Now that's a business model...

[CazMar]

Originally Posted by SensualPoet

I hate that in a spouse ...

But sometimes even the spouse (in this case me) has to make that decision about being able to move and turn around in a room OR get rid of some books!

[amoroso]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

Most of it is the advances.
At a big pub, the author may demand (and get) a $300,000 advance. A small publisher's advance could be $100,000 or less.

Can you elaborate on what you mean by small publisher, and what genres you refer to? From what I have heard in Italy, nonfiction authors typically get a $500-$1.000 advance from medium-small publishers, and consider themselves lucky. Good print runs are usually around 1,000 copies or more.

[Worldwalker]

Originally Posted by Fbone

I believe these executive decisions are made to please the shareholders. They demand fast growth and big profits so their stock prices rise for quick gains.

That's a major problem. Shareholders rarely behave like co-owners of a company that want a healthy company, steady dividends, and long-term gains; all too often, they're speculators who want a quick rise in stock prices so they can unload the stock for more than they paid for it and then move on to the next boom-and-bust profit. Equally short-term CEOs with gem-encrusted platinum parachutes, people whose "compensation" (when did it stop being pay?) is tied to the stock's short-term price, not the company's long-term health, have no reason not to do what they can to boost that short-term price (making the speculators happy) at the cost of sinking the company. Consider, as a random example, Circuit City, whose CEO fired all his good sales people because they were earning "too much" (while handing out millions to his fellow executives) and then wondered why their minimum-wage replacements couldn't sell electronics. His short-term savings in wages killed the company in the long term.

Personally, I think having the profits from speculating in stock being essentially tax-free encourages this sort of behavior. If we do want to tax only income from wages, not income from stock speculation, at the very least that tax-free status should require long-term ownership of the stock, not a year or two (or, worse yet, an hour or two). As long as company executives, boards of directors, and temporary stockholders think "long term" is the next fiscal quarter, we're going to keep on having this mess, to the detriment of productivity, competitiveness, and, well, having a Circuit City in your town.

[amoroso]

Originally Posted by amoroso

Good print runs are usually around 1,000 copies or more.

I was inaccurate. I meant that a book is considered good by such publishers if it sells around a thousand copies.

[Worldwalker]

Remember the difference between print runs and sales numbers, too, a difference which operates only to the benefit of remaindered book stores and bulk paper recyclers.

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by amoroso

Can you elaborate on what you mean by small publisher, and what genres you refer to? From what I have heard in Italy, nonfiction authors typically get a $500-$1.000 advance from medium-small publishers, and consider themselves lucky. Good print runs are usually around 1,000 copies or more.

I don't know anything about the Italian market. However it's my understanding that in the US, a 1000-copy print run is fairly small. The US market is also huge -- iirc it's about 25% of world book revenues, and last I checked the US had a bigger population than Italy.

I also don't know any formal definitions of "small" "medium" or "large" publishing firms, though you could make such splits by revenues or by number of employees.

"Genre publishers" specialize in books that have a fairly predictable subject matter and a specific audience: Sci-fi, romance, mystery to name a few. As such, the books they put out are practically commodities.

The biggest example is Harlequin, which is a massive romance publisher and one of the most profitable publishers in the world. They receive tons of submissions from their own audience, and few of their authors truly stand out and drive sales. As a result, they don't need to pay big advances or high royalties to the overwhelming majority of their authors.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

That's one of the reasons I keep harping on Baen, even though I dislike their politics: They've figured out how to keep the money coming. They don't depend on NYT bestsellers (though they've had several). They find good authors and sell their books in paper and electronic formats at a fair price. They pay fair advances to authors who know their books will earn out their advance, so everyone makes money. And they keep on doing it. They're not in trouble; they're growing instead of struggling. They've found a way to make money off books: give readers what they want to buy, and give authors what they need to sell. Unlike the big publishers, they're not betting against house odds (remember, house odds built Las Vegas). And, not surprisingly, it's working.

I know Baen is popular among some e-book readers, but is Baen notably more successful than other publishers? Is there any published data on earnings, profits, etc?

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

I know Baen is popular among some e-book readers, but is Baen notably more successful than other publishers? Is there any published data on earnings, profits, etc?

AFAIK Baen is a private company, and has no obligations to release its financials.

It's unclear how well they're doing. The best we can say for the moment is they still exist. Offhand I'd assume they are at least turning a profit, otherwise they'd likely be looking for someone to buy them out.

FWIW, Harlequin is private but releases figures -- close to $500 million in sales in 2009, with an operating profit of around $80 million.

[Worldwalker]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

I know Baen is popular among some e-book readers, but is Baen notably more successful than other publishers? Is there any published data on earnings, profits, etc?

I'd have to go googling, but the reports I've read over the years have said that Baen went from an also-ran SF publisher to a major SF hardcover and ebook publisher primarily due to the Baen Free Library and their ebook sales policies (they've always done well in MM paperbacks). This is significant in a time when publishers are taking actions they claim are meant to cut costs, such as firing staff, and supposedly having great difficulty making a profit.

I think there's a connection between that and the fact that they don't blow huge budgets chasing blockbusters that don't pan out, promoting books that are only in the stores for 90 days, and of course finding new and different ways to dick over their own customers. They know what their customers want to buy -- competent, reliable, and enjoyable SF in convenient formats at fair prices -- and they supply it. Their customers know what Baen sells, and they buy it. I think a big part of that is Baen knows who their customers are. For instance, Baen does not try to publish historical romances, modern mysteries, or cookbooks. That's not where their expertise lies. They leave those areas to the people who specialize in them (or who dabble in them and get burned) and keep on selling the books they know will sell to the customers they know will buy. And we keep on buying.

[L.J. Sellers]

Another terrific, and amusing, article about the irony and shortsightedness of the publishing industry.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-s..._b_785947.html

L.J.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

I'd have to go googling, but the reports I've read over the years have said that Baen went from an also-ran SF publisher to a major SF hardcover and ebook publisher primarily due to the Baen Free Library and their ebook sales policies (they've always done well in MM paperbacks).

Maybe - but aside from them being lionized by e-book readers, I haven't been able to track down anything suggesting that they are unusually successful. Based on what little I could find on the web, they publish something like 70 titles (out of 2500 sci-fi titles in print), and are something like the 7th largest pure sci-fi imprint. However, they do pretty much completely dominate in the military sci-fi area.

Big publishers produce many tens of thousands of copies - I think HarperCollins publishes something like 90,000 books. So even if Baen is unusually successful, I don't think that whatever they are doing is really translatable to a big publishing company.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

Maybe - but aside from them being lionized by e-book readers, I haven't been able to track down anything suggesting that they are unusually successful. Based on what little I could find on the web, they publish something like 70 titles (out of 2500 sci-fi titles in print), and are something like the 7th largest pure sci-fi imprint. However, they do pretty much completely dominate in the military sci-fi area.

Big publishers produce many tens of thousands of copies - I think HarperCollins publishes something like 90,000 books. So even if Baen is unusually successful, I don't think that whatever they are doing is really translatable to a big publishing company.

They are also very small. I think they are something like 10 persons. I also do not think it as translatable.

[SensualPoet]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

FWIW, Harlequin is private but releases figures -- close to $500 million in sales in 2009, with an operating profit of around $80 million.

Harlequin is not "private" ... you can purchase shares through its owner Torstar (Toronto Star aka Superman's "The Daily Planet"). Torstar, in addition to publishing Canada's largest daily newspaper, also publishes hundreds of daily / weekly papers across the country, and has a long-term relationship with book and digital media through, among others, its Harlequin division.

[leebase]

I don't get it. Nothing in the story suggests that the Indie publishers are turning these "midlist" authors into genuine hit makers. Who cares that someone who's book only sells 15,000 got published at all? Well, I guess 15,000 out of the world's 5 billion people care.

What kind of attention should such an author get from one of the big publishers?

Sounds to me like the big publishers aren't losing anything by losing these authors. Nor, frankly, is the "reading public" gaining all that much in a book that only 15,000 people are interested in. Heck, I'm sure I could get 100 people to read any book I would write with no publisher at all.

Lee

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by leebase

I don't get it. Nothing in the story suggests that the Indie publishers are turning these "midlist" authors into genuine hit makers. Who cares that someone who's book only sells 15,000 got published at all? Well, I guess 15,000 out of the world's 5 billion people care.

What kind of attention should such an author get from one of the big publishers?

Sounds to me like the big publishers aren't losing anything by losing these authors. Nor, frankly, is the "reading public" gaining all that much in a book that only 15,000 people are interested in. Heck, I'm sure I could get 100 people to read any book I would write with no publisher at all.

Lee

I think that's really pretty reasonable, if, as wikipedia suggests, the US is publishing 275,000 books *per year*. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_p...untry_per_year" class="wikilink" title="MR Wiki entry">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_p...untry_per_year

I don't read a lot of bestsellers, nor a lot of series, so I would hate if the only fiction that could be published were those types of books. But with 275,000 books published per year, it doesn't seem like the market is very constrained.

I do think it's good that the fans of the midlist books selling around 15,000 copies have a way to continue reading authors that they like. But, yeah, it's hard for me to see that the publishers are making a mistake by dropping these writers.