A rather good piece at the Walrus has the literature commentariat, such as it is, talking. The piece argues that the sales track of books plays an overwhelmingly important role in the way books are bought and marketed. It has engendered several other takes, such as discussing how retailers over-rely on the sales track as well, how authors are often driven from their best work by the sales track, and, in my opinion, the best piece: Lincoln Michel on how the customers of publishers are not readers. I think this piece illuminates one of the hidden issues of the industry.
Book publishers apparently do not know how to sell books. That, in a country that sells about a billion versions of colored carbonated flavor water, seems like a weird thing to say about a multi-billion dollar industry but it is apparently true. As a result, the Walrus article points out, sales are driven by two things: the previous sales track of the author and how large was the advance, with this being heavily influenced by the sales track. They pour money and attention into the books they paid the most for in the hopes that they will become a huge hit, and spend no time on building an author’s career as there is no money in that work. All of this is a simplification of the article, but it is directionally correct.
It is not, then, that publishers spend too much attention to the sales track. It is that they do not know how to market their products. Part of the problem, as Michel points out, is that they are not selling to readers but to book sellers. Unlike, say, movies, the main marketing of books is to the buyers at stores and chains. Publishers have decided that the way to sell books is to sell the sellers. And why that is a part of the process, surely, it seems a bit off that they see the primary customers as booksellers and not book readers. And since they cannot reach readers, they cannot build authors. Boom or bust seems to be a natural outgrowth of that mindset.
I could be all wrong about this. I am, after all, a failed writer, as it says on the door. But the focus on selling to sellers rather than selling to readers seems to be a large part of the problem. If you cannot reach readers, then you have less space for building author careers, building loyalty to your brands (no one buys a book, for example, based on who publishes it yet people have serious opinions about the difference between Coke and Pepsi), or any sense of how readers react to your marketing. If you cannot have a decent sense of how many books a mid-range piece will sell, you cannot build a business out of selling mid-range successes. You are essentially left depending on blockbusters — blockbusters that you don’t really know how to generate. Again, I might be wrong, but I suspect there is space here for a clever publisher to do things differently.
Weekly Word Count
Pretty much nothing. Been editing and plotting, but I did submit, at the suggestion of people in my writing group, the play to two regional competitions. I will not win, of course (again: failed writer), but I might get some useful feedback.
Have a great weekend, everyone.
Hello and Happy Friday ! You state that you are a failed writer but this is untrue. You produce a cohesive piece but it is more or less about what people are interested in and want to read. Who would thought Kamala Harris's book would hit #1 ? I'd never buy that book or even read it. Keep at it, if nothing else it brings pen to paper and may ease the mind.