I continued thinking last night about how this sort of math might apply to publishers. The problem I ran into was the usual one with this kind of thing: overthinking it.

First blush, and I say to myself "can't do this directly, there are too many hands involved in a publishing imprint".

But then I returned to the basics. The editor.

Let's keep it simple and stick with the editor's time.

And again: we're going to talk about a very good editor, salt of the earth, does everything fairly and professionally. It's the constraints of the job we're after seeing, that's all.

Editor Mona is the development editor at a major publishing house. She's very good at her job, and prides herself on developing new and burgeoning talent. She pays a little better than base, she reads the books coming in, buys them from the agent, babysits them through revisions and copyedits and art/covers/galleys and press and shipping them off to the printers and the stores.

And, she works fair deals: half to the writer, half to the publishing house.

To keep the math reasonable, let's say she pays 4K dollars for an advance. A little lower than Agent Bob typically gets, but he's worked with Mona often so he can trust she'll treat Yvonne's second book with a fair eye. Then the other 4K (the publisher's half) is divided evenly as 2K to Mona's salary, 2K to the publisher/house, 2K to art/covers, and 2K to copy/line edits.

Again, let's assume we're in a transparent and fair house.

2K per book for Mona's gross salary. 50 books per year gets her a nice 100K gross salary per year, which ain't bad if you're in Sheboygan, but is kind of tight for the rare air of Manhattan. So Mona's early in her career if the house is located there, maybe a little farther along if the house is outside the big city lights.

Either way, Mona's spending about 1 week per book. That's to read it, negotiate the sale, revise, ride herd on the copy/line edits, shepherd the cover art and book design, the press, the galleys, the printing, and the shipping off to the stores.

Meaning: a new book had best be ready to go with Mona spending at most one day getting the author's draft revised and ready to copyedit. Maybe two, if she's got a spare moment or two. And, the new writer's agent/negotiations can't take more than a cup of coffee to settle. Maybe lunch if Agent Bob's in town that day.

How about an old pro writer's submission? Zach worked with Mona early in his path, and he's written something that's just right for her house. So Agent Alice sends his latest modest opus off to Mona. Mona reads it and sends a good 40K offer to Alice.

Mona's salary didn't go up. That's fixed. What did Mona buy? An expected 10K profit for the house, and 4 whole weeks of her time.

Because Zach's a well-practiced pro, she doesn't expect to spend more than that same 1 week of her time on Zach's book. He's good, she's good, they'll get it out in exactly the same amount of work that she'd spend on Yvonne's first novel. Probably less.

No, what she's done is buy 4 weeks to work on the problem children. Every house has a set of those. The million dollar screwup, the celebrity collaboration, the flakeout who left for Nepal (nice quiet Nepal) to get her head on straight.

The ones who need significant re-writes, or if it gets really bad, a ghostwriter, to come in rescue the smoking hole in the ground.

Now, it's not all bad for Zach. So long as he's hitting his marks on the manuscripts, that 1 week editor's time should be all that's needed, and he'll still get the 40K checks so long as he delivers. Why not, he's delivering Mona that most precious of things, time to breathe. So she most likely enjoys a couple days with Agent Alice, meets Zach for lunch on occasion, has time to listen to their contract requests and maybe get the house lawyers to negotiate a little.

Why not, Zach and Alice give Mona those 4 weeks in her schedule, she's got time for a little lagniappe in return.

No book-doctoring, though. Zach's a pro, he shouldn't need it, and when he does, Yvonne should be ready to step in and fill that slot in Mona's rotation. And then Zach will move over to the problem-child slot.