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

[barbarienne.livejournal.com]

Definitely different in technical (or other scholarly) nonfiction. I worked for one of the giant trade houses for 14 years, and now I work for a university press. Entirely different sales approaches.

I'm staggered that at the scholarly press we have 100% sell-through on some books! An 80% sell-through at a trade press is considered amazing. Budgets at my current employer work assume a very high sell-through. Budgets at my previous employer assumed a 55% sell-through.