It's a Business, After All

Clare’s short-but-sweet post this past Monday elicited some very interesting comments, a few of which I’ve heard in various forms over the years from almost every writer I’ve known. Being a writer myself as well as an editor, I understand both sides of the issue—what my writer friends feel, believe, and wish and the reality.

The reality is that publishing is a business. It would be wonderful if the publishers could take leaps of faith and sign all the manuscripts their editors took a shine to. It would be fantastic if they didn’t need to be concerned with authors being new or having poor track records, being good writers technically or not, having more than one book in them or not, being marketable or not. It would be great if the bookstores could just stock every book ever published, whether or not its predecessors did well, whether or not the store’s customers indicated an interest in the author or the subject or not. These things would be ideal. But they wouldn’t be good business.

Just like other companies, publishers are in business to make a profit. They find their niche, they hire skilled employees, and they work to get their share of the market. If they repeatedly publish books that don’t sell enough to cover the company’s operating costs, they soon go out of business. And books, even the tiniest ones, cost a small fortune to publish. They’re composed of just paper and ink, but a ton of people work on them—not merely the author and editor, but a copyeditor, proofreader, indexer, book designer, compositor (typesetter), cover designer, printer, binder, cover copy writer, catalog copy writer, publicist, salespeople, special salespeople, subsidiary rights people, and all their various supervisors and assistants. And this list, which isn’t inclusive to begin with, doesn’t include the people who don’t directly work on the books but keep the publishing house running, such as the accounting personnel and IT people. Every publisher occasionally takes a chance on a “special” project, but no publisher can afford doing this too often.

The same is true at the bookstore level. To make enough money to cover their operating expenses and turn some kind of profit, bookstores need to sell what their customers want. If they fill their shelves with books that most people have never heard of and don’t offer enough copies of the books that people specifically come in for, it’s a problem. Such a bookstore would soon find its customers going down the street to a store that does have the books they want.

This is why it’s so important that authors be willing and able to help publicize their books. It’s also why it helps to have a previous book that sold well. It’s a sad fact that the publishers put most of their budgets behind the books that seem to need it the least—the books by the authors who already have big followings, recognizable names, or some sort of platform. But look at it this way: If you had a business, would you rather commit your hard-earned finances to the product that most of your advisers agree has an excellent chance of bringing a good return or to the one that, if lucky, will bring a small return?

Sometimes I feel jaded looking at publishing like this. I, too, have dreams of selling a million copies, chatting with Oprah, and becoming a mainstay on the New York Times Best-Seller List. I know I’m not a favorite at functions attended by writers where this subject comes up. Worse, because of the realities of publishing, many writers see the publisher-author relationship as adversarial. Since I’m an editor, I’m an enemy.

But that’s silly. Publishers want to find new writers. They need to replenish their stables. And the bookstores want fresh voices to draw new readers. After all, it’s just good business.