For most university presses, it's about a 1000 hardcover, which is
difficult because libraries have stopped buying everything that comes
off the presses. At places like Oxford that are supposed to make money,
the numbers are higher--probably 2500 in hardcover and 5000 in paper.
Didn't someone on PEN-L says that Bowles et al had sold 8000 copies of
Understanding Capitalism? In a smaller market (social policy is about
1/15 the size of the introductory economics course), we got a second
edition of our text with about 1/2 that rate of sales.
Joel Blau
Patrick Bond wrote:
What are the economics of publishing for the US left?
In South Africa the minimum is about 700 softback copies, which isn't
easy here.
michael a. lebowitz wrote:
Well, not only market-driven publishers. I remember talking with
Harry Magdoff years ago, posing the idea of doing a book on Marx's
Capital (probably what ultimately became 'Beyond CAPITAL') and he
said, why don't you write something that could sell some books so we
[at MR] can support publishing books that won't sell much?
