Well. Random House.

Posted June 4, 2007 9:26 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

That might be one out of every eight new publications.

I take it Tor does better.

Posted June 4, 2007 9:48 PM by Avram

There's a world of fudge in the word "significantly."

Posted June 4, 2007 10:10 PM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Well, "significantly" was my word, so I get the fudge. (Mmm, fudge!)

NY Mag's words were "Out of every eight books, one is very profitable, one is very unprofitable, and six either break even or lose money." Random House's words, I dunno.

Posted June 4, 2007 10:17 PM by Avram

I think Patrick and I know too much to be comfortable with short general statements about profitability and publishing. That particular short general statement could be worse.

I liked the analysis of taxi profitability. I've always wondered where they made their money.

Posted June 4, 2007 10:43 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

our hostz r in the forumz
hoggin the discushun

...huh? What? Who?

Posted June 4, 2007 10:53 PM by ethan

It seems that cab drivers mostly make their money by holding onto a medallion (the price increase greatly exceeds their earnings, and the TLC is too wimpy to keep the fares unchanged until medallion prices drop to reasonable).

Posted June 4, 2007 11:23 PM by Seth Breidbart

Women are almost always right when they suspect their husbands of cheating, and men are almost always wrong? Not a big surprise.

*looks at smoking wreckage of 20 year marriage*

Posted June 5, 2007 12:30 AM by Mary

Women are almost always right when they suspect their husbands of cheating, and men are almost always wrong? Not a big surprise.

If we assume a population that is generally heterosexual, it makes me wonder who the men are cheating with.

Posted June 5, 2007 8:03 AM by Francis

If we assume a population that is generally heterosexual, it makes me wonder who the men are cheating with.

... unmarried women, maybe?

Posted June 5, 2007 8:14 AM by Chaos

Huh. Maybe the cheating men are cheating with the married women whose men are unsuspecting...

Posted June 5, 2007 10:08 AM by John

Another possibility, and the one I suspect -- men might not be as likely to be suspicious at the right time.

Posted June 5, 2007 10:08 AM by BSD

He Knew He Was Right (obTrollope).

What signal would they be reacting to, then?

Posted June 5, 2007 1:48 PM by clew

Mary @ #8: Women are almost always right when they suspect their husbands of cheating, and men are almost always wrong?

Well, among the ones who hire a private detective to confirm their suspicions, which presumably skews the stats in some unknowable direction.

Posted June 5, 2007 7:06 PM by Mary Dell

somewhere in their is a daniel stern twice-told tale.

failing painter working at yankee stadium steals from Macy's and uses his meth dealer as a middleman to turn the goods, then hires a PI to find out his wife is not cheating, but moonlighting as a cabby because her copy shop is quietly going out of business.

i wish he was still with us to write this one.

Posted June 5, 2007 7:48 PM by j m mcdermott

Having worked in a copy shop for ... erm, a long time... I followed the link to the bit on those. I don't know, I suspect the article there is seriously overestimating how much money they make -- my best guess is that the copiers cost rather more than mentioned. I can say that the one I work for has rather higher gross and lower net, at least.

Posted June 6, 2007 6:47 AM by David Goldfarb

-- Spam message deleted --

Posted June 9, 2007 2:30 PM by Design

Ha! Caught one!

Posted June 9, 2007 2:38 PM by Kimiko sees spam

Of a rather odd kind.

Posted June 9, 2007 2:39 PM by Fragano Ledgister sees what might be spam

Kimiko, Fragano, I think you're right, but because my laptop died I don't have access to my Movable Type account. Could Jim or Avram or Patrick please zap that one? (Avram, current practice is to delete the text but keep the message open so we don't renumber the thread.)

Thanks!

Posted June 9, 2007 10:07 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden concurs; that's spam

Hmm, the message is gone but the spammish mailto: link is still there.

Posted June 9, 2007 10:51 PM by Xopher

Xopher @ 21: It would be wrong to take advantage of that in a hoist-on-their-own-petard kind of way.

So very, very wrong.

Quite bad. Really, really naughty. I am absolutely not advocating such a thing. Because it would be wrong.

Posted June 9, 2007 10:56 PM by Aconite

yay! I was right! *warm glowy feeling*

Posted June 10, 2007 5:37 PM by Kimiko