When Failure is 90,000 Books Sold
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.
February 14th, 2006 at 5:31 pm
You’re an observant writer/editor/publisher who combines an authoritative voice with a jolly good set of questions; then you add a “pinch” of humor — with the occasional kick up the bum. (The “Maureen Dowd” of publishing critiques as it were….)
Another thought-provoking read. (I hope all those publishers out there ARE reading it, and taking note.) Well done.
February 15th, 2006 at 8:34 pm
The yummy Ms. Scanlon hit the spot with this one. Points well taken!
March 8th, 2006 at 1:22 pm
I wish I had some idea of sales figures in the States, but, you know, the publisher has to wait something like a year and a half to send me royalty statements.
So far, the book has earned me about $44 thousand, not counting my personal book sales. Not bad for a first book; not good for 5 years of effort.
Looking forward to the next one. It’s coming along.
January 22nd, 2007 at 9:42 am
Why don’t you start a niche marketing site on the internet? I, and I’m sure every other author who is trying to live in a niche, would be happy to contribute a buck or bucks for every book sold. Nowadays, as you intimate, it’s all niche anyway.
Juliene
January 25th, 2007 at 8:10 pm
On Ms. See’s feeling she failed at 90,000 books sold. I know EXACTLY how she feels. It seems, in this day and age, if a book does not become an overnight “blockbuster bestseller”, it’s considered a disappointment by the publisher. Sad for the editor, but mostly for the author.