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Thursday 23rd February |
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Publishing's DemisePosted at 5:33PM Thursday 19 Feb 2009 It's not hard to identify the problems that led to this state of affairs. Books have always been a low-profit item and in recent years margins have been shrinking even further. Publishers now regularly give bookshops a 50 per cent or even a 55 per cent discount on the retail price. The distributor that warehouses and delivers the book will typically take 10 per cent of what remains, or more if you are a small publisher; 15 per cent goes on production (printing, paper, typesetting). Add another 10 per cent for the author's royalties and the publisher is left with 10 per cent to cover promotion costs, rent and office expenses, wages – and profit.Well - there you have it . . .
The (sobering) Colin Robinson diary in The London Review of Books
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