Understanding Profit and Loss
February 21 @ 11:30 am - 12:30 pm
Date: Tuesday 21 February 2023
Time: 11:30–12.30
Where: Online on Zoom
This session is part of Publishing Scotland’s Sales Bootcamp Training Programme
In this free course for Publishing Scotland members, delegates will consider the purpose of a P&L from an editorial, production and marketing perspective and understand how it can be used as an accounting tool for estimating and forecasting, value engineering and financial control. Step-by-step in Excel, delegates will be guided through the creation of two generic P&L templates for both a book product and a digital subscription service. Learn how to pull together the relevant product information to generate fixed and variable production costs, estimate the overall cost of sales (including advances) and calculate the net receipts, gross profit margin and breakeven point.
Course outcomes
- Identify the data required to create a basic P&L and the publishing functions responsible for them
- Build knowledge of P&L outputs and how they relate to budgeting (expenditure) and forecasting (income)
- Evaluate a book’s financial viability across trade, academic and different formats
- Understand the difference between a book product and digital subscription P&L
- Learn to identify pitfalls of value engineering in different scenarios
About your tutor
Helena Markou is the Subject Coordinator for the MA Publishing (via distance learning) at Oxford Brookes University where she teaches editorial, production and marketing management. Her professional career spans publishing, bookselling and academia. She is currently writing up her SGSAH-funded PhD at University of Stirling on longselling trade nonfiction which interrogates the UK Nielsen Bookscan dataset.
Booking
Publishing Scotland members can book their place now on Ticket Tailor.
About Publishing Scotland’s Sales Bootcamp Training Programme
Publishing Scotland has created a free sales training programme for our members, which we will host in hybrid and online events across early 2022. The sessions will cover best practice for working with the trade so that you build lasting and effective relationships. They will suit member publishers who have been in business for 7 years or less and for new members of staff in sales and marketing who have been working with more established publishers. The sessions are:
- Successful Pitching and Presenting in Publishing, Thursdays 9 and 16 February, 11.00–12.30 (online)
- Creating a Sales Strategy for Publishers, Tuesday 14 February, 11.00–12.30 (hybrid)
- Understanding Profit and Loss, Tuesday 21 February, 11.30–12.30 (online)
- How to Work with a Sales Team, Tuesday 28 Feb, 11.30–12.30 (hybrid)
- Sell More Books with Metadata, Tuesday 14 March, 11.30–12.30 (hybrid)
- How to Sell eBooks, Tuesday 28 March, 11.30–12.30 (online)
Other courses
You may also be interested in Meta Advertising Essentials for Publishers on Wednesdays 25 January and 1 February which is being run for Publishing Scotland by BookMachine. The fee is only £35+VAT.
