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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?
Backlistbooks, e-books and bookstores
Date: 2010-01-07 01:22 pm (UTC)I’ve loved your books for a long time, both the Hunters & Sun Sword world and the Chronicles of Elantra. Like probably everyone, I’m wondering what will happen with the Hunter’s daughter, and Cynthia & Steven/Bredan’s twins, as well as all the people we’ve had to leave behind at the end of the last Sun Sword book.
So, while I enjoy the Elantra books a lot, I’m very glad to hear that you haven’t stopped writing on the House Wars books, and intend to expand them into the new times as well.
I’ve been reading C.J. Cherryh’s blog for a long time, at www.cherryh.com/WaveWithoutAShore (and yes, it does need those 4 capital letters), and this last year there has been a lot of discussion over there about the developments in the book-publishing business.
So I was very interested to read your ideas about that here, from a different viewpoint: I found it an interesting addition to my new view of the whole bookpublishing and bookselling business.
C.J. Cherryh’s explained some of the difficulties with keeping backlist books available, and adding to an existing series (especially if it was running with a defunct publishing house), and suchlike.
She’s also gone into some of the troubles that can create for authors: backlist sales were a solid part of their income, and that has suddenly fallen off due to the effect of the tax-laws on publishers; and gaining new readers for a book that’s part of an existing world-line is more difficult if they can’t get the earlier books anymore.
As a result, she, Lynn Abbey and Jane S. Fancher have just started a small e-book store, at www.closed-circle.net, in which they aim to offer their own backlist-books as e-books. If the venture works, they may even be able to write the stories they’ve wanted to write but couldn’t sell, as they are part of an older series-world (for instance a new Chanur or Morgaine story: as far as I can gather, they as authors weren’t finished with some of their worlds when their publishers went out of business, and no new publisher will touch an existing series from another publishing house). As a reader, I’d both love to be able to buy some older books by favourite authors that just haven’t been available since I discovered this author; and to read some of the books such a good author really wants to write but hasn’t been able to sell for the abovementioned reason.
So I’m happy that they’re trying to get this off the ground.
They are mostly very experienced authors, and have been working for years as editors for each other’s books, so I’m not worried about the editing quality on their e-books. Jane Fancher is an artist as well, so the cover-art on their e-books is or will be of good quality too.
But they are primarily authors, and all this internet-work on the e-bookstore is costing them a lot of time and trouble, with very uncertain pay-offs.
If other authors want to try something similar, they’d need to form groups with all the necessary skills: writing, editing, art & layout, and the computer- and internet-skills necessary for setting up shop and converting files etc.. In order not to spend too much time on all the extras so there’s no time to write left over you need a small but not too small group, and even then it’s very time-consuming. And then all those small-but-reputable ‘e-book-stores’ need to be able to link to each other, so an F/SF reader who’s found a favourite author can be encouraged to browse a bit further … it seems a very complicated way to have to find a new book or author for me as a reader.
I thought that something like SFWA might play a coordinating role in this, but apparently that’s not likely to happen soon.
(Continued)
Hanneke