Several writers have asked for my assessment of the current situation in publishing.  It’s been only two years since I updated “The Business of Writing” section of my writing book, THE SUCCESSFUL NOVELIST.  But already there is need for an update.

In January of this year, a bookstore in the Indianapolis area, The Mystery Company, closed its doors.  This came as a surprise because it was well known and it had been an organizing force behind last year’s Bouchercon, one of the great reader/author crime-fiction conventions.

Jim Huang, the person most associated with the store, left to become a general manager of the bookstore at Kenyon College.  To explain his decision, he posted an essay on The Mystery Company website that I’ll use as the springboard for my own comments.

MY INTERPRETATION OF WHAT JIM SAID

1.      The rise of gasoline prices in 2008 resulted in a decline in bookstore traffic.  Some book buyers no longer made a dedicated trip to a bookstore but instead combined the trip with other errands, waiting until there were enough errands to merit burning the gasoline.  Or else they decided not to take the car out at all and instead ordered from an online bookseller, letting UPS and the post office burn the gasoline.

2.      Last year’s severe book price wars, in which the box stores lost money by selling hardbacks for stunning low prices (as little as $10 for a bestselling hardback), made it impossible for independent bookstores to compete with certain bestselling titles.  Some book buyers became accustomed to those low prices and were reluctant to pay full price or even a reasonable discount.  An online bookseller’s preorder price for Stieg Larrson’s The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest was $11.50 for a $27.95 hardback.  No physical bookstore, including Barnes & Noble and Borders, can match that price without losing money (the break-even point is probably $14).

3.      “Technology {I quote Jim here} is completely rewriting the book on the book itself.”  Electronic reading devices such as the Kindle, the iPad, the Nook , and the Sony reader make it possible for online booksellers to offer digital versions of books for amazing low prices and to deliver those books within a minute.  No UPS, no post office, no trip to a bookstore.  One minute you want it.  The next minute you have it.  As Carrie Fisher says in her novel, Postcards from the Edge, “The trouble with instant gratification is it takes too long.”

MY OWN OBSERVATIONS

1.  When I became an author in 1972 with First Blood, there were perhaps as many as 42 New York publishing houses. Authors and their agents had many places to offer their manuscripts.  These days, because many publishers were acquired by conglomerates, there are five major publishers, with numerous subsets that have some autonomy but are mostly controlled by the larger entity.  In short, there are fewer places for authors and agents to take books.  Fewer innovative books have a chance to find a home with a major publisher. 

2.  As individual publishers were acquired by larger companies, those publishers were also downsized.  Established editors were dismissed and replaced by lower-paid less-experienced editors and in some cases by editorial assistants.  Knowing that they might be next to be dismissed, those newly hired editors (and even experienced ones) became reluctant to recommend a book that doesn’t fit a trend.  As an editor told me, “it’s easier to say no rather than risk my job.”

3.  Editors are leaving the business or moving from publisher to publisher so rapidly that it’s difficult for an author to feel connected to an individual house.  Especially for a beginning writer, there’s little feeling of being nurtured and encouraged.  Publicity departments have also been trimmed.  Publishers expect authors to do increasingly more book promotion, sometimes spending their advances on advertisements and tours.  With so much self-marketing, it’s difficult to find the time to write.

4.  Just as there are fewer New York publishers In the United States, there are now two-thirds of the independent bookstores that there were 10 years ago.  Perhaps less than that.

5.  Of the big chain stores, Borders is rumored to be in trouble while Barnes & Noble has put itself up for sale.  A new trend involves people who buy a cup of coffee at a chain store and then read books and magazines without buying them, or else they browse and then go home to buy cheaper editions online.  The chains don’t sell only books, of course, and one cause of their problems is that they devote a large amount of space to CDs and DVDs, the market for which has declined.  Then too, many chain stores are located in malls, which have seen a decline in traffic.  An acquaintance who works for a mall-development corporation told me that at a recent conference, the chains cautioned that they would be closing some stores and that they might convert to a kiosk model in which e-readers and digital books are emphasized.  Ironically, the chain stores were once criticized for upstaging small independent bookstores, but now they are regarded with nostalgia.

6.  Book distributors declined also.  For book sections in supermarkets, drug stores, convenience stores, etc., there used to be numerous book distributors in each state.  Now there are only three distributors for the entire nation.  In the old days, drivers for the distributors acted as de facto sales reps, promoting titles.  Now those drivers have been replaced by UPS and Fed Ex, who have no connection with what they’re delivering.  Book sales in these non-bookstore markets are no longer the force they used to be. 

7.  Printed book reviews are fewer, also.  Shrinking advertisement revenues forced some newspapers to go out of business while others eliminated sections, such as book reviews.  Even the Washington Post’s famous Book World section no longer exists.

WHAT’S AN AUTHOR TO DO?

1.      Don’t panic and chase trends.  It takes a year to write a book.  Trends can change rapidly, and all you’re left with is a book that doesn’t have a publisher and that you didn’t want to write in the first place.  Yes, you might get lucky, but I’d sooner write the book I was meant to write rather than a book that is cynically concocted.

2.      Pay attention to small presses.  They are far more willing to consider innovative books than are major publishers, and there are an increasing number of small presses.  You won’t earn big advances, and your print runs won ‘t be larger than a couple of thousand copies.  But you’ll be able to communicate with readers, and that is the point.  Plus, small presses often are fierce promoters.

3.      Be realistic about your expectations.  Why do you want to be a writer?  If you’re after fame and wealth, you should consider becoming a professional football player.  The odds are better.  Even when traditional publishing was booming, only about 200 novelists made enough money to write full time, and significantly fewer earned the big dollars that the public seems to think all novelists accumulate.  Becoming a top bestselling author is in many cases a matter of luck, of being at the right time with a topic that a lot of readers happen to like at a particular moment.  There is no way to anticipate success or control it.  All one can do is write a book that one feels passionately about, and let Fate decide the outcome.  This is not a profession for the easily discouraged or the faint of heart.  In fact, it should be considered a vocation more than a profession.

4.      Free yourself from needing a surrogate parent.  Some authors bemoan the changes in major publishing because they want the comfort of a nest and a support group.  But the days of “my publisher loves me for the wonderful person that I am” are over.  The warm feeling you get from thinking of a nurturing editor as part of your family can turn to frostbite when the editor is fired or leaves for another publisher, as is likely to happen.  There’s something liberating about feeling independent and realizing that your self-worth doesn’t depend on approval from a business conglomerate.

5.      Be true to yourself (an extension of the previous point.) Ultimately each of us is responsible for our destinies.  How many books did you decide not to write because an editor told you that it didn’t fit the current market?  You felt passionate about the ideas, but you weren’t given permission to write them.  Didn’t it hurt not to write them?  In contrast, I’m reminded of my friend Steve Berry who spent the 1990s writing international thrillers when they weren’t in fashion (see his essay about this in THRILLERS: 100 MUST READS that I co-edited with Hank Wagner).  He wrote book after book after book and eventually had five of them rejected for a total of eighty-five times, but he persisted because he loved writing international thrillers.  In 2003, when the genre came back into fashion, Steve Berry was suddenly an innovator.

6.      Remember that just because major publishing is having trouble, that doesn’t mean people have stopped reading books.  Printed books won’t go away, but e-books won’t go away either.  To return to what Jim Huang said at the start of my remarks, “Technology is completely rewriting the book on the book itself.”  Current conservative estimates are that 50 percent of book sales will be electronic within 5 years, perhaps sooner.  People who own e-readers report that they now buy far more books than they used to—because it’s so easy to buy them.  And they read in ways that you wouldn’t expect.  For example, someone emailed me recently to say that he was reading one of my novels on his iPhone as he rode on a commuter train to go to work in Manhattan.

7.      Remember, too, that the Internet provides abundant ways to promote a book, far more than in traditional magazines and newspapers.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I believe that independent bookstores will benefit from what’s happening.  People who buy a lot of e-books report that they also buy print versions of some of the e-books they enjoyed—as gifts or because a printed book is a revered object.  An author can’t sign an electronic book (although some people do ask authors to sign the backs of their e-readers).  Independent stores offer expert knowledge.  At their best, they are valued members of the local community and can bring authors together with readers in a more intimate way than cavernous signings at chain stores.

William Goldman famously said about movie producers, “Nobody knows anything.”  The same applies to the publishing and bookselling world.  I find that exciting.  All bets are off.  Anything is possible.  Change is painful, but change is also an opportunity.  Those authors and publishers and bookstores who embrace the future and innovate will survive and prosper.

In my writing book, The Successful Novelist, I have a chapter, “The Novelist as Marketer,” which explains the basics of how to be your own book promoter, but in the new publishing world, other methods are constantly being developed.

In part two of this discussion, which will appear on a future WHAT’S NEW page, I’ll explain some new methods of getting your work into the hands of readers.