Re: PDW

[Jeff Hecht <jhecht@world.std.com>]

Jessica asked:

>As far as I know the book Predatory Dinosaurs of the World is out of
>print...
>so, under most circumstances, I wont be able to get it (aww).
>But I was wondering, if it's such a good book, WHY is it out of print?, or
>does that have nothing to do with it? How do books get out-of-print? Can
>they get back in print too, if they cn be out of print?

Sales of even the best books drop off with time, and often they drop so low
that the highly inefficient publishing distribution system can't make any
money handling them. Strictly speaking, they go out of print when the
publisher doesn't have any more in stock and isn't willing to print another
batch. The reprint decision depends on how much money the publisher can
make, and big publishing companies want to make big bucks, so they'd rather
publish schlock that sells zillions of copies than quality books that sell
slowly.

Printing books with high-quality color art is much more expensive than
simple black-and-white text, and has to be amortized over a much larger
print run. Thus you might have to have a print run of (say) 25,000 to make
money on a book full of pretty pictures, while you could get away printing
2500 copies of one with only black-and-white text. (The imminent appearance
of publishing on demand using specialized copying machines will make out of
print black-and-white texts readily available; unfortunately, good color
printing technology remains much more expensive, which is a problem for
things like PDW.)

Those of us who have dealt with certain big publishing companies tend to
think of them as "dinosaurs" only in the sense of huge, unweildy and
extremely stupid beasts doomed to well-deserved extinction in the 'popular
visions' described by Tom Mitchell in THE LAST DINOSAUR BOOK.

-- Jeff Hecht

Jeff Hecht     Boston Correspondent    New Scientist magazine
525 Auburn St.,          Auburndale, MA 02466             USA
tel 617-965-3834 fax 617-332-4760 e-mail jhecht@world.std.com
URL: http://www.sff.net/people/Jeff.Hecht/
see New Scientist on the Web: http://www.newscientist.com/