Part 2 (1/2)
About book publis.h.i.+ng.
We wrote this book to help you get your dream job in publis.h.i.+ng. And that innocent term 'publis.h.i.+ng' covers a vast array of very different types of product magazines, books, journals, e-publis.h.i.+ng for very different buyers in very different markets looking for very different things.
This chapter looks at those differences, and asks you some tough questions about whether you've got what it takes to be successful in each of those markets. And that's important, because to publish in a particular field you have to really identify with your customers, with their needs and wants; with your authors; and with the market itself. This is no place for dabblers!
Publishers need to be part of the target community they seek to serve, not just a distant supplier. (ROBERT MCKAY, DIRECTOR CCH INFORMATION UK) Different jobs for different kinds of people what suits your style best?
It is important to keep reminding yourself that your first job and the first market you work in is highly unlikely to be the one you spend your whole career in. So, settling for expert status in just one small corner of publis.h.i.+ng isn't the best move, since it limits your future potential. It makes much more sense to move around now, while you're early in your career and change is still a possibility. Otherwise you could find it's too late and you're stuck for good.
It gets harder, as you become more senior, to move from one part of the industry to another, and particularly into trade publis.h.i.+ng from another sector. It's very helpful to move from one area to another in your formative years in order to see beyond the detail, but you should probably have in mind the sector you want to move up in by the time you're 30. Publis.h.i.+ng has crises every ten years or so, so everyone goes through one in their formative years it's the best time to make big leaps.
(ANTHONY FORBES WATSON, PUBLISHER, UK).
So, in this chapter we're going to look at 'the big three' trade publis.h.i.+ng, schools publis.h.i.+ng and higher education publis.h.i.+ng. (You may be mildly surprised that it's worthwhile splitting schools and higher ed: we're coming to that.) There are other markets hundreds of others, in fact but by taking a systematic look at these three you'll soon develop your own ability to a.n.a.lyse any market in similar fas.h.i.+on.
In each case we'll look at: * What's going on? What's being published?
* Who's the customer? (This is more complicated than you'd think, actually) and * What does it take to get ahead . . . ? What it takes for you to succeed in this market Trade publis.h.i.+ng This is a general term for products sold through bookshops the 'trade' refers to the outlet through which t.i.tles reach the buying public (although, increasingly, consumers see online shopping as part of the same thing).
By the way, did you notice the use of the word 'products' back there? You may find it off-putting (we do), with its implication that books are like widgets, doobries or any other manufactured item. And that's just the point: they are. To be in publis.h.i.+ng at all you have to drop (or at the very least be careful about) the sentimentality and the romantic swooning: this is business, and if you get it wrong you lose money for the company you're working for and pretty soon you're out on the street wondering what happened.
Besides, as we discuss elsewhere in this book (in Chapter 6 on e-publis.h.i.+ng, for example), any publisher planning to be around for a few years is publis.h.i.+ng in a mult.i.tude of digital formats, while continuing to publish the good old-fas.h.i.+oned book.
What's going on?
Trade publis.h.i.+ng covers a huge range of different types of product, from ma.s.s-market to literary fiction, from biographies and 'how to' books to children's t.i.tles for reading on their own, to picture books for babies and everything in between. In effect, it's everything except everything else.
Trade sales matter to publishers because they are as close to cash in the bank as publis.h.i.+ng gets and that's not very. On the downside, publishers have to pay out a year or more before they see any sales revenue to authors, copy editors, designers, printers and so on. On the upside, t.i.tles ordered ('subscribed')1 ahead of publication by bookstores stand a strong chance of generating cash. The publisher knows with a fair degree of certainty that the t.i.tles selected will be displayed once the book is published and so will be ready to meet the demand they plan (hope) to orchestrate at the same time.
Trade sales are the bread and b.u.t.ter of publis.h.i.+ng, and publishers try to make big sales in this way to support more speculative ventures investment in writers who are just starting out, perhaps, or the luring of an author to their list from another publisher (costly in the short term), or the setting up of a new imprint, or buying up another publisher.
And don't, by the way, think that publishers invest in new authors out of a sense of duty or public-spiritedness. They're doing it because today's brash new author is tomorrow's bread and b.u.t.ter. Imagine if you'd signed up JK Rowling or Stephen King. Not only would you be walking about with a grin from ear to ear, you'd also have a ma.s.sive cash float to go out and try and find the next blockbuster author.
Who's the customer?
That sounds like a daft question. Of course the customer is the person in the shop who's just picked up that book, carried it over to the counter and is about to fork out their hard-earned cash as you've done for this book, and we thank you for it.
But hang on a second. There are in fact two customers for every book, and while their interests overlap, they are by no means identical. The book-buying punter is one of those customers, for sure. But the other is . . .
The book retailer/buyer If you, the publisher, don't persuade the bookshop to stock your book, you'll never get the chance to wow your potential customer with that flash jacket and beautifully crafted blurb.
In fact, for trade t.i.tles the most important person in the whole world is the book buyer or retailer the person who makes the vital decision whether their shop(s) will have your book on their shelf. Or not.
How do they make this decision? How do you persuade them to carry your t.i.tle? Funnily enough, they're actually not so much concerned with the quality of the book, the intricacies of its plot or even its literary merit. All they want to know is this: will it sell? So you've got to persuade them to believe in your book's commercial worth. You've got to convince them that it will get enough support, through marketing and publicity, for the book-buying public to actually know it exists.
Remember, too, that the bookseller has very limited s.p.a.ce and budget, and has to choose from the offerings of every publisher out there, not just you. Either they get a very acute sense of what jumps off the shelves in their shop, or they go out of business. They work to incredibly tight margins (perhaps a couple of per cent profitability), and that makes them very, very good indeed at spotting the good stuff. Publishers dismiss booksellers as tired cynical old dodderers who have no drive and won't take a risk to save their lives. In fact, the opposite is true: it's their lives, or at least their livelihoods, that quite literally depend upon them taking as few risks as possible.
Get yourself into a bookshop today. Look around at what's selling. Read the bestseller lists in the media avidly. Follow the emergence of new subjects as they take up more and more s.p.a.ce in the shops. A while back, for example, the Western made a somewhat surprising revival, and you'd have to conclude from the shelves that your average punter was a creative writer with a deep interest in punctuation, worries about the environment and an obsession with bizarre and obscure trivia. There's money to be made from jumping on the bandwagon, which is why so many publishers do just that. There's even more money to be made from being there first.
My other tip is that industry experience such as having worked in a good bookshop or volunteered for work at a writers' festival can be more impressive than academic qualifications. It is all very well to have a degree in literature and to say how much you love books, but having worked in a bookshop actually demonstrates your pa.s.sion.
(JESSICA, AUSTRALIA).
The customer And so we come to the book buyer, the person who actually keeps this whole three-ring circus going by flexing the plastic.
Publishers have always relied on a steady bunch of regular book buyers most of the books bought are sold to those who are frequent purchasers. These people buy wherever they see books available (in supermarkets and garage forecourts as well as in bookshops). On the back of this (or perhaps because of it) comes the accusation that publishers are happier commissioning t.i.tles they themselves like reading, for sale to their friends, which they can then discuss together. But even if this is true, this core market is getting older and, unlike previous generations, today's youngsters have lots of other calls on their time than the joy of reading a book: Today's under-30s who ought to be tomorrow's hardcore book buyers live out their lives on the playing-card screens of mobile phones, preferring to interact online with the social networks of Mys.p.a.ce, Flickr and Facebook. Inveterate multi-taskers, they listen to their iPods and text their friends while watching television with laptops, not books, on their knees. (MICHAEL HOLDSWORTH, THE LONDON BOOK FAIR DAILY, 18 APRIL 2007) Finding new markets Today the search is on for new markets of readers who can be persuaded to buy, and to widen the generational appeal of t.i.tles. So the trade publisher is not just trying to sell the latest batch of wares, but also to promote the habit of reading and book buying in the hope that a new generation of buyer will arise to fund the industry in future.
Similarly, publishers are undertaking initiatives to widen partic.i.p.ation within the industry, because without a broad range of ethnic backgrounds and lifestyles represented, we have little chance of producing the kind of books these groups want to read.
The other complication for the trade publisher is the difficulty some might say the impossibility of predicting the tastes of book buyers. Authors often speculate about what is going to be the next big thing in publis.h.i.+ng, but some of the recent successes have been very surprising. Recent runaway successes have included a book on punctuation (Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss) and a novel for young adults about autism (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon). If you can honestly say you could have predicted the ma.s.sive success of either of these t.i.tles, then (a) you deserve a big slap on the back for being so clever, and (b) why didn't you tell us about it? We could have made millions.
A recent compet.i.tion to find a new writer on the UK TV show Richard and Judy offered publication as the prize. It duly produced a winner . . . and in fact the publishers sponsoring the compet.i.tion considered the shortlist so strong that they decided to offer all five runners-up a contract, too. Guess which one of the six t.i.tles published was the runaway bestseller? It wasn't the 'winner', but one of the runners-up! The moral of the story is that picking winners is virtually impossible.
What does it take to get ahead in trade publis.h.i.+ng????????
In a word: curiosity. In two words: insatiable curiosity. In three words: absolutely insatiable curiosity. You need to be that unusual kind of person who spots trends and fas.h.i.+ons way before anyone else sees them coming. In short, you have a keen nose for the spirit of the times.
What are people reading on buses, by the swimming pool on holiday? What books are the media getting all excited about? What are your friends talking about? For children's t.i.tles, watch what they choose themselves, given a completely free choice (preferably with the parent waiting outside the shop rather than helping them make their selection which will undoubtedly influence what is taken to the cas.h.i.+er). Sometimes you'll find it is the jacket blurb that attracts attention, sometimes the cover blurb, at others personal recommendation. An effective trade publisher needs to be constantly curious about why people make particular choices and what they are interested in.
Ten Ways to See If You Have the Right Stuff to be a Good Trade Publisher 1. When did you last go into a bookshop? Or look through the book selection in a supermarket? How many books are for sale in your local garage? If you were looking for something specific, how long did you browse for after you had found it?
2. As well as looking at other products on offer, did you look at who else was shopping? If so, what time of day was it, and were they the type of customers you would expect? Anyone who surprised you by being there?
3. When you are out shopping for groceries and waiting in the queue to pay, do you habitually look into other people's trollies to see what they are buying? Does this prompt a daydream about what kind of lives they lead?
4. What is your partner/best friend/parent reading now?
5. When you use public transport (and you should2), what's the book you see being read most?
6. When you drive, do you listen to talk radio and commercial/popular stations to find out what people are talking about?
7. Do second-hand book stalls at your local fundraising sale (and you need to be there too) tell you anything about which t.i.tles people bought but no longer want to live with? Why is this? Which non-book stalls are the most popular?
8. How much do you interact with popular media: news programmes that are targeted at different groups during the day, quiz and magazine programmes, chat shows and children's media?
9. What about newspapers do you read a wide range or stick to those that confirm your own opinions?
10. How do you find out things that you consider news?
You can tell of course what the 'right' answers to these questions are. It's not something you can fake, and although you can sharpen your instincts and work on them, if they're not there in the first place you can't grow them.
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Trade Publishers3 1. Spot movers and shakers, who are not necessarily writing books at the moment. Publishers often have to find not only the idea, but also have to spot the potential writer and the person they settle on may not even be thinking of writing a book. Ideas for people to commission may come from almost anywhere: you may hear them on the radio, or spot something else they have written. If you notice a magazine article that generates a lot of hotly argued letters, for example, you could well be looking at a book in the making.
2. Organise. A strong ability to remember names, contact details and where you noted them.
3. Sharpen your research skills to explore and explain the trends you spot and the hunches you develop.
4. Empathise. Develop a genuine interest in other people and an ability to relate to them the kind of interpersonal skills that encourage people to talk to you.