ATHRY HOUSE Books

THE PRESENT AND FUTURE OF PUBLISHING

By David Morrell 

 

Several writers have asked for my assessment of the current situation in publishing.  It’s been only two years since I updated “The Business of Writing” section of my writing book, THE SUCCESSFUL NOVELIST.  But already there is need for an update.

 

In January of this year, a bookstore in the Indianapolis area, The Mystery Company, closed its doors.  This came as a surprise because it was well known and it had been an organizing force behind last year’s Bouchercon, one of the great reader/author crime-fiction conventions.

Jim Huang, the person most associated with the store, left to become a general manager of the bookstore at Kenyon College. To explain his decision, he posted an essay on The Mystery Company website.      “Technology {I quote Jim here} is completely rewriting the book on the book itself.”  Electronic reading devices such as the Kindle, the iPad, the Nook , and the Sony reader make it possible for online booksellers to offer digital versions of books for amazing low prices and to deliver those books within a minute.  No UPS, no post office, no trip to a bookstore.  One minute you want it.  The next minute you have it.  As Carrie Fisher says in her novel, Postcards from the Edge, “The trouble with instant gratification is it takes too long.”

 

MY OWN OBSERVATIONS

 

1.  When I became an author in 1972 with First Blood, there were perhaps as many as 42 New York publishing houses. Authors and their agents had many places to offer their manuscripts.  These days, because many publishers were acquired by conglomerates, there are five major publishers, with numerous subsets that have some autonomy but are mostly controlled by the larger entity.  In short, there are fewer places for authors and agents to take books. Fewer innovative books have a chance to find a home with a major publisher.

2.  As individual publishers were acquired by larger companies, those publishers were also downsized.  Established editors were dismissed and replaced by lower-paid less-experienced editors and in some cases by editorial assistants.  Knowing that they might be next to be dismissed, those newly hired editors (and even experienced ones) became reluctant to recommend a book that doesn’t fit a trend.  As an editor told me, “it’s easier to say no rather than risk my job.”

3.  Editors are leaving the business or moving from publisher to publisher so rapidly that it’s difficult for an author to feel connected to an individual house.  Especially for a beginning writer, there’s little feeling of being nurtured and encouraged. Publicity departments have also been trimmed.  Publishers expect authors to do increasingly more book promotion, sometimes spending their advances on advertisements and tours.  With so much self-marketing, it’s difficult to find the time to write.

4.  Just as there are fewer New York publishers In the United States, there are now two-thirds of the independent bookstores that there were 10 years ago.  Perhaps less than that.

5.  Printed book reviews are fewer, also.  Shrinking advertisement revenues forced some newspapers to go out of business while others eliminated sections, such as book reviews.  Even theWashington Post’s famous Book World section no longer exists.

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FINAL THOUGHTS

 

Remember that just because major publishing is having trouble, that doesn’t mean people have stopped reading books.  Printed books won’t go away, but e-books won’t go away either.  To return to what Jim Huang said at the start of myremarks, “Technology is completely rewriting the book on the book itself.”   Current conservative estimates are that 50 percent of book sales will be electronic within 5 years, perhaps sooner.  People who own e-readers report that they now buy far more books than they used to—because it’s so easy to buy them.  And they read in ways that you wouldn’t expect.  For example, someone emailed me recently to say that he was reading one of my novels on his iPhone as he rode on a commuter train to go to work in Manhattan. Remember, too, that the Internet provides abundant ways to promote a book, far more than in traditional magazines and newspapers.

I believe that independent bookstores will benefit from what’s happening.  People who buy a lot of e-books report that they also buy print versions of some of the e-books they enjoyed—as gifts or because a printed book is a revered object.  An author can’t sign an electronic book (although some people do ask authors to sign the backs of their e-readers).  Independent stores offer expert knowledge.  At their best, they are valued members of the local community and can bring authors together with readers in a more intimate way than cavernous signings at chain stores.

William Goldman famously said about movie producers, “Nobody knows anything.”  The same applies to the publishing and bookselling world.  I find that exciting.  All bets are off.  Anything is possible.  Change is painful, but change is also an opportunity.  Those authors and publishers and bookstores who embrace the future and innovate will survive and prosper.

In my writing book, The Successful Novelist, I have a chapter, “The Novelist as Marketer,” which explains the basics of how to be your own book promoter, but in the new publishing world, other methods are constantly being developed.

In part two of this discussion, which will appear on a future WHAT’S NEW page, I’ll explain some new methods of getting your work into the hands of readers.

 

Happy reading,

David.