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Too Many Words, Too Little Meaning
A Saturday Rant 9-29-01I am constantly amazed by the number of manuscripts I get that I believe
will never sell more than 10 copies. I wish I could have a dollar for every
doctor who sends me a proposal about his "killer" book about some disease or
another. The same goes for financial planners and to a lesser degree,
new-age devotees.
Every writer seems to have an answer to a question than hardly anyone seems
to ask! I'm equally amazed at the number of publishers who whine and moan
about not being to sell their book when the fact of the matter is that their
book has been done 10 times before. And it didn't sell any of those times
either!
I don't think many publishers realize a sad fact about this industry. It is
an easy one to enter. Anyone with $10K can be a publisher... and probably
lose that $10K. The basic facts about this business are this:
1. The supply of books exceeds the demand by a huge margin.
2. The distribution and retail channels are inefficient and made more so by
the huge numbers of entrants.
3. Books cannot compete with the Internet as a means for providing quick,
up-to-date, general information.
4. Books are under priced compared to their production costs and the risk
taken by the publisher.
5. Large publishers have just as difficult a time making profits as do
small ones.
6. The only consistent winners are well managed middle-people (Ingrams,
PGW, IPG, etc.)... and even they are having problems.
But people seem to flock to this industry. There is a cachet about being
able to tell people that you are a "publisher." It evokes an image of a
highbrow, educated person, dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge and not
that of the evil dollar. (And for the most part this is a true image, as
there are damn few "evil" dollars to be made in publishing.)
So what is my point? If you are serious about making money, it would be
advisable for you not to quit your day job. Unless you get very lucky,
publishing as it is practiced by most small one/two book publishers, will
eventually turn out to be more of a hobby than a business. Why? Because most
author/publishers bring out books that have been done to death!
In line with the above, I had a wonderful series of letters with an old
friend on the subject. I usually write rants on the business side of our
industry, as I have above. But, I want to finish this piece with a few
hundred or so words about the artistic side of our business.
I want to comment NOT on how we publish, but what we publish. And I’m
beginning to think that perhaps the difficulty small publishers have is not
that they are bad business people (although most are) but that they really
publish bad books.
In a very early review of my 1993 edition of ComputerMoney, a reviewer said
"Canton’s words are like those of Hemingway, terse and strong." This was
published in a well-known, national computer magazine, and when my friends
saw it, they first fell down laughing and then went out and bought me
something by Hemingway. So over the years I have been slowly reading the
lesser-known works by Papa. I’m just about done with The Moveable Feast and
I’m struck not only by how succinct a writer Hemingway was, but also his
ability to say things worth hearing. His works touch on universal truths,
emotions, and one gets the idea that each sentence was carefully crafted as
are stones in a mosaic.
What does this have to do with publishing? I’ve been thinking lately about
what is published by the members of this list, as well as the industry as a
whole. I look at the titles that fill the shelves, that are listed in the
review section of Forward magazine, and those in the sigs of the list
members. And it strikes me that so many of them are, in my opinion, truly
worthless, and a shocking waste of fine trees.
As an industry, do we publish what people want, or do we publish what we
think is good? Why do we need another diet book? Will another
techno-thriller or lawyer story or murder mystery or psycho-self-help book
add to the knowledge of the world? Do we need another pulp fiction sex
novel? As a nation, can’t we do better than Grisham, Grafton, and Crighton?
We feed junk food to our bodies, and feed junk books to our minds.
Answer this for me. If you as a publisher come across a killer manuscript
for, say, some diet that claims eating a gallon of ice cream a day will help
you lose weight, and you think the book will make you a fortune, do you
publish it? Do we want to kill tress on books that teach people how to make
bombs? Will another book on angels, devils, spirits, or after-life be a good
use of our time and energy? Why are you a publisher? What do you publish? Is
it different from what you WANT to publish?
You ask, "Who the hell is he to judge what is trash?" My answer is that
SOMEONE should. You say that perhaps a trash novel is to many people what
Hemingway is to me. I won’t argue with you. And you ask, "what is wrong with
a good mystery or sex novel?" My answer is "nothing." There is nothing
"wrong. " It is, in my opinion, just wasteful.
We publish too many books (some 75,000 a year) with the hope that someone
out there will buy them. We always hear the same old assumptions: "publish
to the fad, or do a cookbook." But do we need 5,000 new cookbooks a year?
What, fellow publishers, is the point?
Yes, we publish what we THINK people WILL BUY. And then we complain when
they are returned to us. I wonder what would happen if we, as an industry,
decided to publish what we THINK people SHOULD READ.
After dealing with Hemingway (did you know he hated the name Earnest?), I am
seeing books in a different light. I know there are better novelists out
there than Daniele Steele. I know there are better and more enlightening
stories out there than the murder, mayhem, and macabre we see so much of.
I think that we publishers have lost sight of our mission.
We are not peddling caramel-colored carbonated water.
We produce books.
We are the keepers of the culture.
We, more so than other industries, have a chance to elevate that culture.
But it is not done by turning out 50,000 copies of The Ice Cream Diet.
Yes, yes, yes, I know that trash books help pay for "literature." I’m not
stupid. I know the rules.
What drives me crazy is this. If you can "sell" crap, it should be just as
easy to "sell" good writing, solidly crafted stories, and books that touch
people emotionally; as opposed to merely raising their blood pressure or
their libido.
I am told that "if it is good, it will eventually sell." I used to believe
that, but I’m not sure anymore. There is a theory in economics called (I
believe) Greshems Law. It says that "bad" money will drive out "good" money.
In a country with "worthless" money, like the former Soviet Union, everyone
used Rubles but hoarded gold or US dollars. I think that bad books drive out
good books.
It is getting more and more difficult to "cut through" the clutter. When a
book about rampaging dinosaurs in a theme park is the biggest seller of the
year, and raved over by the mass media, is it no wonder that a wonderful
novel like The Shipping House News is hardly noticed (even though it won
several awards.)
One answer, or fervent hope, is that perhaps the new communication
infrastructure (the Internet, expanded cable channels, better distribution)
will free people from being so dependent on the few mass media outlets for
"ideas".
Perhaps people will have other options to learn about books and hear
opinions about them from other readers who have discovered something unique
and good. If it is true that word-of-mouth is the ultimate seller of books,
than it stands to reason that more word-of-mouth will mean more sales. Every
publisher needs to work on a marketing strategy devoted to creating this
word-of-mouth marketing via the Internet. If Time, Newsweek, or The New
Yorker will not cover one of your books, then you will just have to find
another way to get people informed and hopefully interested. And the guy or
gal who finds the best way to do this will be the next Bill Gates!!
But more than anything else, we publishers have to stop publishing crap and
start publishing quality. Otherwise we just become an ink-on-paper version
of the World Wrestling Foundation.
"In order to have great writers, you have to have great readers." We as
an industry are doing little to create great readers.
Alan N. Canton
Adams-Blake Publishing
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