When we go to upload your book files to Ingram during the publication process, we must enter lots of different metadata when we do.
This metadata includes your book title, your author name, book description, etc. This is also where we enter the retail price of your book and set the wholesale rate.
Customers purchase your book at the retail price, while wholesalers such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target, Walmart, etc., all purchase your book at the wholesale price.
When we receive compensation from Ingram when books are sold, the amount we receive is based off of the wholesale price minus the cost of printing and fees.
For example: The retail price of a book is set to $10.00. We now have to have a minimum wholesale rate of 40%, which means the wholesale price is $6.00. Say the book costs $3.00 to print and the fees equal $0.75, that means the compensation we receive is going to be $2.25 per copy sold.
When we pay you, the author, your royalty amount is calculated off of your customer retail price. So if your book is published at $10.00 and your royalty rate is 10%, then you would receive $1.00 every time a copy sold.
This is a very straight forward example, so when Ingram raises the cost to print and the internal wholesale rates rise, this all impacts the amount of compensation we receive from Ingram.
Over time, this might mean that we no longer receive enough compensation per copy sold to cover your royalty rate or it might be that we have to increase your retail price so that we earn more per copy in order to keep your royalty rate the same.
The options to resolve these issues will vary by book, and we welcome the opportunity to go over all the available choices you have.
Please don’t hesitate to email us at Contact@bookstandpublishing.com.
