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

[kallisti.livejournal.com]

Thanks for writing that up. I can now point people at this...

I've heard this analysis of the costs of publishing a book any number of times...I used to run CAN-CON, an SF convention that David Hartwell used to frequent, and it always fascinated me how all of this anaylsis defines how a book can affect the career of a writer. It is scary how so much of the success of a writer depends on good estimating by publisher. A bad job of estimating will stall or ruin the career of a new writer, which is a shame. But it is an important piece of information for writers to know about, and plan their careers with.

ttyl
Farrell J. McGovern

...Co-Founder of CAN-CON, The Conference on Canadian Content in Speculative Arts and Literature.

[alg.livejournal.com]

Not only estimating, but any part of the human factor! What always scares me is how much luck everything takes.

[kallisti.livejournal.com]

Ya, the old story about the Thomas Covenant books (apocryphal or not), after being shopped to 19 different publishers, being bought by the same publisher they were initially shown to is a good example of the "human factor". Luck...well, that's always a factor in any business. The "Fickle Finger of Fate" is an invisible weathervane in all human endeavors.

ttyl