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

[(Anonymous)]

$4500 for art, actually not shocked at all. Tor covers are original paintings not stock art or designed covers. Talking as an ex-Art Director, I know finding a competent painter or illustrator willing to work with defined concept in mind is not easy to do, and it usually only gets produced once.

It is not like getting an image from a stock catalogue (or istockphoto.com for cheap) and then having a designer do their magic. Has anyone seen many dragons in the stock photo catalogue recently? As an aside:I really think deviantart.com is missing a real opportunity by not offering a stock agency relationship out of the images on their site.

Designers don't deal well with artists, they deal well with art. Tor covers are exceptionally well tuned for the market they are selling for (it may not be your "adult" cup of tea). When I was fifteen and buying as many Tor books as I could get my hands on, it was because the "hero" was buff and the woman was barely dressed.

Ask any designer to produce that and they will fail, or know enough to say you are looking for a "real" artist, not a designer. A painting for $4500 would be cheap at a decent art gallery but somehow if it helps sell 20000 more books it is expensive.

My firm motto as an Art Director is a good cover will not sell a crappy book, a great book will sell itself despite what is on the cover, but if you put a great cover on a great book, it will get the sales representatives behind the book (they may even read a chapter or two) and your initial orders will sky rocket.

In the Tor market, teenage fantasies are driven by the cover, and thus sales are increased. In the Adult Trade Paperback the cover gets the book picked up, the quotes get it opened, but if the random page of writing that customer reads sucks that book is going nowhere.

Leslie Smith

Re: breaking down some line items

[alg.livejournal.com]

My firm motto as an Art Director is a good cover will not sell a crappy book, a great book will sell itself despite what is on the cover, but if you put a great cover on a great book, it will get the sales representatives behind the book (they may even read a chapter or two) and your initial orders will sky rocket.

YES.

Thanks for jumping in here -- you've explained it better than I could!