Posts by Fergus Barrowman
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David, I don't have access to everything here at home, and it's late, but I should say that those figures aren't for a particular book or type of book; they're just intended to show the pattern.
Prepress means editing, typesetting, proofreading, design and things like illustrations maps and index if they're not charged to the author. 6K would be high for most fiction but not for non-fiction. Sales and distribution, marketing and promotion, and overheads are not included.
Actual print prices quoted on one recent "average" novel, just between you and me and anyone else listening, were 1000 @ $5.14, 2000 @ $3.49, or a short run (not quite on-demand) of 100 @ $9.53.
BTW, I haven't seen an average NZ novel selling for $24.95 for a while. Our standard rrp is $30; the multinationals tend to go for $28 for B-format and $35-38 for trade paperback, although the other day I bought one (246pp) for $40.
Print-on-demand has been dangled in front of us for many years but has never become a reality for reasons of both price and quality. Don't worry, we'll be all over it when it's here.
Our recent experience with ebooks has been very interesting. Working with mebooks.co.nz (highly recommended), we've found they're easy to make and publish, but as the old saying goes, just because you put in a phone doesn't mean it's going to ring... Easy for me to say it's just as easy and safe for a customer to find our ebooks and buy them on mebooks as it is on Kobo or Amazon or the Apple Store, but the real world customer doesn't behave like that. No doubt sales will pick up once we get them on those larger platforms, but it's taking us forever to do so, not I think because of any substantive problem in our negotiations, so much as the difficulty of someone as small as us accelerating negotiations with someone as large as them.
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David, did I say $5 minimum? I meant to say $5 average, across a mixed list. Also, most books are printed on bulkier paper than your estimates are based on -- because the customer seems to equate bulk with value. And most books are posted in padded envelopes or bubble wrap or corrugated cardboard or something, because otherwise a proportion of them get bent, and the customer doesn't like that.
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David,
I'm sorry if I came across as rude. I didn't mean to. I was trying to strike the kind of casual, unselfconscious tone I enjoy reading in this forum, but as happens I got it wrong.
I believe I understood you perfectly, and from my perspective I think the prospect of authors acting as their own retailers is either a long way down the list of challenges publishers are facing, or one of the things that might help us pull through the difficult times we're in. It's just that I can see so many practical difficulties with what you propose. (To add just one more that hasn't been mentioned yet: if all the authors are acting as independent retailers, how do you insulate your personal customer satisfaction rating from authors who are slow to fill orders, or cut corners on packaging so books arrive damaged?)
Mike's points about publishing economics are all correct in substance, even if something's made him hot under the collar. Mike, I hope you're relaxing with a good single malt by this stage of the evening.
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If Harry Orsman were still with us he would be arranging for a mate to use "twatcock" in Truth or a novel, so he could include it in the Oxford Dictionary of New Zealand English. What are dictionary protocols now?
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Here are some figures, a bit out of date but they're an indication of how economies of scale work:
Print run 1000 2000 3000
Prepress 6000 6000 6000
Print 6000 8000 10000
Total 12000 14000 16000
Unit cost $12 $7 $5.33
RRP (x5) incl GST $67.50 $40 $30 -
I will have to defer to your better memory, Keri. What I do recall (it comes back...) is that the copy of the unsigned contract in our files contains some customised clauses, including a royalty escalator of the kind that makes it difficult to reprint a book in the kinds of print-run that our small market can bear.
The smallness of our market is of course one of the two venerable reasons for the price of books here, the other being the tyranny of distance.
But I'm serious about the ebook. Even if you don't want it released, we can arrange one that you can play with at home, at a very reasonable price.
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Oh and the other thing: If you would like an e-Kaihau, we would be happy to make you an offer.
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Islander -- That's right, we both lost the Te Kaihau contract, didn't we. But I remember signing it, in your room as Canterbury University Writing Fellow, and the delight of the passerby we called in to be the witness. But I'm not getting at anything.
We account for the author's blood, sweat and tears morally, didn't you know.
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I hope it wasn't insulting that my first response to this was "This is from the Onion, right?" It wasn't meant to be, but as someone who is simultaneously in both positions -- employed as the publisher of VUP, and as the publisher of Sport hand-distributing each issue to try to keep it afloat -- I'm aware of the brute realities on both sides. The sheer labour in posting 2000 separate items, at a minimum average cost of $5 in my experience...
Islander: you're right that when a book fails (or doesn't succeed enough -- it's all about expectations) it's the publisher that takes the hit. Apart from the author's blood, sweat and tears of course.
But on one point you're wrong. You've had at least two contracts allowing you to buy your books "on trade terms for personal use but not for resale". That's the traditional formula, but publishers these days will usually agree to revise it -- why would they want to stop their poets humping cartons of their books around the reading circuit?
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What Sam says. And it's the same in books. The future is rosy for independent retailers who are closely linked in with their communities, and for publishers who can work across the different channels (ha ha, did I make that sound easy?).
The present is incredibly rosy for the Wellington music consumer, with Slow Boat, Parsons, JB, Real Groovy and the internet (especially if you've managed to hang onto your grandfathered emusic account).