The great fiction crash?

Sand Storm kindly provided me with a link to an article in the Canadian Globe and Mail, arguing that fiction sales are well down world wide.

Well, if they are, the reason is not far to seek. Too much emphasis on the writer and not enough on the reader. Also, we have every newspaper that publishes book reviews continuing to review what they describe as the 'good stuff' -- which many experienced judges regard as unreadable (see post below) -- while steadfastly ignoring books which ordinary readers buy by the tens of thousands.

This article, by the way, turns out to be the source of the story about James W. Nichol -- see second post below.

One honest and right-thinking man

There is, it seems, one top critic on a major newspaper who is prepared to face the dreadful truth. Publishers Lunch provided the link to a piece by Jonathan Yardley in the Washington Post.

Yardley tells us that 'the "literary" fiction being written in this country nowadays strikes me as so jejune, self-absorbed and lifeless that I am just about unable to read it, much less pass fair judgment on it.... Instead I find myself turning more and more to what is commonly dismissed by the literati as "popular" or "genre" fiction.'

Instead of struggling through the unreadable literary crap, Yardley has finally discovered John Grisham. 'Advised some years earlier that I'd find his work unreadable, I avoided it but finally decided that I couldn't go on ignoring one of the world's most popular novelists.'

This statement, mark you, is made by a man who is described at the foot of the article as the Washington Post's book critic. Not 'a' critic but 'the'. And he's only just got around to reading Grisham? Doesn't this man have some sort of duty to keep up?

Anyway, Yardley has now made the amazing discovery that Grisham knows what he's doing, which is more than can be said for some people. 'Boning up for his [Grisham's] new novel, The Broker, I read several of its predecessors and was astonished by how good they are.'

As usual, one doesn't know whether to laugh or cry.

And you thought it was easy

Suppose you were a first-time author and you managed to sell a book to a publisher. And the publisher did quite well with it. And it sold well in other countries too. Like, 200,000 copies in Germany. And 50,000 in the UK. Well, then you'd think it would be pretty automatic that everyone would welcome your second book, wouldn't you?

Of course you would. But that's not quite how it worked out for Canadian author James W. Nichol. Publishers Lunch reports that his debut mystery thriller The Midnight Cab sold the figures quoted in para one, but Nichol's Toronto agent, Bev Slopen, reports that Nichol's Canadian publisher, Knopf, took a pass on book number two, as did his British publisher, Canongate.

Big-budget book marketing

Most small, independent, or self-publishers struggle to get publicity by spending a pound here, a dollar there. They start a blog, send a few emails, perhaps even set up a website, though that takes more time and money than some would care to allocate.

Things are different, however, in the world of big-time publishing. If you want to know how the modern publisher of bestsellers goes about marketing a book, visit the Wall Street Journal, home of the men who really know about money, and read Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg's piece about a forthcoming non-fiction book, The Number.

Thriller convention

I've been thinking for some time that someone ought to call together all the thriller writers in the world and explain to them that books don't actually need to be over 400 pages long to be any good. This thought was, of course, prompted by reading Brandenburg, the latest in a sad succession of grossly overwritten thrillers.

Well, somebody has decided to do something similar, if not exactly what I had in mind. Publishing News reports that what is being billed as 'the biggest thriller conference ever' will take place next year. ThrillerFest will run from 29 June to 2 July at the Arizona Biltmore Resort in Phoenix, Arizona. It will feature readings and discussions and the chance for readers as well as librarians, the media, and publishing professionals, to network with such authors as R L Stine, Brad Meltzer, John Lescroart and Tess Gerritsen. More details are at http://www.thrillerwriters.org/index.php.

The ARC 'problem'

An ARC, in case you're wondering, is an Advance Reading Copy. When publishers are about to issue a book which they intend to make into a really big seller, they often put out a special pre-publication version, in paperback. This is usually labelled as an ARC and carries a Not For Sale tag on it somewhere. It's distributed to booksellers, newspaper reviewers, and even the occasional blogger.

And now, guess what. British publishers are getting really pissed off because some wicked people are actually selling these things on ebay, or dropping them into their corner shop which sells secondhand paperbacks. And It's Not Good Enough. Honest and decent chaps would not do such a thing. The on-sellers are robbing hard-working publishers of a proper sale. And all like that. Galleycat has the full story.

Well, yawn, the publishers seem to me to be missing the point. As usual. The whole point of issuing ARCs is to get the book known. I've very rarely had any myself, but I'm reading one at the moment. And when I've finished it, what then? Is it best for the book to sit on my shelf for five years, after which I dump it? As it happens, I couldn't be bothered to sell it, either on ebay or to my local shop. But I might very well give it to the local charity shop or the church jumble sale. And isn't that better? One more person might get to hear about the author, might talk about it, might buy a proper copy for a friend, and so forth.

Talk about fuzzy thinking.

Author goes hi-tec in search of a publisher

Galleycat has a story about how blogs can help publishers to publicise a book. From this I learn, by the way, that there is a US Publishers' Publicity Association which is the equivalent of the UK Publishers Publicity Circle which I mentioned a while back. (Note, by the way, that one uses an apostrophe and one doesn't. And the US one is dead picky about who is allowed to read their stuff.)

Anyway, the point about the Galleycat piece which I want to highlight here is that it mentions a man called Val Landi. Landi was formerly an editor with Bantam and IDG (who?) and then went off to work in dot.com land with LookSmart and Redband Broadcasting. So he knows how to use a mouse. And now he's written a novel. And to help him find a publisher he has set up a flashy web site.

The web site's typeface is far too small for my old eyes, and it doesn't respond to adjustments in the browser, but apart from that the whole site is definitely on the hi-tec and flashy side. You get to download a chapter in pdf, and a whole lot more. And all this, just to get a publisher interested? Jeez. Us guys with the quill pens are going to have to watch ourselves.

There's a blog too, of course. And it is seriously worth reading. This man is not unconnected with the good and the great. He has worked in some top media machines. And here's one of his first comments:

How do first-time authors who are not global brands, break out? We use the power of the Web to create a global market to generate word of mouth and interest on a scale that leapfrogs and transforms the industry as it exists today. We have to pioneer on the creative, pre-publication side, what Jeff Bezos and Barnes & Noble and soon Google, Yahoo, and MSN have pioneered on the distribution side. The Road To... will chronicle this experiment as my weekly blog. I invite you to join me in the adventure, follow the defeats and victories, and the topics and emerging themes of the 21st Century that form the substance and plot of A Woman from Cairo.

Copyright gets complicateder

Last Friday's Times carried a letter from Professor J.A.L. Sterling, who is involved with the Intellectual Property Research Institute at the University of London.

The Prof makes the point that many unpublished works by long-dead writers are still in copyright -- even though their published stuff is out of copyright. Since the guy is dead, obtaining permission to use or print such works may be difficult if not impossible. (I have certainly found this to be true in relation to photographers; in many instances it is literally impossible to trace their heirs and successors.) Furthermore, the law of copyright will vary from country to country, so that the person who is entitled to give permission for use in one country may not be the person entitled to do so in another country. What fun!

'In the digital era,' says the Prof, 'international copyright becomes an Augean stable requiring a jurisprudential Hercules to bring order out of chaos.'

Well, at least one group of people are trying to improve the situation somewhat. Over on the Creative Commons blog, Lawrence Lessig provides part two of a description of an initiative which will be 'critical to the ecology of creativity generally.' It's not easy stuff to get your head round, but it is clearly vital.

Irony and communication

Back when I first started blogging, I read a piece about writing for the web, and it included a caution against using irony. Irony, the writer maintained, is often misunderstood. People will take you seriously.

Well, I'm not sure if Ed Shelton's little workshop on writing for the web is the one that I read some eighteen months ago, but it too contains a suggestion that 'clever-clever' devices such as sarcasm or irony are best avoided. 'Your message,' says Ed, 'will then be understood by the widest possible audience.'

Hmm. I mention this because (a) I seem to have been misunderstood one day last week, (b) I was tempted to respond with further irony, and (c) on first reading an email recently I think I misunderstood it entirely.

Incident (a) is trivial. I reviewed a book published by iUniverse, and mentioned that the firm is less selective in what it publishes than is Random House. Thereafter a commenter took plains to explain to me that iUniverse is a firm which will publish more or less anything by anyone, if they just hand over the money. And actually -- ahem -- I did know that.

The same angry commenter went on to ask me how much the author of the iUniverse-published book had paid me to review it. The answer, as most of you will understand, is nothing. He just asked nicely. But I was tempted to reply ironically, and say that he didn't pay me anything, but that -- hey -- I was ready to review to order if there was anyone out there dumb enough to offer me money. I was also going to add that, in England, the tradition is to hand over the cash in used notes, in a brown-paper bag, and that the locale de choix is a supermarket car park. But perhaps, in the circs, I won't say any of that. It might lead to confusion.

And then there's the email sent to me by Sylvia Van Nooten. I thought at first, perhaps being somewhat sensitised by last week's experience, that she was having a little go at me. But actually I don't think she is.

Sylvia refers in her email to 'egotistical maniacs convinced they are the reincarnation of Swift and who splay their names and blogs wherever possible.' And she has coined an expression -- BlogBeggars -- to describe 'those sad souls begging for their blog to be noticed by a "someone".'

But when I saw that Sylvia has a blog of her own I began to reinterpret what she said. To labour the point, I don't think she was having a go at me, or anyone else. She was just making a comment (inspired, it seems, by one of mine) on the sad nature of many writers' ambitions.

Sylvia's blog is called (ironically?) I will be your guru, and she seems to be working on a novel. And the comment of mine which set her off was this: 'Publishing depends, for its continuance, upon a ceaseless flow of mugs, suckers, and assorted halfwits who are prepared to work for a year or more without any serious prospect of remuneration.'

And I was going to add that, in my case, I may have some prospect of remuneration if there anyone out there who (a) wants a book reviewed and (b) has some spare moolah. But I won't.

Publishers' profits

Some months ago, a correspondent who used the pseudonym Jeremy Snippet wrote a lengthy comment about publishers' profits. His essay appeared in response to my first article, in a series of three, on authors' advances.

Mr Snippet will long since have abandoned all hope that I was ever going to respond to what he had to say, but I never quite forgot his point, and periodically, while shaving or whatever, I have been mulling things over.

Basically, Jeremy was arguing that writers are underpaid by comparison with publishers, and that publishers make really quite hefty profits.

Jeremy presented a lengthy example of the sales of a hypothetical novelist, one Geoffrey Gloom, and the royalties resulting. He went on to suggest that, from total sales income (customers' money handed over the counter) of £108,000, the publisher would end up with a net profit of £24,000. The author, by contrast, might get £11,000, less agent's commission, less expenses.

Actually, Jeremy's figures (if I understand them correctly) are not quite correct in terms of their own arithmetic, because he forgot to deduct the author's royalty from the publisher's profit, so the £24,000 becomes £13,000. But, having noted that point, let us summarise Jeremy's estimates, as seen from the publisher's perspective, and consider how the £108,000 which is handed over the counter actually gets distributed. In rounded percentage terms, the figures work out as follows:

Booksellers' share: 54%
Manufacturing costs: 15%
Overheads: 4%
Distribution and marketing: 5%
Royalties: 10%
Publisher's profit: 12%

The next question is, do these figures correspond with reality? In other words, how typical are they of the year-in, year-out figures produced by the average major trade publisher in the UK?

Now that's a difficult question to answer, for a variety of reasons. Here are some of those reasons.

To know how well a particular company is doing, you need access to that company's accounts. Very few people have such access. True, you can apply to Company House for the publicly available information, but few of us do that. Even if we did, we aren't able to make much sense of the figures unless we are experienced accountants.

Christopher Gasson is a man who knows as much about the accounts of publishers as any man breathing. If you want to gain some insight into that arcane art, find a copy of Gasson's Who Owns Whom, 2002, Bookseller Publications, ISBN 0 85021 330. (Amazon link.)

In his section on business ratios, at the back of this book, Gasson points out that published accounts 'are not wholly reliable.... Publishers have 'considerable scope for creative accountancy.' This is particularly true of those firms which are part of big international conglomerates.

What this means is that, even if the bosses of the company are born-again Christians, and are determined to obey every law and principle of good accounting practice known to man, there are perfectly legal and sensible variations in the way in which accounts can be drawn up. Many publishers, for example, 'write off against the first year's sales the plant costs of a book and any author's advance that has not been earned out in royalties.' On the other hand, 'Element Books famously wrote its plant costs off over five years... with the result that the company was able to declare a double-digit operating profit not long before it went into receivership.'

And, of course, not all company bosses are born-again Christians. Think Robert Maxwell, Enron, WorldCom.

Another problem is that the pattern of income and expenditure will vary considerably as between different types of publisher. A publisher of academic books, for example, will typically give a much smaller discount to retailers and will also pay his authors less. But he will not necessarily make a much bigger profit, because it is, on the whole, harder to sell a book on the economics of maize production in Malawi than it is to sell the latest scandalous autobiography by a celebrity.

My guess is that, at any given time, there may be as many as two people in any major firm who have a pretty good feel for how things actually are. One is the overall chief executive, and the other is the chief financial officer. Whether either of these people will ever tell you the truth about the real position is a matter of opinion, and will doubtless vary according to the personalities involved.

Having said all that, there are occasionally glimpses of something approaching a true picture, glimpses obtained through the general smoke-screen generated by commercial confidentiality and deliberate obfuscation. Who Owns Whom provides one such glimpse, as does British Book Publishing as a Business since the 1960s, by Eric de Bellaigue. There were a number of earlier published reports on the financial state of British publishing, and some of those are referred to in my first article on advances, mentioned above. None of these books or reports suggest to me that publishing is a highly profitable business. Quite the reverse.

And, finally, the Society of Authors magazine The Author published in 1998 an article by Tim Hely Hutchinson (CEO of Hodder Headline) in which he analysed the pie chart of publisher's income along similar lines to those suggested by Jeremy Snippet. Here is the Hely Hutchinson breakdown of how the customer's pound was distributed, as seen by a major trade publisher in 1998:

Booksellers' share: 55%
Manufacturing costs: 15%
Overheads: 9%
Distribution and marketing: 8%
Royalties: 8%
Publisher's profit: 5%

In his article, Hely Hutchinson compared these figures with those that he had drawn up in a similar article ten years earlier. The bookseller's discount was up 5% (and will, I guess, have risen further still by now). Manufacturing costs had been pared from 17% to 15%; overheads were down from 10% to 9%; distribution and marketing remained the same, as did publishers' profits; but the authors' share of the cake, unsurprisingly, was down from 10% to 8%.

I think that's probably as good a picture as we're ever going to get. What it means is that trade publishers are struggling, and by and large failing, to maintain their share of the customer's pound, in the face of ever-increasing demands for more discount from the bookselling chains and the supermarkets. And they are tending to make up for (some of) what they've lost by hammering the authors.

Publishers are not making vast profits. And quite a lot of them aren't making any profit at all.

Publishers, particularly the ones which can make you a star, are big, strong, and (relatively) knowledgeable. Writers, even with the aid of a good agent, are small, weak, and often don't know nuffink. Who'd be one?