Almost every paragraph in your fascinating post could spark another comment, but I'll keep this down to a couple of specific points based on the P&L, rather than on the more general publishing/sales & marketing/returns issues.
I'm a bookseller who also does some publishing -- see www.crumcreekpress.com for more about my publishing work and www.statelyhuangmanor.com for more about me. One of the authors in my publishing program was originally published by Tor/Forge; another one of my authors is currently with Tor/Forge (I have one of her deep backlist titles).
I'm puzzled by the inclusion of "fixed cost to keep the lights on in the factory..." in "typesetting and design." Does Tor/Forge own its own presses? If not, why aren't these costs covered under PP&B? My publishing firm contracts with a printing company (several different ones, actually) to manufacture books. Their fixed costs are theirs, presumably built into the PP&B price that I pay. I can't figure out why your situation would be different.
This question isn't necessarily worth asking just for itself, but it is part of my overall reaction, which is that you're spending way too much here. The PP&B cost isn't outrageous, but $2,700 for typesetting & design? What part is type and what part is design? If there's any cost here at all for type, why is there a cost? The author should have turned in an electronic file that could easily be adapted for design purposes. The last book I published -- my first fiction original -- came in on disk from the author. Even when we have paid -- to re-key a book that we were restoring to print -- the cost is generally $350 or less, start to finish. (Yes, I'm outsourcing to India.)
$4500 for printing covers? We run covers for marketing purposes along with the covers for production, which means we spend $100 to keep the presses rolling just a little longer to produce the extras, instead of the thousands it would cost to run covers twice, once for promotion, once for finished books.
I realize that everything in New York is more expensive, but these numbers sound really high.
Jim Huang Crum Creek Press / The Mystery Company www.crumcreekpress.com www.themysterycompany.com
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breaking down some line items
Date: 2006-04-24 08:47 pm (UTC)I'm a bookseller who also does some publishing -- see www.crumcreekpress.com for more about my publishing work and www.statelyhuangmanor.com for more about me. One of the authors in my publishing program was originally published by Tor/Forge; another one of my authors is currently with Tor/Forge (I have one of her deep backlist titles).
I'm puzzled by the inclusion of "fixed cost to keep the lights on in the factory..." in "typesetting and design." Does Tor/Forge own its own presses? If not, why aren't these costs covered under PP&B? My publishing firm contracts with a printing company (several different ones, actually) to manufacture books. Their fixed costs are theirs, presumably built into the PP&B price that I pay. I can't figure out why your situation would be different.
This question isn't necessarily worth asking just for itself, but it is part of my overall reaction, which is that you're spending way too much here. The PP&B cost isn't outrageous, but $2,700 for typesetting & design? What part is type and what part is design? If there's any cost here at all for type, why is there a cost? The author should have turned in an electronic file that could easily be adapted for design purposes. The last book I published -- my first fiction original -- came in on disk from the author. Even when we have paid -- to re-key a book that we were restoring to print -- the cost is generally $350 or less, start to finish. (Yes, I'm outsourcing to India.)
$4500 for printing covers? We run covers for marketing purposes along with the covers for production, which means we spend $100 to keep the presses rolling just a little longer to produce the extras, instead of the thousands it would cost to run covers twice, once for promotion, once for finished books.
I realize that everything in New York is more expensive, but these numbers sound really high.
Jim Huang
Crum Creek Press / The Mystery Company
www.crumcreekpress.com
www.themysterycompany.com