Firstly, as of right now this second, I'm not publishing anymore books. I loved every single aspect of the process, from the Call for Submissions to seeking out and hand-picking artists, to editing, to designing, to typesetting, to picking out the bindings and sizes and endsheets and colors and paper weights, everything. I loved all of it. But the money just isn't there. Not only did we lose money on IMC2013, but we lost a lot of money. I expected the reviewers to get us word of mouth and sell books. For printing, packaging, and shipping off paperbacks to the reviewers, it cost us about fifteen hundred dollars. You know how many sales we got from reviewers? ZERO. And when I say ZERO, I mean zero. Absolutely zero. I had planned on the second printings of paperbacks selling out, but there was so little interest that we didn't even go to print. If a second printing of paperbacks had sold out, then we would have broke even.
With IMC2014, I was going to cut out the reviewers all together. Save some money. We only donated $500 (I think) to last year's Haven Foundation Fundraising instead of $1,000 to save even more money. We got Darrell Schweitzer and Tim Lebbon and I was going to push push push their names as best I can. And then, of course, things happened and couldn't produce the book this year, which in turn made a third of the artists and authors and a huge chunk of the customers want to leave.
Unless you're selling hundreds of books a month and/or you price your books/limited editions/signed editions at a MUCH MUCH MUCH higher percentage than what you're producing them for, it is my experience that publishing is a losing battle. A fun, losing battle, but a losing battle all the same.
Anyway, onto the question at hand. I can't sell/release them because it's not fair to the people that purchased the hardcovers that had a limitation of 100 numbered copies and so many PE/PC/CC copies. And since I'm not planning on publishing anymore, I can't use them for the Lettered edition setup ... But at the same time, I don't really want the boxes sitting in the corner. And I don't want to burn them or throw them out. Uggghhh!!!
Hey divey, I haven't used the ambannonbooks email in a while (I posted a note on the main page with my current Yahoo address), is that where you emailed me? I think I still have five or ten or so paperbacks available and a few PC hardcovers. You can email me at
sgaisserindiego@yahoo.com
Thanks!
Originally Posted by Shannon
Firstly, as of right now this second, I'm not publishing anymore books. I loved every single aspect of the process, from the Call for Submissions to seeking out and hand-picking artists, to editing, to designing, to typesetting, to picking out the bindings and sizes and endsheets and colors and paper weights, everything. I loved all of it. But the money just isn't there. Not only did we lose money on IMC2013, but we lost a lot of money. I expected the reviewers to get us word of mouth and sell books. For printing, packaging, and shipping off paperbacks to the reviewers, it cost us about fifteen hundred dollars. You know how many sales we got from reviewers? ZERO. And when I say ZERO, I mean zero. Absolutely zero. I had planned on the second printings of paperbacks selling out, but there was so little interest that we didn't even go to print. If a second printing of paperbacks had sold out, then we would have broke even.
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