I’ve been working with books, and blogging about them, for a few years now, and reading them for a little longer. There’s something that I’m finding increasingly troubling: the majority of the books I purchase to read, or receive for review, shouldn’t have been published. At least, not in their current state.
I’m not talking about taste here: I like to think I’m wise enough to tell the difference between a book that’s not for me and a book that does a bad job of fulfilling its own goals. So much of what I see is half baked. These are books which don’t fully commit to their ideas, that are full of new-writer twitches and mistakes that should have been ironed out by a good editor. Typos and grammatical issues abound. (Shhh… That’s okay on a blog; it’s not okay in a published book.) Horror stories reach me about copy editing outsourced to cheap but non-native speakers (like the academic who had his manuscript returned to him with all of the Latin words spell-checked into the nearest English word), and I’m forever tripping over misplaced commas. However, it’s not the missing copy editing that’s the primary problem: it’s the missing structural work. The days of Maxwell Perkins are long gone, but we may need them back if the industry is going to survive.
While I’m not usually one to shy away from writing a negative review, I’m finding it increasingly hard to review these books. When we review books, we review authors, but in these cases, the authors aren’t really the ones to blame: I’m sorry to say it, but it’s the publishers.
Publishers do both authors and readers a disservice when they release a book which should have been developed further, or even when they should have shelved the book and held the author in the paddock pending the next one. When this happens, the reader doesn’t get fair value, and the author’s entire career is put in jeopardy.
Before we start waving pitchforks and lighting torches outside their offices, however, we have to accept the fact that publishers can only afford to do so much. Good copy editing costs a lot of money, and good developmental work costs even more. They’re also time-consuming, meaning there’s a limit to how much in-house staff can do.
This is where we come to discounting. Discounting is where a publisher takes the money they could have used to properly develop their book, and gives it to Amazon instead.
How discounting works
My figures are a few years out of date here, but plus or minus 5% and you’ll get the idea.
Publishers sell their stock to retailers at a discount. A few years back, this was around 35% of the price of the book—so a £6.99 paperback would wholesale at £4.54. However, the leading chains, Amazon, etc. demand higher discounts—up to 60% or more. If a publisher gives a discount of 60% on a £6.99 paperback, they only make £2.80, and that £2.80 has to cover all the same things that the old £4.54 had to:
- Book production
- Marketing
- Author royalties
- Running the company
- Cover the cost of producing and then pulping returned stock
- etc etc
Even jacking the price up to £8.99 would only yield £3.60.
Given the way the walls are closing in, it’s not hard to see why a few corners get cut when it comes to developing new writers and editing existing ones.
You may also have noticed that there’s a vicious circle here:
- Major retailers own a larger proportion of the market.
- Major retailers demand higher discounts from publishers.
- Publishers receive less money for their books.
- Based on higher discounts, major retailers undercut competitors (e.g. independent stores)
- Competitors go bust.
- GOTO 1
(Apparently this cycle can’t happen fast enough for some publishers, who occasionally try to speed up the process by offering their new titles to the major chains not just with extra discount, but as exclusives.)
The threat from self-publishing
The number of authors self-publishing is increasing fast, and this is a bad thing. It’s a bad thing for readers because the vast, vast majority of self-published books are rubbish, and it’s a bad thing for authors because they don’t get read, and they don’t get the support they need to grow. Traditional publishing should be standing out among all this rubbish, the imprint a seal of excellence. This assurance—that the book, if not to your taste, will at least be properly written and edited—is really the principal added value that publishers can provide to readers.
Whose responsibility?
It’s tempting to say that consumers have the responsibility here: that we should vote with our purchases and send a message by choosing the full-priced books from the independent booksellers, or direct from publishers. Like a lot of people, I try to do this from time to time, especially if there’s a small publisher or independent bookshop that I want to support.
However, just as directors have the responsibility to ensure maximum profitability for their companies, so too do consumers have the responsibility to themselves to ensure fair value on the things they purchase. When a publisher discounts to allow a book to be sold for £5.49, that publisher is sending me the message that £5.49 is all the book is worth. Only a fool would spend, say, £10.99 on something that even the manufacturer suggests has a value of only £5.49.
Furthermore, there’s no doubt in my mind that, when we pay full price for a book, we’re now paying over the odds because the RRP is set to compensate for a retail discount of 60% or more. In other words, if we buy a paperback for £10.99, we’re not only paying for our own copy, we’re also subsidising the copy of the guy who’s paying £5.49 in a half-price promotion on Amazon.
This artificially inflated pricing means that consumers aren’t fulfilling their responsibility to themselves if they purchase at full price a book which has had its price set with high discounting in mind.
In other words, I am being responsible to myself when I pay £7.99 for a book worth £7.99. I am not being responsible to myself when I pay £10.99 for a book worth £7.99, that’s been priced to allow it to be discounted and sold for £5.49.
What can be done?
At this stage, this isn’t such an easy question to answer. We really need to re-establish the essential value of a book. Is a paperback novel worth £3.49 or £8.99? When I open a hardback of the latest novel from Joe Author, am I reading something worth £18.99, or something worth £8.99 with free super saver shipping?
I no longer know the answers to these questions.
What I do know is that we need to get back in touch with how much books are worth. However much this is, consumers need to be willing to pay these prices, and publishers face just as much of a challenge: they need to be willing to charge them, with only a reasonable discount to even the largest retailers.
Otherwise, a book will only be worth the cheapest price at which it can be bought, and that’s not a price which allows for proper development and editing.
Only when we can pay and charge a fair price for books will publishers be able to properly focus their resources on maintaining the standards of excellence that we all want from our industry. In the meantime, next time you’re about to pick up that heavily discounted book, think about what isn’t included in that cheaper price: the prospect of a fully functional publishing industry.
July 1st, 2009 at 4:58 pm
Very interesting post Rob that really makes you think. Share your views that some stuff just seems to have been rushed out or printed in a form that should have been worked on more.
July 1st, 2009 at 5:07 pm
Thanks, Simon. I’m still trying to work out whether this is a new phenomenon, or I’m just becoming increasingly aware of it.
July 1st, 2009 at 6:50 pm
The situation looks pretty grim..any alternative? Solutions?
July 1st, 2009 at 7:42 pm
An excellent and thought-provoking post, Rob. I think I’m lucky to have been edited exceptionally well (by Picador) and to have been held in the paddock, briefly but effectively (new novel out next April!). Stella Duffy has also blogged only today about the thoroughness of her copy editor. Clearly, though, this isn’t always the case. But the issue of how price should be determined other than by market mechanisms, especially in the absence of any retail agreement, is, it seems to me, pretty much insoluble in the current state of affairs. As a non-UK resident I buy almost exclusively from Book Depository, which is my way of marginally reducing the guilt shopping at Amazon tends to induce (plus, I save money). But I’d be happy to pay an honest price for what I buy if anyone’s able to establish what that might be.
July 1st, 2009 at 8:11 pm
The solution is the net book agreement. It seems like a kind of utopia now, but it’s not that long ago – at least to an old git like me – since any book was the same price whether it was in Waterstones, a local bookshop, or a supermarket.
I know of at least one bookseller who regularly fills his trolley with books at Tesco, because he can’t buy them wholesale at Tesco’s discount price.
July 1st, 2009 at 8:34 pm
Charles, what a pleasure to have you comment on the post! I’m waiting with great anticipation for April’s novel. I do agree that these issues are most probably insoluble, but I wanted to raise them out of sheer frustration.
Incidentally, am I right in thinking that Italy has a limit of maximum 15% discount on the retail price of books? I was in GS supermarket the other day and saw their racks of books with bright “15% sconto” stickers. It seemed almost quaint in comparison to Asda. I keep meaning to head out to the Almost Corner bookshop.
Other Rob: I didn’t want to say it myself, but quite probably yes. Or at least for publishers to have the nerve to demand a reasonable discount.
July 2nd, 2009 at 4:31 pm
[…] the last comes from Rob at thefictiondesk.com: Stop discounting before discounting stops publishing. He talks about the price set for books (which ties into the current conversations about […]
July 2nd, 2009 at 9:17 pm
Completely agree with your views. Still, being an author myself,I have to admit that it’s extremely hard to get a traditional publishing contract. As for the ones getting published, half of them are rubbish, even if they are professionally “polished,” as you suggest. Moreover, the high price is a hindrance – and I speak from personal experience, both as an author and a reader. You have to look at the price from the side of someone who loves reading but can’t afford the quantity (and quality) of books he’d like to explore. Going for the cheaper option will definitely be his thing. Anything over a certain value will be instantly dismissed; and that’s not the way for the good books to be promoted either.
July 3rd, 2009 at 3:45 pm
So much truth here. I tend to read books from the independent presses, and also some classics and re-prints. I find its best to avoid fashionable books (Sadie Jones The Outcast being a notable exception), and the Booker shortlist usually leaves me cold. My local independent books offers a small discounts to regular customers and but can’t get anywhere near online prices. Its only people who value books for their own sake who shop with him I think
July 3rd, 2009 at 3:46 pm
I think there are two different issues here. There’s the problem with editors not actually editing properly, and there’s the problem with prices.
Regarding editors, I think the (wrong) perception nowadays is that the people reading the book are stupid and won’t notice bad things. Like a book I recently read. It was cute, had a fun story and a strong central character, but every (and I do mean every) conversation sounded stiff, included too many uses of first names, and came off completely fake. Basically, crappy dialogue ruined an otherwise nice book. I’m assuming that’s something the editor should have caught and fixed. Somehow, though, authors always cheerful thank the editors in their acknowledgments, leading me to wonder if editors really do much these days beyond a standard spell checker. That’s a little weird to think about. Perhaps someone can enlighten me a little in that field.
The other issue raised, the one I find more interesting, is that of the actual discounts. The problem seems to stem from the retail price, and Amazon’s demands to get books in bulk for significantly cheaper. 60% seems like a ridiculous demand to me, but as long as the majority of shoppers do so through larger chains, it’s unsurprising that chains will get a little full of themselves. But I definitely don’t blame myself for buying through these cheaper mediums. Limited book budget and all that. Fixing a price for books may help the problem but it’ll probably piss off buyers, because chances are the books will all be overpriced. Hmm… that’s gloomy.
July 3rd, 2009 at 3:57 pm
Hi Biblibio,
You’re right about these being two separate issues. What I’m wondering is how much the former (lack of decent editing) is due to the latter (lack of funds caused by high discounting).
And as you say, I think we can’t as consumers blame ourselves for taking advantage of these cheaper prices. After all, by offering the books at these prices, the book sellers (and publishers) are sending us the message that this is what they’re worth.
July 20th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
Fascinating piece Rob.
I tend to pay full price at independent booksellers for stuff like Pushkin Press titles or relative rarities (which may well be published by major houses, but just aren’t that easy to find). That’s worth it to me because I want places like the LRB to continue, and while my individual spending won’t make much difference I can at least be a small part of supporting that.
For stuff like SF though, or mainstream crime, I buy from Amazon or thebookdepository. These are mass produced books, widely available, and they’re not really what I go to places like the LRB looking for anyway. At that point, paying over the odds at an independent bookstore (they tend to stock the crime, not the sf, but I shouldn’t digress into genre hierarchies…) seems simply foolish.
Self publishing doesn’t work because as a reader the odds are I simply won’t hear about a self published work, after all, there’s no marketing budget. I also have no way as a reader to filter the dross, and limited time to do it myself (I do do it, obviously, every active reader does, but some preliminary filtering is helpful – if it’s published by Penguin I may still hate it but odds are it meets some minimum quality threshold).
Publishers themselves can be part of the problem, forcing more popular writers to churn out books. Over at Jonathan McAlmont’s old blog he wrote a piece criticising SF writer Charlie Stross for producing increasingly tired books. Stross appeared in the comments, agreed and said it was because he was contractually bound to produce two novels a year and his publisher expressed strong views on what they should be about wanting stuff similar to that which had already sold, he was looking forward to the expiry of a contract he had long since regretted signing. Leaving aside discounting, Stross’s publishers weren’t doing the public any favours with that approach.
I’m not sure where that takes us though. The net book agreement won’t come back, nobody likely to be in government is in favour of that sort of code any more. Supermarkets will continue to discount the biggest sellers, which then puts pressure on the bookstores and even on the online sellers, themselves putting pressure on the bookstores. Margins will continue to be squeezed.
In some ways, it’s not so bad if your tastes run to the more obscure branches of literary fiction, that doesn’t really get discounted anywhere. If you enjoy the odd thriller though, or general fiction, then I don’t see the situation improving anytime soon.
July 27th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
In France, the maximum discount is 5% on the retail price. No matter if it’s a big bookseller or not. And yet publishers, big and small alike, are still cutting costs on copy editing… (I’m working in the French book industry, by the way.)
July 28th, 2009 at 10:50 am
Max,
Sorry to take so long to reply to your comment. I’ve been travelling a bit lately, and got a bit behind.
I agree with you that it’s a good compromise to pay full price for the indies and get mass-produced titles as cheaply as possible. The Charlie Stross anecdote was interesting too, the kind of thing one imagines but doesn’t like to hear confirmed.
Stella,
That’s interesting about France—are there other changing factors that could be causing the drop on editing quality over there? (Or rather, over here, as I’m writing this in Paris…)
July 28th, 2009 at 11:27 pm
This is a very interesting discussion. The economics of book publishing are likely not going to improve much with e-publishing. Given the ease of publishing, it seems that there is room for a new type of entity, an entity that gives an imprimatur of quality to a work.
Perhaps enterprising small publishers or bloggers will come up with a business model that at least partially solves the problem of identifying books and authors worth reading.
I am less concerned with the price of books, than with the other value-added inputs (editing, grooming, etc.) that traditional publishers used to provide. Publishing is changing and likely will not provide those same functions in the future, at least not in the same quantity and manner as before.
Can bloggers or a network of bloggers solve part of the problem, that of identifying good books? Of course, most bloggers do not want to spend time going through a self-published slush pile. Authors will likely have to spend even more time on the business of writing and less time actually writing, at least in the near term.
Editing is another issue, but perhaps that will become less centralized as well.
Anyway, fascinating topic and an engrossing discussion you have going.
July 29th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
Hi Kerry, and welcome to the site.
I’ve been thinking along those lines myself—if publishers can no longer act as a quality stamp on literature (and I’m not saying it will come to that), would there be room for an independent body or network to certify the quality of new, self-published books?
Some tricky questions there, though: I can see certification for, say, copy editing or binding quality, but how could you certify the quality of text? Of course, there’s a lot of bad writing that really is just bad writing, but there’s room for subjectivity too.
Also, how would such a network be funded? (And it would have to be.) I dislike the idea of having authors pay for some kind of certification process, especially as I suspect the pass rate would be less than one percent.
October 24th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
This may need to start as so many things do- a group of like minded professionals getting together and starting it as non-profit, taking donations and keeping the fees for book certification small. The love of finding that next great read would be their number one motivator, as well as seeing other readers enjoy the book too.
Hmm, sounds like something I should get involved in. As someone who went through the self-publishing process, I’d be more than happy to pay a small price to increase circulation of my books. It would also give me the opportunity to get an honest critique of my writing. It’s easy to get compliments from friends, family, and, yes, even those companies you pay that are supposed to give you editorial feedback and critiques. Instead, you get form letters and generic comments that offer little to no guidance. Aspiring writers turn to taking expensive courses that are tailored to the masses to learn plot, character development, and dialogue. There are so few one on one evaluations anymore.
I’d love to see a network such as Rob is talking about get started. It would definitely have my full support.