THE CAREER NOVELIST
When I began my career as an agent in the late seventies, the sit-
uation was somewhat simpler. If I sought to move an author from
one publisher to another, for example, the prospective editor would
ask, "How well does this author sell?"
Today the question is, "What are her numbers?" Decoded, the
editors question is about a range of figures and ratios. Each is
important and worth examining in some detail.SALES
Publishers still care about sales, that is, the number of copies actu-
ally sold. Sales are the main source of a given book's revenue (total
funds received by the publisher). Sales are money in the bank.
Are you with me so far?PROFIT
A publishers profit on a given title is a fuzzy number. Most publish-
ers do not even know how much money any given book has made.
If that sounds bizarre, it is.
Profit is not, of course, a publisher's gross revenues from book-
stores, mail-order sales, book clubs, subrights deals, and so forth.
Not by a long shot. Out of gross revenues publishers must pay out
royalties, production and printing costs, overhead, the cost of ship-
ping (sometimes), taxes, and a hefty cut to distributors. Then maybe
there is some profit.
Maybe. Who knows? Certainly not publishers. There is disagree-
ment about how to assign, say, overhead costs to any given book.
Publishers can usually tell you how much revenue your book brought
in, but not how much they made. But they do make something.
That something can be increased, naturally, by keeping costs
down. Paying a low royalty rate is one way. Doing without advertis-
ing and promotion is another. (Hey, when you launch hundreds of
new products—sorry, books—every year you have to economize
somehow.) Publishers, believe me, do control costs.
If profit is really a guess, then, that does not stop publishers from
guessing. Indeed they must, especially before purchasing a new
manuscript. That guess is called a P & L, a proh't-and-loss estimate,
and it is an editor's main money tool when cutting a deal. The P S- L,