As a writer who finished the first draft of their first (complete) novel, who also has zero social media presence, & no real writer community, I am overwhelmed by what I should do next, apart from working on my novel.
I know authors are expected to help market their own books, and I get that. But what do the big five publishers DO THAT ACTUALLY SELLS BOOKS by unknown authors? (I suppose it's likely to vary depending on the type of book, but let's take adult literary fiction as an example.)
It sounds like most things don't actually sell books - Goodreads giveaways, advertising, books signing events, etc. What DOES sell them, and which things are publishers likely to do for an unknown author? Anything? 😂
But publishing company employees' efforts are necessarily very limited if each book's marketing budget is miniscule. There's only so much they can do.
So, with that limited budget, what does the publishing company do that actually does sell books that they don't anticipate being huge bestsellers (because they're not written by an established name)?
The root of publishing problem is in what you said: "most of the revenue comes from very few books". Most publisher do not have the gift to find gems and help them grow, so they rely on "sure bets", i.e., big name memoirs, big name authors, expose, etc. , crime novels, sappy romance or the books on the margins that would satisfy the bleeding edge critics. Meanwhile, there are a lot of junky, half baked books out there, creating noise. Good stories, well told who are not best sellers, never get a chance. A good publisher with a small but good team can (or should) make money from a book that sell 20,000 copies. But that require lots of work. So I agree, to change someone got to start from scratch.
Kathleen this might not fit here but what do you think is the best window to start pushing pre-orders for an indie published book? Thanks! And I just referred a client to you for a session.
That’s a q for Friday Book Therapy. The short answer is that preorder campaigns largely don’t work, but publishers insist authors do them. The reality is that most people don’t preorder books unless it’s an author they love or a celeb. People want what they want when they want it. They don’t want to wait. There’s no urgency to preorder most books, so I’m not a fan of pushing authors to post the links etc. preorders are not indicative of a book’s success.
I am concerned that as publishers weigh author platform more and more heavily that certain voices will continue to be platformed over others in publishing. Social media is largely pay-to-play now and robust marketing for a book is nearly a full time job on its own. Will this reality mean that most writers who successfully land book deals in traditional publishing are those who are privileged to have the personal financial resources to make it happen?
My question is very narrow. It is well known that most traditional publishers will not pick up a book already self-published. Can you tell me please if the following is true: that they will not pick up even an un-self published book if it has been discussed in the author’s blog. I am just setting up my authors page and want to make sure I am not short-changing my future traditional publishing opportunities. Thanks!
What concern? From an author's point-of-view, the lack of meaningful marketing/publicity support from publishers today (from Big 5 to indie to small presses) that zaps an author's writing time, resources, energy and creativity. Why do publishers today think they can sell a product effectively without advertising it? Even GM, Boeing and Tesla continue to advertise and publicize their products.
Advertising does not sell books. That’s why they don’t do it. When you see big ads for books, it’s mostly because 1) The author paid for it. or 2) The author is big enough that the publisher needed to place ads to placate them. The return on investment for book ads is depressing. Trust me.
Thanks. Very insightful. Great to know! But my concern still resonates if you strike "advertising" from my question and just discuss publicity. Why do today's publishers (in general) shun spearheading publicity for their authors' books? Wouldn't such publicity increase profits?
The media landscape has changed irrevocably. You used to be able to get a few guaranteed big hits with print and broadcast and know you could sell books but audiences have splintered so much that the impact of those prior big hitters - if they are even still covering books in a meaningful way - has lessened considerably and you have to get so many more media hits to reach the same audience size. Plus publicists are working on more books than ever because, as per the comments above, publishers are employing less staff.
Most of them still spearhead publicity for books. The exception is small publishers, who usually don’t have the staff to support publicity efforts because they can’t afford to hire more people. It’s a question authors should ask upfront & do the research. Look at a publisher’s website, pick books similar to yours or in your genre, and Google to see what coverage they got. If they didn’t get much coverage, ask why. A mistake authors make is assuming publishers will go all in on publicity when that’s not always the case.
I'd love your thoughts on how the sales team at Big 5 versus mid-size vs. small press and how they work with major retailers (think B&N or Target), libraries, and independent bookstores. It's especially helpful to understand what the publisher at each size does versus what the author might be expected to do. Also, I'd love your take on book tours and whether it ever pays off.
You don't need a sales team to sell through B&N. They picked up my book and will be setting up reading events for me. Working with them is a lot more efficient and rewarding than calling 2000 indie book stores who do not even answer the phone.
I'm so happy you asked. I have MANY questions (as someone with debut cookbook published by big 5 and working on next). My main question is: how can we change the PR 'launch and leave' model? By which I mean, why do publishers put so much effort and £ into making the book (especially illustrated non-fiction) then PR it for barely a month before moving on to the next book? It seems so inefficient. Why is the business model driven by newness and how can we make it more sustainable? (Thanks. Also fascinated to read your findings on all the other terrific questions asked here)
As an author with a new novel out — and previous releases via a mix of traditional publishers and self-publishing — I understand that we authors are required to perform more and more of the marketing. Believe me. It also takes away from the writing, sadly. But what I’m seeing now, with so much of social media reaching fewer potential followers and readers, is that many authors (both traditionally and self-published) are just skipping right to buying tons of ads on places like Amazon and FB. The more you pay, the more you reach and sell. The problem with this pay-to-play model of course is that few of us authors can afford the huge amount of ad buys required to reach readers or break even. Quality of the work is another issue. As another commenter put it: “Where does this stop?” It’s long past sustainable for anyone, let alone readers inundated with ads already.
I have two concerns about publishing. (I'm coming at this from the perspective of a writer and former management consultant.)
First, the big five publishers appear to be growing more risk averse, despite having more resources from their parent companies to take risks. Big publishing is evolving like the big movie studios - dependent on blockbuster books, brand authors, and story franchises to support the overhead expense of the parent company. (For example, I'm quite sure that somewhere on the financial statement of PRH there is a line item for a Bertelsmann corporate charge.) This results in publishing 'same but different books' rather truly original work. Meanwhile, small presses and hybrids struggle to stay afloat while publishing great books that don't get the visibility they deserve because the big five crowd them out of a duopoly distribution system.
Second, on the creative side, it seems editorial work is getting pushed further and further away from publishers, and mid-list or new authors must pay for editorial work or find a robust writers group. One hundred years ago editors like Max Perkins at Scribners (now part of S&S) worked directly with authors to refine their work. Even as recently as fifty years ago this occurred (Look-up how Cormac McCarthy's career evolved - a path that people in publishing readily admit could not happen today). Then along came the literary agent. Most publishers will not consider unrepresented work or work from authors without an MFA. For the last few decades agents became editors and worked with authors on refining their material, turning acquiring editors at the publishers into book production project managers who dabble in classic prose editing. Now, literary agents are becoming loath to edit an author's work. Enter the manuscript consultant. My concern is - where does this stop? How many non-value add middlemen will this process tolerate?
This is part of a bigger piece I’ll write about publishing myths & truths. A myth is that publishers will only consider authors with MFAs. That’s so far from the truth. I’ve been doing this almost 30 years and haven’t worked with many MFA authors! I’ll address the rest of it in an upcoming newsletter.
Here’s a hard one, and one where I personally struggle. To wit: I *want* to support indie bookstores, abstractly speaking. But we’ve got one giant industry vendor whose convenience and pricing and return policies tend to outstrip everyone else’s, so most of my book purchases go through them. Can you offer any advice (or words of encouragement) on how I could approach this differently?
My local indie bookstore has a great website for online ordering and there's no shipping cost because I pick up. ;) It's worth comparing the prices of books. Don't assume Amazon is always cheaper. Often, there's no price difference between my independent bookstore and Amazon. Sometimes it's a slight difference, and I'm willing/able to pay a little extra to shop at my local bookstore when I'm buying paper books. The bigger the price gap, the harder the decision, of course.
The bigger problem for me is that there's no way to buy e-books at my local bookstore! I have very little space left in my house for physical books. I do use Kobo/Indigo (here in Canada) rather than Amazon, as much as possible. But I wish there was a way to buy e-books from my local independent bookstore.
I do ask for gift cards to my independent bookstore for birthdays/Xmas etc. Maybe that's something you could do, even if you can't manage to *always* buy from there?
As a writer who finished the first draft of their first (complete) novel, who also has zero social media presence, & no real writer community, I am overwhelmed by what I should do next, apart from working on my novel.
Does book publishing feature as much bureaucracy growth as some other areas?
I'm a writer, not a marketer. I can write all day and finish a novella in three months, a novel in six, and then start another one.
As I said, I'm not a marketer, I don't have time to do research or figure out advertising for my books.
That's what most of us need, is that marketing expert.
I would love to hear about your take AI and the publishing industry
I know authors are expected to help market their own books, and I get that. But what do the big five publishers DO THAT ACTUALLY SELLS BOOKS by unknown authors? (I suppose it's likely to vary depending on the type of book, but let's take adult literary fiction as an example.)
It sounds like most things don't actually sell books - Goodreads giveaways, advertising, books signing events, etc. What DOES sell them, and which things are publishers likely to do for an unknown author? Anything? 😂
I want to clarify here that I'm not criticizing the people at publishing companies who do things like design covers and sell books to Barnes & Noble. Those people work hard and get paid shockingly little, as far as I can tell. (The C-suite doesn't seem to suffer from low pay, at least in 2016: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/71505-how-much-top-publishing-executives-earn.html )
But publishing company employees' efforts are necessarily very limited if each book's marketing budget is miniscule. There's only so much they can do.
So, with that limited budget, what does the publishing company do that actually does sell books that they don't anticipate being huge bestsellers (because they're not written by an established name)?
The root of publishing problem is in what you said: "most of the revenue comes from very few books". Most publisher do not have the gift to find gems and help them grow, so they rely on "sure bets", i.e., big name memoirs, big name authors, expose, etc. , crime novels, sappy romance or the books on the margins that would satisfy the bleeding edge critics. Meanwhile, there are a lot of junky, half baked books out there, creating noise. Good stories, well told who are not best sellers, never get a chance. A good publisher with a small but good team can (or should) make money from a book that sell 20,000 copies. But that require lots of work. So I agree, to change someone got to start from scratch.
Kathleen this might not fit here but what do you think is the best window to start pushing pre-orders for an indie published book? Thanks! And I just referred a client to you for a session.
That’s a q for Friday Book Therapy. The short answer is that preorder campaigns largely don’t work, but publishers insist authors do them. The reality is that most people don’t preorder books unless it’s an author they love or a celeb. People want what they want when they want it. They don’t want to wait. There’s no urgency to preorder most books, so I’m not a fan of pushing authors to post the links etc. preorders are not indicative of a book’s success.
thanks!
I am concerned that as publishers weigh author platform more and more heavily that certain voices will continue to be platformed over others in publishing. Social media is largely pay-to-play now and robust marketing for a book is nearly a full time job on its own. Will this reality mean that most writers who successfully land book deals in traditional publishing are those who are privileged to have the personal financial resources to make it happen?
My question is very narrow. It is well known that most traditional publishers will not pick up a book already self-published. Can you tell me please if the following is true: that they will not pick up even an un-self published book if it has been discussed in the author’s blog. I am just setting up my authors page and want to make sure I am not short-changing my future traditional publishing opportunities. Thanks!
That’s 100% false.
Two letters- AI.
What concern? From an author's point-of-view, the lack of meaningful marketing/publicity support from publishers today (from Big 5 to indie to small presses) that zaps an author's writing time, resources, energy and creativity. Why do publishers today think they can sell a product effectively without advertising it? Even GM, Boeing and Tesla continue to advertise and publicize their products.
Advertising does not sell books. That’s why they don’t do it. When you see big ads for books, it’s mostly because 1) The author paid for it. or 2) The author is big enough that the publisher needed to place ads to placate them. The return on investment for book ads is depressing. Trust me.
Thanks. Very insightful. Great to know! But my concern still resonates if you strike "advertising" from my question and just discuss publicity. Why do today's publishers (in general) shun spearheading publicity for their authors' books? Wouldn't such publicity increase profits?
The media landscape has changed irrevocably. You used to be able to get a few guaranteed big hits with print and broadcast and know you could sell books but audiences have splintered so much that the impact of those prior big hitters - if they are even still covering books in a meaningful way - has lessened considerably and you have to get so many more media hits to reach the same audience size. Plus publicists are working on more books than ever because, as per the comments above, publishers are employing less staff.
Most of them still spearhead publicity for books. The exception is small publishers, who usually don’t have the staff to support publicity efforts because they can’t afford to hire more people. It’s a question authors should ask upfront & do the research. Look at a publisher’s website, pick books similar to yours or in your genre, and Google to see what coverage they got. If they didn’t get much coverage, ask why. A mistake authors make is assuming publishers will go all in on publicity when that’s not always the case.
This is such a relief to hear.
I'd love your thoughts on how the sales team at Big 5 versus mid-size vs. small press and how they work with major retailers (think B&N or Target), libraries, and independent bookstores. It's especially helpful to understand what the publisher at each size does versus what the author might be expected to do. Also, I'd love your take on book tours and whether it ever pays off.
You don't need a sales team to sell through B&N. They picked up my book and will be setting up reading events for me. Working with them is a lot more efficient and rewarding than calling 2000 indie book stores who do not even answer the phone.
I'm so happy you asked. I have MANY questions (as someone with debut cookbook published by big 5 and working on next). My main question is: how can we change the PR 'launch and leave' model? By which I mean, why do publishers put so much effort and £ into making the book (especially illustrated non-fiction) then PR it for barely a month before moving on to the next book? It seems so inefficient. Why is the business model driven by newness and how can we make it more sustainable? (Thanks. Also fascinated to read your findings on all the other terrific questions asked here)
Maybe publishers need to start investing in PR and marketing staff devoted to backlist?
A lot of them already do!
As an author with a new novel out — and previous releases via a mix of traditional publishers and self-publishing — I understand that we authors are required to perform more and more of the marketing. Believe me. It also takes away from the writing, sadly. But what I’m seeing now, with so much of social media reaching fewer potential followers and readers, is that many authors (both traditionally and self-published) are just skipping right to buying tons of ads on places like Amazon and FB. The more you pay, the more you reach and sell. The problem with this pay-to-play model of course is that few of us authors can afford the huge amount of ad buys required to reach readers or break even. Quality of the work is another issue. As another commenter put it: “Where does this stop?” It’s long past sustainable for anyone, let alone readers inundated with ads already.
I have two concerns about publishing. (I'm coming at this from the perspective of a writer and former management consultant.)
First, the big five publishers appear to be growing more risk averse, despite having more resources from their parent companies to take risks. Big publishing is evolving like the big movie studios - dependent on blockbuster books, brand authors, and story franchises to support the overhead expense of the parent company. (For example, I'm quite sure that somewhere on the financial statement of PRH there is a line item for a Bertelsmann corporate charge.) This results in publishing 'same but different books' rather truly original work. Meanwhile, small presses and hybrids struggle to stay afloat while publishing great books that don't get the visibility they deserve because the big five crowd them out of a duopoly distribution system.
Second, on the creative side, it seems editorial work is getting pushed further and further away from publishers, and mid-list or new authors must pay for editorial work or find a robust writers group. One hundred years ago editors like Max Perkins at Scribners (now part of S&S) worked directly with authors to refine their work. Even as recently as fifty years ago this occurred (Look-up how Cormac McCarthy's career evolved - a path that people in publishing readily admit could not happen today). Then along came the literary agent. Most publishers will not consider unrepresented work or work from authors without an MFA. For the last few decades agents became editors and worked with authors on refining their material, turning acquiring editors at the publishers into book production project managers who dabble in classic prose editing. Now, literary agents are becoming loath to edit an author's work. Enter the manuscript consultant. My concern is - where does this stop? How many non-value add middlemen will this process tolerate?
This is part of a bigger piece I’ll write about publishing myths & truths. A myth is that publishers will only consider authors with MFAs. That’s so far from the truth. I’ve been doing this almost 30 years and haven’t worked with many MFA authors! I’ll address the rest of it in an upcoming newsletter.
Here’s a hard one, and one where I personally struggle. To wit: I *want* to support indie bookstores, abstractly speaking. But we’ve got one giant industry vendor whose convenience and pricing and return policies tend to outstrip everyone else’s, so most of my book purchases go through them. Can you offer any advice (or words of encouragement) on how I could approach this differently?
My local indie bookstore has a great website for online ordering and there's no shipping cost because I pick up. ;) It's worth comparing the prices of books. Don't assume Amazon is always cheaper. Often, there's no price difference between my independent bookstore and Amazon. Sometimes it's a slight difference, and I'm willing/able to pay a little extra to shop at my local bookstore when I'm buying paper books. The bigger the price gap, the harder the decision, of course.
The bigger problem for me is that there's no way to buy e-books at my local bookstore! I have very little space left in my house for physical books. I do use Kobo/Indigo (here in Canada) rather than Amazon, as much as possible. But I wish there was a way to buy e-books from my local independent bookstore.
I do ask for gift cards to my independent bookstore for birthdays/Xmas etc. Maybe that's something you could do, even if you can't manage to *always* buy from there?