The Publishing Death Spiral

[sleigh]

Via the ever-vigilant ysabetwordsmith, a post from Norman Spinrad explaining the publishing death spiral.

Here's the nutshell, in Norman's own words:

Let’s say that some chain has ordered 10,000 copies of a novel, sold 8000 copies, and returned 2000, a really excellent sell-through of 80%. So they order to net on the author’s next novel, meaning 8000 copies. And let’s even say they still have an 80% sell-through of 6400 books, so they order 6400 copies of the next book, and sell 5120....

You see where this mathematical regression is going, don’t you? Sooner or later right down the willy-hole to an unpublishablity that has nothing at all to do with the literary quality of a writer’s work, or the loyalty of a reasonable body of would-be readers, or even the passionate support of an editor below the very top of the corporate pyramid.

Read the whole post, though, since it's entertaining and does a vastly better job of explaining his reasoning as to why so many writers have to resort to pseudonyms after three or four books...

What do you think? Is the American model of publishing broken?

Comments

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

I can foresee a bookstore that keeps only 'sample' books on the shelves, no more than one of each: the cover, with maybe a short excerpt. (Yes, you could accomplish the same thing with a bunch of terminal kiosks that show you the cover, the quotes, and an excerpt). You don't buy the sample; it's only for browsing. You decide what book you want, and a printer in the back, connected to the various publishers, prints out the selected book in a few minutes, in MMPB or TPB format, or Ebook if you bring in your reader. It's up at the front desk shortly for you to pick up.

Hardcovers will be only for libraries and collectors (which is pretty much the case now anyway.)

Combine this with a coffee shop atmosphere (which some bookstores are already doing) and perhaps 'extra' enticements like readings, interviews, writing groups, etc. and it wouldn't have to be a 'sucky' experience. But certainly a different one than the current model.

Even with this model, though, you still have the 'visibility' issue. With no reason for a book to go OP, the shelves become more and more packed... so the bookstores themselves would start pulling the 'old' books that are selling one or two copies a quarter in favor of those selling more. But: you should be able to walk into the bookstore and order one of those 'old' books as long as you know author and title -- or you could find an author you like and order every one of his/her back titles.

I suspect that if brick-and-mortar bookstores are going to survive, they're heading for something along those lines -- or toward something entirely different I can't foresee that works better.

But I doubt that they'll survive in their current form. Someone who actually runs a bookstore and knows the economics would be better able to predict how the bottom line changes once there's no more strip-and-return policy as with the current distribution model.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

"With no reason for a book to go OP, the shelves become more and more packed..."

Think about this more generally. Forget the shelves -- choice becomes more and more. Instead of having to compete with the books now in print, you're going to have to compete with every book ever written.

B