Book 'The Immortal A7'

[merlinart]

That's ridiculous! Quite apart from the fact that Veloce's wholesale price is £25 which leaves no margin for postage and profit, why on earth is the book being so heavily discounted so soon after publication - surely this is just the time for people to be maximizing their profit?

Fundamentally, there is massive profit in publishing, there isn't much in it for an author unless he self publishes and self distributes.

This book most likely would come off the press for well under £5 per copy, the author would receive around £2500 for his script. The initial print run might have been low at just 1000 copies or perhaps 2500....some publishers realising that this book is such a narrow niche market (2500 copies sold is doing very well) might have an even lower print run of less than 1000, such that they can easily judge future demand.

Amazon would demand a discount of about 60%, when the standard wholesale discount generally has been around 40%, and Veloce has been offering a discount to a "known Austin Seven" market of 37.5%.

Of course, one might say that in reality the book isn't worth £45....that is remarkably expensive and the publishers set a very high price in order to accommodate the demands of the discount structure. if one walks in the diminishing number of high street bookshops one might impulsively buy such a copy for £45...then annoyingly discover that it could have been bought much cheaper.

When I published a book with 96 pages it came off the press at £1.17 per copy (would be even cheaper now), I discounted it to the trade for £9.99 and still sell it for £14.99, though I had to buy 5500 copies, though today I would be able to buy fewer as an initial print run.

At a 60% discount, Amazon would buy in for around £18, so plenty of profit for them at £25, 38.88% profit.

Arthur