Is Traditional Fiction Publishing Broken?
By Therese Anne Fowler | November 3, 2023 |
Today’s post was inspired by a novelist friend of mine who has been having a hard time of it lately, and in their struggle to regain footing in the fiction market, suggested that I address the question of how to keep the faith in today’s challenging publishing environment. What follows are my thoughts and observations about what’s going on and why, and what can be done, and whether there’s any cause for hope. I welcome your thoughts and observations, too.
Times are tough these days for novelists who are not long-established perennial bestsellers, literary luminaries, or aren’t named (for example) Colleen Hoover, Bonnie Garmus, Rebecca Yarros, Taylor Jenkins Reid, Hannah Grace, or Ana Huang.
Fiction sales to consumers over the past three years have been robust in comparison to pre-pandemic years. Yet, across genres, published and aspiring authors alike are finding it especially difficult to get read, whether that be by editors or agents or the reading public. Authors who’ve been in the business for a while (sometimes for decades) can’t get new book deals. Agents are rejecting new authors at even higher rates than usual. What gives?
I should note that publishing always has a component of what I call “eight-year-olds chasing the soccer ball”—wherever the ball is going at any given time, the herd is running after it. Which is to say that when a given genre or sub-genre starts trending, a significant proportion of the publishing ecosystem, from writer to bookseller and all points between, wants in. In years past, this wasn’t especially problematic for those who exist outside of the trend(s); there was demand for and space for all kinds of books. So what’s changed?
Let’s look, first, at space. National media book coverage has shrunk to almost nothing, and where it exists, coverage has in many cases become so clotted with titles that it’s practically meaningless (take for example, EW’s recent list of “The 42 fall books we’re most excited to read”). Bookstore space is also tighter, due to rising rents, the proliferation of eBooks, and online book-buying. What’s more, many physical bookstores, wanting to capitalize on the biggest trending books, are prioritizing that handful of titles by placing even larger orders and creating big, obvious, exclusive displays. Publishing space—meaning the number of publishing imprints as well as the number of books being acquired—has contracted, too.
Now, demand. Demand is a wibbly concept. Seen one way, it’s demonstrated concretely by what readers are buying en mass. The books they’re buying, though, are less a reflection of what, independent of influence, they may desire than of what they see the most of (this is the principle behind advertising; create demand). By the same token, if we don’t know a book exists because we haven’t seen or heard about it wherever we spend our time, we aren’t going to seek it out—and this creates a perception that there was no demand for it. (This is the all-too-common Kiss of Death for authors’ careers.)
These days, the primary, most effective book-discovery resource is TikTok—where nearly 75% of users are younger than 45, and 44% are under 25. During the early phase of the pandemic, lightning struck Colleen Hoover there. Her blaze was astonishing. If I’m recalling correctly, I think that at one point her books held nine of the fifteen spots on the NYT trade paperback list. Nine! This is, to use an overused word, unprecedented. In 2022, she sold more than 14 million books. Let that sink in for a minute. One author, in one year, sold more than 14 MILLION books. Consider what that says about readers’ book-buying behaviors (the book industry certainly is doing so).
But here’s the thing about phenomenons: they don’t last. The brushfire burns hot for a while, but eventually it uses up its fuel and burns out. The problem, though, is that while it’s burning, the herd runs in the direction of the blaze in the hope of catching fire, and this blaze is possibly the biggest publishing has ever seen.
Another component of the problem is occurring on the bookselling side. The competition among publishers for bookseller notice and support, both pre- and post-publication, is fierce. Influential booksellers are besieged with bound manuscripts and advance copies. They sincerely want to help everyone they can, and this puts pressure on them to read and review as many books as they can, which naturally results in them reading much more quickly than they ordinarily would, which creates unintended bias toward high-concept and/or shorter and/or fast-paced, easily digestible stories, and against authors who write denser, more layered work (unless of course those authors are already “names,” cf. Amor Towles, Abraham Verghese, Barbara Kingsolver).
The same is true for those on social media (IG in particular) who are considered to be book-influencers and who are over-relied upon by marketing teams to “build buzz.” Only, unlike booksellers, they are primarily young (under 35) with reading tastes that already skew toward books that, whether “light” or “dark,” move fast and give them what critic Laura Miller, when writing about Colleen Hoover’s books, described as “all the feels.” Though they sometimes gush about a particular book, often they post lovely but largely ineffectual photos of book stacks. Not only are they trying to influence their followers’ tastes, they’re competing with one another—for followers, for publisher favor, for having read the largest number of books. The FOMO factor here is significant. While there are some really wonderful book-folk in this space, thoughtful engagement with and meaningful feature of a book is more the exception than the rule.
We all know that while writing novels is an art and craft, publishing novels is a business, and staying in business requires lots and lots and lots of books to be sold. Risk is discouraged. So although there are still many agents and editors whose tastes and preferences remain outside the blaze, the current reality is that if a given book isn’t likely to be selected by a celebrity or isn’t BookTok Hot, it’s going to be a harder sell at every stage. Readers who are over the age of 45 and/or don’t prioritize social media are difficult for publishers to reach, and no one seems to have fresh ideas let alone answers for addressing that.
All of this translates to a larger number of editors seeking trendy bookalikes, which translates to more agents seeking those same bookalikes because that’s what they can readily place, which puts pressure on writers to create such bookalikes if they hope to break into the business or, if already in, to stay in. More than ever before, the fiction market is becoming homogenized. The midlist author is increasingly marginalized. Traditional fiction publishing, if not yet broken, feels creakier than it’s been in any of my fifteen years in the biz.
So what happens to those who can’t or won’t write for the current market yet still also prefer to be published traditionally—but agents and/or editors are turning them away? Should they just give up? Is there any cause for hope? How can they keep the faith?
In discussing this with another friend—one who bashed her head against the gates for close to 20 years before her break finally came—we agreed that the intrinsic motivation for continuing to write lies in narrowing one’s focus to what can be controlled: the story on the page. But faith itself is extrinsic—and in this case, it requires a belief that “this, too, shall pass.” That, somewhere, there is and will always be room for another well-told story. I suspect that, as there are fewer and fewer slots for midlist or off-trend books at the Big Five, scrappy smaller presses will increasingly snap up those books and innovate their way to the huge-but-harder-to-reach demographic of readers, who’ll flock to them with relief and joy.
In which case, for the off-trend author, does it all boil down—as ever—to patience and perseverance?
Maybe.
Your thoughts?
Therese Anne Fowler is the New York Times, IndieBound, and USA Today bestselling author of multiple novels including Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald, which was adapted for television starring Christina Ricci. She has been a finalist for the Goodreads Choice Awards and the Southern Book Prize for fiction. Her articles and essays have appeared in The Week, Harper’s Bazaar, the Telegraph, and elsewhere. Therese earned a BA in sociology/cultural anthropology and an MFA in creative writing, both from NC State University. She lives in Raleigh, NC, with her husband, author John Kessel.
[coffee]
Thank you—this was very approachable for such an expansive topic.
It strikes me strongly that Gen X should not be hard to reach at all. We’re on FB (even though we mostly ‘hate’ it) and X, and Instagram.
As a bookseller, the TikTok phenomenon and Bookalikes has been fascinating. However, I’m also noticing a HUGE increase in gorgeous, diverse, literary, novels that are deeply intellectual and compassionate, and that tell stories we’ve never heard before, from cultures we know little about. I don’t think we have anything to worry about. It’s exciting that young people are reading so much, and hopefully that will lead to young TikTok readers maturing into deeper, more interesting books. Personally, I think despairing over the state of things in publishing (whatever that means) is a cop-out. It allows us to throw our hands in the air and say “it’s not my book, it’s the business.” There are so many outlets to find readers, but it takes a lot of dedication and energy and work. I suspect that’s always been true. The question is, who is up for the challenge? Success has never been easy.
Stella, I agree with most of what you say. There IS a refreshing breadth of diverse stories, and it’s exciting to see so many young readers engaging with fiction. The authors who are struggling, though, whose novels are less diverse and are aimed at older readers, will beg to differ about their despair being a cop-out. The problems are real. Even the major publishers’ marketing and publicity teams, with all their resources, are having difficulty reaching a large segment of readers. Some excellent novels are coming to market but then disappearing almost without a trace. Low sales lead to low future advances or to failing to get new book deals at all.
I agree. As a 45+ author and reader, I am finding it harder to reach my demographic. And as an author who writes “quiet novels” and “clean seasoned romance” (closed-door love stories featuring protagonists 50 and older), I cannot be offered an advance by the Big 5 unless I add some kind of twist to make the writing more fresh and exciting to suit trends and younger readers. But it’s hard to pivot without some fallout, which I saw recently when I ventured out into romantic suspense.
Thanks for your comment, Angela. The frustrations are real, there’s no question. I hope (and trust) new and effective ways of reaching that market *will* come. Hang in there!
C’mon, lads! Never mind the machine guns! Over the top, now. War has always been difficult!
Thanks, Susan. While it’s true that Gen X is using those socials, evidently getting books in front of readers on those formats is not as simple as it might seem, nor is what *can* be done proving to be very effective in terms of driving book sales for most books.
Thank you, Therese, for raising and examining several questions that often seem existential from the point of view of the author. I’m not really sure what “traditional publishing” is, or was, though. Some of us, perhaps, idealize the age of Maxwell Perkins or maybe of Gordon Lish, but I suspect there were plenty of talented authors who had a great deal to complain about in those times, too. In any case, I agree that – obviously – things have changed and are continuing to change in confusing ways.
The biggest turn-off for me personally, when I first got involved in this business, was the discovery of the apparently increasing importance of hype. As a reader, you’re aware of the existence of echo chambers, feedback loops, herd mentality – however you want to characterize the phenomenon – but when you finally have a chance to observe the machinery of publishing up close, you’re sometimes left with the impression that the whole apparatus relies upon contrivance and deception. Often you wonder why certain books are ignored and others chosen – perhaps for political reasons, within the publishing house, that have nothing to do with the work itself but a lot to do with the power (or lack thereof) of the editor at a particular moment. For me, the answer is: we can only do our best. In literature as in life, we control much less than we think.
Mitchell, “traditional publishing” means not self-published or published by a vanity press.
It is, as you observe very well here, a business that does indeed involve a lot of contrivance, insider politics, etc. I often lament what a rotten business it can be, and maddening. Disheartening, too. One has to be willing (and able) to work within the system. Easier said than done!
Hello Therese. Thanks for giving us a feel-good Friday. Joking aside, thanks even more for telling it like it is. If TikTok is “the most effective book-discovery resource,” and of its users “44 percent are under 25,” and the industry has always been famous for emulating “eight-year-olds chasing the soccer ball,” the writing on the schoolhouse wall is clear: either write for children and young adults, or open an ice cream shop. Has anyone researched the age and gender demographics for today’s agents and editors? My guess is, the findings would fit with the youth culture stats in your post. The only path for those who write for educated adults will have to lie in some as yet undeveloped tactic. Say, a social-media approach that attracts such readers by being specifically for them. Other than that, we would seem to be left with another instance of class warfare: those with enough money to hire savvy publicists who can ramp up the exposure frequency for their authors’ titles, and the rest of us, in smocks serving up butter pecan and fudge ripple. Thanks again for telling the truth.
I am choosing to celebrate that young people are reading so much. Their tastes will mature in time. I overheard a customer at the bookstore where i work complaining that “I bet young people won’t be reading at all in a couple decades.” It took everything in my power not to retort, “Actually, most of my customers are under 45.” It’s beautiful to see so many people engaging with literature, getting excited over stories, rushing to buy books.
Barry, happy feel-good Friday! :)
You put your finger on just what I’ve been thinking: “The only path for those who write for educated adults will have to lie in some as yet undeveloped tactic. Say, a social-media approach that attracts such readers by being specifically for them.” Except I’ll say this won’t be the ONLY path, but certainly a far more effective one.
Great column, but a little late – such a scary read belongs on Halloween.
Thanks, Greta––and…sorry? By nature I am an optimist, and I think knowledge is power, in the end.
I do agree with you about knowledge and power, and did really appreciate your column. It was funny that shortly after I read this on Washington Post, I read an article about the shift in journalism and news consumption, with content creators taking up more of the news consumption from traditional news media. The article mentioned one in five adults under 24 get the news from TikTok. (https://wapo.st/46Vlp3O for the curious). There seems to be a lot of parallels.
I am an industry insider, and I can tell you this: hand-wringing about book publishing has been going on for the entire forty-six years that I’ve been in the business. Yet here we are.
Bandwagon syndrome (bookalike) is not new. The mid-list has been “dying” for all that time even though the majority of titles sell modestly. Getting attention, either pre- or post-pub, has never been easy. But the number of fiction titles published (traditionally) every year has been the same for the entire span of my career. And, what do you know, original and well written books can and do sell.
Have some things changed? Yes, obviously, but change is not the same thing as being broken or dying. I’m not shifting careers. No need. There are books to sell, and readers waiting for them.
Well said, thank you!!
Thank you for your insight from inside.
We’ll have to discuss this in person, if we get the chance next week. There ARE books to sell, and readers ARE waiting for them, and it HAS always been challenging to get attention for books. BUT.
You bet! Will be nice to chat in person!
I’d love it if you’d let us in on that discussion by writing a follow-up to this article.
Therese – thank you. I found your piece brilliant, perceptive. btw the link to your website doesn’t seem to be working (for me?) I’m going to dive into your books!
Thank you! And thanks for the heads-up about the website. The link is *supposed to* redirect to thereseannefowler.wordpress.com (which is functioning fine) but for some reason won’t. I’ll look into it.
A fix is supposedly in the works. Meantime, going directly to thereseannefowler.wordpress.com has no issues.
This is the intelligent discussion we’ve all been waiting for—thank you so much! I’ll add two reflections to your thoughtful, comprehensive essay, if I may.
One is that there is often a tendency among authors to conflate getting an agent (or even a book deal) with getting sales and readers. I’ve seen many people on Cloud Nine when they “get” the first— but then never “get” the second. For sure, seeing one’s book in print is an unforgettable thrill :-) But most books sell few copies and reach (relatively) few readers. In large part, that’s because all the work of outreach and promotion, for 99% of published authors, is on us. And that work is very, very expensive in terms of time, energy, and money. Not everyone has that capacity, given the demands of life.
And even if one does get an agent and/or publisher and undertakes a wholehearted promotion, one is still likely to sell very few books—for the reasons you’ve noted. I’m not sure that patience and perseverance really move that needle. Not in the landscape you describe so accurately.
My other reflection relates to my own post from last month (https://staging-writerunboxed.kinsta.cloud/2023/10/18/why-we-write-artistry-identity-and-legacy/), which I know you commented on (thank you). I really do think it starts with that. We may not get what we want, of course, but knowing what I truly want can provide a quiet hub for all the frenetic activity of trying to get published and read. That’s why self-publishing and assisted self-publishing have become so popular, I think. Not because we’ve failed to become the next Colleen Hoover. But because we want some sense of agency in this thing that matters so much to us (just like our protagonists). I don’t think those “scrappy smaller presses” are the answer, if one’s goal is highly ambitious, because they don’t have the outreach and resources. But yes, it one’s goal is offer a story to the world, then—absolutely!
Anyway, thank you for this excellent piece.
Many thanks for this thoughtful reply. By the scrappy presses remark, I agree they’re mostly not having large effects YET. But I’m seeing signs that this may be shifting in at least two cases I know of. I’m an optimist!
Good insights on the demographics of promotion. My reader might be on TikTok, but is more likely on Facebook. Knowing how to reach that over 45 market is huge for most of us. I think they’re on social media (I am, all of us here are), but engage differently.
Mainly, I agree with Don. The sky has been falling in publishing since I sold my first book—a very long time ago. The challenges change generationally, but it’s always been something. Garmus was an unknown debut author over 50 when she sold a weird book about a strange woman set in the 60s. The author (or the book) is the soccer ball, not the market. Obviously, marketing books is a challenge in a 24/7 entertainment cycle, but we just have to deal with that reality-and hope lightning strikes.
It is always something. I’m hopeful that new technologies and creative minds will create real and meaningful innovation. There are too many talented writers slipping through the cracks. They can hope for lightning to strike, but they can’t take that hope to the bank while they’re waiting.
That is exactly it. At 59, I’m running out of time (and patience) for lightning to strike. Thank you for this honest post!!
Therese, thank you for this discussion. I didn’t know about the TikTok stats. Impressive! It makes me happy to know that young people are still reading. Most of them in my circle of friends read so I’m not surprised. However, what was surprising is that at a church bazaar where I rented a table to sell some of my children’s books, several older ladies came by and commented that their grandkids don’t read and that they themselves have lost the ability to concentrate on reading novel-length books. I wonder whether the phone is the culprit for this demise. I’ve participated in book fairs and sales are robust. But when books have to compete with other entertainment, they don’t do as well. As for me, I will continue to write and I’m so happy that there are so many options for sharing our stories.
Yes, the competition for attention is fierce!
I’ve also had older readers say they can’t concentrate on reading long fiction anymore. Between brain fog and other cognitive problems that might happen during the aging process, we might have to learn how to pivot to reach the needs of that older demographic. I have had more success selling 100-word stories than 80,000 word novels.
Have you considered audio books, if you haven’t yet?
Not all of us older readers have brain fog, just the 1 out of 7 (or is that 1 of 6) that end up with dementia or those that didn’t bother to take precautions during the pandemic and ended up with Long Covid and/or POTs.
Since I’m almost 80 and have been an avid reader since the late 1950s, I read full length print books at home and listen to audiobooks in the car, something I’ve been doing since the 1980s.
Still, I buy more than I have time to read. The piles of unread books, waiting to be read, keep growing. I can’t say no to a book that grabs my interest, and I buy way faster than I can read them. Since I’m also writing, publishing and promoting my own work, I don’t read other books as long each day as I once did.
Thank you. Well done. This big picture of the uphill climb can help us all feel that we’re “not the only one” facing a tougher market.
You are definitely not alone in these challenges!
I started bashing my head against the gates controlled by traditional agents and editors as soon as I finished my first novel in 1968 or was that 1969. I don’t remember the exact date today. Over the years, I had an agent or two. A couple of manuscripts made it to editors desks; one senior editor at Random House wrote a personal rejection and let me know he loved the book but no one was publishing stories about Vietnam because that market was glutted. I’d publish that one as an indie author decades later. To date, it has sold more than 500 copies (mostly ebooks) and racked up 100 reviews/ratings on Amazon with a 4.3 average, and it’s one of the three I label, “my losers.”
I didn’t grow up wanting to be a writer. In fact, when I was seven, my mother was told by experts that her son was too retarded to ever learn to read or write. Mom made a liar out of them after she asked my 1st grade teacher what she could do at home, and did it, turning this seriously dyslexic child into an avid reader, often polishing off two paperbacks a day in high school.
I credit Ray Bradbury for planting the seed that turned me into a writer.
Still, for almost 40 years, I wrote more than a dozen novel length books and collected hundreds of rejection slips from the traditional gatekeepers. Along the way, I earned a BA in journalism, an MFA in writing and 20th century U.S. authors, and spent about 7 years attending writing workshops out of UCLA, all to improve my writing craft.
Then along came Amazon KDC in November 2007. And a month later in December 2007, I became an indie author and published my first novel that has since had more than 50,000 orders and over a half million page reads since 2018. That historical fiction novel now has more than 1,400 reviews and ratings on Amazon with a 4.4 average.
I have been an indie author for about 15 years with six titles on Amazon. Every one of my books has sold more than the average indie author.
How do readers find my work?
Well, they don’t. I learned how to find them through my four blogs and more recently running hundreds of 24/7 Amazon ADs alongside quarterly Amazon KCD promotions supported with deal site Ads, et al.
I may never earn enough to support this writer’s lifestyle, but that doesn’t matter because I taught in the public schools for thirty years and earned a retirement income in 2005, enough to support me. My lifestyle isn’t lavish and that’s okay. I’m not alone, most published authors, traditional or indie, will never earn enough to support their lifestyles.
This month, the monthly royalties that landed in my bank account from Amazon KCD added up to a little more than $700. I’d starve on that.
If you are curious who taught me how to use Amazon ADs properly, I’ll let you know. But first, I think you should know that he teaches a five day workshop webinar once each quarter for FREE, and we can take it as many times as we want. What you learn in that FREE webinar, that even Amazon recommends, is all you need to know when it comes to Amazon Ads.
No one has to pay for any of the services he charges for, to teach more marketing skills. And even those extended marketing skills can be learned from the reasonably priced books he also offers on the same topics.
The FREE five-day webinar that even Amazon Advertising recommends, is, I think, all we authors need. And if you don’t understand how that method works the first time, take the webinar again the next quarter and again and again until you do.
I starting using this method in October 2022. By the end of September 2023, my work had earned $209.09 more than I spent on Amazon Ads.
Lloyd, I’m so pleased that you’ve found a route that’s working nicely for you! I believe that independent publishing can be a great fit for many authors.
Amazon also has imprints that are similar to traditional publishing houses. Dean Koontz left traditional publishing and signed with Amazon Publishing imprint Thomas & Mercer. I think I read that he went indie first, but could be wrong.
The main difference is Amazon uses its powerful advertising platform to promote books it publishes through its imprints, something traditional publishing houses cannot duplicate.
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2019-07-22/dean-koontz-book-deal-amazon
I understand that authors cannot submit their work to Amazon’s publishing imprints. Instead, Amazon watches indies that publish on their KDP platform and contact some indie authors with offers after they prove themselves in some way.
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2019-07-22/dean-koontz-book-deal-amazon
https://amazonpublishing.amazon.com/our-imprints.html
Thank you for this insightful post about today’s publishing environment. While I’m thrilled that young people are buying books, there’s another perspective that I would add. What I see around me are huge numbers of older fiction readers, mostly women, some in book clubs. At our local literary festival last month, people (most of them over 45) bought *armloads* of hardbacks.
You say the over-45 group is hard for booksellers to reach. That’s on them, because there are a heck of a lot of older folks (just look at the demographics) who grew up reading books and have the resources (time and money) to support their voracious reading habit. I’ve asked older readers how they discover books and they list word of mouth (friends, but especially local indie bookstores), book clubs, Goodreads, readings and festivals. I’d love to hear other people’s ideas for reaching this ripe market.
Yes, that market is RIPE, and whoever figures out how to reach them will be my hero.
Popping in to say great article, Therese. Something Don mentioned above is that the number of *traditional titles* has remained more or less the same over time, but that’s not the issue at hand nor is it the point of this article, I feel. The larger market as a whole has shifted considerably as reaching readers and discoverability–our whole point as authors and booksellers–has become harder than ever. The expansive number of self-published and indie published books has changed the marketing of books considerably. Massively. I’d love to discuss this with you both next week! :)
****I’ve self-pubbed a title of my own a few years ago, so it’s important to note that I’m not bashing either indie publishers or self-publishing. But it has very drastically changed the way we are able to and should market books.****
All good points. See you soon!
Traditional publishing isn’t broken. Still, most if not all of traditional publishers haven’t changed the ways they promote their books, while indie authors that take the effort to learn how to promote their work have innovated book marketing in amazing ways using methods the traditional industry never used before and in many cases still isn’t using.
For instance, Anchee Min and I were married 1999 – 2015, and we raised a daughter together. If you don’t know who Anchee Min is, she wrote Red Azalea, her memoir growing up during Mao’s Cultural Revolution. The New York Times named it one of their notable books of the year back in the 1990s sometime. She published several other novels and a second memoir, The Cooked Seed. Her books were translated into more than 20 language and sold more than a million copies in English alone.
Earlier this year, our daughter told me she wanted me to transfer her mother domain name and website to her so she could manage it. I said OKAY. It turned out more difficult than we thought, and we haven’t transferred Anchee’s domain name yet, but it will happen one day, I think.
During the first and second failed attempts to transfer Anchee’s domain name to our daughter, I was curious and checked the categories her traditional publisher had placed her books under on Amazon. I was shocked to see that their Amazon categories were all wrong, and I let Lauryann know this. Maybe she’ll contact the publisher (I think it’s Random House and one of its imprints) and have them fix this.
Indie authors have learned how important categories and key words are on Amazon. I don’t think most traditional publishers have.
As an indie author, I use Publishers Rocket to find the best categories and key words for my work. I also advertise my work on Amazon and through deal sites when I run Amazon Kindle Countdown deals. That’s the tip of the indie promotional iceberg.
I “just” noticed that in my 14 book stack on the side table, waiting to be read, is your “Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald”.
From the same stack, I’m currently reading one of Ann Patchett’s novels. I’m going to have to read faster.
:o)
Hey, how about that! I hope you enjoy the book, when the time comes.
Soon.
I’ve been fascinated with Hemingway and Fitzgerald’s lives since reading all of their work while earning my MFA in writing with a focus on America’s 20th centuries most popular and well known authors. There were other authors on that list but those two had the most colorful lives.
I have no idea when I’ll write the reviews and post them since I’m way behind with 17 books stacked on another surface waiting for me to Get Around To It. I prefer reading and writing to reviewing.
My wife Anchee Min was traditionally published and her work went viral spreading to more than 20 countries and languages around the world. Her first book was optioned for film by Oliver Stone (that’s another story – what a jerk he turned out to be).
During that marriage, as her husband, I was part of her publishing experience. Her publishers (since most of her books have been published in more than 20 countries and languages) promoted her and her work — sending Anchee on book tours to Australia, Europe, North America. I went on a few of those and so has her daughter. Still, most of them, we stayed home and she went alone.
One traditional author tour can cost a lot of money for a publisher: air fare, hotels, drivers, meals. Anchee’s tours crisscrossed the country. I don’t want to know what it cost her Australian publisher to send her to Perth for a literary festival. Imagine flying business class (it might have been first class, I don’t remember) from San Francisco to Australia and then another flight from Sydney to Perth in Western Australia. We didn’t go with her on that one. Just hopping across the Pacific is like a 12 to 14 hour flight.
Traditional publishers do not do what they did for her for all of their authors. During that marriage, I met a lot of traditional published authors, and most of them didn’t earn enough from their traditionally published books to support their lifestyle so most of them taught mostly in universities/colleges. One friend of Anchee’s won the Pulitzer Prize or the National Book Award for one of his novels. I don’t remember his name. He also grew up in China during Mao’s Cultural Revolution. He had to teach because medical doesn’t come with being an author and his work, regardless of the awards, didn’t sell enough to support his family and pay for the medical care his wife needed to survive and stay alive.
Anyway, to cut to the chase, sometimes traditional authors can get their publishers to pay half the bill for promoting their work, if they ask. Anchee never had to do that. She hates flying and traveling so her publisher included the launch promotions in her contract so she had to go, or pay back the advances.
Since you have a NYT BS, I don’t know why your publisher would say no to paying at least half if not all of what it would cost you to run Amazon ADs that can be programmed to focus on your genres and readers of similar novels by other authors.
Even if that was possible, I’d still recommend learning how to set up a proper Amazon Ad that works and doesn’t break the bank. That’s where the five day free Amazon AD course I mentioned earlier in another comment in this thread comes in that even Amazon recommends. Amazon didn’t create that free five day course. Bryan Cohen did.
I was reading books on how to run Amazon Ads long before I took that course and what I was learning from those books was NOT working. It was costing me thousands of dollars with few if any results. Then I took the FREE, five day Author Ad Challenge, learned that method, applied it and it works. Although I went on to pay for some of the other support from Best Page Forward, I now know I didn’t have to do that. All I needed was what I learned from that FREE five day Amazon AD Challenge. Anything else Best Page Forward offers for a costly price is also available for very reasonably priced books published by them, too. All we have to do is read and learn instead of pay for more webinars.
Look, most traditionally published authors are not as fortunate as Anchee Min was to be supported like her publisher did for her work. However, that financial promotional support was only the book tours after each book came out and then it stopped. Anchee was also fortunate that the New York Times and most of the other major media outlets reviewed all of her published books. She’d end up on NPR and PBS for interviews too not counting other broadcast media outlets. Germany’s Der Spiegel sent a reporter to our house near San Francisco from Germany to interview her and her family. When one of Anchee’s novels was nominated for the British Book Awards, her British publisher paid for her to attend in London, I think it was London but it was in the UK. Since her British publisher was also JK Rowling’s publisher, they shared a table at that event and Anchee got her autograph for our daughter who is a Harry Potter fan. Lloyd and daughter stayed home for that one.
Here’s the link to the free webinar. Any traditionally published author that wants to reach readers that buys books on Amazon that might be interested in their work should at least have a look and maybe take the free five day course at least once. It’s offered four times a year, once each quarter.
https://www.bestpageforward.net/getting-ready-for-the-5-day-amazon-ad-challenge/
“Trends” is perhaps to broad a word on what editors and agents chase. To some in kidlit, trends means vampires, superhuman powers, historical, ghost stories, etc. Publishing moves so slow that once a trend has hit the pulse, an incoming manuscript is still 1.5 to 2 years away from publication. In kidlit, I think a few books must still slip through based on literary merit, and many are because of things like “MG kids really liked this sports book, and those two kid-moves-to-a-small town story, so let’s get more of those–but with a different twist.” I think the real secret is to keep your joy in writing, edit very well and take your time, save up for outside development editors if you can, and simply keep producing. You must set aside hours per week that are regular writing/editing time, and not fret if you are on manuscript four or five or whatever, without publication. To keep the flow, you must, as Sarah Aronson says, hold the magic and the wonder in writing. That will inspire you when the business side is tough and tricky.
All good advice, Chuck. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
What I don’t see addressed here is the debut novel of Millie Bobby Brown ghostwritten by Kathleen McGurl. According to the news reports, Millie provided the premise and some ideas in a zoom call with McGurl, while McGurl did all of the writing. This may be typical for one-off celebrity memoirs, but will this now become the new normal for novels as well? Will the writer have any say in the story or own a piece of the publishing deal? Or will the writer be paid a nominal fee upfront and then be told to go away and keep quiet?
Marcie, that’s an interesting question/scenario. The practice (more or less) does already occur on a small scale––e.g. novelists who pen books for the Star Wars series, the Stranger Things series, and other single-title books that publishers and/or book-packagers conceive and then hire writers to pen. The writers’ names are on the books, but the compensation structure and copyright are different than if the IP was their own. But I don’t see this becoming a *common* practice for fiction broadly; even with the pressures to write “bookalikes,” most of us prefer to conceive and control the stories we write, and in the long term, the industry has and I think will continue to thrive on original and/or distinctive works of fiction across every genre.
Thanks for this, Therese. I appreciate your perspective, although to me, those “Star Wars” and “Stranger Things” novels aren’t the same scenario. Those are works-for-hire and, as you noted, the writer is generally credited as the author. Brown, who, by the way is the star of Stranger Things, is credited as the author of her “debut novel,” even though (as was later revealed) the novel was written by Kathleen McGurl. Brown’s name is on the cover. McGurl’s isn’t. The marketing info says, “Actress, entrepreneur and now author Millie Bobby Brown proves there’s nothing she can’t do with her debut novel.” McGurl isn’t mentioned. Doesn’t that imply that Brown wrote this novel? In fact, she only provided an idea and some historical research, and her celebrity name, which is on the cover for marketing purposes. What is the future for fiction writers if ghost-written / celebrity-authored novels become the norm?
This makes the point better than I did: https://theconversation.com/millie-bobby-browns-debut-novel-is-a-bestseller-does-it-matter-that-the-19-year-old-actor-didnt-write-it-214258