IVP - Andy Unedited - September 2008 Archives

Publishing for Profit: Redux

Off and on over the past year I've been commenting chapter-by-chapter on Tom Woll's Publishing for Profit. The front cover quotes the Associated Press as calling it "the Bible for the industry." Almost as good as Holy Writ? Well, you be the judge.

For your convenience, here's Woll's table of contents linked to each blog post I've made on the book.

I. The World of Publishing
1. C3--Commitment, Consistency, Credibility
2. The Publishing Environment

II. Managerial Organization: Strategy and Techniques
3. Define Your Niche (part one)
3. Define Your Niche (part two)
4. Make Planning Primary
5. Keep Your Staff Lean (But Not Necessarily Mean)
6. Protect Your Assets

III. Functional Organization: Strategy and Techniques
7. The Editorial Process (part one)
7. The Editorial Process (part two)
7. The Editorial Process (part three)
8. Production and Manufacturing
9. Sales . . . and More
10. Subsidiary Rights
11. Direct Response Marketing
12. Operations, Fulfillment, and Accounting
13. Electronic Publishing and Marketing
14. Returns
Conclusion

The Crystal Ball

When anybody talks about the future of publishing, the impact of the digital world is always front and center. There's nothing wrong with that, of course. It is having and will have a massive impact. Tom Woll acknowledges as much in the conclusion to his book Publishing for Profit, as well. But what is really interesting, I think, are his predictions for brick and mortar stores, which many prognosticators ignore.

Eventually, he says, superstores will find that stocking a wide array of inventory that doesn't sell won't make economic sense--and therefore having 50,000-square-foot stores won't make sense either. In a few years' time the superstore strategy will revert to the mall chain strategy.

When that happens, surprise! The independents will return to the scene. Those, he believes, will tend to be more focused on certain genres like history or mystery or travel.

Is his crystal ball clear or cloudy? I'd be interested in what you think.

Small Returns Are Beautiful

Publishers like to complain about returns, but few seem to do anything about them. How do I know? Return rates keep climbing, costing the publishing industry over $7 billion a year.

Why do books come back to publishers from stores, distributors and wholesalers? The reasons are many. Tom Woll offers a dozen in Publishing for Profit. What I find fascinating, however, is that he lays responsibility for ten of the twelve reasons right at the feet of publishers. Only two of Woll's reasons have anything to do with those who return the books--and even with those two, publishers bear some responsibility.

Most publishers, I would guess, would assign responsibility for returns primarily to others, not to themselves. So where does Woll see publishers creating the returns problem? Among other things,

* Large advances--if they are excessive and therefore require larger sales (and therefore larger print runs) to make the project work financially, books come back.

* Overpricing--this tends to be more true of publishers tied to conglomerates that are margin driven.

* Lack of promotional and marketing support--often only the highest-profile books get backing. Many others are expected to sell on their own. Often they don't.

* Reprinting too soon and too many--a book that is selling well can generate automatic reorders that may not be justified.

Don't accounts bear some responsibility? Yes, if they succumb to excessive publisher enthusiasm and overbuy. Yes, if they pay for new books with returns of old ones instead of money. But you can see that publishers bear some responsibility even in these dynamics as well.

Is there a silver bullet for the returns problem? No. It takes discipline and hard work to solve. But the returns on that investment are well worth it.

What Does That Amazon Sales Rank Mean, Anyway?

One of the most convenient “real time” views of how a book is doing is to check out Amazon’s sales rank. It’s simple (the lower the number, the better the sales), it’s convenient (just a click away), and it’s empirical (gotta love those numbers). Alas, as Aaron Hierholzer says, “the Amazon sales rank is a fickle mistress.”

Observe, Don’t Explain

“Show, don’t tell.” That advice has been given to writers as often as laptops have been turned on. Robert McKee repeats the advice in Story, his classic text on writing screenplays. Following Aristotle's advice in Poetics, he says, “Why a man does a thing is of little interest once we see the thing he does. . . . Once the deed is done his reasons why begin to dissolve into irrelevancy” (pp. 376-77).