Markups

I've grown to like middle-men less and less during this process of releasing my book.

Lulu's price ($11.99) includes $2.97 of royalties and Lulu's profits and $9.02 in production cost. To determine suggested retail price, they take the royalties and profits ($2.94 in this case), add it to $6.05 in production costs and then DOUBLE it. In other words, anything over $9 is the total profit for the bookstore that lists my book.

Think about that. Amazon.com is using the suggested retail price of $17.99 and getting a nearly 50% profit from it. If they just used the $11.99 price Lulu sells my book for, they's still be making $3 a book, which is still a 33% profit. But they don't do that because they think they can sell it at the higher price.

Think about that when you want to hire a middle man.