$elf publishing in Singapore

Pinched this link from Sharon's blog. I'm putting it here because it's related to the articles in my previous entry. Here are some figures culled from the said Straits Times article of 17 Dec 2005, So Many Authors, So Few Readers.

Self-pub author	Title	Outlay	Copies sold
Harris Ng	Reovered Grace (autobio)	S$8,000	600
Low Kay Hwa	I believe you (love story)	S$2,340	1/2 of first print run
Emily Tai	Will Your Child Eat a Tomato? (cookbook)	S$20,000	220 out of 5,000
Joanna Wong	Squeaky… He’s more than a squirrel (children’s bk)	S$23,000	1,800 out of 10,000
Mohamed Ismail Gafoor	You Can Fly (in Eng, Chi, BM)	S30,000

Where the money goes

Cost of publishing book	:20%	(includes printing, layout, editing & cover design)
Author royalty	:10%
Distributors	:50-55%
Publisher's gross profit	:15-20%	(before deducting overheads like rent and salaries)

Assuming that a self-published author appoints a distributor to place the books in the bookstores, his profit would be 25-30% gross.

Personally, I’d rather take the 10% royalty and concentrate on the writing.