agents and I hate publishers, I hate bookstores. I love all those people. These are all book people and I love the success of any writer however they get published.”