Selling Books
Nine years and eight days ago, I started work at Borders. It was just a "temporary" job, but in retrospect, it was the best thing that could have happened to me. There's no better education in the fact that publishing is a business than working in a bookstore.
I really wish that Mary W. Walters, the author of this article, had the same educational experience. Maybe then rejections wouldn't feel so personal.
In the article, Walters writes to a hypothetical senior editor:
I can tell you why your desk is piling up with flimsy bits of vampire literature, fantasy, romance, detective stories and the kind of first-draft bubble gum that used to be called chick-lit but is now shuffled in with other women’s writing in order to give it heft-although as far as you can see, neither the quality nor the subject matter has improved-which you are required to somehow turn into publishable books. It is because the vast majority of literary agents do not, in fact, have any interest in literature. They are only interested in jackpots.
What she fails to understand is that books need to sell.
Even when the economy was going great, we didn't sell sell every book we had on the shelf. No bookstore does. And when there are new books coming in every day, books that didn't sell would have to be sent back to make room for them.
Publishers lose money on books all the time. They've already spent the money on the author's advance, cover art, printing, and other costs. True, the losses are built into the system, but still ...
msagara's post here says it so much more clearly:
Editors are paid to make their decisions with someone else's money. And they all have some experience with the bitter disappointment of a much loved novel that failed to sell; they grow a sense of what will--or what won't--work in the market, or work with the tools they have (marketing, sales force, etc.). They are expected to use someone else's money wisely; they are not expected to lose it.
No book is entitled to a sale, whether it's to a publisher, a bookstore, or a customer. And in a recession, when everybody's money is tighter, everybody in that chain of purchasers is going to be more cautious of risking money on an unknown author.
I really wish that Mary W. Walters, the author of this article, had the same educational experience. Maybe then rejections wouldn't feel so personal.
In the article, Walters writes to a hypothetical senior editor:
I can tell you why your desk is piling up with flimsy bits of vampire literature, fantasy, romance, detective stories and the kind of first-draft bubble gum that used to be called chick-lit but is now shuffled in with other women’s writing in order to give it heft-although as far as you can see, neither the quality nor the subject matter has improved-which you are required to somehow turn into publishable books. It is because the vast majority of literary agents do not, in fact, have any interest in literature. They are only interested in jackpots.
What she fails to understand is that books need to sell.
Even when the economy was going great, we didn't sell sell every book we had on the shelf. No bookstore does. And when there are new books coming in every day, books that didn't sell would have to be sent back to make room for them.
Publishers lose money on books all the time. They've already spent the money on the author's advance, cover art, printing, and other costs. True, the losses are built into the system, but still ...
msagara's post here says it so much more clearly:
Editors are paid to make their decisions with someone else's money. And they all have some experience with the bitter disappointment of a much loved novel that failed to sell; they grow a sense of what will--or what won't--work in the market, or work with the tools they have (marketing, sales force, etc.). They are expected to use someone else's money wisely; they are not expected to lose it.
No book is entitled to a sale, whether it's to a publisher, a bookstore, or a customer. And in a recession, when everybody's money is tighter, everybody in that chain of purchasers is going to be more cautious of risking money on an unknown author.