Khai, I think what you're getting at is that books are relatively more expensive here in the US than they are in the UK when compared to a pair of jeans. Same goes for electronics, whiskey, and quite a lot else, which are cheaper here. Books in the US are, however, relatively cheap when compared to, for example, green vegetables, potatoes, and a whole bunch of other things. Overall, the cost of living between the two countries seems to work out roughly the same if you ignore medical insurance, which shoots up the US cost of living unbelievably. Even so, because mean wage levels are higher, for most people a book represents a smaller percentage of their net disposable income than is the case in the UK. That's why mass-market paperbacks are a major part of the book scene in the UK, whereas in the US they're a relatively small part: in the US, hardbacks aren't a luxury item. OK, now if a book costs $25, the publisher will receive on average something like $10 per copy sold through bookstores, and about half that for copies sold through book clubs or as a co-edition. The net return is less than that, because the publisher has to pay shipping cost. Because booksellers exploit the sale-or-return option ruthlessly (and in my opinion often dishonestly), something like 25% of the copies you think you've sold to bookstores come back to you, at your shipping expense, and many of these are unfit for reselling. The unit cost per copy of a $25 illustrated book is likely to be in the $4-$5 range, assuming it's been printed in the Far East (which probably most of them these days are). Oh, yeah, and you shouldn't forget the costs of the fact that booksellers, book clubs and everybody else take as long as they possibly can before they pay you, and sometimes they never do. Adding all of that lot up, you can see that your simple math of $25 x 10,000 copies = (Wow!) $250,000 doesn't look so juicy or healthy after all. These figures don't apply to the new Stephen King or John Grisham novel, where the first print-run is astronomical and the origination costs are virtually zero. But they do apply to the average illustrated book, of which this is one.