A Publishers' Conversation with Authors: Is Amazon putting bookstores out of business? Understanding the Right of Return Model of Book Selling
It is Tuesday. Time to tall turkey. Monday's madness is over, and Wednesday will take us over the hump, so Tuesday it is--for some serious discussion with authors. Tuesday talks mean to address authors in waiting and self-published authors who would like to go a more traditional route or who would What at least like to take their steps with a publisher by their side. Today's topic arises from a discussion last week with an author whose cost of book returns brought an otherwise successful book into the negative net income (i.e.) loss realm. Our conversation revolved around several questions that arose from her discussions with her local bookstore. Why/how do returned books create loss for an otherwise successful book? A large number of returns can eradicate all profit from the book sale and put the book into the loss column on a P&L statement: print costs will not have been recoupled; additional books have now been returned to the publisher's inventory, books that wer...