Quote:
Originally Posted by calvin-c
I'll check out Eric Flint's stats later, but I'll also note that to make those costs small you either need to start with them being small or you need to spread them over a *lot* of books. Taking that hypothetical 10,000 copy run, if the one-time costs are $65,000 then that's $6.50/copy. Books from well-known authors usually sell more than 10,000 copies, of course-but the average book doesn't.
Perhaps the problem is that publishers are spreading their costs over all books. maybe if the costs were allocated according to sales it would be more fair-but it seems to me that pricing a new author's book at, say $1000/copy would result in far fewer new authors being published.
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Obviously, it will vary per book.
Wikipedia gives some numbers as far as what "best sellers" means.
But I believe your idea that well-known authors sell only about 10,000 books is very low. I would put the number more toward 1,000,000 for best-selling authors. 10,000 would seem more for the lesser-known authors. I can't seem to easily find sales numbers on the web (quick search before I head out for tonight).
But, you do make a valid point about the costs resulting in far fewer new authors being published. I've had new authors tell us that they paid for their own print runs. Also, I'm sure that many publishers do an analysis to see if the new author's book would sell enough to make it worthwhile.
Which makes eBooks all the more attractive. Since many of those costs simply aren't there, new authors will have a much easier time of getting ePublished.