63 Comments

I just read this article.... I loved your insights here!!!! Now I'm super curious about all of your secrets.... Do let us know if and when someone pays you to release them to the public 😄

Expand full comment

You say too many books are published and the market is saturated. In other contexts, I've heard you discuss your time as an agent when you felt like really good books that normally would've gotten published, weren't. Is the problem what's getting published to oversaturate the market?

Expand full comment

Yes, it is. A quick look around Barnes & Noble will make your eyes hurt because the covers are so similar that they bleed into each other.

Expand full comment

Hi!

> Book publishing has no scarcity, and scarcity is what sells. I have one big idea to help solve this, but…that is my secret sauce.

Can you expand here on what you mean by "scarcity" sells? I'm thinking analogously to something like limited edition vinyl pressings in the recording industry. Is that the kind of scarcity you are referring to?

Expand full comment

It is marketing 101 in consumer behavior. If people think something is selling out, they will jump on it. We have seen this with brands who do "drops": a limited qty of a collection that is not available once it sells out. Or is it? It is all in the marketing. In book publishing, there is no urgency to buy most books bc we know they'll always be available.

Expand full comment

Excellent as always. Thanks for your always-thorough takes, Kathleen. Sound and helpful info for authors.

Expand full comment

Terrific piece. Smart, real and insightful. Thank you for writing!

Expand full comment

I couldn't get further in that article than the "only five books" claim when it popped up in my feed. I thought, what you're saying is, there are five spots open to new authors! Wow! Great! I'm a glass half full kind of person. The journalist is clearly a pessimist.

Expand full comment

Great piece and thanks for mentioning A Mighty Blaze! (I have a show called The Thoughtful Bro on AMB).

Expand full comment

So many nuggets of wisdom and clarity here. Thank you!

Expand full comment

Best article I've read so far on the subject. A lot of food for thought for me as a debut author.

Expand full comment

Thanks so much.

Expand full comment

Thank you for all of this, but this in particular: We live in a society where preorders are impossible because consumers want what they want when they want it. Preorder campaigns rarely equate to meaningful sales. Let’s stop torturing authors with this task. Low preorders aren’t a precursor for bad sales.

Expand full comment

Congrats on reaching 10K subscribers! I think that speaks to how opaque the rest of the publishing industry is and how we so need this honest take on how it all really works.

Expand full comment

Thank you :)

Expand full comment

Thank you for this! Most of the news on publishing is so bleak - great to see a proper take.

Expand full comment

Thank you!

Expand full comment

I would love to hear more about your preorder opinion in future issue! 😊

Expand full comment

It’s the worst way to take the temperature of a book. I’ll write about it more.

Expand full comment

Thank you for this helpful information!

Expand full comment

This is so funny because I literally read the article this morning & found it extremely disheartening!

Thanks for the clarification!

Expand full comment

This is such an insightful post--I always learn so much from you! It also brought back memories of when I worked in publishing in the early 2000s. I remember going to the lunchroom to find ARCs stacked all over after they'd cleaned out the book room. I still have some of them on my shelves. Thanks for all that you do.

Expand full comment

Thanks so much. I needed to hear this today.

Expand full comment