One of my jobs was to help rank our titles A, B and C every season. Our marketing manager once told the editorial department, "Don't ever email me or anyone on my team about a C title."
I was told constantly by my mangers to focus almost all of my efforts on As, and a few select activities for a few select Bs.
There is also something of an exception in Children's publishing in that there are "S&L As," books which don't have a lot of commercial potential, but will review and sell well + win awards in the School and Library channel.
It was very challenging to field calls and emails from B and C list authors, but that was part of the job too.
And... some books are meant to be midlist. All of the marketing in the world won't turn mostly quiet, quirky books into bestsellers.
I've seen a lot of A-list books catch fire, then crash & burn, and some midlist titles sell year after year and become the reliable workhorses of the backlist that are the backbone of the business.
I don't know the answers, and I absolutely know that the system is broken when so many of books in the categories I follow most closely have been on their lists for 100s of weeks
As a marketing company, we love ARCs. The reason is precisely, as you stated, there is a perception that reading an ARC means the reader was chosen. When we place them in select hotels, we hope the guests feel they are given a book on the "must-read" list. For us, it does not mean that books from indie authors are less desirable; it just means that we must work harder to build an awareness campaign and an audience for their book.
“They even numbered them to track who received them and if that person was selling the ARC online.” WAT? They numbered the ARCs they sent out to track them…whoa, a whole new level. As always, Kathleen, thanks for keeping us up to date on the latest in the industry. This is crazy stuff.
I'm a critically successful author whose books have never been chosen to be on the Big list, and although I'm incredibly grateful for the positive reviews, I would have liked some financial recognition as well. I too find it frustrating, and my sales numbers have followed me through to the next book, which has been hard to sell because of ... my sales history, which is a euphemism for shitty numbers. I also don't have a solution here but your post really resonated with me. Thank you!
I’m not smart enough to make the exact correlation, but your words above reminded me of these by Ursula LeGuin when she received her lifetime achievement award in 2014:
“ Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximise corporate profit and advertising revenue is not the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship.”
It’s a great speech. The second paragraph inspired me to write a world where collaboration, equality, and consent are a given. How wondrous would it be for these words to describe the publishing industry as well?
The full is speech below.
“ To the givers of this beautiful reward, my thanks, from the heart. My family, my agents, my editors, know that my being here is their doing as well as my own, and that the beautiful reward is theirs as much as mine. And I rejoice in accepting it for, and sharing it with, all the writers who’ve been excluded from literature for so long — my fellow authors of fantasy and science fiction, writers of the imagination, who for fifty years have watched the beautiful rewards go to the so-called realists.
Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom — poets, visionaries — realists of a larger reality.
Right now, we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximise corporate profit and advertising revenue is not the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship.
Yet I see sales departments given control over editorial. I see my own publishers, in a silly panic of ignorance and greed, charging public libraries for an e-book 6 or 7 times more than they charge customers. We just saw a profiteer try to punish a publisher for disobedience, and writers threatened by corporate fatwa. And I see a lot of us, the producers, who write the books and make the books, accepting this — letting commodity profiteers sell us like deodorant, and tell us what to publish, what to write.
Books aren’t just commodities; the profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable — but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.
I’ve had a long career as a writer, and a good one, in good company. Here at the end of it, I don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river. We who live by writing and publishing want and should demand our fair share of the proceeds; but the name of our beautiful reward isn’t profit. Its name is freedom.“
I just got an earful from someone at S&S about how publishers buy their way onto the NYT bestseller list. I knew it already, but she explained actually how to do it—leaving me feeling disheartened about everyone's willingness to participate in something like this, for frankly not that much money...
Did you see the link in that article to another Esquire piece on book merch, again involving a Sally Rooney pub? Another level of the same core issue. Curious about your thoughts on this.
I read that article when it was first published. It presents the same issue: the “chosen” authors vs everyone else. Sometimes merch doesn’t make a difference, but sometimes it’s very buzzy so it does. I’m not really of fan of doing it.
Thank you so much for sharing your perspective! I'm a business nerd, so this is catnip. =) Loved the post.
Slightly off the ARC topic, but I've heard your point about publishers needing to buy fewer books and market them more. What I hadn't realized was that billing targets essentially beget acquisition targets. For those more "C list" books, how do they actually contribute to billings if there are no active efforts to sell (or at least market) them? Are they just bundled into shipments to larger retailers? Or are they primarily eBooks, pushed out in the hope an algorithm will help a few buyers stumble upon them?
I want to read Intermezzo and I preordered it from Volumes in Chicago, but I don’t understand the influencer with ARCs aspect for a book that already has so much hype! I have been enjoying all the other fall lists that highlight other books. I have never been granted an ARC of a high profile book unless it was on read now and I don’t consider myself an influencer in any way so I’m thankful for publishers granting me anything book! I got an ARC of The Happiness Blueprint by Ally Zetterberg and it was really validating for me to see a ND protagonist with T1D- the gender roles were flipped but as the spouse to a AuDHD person with T1D it was the first time I had seen that story in any book.
I self-publish. I don't write for sales. I write books for the children, about the children, about what they would want to read about. It's that simple. The ARC readers, Beta readers, influencers, can all be damned. They are here today and gone tomorrow, but my children will always be there as inspiration for my books.
One of my jobs was to help rank our titles A, B and C every season. Our marketing manager once told the editorial department, "Don't ever email me or anyone on my team about a C title."
I was told constantly by my mangers to focus almost all of my efforts on As, and a few select activities for a few select Bs.
There is also something of an exception in Children's publishing in that there are "S&L As," books which don't have a lot of commercial potential, but will review and sell well + win awards in the School and Library channel.
It was very challenging to field calls and emails from B and C list authors, but that was part of the job too.
And... some books are meant to be midlist. All of the marketing in the world won't turn mostly quiet, quirky books into bestsellers.
I've seen a lot of A-list books catch fire, then crash & burn, and some midlist titles sell year after year and become the reliable workhorses of the backlist that are the backbone of the business.
I don't know the answers, and I absolutely know that the system is broken when so many of books in the categories I follow most closely have been on their lists for 100s of weeks
Yes to all of this.
Appreciate your inside perspective, even though this sounds difficult and disheartening.
It’s frustrating as an author and I don’t have solutions either except this post feels validating!
As a marketing company, we love ARCs. The reason is precisely, as you stated, there is a perception that reading an ARC means the reader was chosen. When we place them in select hotels, we hope the guests feel they are given a book on the "must-read" list. For us, it does not mean that books from indie authors are less desirable; it just means that we must work harder to build an awareness campaign and an audience for their book.
Great post :)
“They even numbered them to track who received them and if that person was selling the ARC online.” WAT? They numbered the ARCs they sent out to track them…whoa, a whole new level. As always, Kathleen, thanks for keeping us up to date on the latest in the industry. This is crazy stuff.
I'm a critically successful author whose books have never been chosen to be on the Big list, and although I'm incredibly grateful for the positive reviews, I would have liked some financial recognition as well. I too find it frustrating, and my sales numbers have followed me through to the next book, which has been hard to sell because of ... my sales history, which is a euphemism for shitty numbers. I also don't have a solution here but your post really resonated with me. Thank you!
Thanks for reading it.
I’m not smart enough to make the exact correlation, but your words above reminded me of these by Ursula LeGuin when she received her lifetime achievement award in 2014:
“ Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximise corporate profit and advertising revenue is not the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship.”
It’s a great speech. The second paragraph inspired me to write a world where collaboration, equality, and consent are a given. How wondrous would it be for these words to describe the publishing industry as well?
The full is speech below.
“ To the givers of this beautiful reward, my thanks, from the heart. My family, my agents, my editors, know that my being here is their doing as well as my own, and that the beautiful reward is theirs as much as mine. And I rejoice in accepting it for, and sharing it with, all the writers who’ve been excluded from literature for so long — my fellow authors of fantasy and science fiction, writers of the imagination, who for fifty years have watched the beautiful rewards go to the so-called realists.
Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom — poets, visionaries — realists of a larger reality.
Right now, we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximise corporate profit and advertising revenue is not the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship.
Yet I see sales departments given control over editorial. I see my own publishers, in a silly panic of ignorance and greed, charging public libraries for an e-book 6 or 7 times more than they charge customers. We just saw a profiteer try to punish a publisher for disobedience, and writers threatened by corporate fatwa. And I see a lot of us, the producers, who write the books and make the books, accepting this — letting commodity profiteers sell us like deodorant, and tell us what to publish, what to write.
Books aren’t just commodities; the profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable — but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.
I’ve had a long career as a writer, and a good one, in good company. Here at the end of it, I don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river. We who live by writing and publishing want and should demand our fair share of the proceeds; but the name of our beautiful reward isn’t profit. Its name is freedom.“
Great points! I see so many parallels between the publishing world and the music industry. Thanks for writing this post.
My husband is a music exec & we talk about the similarities all the time!
I just got an earful from someone at S&S about how publishers buy their way onto the NYT bestseller list. I knew it already, but she explained actually how to do it—leaving me feeling disheartened about everyone's willingness to participate in something like this, for frankly not that much money...
Sigh. You and I need a coffee date on Zoom this fall.
Ahem. What is an ARC?
Advance Review Copy
Thanks you. Isn't that kind of redundant?
Not really. They are also called galleys.
Yes. I know. "Advance" and "review" are redundant.
I also see it as Advance Reader Copy sometimes. It will be missing details like reviews on the cover, and there may be a typo or two.
Kathleen, I am so grateful for your voice. Thank you for all that you do!
Thank you :)
Did you see the link in that article to another Esquire piece on book merch, again involving a Sally Rooney pub? Another level of the same core issue. Curious about your thoughts on this.
https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a44449495/book-publishing-influencer-merch-explained/
I read that article when it was first published. It presents the same issue: the “chosen” authors vs everyone else. Sometimes merch doesn’t make a difference, but sometimes it’s very buzzy so it does. I’m not really of fan of doing it.
Thank you so much for sharing your perspective! I'm a business nerd, so this is catnip. =) Loved the post.
Slightly off the ARC topic, but I've heard your point about publishers needing to buy fewer books and market them more. What I hadn't realized was that billing targets essentially beget acquisition targets. For those more "C list" books, how do they actually contribute to billings if there are no active efforts to sell (or at least market) them? Are they just bundled into shipments to larger retailers? Or are they primarily eBooks, pushed out in the hope an algorithm will help a few buyers stumble upon them?
I want to read Intermezzo and I preordered it from Volumes in Chicago, but I don’t understand the influencer with ARCs aspect for a book that already has so much hype! I have been enjoying all the other fall lists that highlight other books. I have never been granted an ARC of a high profile book unless it was on read now and I don’t consider myself an influencer in any way so I’m thankful for publishers granting me anything book! I got an ARC of The Happiness Blueprint by Ally Zetterberg and it was really validating for me to see a ND protagonist with T1D- the gender roles were flipped but as the spouse to a AuDHD person with T1D it was the first time I had seen that story in any book.
Aggressive marketing of books by established authors almost guarantees that I will not buy the book and may not even read it.
I self-publish. I don't write for sales. I write books for the children, about the children, about what they would want to read about. It's that simple. The ARC readers, Beta readers, influencers, can all be damned. They are here today and gone tomorrow, but my children will always be there as inspiration for my books.