I have decided that I am going to write a second book about Trout Falls. The response so far has been excellent on the first book and plan a second printing next week and when it arrives I will be able to get it out in book stores before I leave on Feb. 5.....

I want to give you the financial cost involved to get your book out when done. Kind of dangle a carrot of the profits ahead before we start. First of all, it costs me $5 per book to get printed. Mine sells for $15.95 and that is an average rate for a soft paperback. If I order 300 more copies (print a 1000 and it goes down to $4 a copy) next week at $5= $1500.00, I pay half on printing and the other half when it is done.

For the first time printer there are additional costs to get started. The cover design is one. I chose a glossy color cover over a cheaper black and white cover. If you want a picture on the cover it will cost more. More color and illustrations cost more.

Putting illustrations or pictures in the book itself will cost more money. The fancier it looks the more it will cost. Using color in any way will cost more.

I did a rough cover design on cardboard and gave it to a young friend of mine who made it up for free for me in exchange for credit for it. That is all he wanted and it worked out well for me and him...

When I took in my manuscript which was also on the computer in Microsoft Word I paid the $5 per copy printed and about $700 for help with the cover, spell check and page design and format and a few other odds and ends. You can pay more to have it proofread and critiqued but I chose not to.

The other first time cost was ISBN numbers for Library of Congress and having it listed as the publisher/writer. I also paid for bar codes and other technical stuff that came to another $500 or so. This makes it legal to sell in bookstores and Amazon.con or other wesites. I also have paypal...

This $1200 was for the first printing and not paid again with other printings. You also get enough bar codes and ISBN numbers for 10 books.

My collectors edition enabled me to recoup my original cost and now I can really make some money and experct to....

To recap, $5 a book and about $1200 initial set up fees. You can print up as few as you want to break even or enough to set up next printing like I am doing. I don't have much spare money around and you can do it like I can.

Any questions? Feel free to respond to forum or me in particular. I'll try to help anyway I can. I will start my new book on Monday and get back into a routine I miss those days. I can't tell you what the feeling is like having written and published my first book. I am so happy and proud of sticking to it and learning what I didn't know then but do now. Now, it's your turn.....