I’ve been working on a book project lately called The Golden Crystal, a fiction novel (thriller) similar in style to Dan Brown, James Rollins, J.A. Konrath, and James Patterson. Rather than choosing the “traditional” route of publishing through a legacy publishing company, I chose to use Lightning Source as my printer/distributor for the book, as it will save me a considerable amount of money on each run, and I get to maintain the rights.

However–and this is something many will tout as a reason for not printing with Lightning Source–there’s a lot of up front work to get a book from submission to print. If you faint at the thought of using page layout software, creating full-bleed documents, and designing book covers, Lightning Source really doesn’t help much. However, if you’re tech-savvy, you should be okay.

When choosing Lightning Source or another provider, you may want to try to figure out what your costs will be, and this calculator takes into account each variable in their pricing structure (as of January 2012).

Note: These estimates are exactly that–estimates. Your final price per unit may differ slightly; use for planning purposes only!

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