Is publishing broken?

Not for publishers!

Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash

Elle Griffin

read the PRH/S&S Department of Justice trial transcripts and shared her thoughts on some of the numbers shared during the trial. The numbers they shared during the trial are DISMAL. It’s not an inspiring read for authors or for people working in the industry.

Since then I’ve seen posts with a counter-argument, asking people to stop bashing publishing, and I appreciate that too.

I want to share a bit of background / context around the numbers, particularly from a UK perspective, as far as I understand it.

But first: I *really* struggle to write posts like this. It makes me feel like I’m shouting ‘I AM AN EXPERT’ at the top of my lungs. I can own my expertise when it comes to book marketing, but I have never been an acquiring editor or been on a board, and I am by no means an expert on the industry as a whole.

I’m also an enneagram 9, which means I can always see all sides of an argument. I’m not arguing for one side or the other, I just want to share some thoughts.

So, with that said, here are some thoughts that came up while I was reading it, which might have been percolating a little bit since the trial:

• Publishing’s Profit & Loss sheets (which are meant to determine whether a book is bought or not) are very detailed and full of pretty much made up numbers, based on what another book that’s vaguely comparable sold.
  Putting one of these together is not an exact science in any way. Unless an author has an established readership, it is very difficult to say ‘we know this book will sell this many copies’. It’s an educated guess based on comp author numbers and the experience of the publishing teams.

• Many books do not make a profit for the publisher. If the book has been acquired on an advance basis (where you get paid a set amountin advance, in 3-4 installments), there will be no royalties for the author, either. Authors only get royalties when a title ‘earns out’ - ie: their advance is fully recouped by the publisher. Sometimes that works in the author’s favour, sometimes it doesn’t.

• On the flip side, some books are very profitable, particularly when there has been a small to medium sized advance. Sometimes these are ‘breakout’ books, but sometimes they are just books by repeat authors that deliver sales that are potentially not that impressive, but consistent book on book. Sometimes they are books that were published 8 years ago, and which suddenly get a Netflix series. Sometimes they are backlist books that keep selling year after year.

• Publishers will continue to back new titles/authors on the off-chance that one of them will be one of the ones that makes a lot of money. You can call that ‘investing in future talent’, you can call that fancy gambling. Again: it’s not a science. But it’s not based on nothing. Comp sales and experience count for a lot, and the reason that publishers take so few risks is because they tend to back things they think will make money.

• This doesn’t always work in their favour! However, as an industry, it is very profitable (at the minute), so the gamble is working for them. Is publishing broken? Not for publishing companies!

• And not for the authors that are doing ‘well’, either. And by well, I don’t mean those authors that sell into the hundreds of thousands of copies. I mean the ones that are publishing a book a year, maybe in a series, selling 8-10k copies per book, and growing book on book. There are lots of authors on this level who make a living from their writing. Are they retiring early and buying a house in the South of France on this income? Probably not. But they’re paying their mortgage and turning the heating on when it’s cold.

• On the flip side, there are lots of authors who are not making a living from their writing. The average UK author income is *low* - the last stat I could find was £7k a year. Clearly that is not enough to sustain anyone full time. Only 19% of people who consider themselves ‘professional authors’ write full time - most have other sources of income to support them.

• That said, the average income for an author household is £81k, so those 81% are doing just fine. Of course this then brings up a whole other issue about access to the creative industries for working class people, which is still dire.

• There is also a lot of staff burnout and the wages paid to junior to mid-level staff are a joke. Publishing staff works *incredibly hard*, with very limited resources, for very limited pay.

• The 'investing/gambling’ approach means that publishers publish WAY TOO MANY BOOKS. I know that from the outside, especially if you’re an author who is looking for a book deal, it can feel as though they don’t publish enough, because they still only publish a fraction of the books that are pitched to them. But the volume of books they publish is enormous compared to the size of the teams working on them, and the budgets they are given.

• There is also the retail side - there is no retailer that has the physical space to carry all the new books released as well as all the backlist books people expect to find when they go to ta bookshop. That means only a small percentage of books released even make it into a bookshop at all. Thanks to the internet, that’s not the dire situation it sounds to be, but it still does lead to disappointed authors who want to see their book on a shelf.

• What’s the solution to this? I don’t know. If you have good suggestions, please share them with me (and ideally, with someone who can do something about it - I’m a freelancer with no sway, guys).

What else?

• Having a platform helps, but it isn’t an essential, at least here in the UK. The article / trial quotes some of the low sales figures achieved by celebrity authors with *giant* platforms. This is true in the UK, too. Some of the biggest celebrities can have the worst book sales. Often, this is because they won’t use their platform to promote their book. They might have a contractual obligation to promote it 3 times on their Instagram, to do one interview, and maybe one event, and that’s all they’ll do.

• The bigger the celeb, the more other projects they have going on. For a lot of celebrities, the book is a side thing to make a bit of cash, not something they’re truly invested in. I have worked on *so many books* where I’ve been emailing the agent, basically begging them to get the celeb in question to just share the link to the book in Instagram stories, getting no reply.

• There’s a small point in the article (/during the trial) about Amazon - publishers have access to Amazon Marketing Services, where they can run ads to increase the likelihood of a book appearing in search. This isn’t any different to what authors can access in their marketing area, where you can run ads, create attribution tags, add Amazon+ graphics etc.

• The numbers shared in the article/trial are all US based. In the UK, our population is smaller, the budgets are smaller and sales levels are a fraction of the ones shared. There’s a marketing budget quoted of $36k on a celebrity book. What a dream!

• In the article it says that 10% of books get to 300k books sold in a year. In the UK, 10 titles *in total* achieved that level of sales in the UK out of all books published last year**. 20% of the top 50 were Colleen Hoover and Richard Osman. Only 1 was a debut novel (and that was a straight up ‘Richard Osman fans, read this book’ pitch).

• **These stats are from the Bookseller chart of the top 50 titles of 2023, based on Nielsen BookData. What isn’t clear is whether this also covers audiobooks / ebooks or self-published books. I expect it covers traditionally published books in all formats, but not self-published books. If anyone knows more, please let me know and I will update this.

• As much as I love reading and love books, this is not a mass market activity compared to something like watching sport on TV or listening to Taylor Swift. We don’t all read the same thing. Prince Harry had the UK's #1 bestselling book last year, at just over 700k copies. Huge number! But that still means under 2% of the adult population bought a copy. 

• And yet - lots of people DO read books. Just not the same one. Nearly 199 MILLION books were sold in the UK last year. That’s a lot. I still believe in books and authors and publishing. There are things about the industry I really wish would change (please publish fewer books or hire more staff!), but I can’t see those things happening anytime soon.

• Disruptors to the industry DO come along (clearly Amazon was the huge disruptor, first with distribution, then ebooks, then with self-publishing), but I don’t think Substack will be one of them. Yet! Maybe they will come out with something cool in the future, now that they are building this userbase of authors. Maybe someone else will come up with something. Traditional publishing will carry on, maybe with a few tweaks.

What does this all mean for you and your publishing?

• Be realistic with your expectations. There’s absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t aim big, but do your research into what ‘big’ looks like for your genre. What is your motivation for writing your books? If you only sell 500 copies of your book, what is your next step going to be?

• Consider what the value is you expect to get from a publisher. I still genuinely believe that a lot of traditional publishers add huge value to most authors. From the cover to the marketing and sales and publicity team, to everything the editorial team does (which is way more that just edit), to rights, to crafting cover copy and so much more. If you are going with a traditional publisher because you think they will sell hundreds of thousands of copies from your books, you are probably going to be disappointed. If you go with them because you want your book to be the absolute best it can possibly be, and because you want to give it the best chance, you will be in a better place. If you still aren’t getting what you need or expect, it might be time to consider moving publishers or going independent.

• If writing is something you want to earn money from, you need to think long term, and invest in your career as an author. That doesn’t mean money, it means spending time to build relationships, build your platform and do research. It doesn’t matter how old you are - if you don’t know how to do something, you can learn.

• Think different! I love this post from

  Suw Charman-Anderson
  on what to do when all the doors to the creative industry are closed. This is something Elle has done so well, too, and I think there are lots of authors who are really taking control of their author careers and approaching their publishing more like a business than a traditional author might.

• If you are looking to spend money to hire someone to help with marketing / publicity etc (ahem), think about how it will help your overall platform, and your author career, vs making back your money immediately on one book.

I had more things to say on this than I thought. I could write about 10 more points here. I know I picked a clickbaity title, but this topic is so complex.

The way publishing makes money is opaque, even for those who work in it. It wasn’t until I moved to Quercus at Hachette that I started to look at P&L sheets regularly. They’re also the only publisher I worked where we actually reviewed whether a title had made any money or not. Previous to that it was like, was this book a success? IDK!

*Clearly* people above my pay grade DID do that analysis, but why wouldn’t you get everyone involved in that review? There were books I thought had done terribly, thanks to lower sales than expected, that turned out to be profitable for both publisher and author. And others I thought had done brilliantly that the company lost money on. This is useful information for teams to know - why keep it locked up?

Anyway. Questions? Comments? Things you want to clarify, that I’ve misunderstood? I’m sure there will be things in here, and I’m happy to update this piece as I learn more. Just please be nice.