Mark, ok, let’s assume that design per book is £200; stamps and envelopes and postage cost per book to send out review copies and complimentary copies is £5 per book; and about £10 to do each POD (I don’t know how much PODs cost so this is a blind guess). If they, say, published 60 books a year, which I read somewhere this was about the number, the total cost of production for each book comes to £12,900 a year. That leaves £167.100 change, which must have been spent on salaries and hiring some staff. Let’s assume that Salt hire two staff, that this £167.100 is divided equally between these two staff and Hamilton-Emery and his wife. This comes to £41,750 each. I only divide it equally for simplicity purposes, obviously Hamilton-Emery and his wife would have the bigger share. This is a good income indeed--especially as it was given to them.
Let’s say each book was sold for £8.99 and only 500 were sold a year, this comes to £4,495. They may have sold more, though, which is likely given their success in the early days. So this £4,495 is not a bad income on top of a large grant. As they would not have to sink this back into production costs it could be added to their salaries.
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