Reb Livingston, the publisher of No Tell Books, has written a post about the economics of her own press in the light of the BlazeVOX controversy. What kinds of sales numbers are we talking about for poetry collections?
“No Tell Books’ best selling title broke even after three years and is now earning a very modest profit. This is by an author whose work has appeared in places like Poetry and Best American Poetry. This title has been taught at universities. How many copies does one have to sell to be the best selling title at No Tell Books after four years? 228. That is not a typo. This number doesn’t include what the author has sold herself, probably around 200 copies on her own. But the press doesn’t earn money on those sales.
So if that’s a best seller, what’s a flop? 74 sales after five years (again, this number doesn’t include what the author sold on his own, which was maybe 50 or so). (UPDATE: Gatza states, “In general, books by new authors sell around 25 – 30 copies.” Shocking? Only if you don’t know the first thing about poetry publishing.)”
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And I know from my own limited publishing experience that it will cost $1,000 to put out a book of between 64-96 pages with cover art and an ISBN. Presuming you only sell maybe 75 copies and the author another 50 (and he gets them at cost, or at 60% of cover) and you probably don’t break even on hard, external costs no even counting editorial time ( reading the slush pile, working with the author, formatting the manuscript for printing).
My gut reaction when a local poet posted a link to the controversy over the weekend was very sympathetic to the author, but the more I think about it as a starting out small publisher asking the author to kick in (or buy a minimum # of copies at say 50% of retail which gives them a tiny margin on local store sales) doesn’t seem so unreasonable.
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