Q&A: Does Recession Hit Midlist Authors Harder?
Fantasy Magazine Asks
My answer to the question
by David A. Rozansky, Publisher, Flying Pen Press
Readers, Writers & Royalties columnist
April 29, 2009
Copyright 2009 David A. Rozansky
Fantasy Magazine sent me a question in a tweet:
fantasymagazine @DavidRozansky I have heard that it's midlist writers most hit by the recession - is that true? Which authors are still selling books?
Naturally, I can’t answer this in 140 characters, so I thought this would make a good “Reader’s Question” to answer in the Readers, Writers and Royalties column.
Q: Are midlist authors most hit by the recession?
A: In my experience, the answer is an emphatic NO! Flying Pen Press has experienced growth and improved sales since October. Flying Pen Press has been prepared for the recession since it’s inception two years ago, so we are pretty well prepared with a solid business model.
The thought that midlist authors are hurting more in this recession is probably related to the belief that when fewer books are being sold, readers will not venture further than the frontlist titles. I am not so sure this is true, and here is my reasoning.
First, I don’t think that there are less books being read. Instead, I think there is a change in people’s buying habits. Just as Faith Popcorn predicted for the Nineties, people are spending more time “cocooning” again, that is, they are staying at home. They are spending more time in front of their computers and less time in stores. Thus, stores that have relied on the “browsing customer” for their livelihood are hurting.
Amazon’s sales are up. Chain stores are precipitously down. Indie bookstores are seeing mixed results from the recession, but in talking to booksellers, I think I have seen a trend: those stores catering to their local neighborhoods and to those readers who are cocooning are seeing strong increases in sales.
When people stay at home, they are exposed to less of the frontlist marketing that big pubslihers put out, and they have less exposure to word of mouth buzz about any book. Instead, they spend more time at home in front of the computer, and so those authors and pubsliehrs who are more internet savvy and spend more of their time online tend to do better, and this tends to favor the midlist author, as most midlisters have had to learn internet marketing just to get their names out there.
In December we saw another significant trend. It was a slaughter in New York City as hundreds of editors and staff were let go from big publishers, and many authors found their titles and contracts melded into imprints that were in no way related to their subject matter. Meanwhile, most small presses saw incredible gains in December. The culprit, most everyone agrees, is “excessively large advances.”
Midlist authors and authors at small presses receive little, sometimes no advance. They earn royalties based solely on how well the book sells, not on pre-publication hype. Many frontlisteers found themselves out in the cold because their large advances caused large losses, while midlisters were still pulling their own weight or failing small.
With so many readers staying home and ordering from online retailers and corner stores, we have seen a shift in how books need to be marketed. Internet marketing is crucial to any book’s success, and this has to start with the author, not the publisher. A million-dollar marketing campaign does very little in the way of convincing internet browsers to buy a book, but the efforts of an author who can blog, twitter and build an email list of fans has a distinct advantage over authors who do not. Midlist authors, to survive, have had to learn internet marketing or perish. Frontline authors, on the other hadn, have relied on large publishers for more conventional “flood the stores” style of marketing, a style that does not work when there are fewer patrons in the stores to begin with.
Thus, I am seeing that midlist authors are doing better than frontlist authors, Of course, if a frontlist author makes only $3 million instead of $6 million, it probably does not hurt that much in any economic situation. But an author who is making $5,000 on sales doesn’t particularly feel that much better than one making only $2,500 on sales. IN that regard, midlist authors, just like blue collar workers and entry-level clerks, feel the recession all the worse, even with modest raises in income. Midlist authors still strive to be frontlist authors, or simply accept the fact that they will have to keep the day job.
But a publisher, who has a stable of “midlist authors”, is not as sensitive, so an increase in midlist sales for smaller publishers tends to be truly impressive, especially when you realize that small, independent presses see the world differently, that for them, there are only frontlist and backlist titles, that the “midlist” is really their “frontlist.”
As to fantasy, there are some peculiarities in the industry. Normally, fantasy sells well in bad economic times. Hard science fiction does just the opposite, selling well only in good economies. But the crash of 2008 seems to be different. Fantasy is not selling well, nor is SF (overall, anyway, as our sales are certainly doing well in the area of SF). Usually, the thinking was that in bad times, readers are looking for an escape. But when times get very bad, that is, people are losing their homes, nut just buying less, they seek real answers for real problems, and thus, fantasy cannot help them.
However, if the fantasy SF, or mainstream novel can commiserate with the reader (space pirates championing the moral underdog in the face of soulless corporations, underemployed single women seeking a stable family life, and urban fantasy taking place among boarded up buildings and viral disease out of control), the book seems to develop a stronger affinity with the reading public. But of course, trends can change on a dime, and tomorrow it might be Disneyesque princess stories and the return of “Greed is Good.”
To sum it up, I would say that book sales of midlist titles are doing fine. However, midlist authors often need a day job to get by, and so many of those day jobs are at risk of layoffs, so yes, the recession hits the midlist author hard, but not because of what is happening in the book industry.
Q:. Which authors are still selling books?
A: The answer remains unchanged. Authors who work harder to communicate with their readers and to write more prolifically do better. This was true in Mark Twain’s time and is still true today. However, because publishers are less effective with conventional marketing, and readers are becoming increasing proficient with the internet and with social media, those authors who focus on connecting with their fans through the internet, including blogs, Twitter, and email lists, do far better than those who are relying on their publisher’s marketing machine.
We have even come to the point where self-published authors and small press are seizing a much larger market share.
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This is just one article in David A. Rozansky’s column, Readers, Writers & Royalties, a blog column about the book trade, from writing and publishing, to selling and reading. The column is currently hosting the 36-part “Book Wars” series, a series of articles where Mr. Rozansky interprets war strategies from Robert Greene’s The 33 Strategies of War, as they may be applied to independent booksellers.
Readers may find archived articles or subscribe to Readers, Writers & Royalties at www.ReadWriteRoyalty.Gather.com. Subscribe to all of Mr. Rozansky’s articles at www.FlyingPenPress.Gather.com.
David A. Rozansky is the publisher of Flying Pen Press. He has been in publishing since 1987, and has more than one million published words under his byline. Flying Pen Press is at http://www.FlyingPenPress.com. He is available for speaking on the subject of writing magazine articles, public relations, marketing and book-length material.
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Comments: 10
The current economy is quite a tough time for brick and mortars to sell hard cover books, however, with the expansion of social networking on the Internet, I think they would be having a hard time of it anyway.
As David said, there are not as many people in the stores; people are hunkering down at home, connecting with others online. Fortunately, the bookstores are not the author's end consumer, the readers are. And if readers are rutting in at home and connecting online, the smart author will be there too.
If buyers go into stores even in reduced numbers they won't find a POD book on the shelf. End of story.
Our books are on the shelves, as are thousands and thousands of books from big name publishers using Lightning Source as their printer. POD has become the "Long Tail" solution that the publishing industry is using. I think you will be surprised to find just how many trade paperbacks are published on demand.
Flying pen press's books aer available from the major wholesalers 9in fact, Lightning Source, our printer, is a subsidiary of Ingram). Orders from bookstores are filled faster through Ingram than warehoused books. Our books are completely returnable to the trade, which the wholesalers participate in. We offer high quality books, and the quality of the paper is higher than most pulp-using books. We are a greener and leaner company, but the one thing we have no problem with is getting on bookstore shelves.
I am happy with our growth. Is Flying Pen press a small publisher? yes, of course it is. but we are doing fine and we have a bright future. Sorry if the new technology upsets you, but it is here to stay and quickly becoming the industry standard. And in this economy, which is hte basis of this article, printing books only as they are ordered is the smart, fiscally responsible choice.
POD books are on shelves, from Oxford University Press, Simon & Schuster, John Wiley & Sons, Hachette Book Group, McGraw-Hill, Macmillan, University of California Press and Norton. And that is only a short list of publishers using Lightning Source as their printer and distributor.
And yes, Barnes and Noble is shelving our books. We are a small press, and like the 30,000 other small presses out there, and the more than 7,000,000 active titles to choose from (according to B&N) it is not always easy getting Barnes & Noble to stock our books. So they may seem hard to find. But there are a fair number of B&N outlets that carry our books, and we are seeing those numbers grow.
Don't confuse the manufacturing process of printing on demand with the concept of self-published or vanity press. More than 300,000 titles are printed by Lightning Source, including New York Times bestsellers (see press release clips, below).
While you seem convinced that POD won't get on major bookstores' shelves, you will find that you are quite mistaken if you were to actually call Barnes and Noble and ask them if they are stocking Lightning Source printed books. Barnes and Noble orders our books all the time, although certainly not in large quantities (which is sort of the point, frankly). But as we grow and our reputation grows with it, Barnes and Noble will be picking up more of our titles.
Lightning Source is our POD printer. They are also a subsidiary of Ingram Books, the largest distributor of books in the world. Lightning Source was founded by John Ingram, CEO of Ingram. It would be silly if the Ingram POD printing facility didn’t distribute books to Ingram’s customers.
Thus, Lighting Source is not only our printer, but also our distributor. They distribute books to Ingram, Baker & Taylor, BN.com, Amazon, and NACSCORP. Ingram and Baker & Taylor service boosktores and libraries all over the world.
If a book is returnable, available at standard trade terms and discounts, and can be ordered through Ingram, then Barnes & Noble allows it for stocking. It takes some time and effort to convince the corporate buyers in New York to put in an order, but we have convinced them to make purchases of Looking Glass by James R. Strickland, She Murdered Me with Science by David Boop, and The Game Day Poker Almanac Official Rules of Poker by Kelli Mix.
I also see on the BN.com website that some stores are carrying Dragon Ring by Lettie Prell, Seventh Daughter by Ronnie Seagren, The Feral World Series by Gaddy Bergmann (Migration of the Kamishi and Trials of the Warmland). And there is a store here in Denver that has copies of all of our books. However, I am not privy as to how those books were ordered by Barnes and Noble; they may have been regular stocking orders, or they may have been special orders or “short orders” put in by on-site managers.
Barnes and Noble small press division in New York has asked us to submit the first three titles in the Full-Throttle Space Tales series of anthologies, as they are looking at a standing order for the series.
Here are some references for you in your research. The small-press buyer at Barnes & Noble is Marcella Smith. In a webinar given by Marcella Smith on the subject of selling books to Barnes and Noble, she specifically answers a question about buying POD products. Her answer: “Almost all POD books we carry come through Lightning Source. Otherwise, you [the publisher] will have to make it available to our wholesalers.” The primary wholesaler for Barnes and Noble is Ingram. That comes from the head of small-press at Barnes and Noble, in a discussion about how to submit books to Barnes and Noble buyers.
Also check with Ingram. www.ingrambooks.com.
You can also talk to Lightning Source. www.lightningsource.com. My rep there is Gayle Cantrell. She can answer all your questions. If you can get a hold of John Ingram, he will tell you quite emphatically about the company’s capabilities and its relationship with bookstores.
Finally, I would direct you to a POD Yahoo group:
Print-On-Demand@yahoogroups.com. You will find a lot of POD publishers on that site. Many of them use Lighting Source, and they can back up everything that I have said here.
Lightning Source is recognized by the industry for its high quality, its deliverability, and its distribution to bookstores in the U.S. and in the U.K. It is now becoming the heart of the new Espresso Book Machine that is being placed in bookstores, libraries and museums around the world, and that means not only are the stores stocking the books, many are printing the books onsite! For more on this, check out the Publishers Weekly article link:
http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6652248.html
To be clear: POD books are stocked by Barnes and Noble on a regular basis. To say that they are not stocked is patently erroneous.
Need more proof? Here are some of the NYT bestsellers that came from POD. You have certainly heard of a few. Clips are taken from Lightning Source press releases:
June 4, 2008: To help meet an extraordinary volume of bookseller orders for Scott McClellan’s book What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception (ISBN 978-1-58648-556), the publisher PublicAffairs, a member of the Perseus Books Group, has selected Lightning Source Inc. to bring to market thousands more copies of the book produced with print on demand technology.
Link: https://www.lightningsource.com/NewsItem.aspx?id=CST29
Sept. 2, 2008: Senator John McCain’s announcement on Friday that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin would be his vice presidential running mate touched off an unexpected demand for her recent biography, published by Epicenter Press.
To meet this sudden and significant volume of bookseller orders, Epicenter Press executives turned to the Ingram content companies for the capability to bring to market tens of thousands of new copies of SARAH – How a Hockey Mom turned Alaska’s Political Establishment Upside Down by the author Kaylene Johnson (ISBN 978-0-9800825-6-2), “The Palin biography was first released in April 2008, but the intense media attention following McCain’s announcement last week caused a dramatic spike in orders,” said Kent Sturgis, publisher. Through his distributor Graphic Arts Center Publishing Co., he quickly made arrangements with Ingram Publisher Services and Lightning Source Inc. for the immediate manufacture and shipment of books to retail booksellers.
Link: https://www.lightningsource.com/NewsItem.aspx?id=CST34
Oct. 15, 2008: The University of Nebraska Press has selected Lightning Source Inc. to print and distribute two books by the 2008 Nobel Prize winner in Literature, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio…
With nearly 200 translated titles currently in print from five different languages, the University of Nebraska Press is one of the largest, most active American publishers of translated works. Two Le Clézio titles, The Round and Other Cold Hard Facts (ISBN 978-0-8032-8007-6) and Onitsha (ISBN 978-0-8032-7966-7), both published in English, are enjoying resurrected demand since the Nobel announcement.
Link: https://www.lightningsource.com/NewsItem.aspx?id=CST47
October 20, 2008: To help meet the demand of orders for the timely George Soros break-out title The New Paradigm for Financial Markets (ISBN 978-1-58648-683-9), PublicAffairs, a member of the Perseus Books Group, has again called upon Lightning Source Inc. and its innovative print-on-demand technology and fulfillment solutions.
A New York Times best seller, the Soros book was originally released in April this year. The current global economic crisis and an appearance by the author on the PBS show Bill Moyers Journal, created an extraordinary spike in orders. The Lightning Source team worked with PublicAffairs to digitize the title in a matter of hours and manufacture 2,000 copies of the book to supplement offset print runs.
Link: https://www.lightningsource.com/NewsItem.aspx?id=CST89
To be clear: POD books are stocked by Barnes and Noble on a regular basis. To say that POD titles are not stocked by Barnes and Noble is patently erroneous.
Lightning Source is recognized by the industry for its high quality, its fulfillment reliability, and its widespread shipments to bookstores in the U.S. and in the U.K. It is now becoming the heart of the new Espresso Book Machine that is being placed in bookstores, libraries and museums around the world, and that means not only are the stores stocking the books, many are printing the books onsite! For more on the EBM, check out the Publishers Weekly article link:
http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6652248.html
And no, selling to authors is not how Flying Pen Press does business. We buy trade paperback rights to a select few manuscripts chosen from our review queue and from authors known to our editors, use those rights to print and distribute books to the trade, and pay a healthy royalty back to the author. Authors are entitled to buy books at a 55% discount from the cover price (the big publishers’ standard is 40%, so Flying Pen Press is technically giving authors a better deal than the industry standard). We make most of our net receipts from the check that comes from Lightning Source each month, or from sales we make directly to bookstores from our own office.
You are correct that we don’t pay advances on royalties. That is simply because we are building a publishing company from scratch, without the big cash reserves. But we do pay royalties, based on gross profits of the sale of each book (so that sales directly to bookstores at a lower discount and to the consumers at the cover price result in higher royalties to the author, when they occur). True, it won’t attract big names, but it is a fair payment that properly reflects the value of the author’s work.
But you are wrong to say that we don’t have copies available pre-sale. We just don’t print galleys, as all of our work is electronic. Nor do we bother sending books to reviewers in the media prior to publication date, as there is no reason in this day of blogging and instant customer reviews. Instead, we send books out to readers and bookstore owners, and we send out pdf versions of the galleys to those bloggers who wish to receive galleys in that format.
My business model is working fine, and Flying Pen Press is off to a good start for a small press. I am happy with it.
Addendum: I see that you have two books that are published POD: Against a Strong Current, and Alaska Tales. The former is published through XLibirs and the latter through IUniverse, according to Amazon. Both of those imprints are subsidy presses that do not offer any “returns” policies to Barnes and Noble, so of course those imprints are never considered by Barnes and Noble buyers. If these two subsidy publishers are the basis of your remarks, then you might want to update your knowledge of POD, as the industry has changed since you last submitted your files to IUniverse in 2002. Not that IUniverse has made any progress in working with Barnes and Noble, but Lightning Source and Ingram have certainly come a long way. Perhaps you should buy new ISBNs, give Lightning Source a call and send them the pdf files of your books, and then send Marcella Smith a notice that your books are available from Lightning Source (they will need to see a copy of the finished book and your marketing plan). See what happens.