Off Retail

If a discount of 20% off the retail price of a desk saves Mark $45, how much did he pay for the desk?

some people got this anwered but i need help with the breakdown

Discount = $45
Percent = 20%

Set up the equation. You know the percentage 20% or (20/100); and the amount he saved, 45.
20/100 = 45/x <---use x as the denominator because you do not know the full value of the desk. Cross multiply.
20(x) = 45(100) <---multiplication
20x = 4500 <---divide to find the value of x
x = 225 <---This is your original price

Original Price - Discount = Price Mark Paid
$225 - $45
$180

Mark paid $180 for the desk

Retail Margin, Trade Discount, & What it Means for the Author

DEFINITIONS

Retail margin is basically the difference between your book's
wholesale price and your book's retail price. For example, a
book with a cover price of $10 and a wholesale price of $5 has a
50% retail margin.

Wholesale price is the cost of your book to a retailer. To use
the same rudimentary example, a book with a cover price of $10
and a retail margin of 50% will be sold to a retailer for $5.

Retail price is the same as cover price or selling price. This
is the cost of the book to the end consumer (the reader). The
retail price is typically printed on the cover of the book and
also "embedded" within the barcode on the back. For example, a
book with a wholesale price of $5 and a retail margin of 50%
will have a retail price of $10.

As you can see, retail margin, wholesale price, and retail price
are interconnected. By having two figures, the third can be
calculated.

The fourth definition to be aware of is the trade discount,
which is the percentage off the retail price that a wholesaler
or distributor pays for your book. Since the retail margin is a
portion of the trade discount, the trade discount always exceeds
the retail margin. Distributors typically expect between 50% -
70% in order to provide an acceptable margin to the retailer.

MAKING DISTRIBUTION WORK FOR YOU

It should come as no surprise that the amount of distribution
your book enjoys rests largely upon its trade discount.
Generally, the higher the discount, the greater the distribution.

Think about it - distributors want to make money, too. So do
retailers.

While your book's trade discount is but a piece of your pie
(albeit a big piece), it is the entire cake for distributors and
retailers, who together must split the take. The greater the
number, the greater incentive they have to distribute your book,
sell your book, and market your book, etc.

The proper trade discount depends upon each author's intentions,
and can vary from author to author just as readily as from book
to book. Obviously, the higher the retail margin, the higher the
cover price, so authors interested in maintaining the lowest
cover price possible will often opt for a lower retail margin.

Conversely, those authors who long for the best distribution
possible will elect a higher trade discount, even though their
cover price will increase accordingly (or their profit will
decrease accordingly). Non-fiction or niche-markets are less
affected by higher retail prices and greater distribution is
often advantageous in finding those markets.

Often, the author will have little to no say in what trade
discount to offer for their books -- its whatever the
distributor mandates.

Trade discounts can be as low as 20% to successfully get listed
on Internet retailers like Amazon.com, who manage to make a
profit with such low margins through EDI (electronic data
interface) with distributors like Ingram and on-demand
publishers like iUniverse and Outskirts Press.

By comparison, trade discounts can be as high as 75% - 80% when
dealing with a niche wholesaler, or when attempting distribution
for a book that does not have a proven market. In these cases,
the distributor may be padding the coffers a bit in anticipation
for a "harder sell" and perhaps, also, in preparation for
offering an increased retail margin to close the deal.

INDUSTRY STANDARDS

Industry standards for retail margins are difficult to define
because, ultimately, it comes down to negotiation between all
parties involved. Publishers have the power to negotiate with
distributors, who have the power to negotiate with retailers,
who have the ability to negotiate with the reader, but the
typical trade discount is around 55%, which allows for a typical
retail margin of 40%.

Publishing-on-demand is removing some of the participants in
this little dance, and as a result, the same piece of pie is
being divided among fewer people, resulting in more money for
the remaining players (especially the author).

About the Author

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