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

[pir8fancier.livejournal.com]

They are determined to keep it small so that they don't lose control. I remember talking with an editor at Simon and Schuster about the process to okay a book. How 10 people have to love it. It's book by committee. If the 10th person doesn't love it, it doesn't get published. With my publisher, if the editor likes it (who also happens to be the owner), it gets published. They run it for love, not money. Lucky them.

Has the romance mid-list gone through the same hell as the mystery mid-list? I have a friend who was cut from Bantam because she sold through only 40,000 paperbacks. ONLY 40,000! Wow. I would be doing handsprings if my books did that well, but it wasn't good enough for her. They cut her.

[alg.livejournal.com]

ALL midlist has gone through the same cuts. ALL of it. Mystery, SF, fantasy, westerns, romance, etc. The difference is in the numbers.

(Frankly, the above doesn't sound very plausible. A 40,000 sell through is good -- unless you printed 200,000 copies of the book, which I doubt it did.

A 40,000 print run is what is not good.)