Quote:
Originally Posted by pwalker8
I think that what you fail to take into account is all the books that don't earn out their advance. It's a bit like complaining that an investor gets too much money for a company that makes it big, without considering the other 100 investments in which the investor makes that loses money.
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I take your point, but there is a further consideration. Not "earning out" is not the same thing as the Publisher losing money. Particularly at low royalty rates there should be a significant range where the Publisher has recouped expenses and is making money but the book has not yet earned out. I haven't seen any actual figures on this but I suspect that for the business model to succeed a lot of books that don't earn out fall into this category, and that whilst Publishers do lose money on some books it would be relatively rare for them to lose very large amounts.
If you are aware of any figures available I would be very interested to see them. Though I do suspect that such figures have always been closely guarded secrets, just as Amazon now keeps a lot of information to themselves.