On #1 “Signing with a publisher before you have leverage”, a bit from an episode[0] of Patrick O’Shaughnessy’s <i>Founder’s Field Guide</i> podcast stuck with me.<p>> If you ask questions of an industry and they won't tell you the answer, that's always a good sign that someone's getting very wealthy. In publishing, if you ask an author, ask any author, how much did it cost to print the book? What are your COGS? They will not know. Ask any literary agent that question and they'll think you're off your rocker. Ask any publisher to give you that information transparently and they will rip up your contract.<p>> So call the printers in China, pick your favorite book, find out some print brokers here in the US, and say, "What did the printing of those books cost? Send me a spreadsheet." And when they do and you find out that a $50 retail book cost about $2 to print, and you're going to get 10% of [off?] cover price, they're requiring that you order 5,000 for your own list and they're going to give you a quarter of a million dollar advance, you realize that there's no way they've taken no risk at all.<p>Interestingly, the person speaking was in the restaurant business… There’s quite a bit of insight in that episode.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.joincolossus.com/episodes/20135760/kokonas-know-what-you-are-selling?tab=transcript" rel="nofollow">https://www.joincolossus.com/episodes/20135760/kokonas-know-...</a>