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

What, more questions?

[(Anonymous)]

I wouldn't want to seem ungrateful, but some of us are worse than hobbits, you tell us something and we have a thousand questions. Well, maybe not a thousand. But a couple, at least?

You made it clear that there's a definite difference between trade and mass-market, and phn made it clearer and maybe even fascinating. But, y'know, this sorta begs the obvious question:

Here's a new novel from author X. Is it to be trade, or mass market; and why; and who particularly makes that decision? Is it contractually negotiable? Should it matter to an author?

Then you have your grid of production costs, and I realize you didn't want to do an exhaustive breakdown but I am just assuming that it is a workable breakdown in context of this question: which of those items does Tor do in-house, which are contracted out, and which might go either way? And why?

For example, I know some printing is done in the US, while some is done overseas and shipped by slow boat, particularly if there's an important delivery deadline that can be missed. Is it a lot cheaper to have it printed overseas? Is the quality comparable? And are there other factors to the decision?

This next question arises because I bought what I thought was a new novel by a favorite author, from a major trade outlet while on vacation in Santa Fe. I was really thrilled to find their sole remaining(? It was the only one.) copy, in the course of looking for a geology text, so I scarfed it up (but didn't say, "OMG! SQUEE!") without looking too closely and went back to my hotel. I was all set to enjoy it when I realized that I'd already READ it, fairly recently, bought under a completely different title. A note printed inside the cover advised me that this particular book was for release to the Canadian market. (Insert extreme annoyance here.)

But how might that solitary volume have found its way from Canada all the way to Santa Fe to be sold as a new book? Is there a grey market in SF novels? This wasn't remaindered or used, and it was from a major chain, so I've been trying to figure out exactly what might have happened?

Re: What, more questions?

[alg.livejournal.com]

These are really good questions, but I am not going to answer them. Why? Because the answers are long and complicated and will take a long time, and I just don't have that kind of time. If you are serious about wanting answers to your questions, I suggest you hit my post where people ask their questions in the comments (http://alg.livejournal.com/74060.html?mode=reply"), and I will get to it and make a post about it. OK?