How Do Book Publishers Make Money?

How do book publishers make money?

The short answer is, t often don’t. The upfront costs to starting a business can be steep, and often small presses don’t make enough in five years to pay back their loans. This usually leads to the business shutting down or filing for bankruptcy. But! The longer answer is, t sell books directly online to readers, and to bookstores, libraries, teachers and professors via distributors. If t’re self-distributing, it’s still important to get word of their books in front of relevant buyers. There are multiple ways to do this; the best method varies depending on the target audience of the press. Let’s look at two examples of successful small presses. A while back, Gavin Grant talked about the ins and outs of starting his small press with Kelly Link, called Small Beer Press. In his article How to Start a Small Press, in Strange Horizons, he talks about the upfront costs necessary to start a small press, and the fact that the vast majority never recover that initial investment. To quote him. “You need to begin with money. Publishing a book (trade paperback, 256 pp, 100+ galleys, 2,000 copies, good art, professional prrofreader [sic], friendly royalty rate) costs in the region of $10,000. Publishing two issues of a literary magazine (perfect bound, 72 pp, 2,000 copies, etc.) will cost about the same (assuming you choose to pay the contributors—and you're a nice person, so you will). So, first things first. get a real job and prepare to stay up until 4 a.m. a couple of times a year. In the meantime, you could always start a zine. 200 copies of a photocopied zine cost much less than any of the above. When I started LCRW my rule of thumb for the cost was inspired by the billboards in winter in Boston offering cheap flights to Florida and the Caribbean. Since my blood was thicker then and I didn't mind the cold (don't believe anything else you hear), I figured I could spend what I'd drop on a weekend in the sun on a zine, say $200-400, without it seriously impacting my bookselling self's bottom line. If the above costs haven't put you off (hello lovely philanthropists, hello dot-com survivors!), here are a few pointers, places to go, and then a diversion.” Ten years later, in 2015, I followed up with him on the subject. When I was writing for the short-lived ‘zine Indie Lit, I asked. What challenges do small press editors face at the marketing stage, and how can t be best met? Grant replied that the biggest concern was, “Budget! A challenge that can best be met by. 1) large anonymous checks from supporters (well, it’s never happened but it might) 2) using channels such as Edelweiss to distribute review copies as widely as possible 3) attracting review attention/pitching books or authors for off-the-bookpage coverage 4) national radio attention.” Getting books positively reviewed widely, whether that’s in Publisher’s Weekly (a trade publication read by most teachers, librarians, and bookstore owners), other book review outlets, online, in vlogs or blogs, or on NPR, is key to selling out the print run of any given title. And, hopefully, making enough profit to invest in a second or third printing! With the advent of ebooks, it’s much easier for small presses to keep their popular titles perpetually in stock, which keeps the revenue flowing. Nowadays, many small presses offset the initial costs by using small business loans, art grants, and pre-order campaigns on Kickstarter. Spike Trotman, Editor in Chief of the small comics press Iron Circus Comics, has been open and encouraging to beginners who want to start presses using mainly digital tools. She wrote the popular one-off ‘zine “Let’s Kickstart and Comic and Not Screw it Up!” which helpfully walks newbies through her process of running a Kickstarter campaign for a graphic novel. In the same interview with Indie Lit, I asked her. What tools, websites, or social media platforms do you find the most useful when creating a new anthology, whether in the curating submissions stage or in the stage of promoting the kickstarter and the book itself? Trotman answered that, “Twitter and tumblr are where the vast, VAST majority of my project funding comes from. I find interviews on industry sites like Comics Alliance or Robot6 bring in a couple thousand dollars; Twitter pulls 20 times that. People value recommendations from friends or people t trust a lot more than formal interviews. And tumblr pulls in loads and loads of submissions; even people with no interest in the arts will reblog something t think their artistic friends might be into. Reblogs are invaluable forgetting the word out.” Trotman and Grant both self-published and distributed shorter works before launching their small presses. These works helped build their audience before releasing a more-expensive product (a book, as compared to a webcomic and a magazine, respectively). Spike Trotman self-published her webcomic, Templar AZ, for years before launching Iron Circus Comics as an LLC. While Templar AZ made some money from advertising and merch sales (and reached a decent audience through the Hiveworks platform), it never made quit-your-day-job money. In fact, for the first few years of of the comic, it probably lost her money; she didn’t pay herself for her time spent writing and drawing it. She just wrote and drew Templar AZ because she loved writing and drawing more than she loved the other things she could be doing. And she *did* pay to attend conventions and for web hosting. Likewise, Gavin Grant created a magazine, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, with Kelly Link, in order to publish stories he loved that didn’t seem to sell to the fantasy and science fiction magazines that existed at the time. While it wasn’t entirely free, there were absolutely stories anybody could read for free on the magazine’s website, and that attracted a decent-sized, loyal audience. The magazine itself was much less expensive to purchase than a book, and since it came out frequently enough, the fanbase was ready to jump on-board when the small press launched. Ultimately, there are many strategies a small press can use to sell enough books to recoup their initial investment. But none are a guarantee. Over at LitReactor, Gabino Iglasias interviewed ten editors of successful small, independent presses about why so many indie presses fail. It’s worthwhile to read the whole thing, but there are some recurring themes. Many people who launch small presses take on too much overhead, have unrealistic sales goals / expectations, struggle with effective distribution in an overcrowded market, and lack a strong internal motivation (which is necessary if, like Trotman or Grant, you’re initially working without a paycheck— it’s not a labor of love if you don’t love it enough to commit). Running a small press can sound romantic, but it’s a lot of work for very little pay. While I’m not aiming to dissuade any novice editors from starting the press of their dreams (after all, who knows! you may well bring grand, revolutionary books into the world), I want people to go into the business with both eyes open and feet firmly planted on the ground. Hope this info helps people make wise choices.