For those of you curious about how much money is made on books, I’ve created a spreadsheet which shows exactly how much money is made self-plublishing e-books and print books.

The spreadsheet compares most of the major self publishing services: Lulu, Create Space,  Lightning Source, Amazon Digital Text Platform (Kindle),  Amazon e-docs, as well as selling directly through the web.

The comparisons shows how much profit can be made selling a self published book using the various companies and various different formats.

As you can see above, the most profitable option for print books is to point your customers to Lulu or CreateSpace Pro store. This option would give you $$5.61 and $6.76 per book on a $14 book. For  books that are distributed on Amazon or other retail sites, Lightningsource is the most profitable option followed by CreateSpace Pro. Lightning Source gives flexibility with the discount rate which can increase profitability further as well as opening the doors to websites besides Amazon.com. CreateSpace Pro provides greater ease of use and lower start-up costs.