When I think about the price I would charge for a book, several factors are involved. Obviously, the production costs of the book must be recovered, and then there is some payback for the effort put in to writing and assembling the book. One cost that is not apparent unless you try to self-publish a book is the purchase of ISBN numbers and bar codes. This is required if you wish to sell the book through any retail, like Amazon. In the current world, production is simple with print-on-demand, so overruns do not have to be covered. Then the distributor needs their cut, so it is not simple.
In the case of the LCC book, I am making it available as a PDF file with all the color and pagination intact. I still have to pay for the PayPal collection, but that is not very much. But, I did put in a significant amount of time writing and testing the configuration, as well as purchasing parts for the demo. On the other hand, I want this to be available to anyone at a reasonable price, so I probably will lose in the long run. So what’s new? Hobby enterprises are almost all efforts of love, not greed.
My pricing structure is such that each format returns roughly the same royalty. The production and distribution costs of the paperback are the highest, so naturally that format costs the most. I can get the books at cost, so I will probably have several with me in Salt Lake City and will sell them at a discount. I do believe there is a valid reason to have a hard copy to carry around. I do not thnk that this book will read well ona smart phone because of the many figures. I can see it on a tablet or full computer, so I provide the book as a PDF.
I hope that the purchasers of the book, in whatever format, can use the book in getting started with LCC. Happy Modeling!
Dana Zimmerli
President
Belmont Shore Model Railroad Club
http://www.belmontshorerr.com/
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https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCz0u5DihLyw-ZsmWrsrQnxA?view_as=subscriber