mass market books

Via BoingBoing, a great inside look at mass market book publishing:

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How fiction paperbacks lose or make money

By Cory Doctorow

Cory Doctorow: Livejournaller and Tor employee Anna Louise has posted a brilliant, engrossing exposition on the economics of fiction publishing -- how a publisher makes or loses money on a book. It uses real numbers from real books to illustrate in painstaking depth how marketing, printing, and preparation costs interact with margins from different retailers and wholesalers to make or break a book. I think that writer alive (myself included) harbors some cherished illusions about how publishing works. This lucid, entertaining and vivid portrait of the inside workings of a fiction publisher is an excellent way to disabuse yourself of them.

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Whole article here:
http://alg.livejournal.com/84032.html

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