Homework in selecting publishers

It sounds obvious that an author should do a thorough job of investigating publishers before making a selection. I set out to do just that but "things happen" and I made some mistakes. One was not really thinking through the pricing of my book. My publisher gave me some minimum prices and I was able to increase them as I wanted. I sure didn't think this through. I wanted as many people to buy my book as possible so I picked a very low price with a minimum royalty. I forgot to consider the costs of shipping in my decision. It's not really a problem as I didn't expect to make money on my book although it would be nice to recoup my costs. It turns out that with the low costs I selected it's not possible for me to directly sell books at as low a price as the publisher. The reason I want to directly sell some books is to be able to sign and inscribe books for long time friends as associates. I can do this but I either have to sell the books at a loss or charge my friends more than they would pay the publisher. The reason is there are two shipping costs involved when I sell books direct. I have to pay shipping from the printer to me and then from me to the buyer. The shipping cost from the printer to me is more than the discount I get as the author. I should have increased the royalty enough that I could sell books at an equal or lower price than the publisher. Oh well, another lesson learned.