Just out of curiosity I was wondering how much it costs for a publishing house to put out a novel in this day and age?

Does anyone have any idea of their investment in a reasonably sized launch including the printing, promotions etc?

Not hard evidence, but my agent(who founded Boxtree and was an ex-MD of Macmillan Group) said, 'you have to remember, they'll be spending £50,000-60,000 on publishing it, and there's your advance of course'. Another rule of thumb is that production costs are 15-20% of the cover price for a print run of a few thousands.

Emma