Self-Publishing 101: Choosing the Perfect Book Size for Success

One of the most popular videos on this channel over the last seven years has been my video How Big Should My Book Be? Besides the odd person that was offended that I said size matters when it comes to books, there were a lot of people who asked questions and wanted more specific details. So this is my How Big Should My Book Be? Updated with page numbers, trim size, and a whole bunch more information to help you understand how big your book will be and possibly should be. So if you're wondering what size your book is going to be and how that compares in your book category, well, this video is for you. Hey there, I'm Julie the Book Broad. I'm a four time author and founder of Book Launchers, a full service self publishing company. We have courses and a fantastic accelerator for authors building a business from their book and we have a full service support team to help you write, publish and promote your book. Check out book launchers.com for more or hit book launchers.com apply to chat with us about it. Alright, diving in the goals you have as an author and for your book are going to matter the most when you consider how big you want your book to be. I get authors all the time that say I just want a quick read, but their bigger picture goals are speaking engagements or consulting and I always let them know that the book should be big enough to put the title on the spine. Because yes, a quick read is valuable for the reader to get a fast hit, but you also want to look like an expert that is stage worthy and you don't want it to look like a brochure. So how many words do you need to write for that to happen? Well, that depends a lot on some of the choices you make like font type, white space, trim size and images. You can beef up a 25,000 word book to be a decent sized book with the choices you make. So let's take a look at some examples and I'll break it down for you. But before I do that, just check out this screenshot that our production manager Alyssa was kind enough to make for us to show you the different trim sizes and just give you a sense of the book types we usually work with. Now if your book is super short, like under 20,000 words, we're typically going to go with a 5 by 8 for a mid sized book, 20 to 50,000 words, 5.5 by 8.5 typical business books and memoirs 50,000 to 90,000 we're looking at a 6 by 9 and if you're more than 90,000 words, well you've got a big book and we're usually doing 6.14 times 9.21. Our standard font size is 11 point Adobe Garamond Pro, but it will differ slightly depending on the body font and some people do find that is too small while others have a total different preference. So ultimately it's the beauty of self publishing, it's your choice as an author. Now factors that impact final page count include of course that font type and font size, but images because they take up a lot of space and margins. Bigger margins mean more pages, just like more footnotes and citations mean more pages. Your choices on paragraph spacing books with cream paper have a slightly thicker spine as well. So paper choice can impact the book size. Who knew? So let's see what a short book can look like and if you go through Ingram, what the print costs on that will be compared to the bigger books. This book Art for your Sanity by Susan Hensley It's 14,000 words. The trim size is 5.5 by 8.5. Page count 110 print cost $4.31. There's prints and colors, lots of images. It includes full spreads to showcase her personal art journal. We went slightly larger on the trim size to accommodate those images and help them really shine. So now I'm going to compare two others that don't have color. Manda's Beast by Man spitler word count 20,000 trim size 5 by 8 page count 130 print cost $3.10. Prints in black and white and very few images. Then I'm going to compare that to Steve Tafaro's which is a 21,000 word count, almost 22,000 and 138 pages and he went with the 5.5 by 8.5 size. So you can see how these compare. Then an average book we're going to compare Moving to tax free by Bruce Hasler to self publish and succeed by yours truly. So Bruce Hasler's book and I only have the hardcover here. I'll take a picture after that has the soft cover but his book is 53,000 words here. His paperback is a 5.5 by 8.5 page count 258 and his print cost is $4.89. So you can check out the picture that I'm posting here to start to compare all the books and I'll keep adding to this as we add more books to the comparison. But now as you look at Bruce's book, he did go with the 5.5 by 8.5 which is exactly the same as what Steve Tafaro did. And you can see the difference between their books and the 5 by 8 versus the 5.5 by 8.5. Even in hardcover, you can start to see the difference. So again, Bruce wanted a thicker spine, which is why he chose the 5.5 by 8.5, which isn't the typical size for a business book. But choices do impact what you do and he wanted that thicker spine and that's why he went with the smaller size. Now my book to six by nine, which is very common in the business book space. I have 60,000 words. My page count was 238 and my print cost with Ingram was $4.61. It's printed in black and white. I have no images, minimal citations and research. So it's pretty much just text. So that is one we'll compare with the other books. When you look at this photo, you can start to see the difference in size and the difference in spines. Now let's take it to the large books. The opposite is true. By efren Delgado. Word count 177,000. So this trim size that he went with is the 6.14 by 9.12. So you can see it's just slightly larger than what we did for Self publish and Succeed. So his page count is 584 pages and his print cost comes in at $9.46. It prints in black and white and there are some images inside. Now I want to compare. We don't have the print costs on the next one I'm going to show you. Because he went with offset printing because he wanted a color insert in the middle. You can see that. But Patrick Chauvinac cleared for the option. It's 145,000. He did a trim size that's the same as self publish and succeed with with 6.9. His page count is 470. And again he opted to do print on demand because of the special considerations. It is printed in black and white with a glossy 24 page full color image insert. And inside he also has a lot of black and white illustrations and he has a very extensive index at the back. So you can see in this photo that these are the differences in your book and that gives you a range of okay, if I write this this much, this is where I'm going to be shooting for a trim size. So the answer to how big my book should be isn't a one size fits all answer. And as noted at the beginning, if you want to use your book to get onto stages. I would highly recommend making it big enough that it gives you the feeling of an expert when you give it to people who might put you on their stage. I've heard a lot of people say that book was more of a brochure. So if your book is too small, that could be them talking about your book. Of course, there are always exceptions. I love Price Pritchett's books and they are small and they don't have a spine. They're just bound with a staple. So these are considerations, not rules. You have to make choices that are a good fit for your business and your brand. If you want your book to be on the shelves of stores or libraries, considering your spine and how it will appear, like with the size and the color and making sure it's not too small that it will be lost, an important thing. And if it's so small you can't put the title on, it will get completely lost. Now Price, he has an established reputation and he has people like Lewis Howes who are telling people all about his books. And he's already built a successful business and has a big email list where he sells books direct to. But is that where you are starting out? Additionally, if it's too big, people might be intimidated by that. Or should it be that big because it emphasizes the expertise and adds more value? These are decisions that only you as the author can make. And of course, in addition to that, considering the print cost versus the price you can charge, a book like Patrick Chauvinox had to be color in the middle, but it would lose money if he printed the whole thing in color on print on demand. So it's much higher to print a book like that than it is to print a book like Manda's Beast. If your category doesn't have any books that are over $19, are you going to be doing the right thing by making a big book in color that you have to price at 29 or even $39 to make it profitable? There were so many considerations, but I hope this helped answer your size questions. If it did, please click the like button and subscribe to the channel so we can hang out again. If it didn't, well, still click the like button and subscribe so we can hang out. But go ahead and ask the question you need answered below and I'll shoot a video to help you out. This video is on how to Succeed with Bookstore Events and it's a good one to watch after you've figured out how big your book should be. And this one is on all the things you should know about book printing, which is really important to think about after you've thought about your book size. So go ahead. I've got the coffee on. I can't wait to see you there.