Number Shock

In yesterday's NYT there was an article about George Pelecanos. It's an excellent portrait of a writer I have  admired for years for never sacrificing his characters for gratuitous action - which is so easy to do in suspense.

What floored me about the article were the sales figures reported.

"So far, that critical acclaim has failed to translate into the kind of sales that Mr. Pelecanos’s publisher, Little, Brown, believes he deserves. According to Nielsen BookScan, none of his last five books have sold more than 13,000 copies in hardcover; Little, Brown contends that the figures range from 17,000 to 21,000 copies."

Based on name recognition alone I would have guessed his hardcover sales were double or triple that number. Not to mention how great the books are.

But then again, I'm surprised that I'm surprised.

When we, as an industry, continue to rely on the old ways of doing business and refuse to make any real marketing and advertising breakthroughs as to how we publicize books and incentivize readers - things aren't going to change for more than a tiny handful of books each year.

The most shocking thing I heard this year was from a bestselling author who reported about a meeting with his publishing company. This author's sales are consistently around 75,000 hardcovers and ten times that in mass market. And while those are terrific numbers they have held steady at that same level for the last few books.

So he suggested at this meeting that they shake things up, try a few new things, look at a different kind of marketing/coop/advertising mix - push his books up to the next level.

Their answer was they were satisfied with the numbers and didin't see any need to push harder.

Imagine any other business executive in the world looking at a successful product and saying - "No, these sales are quite enough, thank you."

Or another author whose book took off 9 weeks into its launch. Rather  than the publisher supporting that growth with some marketing/advertising they did nothing contending it was too late but the growth would help paperback when it came out 12 months later. Great, 12 months later when the momentum has vanished.

Imagine any other business executive in the world looking at a product with a sudden growth spurt and not exploiting it. Or a product with good sales but no  growth over the last four years and not calling in the marketing team  -- all with masters degrees and resumes that detail their successes - and the advertising agency and putting the pressure on. Making it clear that without some growth, she might have to switch agencies or make some personnel changes.

 

Oh silly me, I forgot for a moment, the publishing industry doesn't rely on advertising agencies or marketing teams with past successes. I forgot books aren't products. I forgot all the things publishers have told me about how the bookstores tie their hands. I forgot so many things.

Forgive me if I sound bitter, but for years now, we've watched sales stagnate books that we believed in fail time and time again and yet there are no  shake ups, no bold and brilliant moves.

I watched an elderly woman walk up a flight of stairs last night, holding on the banister, taking it slow, making it to the top but not without effort while her much younger son held her arm and slowed his own gait to match hers.

First I thought, how thoughtful.

Next I spent a few seconds regretting I don't have a son and no one will be there to help me up the stairs when I'm that age.

But then I realized the scene was a also a metaphor for our industry.

We do have some smart innovative thinkers in this business. I've met a lot of them. But mostly their jobs are to  prop up a old system instead of... oh... I don't know... finding an elevator instead of taking the stairs?

Comments

[Jeff Nordstedt]

I tell authors all the time to remember that their primary goals and their publisher's primary goals are different.

Authors want their book to succeed. Publishers want their business to succeed.

It would seem that those are the same goals, but have to do what they think is best for their whole list. That isn't always what is best for any given title.

Is that a good situation? No. But authors just need to understand this before getting in to a conventional publishing situation.

[MJ]

Sigh.

[Eric]

This post is exactly why authors need to take marketing into their own hands. It's also why I've decided to self-publish from the start. I love marketing and I can't imagine leaving those activities up to someone else--especially someone who doesn't care about me or my book.

It's true at my day job in the video game industry too. Publishers Just. Don't. Care. Beyond the initial push, why should they work hard to sell the product?

I think in any creative industry the marketing is married to the design/creator, and if it's not, it should be--because the person who cares most about the work is the creator.

But then you've got to get over the fact that a lot of creative people see business and marketing as the enemy. Oh well, I guess that's less competition in the world? ;-)

Hate to be cynical, but it's hard not to be.

[C.M. Mayo]

Just started reading Wall Street Journal reporter Teri Agins' THE END OF FASHION: How Marketing Changed the Clothing Business Forever. Am wondering what parallels and lessons I might find for the book business. Certainly, as a consumer, I've noticed that the clothing business has changed in the past decade, and in many ways along the same lines as the book business.

[David J. Montgomery]

When you see numbers like that, from a writer I consider to be one of the very best in all of literature, it's like a punch to the gut.

Like MJ, I'm surprised -- but I shouldn't be.

[MJ]

Eric - beware - self publishing doesn't solve the problems. Been there/done that. The promblems increase. You are in control but of a much smaller budget. But that's not the real problem - the real problem is distribution. There are too many self pubbed books these days for the bookbuyers to be intertested unless you have a famous last name. Many self pubbed hear that and say - fine I'll sell everything on line. But ony 8% of books are sold online and there's so much competition there too.

Publishing may be limping along but having self published that's like doing it without a cane, wheelchair or crutch.

[Steve Clackson]

and yet we toil.

[Eric]

MJ,

I realize self-pub isn't the magic silver bullet.

But I can't conceive giving up all my control to someone who won't work hard to sell my book, but still takes a majority of the profit.

I won't do 99.9% of the work for only 7% to 15% of the profit. That's theft. My hours spent creating the book, even on minimum wage, are worth more than that.

THAT is the reason to self-publish.

It would kill me to see a publisher not lift a finger to push my book. I'd want to kill someone. I'll take distribution problems... distribution problems seem a fair trade.

[Eric]

My only other point of contention is that distribution, as a problem, seems framed in the wrong way. Is supply ever really a problem? The world has no shortage of supply in books. Demand is the hard part. So distribution is not so much a supply problem as it is a demand problem. Does having distribution create demand? Maybe by accident. Maybe just by a book being in stores everywhere, people buy it. But doesn't that seem like a very limited form of demand? Shouldn't self-marketing authors strive to create more compelling forms of demand for their product?

I just see the whole problem of selling books to be a demand problem, not a supply problem.

[David J. Montgomery]

The problem with self-publishing isn't "distribution problems" -- it's no distribution at all. No distribution, no reviews, no sales, no readers.

There's a reason that every self-publishing success story ends with "and then he sold his book to a real publishing house."

Unless you're a celebrity, or have a book that fills the most exclusive of niches, self-publishing is no solution.

As screwed up as publishing is, the best pathway to success is still to work within the system -- just to work smarter, harder and more efficiently.

[Eric]

David,

That makes sense. It's the old, "Prove you don't need them so that they're willing to work hard for you."

Totally agree on that. Key point being, you have to prove it first.

Yet at the same time, how does anyone ever start a new publisher then?

Can't help but think part of this is the Myth of the Tabula Rasa--that somehow success happens overnight, or blooms out of nothing.

Every plant starts as a small seed. All overweight adults were once small children.

Not to get all philosophical on ya, but I'm sure you see my point.

This is all very similar to problems at my day job in the video game industry. It's all about building something from 'nothing,' and growing leverage.

Writers, like most game developers, simply don't have any leverage--whether they're completely indie or with a publisher.

My thinking is that self-publishing is a way to demonstrate leverage--that you simply don't *need* a publisher. Whether you want one, or eventually cave in and go with one, is another story. :)

[Jason Pinter]

This is true in the same way that if you're a painter, you can sell your work on the street rather than a gallery.

Or if you make jewelry you can sell it out of the trunk of your car rather than a store.

You don't HAVE to do these things, but you'll have a much easier time if you do.

Not to mention I think we're giving publishers a little too much criticism. Many publicists work their asses off, and many publicity campaigns have created huge bestsellers.

Unfortunately not many new avenues have been explored, but I think that's mainly because people don't get into publishing for the money, they get into it for the love. If you're publicist and want to make a mint, you can work at a million PR firms and get paid ten times the salary.

[David J. Montgomery]

"Yet at the same time, how does anyone ever start a new publisher then?"

If there is a successful publishing company that started as a vanity operation, I'm not aware of it. I can think of a couple off the top of my head that began this way in recent years, but they've both failed.

One of the essential problems of self-publishing -- and it's an almost insurmountable barrier -- is that the person who is publishing and selling the work is also the person who created the work. So there is no objective determiner of quality.

If Random House publishes a book, we at least know that it meets a minimum level of quality in terms of writing, content, editing, copyediting, binding and everything else.

If Dave's Books publishes it, you have no expectation of anything. Not anything positive, anyway.

I don't mean to hijack the thread, though, so I'll turn it back over to the original topic. :)

[Douglas Clegg]

M.J. -

This was a great and thought-provoking post. One thing I'm coming to understand -- after too long -- is that the novelist must be a force of nature.

I do believe publishers and novelists have to look for new and different ways to promote and get word out on books.

We're not natural enemies -- both camps want people to read books.

However, I've seen egos get in the way of the communication on both sides of this issue.

Still, as you mentioned, there are some who are not tone deaf to the marketing and promotional stones that are only just being turned over for the first time.

The various ways of marketing books -- including things like Book Trailers (tm) which Circle of Seven Productions and Sheila English do, or AuthorBuzz.com with its reach of more than 300,000 readers of books, or any number of other methods that are still relatively inexpensive when put side by side with a national magazine's print ad costs -- are just the beginning of a different approach to reaching booksellers and potential readers.

I can only hope that more and more publishers and novelists incorporate these and other methods for expanding the readership of books.

The main thing I want from any publisher I work with is open communication, and the understanding that we're both working toward the same goal -- which is bringing readers to books in an active and ongoing way.

That's really all I expect, and still, I don't always get that.

[Joe Wikert]

Hi M.J. I think you raise some excellent points. I added my two cents from the publisher's perspective over on my blog at:
http://jwikert.typepad.com/the_average_joe/2006/07/mj_rose_on_the_.html
(I would have preferred to do a trackback from my blog to yours but I see you don't have trackbacks enabled.)