alg | P&Ls and how books make (or don't) money

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demystifying publishing

P&Ls and how books make (or don't) money

Profit & Loss/Profitability & Liability: How Books Make (or Don't Make!) Money

A basic outline of what happens when an editor buys a book and wants to publish it. This is very much a basic look at publishing and publishing finance, with some explanation of terms commonly used by the marketing and sales departments.

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Sorry, I got nothing!

Part 2 has not yet been posted. In about two weeks, I should have it ready.

My firm motto as an Art Director is a good cover will not sell a crappy book, a great book will sell itself despite what is on the cover, but if you put a great cover on a great book, it will get the sales representatives behind the book (they may even read a chapter or two) and your initial orders will sky rocket.

YES.

Thanks for jumping in here -- you've explained it better than I could!

Thank you! I'm looking forward to it.

And I was thinking Michael Crichton...

Indeed. I liked the line about 'production bumped it up to x print run to save money in case it was a best-seller'. But how many books are best-sellers? If you instead reduced every print run on principle, you would indeed be caught out by the rare best-seller, but so what. The reprint would be slightly more expensive than having some extra copies from the first printing, but you would have saved from all the other printings that didn't turn out to be bestsellers.

"She's trying to convey some fiscal realism to aspiring writers."

and, as an aspiring writer... she totally did. So, Jim. You are confusing me & a lot of new writers go for the big guys in NYC anyway, because we know we can trust them. I'd rather have the facts, and i don't see negatives here... but I think Anna's post is really positive and informative, ....information that is really helpful to a clueless newbie.

(as in clueless I can't seem to ever log in... this was me, and I promise to stop forgetting~!)

It's not my intention to confuse the issue, and if that's what I'm doing here, I apologize. I think it's probably time for me to bow out of this discussion here.

For a more complete -- and I hope less confusing -- expression of my point of view on all this including the advice I'd give to new writers, visit: http://statelyhuangmanor.com/essays/DSkeynote.htm

-- Jim

The interesting thing is that, for about a day, TOR *did* sell ebooks through Baen's Webscriptions (until various legal reasons shut that down) yet those who were able to purchase ebooks through that process all stated great satisfaction at *finally* being able to get TOR ebooks. I was one of them. Managed to snag Stross' first two Family Corporate books in ebook format - I already have them in HC. Perhaps you should research the ebook PnL potential to help convince the TOR principles as to the profit potential of ebook sales?

I am a MM PB author very similar to Ms. Sun--a nobody, with no "platform," no blurbs, no fancy cover and no co-op dollars. Not surprisingly, my sales results were quite similar to Ms. Sun's. My question: why do publishers acquire books that they have no intention of promoting? It seems like a guaranteed recipe for failure, and then they blame the poor author! When Nabisco launches a new cookie, they promote the hell out of it. They don't just ship it to grocery stores and stand by passively while the cookies grow stale on the shelf. Why is publsihing different?

Ah, but the mroe copies you make, the mroe you sell, even if you don't seel them all.

suppose, as a very very simplistic model, there are three bookstores in the world, each of which has offered to stock 1 copy of the book. and suppose that there's a 1/3 chance at each store that the book will sell before they decide to "return" it.

so you print 3 copies, send one to each store, and sell 1 of them. ideally, you make enough to money to cover the cost of all 3 off the one sale.

sure, ti looks wasteful. but if you only printed 1 copy, you'd only be able to have 1 store stock it, and then you might well sell one at all.

Your report was pretty interesting!

The bookbusiness..is a hard business!

Greetings from Germany

Irena

There will be a "Grunge II", sooner or later. You can be a star. And I can be a novelist. It'll all work out in the end.

Or something.

-- Jules, who doesn't have a LiveJournal account yet.

Your article may be slightly pessimistic but not nearly as much as an editor I once met in Banff, Alberta in 1999. Our conversation went like this:

"What do you write?" he asked.

"Short fiction."

"HA!" he mocked, "Good luck, buddy!"

"How can I improve my chances?"

"You really wanna make money writing? OK here's what you do: first become a big celebrity, then write a cookbook."

No kidding. That's what he said. I still write but not as much or as enthusiastically as I did five or six years ago. I have not yet started a cookbook.

Totally different market for the trade paperbacks, then?

Not entirely. But what you are describing is different -- technical books are non-fiction, not novels.

How different is the PnL for a trade paperback novel? Not being mass-market, are their print runs automatically smaller?

Read the whole thing, and feel like I've been beat half to death. No wonder I'd rather write. It's an escape from this kind of awful, grinding machinery. Hurray for the grinders!

Fantastic info even if I am reading it late.

Thank you!

Shannon

I know it may be naive of me, but thank you anna louise. I got a form reject from an agent this weekend and I've been rather depressed since. But reading this post just reminded me why I wanted to tough it out and find an agent anyway so that I didn't have to be the one stressing over the numbers and business side. I understand that I need to know these things, to understand how it all works, but I am 100% OK with handing my 15% over so that I can focus on the writing part.

Several months late, but this was such a cool read. Now I feel better about blowing tons of money on books.

Andre call me ,please ! Or my ICQ - 25634874 .Sorry for offtop о:( .
Regards.

You might as well turn off the lights and throw darts to determine how to make a profit. This book publishing nonsense is the most irrational and inefficient system still waiting to be laughed off of Wall Street today. The only industry in bigger denial of it's outmoded institutional dogmas is religion. But they still have a viable product: FEAR.
Speaking of religion, it's often said that Christianity succeeded when it did because it welcomed women and slaves. Sounds a lot like the POD movement which is eating the flesh off the bones of Bertelsmann et al.

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P&Ls and how books make (or don't) money

Re: Yep that would be the thing...

Re: Part II?

Re: breaking down some line items

Re: Part II?

no subject

Re: breaking down some line items

Re: breaking down some line items

Re: breaking down some line items

Re: breaking down some line items

Re: P n L. Can you do a version for ebook sales

acquiring books that won't be promoted

Re: breaking down some line items

no subject

Don't worry!

Pessimistic?

Re: Strange

letmeoutofhere

no subject

Thank you

no subject

For Andre ...

Why???

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