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Literary Whores: Being a Bestseller? |
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Written by nacho
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Pick a famous bestselling author. Someone who was on the Times
list in the last couple of years. How many copies of that
bestselling title do you think they sold?
A million? Are you sure? There are 260 million Americans right now, not to mention the world market.
How about ten million? Sound better?
Try 40,000. And that's an unusually high number. If a fiction
novel sells 25,000 copies within a year, it's worth opening a bottle of
good champagne because you just made the top five percent of authors.
Let's talk about the numbers game and being a literary whore. What is a
bestseller? And how can a down on her luck romance writer outsell
Stephen King by a hundred thousand copies?
The first question is easy to answer. The official definition of
a "bestseller" is when you sell an amount equal to one percent of your
nation's population. In the US, that would be over a quarter
million sales. There's a problem, though. The definition is
about 150 years old. That's easy to get around, though.
Now, the sales are counted from the initial publication date.
When you hear people say the Bible is the bestselling book of all time,
they're including every sale since the mid 1600's. In truth, the
Bible has seen decreasing sales in the last decade or so. So an
international bestseller sold "over 100,000 copies." Right, since
the publication date in 1972.
The publishers staged a bit of a coup about 100 years ago. The
first thing they had to do was throw out the definition of
bestseller. There's no rhyme or reason to the modernized
definition but, roughly, it breaks down into a printing war. You
see, publishers can't afford to warehouse a huge number of books.
With any given "bestselling” title, the average sales will be
10,000-15,000 copies a year. They won't get pissed off until you
drop to under 2,000 sales a year, and the smaller presses will be
ecstatic if they move 500 copies a year. What the publishers did
was promise to print a certain amount and let that determine bestseller
status. Such promises are backed up by the printer. For
example, Publisher X says that they have the ability to print 40,000
copies of the latest Stephen King book. They only need print
15,000 in order to saturate the market and they may keep some on hand,
but the remainder of the 40,000 doesn't exist. It's virtual
inventory. Yet if 40,000 people ran out and bought the title,
they'd be able to produce that amount quickly. Of
course, that costs money. A smaller press can't make such
extravagant promises.
While there is organic growth on the New York Times bestseller list,
the heavy hitters premier on the list based on copies in print,
including virtual inventory, and not hard sales. Gasp!
Nacho's attacking the validity of the bestseller list! Look,
kids, you've seen a bestseller list based on sales at Amazon. It
changes every hour, and that's not just something new to the Internet
Generation.
This is why Stephen King's latest book appears on the bestseller list
four days after it comes out yet the Writer Who Changed Your Life
published by an Alabama small press isn't even on the horizon.
Immediate virtual inventory. Copies "in print."
The publishers tipped their hand with the first Harry Potter. Sales
rapidly outstripped a somewhat low virtual inventory and, well, the
publisher couldn't make a second run. They had the printer on
standby for a certain number of copies but, moving beyond that number,
the printer had to tell them to wait. Hey, they have other work
to do. Let's put that in perspective: I work for a medium
sized academic publisher. We put out 80 titles a year.
There are a couple dozen similar sized publishers doing the same,
about 150 small presses putting out 10-50 titles a year, and the
Starting Lineup, The Names You Know, all putting out 100-300 titles a
year. It's busy out there.
A large publisher can supply all the major chains, e-tailers and
independents with only 15,000 physical copies. A small press may
only put out 1-4000 copies. The sad truth is, that's
enough. That's an okay year. With our Stephen King example,
not a single one of his titles sold more than 70,000 copies within a
two year period. However, there's an exception. There
always is. Enter Janet Dailey, schlock romance writer. She
hits that one percent mark rather quickly. It took many years,
she's late in her career now, but one of her books in a three year
period rapidly outsells Stephen King.
The business of writing is business. You don't make money when
you sell a book. Getting that novel on the shelf is not the final
step. Hell, you ain't even halfway through the gauntlet,
sunshine. The money is in promotion, movie options and constant
output. Seriously, you have to write a novel every year to earn a
decent living or you have to sell the shit out of what you do have and
hope for about a dozen lucky breaks and windfalls.
"I need to get published." I hear that all the time. It's
as if people expect to wake up and get published by the end of the
day. Sorry, kids, it's a war of attrition and, for most of you,
it'll bring you to the edge of destruction. (Am I crazy if I
rather enjoy that aspect?)
"Once I get published, all my worries will be over." Ho-ho!
Stop taking the goddamned sedatives, wouldja? Once you get
published, you'd better be ready to kick into high gear. You're
going to have to turn yourself into a drug. You'll only succeed
if you whore yourself. Don't give me your elitist, writing for
the masses bullshit. You'll complain about the money in the same
breath, so I don't want to hear it unless you're an honest rebel with a
heart of gold. Get out of the business, because it's not about
open arms and love and changing the world. When you publish, and
if you succeed in round one, then you're Caesar on the Senate
floor. If the publishers and agents and fellow authors don't get
you, your own lazy irresponsibility will.
Most writers I know are poverty-stricken freak puppies because they're
all MFA dropouts who thought a book on the shelf was the end all be
all. Don't think I'm crushing your dreams. Kids, if you
devote yourselves and treat this like a business, like a career,
you'll be millionaires. But you're gonna have to draw
blood.
Now, the resume that I spoke of in earlier articles. Is it really
all that important? Ha! No, not really. Consider it
more of a stepping stone. It will help you, it will pay off, but
its primary purpose these days is as a focusing tool. Self
improvement. You see, your prose sucks. I know it
does. You've been working on your grief project novel for three
years, right? One out of ten of you will be true writing
geniuses. The rest will have to work for it. Don't focus on
the great American novel – that's always a mistake.
Writing is a craft and, like any craft, you have to work at it.
The masters will fly ahead, those goddamned geeks, but the normal folk
like you and me will have to apprentice, earn money to buy our own
store, buy a mule, and get driven out of town for diddling the mayor's
16 year old daughter. No, wait! Don't do that!
You hone your craft by getting out there. Even if nobody ever
gives you honest feedback, it's a question of dealing with your own
mind. When you know there's an audience, you think
differently. Your work improves. It's practice. So
look for alternative publications -- magazines, journals,
websites. Box up sections of your work in progress and sell them
as short stories. Get out of your head. Quickly!
Starting up a crappy webpage, of course, is the cheap and easy thing to
do these days. You can even sell your own book online. Hey,
don't laugh, Roberto Vacca makes a living doing that. Never heard
of him? Doesn't matter, he's a writer and he makes a living off
of self publication. The writer has again reclaimed a
voice. We are no longer tied to agents or publishers or
distributors. Of course, it'll take you years to see dollar one
unless you already have some books out there but, well, it's
possible.
The best way to beef up your online/print zine presence is guerilla
advertising. The writer's secret tool. Stickers and
business cards in odd places do wonders. I know a girl who sells
50 copies of her self published novel ($10 a shot) each year, plus
merchandising items, mainly thanks to the art of guerilla
advertising. Hey, you're laughing again. Have you made
$500+ a year just because of your writing?
What's the method? Stick a business card or a sticker on
payphones, bus seats, subway seats, advertisements, the backs of every
envelope or bill you send out, on the forehead of everyone you meet.
Don't forget cheap or free classified ads in independent newspapers.
Talk about an easy. All you have to do is vandalize that
McDonalds poster in the subway.
Let's look at a Bigger Picture. Janet Dailey, again. How'd
she do it? She spends half a year traveling the US in the back of
an RV, constantly touring, constantly promoting, constantly
writing. Her husband and tour manager juggles slick blue
highways, a cell phone and dinner for two at campsites or in parking
lots through the US. They know wealth beyond avarice, kids. They
make the politicians look slow. Every writer who uses these
methods will get some gas money. I'm not talking about the Few or
the Lucky Bastards. If you can write well and put something out
each year, then you can crack the publication nut and you will make a
comfortable living. No question. But you have to write to
sell yourself.
And always remember rule number one: You will fail. Pick
any writer, from 1800 onwards. Not a single one made it in their
first attempt. Even Charles Dickens had to self publish and sell
himself door to door. It's a hard business, and
you'll have to be a hard businessperson. If you're not, then
you're wasting everyone's time.
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Newsflash |
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