4 ms·

Maybe, but how do you explain the example he gives? Making 1,8$ pr books seems low. You'll have to sell a lot of books to make a living.. Edit: That might not

by gizzlon 14y ago

Maybe, but how do you explain the example he gives? Making 1,8$ pr books seems low. You'll have to sell a lot of books to make a living.. Edit: That might not be the publishers fault though.. Anyone know how the $29.54 breaks down? How much does amazone take for example?

nicholassmith 14y ago
Well partly it's the accounting. Making a book is actually quite expensive compared to making other things, there's the costs of proof reading, the costs of paper stock, binding, artwork, distribution (books are heavy compared to CD's and much bigger). All of these things are real, actual costs. Then there's the RRP, most of the time this is a big chunk higher than the company pays for the book, so lets say the margin is ridiculous and it's 50%, so on a £20.00 book the publisher is getting £10.00 from the sale, then the costs of the book come out of it from there. And yes, writers have to sell a lot of books to make a living. I can imagine a lot of fairly well known writers probably make comparatively little compared to say, a software developer.
- Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
  > And yes, writers have to sell a lot of books to make a living. I can imagine a lot of fairly well known writers probably make comparatively little compared to say, a software developer. It's no co-incidence that you'll often find writers penning newspaper columns or appearing as talking heads on TV shows and the like - it's regular money which supplements the irregular and not massive income they get from writing.
Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
As I say, I think much of the issue here is that he's generalising based on tech books which have higher costs (they're bigger, cost more to print, store and ship), sell in smaller volumes and go out of date faster (leading to far higher numbers of returns). Full breakdown here but the publisher is basically getting about 50% of the list price so your $30 is already down to $15 by the time it gets there: http://www.askdavetaylor.com/how_do_the_costs_of_publishing_a_book_break_down.html http://www.askdavetaylor.com/how_do_the_costs_of_publishing_... He's probably right that tech books are broken but I think it's important to distinguish between technical books and other books which don't share the same model.

by gizzlon 14y ago

nicholassmith 14y ago

Well partly it's the accounting. Making a book is actually quite expensive compared to making other things, there's the costs of proof reading, the costs of paper stock, binding, artwork, distribution (books are heavy compared to CD's and much bigger). All of these things are real, actual costs. Then there's the RRP, most of the time this is a big chunk higher than the company pays for the book, so lets say the margin is ridiculous and it's 50%, so on a £20.00 book the publisher is getting £10.00 from the sale, then the costs of the book come out of it from there. And yes, writers have to sell a lot of books to make a living. I can imagine a lot of fairly well known writers probably make comparatively little compared to say, a software developer.

Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
> And yes, writers have to sell a lot of books to make a living. I can imagine a lot of fairly well known writers probably make comparatively little compared to say, a software developer. It's no co-incidence that you'll often find writers penning newspaper columns or appearing as talking heads on TV shows and the like - it's regular money which supplements the irregular and not massive income they get from writing.

Tyrannosaurs 14y ago

As I say, I think much of the issue here is that he's generalising based on tech books which have higher costs (they're bigger, cost more to print, store and ship), sell in smaller volumes and go out of date faster (leading to far higher numbers of returns). Full breakdown here but the publisher is basically getting about 50% of the list price so your $30 is already down to $15 by the time it gets there: http://www.askdavetaylor.com/how_do_the_costs_of_publishing_a_book_break_down.html http://www.askdavetaylor.com/how_do_the_costs_of_publishing_... He's probably right that tech books are broken but I think it's important to distinguish between technical books and other books which don't share the same model.