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: 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.