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

[casacorona.livejournal.com]

No. Crighton is an Idiot will go out of print within the year, and never be heard from again, except possibly as a POD book put out by a small press after the author becomes a big hit.

[alg.livejournal.com]

Yeah, especially since "big hit" in category romance is pretty much a meaningless phrase.

[(Anonymous)]

If Aeryn Sun turns into Tami Hoag fifteen years later, then, yes, every scrap of old published work will come back into print with the author's name in very large type.

(We had a discussion in my company's editorial meeting this week about how Bantam is bringing back, just about simultaneously, three creaky old Loveswept novels by people like Hoag -- and two others whose name I forget -- as $15 hardcovers this summer.)

But the success level required for that is #5 New York Times bestseller or better. (And consistently.) I know that every writer assumes that level of success will inevitably happen for her, since she is smarter than the smarties and tougher than the toughies, but the odds of it actually happening makes Mega Millions look like a charity program.

Andrew Wheeler
Senior Editor, SF Book Club
http://antickmusings.blogspot.com

[alg.livejournal.com]

Word.

See my comment in this same thread with a similar notation.