Most printers seem to play their pricing card pretty close to their vest. I’ve never really understood why, other than price fluctuations might make posted pricing frequently obsolete. If you know why, please drop a comment below to explain.

With most printers, you are invited to call, or email for a quote. They ask for details about your project and then quote a price based on what you need. This makes sense, but in todays gotta-have-it-now-on-the-web world, we generally expect to get this kind of information immediately and without the inconvenience of having to talk to a real live person.

One of my favorite printers, InstantPublisher.com, has done just that. Going against the tradition they have published a handy little pricing calculator on their site. Select the appropriate options as they pertain to your project and submit. You will instantly get a price quote.

The cool thing about it is, you can back your browser up, change some of the settings, and then resubmit to see how it effects the per-unit price, and the over-all price. It makes it easy, fun even, to find that optimal “break-even” point where the number of books against the quantity discount works most in your favor (maybe thats why more printers haven’t done this.)

Want to know what it would cost to print your book 4¼x7 vs 6×9? Its easy. Try different cover types, add color pages, or different binding options to see how it would effect your price.

This is a great tool to get a good ballpark sense of what it will cost to print your book. You may want to shop around once you have a quote from the calculator – I’m sure some printers will do some things cheaper or better. But this is a great way to play around with your printing configuration to get an idea of how your price will be effected by different options.

It’s also a great way to learn a little about printing pricing in general. I was fortunate to find this tool when I was first starting to research publishing… and it really gave me a good sense as to what a printer looks at when determining price quotes. I still go to it from time to time, even if it’s just to check the feasibility of some idea or other I may have for a book.

Once again, here is a link to InstantPublisher.com’s handy pricing calculator.

Enjoy!