10 Wonderful Truths About Publishing
By Michael Larsen, AAR
Inspired by Steven Piersanti's 10 Awful Truths About Publishing
1. Thanks in part to technology, publishers have the ability to edit, copy-edit, design, sell books and subsidiary rights, promote to the trade and the public, and print and distribute books more effectively and creatively than ever. They understand that to compete with other publishers' books and other media, they must do their best. Big houses are taking more pains with jackets, hiring specialists to do online promotion, and investing millions of dollars to digitize their books to sell electronic rights. Big-Apple publishers may have sister companies abroad or in Hollywood in the same conglomerate that may want to buy subsidiary rights. Email enables this complex web of relationships to function faster and more efficiently than ever.
2. The phrase "unpublished author" is obsolete. All you need to be published is a manuscript. You have more options for getting your books published than ever, some of which - ebooks, print-on-demand, podcasting, blogs, and websites -- cost little or nothing.
3. Money doesn't rule publishing; passion does. If publishers believe in a book passionately because they love it, they think it will sell, or it must be published, they'll publish it.
4. Nothing can prevent the success of a book that serves its readers' needs for information, inspiration, beauty and entertainment well enough. Publishers spend millions of dollars a year buying and marketing books that fail, while self-published books and books from small and university presses become bestsellers.
5. Television and word of mouth and mouse enable books to succeed faster than ever. One of our authors, Cherie Carter-Scott, got on Oprah, and that afternoon, her book, If Life is a Game, These are the Rules, rocketed to the top of Amazon's bestseller list. Then its momentum carried it to the top of the New York Times bestseller list.
6. Anything is possible.
- Dr. Benjamin Spock's Baby and Child Care has sold 50,000,000.
- The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown has sold 60,000,000.
- The more than 100 Chicken Soup books have sold more than 100,000,000 copies.
- J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series has sold more than 300,000,000 copies.
(The series transformed Rowling from a single mother on the dole to the richest woman in England in less than a decade.)
- Barbarba Cartland's romances have sold 1,000,000,000 copies.
- The Agatha Christie mysteries have sold 2,000,000,000 copies.
- The Bible has sold more than 5,000,000,000 copies.
7. Thousands of new authors succeed every year.
- The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller
- The Christmas Box, originally self-published by Richard Paul Evans
- Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
- The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
- Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson
These are first novels that became bestsellers and movies. And because it's easier to promote nonfiction than fiction, it's easier for nonfiction writers to make the list.
8. Publishers know how books are selling. They receive daily sales figures from Bookscan that account for 70% of their sales. This enables them to schedule reprints based on sales which lessens returns and helps ensure that stores have a steady supply of books to sell.
9. The more people know, the more they want to know. If readers like one book in a series, they'll buy the other books in the series. So all of the books will continue to sell as new readers discover them. And this is true around the world.
10. Publishing continues to attract bright young people from around the country who bring with them fresh infusions of passion and dedication. There are only two kinds of people in the creative side of the business: writers and frustrated writers. If editors could be home writing the Great American Novel, they would be. The next best thing is being in-house agents for their writers by helping them create the strongest possible books and building enthusiasm for them with the gatekeepers inside and outside of the house.