Wanda Pease wrote: >> And do you have the sales figures on (a) what "gangbusters" consists of >> in terms of both units sold and profits realized, and (b) how many of >> these copies were actually sold to SCA members? > > Do you?
I know exactly how many copies of each book I've sold, and how much each has earned to the penny. I also know how much it cost to produce, exactly how many copies I printed, and exactly how fast they've sold. I've got a whole set of spreadsheets for each book, as well as summary spreadsheets comparing figures for the different books. I've also got a database program written on top of Microsoft Access specificially for my business needs, which contains different sections with names and addresses of different kinds of customers and potential, totaling many thousands. I've got paper files full of printed info of reviews, customer comments, all kinds of stuff. I also know which exactly retailers and wholesalers I'm selling to, which pay their bills regularly, etc. This is all information I absolutely have to keep track of to stay in business, and it is comparable to that of larger publishers I have worked for. Since this is my business competitive information, no one else knows it but my husband/business partner, and for the financial part, my accountant and the IRS. Many publishers don't reveal this kind of info outside their businesses. I can ask Ian Stevens when I see him tomorrow. Although I doubt > that he has such figures at his fingertips any more than I would be expected > to. I have them right here on the computer I am working at. That I get answers from various publishers who are pleased with their > SCA sales makes me think that we are not a contemptible source of revenue > for them. I did not say contemptible. I said that every book has multiple markets if the publisher can possibly find them, some considered primary and some secondary. The SCA is just one market, and it is not the usual primary market for academic books, which is university professors and students. > Considering the less than stellar costumes we have been treated to in > various theatrical attempts this year I'd say that Theater Costumers are > pretty much wasting their time buying these books on costuming. Not at all. Theaters have their own constraints and needs. They are not only by no means obligated to meet the "accuracy" standards some reenactors want to impose on them, usually they can't. I'm not responsible for the quality of the costumes theatrical and film costumers make, and I don't care what they do with the patterns in my books. If they want to take a bustle dress pattern and make it up in turquoise PVC with little electric lights all over it because that's the director's vision for a production of _Midsummer Night's Dream_, that's fine with me. The basic > thrust of all theatrical costume books I've seen and have seem to be far > more interested in creating the "look" than the accurate cut and > construction of clothing. You cannot generalize and say all books in a genre are the same. My books are my books, and other publishers' are theirs. I am not responsible for the contents of anyone else's books. Theatrical and film costumers often use SCA-sanctified sources like Janet Arnold too, you know. Some renditions are enough to gag a maggot - "The > Tudors" being the worst I've seen lately. The costume library of the > Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon (not a shabby small town effort) is > exactly that; a library meant for costumers, not researchers. They buy mine too. So? Of course not. They publish a great many journals for many societies to > include the Costume Society. Since I've been a member of the (British) Costume Society for decades and have also bought many of Maney's books, I know that. > Present PAID memberships in the SCA are 29,500. This does not count those > who play but do not pay. That's nice to know. Maybe I'll consider the SCA as a market some day. >> No, it is not. Unless a market is a certain size compared to the costs >> of book publication, the book is not worth publishing. Unless a >> publisher is subsidized by a nonprofit, they simply cannot lose money >> and still stay in business. > > The days of such publishers may be numbered. If you mean publishers who lose money, their days certainly are numbered--except, as I said, for subsidized publishers. There are nonprofits--the Sierra Club is one of many examples--who publish books primarily to promote their vision, though they don't mind making money too if they can. Some museum and corporate publications are also subsidized. Those who refuse to publish, > or publish with no intention of affording the authors of scholarly works > with any type of royalty (Kegan Paul in one incident I know of) may find > that publishing via the internet will become a viable alternative. I've worked in publishing for 24 years, know numerous publishers on and off publishing e-lists, and hear these issues debated every day. I used to edit academic and scientific papers for journals and authors, so am familiar with that world. Not to mention, my mother was a university professor, and my husband is a researcher in artificial intelligence. Academic papers have generally never paid much if anything, nor have scientific corporate R & D papers. The goal is to get the author's name (or often, multiple names on one paper), and/or the corporate or university name, and the cutting-edge research (especially in the sciences) out there. Yes, the Internet is a means of distributing many such papers. And scientific papers are frequently released by their authors to colleagues who need cutting-edge information, well before official publication. But also, the same papers are not infrequently published in an academic print journal, which has more prestige than the Internet. Prestige gets the author tenure, grant funding, and credits that help him or her move to the next job up the ladder at the same or another company--in other words, payment that does not come directly from the publication. It also helps the corporations and universities who employ the people who write the papers, government grants and other very desirable benefits. When I was working as an editor and writer for R & D labs, the researchers were under employer pressure to publish, just as universities are. However, an academic or scientific paper is a very specialized type of publication. Scholarly books are different, and textbooks can be very different indeed. Textbooks can make their authors and publishers a great deal of money. And some books are both scholarly books and advanced textbooks. The bottom line is that the more time and money go into publishing something, the more money has to come back to the author and publisher in some form or another. Outside the worlds of academia, R & D, and nonprofit corporations, that money generally has to come from purchasers of the publication. And the longer a publication is--for example a book as compared to a paper--the more money and time is invested in it and has to be recouped. I have > favorite Science Fiction authors who have had a problem finding a publisher > until lately. I was introduced to their work by a friend and now go to > their website, pay either via Pay Pal or credit card, and download the > books. I then put them on my computer, or my hand held (the Kindle may be > one of my next purchases if they come out with a back-lit screen option for > reading in the dim light of an airplane). Certainly nothing would stop me > from doing the same and printing it off, or sections of it off if I wanted. I hear this method debated _all the time_. Endlessly. Some publishers are for e-publishing, some against it. I'm against it myself. The reading technology is not "there" yet, and no really effective technical copyright protection has been developed yet. Well, it's being used for things like classified government info, but not in the commercial publishing world. And copyright protection is the basis of making money. When it's gone, so is the money, and if the money is not coming from somewhere else, the author, the publisher, etc. are sunk. Bear in mind that printing is not even remotely the only major cost of producing a book. There's (usually) years of time spent writing it, there's editing, there's indexing, there's (often) illustrations, there's book design, there's page layout, there's marketing, there's accounting, there's expensive computer equipment, there's overhead. Sometimes there is translation to or from a foreign language, and other costs. E-publishing is not going to give the world a future of almost-free books--not if authors, publishers, editors, book designers, etc. are going to continue to eat. > The authors would then be assured of receiving at least something for their > efforts. This assumes that the authors aren't doing their publish or perish > thing for academia. For those who really want to put their information out > to the public. Wanting to give information (or in the cases of many books, entertainment) to the public is by no means incompatible with making a profit. Profit is what enables authors, publishers, editors, indexers, book designers, translators, etc. to continue eating. It might be nice if everyone could afford to give away all their time and money in the world. The reality is that everyone--no matter how much they love their profession and no matter how good their work is--has to buy groceries. > Publishers are also sometimes surprised at their market since they never > even thought to look outside a narrow academic field. The existence of > Oxbow and David Brown provides information on that. I spoke to Ian Stevens > today and he mentioned that they are going to be getting some sale books > from Cambridge. He was also interested in what type of books I knew would > be of interest to the several lists I'm on, from Cookery to leatherwork and > beyond. Want to bet the Cambridge books will fit comfortably in someone's > library that the original publisher never surveyed? Actually, it seems clear that Ian Stevens _is_ surveying the market. Believe me, marketing departments generally speaking beat the bushes for absolutely any and every audience that will plausibly buy the book and which the publisher can afford to approach. There are numerous books on the process of marketing books, if you are interested. My one comment is that salespeople and marketing people of all types tend to be relentlessly upbeat. The "your book can be a national bestseller" pitch is too upbeat to be realistic in most cases. > > And there are some books which are published with no intention of > providing > the author with any kind of remuneration. I am not really sure what you are talking about. Publishers are not generally out to cheat or deceive authors. On the other hand, authors often hire agents or contract lawyers to make sure they get as fair a deal as possible, and they always have the option of hiring at least a lawyer, if no agent will accept them. Professional author are often very savvy indeed, and I'd recommend that all beginners find a good contract lawyer to help them out. A few hours of contract lawyer time can really pay off. Then again > there are those that are published at a price that is simply beyond the > means of any but a library audience. Generally publishers price a book at more or less the lowest cover price they can, and still cover all their costs. The size of the book, the illustrations, and so on are very important cost considerations, as is the size of the audience. In other words, publishers can afford to price a Steven King mass-market paperback at $6.50, but they cannot afford to price a large, heavily illustrated scholarly book that way. Just because you cannot afford a book you want, does not mean the publisher is ripping anyone off. > > These can now be electronically published. The costs may be computer > time, > one copy of the book in a readily readable format such as Microsoft Reader. > There are already several selling venues for such. The trick is going to be > for the audience to find them. The trick is going to be actually making any significant money from them. Although a number of publishing experiments have been made, most publishers can't figure out how to make money off e-books, other than as things like loss leaders to promote the books they are really making money from. For a large publisher, the cost of both experiments and failed books is borne by the successful books. The smaller the publisher, the more a book _has_ to make money. I certainly can't afford to experiment, and I would not touch e-book publishing with a ten-foot pole. > I doubt that it is solely responsible, but the entire > re-creation/recreation movement has made a market for books that would have > had a far smaller market without 40+ years of SCA and other group influence. Sure--I've sold to the reenactor market for 14 years now, among other markets. As I said, it's a good secondary market for my books and many others. Fran Lavolta Press http://www.lavoltapress.com _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
