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A book packager's cost estimate: Beyond the ballpark

  

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"Just so I can talk to my boss about it,
give me a ballpark figure for what this is going to cost us."

 
This problematic request is probably endemic to service-based businesses, and I sympathize with the people who ask it. If they have no notion of what it will cost, how can they move ahead with their book-production exploration? But, because each publication has its own personality and peculiarities, expenses and time requirements vary widely from project to project, which makes it nearly impossible to arrive at a preliminary, or ballpark, estimate worth the email it's "printed" on.

Here's the "ideal" process we try to follow in order to provide a reliable estimate. Right off the bat, project demands are divided into two categories: (1) cost of service (called "cost of goods sold" in other industries); and (2) manufacturing.

First Base: Cost of service for publications
Let's assume our client wants the soup-to-nuts package: project management, development, editorial (line and copy editing, proofreading, and indexing), design, art preparation, pre-press, and production. Every line item requires evaluation. A few questions we consider include:

• Has the writer ever completed a manuscript this complex?
• Is fact checking required?
• Are we expected to clear permissions to reprint text or pictures? How many? In what language(s)?
• Is a one-color (or a four-color or a six-color) design desired?
• Is the art in digital form, or must transparencies and hard copy be scanned and color corrected?
• What about the 27 charts and graphs—will they need to be redrawn?
• Do you want us to be present at the press check?

Questions such as these lead to broader considerations:

• Will we assign some of the work to freelance colleagues, or must our in-house staff do everything?
• How much time will be devoted to in-house editing or design or production?
• What about the schedule? Does the client want bound books yesterday?

We prefer to meet with our client to explore every requirement as well as any special procedures that may need to be implemented. During this meeting, we complete a page-long requisition of services. This needn't be a long or onerous process—it can be accomplished in as few as 15 minutes—and once that discussion is complete, the services needed for us to deliver a top-notch publication are understood by everyone involved.

Caveat: While this exploration takes a little more time up front, beware of the publication service provider who is ready and willing to reel off costs without first gaining a clear understanding of the project's intricacies and peculiarities. That way lies, if not madness, a sizable roster of added charges after the fact and severe headaches during the publication's gestation period.

Second Base: Manufacturing costs
Truth be told, it is usually easier to handicap the service requirements than the cost of printing, paper, and binding (PPB) and shipping, which we commission a printer and binder to provide.  Here, too, we complete a page-long questionnaire, which sketches in a full, accurate description of the end product's specifications —trim size, page count, type of binding, weight and quality of paper, quantity for first printing, etc. We submit these specs to at least three vendors, and it takes at least a week, usually longer, for us to receive their bids.

Rounding Third: Putting it all together
Now we deposit all the estimates, considerations, and perceived elements into our hopper to determine what the publication will cost to produce, when we will need the raw materials, and when the project can be completed and delivered. Over the years, we have developed reliable spreadsheets to estimate costs and schedules, but they assume accuracy in the data entered.
 

Home Plate! We issue the proposal
Thousands cheer. General good feeling abounds.

So, you can see why off-the-cuff estimates tend to be unreliable, hence unwise. Nonetheless, clients' urgent pleas have prompted us to suggest ballpark figures based on similar past projects. Doing so always warrants a disclaimer—"this is not an estimate...,"—but the ballpark figure usually sees our client through an imminent committee meeting or budget projection.

Then why don't we do that more often? Frankly, because it just isn't sufficiently reliable. For example, take a book based on one we produced six years earlier. Today, editorial fees are, say, $5/hour higher; the previous project took eleven months, but the new one needs only nine; the paper is more expensive; and the quantity to be printed is twice as high. Any one of these considerations can skew the figures; taken together, the overall result can be fouled right out of the ballpark.

We continually improve our itemized cost-projection system, which we are honing to permit issuing reliable on-the-spot estimates. But, as with so many project-planning tasks, it still relies on best guesses and assumptions, and the umpire has yet to rule on that.