Baby, It’s Going to Be Cold Outside in Book Publishing
Fewer books, bigger deals—No room for debuts?
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Pub Crawl
A frost is coming to publishing. And while the much ballyhooed death of the industry this is not, the ecosystem to which our book makers are accustomed is about to be unmistakably disrupted. At hand is the twilight of an era most did not expect to miss, but will.
For now, the stifling timidity many editors and agents are predicting appears not to have taken hold. The Penguin Press just acquired a book about the history of American counterfeiters written by a recent college graduate who works at Lapham’s Quarterly. Literary agent Susan Golomb, who introduced Jonathan Franzen and Marisha Pessl to the world, is out with a manuscript for a novel by first-time author Tom Rachman, and interest from editors has been so energetic that she had trouble keeping up with the preempt offers. Mitzi Angel, the 34-year-old editor from London who was recently brought over by the publisher of Farrar, Straus & Giroux and charged with signing up new, unpublished talent, has acquired the rights to a collection of short stories by David Means, whose debut collection she published when first starting her career in the U.K.
Soon, though, people may find themselves compelled to be more wary. Only the most established agents will be able to convince publishers to take a chance on an unknown novelist or a historian whose chosen topic does not have the backing of a news peg. The swollen advances that have come to represent all that is reckless and sinful about the way the business is run will grow, not shrink. Authors without “platforms” will have a more difficult time finding agents willing to represent them. The biggest publishing house in the world, meanwhile, will be overhauled by a 40-year-old man who worked in printing until he was appointed to his post as CEO of Random House Inc. last spring.
“Think of it like a supply chain,” said one publishing executive who would not speak for attribution. “If the newspapers have fewer ads, they’re running fewer book reviews, so therefore, for those books that don’t have a pre-established audience, there are fewer opportunities to appeal to the consumer. Therefore, there are fewer of those consumers going into the bookstore. The bookstore recognizes this, and they tell you your mid-list books aren’t doing shit, so they’re not gonna order them, or they’re just gonna order 100 copies. They can cut off those books, and then the publisher is faced with a tough decision—how am I gonna buy those books that I know I can only ship 100 copies of? What am I gonna do? Am I gonna keep doing it? Or am I gonna spend more [money] chasing established authors?”
Endeavor Talent Agency’s Richard Abate, who has in recent months done deals for Tina Fey, Heroes creator Tim Kring and filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, called this the “tent-pole effect.” Skittish publishers, he said, will flock to books by well-established cultural figures—celebrities, athletes, etc.—which they feel they can count on to achieve blockbuster status just as those books are becoming more in-demand and harder to reel in. Publishers feel vulnerable unless they have at least one such title in their arsenal every season, and as a result they will offer more outlandish sums of money for them than ever.
Mid-list projects, Mr. Abate said, the kind of books that have traditionally attracted advances in the $50,000 range, will suffer as a result: For little-known literary authors and journalists, “the advances are going to be lower and it will be that much harder to sell them.”
In fact, he said, these books “might not even get bought. We’ll see how it shakes out, but my guess is we’re going to have fewer purchases, smaller lists, more focused lists, and it’s going to get tougher for all those books.”
Some of those books might end up going to the university presses, many of which have teams devoted to producing trade titles meant for audiences outside of the academy.
“If the advance levels come down, then we’re pretty much back in the game,” said David McBride, an editor at Oxford University Press who acquires academic and trade books on politics and sociology. “There’s a level of high-profile author that we’re simply not going to get anyway, but for some mid-level people who I think are really good who may have been signed up by, oh, I don’t know, Random House or Simon & Schuster two or three years ago, we might be better situated now.” Next Page >
Sounds like the publishing industry is going to kill itself the way record labels did -- by pushing out new artists and only going for what's "safe." New authors will have to self-publish, and when self-publishing gets really lucrative, the established authors will go that way, too. Good-bye, dinosaur publishers. It was fun while it lasted.
What Abate points to is already happening--book advances are rising at a rate that far outpaces book buying. As publishers grow more desperate to hook the few big, attention-grabbing fish, they enter a fierce competition with each other that only increases the problem--and the earnings for those lucky Tina Feys--and decreases the chance that they'll notice the smaller (but much more nutritious) fish. This is bound to collapse on itself (echoes of Wall St., anyone?) sooner rather than later, when the only way a publisher can grab those money makers is by paying them more than they'll actually make on the book. The imminent collapse can only be a good thing--I predict a few publishers at a time will forgo this recklessness and refocus on books that will sell because they're worth reading. Hopelessly optimistic? Probably.
I've had the good luck/bad luck of having my first book come out in the midst of this downturn in the publishing industry. Good luck, I say, because I'm thrilled that I've at least had the experience and gotten a book out before the whole industry collapses. Bad luck, I say, because my book sales have not met expectations, despite good publicity in major publications and media outlets. And despite having a platform to promote it. So, 10 weeks out of the gate, the publisher told me that they won't be doing the paperback version, which was devastating to hear. My agent tells me this is a new trend--cut losses very early. This was one time I didn't want to be a trend-setter!
My feeling is that the book publishing industry is going to have to be more cost efficient. The way some of the book production was done was so time-consuming and wasteful--a throw-back to a pre-computer age. Also, some of the decisions made about my book tour expenses were shockingly penny-wise, pound-foolish. I predict many things about the way books are bought, sold, produced, promoted will change and it might not be a bad thing. And yes, I feel that I've done so much of my own promotion, that I could self-publish and end up making a decent amount of money that way. Now that I've been through the system once, I think I've learned a lot about what is good and not good about the industry and I could apply that to self-publishing.
None of this is news, is it? And what about the Publishing Institute at Denver University? It's an outstanding program, run by Joyce Meskis, owner of Tattered Cover Bookstore. Publishing and related activities are not just happening in the east.
This is nothing new. This cycle has continued for the over 25 years I've been in publishing.
uh, big houses collapse into themselves? no news here. the next column will a profile of the upstart-young-nimble-independent presses that will take on risky ventures and score.
"Two such programs, both six weeks long, currently exist—one at Columbia, the other at New York University—and though between the two of them they already send more than 200 young people onto the job market every year, Mr. Oakes is confident there are still more eager beavers out there in need of training."
Huh? There's been one in Denver for two decades. Joyce Meskis runs it now, but it was founded by Elizabeth Geiser. Apparently everything west of NYC is "here there be dragons" territory.
There is an excellent publishing program at Stanford, too.
Re: publishers only buying books from "established" agents, that sounds exactly like something an established agent would say (and be put forth as fact by a reporter who has never worked in book publishing). Sure, submissions from top-tier agents are given priority and read first, but publishers will take quality from anywhere. If it is indeed that good, top publishers/editors will find out about it regardless of the agent. Likewise, they'll reject top-tier agents if what they're selling isn't the real deal.
I will try not to sound too Pollyanna-ish here......but it's really hard after reading this same gloom and doom story again and again.
I totally disagree that publishing is dying. It's changing (like the rest of the world).......and that's a good thing. Look at the music industry. It didn't die. It evolved.
As someone who's worked on hundreds of books a year.....I'm all for publishing fewer, higher quality books and focusing more on each one.
Also, just because there are less review pages does not mean there is less opportunity for an author to be found by a reader. In fact, the Web 2.0 world has opened up a whole universe of opportunity that didn't exist before. Writers and readers can now interact directly in a way that's way more intimate and meaningful.
But don't get me started.
I formed the Waterfall Press, Inc. for the very reason that I see a trend in publishing right now that will force talented young authors to "self-publish" more, given that they lack the "platform" of other famous individuals and thus have a hard time moving books. But it is very nerve-racking, this idea of just self-publishing. Especially when, like me, you are busy trying to do so many other things that compete for your time. There's only so many hours in the day. And your resources are not exactly limitless. That is why I continue to send out three of my books, 1) The Law School Rules, 2) A summer in Brooklyn a Summer in Paris and 3)How Oprah, Donald Trump and Jesus helped me turn a midlife crisis on its nose to traditional publishers. So far I've gotten one offer from a small house for a very small advance, so I passed. Sometimes I think I made a big mistake by not taking what was offered. I mean, nobody is going to give an unknown author a six figure advance at this point.
But something in me believes either a much better deal is out there, or that I would do much better taking the bull by the horns myself and going full throttle into publishing myself. I just need to big up my platform, that's all. How do I do that? Well, look, all I need is a sit down with either Oprah, or Donald. I just need one of them to say, Great book! What bigger platform do I need than that? You know? The only question is, how do you get the attention of these cats? When you are a little mouse like me? by Marion TD Lewis, Esq.
For a journalistic piece, this is woefully lacking in facts, and I for one would like to know the factual basis for these statements. It appears that there are three or four quotes, which are personal thoughts--not the collective opinion of the publishing industry, booksellers, or the buying public. At the very least Mr. Neyfakh should be specific about the genres he’s including in his gloom and doom. Are you talking every type of book currently being published or a specific genre such as literary fiction, non-fiction, memoirs, thrillers, romantic fiction? Because as a member of the buying public, I can assure you there is a big difference there.
At a time where it seems that we can no longer depend on anything in our world, we can still depend on a good read. In fact, reading fiction is often the only way many of us can escape from reality, and the guaranteed happy ending in a wonderful romance novel just might be the last guarantee around. People can no longer afford to go out, and “out” is becoming less and less safe, so what’s left? TV, books and the Internet. TV is, unfortunately, mirroring reality, thanks to all the reality and crime shows, and the Internet, while packed with information, does nothing to lift our spirits.
That leaves BOOKS, and if publishers only have so much to spend and they are spending it all on a handful of big names, they are doing a disservice, not only to all the mid-list and debut authors, but more importantly, to the buying public. If they want their industry to flourish, they need to bring more readers to it, and the time is ripe for that. But buying a few books and paying hugely for them is not the way to do it. I won’t be buying any of those celebrity or “big buzz” books. I want a book with a great story and with characters who linger on in my heart long after I’ve read the last word. A book that lifts my spirits and makes me feel good about life. Sure, there are some big authors who write these kinds of books, but a few authors cannot write fast enough to keep me in books because I read at least two 400 pp books a week.
So, yes, I’d like to see the facts about the genres that will be affected in the manner you’ve described--unless one of them happens to be romantic fiction. Then don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.
I'd like to know who buys all the celebrity book? For goodness sake, they only have one story to tell, but they're awfully good at retelling it again, and again.
For example, Valerie Bertenelli -- a D-list actress who lost weight. Now a second book on her new life? This is a role model?
I don't want to make the publishers out to be the only villains. The bookstores contribute plenty. They won't feature books by new authors to give them a shot. I long for the days of the rotating racks of paperbacks in the local candy store. I met a lot of great authors there, authors who went on to stardom.
And I think a $50,000 advance is a little more than the average published author is earning per book. Try $6,000.
It's a great topic, but you need to be a bit more accurate.
Sounds horrible, doesn’t it? But once I took a moment to think about it, I realized I had to take all this doom and gloom with a grain of salt. Here’s why:
a) In a rotten economy, people spend less on leisure activities. If books were less expensive, and publishers didn’t make hardcovers the be-all and end-all, and, like European publishers published new works in trade paperback, it would keep prices down and maybe, just maybe, sell more books. Also, if publishers are paying $6 million dollar advances, that is not going to be a bargain priced book. I think Tina Fey is great, but a 192 page book that she whips out between writing episodes of 30 Rock and doing her Sarah Palin impersonation on SNL doesn’t sound like something I’m going to be shelling out 25 bucks for.
b) Publishers will get LESS adventurous? Since when were they adventurous to begin with? When James Joyce wrote Ulysses? When Nabokov wrote Lolita? I mean, come on. The big houses have been playing it safe and banking on the same old tired house author that they had when I got into publishing 20-something years ago.
c) Nature abhors a vacuum. If the big publishers only publish huge names and celebs, what do you think is going to happen? The few smaller independent publishers out there as well as some new start-ups will become the home of the mid-list—-the try-outs for the big leagues for the new authors. In Hollywood there were A movies and B movies. In baseball you have the major leagues and the minor leagues. There's Broadway, and Off-Broadway, and Off-Off Broadway. In publishing you’ll have the big houses and the small houses.
d) Publishing as it’s currently set up doesn’t work well. It’s a crazy business (and I use the term loosely) that doesn’t fit well into a corporate model. It’s alchemy, it's making something out of thin air, not number crunching and bean counting. But when the bean counters and the number crunchers run the business, editors and publishers have to feed the maw of the mighty bottom line—and that doesn’t tolerate quirkiness, chances, “make-books,” or anything else but "guarantees." It’s a system that has been stifling the creativity of editors for years. And I speak from experience, shaking my head in disbelief at some of the great books I've seen editors forced to turn down over the years.
e) Of course, this economic downturn may turn out to be worse than those caused by 9/11 or the Gulf War in the early 1990s. If this one is truly different, and the economy doesn’t bounce back in a year or two, then I don’t know where the hell publishing is headed. That’s when I call my uncle and start selling insurance…
f) I think the thing that will save publishing may be the thing that kills the book-—an electronic reader priced under $50. When the readers become so cheap, and user friendly (Steve Jobs, is there an iReader in our future?), then publishers will reach the tipping point where they sell more books electronically than they do in paper. Even though the physical book is a pretty perfect piece of technology (lightweight, portable, doesn’t need a power source, high contrast type, relatively inexpensive, etc.), it is expensive to produce in large quantities, uses up a lot of resources (paper, energy), and then takes up a lot of space requiring large warehouses, large trucks, and a lot of people to move them from one place to another. If books are delivered electronically, PPB costs will vanish for those copies, as will shipping and warehousing. It will put a lot of truck drivers and box makers and warehouse workers out of jobs, but it will increase profitability to a point this industry probably hasn’t seen in over 30 years, if ever. Only time will tell if I’m right.
There is no electronic reader that will replace books for me. Every book I buy is a piece of art, each page an exploration. A reader is nothing more than a thing to read words on. For me, that can never replace a book.
Debbie,
It's true, the music industry didn't "die" it just became less powerful and more in the hands of the artists. It's now equally legitimate to start an indie band, as it is to go with a record label. In fact, most bands prefer to AVOID the labels.
I think all the squawking is because maybe, just maybe, this is about to happen in the publishing industry. What will people do when others don't derive all their meaning in life from whether or not Random House will publish them?
There is a lot of ego wrapped up in this, methinks.
So here I am, writing what should be a great narrative non-fiction: completely unique idea, no one has ever done what this person is doing, positive/inspiring story, deep yet funny, etc. Better yet, people following this person's story are waiting for the book to show up.
However, I've just about given up on finding an agent - self-publishing is looking like a good option.
Should I call it my indie book?
sheepwriter
Hi. I am new to this web sight and was reading all the comments and I am a little discouraged. I am presently writing a non-fiction book about seniors/health/and fun. It is based on my well read column that I have been writing for over a year for a local newspaper. The positive comments have encouraged me to begin putting it all in a book. You are scaring me. It all sounds so hopeless and unobtainable! However, I do have a passion for what I am writing and I do believe I have the largest audience in America that will like reading it - the over 55 group. I have been in the fitness business for 28 of those 77 years, and actually have had fun keeping in shape and helping others. I definitely will keep writing and begin searching for the perfect publisher.
Yes it all will change.
In under ten years, no book will be made until a customer wants it - simple. Whether they net it to your kindel or net it to the book on demand machine at your local bookstore.
Publishers will only promote big names, looking for the big profit. Midlist authors (maybe higher?) and down will find themselves back among the great unwashed - those of us that were racing toward the castle walls of the Great Houses of Publishing with our ladders and gifts - some would say spears.
I'm saying this again and again to any writer that will listen - if you can think out of the box in terms of what a book should and shouldn't be, if you're willing to allow your words to do more than lie on a page, then I believe there is another market emerging for you to consider. It stands empty right now because up till now, no one thought the book could ever be different then just words on a page.
If you live by the rule, "If it was good enough for my daddy, it's good enough for me," then this direction is not for you. But if you can say, "It was good enough for my daddy but it's not good enough for me," then I think you should look into this new market…
It’s called Hyper-Serializations.
This field will explode first within short fiction, flash fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and children’s books. Once the Kindel recognizes - if they haven't already - what's coming, they will adapt the kindle to this new form of reading.
The long novel will be more difficult, do to the amount of work that Hyper-serializing it will take. But many writers may start to discover this - short hyper-serialized fiction brings a bigger payday, for it draws readers to other works of the author.
Look into it. Early adopters sometimes (and sometimes not) have an advantage.
For what it’s worth.