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

Re: breaking down some line items

[flawed-creation.livejournal.com]

Ah, but the mroe copies you make, the mroe you sell, even if you don't seel them all.

suppose, as a very very simplistic model, there are three bookstores in the world, each of which has offered to stock 1 copy of the book. and suppose that there's a 1/3 chance at each store that the book will sell before they decide to "return" it.

so you print 3 copies, send one to each store, and sell 1 of them. ideally, you make enough to money to cover the cost of all 3 off the one sale.

sure, ti looks wasteful. but if you only printed 1 copy, you'd only be able to have 1 store stock it, and then you might well sell one at all.