When her next publisher is looking at buying her books, don’t they only have access to sales (though Bookscan) not the print run?
Well, no. Because not only do we have access to Bookscan, we also have access to buyers for major chains and big wholesalers who remember all too well the extent to which the previous publisher pushed too many copies onto them.
It seems like authors (or agents, at least) should push for bigger print runs, hoping that the extra copies will result in better merchandising
Ah yes, the old "Push them into over-distributing it, then they'll have no choice but to spend lots of money marketing it" argument. There are many reasons this doesn't actually work, but the biggest is that "marketing" and "merchandising" dollars spent after an act of gross overdistribution are a lot less effective than you might think.
and get sales in the bank (bookscan) and let the publisher worry about the returns.
I'm having trouble making sense of this. Bookscan records cash-register sales, not the number of copies distributed. I.e., Bookscan sales are all copies that aren't going to be returned.
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Re: Returns - always bad?
Date: 2006-04-22 04:52 pm (UTC)Well, no. Because not only do we have access to Bookscan, we also have access to buyers for major chains and big wholesalers who remember all too well the extent to which the previous publisher pushed too many copies onto them.
It seems like authors (or agents, at least) should push for bigger print runs, hoping that the extra copies will result in better merchandising
Ah yes, the old "Push them into over-distributing it, then they'll have no choice but to spend lots of money marketing it" argument. There are many reasons this doesn't actually work, but the biggest is that "marketing" and "merchandising" dollars spent after an act of gross overdistribution are a lot less effective than you might think.
and get sales in the bank (bookscan) and let the publisher worry about the returns.
I'm having trouble making sense of this. Bookscan records cash-register sales, not the number of copies distributed. I.e., Bookscan sales are all copies that aren't going to be returned.