What Does it Cost the Publisher to Produce a Book?
I’ve heard that it costs from $20,000 to $150,000 to produce a paperback book. The difference in costs depends on a variety of factors, including advances, cover illustration costs ($1500-$3000 for the average mass-market paperback cover painting), size of the novel (200 or 1200 pages), and so on. According to my own publisher (Del Rey/Random House), it costs approximately $150,000 to produce a mass-market paperback novel, including all costs associated with that book (rights, editing, cover art, production, printing, warehousing, distribution, sales, etc.). For a hardback book, the breakout of costs, according to the January 12, 1998, issue of U.S.
