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]

B&N is notorious for their central ordering, a thing most of the trade houses don't really like, but suffer with. I can't speak for Borders or other chains (are there other chains anymore?), having not heard anything specific about them.

Bookstore managers of my acquaintance have confessed to manipulating the ordering chain. And backlist is generally up to the local manager.