This month's discussion will be moderated by Brian of Dispatches from an MFA Seeking Writer, and today he points us to a short piece in New York Magazine on Random House's income and expenses. Very interesting.

With BEA just out of town, I find a lot of my thoughts going back to the conventions I've attended. I remember when Bertelsmann bought Random House; the deal was finalized at a Frankfurt Book Fair. News of the buy traveled up and down the aisles of the buchmesse like quicksilver, and the Random House employees working in their booth were the last ones to find out.

A pair of publishing truths from Will Ferguson's Happiness:

"Edwin, you know as well as I do that the greatest sales tool we have is word of mouth. It sells more books than anything else. You can have the biggest, slickest marketing plan available, but poor word of mouth will still kill the best-laid plans of mice and publishers." (p. 149)

And:

It was a typical backwards theory, the type with which publishing is ripe—namely, the more successful the book, the more money you spend promoting it. After all, if a book isn't a blockbuster, why waste money pushing it? The result? The books that need it the least get the most money. (p. 158)