Re: RARA-AVIS: Tax and back list

Fred Willard (fwillard@mindspring.com)
Tue, 02 Dec 1997 23:25:25 -0500 At 09:56 AM 12/2/97 EST, you wrote:
>> >I suspect this is partly due to tax laws that make it very costly for
>> >publishers to keep old material in print.
>>
>> I'm not sure what tax laws have to do with it--the sheer cost of printing,
>> publishing and distributing books, by authors living or dead, is high
>> enough.
>
>Some years ago, publishers could for tax purposes depreciate the books on
their back
>list that were in storage, and therefore they tended to keep them
>around rather than immediately remaindering them. The depreciation
>is no longer allowed, so the back list is no longer as extensive.
>
>Doug

I remember quite well when this happened, and it did have a serious and
immediate effect on genre writers.

Within several years, there were writers who were selling books and had
followings, who had a lot of trouble finding publishers.

The problem was that while they were making money in the previous
environment, they weren't in one that required that books pay out more
quickly.

Fred

-----------------------------
Down on Ponce by Fred Willard
fwillard@mindspring.com
http://fwillard.home.mindspring.com/

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