Morning all
I am interested in the discussion of the price of Morcombe's new guide. The
recommended retail price is definitely $45. Angus and Robertson are selling it
for $29.95. This suggests that the publisher has done a deal with A&R in return
for them purchasing a bulk lot. This is a fairly common sales tactic these days
which may be good for the publisher but is definitely detrimental to the author.
Authors are usually recompensed by receiving a royalty based on the return to
the publisher for each book sold. This royalty is often 40% of the income
received by the publisher, ie 40% of the wholesale price. For books, the
wholesale price is usually 60% of the retail price.
If a bookseller does a deal with the publisher, the publishers receipts are
lower so the authors royalty is reduced accordingly. Therefore, if you are
interested in Michael receiving a fair return for his 14 years of labour on the
book, you ought to be prepared to pay the recommended price. I think that $45 is
quite reasonable for a book of this size with full colour throughout and high
grade paper, and don't forget the 11% GST.
By the way, and without going into details here, I think the book has many good
points. It is an imaginative and somewhat daring change to the usual field guide
layout which has allowed the inclusion of significantly more information. I'm
not too bothered by the colour problems because shades of colour are rarely
important discriminating features for bird identification. It is a pity that
there are quite a few errors in the book, but is this worse than in the first
print run of Pizzey and Knight?
Peter
Birding-Aus is on the Web at
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