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msagaraI've resisted comment on the question of vanity presses this weekend, and broke my embargo only recently, on Jackie Kessler's informative and humorous post. I don't actually say much about the current situation because it's been said very well by so many people now I can't begin to link them all.
But... (you knew there was a 'but', right?) one of the things I keep seeing on-line, and perhaps I fail to understand what I'm reading clearly, is the open declaration of the Fall of the Evil Empire of Gatekeepers -- publishers and agents -- combined with a declaration of democracy, of readers deciding what is, and is not, to sell.
I'm not a publisher; I've never worked for a publisher. I have friends who have worked in various editorial positions. All of my interactions with the industry known as publishing have come through the bookstores I've worked in since I was sixteen years of age. I've worked in chains, and in independents, and anything I understand about the industry and its workings comes both from that, and my experience as the third side of the triangle -- as an author.
But I felt, in the end, that I had to comment, and I've cut and pasted my post from the above-linked blog beneath the cut, and then added more (I would have added more on her blog, but it was already way, way, too long).
I suffer from familiarity with how bookstores, ordering, shelving, stocking and returning actually work, so I'm not sure how much of this is unclear, how much of it is opaque, to people who haven't the same decades working retail. And I kind of want it to be clear.
I honestly don't see how this explosion of self-published and vanity-published books is going to get on shelves. At the moment, we have more and more people walking into the store in person to ask us to carry their books. I know this is in part because the physical fact of a book in your hands implies the rest of the experience: the bookstores and the readers that come with them.
As I said in Jackie Kessler's blog, I do understand how this is supposed to work for ebooks, in which traditional retail exposure has never been important. But while I understand the theory that PoD self-published/vanity published Print Books are supposed to be an act of democracy in giving the widest range of people voices, I do not understand how that is supposed to work in this retail environment. It is expensive to rent retail space. It's expensive to pay staff, and all of the expenses that come with employees. It's expensive to do the initial laydown of stocking shelves and it is also expensive to handle the returns and the processing of things that haven't sold.
It is not expensive to host a file for download in comparison.
The people who are putting up the money to cover these expenses are also trying to make a living. They're used to their customer base, and they're trying to match that base with the stock they can afford to carry. Almost every person who has written a book they deem worthy of publishing -- and has gone to the expense of self-publishing it or paying a vanity press to publish it -- demonstrably believes that their book will be loved when it is read. All hundred thousand of them -- they just need to get it in front of readers. We can't actually begin to stock them all; we can't offer them the opportunity for the exposure that would begin this democratic process because we cannot afford to do so. Even if we were doing this as a charity, and not a business, we still couldn't afford to do so: we couldn't afford to rent the space it would take.
And I'm curious as to how the the loudest of voices about this incredible democratization of books think that's going to change with the fall of traditional publishing.
People who see no need for bookstores obviously don't have an answer for this because it's irrelevant to their position. I can understand that; it doesn't confuse me. I personally love bookstores, but I may be a dinosaur; I also love books; they're a physical geography, to me. But many of the people who decry traditional publishing and gatekeepers also seem to feel that bookstores are necessary to the furtherance of their careers, and it's causing a disconnect for me.
Anyone?
But... (you knew there was a 'but', right?) one of the things I keep seeing on-line, and perhaps I fail to understand what I'm reading clearly, is the open declaration of the Fall of the Evil Empire of Gatekeepers -- publishers and agents -- combined with a declaration of democracy, of readers deciding what is, and is not, to sell.
I'm not a publisher; I've never worked for a publisher. I have friends who have worked in various editorial positions. All of my interactions with the industry known as publishing have come through the bookstores I've worked in since I was sixteen years of age. I've worked in chains, and in independents, and anything I understand about the industry and its workings comes both from that, and my experience as the third side of the triangle -- as an author.
But I felt, in the end, that I had to comment, and I've cut and pasted my post from the above-linked blog beneath the cut, and then added more (I would have added more on her blog, but it was already way, way, too long).
The question is: Does iUniverse actually get your books on shelves in brick and mortar stores? I would agree that without a platform, it’s the most solid visibility around for print books.
But in my experience as a bookseller of many years (some in chains, the rest in an independent), iUniverse, AH, PA, etc. books are not carried.
It’s not just a matter of “non-returnable”. We’ve carried one self-publisher (and in this case he was entirely self-published; he took his stuff to a printer and had it printed) to success, but his first novel -was- traditionally published; he didn’t enjoy that process, and he had enough of a name that -readers- were willing to trust him.
We can’t carry every book that’s published traditionally, period. It’s not possible. We see thousands of titles from publishers’ catalogues and sales reps throughout the year. Yes, we can return any of these that we don’t sell - but having books on your shelf that -won’t- sell is a very, very poor use of linear shelf space, of which there’s too little to begin with.
The problem with the idea that visibility works on Shelves is that it -relies- on the traditional distribution models, and those models are traditional. I hear a lot of people talking about the wave of the future, and from the way they’re speaking, the wave of the future -won’t involve bookstores-.
I can understand this when talking about ebooks, whose distribution is -entirely- separate from the rigor of retail space (and from landlords and property tax passthroughs and shoplifting and etc). But if somehow there’s supposed to be a strong connect between waves and waves of vanity press published or self-published PRINT books and bookstores, I fail to see how, exactly, it’s going to evolve.
It is enough work to stay on top of the various books that will come through the publishers and the reps with whom we have accounts without also trying to wade through the 10,000 new self-published titles that will crop up — sans catalogue or grouping — in Ingrams.
Assume, in a perfect world, that we would treat all publications equally, regardless of publisher. We would require, what? Double the floor space (and growing)? Double the processing time (and growing), and therefore double the man-hours of the staff? It would, in fact, be much more than double, because the -returns- for these titles would be hideously expensive to pack up and ship, given that it would be what, 1 or 2 books per return? At the moment, distributors take returns for the publishers they distribute, so you’ll ship all of your returns in a cycle to a handful of locations.
For that expense, we would have to at least double the sales — and our experiments in the past with PoD/self-published titles has indicated that we would not increase -sales- at all. Only expenses.
I see this as siphoning money from writers; I don’t see this as impacting bookstores because, well, they won’t be there.
I suffer from familiarity with how bookstores, ordering, shelving, stocking and returning actually work, so I'm not sure how much of this is unclear, how much of it is opaque, to people who haven't the same decades working retail. And I kind of want it to be clear.
I honestly don't see how this explosion of self-published and vanity-published books is going to get on shelves. At the moment, we have more and more people walking into the store in person to ask us to carry their books. I know this is in part because the physical fact of a book in your hands implies the rest of the experience: the bookstores and the readers that come with them.
As I said in Jackie Kessler's blog, I do understand how this is supposed to work for ebooks, in which traditional retail exposure has never been important. But while I understand the theory that PoD self-published/vanity published Print Books are supposed to be an act of democracy in giving the widest range of people voices, I do not understand how that is supposed to work in this retail environment. It is expensive to rent retail space. It's expensive to pay staff, and all of the expenses that come with employees. It's expensive to do the initial laydown of stocking shelves and it is also expensive to handle the returns and the processing of things that haven't sold.
It is not expensive to host a file for download in comparison.
The people who are putting up the money to cover these expenses are also trying to make a living. They're used to their customer base, and they're trying to match that base with the stock they can afford to carry. Almost every person who has written a book they deem worthy of publishing -- and has gone to the expense of self-publishing it or paying a vanity press to publish it -- demonstrably believes that their book will be loved when it is read. All hundred thousand of them -- they just need to get it in front of readers. We can't actually begin to stock them all; we can't offer them the opportunity for the exposure that would begin this democratic process because we cannot afford to do so. Even if we were doing this as a charity, and not a business, we still couldn't afford to do so: we couldn't afford to rent the space it would take.
And I'm curious as to how the the loudest of voices about this incredible democratization of books think that's going to change with the fall of traditional publishing.
People who see no need for bookstores obviously don't have an answer for this because it's irrelevant to their position. I can understand that; it doesn't confuse me. I personally love bookstores, but I may be a dinosaur; I also love books; they're a physical geography, to me. But many of the people who decry traditional publishing and gatekeepers also seem to feel that bookstores are necessary to the furtherance of their careers, and it's causing a disconnect for me.
Anyone?
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no subject
Date: 2009-11-22 05:26 pm (UTC)Except that readers already miss terrific books. Of the books publishers put out, some percentage of them are wonderful but never draw in the expected readership. I think we've all be disappointed to find out that an author will no longer write books in a beloved series because it wasn't beloved *enough* and bookstores don't want any more of them.
How much harder will it be for debut authors with amazing books if there are no more big publishers, and the market is flooded with raw slush?
no subject
Date: 2009-11-22 07:55 pm (UTC)That assumes that the market will be flooded at all, which I'm skeptical of. Each author would have to do their own legwork in getting the books into the stores, and the massive amount of work involved would seem to be more prohibitive than the anti-big publisher movement would anticipate.
One would hope that there's not a big Pollyana-esque viewpoint behind that movement, but sometimes it sure seems that way.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-22 08:19 pm (UTC)Yes, but my point is sort of: I think there wouldn't be much in the way of bookstores in this scenario, unless the model changes slowly and some sort of flexible distribution method is already in place.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-22 08:25 pm (UTC)Yes -- but to be fair, 'good' is subjective in the extreme, and we are all guilty of dismissing bestsellers we literally couldn't read half of as ... not very good. It's not just publishers that require bestsellers, however. Bookstores also require some model of it. Specialty stores will have a totally different bestseller list than the general big box stores.
We'll stock books that sell one copy a year if they're part of a series, part of an author's oevre (think someone like Harry Turtledove, who takes up 3 full shelves on his own with almost no face outs). But that rate of sale wouldn't keep us in business. The reason to keep that book on the shelf is that the person who does buy it will usually also buy the books he or she could have easily found in any other store -- the ubiquitous bestsellers. Without the breadth of stock, much of which can move slowly, there is no reason for him, or her, to seek us out.
But... without the books that sell very strongly out of the gate, it's much grimmer.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-23 05:27 am (UTC)Let me ask this: What if bookstores eventually turn to the "Book Machine" model. Behind the register are five or six (or ten) insta-printing and binding machines. Customers browse shelves with a bunch of flats on them--cover art with maybe a sample chapter inside. The customer brings the flat to the register (or scans it maybe), pays and the book is printed out in a couple of minutes.
Any book in the computer could be purchased there, but only Big Name Authors would have shelf advertisement (face out only, I guess, since the flat would be too flat to show a spine.
It doesn't really address a world without Eeeevile NY Publishing, because I don't think the utopian meritocracy of self-publishing land would ever put NY out of business. frankly, I don't think that utopian meritocracy would even come about. I guess the real worry is that books might go the way of the theater--ever marginalized and trying to recapture an audience that has moved on to other media, until theater-goers are left with community theater or nothing.
I don't see it happening anytime soon, for a lot of reasons.