I have my nose to the grindstone at the moment. If the publishing year ends in October then I have begun gearing up for a very packed 2010. Knowing that the Sprawl deadline hits in 20 days, and I'm opening up for reading of novellas/novelettes as of tomorrow, I've been trying to get as much work off my desk and back to other people as possible. Cold Cases is back with Peter. I've had a read of something special and am about to make a decision on that. I've begun reading for 2010 LSS. I've been drafting a nonfiction article due Thursday. I've been working on some final administration work left over from this year. And tidying up of the TPP website. And a few new project ideas have been being bandied about.

But this weekend gone was the weekend I finally sat down and starting looking properly at the TPP books. It was kind of a tough love scenario so my mother kindly agreed to come and sit next to me and ensure I looked tough enough at the numbers and offer moral support for tough decisions. Together we have begun to start unknotting the enormous knot of knotty financial recording mess that I created. It's painful and slow going. Mum helped me work through two projects, required a cup of tea and a biscuit, then left instructions and left. I've been working through the stuff we did for those two projects for the rest. And I hope to untangle another knot before she and I sit back down and relook at things. A lot of the time it's because looking at the figures you say, "well this means this" and then I say, "well it kind of doesn't because this and this and this". So it's a process of chasing down and sorting out all the exceptions that I haven't included yet or owe or am owed etc etc. And understanding just what I am looking at. So many numbers and different tallies. Most of the time it gives me brain ache. It's so complicated and overwhelming.

Having said all that and including the pain of working through each sheet of numbers, I'm sort of uplifted by the answers I am finding. The one trend that can be seen across my projects is the improvement in the bottom line across them. And I think in some ways that makes me feel better about losses that I am currently wearing. Because if I learned from a mistake, learned how to do something better and adapted decisions based on collected data, then I'm ok with those lessons having cost me something - it makes them more valuable. And I can see that I am making better decisions.

I think one of the most important lessons I have learned is that the unit cost does not decrease the more copies you print if you do not sell those extra copies. It's taken a while to get my head around the audience for Australian small press. And for 2012, we overestimated it (and that includes catsparx rushing in yelling "Hold the presses!" at the last minute and making a passionate plea for us to half the proposed print run). I halved that size again for subsequent projects and prefer to do a second print run should demand prove it to be warranted. The unit cost when you are digitally printing is not that significant until you hit 1000 copies.

Reducing the print run means you don't lay out as much cash and lock it into one product, meaning that you have to sell a lot of copies of one book to liquidate enough cash flow to repeat the exercise. In 2009, I think splitting the same cash across 4 projects (or recouping enough from project 1 to reinvest into at least project 4) served TPP well in that it meant we had 4 goes at publishing and I think you can see the marked development of brand and product across those projects and certainly so when you compare Roadkill/Siren Beat to 2012.

The other thing that I experimented with this year was review copies. It's probably hard to judge because I do see a lot of things in pre-Horn and post-Horn timeframes - Horn changed everything for Twelfth Planet Press. But at the same time, I also looked at Horn in terms of it being a loss leader (Note, Horn did not lose money) and I gambled a lot by sending out about double, if not more, review and promotional copies than I had before and sent them further and wider, to all kinds of outlets. I experimented a lot, to see where would be the most effective outlets. This was particularly useful since A Book of Endings followed and is a more expensive and heavier book, meaning each free copy costs me more both in loss of revenue and in postage. I was able to test the waters with Horn and use this information more carefully for the subsequent books.

What I discovered was in some ways counter intuitive. By taking a loss in revenue and spending more on postage by sending out far more free copies, I have sold more copies of each book. And I have sold them to a much wider audience. I'm still hopefully in an expansion phase, trying to reach out to new audiences and build a brand and a following. I have slightly and gradually increased the print runs of each book since Horn and this has been supported with sales. It might be that if I were more patient, I would eventually sell the complete print run of one initial, bigger print run, at full price. But I think I would rather spend that effort developing new projects and selling new works. I'm all for the shiny, I guess. And I like the ability to be more flexible and change tack quickly in response to factors.

It's been an interesting year. I'm hoping my accounts will be finished before the year is done, that better systems will be completely ingrained and that lines can be drawn and moved on from. I'm looking forward to the pain being over and just knowing the truth of the absolute bottom line and working from there forwards. :)