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by David Amerland
If you’ve been bitten by the writing bug you know that writing is a compulsion. It’s not really something you choose to do to fill the time, it’s something you feel you cannot do without, it is as necessary as the air you breathe, as vital as the sunshine and as energising as rain. If you feel like this the last thought in your mind before you put pen to paper is whether writing I good as a career. Real writers do not care about that. They know they want to write – they feel compelled to write and whether it leads them down a path where the streets are paved with gold or up the proverbial garden path in terms of lucre is usually secondary.
At some point however writing, in order to continue, has to begin to pay off and it is here that the question of whether publishing is still good business begins to make sense. Writing as an insider who has seen the publishing industry as a journalist, author, writer and Managing Editor for a publishing house (though obviously not all at the same time), I know that the question is pertinent, relevant, topical and answered, monosyllabically with”‘no.” To be fair, publishing, like all creative professions, has been a hugely chancy affair from the word go with publishers getting burnt along the way.
In the day of the global market with more books being published and markets available than ever before, fewer authors are finding a publisher and even fewer are making any money at all. Why? The answer lies in the mechanics.
The traditional path was that a writer who possessed some talent could count upon a publisher to recognise that and go out on a limb with his book expecting to make a loss from the first one but develop the writer who would then become part of the publisher’s stable. This way towering reputations were forged from Dickens in Victorian England to Kingsley Amis and Vikram Seth and publishers’ reputations were assured.
So what’s different today? Quite frankly a lot. First publishing houses have consolidated being bought up by Media powerhouses like Viacom who have realised that publishing is a license to print money, provided of course you do it right. And right they do it – for them! The modern publishing contract and the way an author is handled and his book is publicised have become the focus of much debate in the media these days precisely because it’s given rise to a paradox: in the day of the global market with more books being published and markets available than ever before, fewer authors are finding a publisher and even fewer are making any money at all. Why? The answer lies in the mechanics.
Pure and simply publishing has graduated from a business that was chancy and required good nerves, a strong heart and a love of and for publishing to a business that is indistinguishable from selling detergent. Let’s take an example: you take your book, your joy and pride and the result of many years of hard work and, assuming you’ve been lucky enough to find a publisher after the usual round of rejections, you get ready to sit back and enjoy a little of the limelight of your success – right?To the publisher your book represents a commodity.
Publishing has graduated from a business that… required a love of and for publishing to a business that is indistinguishable from selling detergent.
After all, publishers are there to do one thing: bring our books and though they don’t really like it these days, it’s still the nature of their business. So, they will give you a $1,500 advance and the absolute minimum number of copies you may get away with (usually three) plus a royalties’ percentage that is between 8.0% – 9.5%. They will bring out 5,000 copies of your book (their break-even number) of which at least 1,000 copies will be guaranteed sales based on the publisher’s internal marketing and publicity machine.
At the point of 1,000 copies sold the publisher will have broken even and made a modest profit (depending on pricepoint). This leaves 4,000 copies which to store, or try and shift will cost money. So they do neither. Instead they are sold at a high-volume discount, about 60% to one of their subsidiaries. The 40% the publisher gets for them is still a substantial profit for them. As an author you will get the “high volume discount rate” of between 2% – 3% so maybe reaping a further $200. In the meantime the subsidiary, having acquired the books at a substantial discount can then sell them on at a reduced price (say 40% off promotion) without having to pay you any royalties. This is a win-win-lose scenario with the last link on the chain being the author.
Disillusioned? Ready to jack it in and go and start a glittering career working at McDonald’s? Well, don’t. Writing is too good a career to be allowed to fizz out like this but you’ll have to work really hard at it, be inventive, and, these days, not be prepared to take ‘no’ for an answer. As Edmond McGuyer admirably covered in his internet radio show not too long ago, success in publishing requires a flair for self-promotion and sheer hard work. The risk is that if you have no talent you will find out only after a long time, precisely because you no longer can trust publishers’ judgement, but that’s better than having talent, trusting them and finding out that it was they who were wrong and you should not be serving burgers at McDonald’s at all!
About the author: David Amerland is part of the elite SEO team at www.helpmyseo.com aiding online business to win at the search engine visibility and online marketing games.
Courtesy: EzineArticles
Photo: rachelkramerbussel.com
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