AIB's Modus Operandi

AIB Modus Operandi is intended as a set of guidelines for Book Title Partnerships

Standard Book Price
We cannot match the prices of the mass book publishers. Instead we adopt a 'just price' approach with equal shares of the retail pound going to book seller, book title partnership and book producer. Then we cast our eye over the market and set our standard price for a standard book. Normally this means a book price of three times the cost of our standard book, but deviations may occur for all sorts of reasons.

Standard Print Run
In an ideal world we would make a dozen books, sell them and then order another dozen. If we tried it with the printing and finishing trade of the late 20th century they would print us 2000, bind 12 of them, throw away 1988 unbound copies and then charge us about 125 times as much per book as they would for 2000. We doubt they can keep this up into the 21st century. If digital technology is that clever, why can't it change the image passing through the printing press and print twenty books in one print run? But meanwhile we are stuck with minimum quantities. Our Standard Print Run is a compromise.

Standard Book Cost
Our business is driven by costs and pledges. We would like our Standard Book to be a 250-page hard cover stitch-bound specimen not unlike many of the books from the 1920s and 30s to be found on the shelves of antiquarian book sellers. And all AIB books could have the same hard covers. Why not? Our only concession to modern times would be a colour cover, printed twice if necessary with one copy glued onto the hard cover board and the other serving as a dust wrapper. Our Standard Print Cost is experience-based.

Minimum Quality Multiplier
Some Book Title Partnerships will multiply the Standard Book Cost by the Minimum Quality Multiplier to get the cost of a perfect-bound soft cover book. That is fine. But that is our minimum bookshop quality standard. Below this quality, books will go out without the AIB imprint as pre-publications copies…indeed most books will start their book life (as opposed to their life as unbound illuminated manuscripts) at something less than minimum quality. These have their place and colour copiers help enormously but we would not expect to see spiral bindings and the like after the pledges are in.

Pledge to Purchase
Once a Book Title Partnership (BTP) is ready to publish, it specifies its end-product and its end-price. The BTP then sets about gathering promises to buy. Once the value of a BTP's pledges (Number of Pledges x Standard Book Price) reaches the AIB Pledge Value (Pledge to Purchase % x Standard Book Cost x Standard Print Run), AIB bites the bullet and the BTP gets the green light to move into production. So pledges have a multiplier effect and work like matching funds. And remember, at Academic Inn Books we work with small numbers, so just a few dozen pledges can often be enough to do the trick.

Minimum Share Price
Merchant Adventurers receive 16 of the 64 shares in a BTP as a 'trading currency'. They use this if they can to barter labour or capital shares for goods or services. If the illustrator's best friend's father works for a book finisher then he may be willing to take BTP labour shares in part-payment. And if the author's great aunt is happy to divert her annual contribution to the local cat's home for just one year then capital shares can be her reward. This is all most BTPs will need. But we insist that shares in BTPs should never be knowingly undersold. Hence the Minimum Share Price. Above this the whims of the market may rule. Below this, without AIB approval, excommunication awaits any BTP selling off its 'Free Shares'.

Academic Inn Books' Standard Values

	1997	1998	1999
	Actual	Budget	Forecast
Standard Book Price	£ 8.95	£ 9.95	£ 9.95
Standard Print Run	2 000	1 750	1 500
Standard Book Cost	£ 2.95	£ 2.75	£ 2.55
Minimum Quality Multiplier	0.75	0.75	0.75
Pledge to Purchase	5%	15%	25%
Minimum Share Price	£ 495	£ 545	£ 595

Peter Etherden
28th February 1998