Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
For a midlist title on a current $4k advance even a sales rate of 10 book a month will earn out in eight years and generate profits long before that. The only way the corporate publishers lose money on ebooks is through funky accounting ala Hollywood.
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Humor me on the accounting.
What about all the years a given publisher is either losing money overall, or only making a small (say, 1%-2% of sales) profit. Surely you don't think that in those years, if you took away all the books that more than earn out, the publisher would have a profit?
As for the real accounting, how many editors (acquisition, structural, copy) are you allowing, and at what pay rates? How much graphic artist time and at what pay rate? However much for the publisher to pay managers, mortgages, rent, HR staff, janitors, and so forth, proportioned out to one released book? Then please explain to me how much they are getting per book, and how they are going to generate profits "long before" they sell 960 eBooks (10 times 12 months times 8 years).
Here's what I think. Publishers are not consistently profitable. The main reason for this is boom and bust depending on whether they had a tremendous best-seller that year.
As for why they publish books that won't sell well, the obvious answer is that they don't know in advance which will and won't do well.
As for the 100 years -- or the eight years -- it's quite properly up the author how much emphasis to put on the unlikely event the book will continue to sell that far into the future.
Major publishers take on risk that would otherwise be borne by the author. In the case of a 4K advance, it isn't much risk, but in case of larger advances, it seems to me they are performing a valuable service both to authors and readers.