john hunt
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- Jan 21, 2013
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- 37
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Fair enough, call us a vanity publisher if you like, we're not going to make progress on that one.
But I've got to take issue with the "misleading" comment.
We don't say to authors "95% of our titles are not subsidized." We say, in several places, as often as seems reasonable without going over the top, pointing potential authors to the info, and it's on the internet, eg -
As explained above, on average in any 10 contracts we offer one level at 1, five at level 2, three at level 3, and one at level 4. A higher proportion of levels 3 and 4 are turned down, so the number of titles we publish with a subsidy is less than that. In 2012 it was one title out of four. That proportion is likely to rise as we publish more, and ebook sales (where there's a 50% royalty) becomes more significant.
Author subsidies and selling books to authors amounts to about 5% of our income, 95%+ is from selling books to retail (physical stores and online). 15% of our total revenues go back to authors in royalty. Vanity publishers get all their income from the author, whether in direct subsidy or selling books to them.
My comment on the proportion of titles across the list, historically, and current, the 95% that is not subsidized, was just to counter the many comments like
A vanity publisher is one which earns money by selling things to the authors it publishers.
that suggest we get all our income from author subsidies. Which is not the case. It was about 3% last year. Less than Penguin (on a much smaller scale of course).
The comment about the 95% was for this forum/conversation/thread, because misleading assumptions were being made here, along the lines of all our income coming from author subsidies. Which is not the case.
And maybe we should scrap them, and publish fewer titles. And then, presumably, we'ld be "clean". I'm not sure of the answer here. That's why I'm finding this interesting, sorry for the hassle/posts etc.
john
But I've got to take issue with the "misleading" comment.
We don't say to authors "95% of our titles are not subsidized." We say, in several places, as often as seems reasonable without going over the top, pointing potential authors to the info, and it's on the internet, eg -
As explained above, on average in any 10 contracts we offer one level at 1, five at level 2, three at level 3, and one at level 4. A higher proportion of levels 3 and 4 are turned down, so the number of titles we publish with a subsidy is less than that. In 2012 it was one title out of four. That proportion is likely to rise as we publish more, and ebook sales (where there's a 50% royalty) becomes more significant.
Author subsidies and selling books to authors amounts to about 5% of our income, 95%+ is from selling books to retail (physical stores and online). 15% of our total revenues go back to authors in royalty. Vanity publishers get all their income from the author, whether in direct subsidy or selling books to them.
My comment on the proportion of titles across the list, historically, and current, the 95% that is not subsidized, was just to counter the many comments like
A vanity publisher is one which earns money by selling things to the authors it publishers.
that suggest we get all our income from author subsidies. Which is not the case. It was about 3% last year. Less than Penguin (on a much smaller scale of course).
The comment about the 95% was for this forum/conversation/thread, because misleading assumptions were being made here, along the lines of all our income coming from author subsidies. Which is not the case.
And maybe we should scrap them, and publish fewer titles. And then, presumably, we'ld be "clean". I'm not sure of the answer here. That's why I'm finding this interesting, sorry for the hassle/posts etc.
john