Who made this, and how it counts.
This site is a free resource made by Scribe Media, a book writing and publishing company in Austin, Texas that has published more than 3,000 books, including 23 New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestsellers.
Why it exists
People thinking about a business book usually ask what it will earn, and most answers they find are about royalties. For most business authors, royalties are the smallest part of the value. This site answers the real question, what a book is worth to your business, with arithmetic you can check and results you can trace.
How the calculator works
The Book Value Calculator adds up the lines a book can produce: new clients from the book times the value of one client, the fee increase per client, paid talks from the book times the fee, copies sold per year times the royalty per copy, and any other value you can price. It multiplies by the number of years you choose, compares the total with the book cost, and shows the payback point and how many clients pay back the book.
It does not score you, recommend a product or fill in numbers for you. Every input starts empty, because there is no honest average for what a client, a talk or a book is worth, and a default would look like a fact without being one. Scribe sells book services, so readers deserve to see exactly how the math is done; every line is shown.
Where the numbers come from
- Author results: Scribe Media's published success stories. Each result is copied as the story states it and links to the story. They are strong results, not typical ones, and nobody can promise them. See the author results page.
- Scribe prices: scribemedia.com/pricing, as it read on October 20, 2026, shown monthly first with the total.
- Amazon royalty rules: Amazon KDP help pages on eBook Royalties, eBook List Price Requirements, the Digital Book Pricing Page, Paperback Royalty and Paperback Printing Cost, checked October 20, 2026.
- Traditional publishing terms: the Authors Guild Model Trade Book Contract.
- Sales expectations and costs: The Scribe Method chapters Realistic and Unrealistic Expectations for a Book and How Much Does It Cost to Self-Publish a Book?
- The name: the Doubleday papers at Princeton University Library. See why "Dollar Book Club".
Worked examples on this site are hypothetical and say so. They show every step of the arithmetic so you can redo them with your own figures.
Talking to Scribe
Some pages have an optional form. If you fill it in, someone from Scribe Media will get in touch about your book. Nothing on the site requires it.
Your privacy
No cookies and no advertising trackers run on this site. The calculator runs in your browser and sends nothing. Read the privacy page for the details.