On Publishing
On Publishing Prose Fiction: Questions and Answers
Why do you separate the act of publishing fiction from the act of writing it?
Because they are two entirely different worlds. Most first-time writers are woefully unaware of the organization of the publishing industry and how small their chances are of publication through traditional channels. So small are these chances that it is difficult to understand how a rational person would waste thousands of hours of his life for nothing more likely than serial rejection and frustration. If writing fiction is a therapeutic exercise or a pleasurable pastime, such as making scale models of buildings with toothpicks, then it makes sense to persevere. If it is done to be read, to have a literary reputation and/or to make money, then a realistic assessment of even partial success would reduce dramatically the population of aspiring writers which, as is noted below, would not be a bad thing.
Aren’t you being excessively negative? Many thousands of books are published every year.
In 2004 it is estimated that 195,000 books were published. That is the good news. The bad news is that the vast bulk of these were non-fiction. Of the fiction that is published only a handful of best-sellers turn a profit and provide a living for the writer. The rest sell only a few thousand copies and lose money. This increasingly winner-take-all phenomenon is reflected in the evolution of the industry: In 1980 there were seventy-nine publishers in Manhattan. Twenty years later there were five, of which three were owned by giant media corporations. The survivors are bottom line operations that view the novel as a commodity – not a work of art. They have cut their costs by outsourcing editorial services to freelance editors here and in India, thereby avoiding the health care and pension costs of permanent staff. Limited marketing resources have been placed on a few likely winners. They have stopped reviewing unsolicited proposals and depend on freelance agents to screen them. Every aspiring author has to find an agent first. Agents, in turn, hire new graduates (or undergraduates) at minimum wages to screen proposals. Turnover is high, and overflowing in trays can be emptied by placing a preprinted rejection note in the self-addressed stamped envelope the writer has to provide -- not unlike the Chinese policy of charging the family of an executed enemy of the state for the bullet that ends his life. Back to Top
Is this sour grapes or an indictment of American capitalism?
Neither. It is merely an attempt to inform the naïve writer of fiction that his chances of getting an unsolicited manuscript published traditionally are less than that of a rich man entering heaven. The forces at work are the familiar ones of supply and demand, demography and technology. On the supply side the number of aspiring novelists is large as word processing technology spreads, incomes and life spans increase, and child rearing decreases. Like home decoration and cooking, many think they know how to write, and everyone has at least one story to tell. On the demand side, young people are reading less extended fiction. They are increasingly consumers of aural-oral and visual media; their reading and writing is restricted to short bursts of unpunctuated text on computer and cell phone screens. The supply of would-be novelists will eventually shrink as the older, more literate generation fades away. A new, low-level equilibrium will then be established. The novel will not be dead, but it will no longer be the locus of intellectual thought and entertainment that it was in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. It will have become a novelty form of entertainment for eccentrics and traditionalists. Print publishing of fiction is not the place to invest your 401k savings.
The odor of sour grapes lingers. Is there really anything wrong with the fiction publishing industry other than the fact that it is in decline?
I am annoyed that it took me so long to figure out that the traditional approach for first-time novelists is largely a waste of time (though not of money), and time is of the essence for a post retirement writer. The standard approach is to submit a query letter, synopsis, sample chapters and self-addressed, stamped envelop to carefully selected agents such as those listed in Writer’s Market. You are told not to pay a reader’s fee or any other kind of up-front payment, as no reputable agent would make such a request. On the surface it seems reasonable A little research quickly points out the flaws with this system. The big problem is that all reputable and effective agents are inundated with proposals that are, for the most part, from semi literate aspirants or from those who have not benefited from the services of a professional editor. The system is clogged with poor craftsmanship which can’t be fixed and/or first drafts that need a great deal of editing and rewriting. The agent’s task of refining this low-grade ore is a costly and tedious exercise that is usually carried out by the new, untrained, low-paid, and high-turnover members of the agent’s staff. In fact, this industry-recommended exercise, for effective agents, leads to only one "hit" in two or three thousand submissions, an exercise hardly worth even a low grade effort. Most successful agents are not accepting unsolicited submissions at all, or get their new clients by referral from old clients, poaching from other agents and from other contacts in the industry -- not from cold submissions.
From the point of view of the first-time writer the odds are
terrible that anyone competent and experienced will ever examine his
work. From the point of view of the publishers and the agents, the
system doesn’t work very well either. They know that all best-selling
authors were once unpublished and aspiring novelists. All are searching
for the new blockbuster since that is what keeps their firms afloat.
Publishers try to jump-start the best-seller process by regularly
betting huge advances and generous advertising budgets on selected
writers whose work, subsequently, does not sell as expected, and they
regularly turn down submissions from new authors that eventually become
best-sellers. The first Harry Potter book was turned down by every
major publisher in London before it was picked up by Bloomsbury for a
small sum, less than $5,000. None of the earlier readers had the
slightest idea of the money making machine they had rejected. If Barry
Cunningham of Bloomsbury had been on vacation and another reader had
examined the proposal, Harry Potter would, according to the author, J.
K. Rowling, ...have remained in the cupboard under the
stairs.
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This must be common knowledge in publishing. What is to be done to improve the process?
Mature and/or declining industries like railroads, textiles and print fiction publishing do not attract the best and the brightest. Remuneration is incredibly low at all levels in publishing. New ideas and analytical skills are lacking. Morale is low. The only serious and innovative piece of writing about fiction publishing that I have seen is by the British author, publisher and literary blog writer, Michael Allen. http://www.michaelallen.me.uk. He has written a quirky, thought-provoking piece with the improbable title On the Survival of Rats in the Slush Pile. (Free copies can be downloaded at http://www.kingsfieldpublications.co.uk). Mr. Allen has taken the recent analytical work of Dr. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who specializes in the risks of unpredicted rare events (he calls them black swans), and has combined the insights therein with his own lifelong experience as a writer and publisher of fiction. (Taleb’s 2004 paper Fooled by Success: the Black Swan and the Arts is available at http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com.)
Allen sees the Harry Potter phenomenon, and others like it, as an unpredicted rare event, a black swan in the publishing world. They are random occurrences whose appearance cannot be explained by publishers and agents and, hence, are not predictable. He maintains that a fundamental problem with management thinking in the world of print fiction is that they think they can pick the big winners in advance and that, somehow, the current approach to screening proposals works, after a fashion. Allen goes on to demolish these arguments and builds a persuasive case for the huge role that chance currently plays in literary success. Publishers hate this message because it means their successes are not due to their special brilliance at picking winners. (nor are their failures a sign of incompetence). Popular writers hate it (not J.K. Rowling) because it means that their success is not because they are somehow superior to those who have not been chosen. Losers love the concept because a major implication is that there are numerous black swan authors among the thousands who, by chance, are not chosen, or who are so discouraged by rejection that they give up and never produce the black swan of which they are capable.Back to Top
An interesting diagnosis, but what are the practical suggestions?
The first is that publishers should eschew their current irrational behavior of giving a few enormous advances to promising writers. If the million dollar advances which make such a splash in the publishing world, but rarely produce a black swan, were broken up into the sort of $5,000 advance that J.K. Rowling got for her first Harry Potter novel, then many more, equally competent, and equally professional writers would get a chance at the brass ring. The black swans paddling around in the slush piles would appear with greater frequency, and those unborn because of despair might come forth as well. As long as publishing management refuses to recognize the essential randomness of literary success, this will not happen.
Allen then makes the case for upgrading the quality of those who review submissions by paying salaries that will attract experienced, trained readers. He sees no alternative to an up-front reader’s fee ($500 to $1000) to be paid by the aspiring writer. There are a host of scam artists and literary bottom feeders who will gladly take your money and give you little or nothing in return. The UK-based Literary Consultancy, supported by the Arts Council, hires experienced professionals and will, for $700, give a detailed report on the strengths and weaknesses of the manuscript. If they like your work they will recommend it to one of the literary agencies with whom it has links. Their present referral rate is one in twenty which isn’t bad, given the alternative. Presumably the up-front fee has the salutary effect of sobering up the aspiring writer. As long as a submission has little or no up-front financial cost, the writer can take a "what the hell" attitude, submit a rough first draft, and hope that he hits the lottery. Laying out cash forces him to assess his chances realistically, and that is something writers are famous for avoiding.
Finally, Allen makes the case to which I resonate. He recommends the so called pro-am approach to writing novels. A pro-am is one who works in a particular field as an amateur, but who nonetheless works to professional standards. (An am-am would be an amateur working to amateur standards.) The pro-am writer is not foolish enough to think he can make a substantial income from writing, let alone produce a black swan. The great attractiveness of this approach to writing is that the current, soul-destroying, winner-take-all approach to publishing can be completely bypassed by making use of the new Print on Demand (POD) publishing technology and the power of the internet for direct marketing.Back to Top
How does POD publishing work?
It is a form of self-publishing that takes advantage of the latest technology in printing and binding. Machines have been developed that read the digital file of the cover and text and print, glue and bind a single volume to commercial standards in a few seconds. This makes it possible to produce only those copies of the novel for which there is a demand. This precludes the need for a minimum print run of 1000 volumes that would cost several thousands of dollars. The POD publisher provides graphic arts services for the cover design and the interior formatting. He also provides a point of sales through a secure website, displays the author’s works on his website and makes regular royalty payments. The POD publisher also obtains a bar code and registers the novel for sale at Amazon.com and other international book distributors. The pro-am author can see his manuscript as a finished book in about two months -- not the year or two that traditional publishing requires. A final benefit of POD publishing is that the contract is not exclusive and may be cancelled with 30 days notice. The author keeps all of the rights to the novel and can sell it through any channel that he cares to. Back to Top
What is the downside?
The downside is that the unit cost per volume is about 25 percent higher than offset printing, and that most POD publishers make their money from the set-up charges for printing any manuscript submitted -- not from subsequent sales of books. This latter characteristic is a serious potential problem for the pro-am writer since his work is published and offered for sale with that of the am-ams. Fortunately, there are two POD publishers who insist on professionally edited manuscripts, and actually make money from the sale of books. They, however, make no attempt to pick winners or black swans. Any work that approaches professional standards is accepted. This begins to sound like the level playing field that Michael Allen would like to see. The problem of marketing and the fact that POD books are not on bookstore shelves (they can be ordered through bookstores or Amazon.com) is less of a problem in the sense that most traditionally published novels have no marketing budget, never get reviewed, are never stocked in bookstores, and disappear quietly into the remainder bin a few months after publication. The bitterness of the unpublished writer is matched by that of the briefly euphoric published writer of modest sales (say 3,000) who, after his second book, is dropped by his publisher and then his agent.Back to Top
So how do the books get sold?
The books of established, best-selling authors and newly discovered black swans are sold by the millions at huge discounts at Wal Mart and Costco. The chain bookstores do most of the rest. POD books do not get to any of these outlets. Their only hope is internet sales, direct from the printer to the purchaser. Fortunately for the pro-am writer, the internet is increasingly where the literary action is. The New York Review of Books, the New York Times Book Review and the Times Literary Supplement no longer have a monopoly as taste makers and book chat people. There are scores of literary blogs on the internet to appeal to a wide range of tastes. They and other outlets review and push the works of a much greater range of fiction than the traditional print outlets. Readers are beginning to learn that their search for a good book need not begin at Costco, Wal Mart or Borders, where the selection is increasingly limited and determined by mega sales potential. A pro-am writer who sells 3,000 books on the internet is a success in the sense that he is being read and can actually make money at a level of sales that no commercial publisher could. Increasingly, agents and publishers are trolling the internet to see who is selling what without their assistance. A number of authors (John Grisham for one) have been "discovered" after a successful self-publishing end run around the industry.Back to Top
Are there any other technological breakthroughs on the horizon?
One of the factors driving traditional print fiction in the winner-take-all direction is that offset printing technology is subject to scale economies. The unit cost of a million book run is much less than a 500 book run. POD technology is cheap only in that it is direct sale, print-on-demand and avoids the nasty problems of retail markups, warehousing, remainders and returns from bookstores. Book prices (including POD prices) are currently too high for many readers who wait for a library copy or search the remainder bins and used book stores for bargains. A substantial reduction in production costs and book prices would certainly expand sales. There are two new developments that could do this: audio books and e-books.
Audio books are particularly good for people with long commutes and older people who have trouble with their eyesight. iPod technology makes it possible to store and play many hours of music or voice recording. These recordings can, for a fee, be directly down-loaded from digital files as is currently being done in the music industry. What works for music will surely work for novels. Mr. Gutenburg’s invention put the copyists out of business in the fifteenth century, and took us away from oral story telling. The iPod and audio books will take certain segments of the public back to the circle around the campfire.
The e-book received a great deal of hype when it first appeared ten years ago. The idea was to store the text of a novel on a compact disc and read it on your computer screen or in a portable hand-held device. The concept took hold, but not as rapidly as expected. Those who read novels the most are the older generation and they prefer the familiar feel and look and smell of 500-year-old print technology. Nevertheless, these people are passing on, and a new generation of readers is comfortable with text on a lighted screen, text that can be magnified for tired eyes. A modest library can now be stored on the various memory devices coming onto the market. A huge benefit of this technology is that the text of a book can be transmitted instantaneously for little cost to almost anywhere in the world. Postage, handling, transport, theft, even the banning by authorities can be avoided. Then too, there is no paper, printing or binding, only a digital signal from seller to buyer. This will cut the purchase price of a novel length story to what the seller is willing to take in a competitive market.
My POD publisher, Llumina Press, offers the e-book option as well. For me this is an interesting development since there will be a potential market for Punjab Nights in India, Pakistan, Malaysia and the UK. Advertisement in local newspapers, with the Llumina web site referenced, will give them access to the novel instantly and at a greatly reduced price without affecting the profits to author and publisher. Who needs a bookstore any more?Back to Top