Discounted Books?
I just received a letter from one of the submitting poets asking if he could get a discount since three of his poems were published in the the Mayberry poetry book (actually, only two were published; we declined one). Don't get me wrong -- usually I am the person negotiating for a discount! However, I have had people raise eyebrows at the cost of the books before. I think shoppers are used to buying trade paperbacks with lots of pages for $7.99. They look at a book which is larger but with fewer pages and think the $12.99 price tag is high. To put things in perspective, I sent him the following note. Actually, more poems = more formatting and more pages printed = more cost to print, so the more poems I run from one person, the more they have increased my costs. That's one reason many publications charge a "reading fee" or "submission fee" for each poem submitted. The $12.95 covers the cost of compiling, editing, formatting, layout, binding, trimming, print...