P&Ls and how books make (or don't) money

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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

[jcfiala.livejournal.com]

Hi. Aspiring writer (aren't we all?) who found you through BoingBoing - I'm hanging around to learn more and see part 2.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Strange as it may seem, actually there are a few people, probably *at least* a dozen in the world at large, who really *don't* aspire to be writers. Given that all the aspiring writers I know also read, I can't even claim that our justification for existence is to be the market. But still, here we are.

Good luck with your aspirations, in any case.

I was first introduced to the internals of publishing through science fiction fandom -- sitting around the bar / consuite at a convention or even sometimes at panels hearing authors and editors talk about the business side some. That still goes on some -- but since I'm married to an author and have known numerous authors and editors for decades now, I don't go to the intro panels so often, so I may have a mistaken impression of how often they occur these days.