Let me tell you a story. Shortly after I published my books and people caught wind of what I was doing something happened. Everyone I talked to who learned that I had published a couple of books started telling me that all their lives they wanted to write and publish a book too.

Most people never got beyond the talking stage. But…one of my colleagues James put something together.

I remember talking with him one day and him telling me he had a friend who did…ballsack tricks. Wait…I know. I thought to myself…are you serious? But then I remembered a few weeks before he told me about his idea I had been in a Urban Outfitters store and had been looking at an unusual book.

“Things White People Like” - Yeah! Great title. We really enjoyed learnng that white people like Mos Def, Will Smith, or that finding the right T-Shirt is akin to a spiritual experience in the white persons world.

Anyhow, I thought to myself, okay…if a book entitled “Things White People Like” can sell in Urban Outfitters and Barnes and Noble then perhaps a book on ball sack tricks entitled “Welcome to a Whole New Ballgame” could hit the jackpot too.

I told James how I had published my books. James however chose to go a different route. Somehow, he found a women through the local phone book who had published her own book and took counsel with her.

Believe it or not she told him he should use Kinkos for printing. I laughed at first, but then told me the price they quoted him; less than $5 for a 75 page book. That’s a pretty good deal.

The price was for black and white with a color cover. He said he wanted thicker paper. Kinkos told him it would be the same price. Wow, that’s a good deal.

I didn’ty think much about using Kinkos for printing at first. After considering it for a bit though I began to think it may be a good deal.

Think about it. Unless you find a publisher and will be self publishing you may be considering CreateSpace or Lulu.com. They are also good alternatives. The thing with self publishing through Createspace or Lulu is that (a.) you have to pay shipping (which can really add up) and (b.) if you sell through their website you could end up loosing money.

See, Lulu.com and CreateSpace take high percentages for selling your book. Now, there are good reasons for this and it’s possible that you may not even want to profit from your book. You may be selling your book at cost and using it as a lead generation tool, counting instead on lifetime customer value.

Anyhow, in James case Kinkos works out well. The books only cost about $4.50, and he doesn’t have to pay for shipping.

Now, a couple of other things we have to factor in are ISBN numbers and barcodes. If you buy these one at a time through Bowker Registration Services they will cost you roughly $100 bucks for the ISBN and another $25 for the bar code. That’s basically another $1.25 added to the price of the first hundred books.

Another cost you have to factor in is cost of setup and proof copies. Going through Kinkos James paid $25 for setup and $25 for each proof copy.

If you have your work copywrited through the United States Copyright Office will cost you somewhere in the neighborhood of $100. Even though (and I’m not a lawyer), it is my understanding that works come under copywrite as soon as they are made.

Another obvious benefit to publishing through kinkos is that you won’t have to pay the distributor fees which can be as much as 60%.

So…there you have it. If you are considering publishing your own book without a publisher Kinkos might be something worth thinking about.  I never would have considered using Kinkos before James used them. Now that he’s used them and seems pretty happy perhaps I woul reconsider.

To sum things up james got 100 copies published for less than $700 dollars. Not bad.

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