The Publishing Contrarian

Lawrence LaRose neatly ducked a question thrown at him today while he gave a talk about his 2004 book Gutted—Down to the Studs in My House, My Marriage, My Entire Life at the Rogers Memorial Library in Southampton, New York.

He was asked how well the book was doing. Amazingly he didn’t blink. He didn’t get dodgy-eyed.

Gutted is selling as a used book on Amazon for $1.23.

LaRose’s 1996 book, The Code: Time-Tested Secrets for Getting What You Want from Women–Without Marrying Them, is selling on Amazon for $.30.

He wanted $20 for the hardcover version of Gutted, a few copies of which were available on a table nearby. I offered him $10. He said: ”But you’re an author, too.” (Like I’m supposed to show some sympathy.) I pointed out to him that I could buy the book for $1.23 online! Sold: $10.00!

Cruel and heartless though I may be toward a fellow author, I know he is just learning a lesson that I learned a long time ago—and moved over into the business side of publishing. The retail price of a book is meaningless. There is no money in publishing for the vast majority of authors. Having a book sell more than 100,000 copies is as “difficult as making an NBA team” I read somewhere, and I believe it. My titles sold very well. Maybe his first book did, too, since he smartly spoofed and rode the coattails of The Rules: Time-Tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right on the publicity circuit and onto a sofa beside Oprah. But just because you sell tens of thousands of copies or even hundreds of thousands of copies, doesn’t mean the big checks will roll in for the author. Not like they do for the publishing house. Read the contract.

What’s an advance against royalties, really? It’s a loan. Something you have to pay back before you see a dime more. Yes, there is the possibility that enough copies will be sold at high enough prices and you’ll receive the maximum royalty, and you may actually manage to “pay back” that loan, but the likelihood is slim, slim, slim. And that’s the way publishers like it. The contract is designed to fill the coffers of the publishing house, not the polka-dotted, porcelain piggy bank of the author. 

Here’s what I recommend for authors today. Don’t accept an advance against royalties. (Yippee! A $100,000 advance against royalties! OK, make it $10,000.) Surprise! It’s doled out upon signing the contract, turning in an “approved” manuscript, being published, and (horrors!) reaching the six-month mark after the pub date if the publishing house can get away with it. Get a check upfront as payment in full, and get as much as you can. Say the magic words “work for hire.” You can take less than the $100,000. (What? Give up $100,000?!) Money you have in your hand today is worth much more than money tomorrow.) By the way, the size of the check you are offered will indicate the kind of support your book will get.

Let the publishers do what they want with the book. Give it away, make it a loss leader for another book, sell ads in it, slash the price, ignore it, remainder it. Once you’ve got your money, you can spend it, save it, invest it and get on with your next book. You won’t have to worry about losing your book’s champion when the editor changes publishing houses, you won’t have to sweat the contract clauses that take that dollar you would have earned for each book sold and reduce it to $.15, you won’t have to worry about your “intellectual property rights.” You’ll know what you have. Period. You’ll no longer be a pathetic figure waiting at the end of the driveway in a blizzard, hopping up and down in the cold, waiting for the postman to drive up and hand you that slim white envelope from your publishing company. You’ll be out of the publishing crapshoot. 

The Publishing Contrarian is not about literature or book reviews. It is a freewheeling, often irreverent, unique forum created specifically for the exchange of ideas, comments and news about what’s going on in all aspects of publishing today. 

The Publishing Contrarian welcomes comments from readers. Published comments may be edited for length and clarity. We regret that because of the large volume of comments received, we are unable to acknowledge unpublished comments. 

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The Wicked Witch of Publishing ™, Lynne W. Scanlon, the voice of The Publishing Contrarian, has been a publisher and executive in the publishing business for over twenty years. She is also an author of three nonfiction books with sales in excess of 600,000 copies. Publishing houses include HarperCollins, St. Martin’s Press and Berkley Books.

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I’ve been howling for years about the spinelessness of the US book publishing industry when it comes to “returns” from bookstores. US books are not “sold” to bookstores; US books are essentially on consignment at US bookstores.

My nonfiction books have sold in excess of 600,000 (count ‘em) copies. Yet, that is a bogus figure because, according to industry statistics, 40% of my books that were “sold” to bookstores were actually returned by the bookstores. In other words my books have shipped a lot more than 600,000 copies!

I have a “reversal of rights” for all my now long-out-of-print books, yet for years my publishers (HarperCollins, St. Martin’s Press, Berkley Books) kept accepting copies back from the bookstores.

“Reserve against returns,” that nasty little clause in contracts to which authors have to agree, assures that even moderately successful writers will have to keep eating rice out of the back of the cabinets while knowing that the publishing house is holding back cold hard cash.

Why can’t the US be more like New Zealand?

I was wandering around the blogosphere this morning and stumbled across Richard Charkin’s blog. He is the chief executive of Macmillan Limited London, England. (Too bad I didn’t notice that before I added a cheeky comment to his February 17th post! Whoops!)

Charkin was just in Auckland, New Zealand. (He’s now in Argentina and was just in Australia. Well, he is a CEO! He’s not punching a clock!) Here is an excerpt from his February 17th posting:

“When a bookshop orders a book the responsibility for selling it is theirs. If it does not sell, the cost of the mistake belongs to the bookseller not to the author.

Are there millions of unsold books washing around New Zealand bookshops? No. Booksellers have had to develop a sense of their market and they have - New Zealand booksellers are the best in the world and they sell the most books per head in the English-speaking world.”

What’s the message here?

Are publishers so intimidated by the major chains like Barnes & Noble, Booksamillion, and Borders Books and the independent bookstores that publishers can’t find the spine to say: Too late! You bought ‘em. You keep ‘em. You sell ‘em.

What does the vendor contract say about the date after which books may not be returned? Who is looking the other way when these books are allowed in the back door of the distribution centers?

I remember calling my editor and asking why in the world my books were being returned years after they had shipped. The answer I got was “that’s the way it is.”

Stop it! Stop it and bookstores will pick books more judiciously. Stop it and the publishing industry will begin a long-needed self-correction.

As an author, I’d much rather know a royalty due is a royalty paid. As a publisher, I’d much rather know a sale is a sale.

Random House Films and Focus Films have rubbed noses and climbed into bed in a multiyear deal to produce films together. They’re forging ahead on the film version of The Attack by Yasmina Khadra, pub date May 2006, and Curveball by Bob Drogin, pub date fall 2007.

I’m wondering, however, if in the end Random House and Focus Features will be pulling the sheets over their collective heads.

First, I hate synergistic deals where everyone is equal. I think someone needs to be the BOSS. The final decision-maker. The guy willing, personally, to take the fall if… well, you know, the worst happens: the film versions stink or the partners “aren’t compatible” in that particular area. The press release says the companies will co-finance and co-produce a “substantial slate of feature films.” And they’ll partner together “on script development, director selection, all phases of production, and marketing and publicity.” All these films will be based on Random House imprints.

So when does the fighting begin? When does lockstep become logjam?

Second, I’m worried about their choices for the first two movies. Sara Nelson, Editor-in-Chief of Publishers Weekly, gave them a less than wildly enthusiastic endorsement today in her column Random’s Late, Late Show by describing The Attack and Curveball as “sophisticated and interesting.” The Attack is a story about an Arab surgeon living in Tel Aviv and Curveball is based on (Get that? Frey taught us a lesson, no?) a true story about an Iraqi informant. I hope it’s not a cold night in New York City (where it was about 15 degrees Fahrenheit last night) when these films hit the theaters because I’m not likely to bundle up for them.

It’s just that I might have picked something a lot safer for a first venture. Something like Benji! Go Home! A dog. A kid. A little trauma. A lot of tissues. SOLD OUT!

Of course, Focus Films produced Brokeback Mountain (which I found boring) and Pride and Prejudice (which, mush that I am, I loved), so those folks are daring and award-winning film producers. And Lord knows, Random House has such great books from which to choose: new, old, amoldering in the bowels of the company. Still, while in theory this partnership is a great idea and a bold, brave stroke on the part of Random House, in practice I’m not sure it will work.

How many years ago was it when I was in the movie theater in East Hampton, New York and the first product advertisement appeared on the screen? No, this was not a movie trailer; this was not an over-loud cartoon enticing you to buy overpriced popcorn and over-ice-cubed sodas in the lobby. No. This was a polished, sleek advertisement that revealed what it was at the end. The audience sat in its seats, stunned, for about 15-seconds, and then all hell broke loose. We screamed, howled, threw popcorn at the screen. We wrote letters to the editor of The East Hampton Star newspaper. At every dinner party that the great, the near-great and the great-pretenders of “The Hamptons” attended for the next few weeks, we didn’t hear the usual vapid, fare. (Did you see how fat Alex Baldwin got? What was Lauren Bacall thinking dressed like that?) That summer it was clear: we would not stand for commercials with our popcorn and movies. Would NOT stand for it.

I went to see the movie Mrs. Henderson Presents this past weekend at the East Hampton Cinema. Passively, stoically, as the buttery smell of fresh cooked popcorn wafted through the theater, my fellow movie-goers and I sat slackjawed watching commercial after commercial.

But not books. Not precious books. No advertisements there. Not for the tweedy set of publishing. No way.

Surprise! Remember the hoopla and outrage back in April 2005 when it was revealed that O, The Oprah Magazine had struck a deal with Dove soap. For $500,000, Dove ran two-page spreads featuring its “Real Beauty” campaign inside the front and back covers of a “keepsake” book containing Oprah Winfrey’s “wit and wisdom.” The book (96 pages and pint-sized) was packaged with the fifth anniversary issue of the magazine and was a freebee for 2.6 million Oprah loyalists. No? Don’t remember the brouhaha that ensued? Not even after The New York Times ran an article on April 11, 2005 with the headline “Buy the Oprah Magazine and Get the Book, Too.” 

Of course you don’t remember because what you heard was…silence. Silence from the literati. Silence from the business end of publishing. Perhaps a few editors “tsk, tsk, tsked” about it, but there was nothing like the great eruption that would have ensued and the industry-wide shunning that would have taken place twenty years ago or even ten years ago if Farrar Straus, Norton, or Simon & Schuster had been so crass, so commercial, as to contemplate placing an advertisement in (gasp) one of their books.

Just a few weeks ago Jane Freedman, President and Chief Executive Officer of HarperCollins Publishers, hinted (was it in PW?) at some sort of tie-in between ebooks and advertising. (Ah, hah! I thought. Here we go.) In Dan Mitchell’s “What’s Online” column in the New York Times today it was announced that ”for the first time, a major publisher is offering a book online at no cost to readers, supported by advertising.” That publisher is (drumroll) HarperCollins.

Of course, the book isn’t literature. No, it’s a 2004 business book called Go It Alone! The Secret to Building a Successful Business on Your Own by Bruce Judson. You can read it for free (there’s that word I hate so much) through the author’s website. But unlike Cory Doctorow (see yesterday’s blog posting), who gave away 650,000 free downloads of his book,  Bruce Judson must have learned something by being a fellow at the Yale School of Management because his ebook may be free, but the ad space is not. (Hum… does he hold the ebook rights?)

A quick trip to Judson’s website does not reveal 1/4-page ads or full-page ads. There are however, small ads and links for Collins Business Journal, Exclusive Wealth Marketing, 3-Step Plan Home Business System (with audio), Wealth Strategy Group LLC running down the left-hand sidebar of the web screen, and links within the text of Go it Alone to companies Judson references like www.guru.com, ”a marketplace for individuals with full-time jobs seeking part-time evening jobs.” Did he get paid for that link?  It doesn’t look like you can download. However, you can download the book for $8.76 from amazon.com and booksamillion.com or $18.26 directly from HarperCollins. (Welcome to the world of book pricing! I’m just shaking my head.) Judson’s website, by the way, looks fabulous. The audio intro is warm and friendly, and the book is very easy on the eyes to read. 

As a marketer, it makes sense to me that we should start advertising in books. My dirty little secret (well, one of them) is that about two years ago I  tried to get a publishing house to cut a deal with a diaper company that would have brought in a huge chunk of change. All we had to do was give a subtle reference to nappies by brand name within the text of a book, which was mentioning diapers generically anyhow. 

“No” today, but “yes” tomorrow. You watch. It’s coming.  

Can 1/4-page ads and spreads be far behind?

Note from the Wicked Witch of Publishing: Will a double-page-spread advertising a Ferrari appear in a novel where the protagonist drives one?  What do you think?

Thank you Grumpy Old Bookman for sending me to read Cory Doctorow’s ”Why Publishing Should Send Fruit-Baskets to Google“ on boingboing.net. 

Doctorow, a Canadian journalist and science fiction author, hauls off and punches the publishing industry in the nose (in the nicest way, of course) for their hissy fit about Google Book Search. Let’s hope Google makes lots of money off its Herculean effort to scan in millions of books, convert the scanned images of the pages into text, and index the texts. Google deserves all the money it can get for having yet another brilliant idea and, although it is somewhat embarrassing to admit, an idea originating from a bunch of left-brainers.

And who is going to benefit from this mindboggling effort without lifting a finger or possibly even a book? Authors, publishers, researchers, entertainers, librarians; you, me, posterity, humankind in ways we can’t even anticipate. And the worst price we pay? Well, for the first time, vast amounts of the deserving as well as the dreadful in publishing will be equally available to all with a click. I’m just sorry a lot of the people involved are not around anymore to hear readers say: “What a great book!” or “Someone actually agreed to publish this?”

What gives me pause in Doctorow’s article is letting 650,000 digital copies of his first book be downloaded at the same time his book reached bookstores. His comment “…it’s no foregone conclusion that free electronic copies of a book will substitute for sales of physical copies of that book” makes me want to put a call into Tor Books, the publisher. (But perhaps the editor no longer works there.) Doctorow’s rationale for the free 650,000 copies is that he feels the “majority of …readers who fail to buy [his] book will do so because they have never heard of it, not because someone gave them a free electronic copy.” His novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is now in its sixth printing. Is that because the free downloads sent people into the bookstore in droves to pay retail for the book or on to the Internet in a frenzy of online purchase power?

Six printings sound good, but that statement, without the figures attached to it, is worthless. How many books per printing? 10,000; 150,000; 500,000? It’s important to know that figure so the industry can weigh the advantage or disadvantage of seeding the marketplace with so many free digital books. I’d have to be convinced that 650,000 free reads is the best way to reach an audience. And as a publisher, I might be wondering where my piece of the action was with these free downloads, and whether my author had saturated the market or even undermined it if he held the digital rights. Regardless, as either an author or a publisher, I would have liked to have gotten a dollar for each book read online. I do so covet that red Jag my neighbor has for sale.  

Wow! Lisa See’s book Snow Flower and the Secret Fan has shipped 90,000 copies and been on the Los Angeles Times best-seller list for 25 weeks. That must make Random House ecstatic! Lots of back patting going on there, I’m sure.  Yet in her essay in Publishers Weekly (Feb. 13), the author hangs her head and writes, almost shamefully, that despite good reviews, awards, and publishers’  “best intentions” and “best efforts,” sales for her previous four books “were not up to expectations.”  

Wait a minute! Who should be ashamed here? Certainly not the author. Sounds like she delivered the goods. No, she MORE than delivered the goods. Where were Ballantine, Harpertorch, and Vintage, et al, when Ms. See’s books were showing a strong literary pulse? Go to her website and read all about how her 1995 first nonfiction book–a national New York Times Notable Book and her 1997 second book–a “bestseller” for which movie rights and foreign rights (14 countries) were sold.  And let’s not forget the Edgar Award for best first novel. All her books are 3.5 to 5-star Amazon.com selections.

I can only imagine the conversation she had with the editor who had the gall to make Ms. See feel bad about the number of copies sold. Though I’m guessing this was the sentence with which the editor began contract negotiations. 

Lisa See is of Chinese descent. Her first book tells the story of her great-grandfather’s rise to being the 100-year-old godfather of Los Angeles’ Chinatown.  (Whew, he must have been pretty formidable. And what great genes he had to produce such a great-granddaughter!) How large is the Chinese community in Los Angeles, in the US, in the world.? Can the Chinese read? Sure. Can they be read to? You bet. Shame on the marketing departments for not plumbing the depths of this huge, huge natural market, starting in 1995 and continuing nonstop through today and into tomorrow.

Yes, I know how busy publishing houses are and how swamped the marketing department is. I know books are coming off the conveyor belt so fast that publicists and marketers can barely read the cover and flaps on one book before another one winds up on their desk. And I know the quantity of books published is not going to change. (See my post re Barnes & Noble.) Nonetheless, no book with as huge a potential market as Ms. See’s should be a literary success — but a financial failure. That’s not HER fault. A publisher’s best and only effort should not be to ship books in a timely fashion to bookstores and reviewers, and then sit back and poke the book occasionally with a stick until everyone loses interest and the book slips into midlist or backlist or the great abyss–remainderdom.

For books like Ms. See’s, there should be a special team within a publishing company devoted to nonstop promotion, nonstop special sales for the life of the book–and that life should never end. And these folks should be incentivized. (Jack Thomas, former partner at AdWeek’s A/S/M Communcations said it all: “Cash is good.”) Offer a dollar per book (okay, make it $.25) to the team after the book reaches ”breakeven,” and watch 90,000 copies turn into 9,000,000 copies.

Chin up, Ms. Sees. You’ve done a great job–with all your books. 

In “The Big Think” by Sara Nelson, Editor-in-Chief of Publishers Weekly, 2/6/2006, Sara (I have met her, thank you.) writes about the angst publishers and booksellers have classifying books for shelving and display purposes: “Which books should be aimed at which niches, and which niches are most likely to buy.” (Let’s go out for a two hour coffee break and discuss it!) Me? I’m betting that it is the rare book that should be a one-niche, one-shelf book. I think it is good for business to shelve in multiple places. I’m for “serendipitous finds” that complement each other on the same shelf.

Let’s pretend you’re wandering around a bookstore looking for a new mystery written by a first-time British author. It’s a fabulous story about

• The most tempting kind of murder — spousal,
• A once-in-a-lifetime train ride in South Africa — The Blue Train,
• Protagonists who eat and drink themselves into daily and nightly stupors — in the most unique restaurants in Cape Town, and
• Two inseparable friends — who are sidesplittingly funny fellows

Should you look in New Fiction, Literature, International Travel, Staff Picks, Restaurant Guides, Gay Literature or Humor? (I asked a friend if I should include Marriage & The Family or the Addiction shelf in this list, but she said NO!) Or because there are so many categories and so many books–and it’s all so confusing–should you buy a Starbucks’ coffee and cruise the Relationships shelf looking for a date instead?

As a reader, I say: Put this book on all these shelves so I won’t miss it! As an author, I say: Put this book on all these shelves so I can live on more than glory! As a bookseller, I say: Put this book on all these shelves, see where it moves, and then put a few more there FAST!