出版与作家生涯2012sfwa.org
1979年最高法院判决如何重创图书出版业
How a 1979 Supreme Court hammered book publishing
导读
这篇讲1979年最高法院的一项税务判决如何冲击图书出版：出版商不能随意把滞销库存按市价减记，导致账面与税务口径分离、现金流压力和库存处理难题。写作者值得读，是因为出版经济学、库存与印刷决策会直接影响哪些书能出、怎么出，也提醒行业写作要分清会计口径与现实现金流。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
写行业或法律题材时，先讲清“账面”和“税务”两套口径，别只用单年数据下结论。
- 02
用印量、库存、货架空间等具体变量解释产业结构，再说明技术变化如何让旧变量失效。
- 03
论证时主动补上“下一年会反转”“畅销会追加印次”等被忽略的反例，让分析更完整。
- 04
区分纸质书与电子书的经济约束，避免把纸质出版模型直接套到数字产品上。
HN 评论精选
只按单年税务账判断，会漏掉账面与税务差异及跨期反转。
该分析只看税务视角和单年数据，忽略公司通常有两套账：账面按权责发生制配比收支，税务按收付实现制看现金进出。滞销库存税务上不能减记，导致今年多缴现金并形成递延税资产；下期出售时局面会反转，税务损失会减少税单。
hncommenter13查看英文原文
This analysis misses a few things: 1) Most significantly, we're looking only at the tax view and for only one year. Companies typically keep two sets of related financials: "book" and "tax." The "book" financials are on an accrual basis (for most companies), which means that expenses are matched with income according to the period in which they occur. The tax books are kept on a cash basis, meaning that they look at what cash came in and out in a given period. What is happening here is that the book and tax results are temporarily diverging (quite common) because they treat this item differently, with the payments to the IRS creating a deferred tax asset that will ultimately reverse. Specifically, for "book" or financial reporting purposes, the inventory is carried at $0.50, reflecting its current value. For tax purposes, however, that is disallowed. As a result, the company pays more in cash to the IRS this year (as the post describes). What it misses, though, is that this situation will reverse in the next period, when the company will owe less tax. (For financial reporting purposes, it would record the tax payment as a deferred tax asset on its balance sheet.) Now move forward a year. When the inventory is sold off at $0.50, it produces no profit on the financial books: we held it at $0.50, and we sold it at $0.50. On the tax side, however, we held it at $1.00 and sold it at $0.50, generating a loss that will reduce our cash tax bill. As a result, the deferred tax asset (the money we paid to the IRS as a result of the higher cash profits in the prior period from not writing down the inventory) will reverse, and we'll pay less taxes. This is a bit complicated, but the basic idea is that the post is misleading: because it only looks at one period, we see the publisher paying more in taxes in the first period, but we don't see the reversal where the publisher pays less tax in the second period. 2) Publishing is actually better off than most industries here, because a) books are cheap to manufacture relative to other, more complex manufactured items; b) Nobody sells books for $2 that cost $1 to print. In the real world, the slight change in inventory holding costs has a lesser impact on the cash taxes paid by the publisher when books that cost $1 to print are sold for $10 or $20, even if some are pulped at $0.50. In other words, this is a bigger deal for industries other than publishing, as publishers can sell their products for quite a bit more than they cost to manufacture (as is true of many IP products). 3) From an economic profit view (ignoring accounting), nobody wins when items are manufactured and written off as unsold inventory. The incremental tax expense in the first period from temporarily paying higher taxes on a higher inventory value is swamped by the overall profitability improvement of not printing books that never sell. No matter what industry you're in, unsold inventory represents a loss. 4) Printing fewer items means less cash is tied up in inventory. This is a huge benefit to the company's overall economic profit and return on assets, as having cash tied up in unsold inventory carries financing costs and results in lower return on equity. 5) This long trip into accounting-land has nothing to do with the fact that ebooks are a damn sight better for many reasons, even if they upend the publishing industry in its current form.
电子书让库存、印量、绝版和货架等传统出版变量失效。
有意思的是，这些等式里的许多变量在电子书时代已不适用：库存不是100个物件而是一份文件；没有印6万册还是8万册的问题；文件不会“绝版”；没有把库存打成纸浆的处理；也没有货架空间竞争，只剩注意力竞争。
gioele查看英文原文
It is interesting to note how many of the variables in these equations are no longer relevant when you deal with electronic books. * «We have 100 widgets in inventory», you have one file copy, * «a publisher prints 60,000 copies (instead of 80,000)», you still have only one file copy, * «this book is out of print», files do not go "out of print", * «dispose of inventory -- i.e., pulp it --», physical books have another counterpart: they are paper that can be sold, this has no parallel for electronic books, * «competition for rack space», there is no rack space to compete for (there is competition for attention, that that is the same for every sellable thing).
按需印刷降低起印门槛，但可能只是过渡方案。
我公司做按需印刷，所有书型都可做到印量1本，包括精装、平装、黑白、半色调和彩色。传统印书业在衰落，按需印刷在接盘，直到电子书胜出后连按需印刷也消亡。
earino查看英文原文
The company I work for does print on demand. Copy count of 1, for all book types. Perfect, case, stitched, BW, halftone, color. The world of printing books is dying, and POD is there to pick up the slack... until even POD dies because eBooks won.
数字印刷改变小批量经济性，畅销书还会追加印次。
还要注意新的印刷技术：数字印刷降低了单次开机成本，小批量更划算。作者忽略了一个因素——如果出版商发现某书好卖，会追加第二次印次来多赚。
advisedwang查看英文原文
Another point to notice: we have new printing techniques! Smaller runs can be more cost effective with new digital printing that has less one-off cost. The author neglects one factor which is especially salient given the above - if a publisher finds a book is selling they will go for a second print run to milk it!
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