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

Strange

[ryanlrussell.livejournal.com]

Totally different market for the trade paperbacks, then?

I write for Syngress, technical books. They tend to be priced in the $30-50 range, list. I think printing runs are more often in the 8,000-12,000 range, costs per book are in the $15-20 range, returns actually are returned and restocked & resold. I take a pretty modest advance usually, if I take one at all. Being a hobby writer, I don't actually need an advance to pay the bills. I don't think I've ever lost money, as in had to pay back, on a book. Publisher keeps a reserve amount of royalties for returns until the book is retired.

And I mean "lost money" as in having to give some back. I'm not counting the fact that my time ends up being minimum wage sometimes. :)

Now, it's not just that my friends and I write killer books that always sell well. :) Is my publisher just structuring things so that I can't get into trouble? Just a totally different market for the tech books?

Re: Strange

[alg.livejournal.com]

Totally different market for the trade paperbacks, then?

Not entirely. But what you are describing is different -- technical books are non-fiction, not novels.

Re: Strange

[ryanlrussell.livejournal.com]

See, I would tend to think that novels would sell better, bigger market.

And a few of my books might qualify as novels, but they are still sold to the Computers buyers at the bookstores. "Hacker fiction" might decribe them.

Re: Strange

[(Anonymous)]

Totally different market for the trade paperbacks, then?

Not entirely. But what you are describing is different -- technical books are non-fiction, not novels.

How different is the PnL for a trade paperback novel? Not being mass-market, are their print runs automatically smaller?

Re: Strange

[lonewolf545.livejournal.com]

Note: This example was specifically about a PAPERBACK EDITION. Hardcovers are handled differently, and the publishers DO keep a portion of the royalties back to cover returns. And that include four years down the line when a bookstore finds a copy in the back corner and returns it, not realizing that the hardcover copies are in high demand and they could almost certainly make double cover price putting the book on eBay (one of John Ringo's more recent royalty statements had a line-item for one copy of _A Hymn Before Battle_ being returned, a copy in good condition goes for $50-100 from a dealer).

Re: Strange

[(Anonymous)]

I don't know if the same definition of "paperback" applies for my books. They have paper covers, but are priced more like a hardback would be. So far as I'm aware, they never get end up in a significantly cheaper edition, not in the US anyway. I'm told that a couple of my book have been printed in pulp editions in countries where that's the norm.

Re: Strange

[ryanlrussell.livejournal.com]

Whoops, that was me. Forgot to log in.