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ysabetwordsmith, a post from Norman Spinrad explaining the publishing death spiral.
Here's the nutshell, in Norman's own words:
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?
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?
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So if an author sells 8000 books, it's because 8000 people want to pay the money to read his book -- regardless of whether the printer prints 10,000, 100,000, or 1,000,000, regardless of whether B&N and Borders order 10,000, 100,000, or 1,000,000. And if the author's next book sells 6400 copies, it's because 1600 fewer people wan to read his second book -- again, regardless of whether the printer prints 8000, 10,000, 100,000 or 1,000,000, regardless of whether B&N and Borders order 8000, 10,000, 100,000, or 1,000,000.
Spinrad seems to be saying that customer demand is somehow influenced by how many books the major chains plus Amazon buy. Now there's going to be some noise in the system -- with fewer books in stores they'll be more mismatch between the stores the buyers are in and the stores the books are in -- but is that it? Is that really enough to explain his phenomenon? I just don't buy his argument.
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And I've seen too many fellow writers have novels turned down not (ostensibly) because the publisher didn't like the book, but because sales figures for the last book were low, and therefore the chains won't order in enough copies of the next book, which means that the book will almost certainly tank.
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That's the noise in the system -- the mismatch between which stores have the books on their shelves and which stores have the customers in the aisles -- I mentioned. That certainly has some effect, but how much really these days? Ignoring WalMart and airport bookstores -- places our books will never see the inside of -- and ignoring best sellers, what percentage of books these days are purchased by someone browsing amongst the bookstore shelves? On the Internet, every book has the same amount of visibility, regardless of how many books are printed or ordered. Do people really learn that you've published another book by stumbling on it randomly, or are they paying attention or is a friend who is paying attention telling them...or what? Seems to me that the death of bookstores, as bad as that is for other reasons, is inherently solving this mismatch problem.
And what's replacing that is information-age notions of "visibility." This is what Spinrad's editor was talking about in this paragraph:
"I wish I could help. Power in this day and age in terms of 'cutting edge' fiction has (as I’m sure you’re aware) largely left the hands of conventional publishers. Rather, the guys who are making it now are doing so off of their web presence, having established themselves as counter-culture figures at large on the net."
You want visibility in the 21st century: don't expect bookstores to provide it, do it yourself. Now we can argue about whether this is good or bad for society, but it also solves the mismatch problem.
"And I've seen too many fellow writers have novels turned down not (ostensibly) because the publisher didn't like the book, but because sales figures for the last book were low, and therefore the chains won't order in enough copies of the next book, which means that the book will almost certainly tank."
Another way of saying this is: publishers now realize that they're not very good at predicting which authors are good (where good = good selling), and there's now enough data that they can safely ignore their own biases. It would be better if publishers would also publish books they didn't like because the crowd data indicated that they would sell, but it's not necessarily a bad thing.
The real issue here is the publishing has become a business instead of an industry. Whenever that happens, quality suffers.
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If 8,000 people bought the first book, how is the fact that the chain only bought 8,000 of the second book going to stop those 8,000 people from buying the 8,000 copies if they liked the book? Unless the bookstore automatically returns the last 20% of the books without trying to sell them, that doesn't make sense to me. Sure, if the chain has enough stores, some of those copies might end up at stores that aren't the stores the potential buyers are looking in, but if the chain sells so many that they don't have copies to put on the shelves, aren't they going to order more rather than sending some back?
The problem I see is that the chain store that I shop at never bothers putting any copies of many of the books I want on the shelf. Their SF section has many shelves of Charlaine Harris books, and several shelves of Star Wars and Star Trek tie-in novels, but not a single book from many of the authors I like. I have nothing against Charlaine Harris or Star Wars. Total failure of books to appear on the shelves causes people to not know they exist, which has to affect sales for most authors.
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After the massive re-purchasing of publishers, the new owners were more interested in choosing only those titles most likely to be serious money-makers, which limits how much range you can allow for. There was also a new dynamic between publishers and chain bookstores, with rack allowances and special deals narrowing which books would make it to the shelves.
So I'd say Spinrad's example of the Death Spiral is missing the main point of the shift - it's not that the books are selling fewer copies once they make it to the shelf, it's that most of them don't make it there at all.
Or at least, that's the way it was shaping up a few years ago. Nowadays with online booksellers moving almost as many books as the brick-and-mortar ones used to, and with ebooks coming into focus now that there are readers people can both use and afford, we have an unprecedented period of selection and access to enjoy - along with the chaos of too many choices and questionable quality control to deal with.
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You need more books in the brick-and-mortar stores than potential readers -- because otherwise the browsers never find you, as you point out in the second paragraph. It's different with the online purveyors: there, all you need is a page on the book and at least one copy in the warehouse.
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Several years ago, I had an interesting conversation with one of the employees of a now defunct local Waldenbooks store. She said that her store's policy was to order half as many books as they'd initially sold when they ran out of copies of a book. It they'd ordered and sold twenty copies, they'd replace them with ten copies. If they'd only bought and sold two, then those two would be replaced with one and that one wouldn't be replaced at all when it sold.
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Yes. They're not going to print 50,000 copies of a book with 5,000 pre-orders. Paper is expensive.
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That's why they offer co-op dollars. Why they pay for front-of-store display, or push backlist-filled endcaps with the new hardcover. Why, when the buyer at Barnes and Noble says, "We don't like this cover," the publisher changes the gorram cover.
There's no question that a typical, new-to-this-author reader needs to see a book more than once before deciding to buy it.
Online sales are big, and ebook sales are growing, so this dynamic is very likely to change in the next several years. But for now, it's still "get eyeballs" and the place to get eyeballs is the bookstores.
Bookstores offer "order it and we'll ship it to you" nowadays, but usually if a person is in a bookstore, it's because they want a book right now, not next week. Those are the sales publishers focus on.
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Most stores put out a number relative to what they think will sell; many copies of a bestseller's book, and fewer of a new author's. But usually they put out at least three copies of something new. (I'm talking chain stores here; indies may have different concerns.)
Paperbacks have a standard flow: X copies on display until they either sell out or 3 months have passed, whichever comes first. Any leftovers get stripped and claim credit from the publisher.
Most of the chain stores have central ordering, with limited options for a local manager to order what is hot in her particular store/region. If one B&N gets three copies of Great New Book, then all B&Ns will get three copies (or some proportionate number relative to their size) of Great New Book.
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They also don't seem to get the same items as the the store an hour east of me. That store has a much better selection and I know I'm not the only one who thinks so.
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It's different in technical non-fiction, I think.
Definitely agree with your last paragraph. "We'll order it and ship it for you" is a futile attempt to compete with Amazon.
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Overnight is the new same day.
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Yes, yes, and yes.
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Print on demand is the end state here, and it's not more than a few year away for trade paperbacks.
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Kind of a sucky bookstore experience.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Bookstore managers of my acquaintance have confessed to manipulating the ordering chain. And backlist is generally up to the local manager.
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I haven't set foot in a bookstore (other than for friends' readings and signings) in years. I'm all about the online ordering. I've just gotten used to waiting a few days. I never pay for shipping.
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Nonprofit scholarly publishers don't have the same problem. My current employer typically aims at three years' worth of stock on reprints, or on four-color books (the most expensive in terms of makeready costs). We use POD for things that move fewer than 50 copies/year.
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Cars are similar. The Toyota Camry is not the same as the Hyundai Sonata, though they are both competing mid-size sedans. The difference between books and cars, though, is numbers of choices. There are far more categories of books than categories of car, and far more selections in a category of books than in a category of motor vehicle.
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