Today’s focus was list management, specifically management of the backlist. A commissioning editor has both long- and short-term plans for previously published books. This could be to commission a new edition, printing more copies, or dispose of the book.

We compared two different MS reports – a good one and a bad one – and compared them both and what would be the best way to proceed, especially if the report is predominantly negative and suggests a multitude of corrections.

We spent some time looking at a reprint report, consisting of various titles that MUP publish, and we were to determine what decision we would come to on the books based on the current sock level, sales in the last 12 months and life sales. Each group came up with varying suggestions for each book and we reached a decision as a group, with Tony’s assistance. The document is shown below. When there are low stock levels and the decision is made to commission a new edition, it is important to reprint a small number of books to cover the time it takes to commission a new edition. This is something we didn’t consider and was beneficial to learn. I didn’t realise how hard it would be to judge further reprints, it is all a risk.

Tony also introduced us to Birthday books which involves evaluating the progress of book sales each year on the date of its publication. Like last week, the excel spreadsheets seemed quite daunting but became clear as Tony talked through it. However, it is still not something that comes naturally to me so I lost interest fairly quickly unfortunately.

This week I found a couple of facts quite interesting:

• • A paperback that retails at £7.99 (Peter Barry’s “Beginning Theory”) brings in 4% of MUP’s turnover which is the highest figure for a single book.
  • To class as a new edition of a book, 20% must be new material.