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Entry tags:
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.
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.
How paperbacks came to be sold like magazines
Very simply, there are two kinds of books: trade and mass-market. The distinction is not actually one of binding or trim size; it's one of distribution terms.
Unsold trade books are generally returned to the publisher's warehouse whole. Unsold mass-market books are usually stripped and their covers returned -- or, increasingly commonly, the books are pulped entire, followed by an affadavit attesting that this has happened.
Most trade books are hardcovers and "trade paperbacks"; most mass-market books are rack-sized paperbacks, but there are exceptions in all directions.
Cheap paperback books have existed for centuries. The modern American "paperback revolution", beginning in the 1940s, was driven not by the invention of inexpensive softcovers (which already existed) but the invention of the mass-market paperback distribution model. The sequence of events went roughly like this:
[1890 through 1941:]
WOULD-BE PAPERBACK PIONEERS: "Stock our 25-cent paperbacks, please!"
BOOKSTORES: "Nothing doing. Two or three of them take up the same shelf space we could use for a $2.95 hardcover. Begone with you!"
[Exeunt omnes, pursued by World War II.]
WOULD-BE PAPERBACK PIONEERS: "Hey, it's the postwar period! Here's an idea: forget the damn bookstores, let's sell our 25-cent paperbacks through the same system of jobbers and wholesalers that distributes magazines and newspapers to every newsstand, drugstore, bus station, and grocery store in America."
MAGAZINE JOBBERS AND WHOLESALERS: "Okay, Mac, but you gotta make 'em strippable, just like COLLIER'S and LOOK. Also, make your lists monthly. None of this carriage-trade 'season' stuff for us burly, down-to-earth practical men."
PAPERBACK PIONEERS: "No problem. Here, have a couple of dozen titles."
AMERICAN PUBLIC: "OMG! SQUEE!"
PAPERBACK PIONEERS: "Have a bunch more!"
AMERICAN PUBLIC: "SQUEE SQUEE SQUEE!"
BOOKSTORES: "Hey, wait! Can we stock these too after all?"
Re: How paperbacks came to be sold like magazines
The universe is indeed a strange and wonderful place.
Re: How paperbacks came to be sold like magazines
Re: How paperbacks came to be sold like magazines
Wherein Ian Ballantine had the really good idea of printing books in 25-cent paperback editions and selling them on US military bases all over the world after WWII. GIs came home, turned around, and asked where they could find those cheap books over here. And thus was born Penguin paperbacks, Pocket Books, and Ballantine Books. Not to mention Ace.
Re: How paperbacks came to be sold like magazines
Also, Penguin got started just before the war, and isn't (until many decades later) really part of the story of the American mass-market paperback. Although Penguin is definitely an important modern story all by itself.
Re: How paperbacks came to be sold like magazines
Re: How paperbacks came to be sold like magazines
Re: How paperbacks came to be sold like magazines
...will you be my internet boyfriend? I will pay royalties to