1) the different factors are: number of photos, quality of paper, quality of inks used (bigger difference than you'd imagine), 6 color offset printing, full bleed on every page, veneer on every photo, quality of binding. If you look at most cookbooks there is a LOT of writing and pages that contain no images. That's intentional.
2) I think 10 Speed did OK on our book since we sold so many. If you do the math from the numbers I gave you can see that they likely made something on the order of $390,000 on our book (this is a very rough estimate). And they took virtually no risk, beyond their time. That said, they did this as a vanity project in order to attract other authors to the imprint -- that was stated from the beginning.
3) Whether there is room for someone else to create an imprint to do this -- I'm not really sure. It's very different to do it as an individual than it is to take on a lot of overhead and put out dozens of titles per year. The point is that the winners pay for the losers... but as an individual you don't have to worry about that.
4) Thanks for the links! I'm going to order that Voynich now -- oh wait, no I'm not... it's $8,000! There are a few publishers that do amazing art quality books and do them very well. But typically they are priced much higher than mass market books, even high end ones at $50 or $60.
5) The 'super amazing' cookbook fits in because it proved to me that the margins were way better than I ever imagined. And frankly, after speaking with the editor that ran that imprint I really felt like she knew I would figure that out and did everything to try to convince me I was going to fail. At this point that book has sold something north of 500,000 copies and the restaurant / chef has IMO received a fraction of what they should have. You're looking at something like $12,500,000 of wholesale revenue from one book alone, maybe more, and the royalties were likely paid at 12% to 15% of cover price after recoup of advance. That's $6.50 per copy. Rough estimate: $3M to the writer. $8M to the publisher, lifetime.
I agree with your conclusion that max. profit occurs with a relatively low quality level... (Hollywood Sequels anyone?)... but that for an individual author it's easier than ever to spurn the system especially if you already have a following through your main profession.
I think the crux of your argument is that you don't feel the employees in the publishing industry should be paid for their time and experience. In your article, you described being very upset when getting critical feedback from them about your manuscript. Even though it was coming from a very experienced source. It sounds like you just didn't want to work with experts on the project. But in the comment above, you went further and said 10 Speed took "virtually no risk" beyond their time. You realize that people get paid, I'm sure. Owning a restaurant, I'm sure you're aware the overhead is more than just the raw materials of the food. And that if you give the same raw materials to a random chef at a random location, you will have varying degrees of success.
It sounds like you're going in completely ignorant to an industry and, because you're very talented in another area, take a simplistic approach and assume anyone benefiting from your (most likely) amazing documentation of your culinary skills is taking money from the only one producing something here. I know it's not your intention, and I think it's more and more common these days.
1) the different factors are: number of photos, quality of paper, quality of inks used (bigger difference than you'd imagine), 6 color offset printing, full bleed on every page, veneer on every photo, quality of binding. If you look at most cookbooks there is a LOT of writing and pages that contain no images. That's intentional.
2) I think 10 Speed did OK on our book since we sold so many. If you do the math from the numbers I gave you can see that they likely made something on the order of $390,000 on our book (this is a very rough estimate). And they took virtually no risk, beyond their time. That said, they did this as a vanity project in order to attract other authors to the imprint -- that was stated from the beginning.
3) Whether there is room for someone else to create an imprint to do this -- I'm not really sure. It's very different to do it as an individual than it is to take on a lot of overhead and put out dozens of titles per year. The point is that the winners pay for the losers... but as an individual you don't have to worry about that.
4) Thanks for the links! I'm going to order that Voynich now -- oh wait, no I'm not... it's $8,000! There are a few publishers that do amazing art quality books and do them very well. But typically they are priced much higher than mass market books, even high end ones at $50 or $60.
5) The 'super amazing' cookbook fits in because it proved to me that the margins were way better than I ever imagined. And frankly, after speaking with the editor that ran that imprint I really felt like she knew I would figure that out and did everything to try to convince me I was going to fail. At this point that book has sold something north of 500,000 copies and the restaurant / chef has IMO received a fraction of what they should have. You're looking at something like $12,500,000 of wholesale revenue from one book alone, maybe more, and the royalties were likely paid at 12% to 15% of cover price after recoup of advance. That's $6.50 per copy. Rough estimate: $3M to the writer. $8M to the publisher, lifetime.
I agree with your conclusion that max. profit occurs with a relatively low quality level... (Hollywood Sequels anyone?)... but that for an individual author it's easier than ever to spurn the system especially if you already have a following through your main profession.