Eoin Purcell's Blog

Eoin Purcell

Loser
The far too late reading of blog posts brought to mind the adage that the world is a funny place. On one blog [Galleycat, who picked the news up here] I read of the end of ReganBooks at HarperCollins:

This afternoon, HarperCollins announced that effective immediately, the ReganBooks name and logo will no longer be used and the imprint’s LA office will close on March 1. An interim logo, HC, will appear on Regan books through this summer, after which the list will be reassigned to existing Harper imprints.

It is not so much a surprise as it is a little blunt. It was an almost inevitable move following Regan’s departure. It is that departure that is so unsettling, the fall from grace as it were is a timely remind that no matter how far you go it can always come to ruin (speaking of which this post by Michael Hyatt is revealling).

Winners
Reading POD-dy mouth today the case of a truly successful POD writer came up:

Based on Lulu’s own Book Cost Calculator, the cost to produce the book is $9.98–which leaves $38 in profit (if purchased from Lulu–I realize the profit drops when purchased through Amazon and the like, not to mention that Lulu takes a small piece of the pie as well–something like 20% of the royalty.)

But let’s play it conservatively and say the author gets $27 per unit. If he sells only 2,000 copies (he will, if he hasn’t already), he’s made $54,000–far more than the average midlist author published by a major house.

Now who would be displeased with that turn of events. The book itself is terrible (yes I read a few pages) but my lord it is a seller! Sucess and failure in one day! And at such extremes.

It is cold here today
Eoin