Selling Philatelic Literature At A Loss

I have published two different booklets and they were printed in small quantities. For the most part, most of these booklets eventually sold for less than what it cost me to print them and the shipping cost did not help in selling them. Am I to conclude that only the big philatelic publishers don't sell at a loss?

Printing hardcopy philatelic books (or any book) in low quantities is never feasible. I have worked with a lot of philatelic authors and I do not know one that made money, all lost money. The break even point is usually 500+ copies. Thankfully, online digital publishing is lower cost and much more feasible.
Don

Morning all,

As a writer of small run (less than 100 copies) philatelic and transportation subject works over the last twenty five years I can agree with Don. Have the material researched and organized to do several more but they may never get done. Just can't justify the time and expense of their completion. Sad.

Have thought of using something like a "go fund me" approach providing those who donate a copy of the book when done. It would be a modern variation on the old traveling salesman seeking subscriptions (advanced payments) for local history books writen in the late 1800's. I have several for Indiana that are invaluable local references that would never have been published any other way.

The business model was a printing company had representative/salespeople canvas an area seeing local information and subscriptions for the final product. This approach seems to have died out around WW I.

Today the business model is content attracts viewers for advertisements on web sites. Content does not have a cash value unto itself?

That model is how yearbooks were done.

If you really want to print a philatelic book, why not use CreateSpace through Amazon?

I'm a big fan of postal history and have the 6 volumes of Robson Lowe's encyclopaedias.

In volume 5 (North America, published 1973) there is a page talking about the future release of volume 6 that would've covered the balance of the British Empire (ie: Caribbean, South America, Antarctica).

Volume 6 was finally released in 1991 but only covered the Leeward Islands. Lowe died in 1997.

In 2012 I wrote a book that covered the British Empire in the Caribbean and South America up to 1900. I physically made 3 copies. It took me three goes to make a satisfactory product. The only thing I couldn't do at home was the dust jacket. You'll see that it follows the format of the previous volumes of Lowe's work. It's a hard cover but doesn't have any gold lettering - I'm happy to admit that skill is beyond me.






I contacted Spink in London (as they own Christies as I understood it at the time) to see if they were interested in publishing but was told, in so many words, that there wouldn't be enough profit in it.

So, it sits alongside the other 6 volumes on one of my shelves and I've used it on many occasions. For me, it's nice to have all the information in the one place.

I know that it would've been out of date almost immediately as new discoveries are being made all the time but you can only work with what you've got at the time.

I can't help feeling that if profit were the sole motivation we'd have next to no philatelic literature. Self publishing is the way to go in my opinion, and when I finish my second book that's what I'll be doing. I can do the whole thing from home and print (and make) it on demand.

One of my societies published a book some years ago. We used Lulu.com, which is a self-publishing outlet that does print on demand for books. The quality was sufficient (and is probably better now), there is no upfront investment beyond getting an ISBN number, and the author can obtain copies at a discount and sell their own hard copies if they'd like. It was straightforward enough that if you could make a pdf, you could publish a book.