One-Page, One-Person: The Follow-up
Last week I posted ‘A One-Page Business Plan for a One-Person Publishing Company’, and since then there’s been the usual deluge of comments, queries and requests in my inbox. Rather than answering everyone individually, I thought I’d collate all the extra information into a new post — so here we go. Hope this clears everything up!
A couple of people asked for the RRP formula as an actual formula… it’s tricky to express such things elegantly on Medium, but here goes:
{ ( [ your hourly rate inc. salary and other overheads × hours needed for project ] + print costs for expected initial sales + other production expenses ) ÷ no of expected initial sales } + author royalty per copy = essential income per copy sold. Then double that and round up for a safe RRP.
That part’s just for completists — enjoy. The next logical question (which kindly enough, you all refrained from asking) is: how come none of your Valley Press books, past or present, have these crazy-high RRPs that the formula prescribes for me?
One answer is that when I started VP as a business, for the first couple of years I only sold the books directly. If…
