More Publishing Mysteries Revealed!

The exquisite Anna Genoese, whose journal you should be reading if you have any interest in publishing (ANY interest: writer, editor, publisher, etc.), recently posted her second item--this time she talks hardcovers--in a series wherein she demystifies the process of how publishers determine advances and then how books make money. (Read about part 1--paperbacks--here)

Again, Anna spells things out in a simple enough way to make the process almost sensible. Well, understandable for sure; publishing may never seem sensible. I won't clip as much from her this time as I did last, but there were a few interesting tidbits:

(No one cares about amazon.com, because that’s less than 5% of the market anyway.)

I'm sure this surprises many people. Since you can 'see' how well your book is doing on Amazon minute to minute, it must be important, right? In my opinion, in the long run, Amazon and online markets will be very important, but right now, they just don't make up much of the total share. And therefore, big publishers can ignore them. This may come back to bite them.

(FYI, Amazon uses Baker & Taylor [one of the biggest book distributors around] out here on the East Coast as their warehouse, so they're savings costs by leasing space instead of owning; side note: libraries have a discount at B&T, but can actually save more money by going to Amazon and for East Coast libraries it won't affect the amount of time it takes to get books...of course they're unprocessed [no bar codes, no hardbacks for paperbacks, etc.] so it may not be all that cost-effective)

And in case you missed it, Anna describes how much retailers (typically) pay for the books they buy from publishers:

Everyone gets a 50% discount off the [hard cover's] cover price
Everyone, to be fair, gets a discount of 50% off the [mass market's] cover price
Everyone gets a 50% discount on the trade paperback's cover price

That's how Amazon offers it's low prices, that's how B&N can offer you 40% off the bestsellers, and that's also how libraries get typically a 20% discount off cover price (and sometimes more) from places like B&T. Makes that $7.99 and $8.99 mass-market price even more angering, eh?

And lastly, I want to clip a bit from Anna where she talks about what releasing a mass-market edition of this hardcover did to the profits:

The publisher had a basic expenditure of $41,057 on the paperback, hoping that the mass market would be a sleeper hit the way the hardcover was, and that maybe they'd be able to make back some of their lost cash.

No way! The publisher earns back ($3.50 * 10,000 =) $35,000

$35,000
- $41,057 (publisher expenditure)
- $5,600 (author earned royalty)
= - $11,657 (total publisher un-profit)

Sucktastic. The paperback actually sucked profit out of the hardcover! That means it was a waste of resources.

This is not unusual, but at the same time, not typical. A mass-market (or trade paperback) follow-up to a hardcover release typically is done to continue to earn money. Publishers don't necessarily release multiple editions of a book out of altruistic reasons. It is a business, after all. Hardcovers make the best money for the publisher, but normally you don't sell as many copies of the hardcover as you do of a paper edition. This is simple economics. If you offer the product with the same content but different exteriors for the following prices: $30, $15, and $8, you will sell more copies of the cheapest version almost every time.

There are weirdos out there (like me) who want to buy series in the same format as the first one that was bought. For example, Jeff Ford's Well-Built City trilogy was published in mass-market editions for the first two books: THE PHYSIOGNOMY and MEMORANDA. The third book--THE BEYOND--was only published as a trade paperback. Every time I look at these on the shelf they irritate me. Not the contents, mind you; these books are brilliant. But the physical objects themselves. Grr! to the publishers! Why couldn't we do all three books in the same format? Sure, most people don't care...ok, we can stop there. I'm obsessing.

But good news:

My trilogy of SF/F/H novels, sometimes refered to as The Well-Built City Trilogy or The Cley Trilogy, consisting of The Physiognomy, Memoranda, & The Beyond will be reprinted by Golden Gryphon Press starting, I believe, in 07.

And even better:

Just found out the other day that John Picacio will be doing the covers for the three books in the Well-Built City Trilogy from Golden Gryphon.

So I will be able to finally get those books in a consistent format. (rubs hands together...thinks of over-crowded storage closet and full bookshelves at home...remembers '2007'...thinks of moving before then to a bigger place...remembers moving...needs to get back to work; man this is starting to read like Greg van Eekhout)

Tags: Science Fiction, Electric Velocipede, Anna Genoese, Jeffrey Ford, publishing