How do the book development costs break down?
As a guide the following figures are from a somewhat dated study of small publishers: • On average it takes 475 hours to write a fiction title and 725 hours to write a nonfiction title. • It takes an average of 531 hours to produce a book – 422 hours for fiction, 550 hours for nonfiction. • An average of 10 to 15 hours are spent designing a book cover. • On average, 61 hours are spent in the editing process. • On average, 29 hours are spent producing news releases for a new book. • Self publishers spend 52.4% of their book development budget writing a book (23.3% for fiction, 55.5% for nonfiction). • Advertising consumes most of the small publisher’s marketing costs (36.5% for fiction titles, 29.8% for nonfiction titles).
