So, is Macmillan losing money on Dominion?

[stevenehrbar]

Dominion, by Fred Saberhagen, is a direct-to-paperback release from Macmillan, under the Tor imprint.  The price is $6.99.  Serpent Moon by  C.T. Adams and Cathy Clamp , is another direct-to-paperback release from Tor, for $6.99.  Both were released February 3rd, 2010.

That sure looks like proof that Macmillan can, in fact, currently edit, typeset, and otherwise prepare a book, then sell it for a profit at a retail price of $6.99.  Which would pretty strongly suggest that they could edit, typeset, and otherwise prepare an ebook, and then sell it at a profit for a retail price of $6.99.  It's not like an ebook has any of the printing, warehousing, and distributing costs of the paperback; surely it isn't more expensive to make than a paperback?

Maybe, of course, the author royalty on the book is razor-thin.  So we then could, say, add an additional $3.00 to the price, to represent a compensation to the author equivalent to a 12%-of-retail-price royalty on a $25 hardcover.  That would bring us to a price of $9.99 for the ebook as high enough to make a profit for Macmillan and definitely reward the author.

Interestingly, ten bucks is the same price Amazon was using as a standard, and that Macmillan is saying was way, way too low for an ebook.

Oh, well.  I'm sure on the $12.99 ebook sales they're paying authors a royalty in excess of $3 a copy, right?  Right?

Comments

[stevenehrbar.livejournal.com]

Serpent Moon is not a risky book from a brand-new author. It's the twelfth book from an established writing team, eighth in its specific series.

Based on the previous seven books from the same authors in the same series, its sales should be rather predictable. If it can't pull its own weight at those numbers, covering its own costs and turning a profit without subsidies from other books, there's no reason in the world to bother publishing it. The authors have had eleven chances already; if they aren't yet proved to be profitable to publish the way Macmillan is publishing them, giving them a twelfth chance would be stupid.

Now, it might well be that there are special circumstances that allow this particular book to be profitable without hardcover sales, windowing, or the like to supplement the profit on a paperback price $6.99. But Macmillan has not yet presented any explanation for this.

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Dominion, apparently, was originally released in 1982, so including it above was a mistake on my part.

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

That sounds like a solid midlist series to me. Some series just don't sell well enough to release as hardcovers, but make enough money to keep being released as paperbacks. It's a great niche if you can get to it. There's a lot less midlist going on these days than there used to be, because publishers work on razor-thin margins. They have money to put out the paperback stuff mostly because of the liquidity given to them by the cash from the hardcover releases.

To wander into metaphorical comparisons for a moment: hardcover releases are the Munchkin for publishers. And having those out there is what lets them put out GURPS releases, which may turn a small profit, but are generally not enough to keep the company going on their own. Whether or not lower pricing would cut into the Munchkin profitability is sort of undefined at the moment, but I'm not about to blame them for being careful about it to start.

So saying "Why do you care about cannibalizing hardcover sales? You can make money just fine on paperbacks!" looks a lot to me like "Why is SJG putting out so many Munchkin releases? GURPS is so much more awesome!" Yeah, GURPS (and lower ebook prices--the metaphor is sort of shaky) is a fine, fine thing. But if you go kicking the big money-maker in the nuts, it's not going to mean More GURPS For Everyone! It's going to mean those less profitable things don't get made, because there's no cash free to pay the printer when you're not sure if GURPS Chicks On Ice is going to sell through.