Over the last few months I’ve heard lots and lots of the rumors about how this awful thing or that awful thing was going to happen to publishing and how writers were never going to sell books and how publishers were never going to buy new books, and… and… and…
Sigh. (I must be getting old because I remember at least ten other times when this exact thing happened in publishing. I sort of believed it the first time, never again.)
So instead of talking about how we all hit that spot in our stories where we think they are crap and thus stop, I need to talk a minute or two about the business of publishing.
First off, most writers out there have no clue how really, really large this business is. Simply walking into a BEA main room gives you some sense, but that’s no where near all of the size. And numbers about gross income and numbers of books sold every week or month or year just don’t sink into people’s minds. Honestly, I have no idea how to really describe how really, really large this business is in any fashion that will make it real to you.
Maybe a good way to understand the size would be to walk down a major street in New York City and look up at a sixty or seventy story building, and realize every floor, every office in that building is one publishing company, and more likely than not, that is only one of a number of buildings, or parts of buildings owned by the huge company, that also owns smaller companies, and those smaller companies own smaller companies still, and then there are imprints and book lines inside each company, sometimes only a few, sometimes a hundred or more.
And that’s only one publishing company. Scattered all over New York, and in Europe, and in Toronto, and in many other countries are more buildings just like that one, all full of people working in publishing. Because I have had the luck with my almost one hundred books to work with many, many publishers and imprints, I’ve been inside a lot of those buildings over the years. Still stuns me at times, to be honest.
So, let’s drop down to a size we can all understand and grasp. One tiny little imprint in one of these major companies, lost in the mists of levels of publishers, vice presidents, company names and such. This one imprint, let’s call it IMPRINT, has a monthly list of five books. Got that. 60 books a year. IMPRINT takes up about three small offices in one major building, plus it will mix with other imprints on sales force and art department and such. Maybe six offices total (in the huge building) assigned to this imprint, not counting the assistants sitting in the hallways. Next to it down the hall is another imprint, and next to that is another imprint, and above and below it are other imprints and book lines, and so it goes. Starting to get the size a little?
Now to justify its very existence, IMPRINT must continue to publish 5 books per month, every month, and generate a set amount of income and cover a set amount of overhead. Got that? It flat can’t stop or the bean counters upstairs will come to attention, heads will roll, people will hit the streets and another imprint will start up to take it’s place that will earn the needed bottom line. Those offices, under one imprint or another, one editor or another, must put out five books per month.
So, here comes the big bad economy issue. For a few months, things are tight, and it looks tight into the coming year as well. But people still need entertainment, people will still buy books, and by the end of 2009 the number of books bought, the gross sales, will once again have gone up as they have for decades and decades and decades.
So, from on high in these monster companies comes the word that things need to be tightened. Each publisher looks around and finds places to cut a corner, a way to combine functions, a way to make an editor work even harder than they already are, if that’s possible. That saves a little.
But where does some real savings come from right now? Cash flow, of course.
Take our sample IMPRINT line of books, putting out five per month. How do they cut some money right away? They can’t cut a book per month, because that would cut their income and send them to a certain death in front of the bean counter’s suicide squad. Nope, can’t do that. But they can slow down buying.
Now I heard a chorus of “Huh?” out there. How can they slow down buying while not cutting the number of books? Simple, actually.
Books that are coming out right now have, more than likely, been on the schedule for two years. That’s right, IMPRINT is working two years out with purchasing. By today, IMPRINT’s 2009 schedule should be very, very solid, all books in or coming in, sales meetings done for a large part of the year. The editors will have a large part, if not almost all of 2010 schedule already set as well, and are working on 2011 schedule, buying books, putting in second books in contracts, and so on. Some 2012 books are even penciled in.
And thus, right now there’s room to flex, work a little closer to deadlines, worry about catching up the extra slack later, as the money flow eases. Publishers and editors do this all the time and in the short term it makes a real difference to a publisher working against a 4% margin of profit.
So what does the rumblings come down to the writers sound like? Editors are not buying much right now. And thus PANIC sets in, writers make stuff up, that’s their job description, but now we have writers on networks making stuff up from rumors, with no real understanding of the real business. Of course editors are slowing down a little at the moment. It’s called cash flow. Duh.
But IMPRINT must turn out five books per month. When they buy those five books has some flex in the schedule and the cash flow, that’s all, and right now the companies are using that flex a little. They might not buy that great book for the 2011 slot, but instead sit on it or if the book is only just good enough, pass on it hoping to find something better. But over the long haul, they still have to have five books per month.
Will there be lay-offs and cut backs in publishing? Yes, and they will make news. But all the lay-offs will go to streamlining something, getting rid of dead wood in other places, cutting a line that’s losing too much money every month (to replace it shortly with another new line or imprint). All this will happen, but keep remembering how really large this business is. And imprints and lines of books come and go all the time, even in good times. They just don’t make the “splash” in the good times as they do when the fear mongers are pushing every bad thing as news.
Remember, the only way this monster business can make money is put out books, lots and lots and lots of books. And writers have to write those books, since we are the supply side of things.
So stop listening to the doom sayers and go back to work. Publishing will continue right on, changing as it always does, but moving forward in a very study pace. Your job is to stay on top of the changes, change with it, not ahead of it or behind it, and save the making stuff up for your fiction.
Cheers, Dean