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Originally Posted by HarryT
Do many independent authors sell printed books? I would have thought (but perhaps I'm wrong?) that most of them only sold ebooks.
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It seems to vary, quite possibly by genre. I sell a handful every month, which is less than I sell of ebooks, but three libraries picked up the Sedona series (humor mysteries). I have had no luck getting any library to carry the urban fantasy series. I've even offered to donate it to a library or two and they still won't even LOOK at it. And I think that is more genre than my indie status. I could be wrong. (EDITED: Wait! There is one library in Indianapolis that carries the Moon Shadow series. For some reason they have several copies of the last book--4 or 5.)
I didn't have the print versions for a long time and another author told me she sold a few every month. She also writes humor mysteries. So, I tried it. I sold 20 or so of the first Sedona book the first month. Well that lit a fire under my, uhm, under me, so I put the rest out there. The Sedona series are available at B&N and libraries, as is the other series. The stand alones didn't seem to do as well, so I didn't make them available everywhere (There is a fee to make them available anywhere but Amazon).
I actually sell almost as many copies at B&N as I do at Amazon and for no reason I can fathom, I sell more urban fantasy copies at B&N in print than I do at Amazon.
It is a HUGE amount of work to do a print copy in addition to an ebook so I can completely understand why authors don't bother. If you don't want to figure out the formatting (which is not a piece of cake) you have to pay to have it done and it's going to be very difficult to earn that back. It runs anywhere from 60 to 100 dollars and if you make a fix to change a typo some places charge you the entire base rate again. Others have a 20 dollar fee.
There's a lot of other time consuming tasks to it--the cover is a lot of work. You have to do a front and back and spine and that is either going to take time or cost. And that cost can run anywhere from 100 on up if you don't know how to do it yourself.
Even doing it yourself runs an average of 25 to 50 because you have to order proofs to make sure that the color is correct and the placement. The online tools are better now, but they are still not perfect.
If I couldn't do it myself, I wouldn't do it. It would simply be too expensive and earning back the investment would take months and months. Doing it myself I generally break even within a couple of months. I wasn't going to do Under Witch Curse (the latest UF) but...I got actual requests. I wasn't expecting that. So, I put it out there and it is selling.
Your mileage is going to vary on this.