Publishing Death Spiral

If you care to listen to a sermon about the sins of the book business, you’re in luck. Here’s Richard Nash. Here’s Seth Godin. (Godin has many; here’s another.)

Today much-loved web aggregator The Awl linked to a long-form rant by Norman Spinrad, who has some reason to complain about his own publishing house, Knopf, as well as the industry practice of bending over for Barnes & Noble and Bookscan — the book industry equivalent of TV’s Nielsen ratings — and politely requesting a spanking. I was witness to some of the events and fire drills Spinrad describes.

But mainly his protest resonated because I’ve given a lot of thought to the subject of why the book business is floundering in much the same way the record companies were at the time the RIAA decided the route to profitability was suing 12-year-old girls for illegal downloading. When authors who’ve had less than gratifying experiences with their publishers complain publicly, their words are often dismissed by those still gainfully employed in the industry as sour grapes. Maybe so. Or maybe that’s an unnecessarily uncharitable assessment.

What’s the saying? “Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you?” Or in this case, just because you’re cranky doesn’t mean your point is invalid.

I’m getting off track. In the last year I began to collate my own impressions of what ailed the book industry. Having worked first as a bookseller, then as an in-house acquisitions editor, a freelance editor, and an author (published author! that’s why this site exists), I felt I had accumulated ample perspective.

The most oft-cited habits that hamper and hobble the old publishing business model are fairly well-known by this point:

• Returns. 35% of all books are shipped to retailers and wholesalers and then returned to the publisher, at which point they are either remaindered or pulped. This wastes fuel, trees, time, and money.

• Advances. The process of acquiring the right to publish a book had spun out of control by the early 2000s. Swollen advances work nicely for some authors — it’s money you don’t have to give back, even if the publisher loses money on your book — but most publishing houses now write down 50% of what once were reasonably considered advances against royalties. The majority of books published today never “earn out.”

• High Overhead. Rampant consolidation failed to solve this problem. (And then, consolidation led to staff cuts without corresponding cuts in output, so that the editors, publicists, and other employees left standing were saddled with more work to do, and fewer resources with which to do it.)

• Bad Retailing. In the ’90s, publishers climbed into bed with Barnes and Noble and Borders, to the point where B&N was regularly consulted on jacket design. The numbers of staff employed to cater to these accounts ballooned.

• Bad Pricing. Swollen advances created upward pressure on prices. Publishers need high retail prices in order to make their P&Ls work. At the same time, consumers are shrugging their shoulders at the prospect of spending $26 on a hardcover debut novel. This is why publishers, agents, and Amazon are battling so fiercely over the Kindle.

• “Throw it at the wall and see what sticks.” Publishers release far more titles into the marketplace than they can and do support. (See above on work load.)

• Bad Branding. A strong brand worked for Penguin in the ’30s, for Vintage Books in the ’80s, but in the late ’90s and early ’00s many legacy publishers diluted whatever household name status they once enjoyed by creating dozens of separate and ill-defined imprints.

Many of these concerns can be addressed by any new publishing start-up. Most of the ones we’ve spoken to — check out OR Books and Open Road Media — have figured out how to better leverage print-on-demand and ebook technology, and are pushing $$ saved on production, overhead, and inventory management over to their marketing departments. This should make authors happy.

All that said, however, there’s one blanketing sin that largely goes unmentioned. Any publisher that wants to exist let alone remain relevant in 2015 will have to figure out how to wriggle out from underneath it. The fundamental error, as I see it, is that the traditional publishing model privileges this formula:

• Underestimated costs + Overestimated benefits = Project approval.

In other words, before most publishers agree to publish anything, they run sales projections spun from a highly selective glance at the track records of “comparison titles” (as they’re called) that sold well. Comp titles that sold poorly are routinely ignored. Only projects for which all decision-makers have bought into best-case scenarios are pursued.

How to work around that? I don’t know! I’m looking for ideas. If you have one, please write me or leave it in the comments.

UPDATE: A conversation with my good friend Julie D. prompts me to clarify that I’m not endorsing Spinrad’s comments about his editors! But his thoughts on the business are instructive.

UPDATE II: More evidence that Borders and Barnes & Noble are, let’s just take a guess here…2 and 5 years from extinction, respectively.

Book Reviewing: A Proposal

The New York Times Book Review has a policy of asking potential reviewers of a book they’ve chosen to cover if they know the author. If author and reviewer share a history, be they friends or antagonists or residents of some lukewarm state in between, it will be difficult in the extreme for the reviewer to approach the book free of personal baggage. That’s the idea, at least, because if the answer to the question is “yes,” the potential reviewer doesn’t get the assignment and the Times calls the next person on their list.

I think the question doesn’t go far enough. All criticism announces its author; it’s the rare reviewer who’s able to use the space allotted without an eye toward advancing his or her own career. As such, linking arms with a author via a glowing write-up, or the alternative — distancing yourself from an author / genre / scene via a negative one — is always and inevitably informed by meta calculations that have zero to do with the merits of the work being discussed.

So perhaps the NYTBR should ask not one but two questions:

1. Do you know the author of this book?

2. Would you like to?

I imagine the answer to this second question tells us as much, and a lot more.

On Being Offended

Apropos of here and here, here’s one more reason why being “offended” ought to end with 2009. Yes, the “offensive” label is overused; if everyone is driving around offended all the time, it makes it harder to gin up real outrage when real outrage is warranted; and yes, saying x is offensive to me is a weird passive construction and way of distancing yourself while still sounding judgmental and disapproving but without actually committing yourself to an overt explanation of why you’re offended. In a word, it’s prissy.

But slapping a “that’s offensive” label on something just doesn’t accomplish what it’s meant to accomplish. It’s often said with the hope of prompting the offender to reevaluate their statement(s). You say that all women who wear mascara are disease-ridden whores, and I say, “Wow, offensive!” but my real point is probably this: I don’t agree. I wear mascara. I don’t have sex for money. Perhaps you should reconsider what you’ve just said, or risk hurting people’s feelings.

If I were extra sanctimonious, I might even be hoping that by calling you offensive, you’d be embarrassed, possibly even ashamed.

Two BIG PROBLEMS right there: 1) Shame simply isn’t that potent a social phenomenon any more. 2) The subtext of “That’s offensive” is usually that you, the offended, are a kinder, more sensitive, and thoughtful individual than the offender is. This is insulting. And you can insult someone, or attempt to influence them, but you can’t do both at the same time.

On Bluntness

The death of literary agent Pat Kavanagh sparked a flurry of reminiscences, including this one by Clive James in the Guardian:

She was beautiful, clever and loved to laugh, but she could also have a blunt way with a fool. Since most writers are fools, especially about money, a new client was likely to find his dreams being set straight quite early in the relationship. I can’t speak for her other clients – she never spoke about them either – but in general I would be surprised if there were any who were spared a close encounter with brute reality when she first explained to them why it would be unwise to start living like Donald Trump on the assumption that the next advance would be as big as the last one.

Such bluntness could be daunting but it was also reassuring because the client guessed, correctly, that his new mentor wouldn’t be pussyfooting with the publishers either.

I get accused of unnecessary bluntness on occasion. But plenty of people admire bluntness but never try it on for themselves because they’re worried it will lose them friends. That’s why testimonies like the one above are compelling. Frankness, even when it pricks one’s ego, can be reassuring because it eliminates guesswork. You rarely have to wonder whether a blunt person is being entirely honest with you. And when someone speaks so frankly to your face, you’re not likely to entertain nightmare scenarios over what they say behind your back.

Bingo

Well put:

Yes and I think that etiquette is the same as any other set of skills where the guidelines are there not to be mindlessly adhered to, but because you have to know the rules to fully understand the impact of breaking them.

This from a comment thread about Emily Post on Jezebel.

the latest Google “How to Be Useful” alert…

…brings us to Malaysia, and advice on how to survive an economic downturn. First suggestion? Renew interest in your hobbies. “If no hobby, get one soon.” Then:

If you need income, then you may have to forgo your enjoyment for the time being and think seriously of how to be useful to others, especially those with cash so that when they are happy with you in whatever you were doing for them, they would or might give you some cash.

If you are without talent or ideas, and you are hungry, then I suggest that you go to the countryside or maybe your parents back home and go to the nearby forest and gather some fruits or vegetables or hunt for some meat in order to feed yourself.

this hurts me more than it hurts you

Why is that people who fire people feel sorry for *themselves*? I wondered about this recently when a friend was told, gently, that her department was being “reorganized” and she wasn’t part of the new plan. The boss lady who gave this speech then proceeded to get teary-eyed and pop a Xanax. (Perhaps she just talked about her desire for Xanax. That part of the story was unclear.)

In any event, I’ve witnessed this phenomenon before. It’s as if some people are deeply ill at ease with their own power. These types do a lot more damage than those who wear their superior status more comfortably — those people, at least, you can see (and hear) coming.

The 9 Commandments of Highly Effective Reality-TV Contestants

Best quote from this Slate feature by Troy Patterson? “I’m like the love child of Fran Drescher and Ricky Ricardo.” But the article got me thinking — actually, it reminded me of a train of thought I’ve entertained before. Namely that someday soon, appearing on reality TV will be the means by which a significant portion of the American middle and lower classes pay their Costco bills. In exchange for not making a fuss about growing income disparities, the have-nots can trade their personal dignity for financial security! Entertainment is made along the way!

It’s a special kind of genius. I mean, Tila Tequila has already used reality TV as an upward-mobility rocket-booster, and maybe I’ve done too much reading on the subject, but now, every time I see her show promoed, Horatio Alger comes to mind. (He was also short. And often described as “elfin.”)

PS. HTBU has a chapter that’s basically about me watching Season 1 of The Apprentice, and trying — hard — to say something nice about Donald Trump. I think I succeeded.

On a radio interview this morning…

…the subject of pretentiousness came up. So here’s a link to earlier thoughts on that topic inspired by a confession from Cary Grant.

Channeling Carrie Nation

A feature in the New York Times City section last Sunday set my teeth on edge. And I need to digress here for a second and explain how reading it led me to fret for the rest of the train ride to Chappaqua. (That detail’s irrelevant. I just like the way it sounds.)

The article was ostensibly about young single women in New York striving to be the next Carrie Bradshaw. But fundamentally it was about gross misunderstandings that prompt some people to butt their heads into walls until sore, bruised, and bloody. The wall, seems to me, is not going to budge. And yet people keep trying, hoping for different results! It’s sad. So it might be helpful to examine these blunders, unpack them some. They have to do with managing other people’s reactions to you, or — more accurately — failing to.

This will take a while.

The article quoted Julia Allison, 27, who writes a dating column for Time Out New York and appears on cable TV as an editor for Star magazine. Here’s what she said, in reference to her career:

“It is sad that people think you have to choose between being intelligent, serious and thoughtful, or you get to be shallow and frivolous and enjoy beauty and fashion.”

She’s essentially saying you’ve got thesis over here, antithesis there, and, lookit me, the synthesis. In this rhetorical strategy, the world is carved into two imaginary opposing camps, and then, either explicitly or implicitly, the speaker’s stance is presented as the sanest alternative. The third way. In other words, she refused to choose between two less than fulfilling options, and now she spans the best of both worlds. And if everyone could only appreciate the moxie, champagne corks would be popping, etc., etc.

Which sounds fair enough. Only it’s bogus, as most arguments set up this way are. I say the strategy relies on “imaginary opposing camps” because they often don’t exist in real life, or, they do exist but aren’t opposed in the way the speaker has just tried to suggest. (You know, like when you think about it…the real alternative to a bowl of vanilla ice cream is not chocolate ice cream, as cliche continues to insist, but…vegan oat flakes, or something like that.)

The cracks in this strategy show right away. In this instance, I’d want to know who in the mainstream, post-Sex and the City U.S. media says that serious women cannot also be found in the aisles of Sephora. Really. Who’s saying this? Did someone just resuscitate Eleanor Roosevelt? In fact, there’s tremendous support for the idea that sparkling, pretty things and a soulful intelligence can go hand in hand. It is a very, very advertiser-friendly idea. Just ask Anna Wintour.

But the dangerous misunderstanding here is assuming that if someone rejects what you’re trying to do — as the article implied was sometimes the case with Ms. Allison — it’s because of either A or B, two camps or ideas that you can readily pinpoint. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say, uh, no. The reason why someone doesn’t like what you’re doing is almost always X. That is, it’s a third factor, an unknown, one you most likely have not previously considered, and the full, final revelation of which usually surprises you.

But the line in this article that really made me scowl — and feel blue, honestly — is this one. After bemoaning some of the scars incurred from her once ubiquitous online presence, Ms. Allison said:

“I think you should be able to make a living doing something that really appeals to you without being judged.”

Yeah, maybe. Maybe that’s possible. Like, if subsistence farming really appeals to you. And this was 1872, and we lived in Czarist Russia.

Thing is, if you want to make a living, you will be judged one way or the other. Sometimes it’s called a six-month review, sometimes it’s called “laid-off” or, more happily, “promoted.” If you’ve opted to live in the public eye, chances are you’ll be judged in public. Protesting that this doesn’t present the ideal situation for you is pointless because you can no more fight it than you can defeat gravity.

O.K. The harmful misunderstanding here: That you can put something — anything — out there and escape criticism for it. It’s not possible. We use to get this as a culture, and somehow we’ve totally forgotten. And I’m not sure why.

In any event, first-generation etiquette books strongly hinted that the whole point of being a relatively private person, and of keeping your mouth shut on certain topics, was not to avoid offending someone, though that was certainly a consideration. No, the point was a clear-eyed awareness that you yourself were the one who’d suffer most once too much information got out. Emily Post argued for preserving an air of mystery. Too much exposure was…cheapening. After a point, you’d start making less of an impression (and ultimately, be less successful).

This is why mega-stars who are smart GO AWAY from time to time. People get tired of looking at their face. They need to gin up some scarcity value.

Moral of the story: Don’t start hitting your head against a wall — this is supposed to be some metaphor for public opinion, but…no time to make it work. Unless you’re committed to bringing about true radical change, in which case, wear a helmet, and bring a sledgehammer or something.

Meanwhile, writing this post has made me feel older than I am, and cranky too, so I’m going to take a few deep breaths and put on some red lipstick.