Going to Press: The Cost Problem in Print-on-Demand

By Cliff Potts, CSO, and Editor-in-Chief of WPS News

Baybay City, Leyte, Philippines — October 27, 2026

One of the quieter frustrations in self-publishing is cost. It does not arrive with the drama of a damaged order or a rejected file. It shows up in the math. An author finishes a book, prices the project, looks at the printing cost, looks at the retail margin, and realizes the room to breathe is smaller than expected. On Lulu, that problem is part of the platform experience.

Print-on-demand has always sold itself on convenience. Authors do not have to order and store hundreds of copies. They do not need warehouse space, shipping tables, or boxes stacked against the wall like a cardboard fortress. That convenience is real. But convenience comes at a price, and the price often lands hardest on independent authors working with narrow margins.

The more ambitious the book, the more obvious the cost problem becomes. Page count matters. Trim size matters. Paper choice matters. Color interiors matter even more. A project that looks reasonable in draft form can become expensive very quickly once production choices are applied. By the time the author reaches the pricing stage, the gap between what a book costs to produce and what readers are willing to pay may be uncomfortably small.

That creates a pressure point. If the retail price is set too low, the author earns very little per copy. If it is set too high, the book may become harder to sell. This is not unique to Lulu, but it is central to understanding the platform. Print-on-demand reduces up-front inventory risk, but it can replace that risk with long-term margin pressure. Instead of losing money on unsold stock, the author may find that each sale produces only a thin return.

The problem extends beyond the retail list price. Authors also need to think about proof copies, replacement orders, personal stock, library donations, review copies, and any copies used for direct promotion. Those are all real costs. A platform may look workable when measured only by the base print price, but the total cost of actually using the books in the real world can creep upward like ivy through brick.

There is also the issue of comparison. Authors often discover that a platform is affordable for one kind of project and far less attractive for another. A simple black-and-white paperback may be manageable. A longer book, a hardcover, or a color-heavy project may feel much less viable. That means Lulu is not a one-size-fits-all solution. It may work well for certain books while becoming economically awkward for others.

None of this means Lulu is unusable. It means authors should approach pricing with a cold eye and a calculator. The platform works best when the economics of the project are understood in advance. That includes testing multiple formats, reviewing production options carefully, and deciding early whether the goal is sales revenue, accessibility, archival value, or simply having the book exist in physical form. Those are not the same goal, and they do not produce the same pricing strategy.

The practical lesson is simple. Before committing to Lulu, authors should price the book from the back end forward. Start with what the reader is realistically likely to pay, then work backward through print cost and margin. If the numbers do not make sense, the answer may not be better marketing. It may be a smaller trim size, fewer pages, a different format, or a different platform altogether.

That is where the cost problem matters most. Print-on-demand is often marketed as a door into publishing, and it is. But some doors lead into rooms with very little space to stand. On Lulu, as on many digital platforms that promise convenience, the user still has to carry the weight of the business model. For independent authors, that means the final question is not just whether the book can be printed. It is whether printing it this way makes financial sense at all.

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