Economics of Deadtree Publishing

NY Magazine has an interesting article on New Yorkanomics. One of the profiled businesses is Random House.

Out of every eight books, one is highly profitable, one loses money big time, and the remaining six break even. It is also interesting that a big blockbuster only accounts for about 10% of their profits. The main revenue generator is their back-catalog, and fiction is 55% of all revenue.

The overhead breakdown is interesting:

Two thirds of Random House's income comes from paperbacks, which retail for about $10. Of that, $5 goes to the retailer; $2 covers Random House buildings and staff; $1.50 goes to author payments; $1 goes to paper, printing, and binding; 50 cents is profit.

The retailer, of course, has their own overhead and costs they have to cover in that $5 amount. It is also interesting that the most profitable way to make money for a publisher is to lock a writer into a long-term contract that is disadvantageous to the writer.

The music industry is having issues with this business model as bands are finding it more rewarding to self-publish and self-promote.

With the increasing popularity of vanity publishing companies such as cafepress and lulu; as well as the democratisation of vanity printing presses from companies such as Xerox and HP, then deadtree publishing will most likely follow the same route.

After all, South Sea Republic has published its own books in the past.

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Who Is Cam Riley

Cam Riley I am an Australian living in the United States as a permanent resident. I am a software developer by trade and mostly work in Java and jump between middleware and front end. I originally worked in the New York area of the United States in telecommunications before moving to Washington DC and working in a mix of telecommunications, energy and ITS. I started my own software company before heading out to Arizona and working with Shutterfly. Since then I have joined a startup in the Phoenix area and am thoroughly enjoying myself.

I do a lot of photography which I post on this website, but also on flickr. I have a photo-journalistic website which lists the modernist and contemporary restaurants in phoenix. I have a site on the Australian Flying Corps [AFC] which has been around since the 1990s and which I unfortunately lost the .org URL to during a life event; however, it is under the www.australianflyingcorps.com URL now. The AFC website has gone through several iterations since the 90s and the two most recent are Australian Flying Corps Archives(2004-2002) and Australian Flying Corps Archives(2002-1999) which are good places to start.

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