[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by shalym

The $50,000 per book number comes from this thread.

And I take it with a sack of salt. See my earlier commentary.

The 10,000 books per year number comes from Harper Collins web site.

And that number is indicative of a problem facing publishing for as long as I've been paying attention: too many books chasing too few readers.

I think I mentioned upthread seeing stats from the American Bookseller's Association in the days before eBooks were even possible, and all books were print editions from trade publishers, that over 50,000 new titles were being issued in the US every year. That was about a thousand new books a week. Who would buy and read them all?

The answer is that the vast majority weren't bought and read. They failed to reach an audience, died on the shelves and were returned for credit. Publishers all crossed appendages that enough titles they issued would sell to cover the losses on the others and make them enough money to remain in business.

Everyone knew too many books were being published, but no one wanted to be the first to trim their lines. Because those were also the days when discovery of new titles was what a reader did browsing in a bookstore. The critical resource was display space on shelves, and if you published fewer titles, you would lose the shelf space and not get it back.

Periodically, someone would be the first to bite the bullet and trim their lines, and everyone else would follow suit in a wrenching wave of consolidation. Books went out of print, authors got dropped from contract, and publishing employees got laid off because less books required less people to produce them.

And those waves of consolidation have continued, with houses folding, or being bought by bigger houses, as everyone tries to get economies of scale and reduce costs. It's why we have a Big 5 in traditional publishing, which could very well become a Big 4.

The $500,000,000 number comes from simple math.

Understood.

Why do their offices need to be in NYC?

They don't, in a practical sense. But where would you suggest they move to?

This is the tip on an iceberg. I live in NYC. One of the main businesses in NYC is banking and finance. The city has been carefully dancing around the big banks and financial houses on taxes. There is nothing about the business that requires it to be done from NYC, and indeed, many back office functions have already been moved to areas where costs are lower.

The city is aware that if it increases their tax burden high enough, they might just relocate their headquarters. There is little they do that can't be done from somewhere else. The city doesn't have a lot of leverage.

An old friend got bit by this in MA. He was a senior security researcher for an insurance company and his offices were in Boston. The state boosted corporate taxes on his employer. His employer closed the offices where he worked and relocated the functions to TX, with a more favorable business climate. He had house, wife, and kid, and was disinclined to pull up stakes and move. He's involved in a consultancy these days which is increasingly embedded in another financial outfit, but things were dicey for a while, and I don't believe he's making what he once did.

And a factor involved in relocation to save costs is that a lot of that office space is under long term leases, that you don't just walk away from. The penalty costs of breaking the lease will be ferocious.

Why aren't copy editors and proof readers work from home jobs? What is it about those jobs that requires that they be done at the office, instead of at home?

Why are an awful lot of jobs not work from home jobs?

Many could be, but it's an uphill slog to get employers to embrace the notion.

And copy editors and proofreaders are increasingly contracted out services.

One old friend was VP of an editorial production house that offered typesetting, copy editing, and proofreading to publishers. She complained on a mailing list I'm on that is mostly publishing folk about proofreading increasingly being dropped to cut costs. Another list member was an editor at a trade house, and said "But such things are part of the book's budget, and always done!" "Maybe they still are in your house", was the reply, "but I'm the one at my company dealing with publishers who used to pay us to do it and don't anymore!"

Another old friend is a copy editor these days. He was an IT guy at a major bank, and survived through several rounds of mergers and layoffs. But his function got transferred to Tampa, FL, and he wasn't interested in relocating. The problem was that the job he did was highly specialized, consolidation in the industry had reduced the need for people like him, and there was no way he would find another job doing it. He took courses in copy editing and proofreading, and does it freelance as a contractor. But when he gets a job, he's expected to report to the publisher's office to perform it.

The underlying assumption is that employees need to be in the same place so face to face interaction can occur.

"Specific to the business of publishing" means finding and paying authors, editing and typesetting/formatting, finding and paying cover artists, and printing, storing, and shipping the books.

Some of those things are external to the publisher itself. Most don't do their own printing, but contract it out. The same with warehousing and distribution.

An increasing amount of stuff is getting sub-contracted. One house has "Consulting Editors". They aren't on the payroll, don't report to an office, and are paid on a book by book basis, to edit books they acquire.

None of that requires having a large office in NYC, or London, or Paris.

And if you eliminated those large offices, you still wouldn't see prices drop to the level you might hope for.