Friends, before entering the field of publishing I didn’t really understand the pricing structure. I thought I wrote a really in-depth, detailed, multi-dimensional and media book in TELP, and couldn’t understand how the best offer I got, by far, only gave me 25% of the future revenue. And even at that I thought I would get more attention to the product and control over the outcome than I did.
So I decided to learn how to do the work myself, and let’s face it, COVID was a perfect time to learn new skills. I’m not sure I could do that now, or rather, I’m sure I couldn’t. It’s also clear in retrospect how little I knew about what I was getting myself into!
Tonight something happened that gave me pause: mainly that my family is home and I’m traveling and have the luxury of sitting down alone at the computer to do some work. The next piece on my plate was a by one of my favorite composers. Like many young composers, this person chooses to use untrraditional software, in this case NoteFlight, which acts as a great resource for many. For me I choose to work in Finale, so when I get non-Finale files I have them sent over in music-XML format. This allows the programs to “talk” to each other, but also adds many little mistakes: the pitches and rhythms are pretty solid, but slurs, articulation markings, texts, formatting, are all, all over the place. Like sometimes not even on the document all over the place.
I enjoy this work, so I happily spent an hour working through this two-page score, lining everything up as the composer wanted it, making sure it was presentable to the players who would need to use it, looking for collisions, and other odds and ends.
So let’s all do some math. This two page score took an hour. This is part of a four movement work. So let’s assume that at this rate start to finish I’d get this piece done in four hours. To keep the math simple (for me!), let’s assume I want to pay myself a minimum wage of $15/hour (and I’m really just choosing that number because it’s easy to calculate), and that I want to give the composer 75% of the proceeds, which to me seems fair to the creator of the work.
If sell this piece for $16, that means that in order for me to recoup my investment in time alone (ignoring software, computer, time paying royalties, extra tax preparation, websites and website maintenance, etc), in order to pay the composer 75% of the proceeds for their composition, I would need to sell 25 copies of this work. In other words, $4 proceeds per copy * 25 copies = $60 which is 4 hours of minimum wage work.
Headwinds. The headwinds that I face in the endeavor of selling 25 copies of a this piece, by an unknown young composer, in an environment where music is not valued enough for many folks to pay money for it, and in an industry that relies very much on standard repertoire, are significant. Most new music sells very little, even by well known composers. And according to Chuck DePaolo, an average of 27 copies is made of every legitimate copy sold (did I remember our conversation correctly Chuck?).
Just like me, the composer also is facing an ever-growing number of composers who all have trouble breaking through the noise just to get their pieces performed, let alone sold. Like myself the composer has a family, and rent, and professional expenses.
So I’m not sure how to make the math add up. If I keep too much new music doesn’t get written, and w all just keep playing the same ol’ Rochut book 1 (or insert other great standard rep) over and over. If I don’t charge enough, I end up spinning my wheels on music that doesn’t get consumed and take time away from my family, my mutes, and the instrument.
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