Posted: 2022-01-02 At: 5:30 am:   

"Light Throughout The Night" has 317 Pages. The book is 5 1/2 inches by 8 1/2 inches, the size of a letterhead sheet of paper folded in half. Four pages are printed on each sheet of paper. 317 divided by 4 = 80. Therefor, 80 sheets of paper are used per book. Currently, I pay about $4.50 per ream of 500 sheets of paper, or about $0.009 per sheet. $0.009 Times 80 = $0.72, the cost of paper needed to make each book.

I use a laser printer and pay a little over $11 per ink toner cartridge. Each ink toner cartridge has a print range of about 1,600 pages. A cost of about $0.0071 per sheet. $0.0071 Times 160 = $1.14, the cost of ink to print each book. (The sheets are doubled from 80 to 160 because the per sheet ink toner cartridge print range(1,600) is one side of one sheet of paper. Both sides are used to print the book.)

I pay about $30 for each printer drum. The printer drum has an estimated life span of 12,000 pages, a cost of about $0.0025 per sheet. $0.0025 times 160 = $0.40, the cost of the printer drum used to print each book. (As with the toner ink cartridge, the sheets are doubled from 80 to 160 because the per sheet printing amount(12,000) is one side of one sheet of paper. Both sides are used to print the book.)

I use standard posterboard as the cover of each book at a cost of $1.22 per posterboard sheet. I can usually make three or four book covers from each sheet of posterboard at a cost between $0.30 and $0.41 per book cover. The posterboard I purchase has a UPC sticker stuck to the posterboard. The sticker doesn't always peel cleanly. The location of the UPC determines how many book covers I can make from a specific sheet of posterboard. More often than not, I can only print three covers per sheet of posterboard. I estimated the cost of the cover at $0.39 per cover.

I didn’t include the cost of book glue. I haven’t made enough books to determine the cost per book. In total, each book costs about $2.65 to make.

The cost also doesn’t include the time I took to write "Light Throughout The Night", the time to make each book, previously purchased items such as printers, software, paper cutters and copyright costs. The cost doesn't include things such as misprints, pens, printer paper and ink used during the writing process and faulty equipment either.

With all things considered, I felt a markup of almost $4.00 for each book is fair, as a result, I priced "Light Throughout The Night" at $6.50 per book.

Per Book Costs
Paper Cost: $0.72
Ink Cost:   $1.14
Drum Cost: $0.40
Cover Cost: $0.39
Estimated Cost To Make Each Book: $2.65




Light Throughout The Night is available for free, posted as blog posts.

The book is also available for sale as an eBook. For those who would like to purchase Light Throughout The Night to have as your own, please visit the Light Throughout The Night store webpage.