Last week, we travelled from 1991 to 2010. From the fall of Crown Books to the rise of Borders, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon. Through the demise of independent bookstores to the sudden appearance of the ebook. It’s 2011… Those of us still standing now face a new era. The death of Borders, the coming death of Barnes & Noble, and the power of the ebook are all things that guarantee the rebirth of print…not the death of print.
by Andrew Gifford
The Witch is Dead
Print sales, in the era of the chain stores, came to be measured in the tens of thousands, and the millions for those select few stars and big publishers. The idea of Seymour Lawrence selling a handful of copies here and there across the nation became ludicrous, even if those handfuls added up over time and translated to bestsellers and famous names.
In short, we got lazy. Publishers focused on chains and gladly wrote off the 30% or more returns as long as the chains bought a bunch of books up front. Spend the money, live large, worry about the returns and the debt later on. That’s why you hear stories that don’t make sense – like Scholastic, the US publisher of the Harry Potter books, nearly having to declare bankruptcy. Authors know that story all too well – you get your gonzo advance and spend it all because you have bills to pay and cocaine to buy, but then you don’t see another penny and the book flops and, nine months down the road, you’re living in the backseat of your Mercedes and crying yourself to sleep.
Print sales have always been about grassroots shenanigans. From writing the book, through publishing it, down to selling it, is an intimate experience for everyone involved. There’s no point in the process where the book doesn’t, somehow, enter the bloodstream. Measuring print sales, then, used to be a quiet little thing. Two copies to this store, three to that one, and ten to that one. Tra-la-la. And that’s a good day for a small press. And that should be a good day, because you know that all those copies are going to be displayed, browsed, and purchased. They aren’t camping out in a warehouse and being turned around just to fund some soulless corporate giant. Amazon, by the way, buys copies based on demand, just like most indie bookstores.
What happened that should have woken everybody up is that, as soon as the order trickled down to freeze out Borders, the average percentage of book returns per title went from 33% to 20%. And, as Barnes & Noble struggles and attempts to focus on a future with the Nook and not with their chain super-stores, that percentage goes down even more. Here in the last half of 2011, B&N has sliced all of their purchasing numbers, and I’ve seen maybe 10% returns on my titles, if that. Ten percent is the new worst-case.
We’ve reached the point where I don’t notice returns. When they do trickle in, it’s usually because they were damaged en route. Returns – formally something that felt like rape – has now been reduced to “breakage.” All because Borders and Barnes & Noble are off to the elephant graveyard.
The problem is that the few remaining indie bookstores are much like successful terrorist insurgents. They’ve sort of won the day, but it’s certainly a Pyrrhic victory. They’re limping around the ashes of their stores, missing arms and legs and eyes, shuddering from nightmares of 20 years of war. Small presses, likewise, are all sitting back and trying to take stock of what’s happened. Not just the obscene horrors of the 2000’s, but the rapidly changing world of book publishing as we move into this century’s second decade.
The question is familiar: What’s next? What’s the shape of things to come?
Ebooks will rule supreme. People love gadgets, they love the convenience. And, already, publishers are moving to make ebooks more profitable through the creation of “enhanced” ebooks. As we move through this second decade, enhanced ebooks will soon become the name of the game. You’ll not just download and read a book, you’ll be able to listen to music tied into the text, interact with maps, follow links to “bonus material” on the publisher’s website, and so on. Enhanced ebooks will also push the prices up to something more comparable to the old trade paperbacks. While, meanwhile, a “vanilla” ebook will always be available at the usual low prices. Apple’s homogenization of the ebook revolution has allowed for incredible flexibility and, in the years to come, you’ll soon be seeing multiple versions of each book. The enhanced ebook, the plain old ebook, and god knows what else. Folks juggling an endless parade of DVD special editions know the ropes.
The technology is cheap and approachable. Once small presses overcome their technophobia, ebooks will become a steady and reliable source of revenue. No returns, no inventory or warehousing worries, and fewer distributor costs.
As ebook sales throw money into our strained coffers, small presses can now take stock of how they’re doing things. The opportunities will present themselves where small presses can start piecing together little oddities once again. Chapbooks, and experimental stuff, and new authors. Small presses were, and should be, fertile seedbeds that give rise to great authors. That, alone, keeps print from dying. Print will only die if the experimental crazies die. If publishing becomes like some “current blockbusters only” industry, like ma and pop video stores did during the late 80’s and early 90’s in the face of Blockbuster, Hollywood Video, and other chains. Their final holdout was to sell off all the weird shit and just try and make money with the mindless top of the charts fare. And, of course, they’ve all faded from memory.
Publishers who love this business can also breathe a sigh of relief as return percentages plummet. Not only is the money starting to make sense again, but the sales are clearly happening; and the books are again being embraced by booksellers and the audience. Indie bookstores were eclipsed, but now their importance is starting to become clear once again.
Above all, small presses and indie bookstores must learn to get along again, to form that united front. Because these glory days will not last. There will be new enemies, if only in the form of the big name publishers swooping in to gobble up whatever they can. Bookselling, and the making of books, should, once again, return to an intimate and pure path. No more pyramids of fad books at the entrance, no more usury, no more back-channeling.
It is a time to celebrate, but it’s also time to form a union, stronger than ever before. Small presses and indie bookstores should never again be enemies. And, together, we can move into this new era and re-establish a beachhead that’s been lost, piece by piece, since the late 1970’s. People will always buy books, no matter how bad it gets. The big publishers have to worry about the bottom line, and so they’re forced to play to the lowest common denominator. The small presses, however, are free. Most readers are hungry for change, for excitement, for new things, for experimentation. It is just as likely, and just as welcome, to put out some offbeat bizarre book in 2012 and have it raise the freak flag from here to Timbuktu as if it was, once again, the 1960’s or 70’s when houses like Black Sparrow and Graywolf and others were cutting their teeth.
Reintroducing the Wild West days of bookselling should be on all of our minds. Controlled, and tailored to accommodate modern needs, but it’ll be a breath of fresh air for everyone. The readers will come, and they’ll fork over their hard-earned money. And they’ll continue to do it both on their Kindle and at the cash register, virtual or otherwise. The trick is, simply, drawing them in. That’s not done with a shotgun blast in a dark room, or a million dollar PR person, or a pile of books at the door. It’s done with creativity, with a product that’s worth something, and with a little bit of devotion and TLC on the part of the people who love this industry: The gunfighters who run bookstores, and small presses, and believe that we’re doing something very beautiful, and very necessary.
Now’s the time, kids. Now’s when we need to get together and talk. If we miss yet another window because we’re all paranoid, isolationist screwballs who can’t get our shit together, then we will die.
Showing posts with label Andrew Gifford. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Andrew Gifford. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Friday, September 2, 2011
Why the Collapse of Chain Bookstores is a Good Thing for Books. Part 5
The death of print… We hear that a lot these days, but it’s really only been a fear for a few years. After a deadly war where independently-owned booksellers and publishers fell on the battlefield, and the economy brought the corporate chain bookstores to their knees, the face of publishing and bookselling simply had to change dramatically. The end of the first decade of the 21st Century saw the most revolutionary technology upgrade to publishing since the 15th centruy – the e-book.)
by Andrew Gifford
Polarization (2007-2010)
Publishers and booksellers are crazy. For publishers, there’s always the dream that we can somehow turn our company into Cary Grant’s publishing house from Bell, Book & Candle: the penthouse office with the wall of books, the feisty secretary, the ever-suffering assistant, and the lunatic, drunken author who’s a sort of controllable hybrid of Orson Welles and Hunter Thompson. And, of course, we’ll hook up with Kim Novak in the final reel.
I don’t know what booksellers are after. All the owners of the indie shops I know are weirdly driven people who belong on the fringe of society. They’re interesting but, in every case, totally dysfunctional and utterly devoted to their tiny empires. I scoff at them, but the truth is that we all suffer from the same demons. A true publisher can look in the eye of a true bookseller and see the same thin strand of insanity that drove us to and keeps us in this business.
The insanity, and general sense of isolation and individuality that keeps us fractured and a few steps behind progress, was most evident during the rise of the ebook. Most distributors and publishers didn’t even bother retooling enough to measure actual ebook sales until first quarter 2010. Up till then, the ebook was a weird fluke. The general attitude was that the horseless carriage could never beat a horse. If Man was meant to fly, you know, he’d have wings. That sort of thing.
Of course, prior to 2010, it was clear that ebooks were the coming thing. Nobody really turned a blind eye to them, we just…didn’t pay attention. Or, maybe, we didn’t quite understand them. This weird ass thing was going on but we’re all – booksellers and publishers alike – so defeated and breathless, we don’t care to stop and think about it. After the great battle, and with Borders falling all around us, and with the economy doing its crazy little thing, the world of books became simple hand to mouth survival. We’ve destroyed our once great cities and now live like post-apocalyptic refugees. Ebooks? Whatever! It’s a few extra bucks here and there. We’re glad for it because we haven’t eaten in days.
The smart people behind the design and development of e-media, though, weren’t quite as desperate and feral as the rest of the book industry. At first, ebooks were more trouble than they were worth. Each reader needed its own format and ISBN. The Nook, the Kindle, the now defunct Borders reader (did that ever take off?), the Sony reader, and regular ebooks each devoured an ISBN and, if you wanted to do it right, had slightly different and always vague formatting rules. So the tech heads had to come in and work with lunatic presses on half a dozen versions of the same book, assuming the desire to actually get an ebook out there was even on the table.
By 2009, Apple had stepped in and quietly standardized the ebook industry, primarily to service their iPad. In 2010, along with accurate measurement of sales, ebooks all fell under the ePub format. A one-stop shop format that would go out to all ereaders. Now, for a small fee, it was possible for publishers to convert a file, shoot it to the distributor, and then wash their hands of the whole mess. A small, happy thing made possible only because the ereader industry, in 2009 and 2010, became a multi-billion-dollar business. It’s in the interest of the powers that be to get the publishers on board because infinite selection equals countless ereader sales. And every ereader sale equals a sucker who’ll happily upgrade to the next version of the device each year.
Ereaders are a tried and true business model – gadgets manufactured by slaves are sold by the millions at a huge markup. And gadgets breed demand. Gadgets breed a mindset where perfectly functional devices are thrown away after a year or two to make way for the next best thing.
To further sweeten the pot, publishers see more bang for the buck. Even if you pay for the conversion, it’s still cheaper than some massive print run that’s plagued by overstock fees and returns. The ebook revolution is every publisher’s friend. And who suffers? Well…the authors. Their royalty checks are suddenly halved, or worse. But…that’s another topic.
For the purpose of this discussion, ebooks proved to be the final nail in the coffin for the chain bookstore dark lords. It spelled the end of the chain bookstore format. Why go all the way out to the mall to curl up with a book and a cup of coffee when you can have the book before you’re done grinding your own coffee at home?
Back to that endless credit scheme I talked about earlier. Borders maintained for years off of ordering books and immediately returning a portion of them. In one sense, they had publishers and distributors over a barrel. You had to meekly accept whatever new insanity they thought up to further their own profits at the cost of everyone around them. But now the readers were compulsively buying the bulk of their books electronically and, with the economy on everyone’s minds, typically buying print books online as well. It’s that change in structure which allowed most distributors and publishers to refuse service to Borders in 2009 and watch them, from relative safety, as they bled out. Any publisher worth their salt lost nothing when Borders finally collapsed, and probably hadn’t sold them a book in a couple of years.
Barnes & Noble continues, thanks to the death of their primary rival and to Nook sales. But their chain stores are hopelessly locked on the same path and will go the way of Borders within the next two or three years.
So we find ourselves at another turning point. Now, more than ever in the past, it is the time of small presses and indie bookstores. Not since the early 90’s has a moment of opportunity like this appeared. We can retool, we can be reborn, and we can step proudly into the next era of books and publishing. The death of Borders, the inevitable demise of Barnes & Noble, and the rise of ebooks are the best things that could have happened to print books. We should celebrate all these things because, despite what the doomsayers scream, we are seeing the rebirth of print sales. The pendulum has swung back to where it was in the 70’s.
by Andrew Gifford
Polarization (2007-2010)
Publishers and booksellers are crazy. For publishers, there’s always the dream that we can somehow turn our company into Cary Grant’s publishing house from Bell, Book & Candle: the penthouse office with the wall of books, the feisty secretary, the ever-suffering assistant, and the lunatic, drunken author who’s a sort of controllable hybrid of Orson Welles and Hunter Thompson. And, of course, we’ll hook up with Kim Novak in the final reel.
I don’t know what booksellers are after. All the owners of the indie shops I know are weirdly driven people who belong on the fringe of society. They’re interesting but, in every case, totally dysfunctional and utterly devoted to their tiny empires. I scoff at them, but the truth is that we all suffer from the same demons. A true publisher can look in the eye of a true bookseller and see the same thin strand of insanity that drove us to and keeps us in this business.
The insanity, and general sense of isolation and individuality that keeps us fractured and a few steps behind progress, was most evident during the rise of the ebook. Most distributors and publishers didn’t even bother retooling enough to measure actual ebook sales until first quarter 2010. Up till then, the ebook was a weird fluke. The general attitude was that the horseless carriage could never beat a horse. If Man was meant to fly, you know, he’d have wings. That sort of thing.
Of course, prior to 2010, it was clear that ebooks were the coming thing. Nobody really turned a blind eye to them, we just…didn’t pay attention. Or, maybe, we didn’t quite understand them. This weird ass thing was going on but we’re all – booksellers and publishers alike – so defeated and breathless, we don’t care to stop and think about it. After the great battle, and with Borders falling all around us, and with the economy doing its crazy little thing, the world of books became simple hand to mouth survival. We’ve destroyed our once great cities and now live like post-apocalyptic refugees. Ebooks? Whatever! It’s a few extra bucks here and there. We’re glad for it because we haven’t eaten in days.
The smart people behind the design and development of e-media, though, weren’t quite as desperate and feral as the rest of the book industry. At first, ebooks were more trouble than they were worth. Each reader needed its own format and ISBN. The Nook, the Kindle, the now defunct Borders reader (did that ever take off?), the Sony reader, and regular ebooks each devoured an ISBN and, if you wanted to do it right, had slightly different and always vague formatting rules. So the tech heads had to come in and work with lunatic presses on half a dozen versions of the same book, assuming the desire to actually get an ebook out there was even on the table.
By 2009, Apple had stepped in and quietly standardized the ebook industry, primarily to service their iPad. In 2010, along with accurate measurement of sales, ebooks all fell under the ePub format. A one-stop shop format that would go out to all ereaders. Now, for a small fee, it was possible for publishers to convert a file, shoot it to the distributor, and then wash their hands of the whole mess. A small, happy thing made possible only because the ereader industry, in 2009 and 2010, became a multi-billion-dollar business. It’s in the interest of the powers that be to get the publishers on board because infinite selection equals countless ereader sales. And every ereader sale equals a sucker who’ll happily upgrade to the next version of the device each year.
Ereaders are a tried and true business model – gadgets manufactured by slaves are sold by the millions at a huge markup. And gadgets breed demand. Gadgets breed a mindset where perfectly functional devices are thrown away after a year or two to make way for the next best thing.
To further sweeten the pot, publishers see more bang for the buck. Even if you pay for the conversion, it’s still cheaper than some massive print run that’s plagued by overstock fees and returns. The ebook revolution is every publisher’s friend. And who suffers? Well…the authors. Their royalty checks are suddenly halved, or worse. But…that’s another topic.
For the purpose of this discussion, ebooks proved to be the final nail in the coffin for the chain bookstore dark lords. It spelled the end of the chain bookstore format. Why go all the way out to the mall to curl up with a book and a cup of coffee when you can have the book before you’re done grinding your own coffee at home?
Back to that endless credit scheme I talked about earlier. Borders maintained for years off of ordering books and immediately returning a portion of them. In one sense, they had publishers and distributors over a barrel. You had to meekly accept whatever new insanity they thought up to further their own profits at the cost of everyone around them. But now the readers were compulsively buying the bulk of their books electronically and, with the economy on everyone’s minds, typically buying print books online as well. It’s that change in structure which allowed most distributors and publishers to refuse service to Borders in 2009 and watch them, from relative safety, as they bled out. Any publisher worth their salt lost nothing when Borders finally collapsed, and probably hadn’t sold them a book in a couple of years.
Barnes & Noble continues, thanks to the death of their primary rival and to Nook sales. But their chain stores are hopelessly locked on the same path and will go the way of Borders within the next two or three years.
So we find ourselves at another turning point. Now, more than ever in the past, it is the time of small presses and indie bookstores. Not since the early 90’s has a moment of opportunity like this appeared. We can retool, we can be reborn, and we can step proudly into the next era of books and publishing. The death of Borders, the inevitable demise of Barnes & Noble, and the rise of ebooks are the best things that could have happened to print books. We should celebrate all these things because, despite what the doomsayers scream, we are seeing the rebirth of print sales. The pendulum has swung back to where it was in the 70’s.
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Why the Collapse of Chain Bookstores is a Good Thing for Books. Part 4
Through the 90’s and the rise of the chain bookstores and the online stores, to the early 2000’s. The last three parts have looked at the war between the corporate chains and the little independent booksellers. With the brief economic downturn following September 11th, the chains showed their true colors, and it also started to become clear that they wouldn’t be able to survive, though their demise would take a decade to happen. Most affected: indie bookstores and independent small presses. Yet, the two failed to meet in the middle and form an alliance against the corporate booksellers and big money publishers. I blame the indie bookstores for dropping the ball…but why?)
by Andrew Gifford
Instead of embracing their wayward former allies, the indie bookstores maintained their campaign of defensive retribution. Maybe they were too shell-shocked, maybe they simply didn’t see the same inevitable collapse of the chain stores on the horizon. Either way, many stores developed a weapon that would only prove to be a Doomsday Device, and their hardest hit victims, invariably, were the small presses. This weapon was the dreaded “Co-Op Fee.”
By far the most poorly handled tactic in this war of bookselling is the co-op fee. Making co-op fees available means that publishers will agree to help out with advertising costs if the bookstore in question decides to use the publisher’s book in their newsletters and other material. The fees are unspecified, so there’s no telling what they’ll be. Distributors and most PR folks tend to insist that publishers make these fees available when new books are announced. If not made available, then that meant certain doors would be closed. Even if (quite distressingly) a press said that co-op fees were unavailable, it was not a guarantee that they wouldn’t be billed for them anyway.
I found co-op fees to be particularly distasteful from day one. Obeying politics, I made them available for the first two books I released. On the small publisher tier, the damage isn’t usually too bad. A slow drain of a few dozen dollars a month as some bookstore somewhere (allegedly) pushes the books.
After my second book, The Fires by Alan Cheuse, I learned my lesson.
A more famous author meant that I was paying fees to mysterious and unnamed sources to the tune of about $150 a month, and sometimes more. After awhile, it started to feel like I was paying protection. Where was this money going? If I'm paying for a portion of the print run of a newsletter, then how come I'm not getting these newsletters? Jesus, how about a thank you at least?
These stores were putting together glitzy newsletters -- often very expensive and attractive ones -- and shipping them out to a bulk mailing list and not spending a penny on it. There's nothing for them to lose, either. You come to the store and buy the books and they make their 40-50% markup in profit, or, if the books don’t sell, they simply return them at their leisure for a full refund. Win-win.
The more aggressive co-op fees came into play during book tours. I sent Cheuse on a very traditional 20 stop tour across the country, which was well beyond what my budget allowed. The tour was great and we pushed plenty of books, saw plenty of returns, and I ended up $5000 over budget, which settled unhappily on my credit cards. Overall, though, a success. A book tour isn't ever about making money, it’s about getting the word out. It’s a necessary evil to keep the flames burning long after the author is home with his feet up. If an actual venue sells out of the 50 or more books they bought, great. But they never do because the people who come to hear an author speak often have the book already in hand. That’s the nature of bookselling in the 2000’s. Each venue will easily return 50% of the books they over-ordered for an imagined audience. And why not over-order if you’re not losing anything, right? The only one who ends up hurting is the publisher.
The bittersweet nature of a book tour, as return fees mount up month after month, isn’t helped when bills start to come in from certain stores. Out of 15 bookstore stops on the Cheuse tour, seven of them sent me a bill for "co-op fees." Tellingly, they didn't send the bill through my distributor. These arrived at the SFWP mailbox. The fees were to pay for advertising, I was told. Something that confused me since, as I was putting the tour together, the bookstores sent me their media lists and I took care of all the advertising out of my own pocket. I asked one store what, exactly, they had done to help promote the stop. They told me that they "featured it in their email newsletter."
Okay. Ready for the punchline? That bill was for $500. Each of the seven stores billed me for between $250-$1000 for...something they couldn't ever really specify.
Alarmed, I turned to my distributor for advice and they told me that the smart thing to do would be to pay the bills. For a couple of the stores, they negotiated a lower price. Because I’m pretty stupid, I paid, maybe, $1000 out of what, between the seven stores, totaled about $5500 in co-op fees. Then I wised up, told my distributor politics be damned, and just threw the increasingly threatening bills away. A year later, they stopped. And I stopped booking authors at indie bookstores, and stopped agreeing to co-op fees of any kind.
The worst offenders of that list of seven are now closed, but the odious nature poisoned the well for me as far as all indie bookstores were concerned. As I swapped stories with other small presses, I started to hear of the same transgressions. With a sinking heart, I realized that small presses didn’t have a home. With murderous return levels from the chain stores, and embittered usury from the indie bookstores, small presses found themselves on the ropes. A dissolution of a devoted monastic order that opened another power vacuum – one that allowed self-publishing to gain prominence.
The co-op fee scheme, when I encountered it in 2007 with the Cheuse tour, was already becoming a thing of the past. By 2009, indie stores were shifting into a sort of self-exile, only surviving if they specialized. To use examples from the DC area, some survived off of their venerated patrician history, like Politics & Prose. Others focused on specific subjects, like my old employer. Most simply became cafes and restaurants and only marginally acknowledged their bookstore past, like Busboys & Poets and Kramer’s.
With the chains starting to show cracks in the foundation, and the indie bookstores a dying breed, and small publishers gasping for air and barely holding onto life, and the far-reaching economic downturn of 2008, the battlefield was ripe for an epidemic, passed from trench to trench. The malarial fever of the publishing and bookselling world – ebooks.
by Andrew Gifford
Instead of embracing their wayward former allies, the indie bookstores maintained their campaign of defensive retribution. Maybe they were too shell-shocked, maybe they simply didn’t see the same inevitable collapse of the chain stores on the horizon. Either way, many stores developed a weapon that would only prove to be a Doomsday Device, and their hardest hit victims, invariably, were the small presses. This weapon was the dreaded “Co-Op Fee.”
By far the most poorly handled tactic in this war of bookselling is the co-op fee. Making co-op fees available means that publishers will agree to help out with advertising costs if the bookstore in question decides to use the publisher’s book in their newsletters and other material. The fees are unspecified, so there’s no telling what they’ll be. Distributors and most PR folks tend to insist that publishers make these fees available when new books are announced. If not made available, then that meant certain doors would be closed. Even if (quite distressingly) a press said that co-op fees were unavailable, it was not a guarantee that they wouldn’t be billed for them anyway.
I found co-op fees to be particularly distasteful from day one. Obeying politics, I made them available for the first two books I released. On the small publisher tier, the damage isn’t usually too bad. A slow drain of a few dozen dollars a month as some bookstore somewhere (allegedly) pushes the books.
After my second book, The Fires by Alan Cheuse, I learned my lesson.
A more famous author meant that I was paying fees to mysterious and unnamed sources to the tune of about $150 a month, and sometimes more. After awhile, it started to feel like I was paying protection. Where was this money going? If I'm paying for a portion of the print run of a newsletter, then how come I'm not getting these newsletters? Jesus, how about a thank you at least?
These stores were putting together glitzy newsletters -- often very expensive and attractive ones -- and shipping them out to a bulk mailing list and not spending a penny on it. There's nothing for them to lose, either. You come to the store and buy the books and they make their 40-50% markup in profit, or, if the books don’t sell, they simply return them at their leisure for a full refund. Win-win.
The more aggressive co-op fees came into play during book tours. I sent Cheuse on a very traditional 20 stop tour across the country, which was well beyond what my budget allowed. The tour was great and we pushed plenty of books, saw plenty of returns, and I ended up $5000 over budget, which settled unhappily on my credit cards. Overall, though, a success. A book tour isn't ever about making money, it’s about getting the word out. It’s a necessary evil to keep the flames burning long after the author is home with his feet up. If an actual venue sells out of the 50 or more books they bought, great. But they never do because the people who come to hear an author speak often have the book already in hand. That’s the nature of bookselling in the 2000’s. Each venue will easily return 50% of the books they over-ordered for an imagined audience. And why not over-order if you’re not losing anything, right? The only one who ends up hurting is the publisher.
The bittersweet nature of a book tour, as return fees mount up month after month, isn’t helped when bills start to come in from certain stores. Out of 15 bookstore stops on the Cheuse tour, seven of them sent me a bill for "co-op fees." Tellingly, they didn't send the bill through my distributor. These arrived at the SFWP mailbox. The fees were to pay for advertising, I was told. Something that confused me since, as I was putting the tour together, the bookstores sent me their media lists and I took care of all the advertising out of my own pocket. I asked one store what, exactly, they had done to help promote the stop. They told me that they "featured it in their email newsletter."
Okay. Ready for the punchline? That bill was for $500. Each of the seven stores billed me for between $250-$1000 for...something they couldn't ever really specify.
Alarmed, I turned to my distributor for advice and they told me that the smart thing to do would be to pay the bills. For a couple of the stores, they negotiated a lower price. Because I’m pretty stupid, I paid, maybe, $1000 out of what, between the seven stores, totaled about $5500 in co-op fees. Then I wised up, told my distributor politics be damned, and just threw the increasingly threatening bills away. A year later, they stopped. And I stopped booking authors at indie bookstores, and stopped agreeing to co-op fees of any kind.
The worst offenders of that list of seven are now closed, but the odious nature poisoned the well for me as far as all indie bookstores were concerned. As I swapped stories with other small presses, I started to hear of the same transgressions. With a sinking heart, I realized that small presses didn’t have a home. With murderous return levels from the chain stores, and embittered usury from the indie bookstores, small presses found themselves on the ropes. A dissolution of a devoted monastic order that opened another power vacuum – one that allowed self-publishing to gain prominence.
The co-op fee scheme, when I encountered it in 2007 with the Cheuse tour, was already becoming a thing of the past. By 2009, indie stores were shifting into a sort of self-exile, only surviving if they specialized. To use examples from the DC area, some survived off of their venerated patrician history, like Politics & Prose. Others focused on specific subjects, like my old employer. Most simply became cafes and restaurants and only marginally acknowledged their bookstore past, like Busboys & Poets and Kramer’s.
With the chains starting to show cracks in the foundation, and the indie bookstores a dying breed, and small publishers gasping for air and barely holding onto life, and the far-reaching economic downturn of 2008, the battlefield was ripe for an epidemic, passed from trench to trench. The malarial fever of the publishing and bookselling world – ebooks.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Why the Collapse of Chain Bookstores is a Good Thing for Books. Part 3
Over the last two days, we looked at bookselling in the 1990’s. A period that saw the rise of a war between independently owned and operated bookstores and the corporate chain bookstores such as Barnes & Noble and Borders, the sinister successors of Crown Books, which had attempted and failed to crush indie bookstores in the 80’s. By the time we hit 2000, the chain stores were all well established, and the e-sellers such as Amazon had also made a name for themselves. Moving towards the new millennium, it started to look like the indie bookstore was dead…
Life during Wartime (2000-2007)
by Andrew Gifford
It’s sad, looking back, to see how booksellers and publishers became enemies when once, long ago, they had been the best of friends.
I often hear stories of late publisher extraordinaire Seymour “Sam” Lawrence. Lawrence discovered and fought for authors such as Jayne Anne Phillips, Susan Minot, Jim Harrison, Richard Brautigan, Kurt Vonnegut, William Styron, Katherine Anne Porter, William Saroyan, Frank Conroy, Miguel Angel Asturias, Tom McGuane, Tom Drury, Richard Currey, and Pablo Neruda. It’s fair to say that not a single one of those names would be familiar if not for Lawrence. He would fill his car with their books and handsell them to bookstores across the country, glad-handing indie store owners and extolling the virtues of his chosen authors. A grassroots approach where bookseller and book industry met face to face. Lawrence is the most notable of this breed of publisher (and unofficial agent), but there were many who did the same. Direct marketing to the indie bookstores from publishers and agents who loved the business, and who loved the books. What Lawrence demonstrated, over and over, was that fine literature could succeed if positioned and promoted well.
You could argue that throwing money at the chain bookstores for paid placements is the same principle, updated for the new era. Just another version of Lawrence plowing dramatically through your doors with this offbeat weirdo sci-fi from some crazy author named Vonnegut.
But, of course, the differences are obvious. Marketing books became a million dollar business, and a cold one orchestrated from glimmering Manhattan offices. Book PR came in from the Wild West, put on a nice suit, and turned into something Machiavellian. Instead of peddling copies to indie booksellers, who may only buy a few, the name of the game became mass sales to chain stores. The craft of writing was no longer important. Publishing became, brutally, a bottom line industry.
This further isolated the indies. Why bother pandering to a few hundred stores who’ll only be good for one or two sales each when you can get in bed with the super-chain who’ll buy several thousand in one go?
From the indie bookstore perspective, the publishers had now betrayed them. By the time the calendars turned to 2001, the indies had declared war and assumed an unforgiving stance. The indie stores, forever inflexible, always the underdog, failed to realize that publishers were, at that point, just starting to see that the other shoe was about to drop. With the brief economic bump in the road after September 11th, there was a moment where the man behind the curtain at the mega-chains was visible. Borders and Barnes & Noble, like Crown Books before them, could not hold the center.
By 2003, the publishing industry’s avarice-addled approach to sales allowed Borders to mastermind a scheme where they were basically running their company off of an endless line of credit. Something that they would ride out until their total collapse at the end of the decade. Barnes & Noble engaged in a similar scheme. With the good graces bought by early successes, the chains would buy up huge numbers of books and then return them, keeping a steady rotation of books moving through the warehouse with only a small percentage actually making it onto the shelves. Publishers found themselves strapped with return fees and merchandise hitting their inventory again long after the money from the sale had been devoted elsewhere. By the latter half of the 2000’s, many publishers could expect a total return rate of 33% for each book title and, as the chain stores foundered, distributors took a casual hand with those returns. Damaged items were accepted, returns were allowed for several years after the original invoice date instead of just six or twelve months. As Borders, especially, parlayed book returns into a lifeboat, they began to destroy small and medium-range independent presses. In 2009, most publishers had cut the chain stores off and prepared to write off unpaid invoices. The death throes had begun.
Many folks saw it coming early on. When the chain stores panicked in the downturn of 2002, they immediately turned on the publishers. The days of fun were over, and never really returned.
Indie bookstores could have turned this to their advantage. With chinks in the armor of the chain stores showing, the indie stores could have appealed to the hearts and loyalty of the publishers. Certainly, they could have won over the small and independent-minded presses who could not afford to play the marketing game at the Harry Potter level. From 2002 onwards, small presses were being slowly driven out of business by the chain model. Each returned book is not only money subtracted from the profits, but also incurs a returns fee that’s anywhere from 10-15% of the net price. When a print run of 1000 copies sees roughly 300 (largely unsalable) returns with a 10% fee attached to each one, then the ship is starting to take on water.
I blame the indie bookstores for dropping the ball at this point. Publishing has always been a scatter-brained business. An old boys network that expects things to be a certain way even after the waiter and the bartender at the gentlemen’s club have died after 50 years of service. Even on the wild and crazy micro-press level – especially on that level – there’s a feeling of isolationism.
Book promotion, on the micro-press level, is roughly like begging for enough money to buy a shotgun and two shells, then going to a place where all the potential bookbuyers are in a dark room, kicking the door open, closing your eyes, and letting both barrels go. Maybe you’ll get lucky and hit something – the most famous example being Evan Connell’s Son of the Morning Star, my favorite rags to riches small press story. Here’s this weird book about Custer written by some guy who wasn’t really a biographer and it meekly sells here and there for a few years, and then it hits this weird groove five years after release and crash-lands on the bestseller list.
The big chains, as soon as they began their quick-return scheme, shook small presses out of their near-solipsistic dysfunction and brought them together. If not in direct confederation with each other, than at least in thought. These big boys ain’t no friends of ours.
So why didn’t indie bookstores and small presses form a united front in the early 2000’s? How did these two potential allies miss each other at such a crucial moment? How did the indie bookstores drop the ball?
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Why the Collapse of Chain Bookstores is a Good Thing for Books. Part 2
In yesterday’s post, we moved through the 1990’s where, as a dumb high school kid, I took a job at a small independent bookstore in 1991. A decade of transition and despair for indie bookstores in America, the 90’s saw the rise of the giants of bookselling – Amazon.com, Borders, and Barnes & Noble. Indie bookstores fell under siege, and victory was hopeless. But what are the origins of the big box, chain bookstores? How’d bookselling move from the strange little independently owned stores and fall into the laps of cold-blooded corporations? The intimate process of literature and creation was ripped from the community and homogenized in a fashion reminiscent of a fast food chain. The first shot in this war over bookselling was fired by billionaire Robert Haft.
by Andrew Gifford
Crown Books, Borders, and Barnes & Noble were all members of what some people call the “77 club.” Crown Books was founded in 1977. Borders, founded in 1971, had just begun, around 1977, to consolidate into “Borders Books and Music,” feeding off of a sister company that specialized in wholesale (they wouldn’t become the beast we know today until a 1992 buyout from Kmart). Barnes & Noble, founded a hundred years earlier, was finally hitting the skids with their handful of discount bookstores. Bought by financier Len Riggio in 1971, a prototype version of their chain discount stores appeared on the scene in 76-77. The 77 Club each independently saw the opportunity to hone and corporatize the super-bookstore idea, and they set out on a few different versions of this path in the carefree days of the 80’s.
Barnes & Noble slowly, with an almost saurian single-mindedness, began to devour the minor chains that had been struggling along in the nation’s shopping malls, while Borders, pursuing a similar path, also dominated the catalog sales, riding the coattails of their wholesale distribution house. Crown Books, however, launched immediately into a poorly-planned, hegemonic chain-store bonanza, opening hundreds of stores across the country. Robert Haft, the founder of Crown Books, casually declared war on indie bookstores, summoning shades of early fast food and hotel chain advertisements. He said he was creating something standardized and reliable, no matter where you washed up. If you wanted a book at a discount, then a Crown Bookstore was waiting for you. As we see today in airports and train stations, the idea was to create brand loyalty to the bookstore without actually caring about the books inside. The chain becomes ubiquitous and, therefore, trusted by consumers. Haft, infamously, would position Crown stores in areas dominated by indie bookstores, using the Haft family fortune to fatally undermine his indie competitors.
Indie bookstores fought valiantly, but only a few could stand against the onslaught. A whole generation died in the 80’s under the withering fire from Crown Books.
But then the Crown Empire ate itself from within. The Haft family splintered over internal politics and, by 1993, Crown Books was no more. A decade-long battle over the Crown fortune tainted every aspect of the empire and, from 1990 onwards, the Crown stores vanished, slowly, one by one. The few holdouts not worth mentioning or visiting.
The indie bookstores enjoyed a brief victory. The foolish belief that a national chain of bookstores couldn’t really hold on outside of soulless shopping malls was held by many, and was something I heard often in the back office at my little shop. Crown Books had imploded because the center cannot hold. Focus was, instead, turned to the coming Internet Menace.
The indies reacted to the hubris and bravado of Haft and his Crown Empire like the fractured, confederate force they were and are today. Thankfully, they still possessed some sense of unity. They came together, appealed to their communities, and joined organizations like the ABA, which saw its largest membership in the late 80’s and early 90’s. A membership that, as of 1992, in the wake of Crown’s demise, started to plummet.
With the indie bookstore guard down, the vacuum left by Crown Books was quietly filled by the much more thought-out and corporate-minded Borders and Barnes & Noble. Amazon, a simply demonic presence in the minds of indie bookstores, ascended the throne of darkness so slowly, it almost acted as more of a feint in the battle between the chains and the indies. The e-sellers wouldn’t really come into their own until 2000. But from 1995 onwards, they were seen, incorrectly, as Public Enemy #1.
Borders and Barnes & Noble, taking advantage of hubris now on the part of the indies, didn’t declare war as Robert Haft did. They painted themselves more as Young Turks, and they knew how to play the game. Unlike Crown Books, they’d taken the time to study the audience. They knew that the bookstore is actually about community. An idea that many indie bookstores had left behind in the 60’s and 70’s. The model for the new chains of the mid to late 1990’s saw the introduction of coffee shops, playrooms, music stations, seats and tables, places where customers could go and get lost in the stacks and read. Where they could fold themselves in a corner and enjoy their book unmolested by staff. Though indie bookstores had, at one time, pioneered this community-oriented model, they found themselves, by the mid to late 90’s, unable to afford to resurrect it. A cold war had begun, and the casualties were starting to mount.
By the end of the 90’s, every indie bookstore was on the defensive against the chains and the e-sellers. It was starting to become clear that the brittle structure of the little neighborhood indie bookstore could not hold on.
From the publishing perspective, sales seemed better than ever. The chains allowed for the creation of the “fad book.” Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael was an early hit, also see The Life of Pi, and the wunderkinds Harry Potter and The Da Vinci Code. All books that were catapulted to international phenomena not by readership but through the mechanizations of marketing departments. With the chains in place, publishers rightly saw that a few bucks here, and a few bucks there, could translate into a pyramid of books just inside the door of every Barnes & Noble and Borders. Customers, in their Romero-esque zombie states, would have to crawl over these pyramids to get to their new bookstore communities of quiet corners, caffeinated beverages, and sweet rolls. By the very nature of a chain bookstore, just a handful of copies for the shelves of each store would guarantee thousands of sales in one shot.
The Da Vinci Code is, in my opinion, the most successful “fad book.” A well-placed check paid to A Major Bookstore Chain resulted in the chain buying out the first printing and displaying the books front and center. If the customer was waiting in line – any line – in the store, then Dan Brown would be right in front of their noses. (Of course, this was combined with an equally stunning and expensive blitzkrieg on talk shows and elsewhere.)
With chain stores, it became possible for wealthy publishers to simply buy their way onto the bestseller lists. “Staff picks,” “featured titles,” those books piled up by the door, and even the “what’s new” shelves and tables were all paid placements. The chains were making money and so were the big publishers.
The indie stores didn’t have a chance.
by Andrew Gifford
Crown Books, Borders, and Barnes & Noble were all members of what some people call the “77 club.” Crown Books was founded in 1977. Borders, founded in 1971, had just begun, around 1977, to consolidate into “Borders Books and Music,” feeding off of a sister company that specialized in wholesale (they wouldn’t become the beast we know today until a 1992 buyout from Kmart). Barnes & Noble, founded a hundred years earlier, was finally hitting the skids with their handful of discount bookstores. Bought by financier Len Riggio in 1971, a prototype version of their chain discount stores appeared on the scene in 76-77. The 77 Club each independently saw the opportunity to hone and corporatize the super-bookstore idea, and they set out on a few different versions of this path in the carefree days of the 80’s.
Barnes & Noble slowly, with an almost saurian single-mindedness, began to devour the minor chains that had been struggling along in the nation’s shopping malls, while Borders, pursuing a similar path, also dominated the catalog sales, riding the coattails of their wholesale distribution house. Crown Books, however, launched immediately into a poorly-planned, hegemonic chain-store bonanza, opening hundreds of stores across the country. Robert Haft, the founder of Crown Books, casually declared war on indie bookstores, summoning shades of early fast food and hotel chain advertisements. He said he was creating something standardized and reliable, no matter where you washed up. If you wanted a book at a discount, then a Crown Bookstore was waiting for you. As we see today in airports and train stations, the idea was to create brand loyalty to the bookstore without actually caring about the books inside. The chain becomes ubiquitous and, therefore, trusted by consumers. Haft, infamously, would position Crown stores in areas dominated by indie bookstores, using the Haft family fortune to fatally undermine his indie competitors.
Indie bookstores fought valiantly, but only a few could stand against the onslaught. A whole generation died in the 80’s under the withering fire from Crown Books.
But then the Crown Empire ate itself from within. The Haft family splintered over internal politics and, by 1993, Crown Books was no more. A decade-long battle over the Crown fortune tainted every aspect of the empire and, from 1990 onwards, the Crown stores vanished, slowly, one by one. The few holdouts not worth mentioning or visiting.
The indie bookstores enjoyed a brief victory. The foolish belief that a national chain of bookstores couldn’t really hold on outside of soulless shopping malls was held by many, and was something I heard often in the back office at my little shop. Crown Books had imploded because the center cannot hold. Focus was, instead, turned to the coming Internet Menace.
The indies reacted to the hubris and bravado of Haft and his Crown Empire like the fractured, confederate force they were and are today. Thankfully, they still possessed some sense of unity. They came together, appealed to their communities, and joined organizations like the ABA, which saw its largest membership in the late 80’s and early 90’s. A membership that, as of 1992, in the wake of Crown’s demise, started to plummet.
With the indie bookstore guard down, the vacuum left by Crown Books was quietly filled by the much more thought-out and corporate-minded Borders and Barnes & Noble. Amazon, a simply demonic presence in the minds of indie bookstores, ascended the throne of darkness so slowly, it almost acted as more of a feint in the battle between the chains and the indies. The e-sellers wouldn’t really come into their own until 2000. But from 1995 onwards, they were seen, incorrectly, as Public Enemy #1.
Borders and Barnes & Noble, taking advantage of hubris now on the part of the indies, didn’t declare war as Robert Haft did. They painted themselves more as Young Turks, and they knew how to play the game. Unlike Crown Books, they’d taken the time to study the audience. They knew that the bookstore is actually about community. An idea that many indie bookstores had left behind in the 60’s and 70’s. The model for the new chains of the mid to late 1990’s saw the introduction of coffee shops, playrooms, music stations, seats and tables, places where customers could go and get lost in the stacks and read. Where they could fold themselves in a corner and enjoy their book unmolested by staff. Though indie bookstores had, at one time, pioneered this community-oriented model, they found themselves, by the mid to late 90’s, unable to afford to resurrect it. A cold war had begun, and the casualties were starting to mount.
By the end of the 90’s, every indie bookstore was on the defensive against the chains and the e-sellers. It was starting to become clear that the brittle structure of the little neighborhood indie bookstore could not hold on.
From the publishing perspective, sales seemed better than ever. The chains allowed for the creation of the “fad book.” Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael was an early hit, also see The Life of Pi, and the wunderkinds Harry Potter and The Da Vinci Code. All books that were catapulted to international phenomena not by readership but through the mechanizations of marketing departments. With the chains in place, publishers rightly saw that a few bucks here, and a few bucks there, could translate into a pyramid of books just inside the door of every Barnes & Noble and Borders. Customers, in their Romero-esque zombie states, would have to crawl over these pyramids to get to their new bookstore communities of quiet corners, caffeinated beverages, and sweet rolls. By the very nature of a chain bookstore, just a handful of copies for the shelves of each store would guarantee thousands of sales in one shot.
The Da Vinci Code is, in my opinion, the most successful “fad book.” A well-placed check paid to A Major Bookstore Chain resulted in the chain buying out the first printing and displaying the books front and center. If the customer was waiting in line – any line – in the store, then Dan Brown would be right in front of their noses. (Of course, this was combined with an equally stunning and expensive blitzkrieg on talk shows and elsewhere.)
With chain stores, it became possible for wealthy publishers to simply buy their way onto the bestseller lists. “Staff picks,” “featured titles,” those books piled up by the door, and even the “what’s new” shelves and tables were all paid placements. The chains were making money and so were the big publishers.
The indie stores didn’t have a chance.
Monday, August 29, 2011
Why the Collapse of Chain Bookstores is a Good Thing for Books
Today we begin a five-post, week-long series on publishing. The author is my great friend Andrew Gifford, the founder and publisher of the Santa Fe Writers Project. We've had many conversations over the years on writing and publishing, and I asked him to write a story for FPP on what he feels the collapse of Borders means to writers and the publishing industry in general. And this is it. (By the way, you may recall reading a profile of Andrew in the Washington Post Magazine three years ago. I was interviewed by the journalist. Alas, my awesome quotes were not included.)Stay tuned all week for what is, I believe, a truly fascinating story. Please read it, and please share it with your networks. Here's Andrew:
High Water Mark (1991-2000)
Before the rise of the chain super-bookstores Borders and Barnes & Noble, my first real job, in the summer of 1991 between my junior and senior year of high school, was at a small independent bookstore in Chevy Chase, MD. There were just two cramped rooms in what used to be, generations before, the servants’ kitchen and dining area of an old mansion overlooking Rock Creek. The customer entered through a narrow hallway and came out to the first room, reserved for gifts and gewgaws, and then moved around a sharp bend into the womb-like bookroom, typically unmonitored and unstaffed. A haven from the hustle and the bustle of traffic, wage slavery and salary serfdom, and the endless rat race of the surrounding city and slowly urbanizing suburbs. In the beginning, we had a strong staff. The manager – a fearsome woman who checked every outgoing package, took weekly inventory of every item in the store, and generally ruled her domain with the comfort and ease of all great generals. Her right hand was the bookbuyer, our de facto assistant manager who spent her day in the shadows placing orders. On the floor, I was one of four part timers who rotated through weekend, afterschool, and evening shifts. For the weekday shifts, the shop was run by viciously territorial volunteers, none of whom were any younger than 70. They would reluctantly hand over the reins at 4pm to one of the youthful staff members, and we’d be sure to keep our heads down till their cars had left the parking lot. For the most part, we’d be alone for the remainder of the shift. On weekends, there’d just be two of us, bored and with our noses always buried in books.
I most enjoyed the evening shifts, where I’d see maybe one customer, especially on dark winter nights, and spend the rest of the time ensconced in the bookroom, folded into a corner with a book and the silent, old house all around me. It was there where I learned to truly love books. I came from a bookish family, but was never taught to enjoy books, to embrace them. I was a typical 80’s latchkey kid, and my free time was spent with the Great God Television. When mom came dragging home at 7pm, there was no time for arts and literature. My Catholic school days were filled with nuns who appeared to have never read anything outside of Bible studies, and fanatically twisted lay teachers who behaved more like disgruntled Roman governors of minor provinces than purveyors of education.
I was the youngest of the part timers at the bookshop, coming in to fill the shoes of a pothead musician who had decided to take the summer off and drive his car around the coast of South America. No one heard from him again until nine months later, when he returned wearing a poncho, a skipper’s cap, and sunglasses like some Peruvian version of Gaddafi and demanded his job back. He was brushed off, and I got to keep my job for the long haul. Unlike my predecessor, I was happily a beast of burden for an extraordinary (for a 17 year old in 1991) $7 an hour.
Of course, it hadn’t yet dawned on me – or many people – that 1991 was the start of a transition. The internet revolution hadn’t yet caught hold, but the demand for a different way of bookselling certainly was there. Savvy indie booksellers knew a battle was coming. After all, they had just survived a major struggle, and now sat hunkered down, licking their wounds, in the calm before another storm.
Borders had been making money hand over fist with their mail order catalog. The early versions of their chain stores, and Barnes & Noble’s, had enjoyed success during the big money 80’s. Both were massing troops on the borders of retail, preparing for an all-out invasion.
On the small scale, independent bookstores like ours were seeing a quiet shift from customers coming through the door to a booming mail order business. Though I might sit through an entire shift and never see a customer, the mail, fax, and phone orders were constant. My initial job description was shipping and receiving, fulfilling the mountain of orders and carting them out to the UPS truck while the driver flirted with my boss.
I worked in the bookstore until 1996, off and on through college, and still keep in touch with the current staffers. I’ve watched it evolve, struggle, and, eventually, thrive over the last 20 years. A strange little oasis that’s defended against two decades of unpredictable, volatile, and somewhat dystopian publishing and book-selling methods.
Always feeling somewhat adrift in life, I latched onto this little store in 1991. It, and the staff and volunteers, became a surrogate for the family I didn’t really have, and the friends I couldn’t successfully make or maintain. I developed a fierce loyalty, and even went so far, when I hit college in late 1992, to place my textbook orders exclusively through the store. I was taking advantage of a 20% staff discount, of course, but the store was still turning a profit. In 1995, my boss asked me to stop. It was too much trouble to take special orders, she said. Too much work. When I returned in the summer of 95 to a greatly reduced schedule, I saw a business on the ropes. The mail orders had stopped, and sales had plummeted. A sea-change had occurred virtually overnight.
1995 saw Amazon.com go live. While not the first online bookstore, it was the first user-friendly one, and the most comprehensive. From my small college in central West Virginia, I had no choice but to drink from the poisoned chalice and take the plunge. Our college library was a haven of empty shelves and outdated books, and the only bookstore in town was an old lady’s living room where she’d sit and watch you like a hawk as you thumbed through her romance novels and mysteries. The school bookstore marked books up 200%, and there were so few students there was no hope of trading or reselling to each other. I went to Amazon and I’ve been hooked ever since.
Back at the little bookstore in Maryland, my shipping and receiving room was painted, carpeted, and became the children’s book room. The orders still trickled in from an old guard of rapidly aging customers, but fulfilling them was a collaborative effort and no longer demanded a regular position. In fact, mail orders were seen as a nuisance. The shop entered into a tumultuous phase where staff were let go, management was consolidated into one position, and inventory began to dwindle. By the time I left to pursue a post-college career, there were only two full time staffers and a volunteer army keeping the place just barely above the waves.
The mid-90’s saw much of the despair and language we hear today about the “death of print.” Except it was the “death of the indie bookstores” that weighed on everyone’s mind. The indie bookstore – privately owned, quirky, and pretty much the polar opposite of the big chain bookstores and online “e-sellers” that appeared to be the model of the future. The cold-blooded and untrustworthy internet had come crashing through the gates and laid waste to the previously secure little fiefdoms of indie bookselling. Sadly, the indie bookstores of the era were unable and unwilling to meet this change head on. Many feverishly decided to enter into open competition, appealing to their customers for mercy and for a partisan insurgency against Amazon and the chain bookstores. A sense of betrayal was born. The customers had turned away. The customers had once had a duty to support indie bookstores, and yet they had been lured off by the Sirens of convenience. For the next 15 years, the indies would retreat into different Luddite versions of this bitterness. This sense of them versus the world.
On the horizon, the masts of great warships also started to appear in the 90’s alongside the online bookstores. Borders and Barnes & Noble embarked on their super-bookstore campaign, having spent the 70’s and 80’s quietly devouring smaller chains and discount stores. The superstore campaign, though, had been pioneered by DC’s own Crown Books.
(to be continued tomorrow)
High Water Mark (1991-2000)
Before the rise of the chain super-bookstores Borders and Barnes & Noble, my first real job, in the summer of 1991 between my junior and senior year of high school, was at a small independent bookstore in Chevy Chase, MD. There were just two cramped rooms in what used to be, generations before, the servants’ kitchen and dining area of an old mansion overlooking Rock Creek. The customer entered through a narrow hallway and came out to the first room, reserved for gifts and gewgaws, and then moved around a sharp bend into the womb-like bookroom, typically unmonitored and unstaffed. A haven from the hustle and the bustle of traffic, wage slavery and salary serfdom, and the endless rat race of the surrounding city and slowly urbanizing suburbs. In the beginning, we had a strong staff. The manager – a fearsome woman who checked every outgoing package, took weekly inventory of every item in the store, and generally ruled her domain with the comfort and ease of all great generals. Her right hand was the bookbuyer, our de facto assistant manager who spent her day in the shadows placing orders. On the floor, I was one of four part timers who rotated through weekend, afterschool, and evening shifts. For the weekday shifts, the shop was run by viciously territorial volunteers, none of whom were any younger than 70. They would reluctantly hand over the reins at 4pm to one of the youthful staff members, and we’d be sure to keep our heads down till their cars had left the parking lot. For the most part, we’d be alone for the remainder of the shift. On weekends, there’d just be two of us, bored and with our noses always buried in books.
I most enjoyed the evening shifts, where I’d see maybe one customer, especially on dark winter nights, and spend the rest of the time ensconced in the bookroom, folded into a corner with a book and the silent, old house all around me. It was there where I learned to truly love books. I came from a bookish family, but was never taught to enjoy books, to embrace them. I was a typical 80’s latchkey kid, and my free time was spent with the Great God Television. When mom came dragging home at 7pm, there was no time for arts and literature. My Catholic school days were filled with nuns who appeared to have never read anything outside of Bible studies, and fanatically twisted lay teachers who behaved more like disgruntled Roman governors of minor provinces than purveyors of education.
I was the youngest of the part timers at the bookshop, coming in to fill the shoes of a pothead musician who had decided to take the summer off and drive his car around the coast of South America. No one heard from him again until nine months later, when he returned wearing a poncho, a skipper’s cap, and sunglasses like some Peruvian version of Gaddafi and demanded his job back. He was brushed off, and I got to keep my job for the long haul. Unlike my predecessor, I was happily a beast of burden for an extraordinary (for a 17 year old in 1991) $7 an hour.
Of course, it hadn’t yet dawned on me – or many people – that 1991 was the start of a transition. The internet revolution hadn’t yet caught hold, but the demand for a different way of bookselling certainly was there. Savvy indie booksellers knew a battle was coming. After all, they had just survived a major struggle, and now sat hunkered down, licking their wounds, in the calm before another storm.
Borders had been making money hand over fist with their mail order catalog. The early versions of their chain stores, and Barnes & Noble’s, had enjoyed success during the big money 80’s. Both were massing troops on the borders of retail, preparing for an all-out invasion.
On the small scale, independent bookstores like ours were seeing a quiet shift from customers coming through the door to a booming mail order business. Though I might sit through an entire shift and never see a customer, the mail, fax, and phone orders were constant. My initial job description was shipping and receiving, fulfilling the mountain of orders and carting them out to the UPS truck while the driver flirted with my boss.
I worked in the bookstore until 1996, off and on through college, and still keep in touch with the current staffers. I’ve watched it evolve, struggle, and, eventually, thrive over the last 20 years. A strange little oasis that’s defended against two decades of unpredictable, volatile, and somewhat dystopian publishing and book-selling methods.
Always feeling somewhat adrift in life, I latched onto this little store in 1991. It, and the staff and volunteers, became a surrogate for the family I didn’t really have, and the friends I couldn’t successfully make or maintain. I developed a fierce loyalty, and even went so far, when I hit college in late 1992, to place my textbook orders exclusively through the store. I was taking advantage of a 20% staff discount, of course, but the store was still turning a profit. In 1995, my boss asked me to stop. It was too much trouble to take special orders, she said. Too much work. When I returned in the summer of 95 to a greatly reduced schedule, I saw a business on the ropes. The mail orders had stopped, and sales had plummeted. A sea-change had occurred virtually overnight.
1995 saw Amazon.com go live. While not the first online bookstore, it was the first user-friendly one, and the most comprehensive. From my small college in central West Virginia, I had no choice but to drink from the poisoned chalice and take the plunge. Our college library was a haven of empty shelves and outdated books, and the only bookstore in town was an old lady’s living room where she’d sit and watch you like a hawk as you thumbed through her romance novels and mysteries. The school bookstore marked books up 200%, and there were so few students there was no hope of trading or reselling to each other. I went to Amazon and I’ve been hooked ever since.
Back at the little bookstore in Maryland, my shipping and receiving room was painted, carpeted, and became the children’s book room. The orders still trickled in from an old guard of rapidly aging customers, but fulfilling them was a collaborative effort and no longer demanded a regular position. In fact, mail orders were seen as a nuisance. The shop entered into a tumultuous phase where staff were let go, management was consolidated into one position, and inventory began to dwindle. By the time I left to pursue a post-college career, there were only two full time staffers and a volunteer army keeping the place just barely above the waves.
The mid-90’s saw much of the despair and language we hear today about the “death of print.” Except it was the “death of the indie bookstores” that weighed on everyone’s mind. The indie bookstore – privately owned, quirky, and pretty much the polar opposite of the big chain bookstores and online “e-sellers” that appeared to be the model of the future. The cold-blooded and untrustworthy internet had come crashing through the gates and laid waste to the previously secure little fiefdoms of indie bookselling. Sadly, the indie bookstores of the era were unable and unwilling to meet this change head on. Many feverishly decided to enter into open competition, appealing to their customers for mercy and for a partisan insurgency against Amazon and the chain bookstores. A sense of betrayal was born. The customers had turned away. The customers had once had a duty to support indie bookstores, and yet they had been lured off by the Sirens of convenience. For the next 15 years, the indies would retreat into different Luddite versions of this bitterness. This sense of them versus the world.
On the horizon, the masts of great warships also started to appear in the 90’s alongside the online bookstores. Borders and Barnes & Noble embarked on their super-bookstore campaign, having spent the 70’s and 80’s quietly devouring smaller chains and discount stores. The superstore campaign, though, had been pioneered by DC’s own Crown Books.
(to be continued tomorrow)
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Interview with Andrew Gifford of SFWP (Part II)
Here's the second and last installment with Andrew Gifford, publisher of the small press SFWP. To read part I of this interview, click here.
At our next birthday celebration, in January, The Writer's Center will bring in Pagan Kennedy. Pagan is a Bethesda native, and one of her very first creative writing workshops happened right here at the Center. What was it like publishing your heroine Pagan Kennedy?
Well, all the authors I’ve published are my heroes. Ray Robertson is the quintessential artist. A man who has devoted his life to the craft of writing and who hits hard every time. Alan Cheuse is in possession of a writing voice unmatched in modern American literature. Richard Currey captures the mind and soul with razor-sharp images that linger for a lifetime.
When next I have my hands on a few thousand dollars, I want to bring forward a new author whose work I’ve been supporting for many years. A young writer who also has the devotion, the voice, and the electric power of Ray, Alan, and Richard.
Pagan, though, does hold a special place in my heart. It’s her zine – and her early works – that inspired me in the early 90’s. My impressionable high school years. Her quirky participatory journalism, and her stunningly addictive fiction, has kept her on my bookshelves for 20 years. I was and still am ecstatic to have published Dangerous Joy, even though we made a mistake on the layout and found ourselves stuck with the inventory. But, hey, that’s publishing. Now they’re collector items. Or they will be, when we get around to a second printing.
What would you recommend for anyone beginning a small press?
The first rule (and this also applies to authors) is that you won’t make money. You must accept that. The old saying is true – you need a large fortune to make a small fortune in this business.
You’re in this because you love books, because you love writing, and you are willing to pursue that love all the way to the bitter end, regardless of the challenges you face or the obstacles in your path. You must also be willing to work. It’s a job – both publishing and writing – and it’s the sort of job that will follow you home, that will steal your evenings and weekends and vacations, and that will compete with your significant others, your children, your life. And that’s got to be okay with you.
If that doesn’t describe you, then stop what you’re doing right now. Sweep it all into the trash can and, please, get on with your life.
Now, the practical stuff: Don’t try and find a mainstream book. Don’t ape a dying industry. Be daring. Be different. Increasingly, as the Old Boy Network of publishing slowly topples, it’s the daring and different work that will begin to emerge.
Once you’ve found that book, then you should do the publicity yourself. Don’t outsource. Use the social networking sites – connect with people. Finally, after all this time trying to put together books with no sense of what the public truly wants, your audience is right there in front of you.
Shell out the cash to get a media list. Shell out a little more to make some nice galleys. Pay attention to your cover, your layout, your editing. Reading books, for many people, is also a tactile experience. The feel, the smell, the look. (Which is why ebooks and the Kindle will never truly destroy the printed word.) And, of course, a nice cover will sell more books than the words inside. That’s the sad truth publishers must face when working with booksellers and trying to get the casual shelf browser hooked.
Publicity should begin six months before publication. But a small press doing one or two books a year? Publicity should start a year before publication. Don’t be afraid to try and do the impossible. Explore translation rights, pitch excerpts to magazines, try and get reviews from big places. It only costs you postage, or a few minutes on email. You’ll strike out 90% of the time but, hey, to hell with them then. All you need is one good hit.
Join PMA. They’re worth it. And, if you don’t have the time or stamina to sell out of your basement, then get a distributor. In fact, I would urge you to take that path. Independent Publisher’s Group is a wonderful organization, and they’ve recently started working with PMA to cater to small presses. Don’t overreach in that area, either. Don’t go for the gold and try to get in the regular trade catalogs. You’re a small press, so act like one. Embrace it.
Indie bookstore owners and many authors are going to keel over as soon as I say this, but you need to focus on online sales and look towards electronic formats. The reason for this is simple – brick and mortar stores order more than they need to cover a supposed demand. They then return unsold copies, and typically get a free hand when it comes to salable condition. Working just with brick and mortars sees a 30-50% return rate, and a percentage of those are so damaged they need to be dumped. Online stores, however, maintain a smaller inventory. They order what they need to meet an immediate and real demand. You’ll still see returns, but maybe just 5-10%.
The industry is not about preserving indie bookstores – it’s about getting the writing to the general population. It’s about the authors, and their books. And it’s your job – by hook or by crook – to get those books into the hands of readers. There’s no room for weeping in the face of technology and change. Your future, as a small press, is to be an agent of change.
At our next birthday celebration, in January, The Writer's Center will bring in Pagan Kennedy. Pagan is a Bethesda native, and one of her very first creative writing workshops happened right here at the Center. What was it like publishing your heroine Pagan Kennedy?
Well, all the authors I’ve published are my heroes. Ray Robertson is the quintessential artist. A man who has devoted his life to the craft of writing and who hits hard every time. Alan Cheuse is in possession of a writing voice unmatched in modern American literature. Richard Currey captures the mind and soul with razor-sharp images that linger for a lifetime.
When next I have my hands on a few thousand dollars, I want to bring forward a new author whose work I’ve been supporting for many years. A young writer who also has the devotion, the voice, and the electric power of Ray, Alan, and Richard.
Pagan, though, does hold a special place in my heart. It’s her zine – and her early works – that inspired me in the early 90’s. My impressionable high school years. Her quirky participatory journalism, and her stunningly addictive fiction, has kept her on my bookshelves for 20 years. I was and still am ecstatic to have published Dangerous Joy, even though we made a mistake on the layout and found ourselves stuck with the inventory. But, hey, that’s publishing. Now they’re collector items. Or they will be, when we get around to a second printing.
What would you recommend for anyone beginning a small press?
The first rule (and this also applies to authors) is that you won’t make money. You must accept that. The old saying is true – you need a large fortune to make a small fortune in this business.
You’re in this because you love books, because you love writing, and you are willing to pursue that love all the way to the bitter end, regardless of the challenges you face or the obstacles in your path. You must also be willing to work. It’s a job – both publishing and writing – and it’s the sort of job that will follow you home, that will steal your evenings and weekends and vacations, and that will compete with your significant others, your children, your life. And that’s got to be okay with you.If that doesn’t describe you, then stop what you’re doing right now. Sweep it all into the trash can and, please, get on with your life.
Now, the practical stuff: Don’t try and find a mainstream book. Don’t ape a dying industry. Be daring. Be different. Increasingly, as the Old Boy Network of publishing slowly topples, it’s the daring and different work that will begin to emerge.
Once you’ve found that book, then you should do the publicity yourself. Don’t outsource. Use the social networking sites – connect with people. Finally, after all this time trying to put together books with no sense of what the public truly wants, your audience is right there in front of you. Shell out the cash to get a media list. Shell out a little more to make some nice galleys. Pay attention to your cover, your layout, your editing. Reading books, for many people, is also a tactile experience. The feel, the smell, the look. (Which is why ebooks and the Kindle will never truly destroy the printed word.) And, of course, a nice cover will sell more books than the words inside. That’s the sad truth publishers must face when working with booksellers and trying to get the casual shelf browser hooked.
Publicity should begin six months before publication. But a small press doing one or two books a year? Publicity should start a year before publication. Don’t be afraid to try and do the impossible. Explore translation rights, pitch excerpts to magazines, try and get reviews from big places. It only costs you postage, or a few minutes on email. You’ll strike out 90% of the time but, hey, to hell with them then. All you need is one good hit.
Join PMA. They’re worth it. And, if you don’t have the time or stamina to sell out of your basement, then get a distributor. In fact, I would urge you to take that path. Independent Publisher’s Group is a wonderful organization, and they’ve recently started working with PMA to cater to small presses. Don’t overreach in that area, either. Don’t go for the gold and try to get in the regular trade catalogs. You’re a small press, so act like one. Embrace it.
Indie bookstore owners and many authors are going to keel over as soon as I say this, but you need to focus on online sales and look towards electronic formats. The reason for this is simple – brick and mortar stores order more than they need to cover a supposed demand. They then return unsold copies, and typically get a free hand when it comes to salable condition. Working just with brick and mortars sees a 30-50% return rate, and a percentage of those are so damaged they need to be dumped. Online stores, however, maintain a smaller inventory. They order what they need to meet an immediate and real demand. You’ll still see returns, but maybe just 5-10%.
The industry is not about preserving indie bookstores – it’s about getting the writing to the general population. It’s about the authors, and their books. And it’s your job – by hook or by crook – to get those books into the hands of readers. There’s no room for weeping in the face of technology and change. Your future, as a small press, is to be an agent of change.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Discovery Friday: SFWP on the Future of Small Presses (Part I)
Today we're joined by Andrew Gifford, publisher of SFWP.
What possessed you to publish books?
My first response is to say “Dunno,” because it’s a hard question. I’ve spent my inheritance, my savings, and all my credit to publish books. And I will gladly do it again as soon as I get my hands on a few grand.
Neurologist Alice Flaherty gave popularity to the term “Midnight Disease” in her book. On the surface, it’s a memoir about her bout with depression and hypergraphia, but she takes it a step further and analyzes the compulsion that drives all writers to write. And it is a compulsion. It is about exorcising demons, or appeasing that voice in your head. There’s lots of real work and dedication required to bring that voice to paper, but it all starts with that weird, lonely compulsion.
I think of publishing as a branch of that midnight disease.
Since the Washington Post article about me, I’ve put lots of thought to this question. I told the journalist, Laura Wexler, it was because I loved Moody Food and wanted to give it the worldwide distribution it deserved, and then the wheel just sort of kept rolling. But the real answer is that I’m compelled to do this. I wrote my first book when I was eight years old, and my mother lovingly bound it and drew some cover art. I pitched my first book – and received my first rejection – when I was 12 years old. I started my first publishing company when I was 15, collecting poets and authors in homemade chapbooks and actually making a nice profit. What possessed me? Dunno…
What is the future of the small press? Is there room for small presses in the publishing world?
Right now, I’d say the future looks both grim and promising. Following the traditional path in the industry is impossible for a small press. The traditional path being the publication of a "marketable" book (whatever that may be), working with a distributor, doing the whole no-nonsense PR thing, putting the author on tour, etc. All the stuff the larger publishers do.
Unless the small press is well funded and, well, just damned lucky, taking the traditional path means bankruptcy. The industry nickles and dimes the publisher into oblivion. First you get clipped by the distributor, and that's just fine because they're performing a vital service. But when you're dealing in sales measured in the hundreds, you're not really making enough to justify the cause. Then you get clipped by the bookstores -- indie stores that charge for readings really rattle my cage. Suddenly you get a bill requesting "co-op money" for "advertising" that didn't go beyond the store's electronic newsletter. Sometimes these bills will be $500 or a thousand bucks. The larger publishers pay them, to keep playing nice. Or they can afford to ignore them. The smaller presses get blacklisted. All this goes on usually without the author's knowledge. Of course, that's also something that's burning the indie bookstores. I know, based on my experience, that I now seek author engagements at the chain stores or indie stores (like Politics and Prose) who truly embrace authors and good writing and don’t extort money from publishers. (And, of course, Politics and Prose is doing well, while other equally famous indie stores now sink beneath the waters. Lesson learned.)
Though there's plenty of resentment for the chain stores, as well. The chain stores have an automated returns policy designed to bolster their tenuous budgets. Books might be returned en masse without ever getting put on the shelves. So they buy the books at a 50% discount, you lose 20-some percent to the distributor, then the books are returned immediately for a full refund and another small handling fee paid by the publisher to the distributor.
Meanwhile, there are a plethora of organizations geared towards "investing" in small presses and their books. It worries me to see more and more small presses moving towards these options. Chances are it's just a money grab on the part of the so-called investors. Usually I see this take the form of a group of industry professionals -- editors and PR folks -- who promise that, with their help, the book will be able to fund a moonshot. Typically, they don't put forward real cash or enable the publisher in any way. They do some PR work and demand a huge up-front payment from the proceeds and, after that, a percentage that guarantees nobody but them will see money from the book. Publicity people are the last great mystery in the business, and these organizations use that to their advantage. But, really, publicity for the small press is easy. It's about buying a list, it's about crafting the right sort of language, and, increasingly, it's about using "guerilla" tactics: Facebook, Twitter, webpages, blogs, etc. There is no mystery.
That gets me to how the future is not really grim if you know what you're doing. SFWP’s first book came out in 2006. If I could go back to 2005 and start all over again, I would. Gladly. I have no regrets. But I'd do a lot of things differently. It's taken four books to really learn this trade and see how it can work. And it can work.
So that's the long-winded answer to the first part of the question. The second part -- is there room for small presses in the publishing world -- is easy. The answer is yes, of course. There always is. A small press won't ever make big money. Those days are (temporarily) over. But there is still a demand for what small presses can offer. My favorite story is North Point Press (now Counterpoint) and Son of the Morning Star. This struggling small press puts out an unusual book that straddled history and fiction by a writer with a strong literary reputation but no sales track record or name recognition. And lightning strikes. That sort of blind luck used to be okay to expect (and I think it still should be). Look also to the story of Graywolf Press.
Now, though, the small presses have become more mainstream. They don’t do daring things. We don’t notice them as much as we used to. Many small presses have become cookie cutter versions of the big presses, or of each other. Readership, meanwhile, declines. How can a dusty old book combat iPods and movies on the laptop and internet downloads and that lovely plasma TV after 12-hour nose-to-the-grindstone days?
The only way is if it’s different. Daring. Interesting. Forget trying to find the next Dan Brown… Gamble a little bit. Why not? Small presses need to do what they’ve always done: Find the next Bukowski. (That’s another favorite example for me – Black Sparrow.)
Would you, as a reader, say there’s no room for another Black Sparrow, and another Bukowski, in the current publishing world?
Join us next week for the conclusion of this intereview. Meanwhile, check out Andrew Gifford at SFWP, at the SFWP blog, or at SFWP's online literary journal.
What possessed you to publish books?
My first response is to say “Dunno,” because it’s a hard question. I’ve spent my inheritance, my savings, and all my credit to publish books. And I will gladly do it again as soon as I get my hands on a few grand.
Neurologist Alice Flaherty gave popularity to the term “Midnight Disease” in her book. On the surface, it’s a memoir about her bout with depression and hypergraphia, but she takes it a step further and analyzes the compulsion that drives all writers to write. And it is a compulsion. It is about exorcising demons, or appeasing that voice in your head. There’s lots of real work and dedication required to bring that voice to paper, but it all starts with that weird, lonely compulsion.
I think of publishing as a branch of that midnight disease.
Since the Washington Post article about me, I’ve put lots of thought to this question. I told the journalist, Laura Wexler, it was because I loved Moody Food and wanted to give it the worldwide distribution it deserved, and then the wheel just sort of kept rolling. But the real answer is that I’m compelled to do this. I wrote my first book when I was eight years old, and my mother lovingly bound it and drew some cover art. I pitched my first book – and received my first rejection – when I was 12 years old. I started my first publishing company when I was 15, collecting poets and authors in homemade chapbooks and actually making a nice profit. What possessed me? Dunno…
What is the future of the small press? Is there room for small presses in the publishing world?
Right now, I’d say the future looks both grim and promising. Following the traditional path in the industry is impossible for a small press. The traditional path being the publication of a "marketable" book (whatever that may be), working with a distributor, doing the whole no-nonsense PR thing, putting the author on tour, etc. All the stuff the larger publishers do.
Unless the small press is well funded and, well, just damned lucky, taking the traditional path means bankruptcy. The industry nickles and dimes the publisher into oblivion. First you get clipped by the distributor, and that's just fine because they're performing a vital service. But when you're dealing in sales measured in the hundreds, you're not really making enough to justify the cause. Then you get clipped by the bookstores -- indie stores that charge for readings really rattle my cage. Suddenly you get a bill requesting "co-op money" for "advertising" that didn't go beyond the store's electronic newsletter. Sometimes these bills will be $500 or a thousand bucks. The larger publishers pay them, to keep playing nice. Or they can afford to ignore them. The smaller presses get blacklisted. All this goes on usually without the author's knowledge. Of course, that's also something that's burning the indie bookstores. I know, based on my experience, that I now seek author engagements at the chain stores or indie stores (like Politics and Prose) who truly embrace authors and good writing and don’t extort money from publishers. (And, of course, Politics and Prose is doing well, while other equally famous indie stores now sink beneath the waters. Lesson learned.)
Though there's plenty of resentment for the chain stores, as well. The chain stores have an automated returns policy designed to bolster their tenuous budgets. Books might be returned en masse without ever getting put on the shelves. So they buy the books at a 50% discount, you lose 20-some percent to the distributor, then the books are returned immediately for a full refund and another small handling fee paid by the publisher to the distributor.
Meanwhile, there are a plethora of organizations geared towards "investing" in small presses and their books. It worries me to see more and more small presses moving towards these options. Chances are it's just a money grab on the part of the so-called investors. Usually I see this take the form of a group of industry professionals -- editors and PR folks -- who promise that, with their help, the book will be able to fund a moonshot. Typically, they don't put forward real cash or enable the publisher in any way. They do some PR work and demand a huge up-front payment from the proceeds and, after that, a percentage that guarantees nobody but them will see money from the book. Publicity people are the last great mystery in the business, and these organizations use that to their advantage. But, really, publicity for the small press is easy. It's about buying a list, it's about crafting the right sort of language, and, increasingly, it's about using "guerilla" tactics: Facebook, Twitter, webpages, blogs, etc. There is no mystery.That gets me to how the future is not really grim if you know what you're doing. SFWP’s first book came out in 2006. If I could go back to 2005 and start all over again, I would. Gladly. I have no regrets. But I'd do a lot of things differently. It's taken four books to really learn this trade and see how it can work. And it can work.
So that's the long-winded answer to the first part of the question. The second part -- is there room for small presses in the publishing world -- is easy. The answer is yes, of course. There always is. A small press won't ever make big money. Those days are (temporarily) over. But there is still a demand for what small presses can offer. My favorite story is North Point Press (now Counterpoint) and Son of the Morning Star. This struggling small press puts out an unusual book that straddled history and fiction by a writer with a strong literary reputation but no sales track record or name recognition. And lightning strikes. That sort of blind luck used to be okay to expect (and I think it still should be). Look also to the story of Graywolf Press.
Now, though, the small presses have become more mainstream. They don’t do daring things. We don’t notice them as much as we used to. Many small presses have become cookie cutter versions of the big presses, or of each other. Readership, meanwhile, declines. How can a dusty old book combat iPods and movies on the laptop and internet downloads and that lovely plasma TV after 12-hour nose-to-the-grindstone days?
The only way is if it’s different. Daring. Interesting. Forget trying to find the next Dan Brown… Gamble a little bit. Why not? Small presses need to do what they’ve always done: Find the next Bukowski. (That’s another favorite example for me – Black Sparrow.)
Would you, as a reader, say there’s no room for another Black Sparrow, and another Bukowski, in the current publishing world?
Join us next week for the conclusion of this intereview. Meanwhile, check out Andrew Gifford at SFWP, at the SFWP blog, or at SFWP's online literary journal.
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