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

[alg]

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.

Comments

Sell thru vs. print run

[(Anonymous)]

In one of your responses you said (paraphrasing) that it would be worse for an author to have a print run of 40k, vs having a sell thru of 40k (wasn't clear if you meant 40k out of 200k, meaning a 25% sell thru.) Which confuses me.

A friend of mine with a low print run on her first trio of s.t. books book but a fabulous sell-thru on all 3 is hitting a wall trying to sell elsewhere. Though her books' average initial sell thru was in the 65-70% range, because the print run was low (40k'ish) nobody else will touch her. And the explanation she has been getting is the high sell-thru doesn't outweigh the low print run.

Can you explain a little more about why it's better to sell 1 out of 3 books with a print run of 120k, rather than 2 out of 3 books with a print run of 40k?

Thanks, this has been fabulous!!
Leslie

Re: Sell thru vs. print run

[alg.livejournal.com]

I don't think I said that. I think what I said is:

+ A 40,000 copy print run isn't good if you're at a house chopping midlist authors (unless you are at a small press, in which case you are their bestseller),

+ but a 40,000 copy print run isn't that freaking bad, especially if you have a good sell through,

+ and a 40,000 copy sell through is pretty good unless you are printing 200,000 copies. If you are printing 200,000 copies, and selling 40,000 copies, your sell through is at 20%, and that sucks.