Lessee - putting my education to work (I was a MAth for teaching HS major - passed all my math courses through Calc III but washed out of the EDU courses)...
11,000 books at an average MRSP of $15 is $165,000. If one assumes 50% of the MSRP cost as the cost of production, 10% as the amount Palladium actually makes on a book, and the other 40% the distributor and retailer margins, then it takes FIVE books (50%/10% = 5) sold to BREAK EVEN - in other words recoup enough profit from normal sales to offset the production cost of ONE stolen book. So, to COVER THE LOSSES from the stolen books, Palladium would have to sell $840,000 books, before actually making a cent of profit. And that's assuming a much HIGHER profit margin per book than most retail and direct-from-manufacturer businesses have, due to tougher competition.
That's one of the reasons shoplifting and employee theft is treated so harshly at retail - if a store is making only 5% on an item, someone stealing one means the store has to sell 19x that item's value to cover the wholesale cost of the stolen item.
And, IIRC, Kane, a lot of the bad record for dealing with fans, especially missing orders and manuscripts, was when STEVE was the one in charge of handling them, and many of the customer calls. The one time I had to call Palladium for an order, it was Steve who talked to me about it.
BTW, for those that were lamenting Rifts: Lemuria being promised, but never released - it was - you guessed it - STEVE writing the book, originally!