Dreaming of having your book published? There are some things you need to be aware of…
Writers Talk: Public Lending Write Pamphlet
Anyone who believes being an author is a pathway to riches is in for a rude awakening. Though the image of the starving writer scribbling away in their garret is dated, the average writer has seen their income drop from a measly £7,000 a year in 2000 (source: The Society of Authors) to £4,000, according to the latest research from the Authors Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS). Although news headlines may trumpet six figure advances for debut novelists and high profile politicians, the reality is that most authors’ advances are well below £10,000.
In the past 10 years rapid changes to the way books are sold has left authors’ incomes squeezed with the gap between high earners and low earners widened to a gulf. According to ALCS, the top 10% now earn 50% of total author income and the bottom 50% take home less than 10%. The cause of this gulf lies chiefly in the hands of book retailers – supermarkets and chains – but is also down to the impact of the Richard & Judy book club.
In 1996 the Net Book Agreement was scrapped, and booksellers freed to buy market share on best-selling titles with deep discounts. The age of the ‘BOGOF’, buy one get one free was born. Subsidised by publishers with one-off payments and the extra profit margins given to large retailers enables them to pile books high and sell them cheap.
The vicious price war was exacerbated by Amazon’s arrival in the UK. They used deep discounting on their vast range of titles to attract shoppers online. It worked, and, worried about losing market share to supermarkets and Amazon, the chains led by W H Smith and Waterstone’s waded in with deep discounts of their own. They had little choice: the demise of Ottakar’s in 2006 was a direct result of the bloody high street price war.
While the drop in the average price of a bestseller appears to be good news for readers, it is less so for the average author who is at the wrong end of the cash flow funding retailers’ pricing strategies. Prior to 1996, booksellers received discounts of about 40%. The cut throat market now means the big players can demand margins as high as 65%. This has led the average price of a £6.99 paperback to drop well below £4 in supermarkets.
To pay for these knock-down prices, publishers exercised high discount clauses in authors’ contracts, which kick in on large orders from supermarkets and chains. In 2003 Asda was reportedly demanding up to £40,000 from publishers for a place in its “Five Star Promotions”. By early 2007, Waterstone’s was reported by The Times to be demanding £45,000. On top of this publishers are expected to give retailers discounts of up to 60% in order to be promoted front of store. The alternative may be that their books are at best relegated to the back. At worst, they are only available on Amazon – if anyone bothers to look.
As a result, an author with a bestseller in Tesco or Waterstone’s may only earn 7.5% as a royalty per sale through those shops. In the world of pile it high, sell it cheap, someone pays. Unfortunately for authors not in the league of J K Rowling and Ian Rankin, an appearance on the bestseller list does not mean they can give up the day job.
Two people hold sway over retailers. Their show’s support for a book helps publishers negotiate better terms with bookshops. They are Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan, whose book club has had a dramatic effect on sales of chosen titles. Sales of Joseph O’ Connor’s ‘Star of The Sea’ lifted 300 % after reviews on the show. Publishers are now desperate to find books that “fit” the Richard & Judy profile and when a literary agent feels they have something with potential, publishers fall over themselves to offer blue chip advances.
This has led to a tiny handful of lit-lite novels commanding high advances, along with celebrity books that are quick to publish and easy to publicise. Coupled with the scramble for territory in the burgeoning children’s market (book publishing is closer to spread betting than any other business) it means advances on anything that looks to have bestseller potential have rocketed.
Although this is great news for the Zadie Smiths whose high advances earn out, it is less good news for those whose books fail to match publishers’ – and retailers’ – over-inflated expectations. The impact of this is twofold: authors who fail to live up to the hype are dropped before they can fulfil any potential as they are too expensive a risk; and there is less money in the pot for books editors feel might just break out. Does the latter matter? Yes. JK Rowling was reportedly only paid £2,000 for the first Harry Potter, and her UK publishers reputedly felt she was such a risk that they refused to shell out a further few hundred pounds more for world rights.
Had they decided she was too risky to bother with (as had seven other publishers), a book that spotlighted the rich culture of children’s literature in this country might not have appeared and many millions of young people who had never picked up books might not have been encouraged to read.
The need for authors to earn a decent living from their work cannot be underestimated. At £4,000 a year, the average UK author earns currently far less for their efforts than the person who swipes their book through the till in a store.
Authors are part of the cultural capital of the UK economy, yet their value is grossly under-estimated. The only figures available on the value of books to the cultural economy appear in The Work Foundation report (Staying Ahead: the economic performance of the UK’s creative industries). They show that in 2004 the publishing industry, including academic and journal publishing, had a GVA of £9.4bn and in 2005 employed 253,000.
As newspaper sales decline, the Work Foundation report noted that book production was increasing. The book industry has an impact on literacy, education, business, film, television and even the games market. But without authors it would have nothing.
Children’s books have been responsible for some of the highest grossing film franchises this century – the Harry Potter franchise had already earned £2.24bn at box office by the time Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix opened in July 2007; the Lord of the Rings franchise earned £1.4bn; and even the Babe franchise, based on the books of Dick King Smith took £161.6m at the box office. Books bring billions into the creative economy of Britain. And behind all of them are authors. If they are unable to earn a decent living from work that is acknowledged as being of merit and of value to the economy because of demanding retailers and copyright theft, they may just give up altogether. And who would blame them?
Comments
Posted by Richard Havers on 8 November 2007
As I’m cheering you I’m reaching for a gun….
Having had a proper job once I can tell you that the way publishing works, or not, it absolutely has to change. There will be a significant shift in the next two years and we shall see some more rationalization on our high streets. First of all I’m convinced that Waterstones and HMV will in some way combine, possibly the reason for buying Fopp was to use that as the future retail model.
Will this benefit authors? Probably not. The general ‘mood’ in publishing is it would be a really good business if it wasn’t for all the authors. Somehow the removal of passion from publishing, to be replaced by that other word beginning with ‘P’ – product – has meant that it never really gets very exciting. What R&J have done, to some extent, is put back a little excitement. While I’ve no objection at all to what Supermarkets do, on a business level, I’d do it if I were them, it somehow manages to reduce books to a commodity. Buying books when you’re buying a bag of potatoes or packet of lavatory rolls just makes it all so ordinary.
I want a campaign to put passion back into publishing.
Posted by Boink Blogs on 8 November 2007
[...] your book published? There are some things you … Danuta Kean added an interesting post on Dreaming of having your book published? There are some things you …Here’s a small excerptIn the past 10 years rapid changes to the way books are sold has leftauthors’ incomes squeezed with the gap between high earners and low earners widened to a gulf. According to ALCS, the top 10% now earn 50% of total author income and … [...]
Posted by D Harris on 8 November 2007
The problem is that retailers, particularly supermarkets, have publishers over a barrel. If publishers collectively try to resist the demands for excessive discounts, they will be guilty of anti-competitive practices. Sadly, if any one publisher resists, the retailer will simply drop their books and other publishers will gleefully step in to fill the gap. The situation is unsustainable in the long term, and requires sensible discussion between all parties. Perhaps a legal limit on the size of the discount would be one answer? If retailers are determined to undercut their competitors in order to obtain greater market share, they should bear the cost of doing so – not simply pass that cost to the publisher and the writer.
I also agree with the call to put passion into publishing. That campaign should include a lot more emphasis on the sheer good value that a book represents – £6 or £7 for a paperback is fabulous value compared to a fast food meal / a couple of drinks in a bar / a cinema ticket, etc. An interesting contrast is the computer games industry. Playstation and Xbox games aren’t discounted on anything like the same scale. If people can happily fork out £40 for a game, publishers and retailers should be more than capable of convincing them to pay a fiver for a book!
Posted by Book Club Articles » Blog Archive » Dreaming of having your book published? There are some things you … on 8 November 2007
[...] Original post by Danuta Kean [...]
Posted by Danuta Kean on 8 November 2007
Actually, I think there is loads of passion in publishing. It is some of the big retail chains that lack passion.
Posted by Richard Havers on 8 November 2007
Danuta I agree there’s passion in publishing, but somehow it’s not seen as an industry that has a collective mission from the point of conception, through writing, production, printing, marketing, sales and retail. You’re of course right when you say that some of the big retail chains lack passion. I get why the supermarkets do, to them it is just a commodity, but retail chains have to start playing a different game. We all need to hope that everyone involved in the business of publishing will all start to pull together.
There’s no question that this s a pivotal time in publishing and things will undoubtedly change over the next few years.
Posted by Euphrosene Labon on 8 November 2007
As an aside, how many books have to be sold to be, officially, a ‘bestseller’?
Euphrosene
Posted by Danuta Kean on 8 November 2007
It depends on what time of year it is .If it is January or February, when book sales are traditionally quite slow, a few hundred in a week can get you a top 10 placing in the UK. In the run up to Christmas, when the majority of books are sold, then you need to sell several thousand to get into the top 10.
Sales are measured by Nielsen BookScan when the book is swiped at the till, so the data from BookScan is pretty reliable for trade books as opposed to academic and professional books.
And Richard, yes, I understand what you mean. The energy does get dissipated, but I do think a lot of it has to do with the brick wall publishers come up against when taking into retailer and all they end up talking about is discount and bungs. It is very dispiriting.
Posted by Maria McCarthy on 8 November 2007
This is such useful information, and stuff that so many aspiring writers are unaware of.
I’ve been doing the literature festival this year, talking about how to get published and always direct students to this blog for the *real* background about publishing as opposed to the six-figure advance hype!
Posted by Richard Havers on 8 November 2007
I’ve personally run into such a brick wall recently. It was so dispiriting to be told that because a book wouldn’t sel 250,000 copies through a particular supermarket, according to their sales people, that there was no point in publishing it.
Posted by Linda on 8 November 2007
Talking of people who ‘dream’ of being a published author, news that the Writers Bureau, purveyors of ads claiming ex students were now the writers of ‘bestsellers’, have had complaints upheld against their advertising, has to be seen as a victory for common sense.
One of the ads claimed a £25,000 ‘advance’ – the ‘evidence’ for which was said to be something written on a piece of paper.
(More details and links here:
http://www.freelancewritingtips.com/2007/11/blogger-takes-o.html)
Nice one!
Posted by directab » Dreaming of having your book published? There are some things you … on 8 November 2007
[...] click here for full story [...]
Posted by SUSAN HILL on 12 November 2007
Richard, I think they were fobbing you off in a cack-handed way. No publisher would say a book was not worth publishing if it didn`t sell quarter of a million in supermarkets – which rarely sell that many of anything other than sprouts. Depending on book and price it`s worth publishing for 1,000 copies plus JUST.. depending on the advance. My tiny publishing company pays a flat £1,000 for everyone in advance, The Friday Project does not pay anything.. for e.g. Obviously one likes to sell 5 or 10 thousand but few books do. The killers are the ones on which an advance of 25K and some publicity money has been spent, as well as actual production costs, and they sell 400 copies.. I am talking of copies actually sold through the tills not into the stores. The Nielsen Book Scan figures are the only ones worth quoting as they are real sales to real people in carrier bags, not Sale or Return into the stores, only to come back again 3 months later.
Posted by Richard Havers on 12 November 2007
Susan, I agree it was a bit of a fob off, my agent is still laying down, in a dark room, trying to get his head around it. However, I think it is symptomatic of a mind set which is increasingly linked to the need to have big hits – known as the PLC syndrome around here). The other thing I’ve heard a lot recently is the, “we need to publish fewer books and sell more of those we do.” Lovely thought, and obviously we all go for that as an ideal but that too is linked to the way in which many publishers operate. The sales tail wagging the editorial dog is to me part of what’s wrong. Anyone can tell you what has happened, it’s the role of the editorial/publishing soothsayers to try to work out what is going to sell in 12 to 24 months time.
Publishing is just like TV. The copycat approach nearly always means a spiralling downwards in quality and success.
As I’ve said before, on this blog, I think some of the answer lies in publishers (and by that I mean the big ones, but not exclusively) more fully understanding the marketing process. They should be having an altogether more honest conversation with their authors and create an environment of expectation more closely linked to reality.
Posted by David Thorpe on 14 November 2007
As writers are to these retailers so are farmers to supermarkets. Both are being squeezed.
Posted by SUSAN HILL on 16 November 2007
I could not agree more about expectation and reality…but few aspiring authors believe you if you tell them 400 copies sold of a first novel is GOOD.
Posted by Richard Madeley on 26 November 2007
As much as I don’t like taking the blame for this, it is very, very depressing. I mean, really depressing. I can’t see how writing can remain a viable occupation.
Posted by Teresa Hamilton-Jones on 11 December 2007
Writing can not remain a viable occupation until the publishers are more discerning and put less books on the shelves. In the good old days, one knew if a book was published at all it had to be half decent. These days, I am not convinced publishers even read the books they print, I think they are all bought and sold on a ‘pitch’. I would say on average I read 24-30 books a year, and over the last few years I have noticed that on average about 70% of them were just not good enough to be published. Ten years ago, you could have turned that statistic on its head.
In an ideal world Wannabe authors should face the litererary world’s version of Simon Cowall, who can just say point blank ‘You’re rubbish, don’t give up the day job’ and then hopefully the current swampy cess pit of a market would tighten into a solid quality arena.
As a reader, my complaint is always the same. There are too many rubbish books being published which ought not to be.
Posted by Register or Signup to Free Internet Services » Blog Archive » Dreaming of having your book published? There are some things you need to be aware of… on 12 December 2007
[...] The only figures available on the value of books to the cultural economy appear in The Work Foundation report (Staying Ahead: … The book industry has an impact on literacy, education, business, film, television and even the games market….Coupled with the scramble for territory in the burgeoning childrens market (book publishing is closer to spread betting than any other business) … Authors are part of the cultural capital of the UK economy, yet their value is grossly under-estimated…. source: Dreaming of having your book published? There are some things you need to be aware of…, Danuta Kean – Freelance Journalist [...]
Posted by Debra Rixon on 20 January 2008
I have to agree with Teresa – as a ‘wannabe’ author and avid reader (I get through 1, maybe 2 books – depending on size – a week), there are some perfectly dreadful books published, which also leads me to lie down in a darkened room with a wet flannel over my forehead, despairing of ever punching through the ’swampy cess pit’! I buy my books, critically sorting through the ones to go to the Charity shop, and the ones I know I will read again at some point because they were so good – I will pay top price for a hardback because I love the author – but the covers truly are vital. I will instantly shy away from the pastel, ditzy woman figure with stupid writing because I know it will be the same as the rest, which helps in the discerning purchasing bit, and I largely ignore the jacket blurb on an author I like, I will just buy it. It IS the brand – the author – that I am willing to pay money for. As an aspiring author, I have to think that if R&J (like Oprah in the US) have such an influence, then it behoves me to get a wriggle on and enter – not because they’ve pushed up the advances, but to maybe have a better chance of actually being read.
Posted by Penelope Alexander on 31 January 2008
“The general ‘mood’ in publishing is it would be a really good business if it wasn’t for all the authors.”
Does anyone else have the feeling there’s a parallel here in film, with the use of computerised ‘actors’ ?
Posted by Oliver Donway on 18 March 2008
I think it is great that this is the only report on the reality of publishing that i have found on the internet. books are no longer valued today alongside authors and publishers have no passion for literature, only money. I am writing my book and in it I will highlight the problems that good authors are faced with. Hopefully, I will get published as speaking objectively, my idea and statements in my book are great and very amusing but true.