Book Market Plunges
By Al Kalar
Publishing suffered through one of its worst years ever in 2008.
October through December showed a 7% drop in sales compared to 2007 and all of the major houses cut back on staff drastically.
The publishing industry is also being convulsed by longer-term trends, including a shift toward digital reading (eBooks).
Early forecasts for 2009 are gloomy and booksellers are doing everything they can to use their space to the best advantage.
Publishers are reviewing cash advances to authors and cutting back there as well. If a book that would possibly have sold 100,000 copies two years ago is only expected to sell 50,000 copies, the author’s advance (if any) will suffer. Some publishers are cutting way back and increasing the share on profits paid to the author. Of course, “profits” as in the movie industry, can be a nebulous number, especially if a loss on a major project is charged against all other projects as part of the “overhead”.
That’s why AKW Books bases royalties on net sales before expenses.
According to Robert S. Miller of Harper Studio, “The two biggest sucking sounds on profits in our business are on advances and (book) returns.”
In spite of all this, a very few manuscripts are garnering huge advances. These are usually projects from a well-known author or personality. Naturally, these projects are where the publisher will spend the lion’s share of its advertising budget.
For instance, HarperCollins paid edgy comedian Sarah Silverman $2.5 million to write her first book and Grand Central purportedly shelled out $1.25 million for the rights to Vicki Myron’s “Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched The World,” a nonfiction book about a fluffy orange kitten found abandoned in the returned-book slot of an Iowa public library.
In this sort of market, the unknown new writer is at a distinct disadvantage. The chance of landing a regular book deal is greatly reduced and the costs of self-publishing are rarely paid off by sales. Dealing with a legitimate (non-vanity) small press can sometimes work, but sales are still going to be slow compared to the blockbuster / best seller offerings of the major New York houses.
Ebooks lack some of the disadvantages tied to cost of production, but the market for eBooks is still small (but unlike the paper book market, is growing steadily). Ebooks have one huge advantage over paper books, no returns.
In such a market, going with an eBook publisher won’t make you rich, but you can sell some books without emptying your wallet. Especially if you deal with a “real” publisher like AKW Books rather than an eBook version of a vanity press. If your book is actually good so you can score a legitimate eBook publisher, you might be able to leverage a sale to a small press.
In either case, 95% of the marketing effort is probably going to land on your shoulders. If you’re not willing to learn that part of the business, your only hope is that a miracle will strike you and some super agent will land one of the very few big book deals that sometimes grace a “newbie”.
Tags: advances, eBooks, industry news, market, returns, royalties
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