[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by darryl

Unfortunately, the authors who write them sell their souls for editorial services that have never been more reasonably priced and available on the open market. Few of them will make a living from these books. Publishers can live off their backlist for a long time, but unless they get rid of the fat, or at least most of it, I expect that they will have increasing trouble attracting new authors.

That is already happening in several genres.
Romance and SF are already majority Indie and small tradpub. Black urban fiction is even more so: 94% of titles on sale are Indie.

There is a tendency to look at the overall publishing disruption and cast it as Indies vs tradpub but it isn't. It is about the BPHs vs everybody else. Plenty of smaller tradpubs have adopted Indie economics and workflows and are surviving and prospering. The same reports that show the BPHs shedding market share left and right show smaller tradpub market share growing, especially lately when, unnoticed, many broke ranks with the big boys on pricing.

Now, yes, the BPHs "know what they are doing" "and they price their books to best advantage" and all that. But the "best advantage" they seek is short term advantage for themselves. Not for the authors. And not for the long term.

And it is being noticed.
Most particularly, by newcomers to the business.

Which is where things are going to get interesting.
Two weeks ago, KKR's column ran a prelude to her next series on author branding and, among other things, ran these snippets:

http://kriswrites.com/2017/05/03/bus....YWztLCis.dpuf

(More at the source, especially in coming weeks as she dissects how authors build up their brands now. Indies are getting ambitious.)

Courtesy of Randy and J.T. Ellison, I received a copy of Targoz Strategic Marketing’s Reading Pulse Survey. They wanted some comments on it before it went live, and I did a quick dive into the survey before the workshop.

As I read it, I realized I needed to spend a lot of time with this thing, because it’s actual research on reading that’s useful, not wish fulfillment. Here’s how the press release describes it:

Based on six years of survey research, the syndicated study provides book publishers, agents, and sellers with an accurate picture of readers, and delivers actionable data on what readers want and how to influence them to buy.

It does deliver “actionable data.” I got very excited by what I read. I got permission to share bits of this with you, but I can’t share all of it, because the survey isn’t public. It’s designed for larger companies with the resources to buy surveys like this. (That’s how they get funded.) Randy says there will be a different version for indies that won’t be as expensive. But that won’t appear until after the big push for the survey to traditional publishers in the next few weeks or more.

This survey can be tailored to a particular company. If I were running one of the Big Five? Four? Three? Two? (who the hell knows) major publishers, I’d be plunking down the money for a customized version of this thing. Because there’s a lot of information here that could change traditional publishing forever.

It won’t, however. Even if traditional publishers buy this survey, they won’t act on the suggestions inside. The corporate headwinds are too strong. A lot of what’s in here would cost department heads their jobs, and devastate the sales departments. Of course, a lot of what’s here would result in new hires as well, for new jobs that would have a completely different focus.

That kind of sea change is almost impossible in large companies. But in small ones, it’s definitely possible.

Then there is this:

So what’s been rolling around in my head isn’t the proprietary numbers that I can’t tell you or the changes I’m thinking about for my own business based on these facts. Instead, it’s a section at the end of the survey that essentially has actionable information for Writer Me.

The section at the end talks about Brand Name Authors. There’s a long list of writers by genre that readers identify by name. And the survey found something that I was aware of, but not that I had really thought about.

Almost all of the Brand Name authors that readers are familiar with are traditionally published. And most of those Brand Name authors are baby boomers. Not just baby boomers, but on the upper end of the baby boomer scale. One genre didn’t have a single person in the top ten brand names under the age of 60.

I would normally dismiss that kind of finding as irrelevant. Writing is a career that many people start late. It’s not at all unusual for “new” writers to be in their fifties, so by the time their name is established, they’d be in their sixties.

But I looked at the names more closely, and saw a completely different problem. The survey broke into four rather broad genre categories: Mystery, Thriller & Crime; Romance & Paranormal Romance; Literature & Literary Fiction; and Science Fiction & Fantasy. Then the survey noted the top ten most recognized names in each of those categories, chosen by readers.

Of the forty names on those lists, only three got their start in this century. Those three included two whose books were made into major movies, and one author who (as far as I can tell) jumped on the coat tails of one of those two. (That’s not something to be ashamed of in any way: John Grisham jumped on the coat tails of Scott Turow, and eventually surpassed Turow in numbers of books published and recognizability and a whole bunch of other things.)

The remaining 37 brand names were nurtured in a completely different publishing climate. One I’m not going to count because he’s an actor, not an author, and I have no idea how he got on the list. So that brings us to 36. Two got their start before 1960. Five got their start in the 1960s. Six got their start in the 1970s. The bulk got their start in the 1980s, with only two getting their starts in the 1990s.

(I’m doing this off the top of my head, so I might be wrong on the exact start dates for the previous century. But I do know for a fact that not a one of those 36 names got started in this century.)

That pre-2000 publishing climate allowed series writers to build. It also allowed writers who only wrote standalone titles (and there are several on these lists) to have lower book sales on one title but still buy the next.

In the 1990s, a publisher could let a series author go, and another publisher would pick up that author—and buy the series out from the old publisher, keeping all of the books in print.

From the late 1990s onward, traditional publishing stopped nurturing careers. It stopped trying to grow a brand name, and instead tried to create one. It’s still doing that.

In case it's not a clear distinction: the BPHs are no longer interested in waiting for good writers to become top selling Name Brand authors over time. They want authors than can become top-selling Name Brand authors *instantly* from day one.

Quick money for them! Yay.

The Authors? Who cares if they can build a career, right?
King and Patterson and Roberts and the rest of the forty Brand Name authors are going to live forever. (Or at least their copyrights will last another century. No rush.)

This is just a single market research study, big deal.
Well, it turns out, last summer Author Earnings tracked the top revenue generators in both print and digital and found that practically all the top esrning authors on the tradpub side started out last century. They broke down the list by earnings brackets and found a literal handful (4) of tradpub authors that started this century are making more than $100K a year.

And of course, the Authors Guild did find that their average author member makes a whole lots less. In the $10K range.

And even Industry cheerleader Shatzkin did a column recognizing that BPH pricing was totally killing debut authors and very softly suggested a lower price point for debut authors might salvage their careers. Nothing followed. Of course not: the BPHs know what's best

Try this drill guys:

List out the top ten most popular authors you're familiar with (not your top ten, just the Big Names you hear.) See how many got started this century.

We can do it and so can newcomer authors.
And remember that when publishers try to handwave the lower bestseller sales the first excuse (aside from the pokitical climate) is "the books weren't as good".

They might be right.
The best writers are going elsewhere.

But the BPHs know best. That is never going to come back and bite them. Nope.
Not at all.

And that is a good thing.
Less for them, more for everybody else.