Profits from various selling (excluding company costs and marketing)

Right at 4.99 and with normal postage charges

1) Amazon - if I am sending my books one at a time to amazon to fulfil orders - I lose 52p per book. This can be mitigated by the amazon associates revenue (about 25p but only if refered from my site) and reduced print costs (this effectively means I have to print in batches of 5000 to break even)

2) Amazon - if I am sending in larger batches the postage drops to about 33p to send to the warehouse - I make 15p - this means that any print reduction plus associates revenue will get me closer to the magic pound per copy. If we print at the 5000 level we can definitely make a pound.

3) Direct - makes profit of 3.40 to 3.10 so we can actually put a total (rrp +P&P) of between 4.50 and 3.50 (for individual books or full set of 3) and still make a pound at current rates

4) Ebay - we make about 60p less than direct so the above applies but with 60p difference

the business can be sustained in the "1000 copies" period because we know that higher print runs will provide profits.

If we work to one pound profit minimum on each book then we should work on 50p company charges and marketing per book - which seems likely.

Accounts would suggest that initially we'll be spending £4000 on company and marketing charges to sell 3000 books. However, those costs will come down substantially with volumes.