Share a "hot take" about the book world, an opinion of yours that might be unpopular but is a hill you're willing to die on (at least for now).
Not sure if this qualifies as a hot take or as an unpopular opinion, but I don’t understand how the publishing biz works. How do they manage to sell books on a large scale? They’ve obviously figured it out, right? Of course they have. They sell millions of books every year. Just not mine.
In general, I have trouble imagining large figures. When I see book sales numbers in the tens of thousands, or reviews on Goodreads and Amazon in the hundreds of thousands, my head spins. I simply don’t know how any book can sell so many copies. Yet plenty do. Who’s buying them? They say nobody reads anymore. Maybe nobody reads, but—apparently—they do buy books.
While I don’t understand big numbers, I would like to have more money. Lots more money with lots of trailing zeros. And I’m not alone. In fact, millions of average citizens try their luck each week on the lottery, hoping to win enough money to live the lifestyle of the rich and tasteless. And that’s despite the infinitesimal odds of winning. The last time I bought a lottery ticket, of the six numbers drawn (five plus one “Powerball”), I matched none. Not one. Hell, I can’t even win a scented candle at a school fundraiser raffle, forget about the lottery. So if it’s that difficult to match one number—1 to 69–which doesn’t even win you a stick of gum, what chance do we have to hit all six and take home the jackpot? Seems impossible to me. And even if I were lucky enough to win several hundred million dollars in the lottery, I’d probably lock myself inside and never venture out again for fear that the universe would flatten me with a speeding bus just to even out the odds.
So I’ll never be a billionaire. That’s okay, since I can’t wrap my head around such wealth anyway. Have you ever stopped to consider that billionaires are worth at least one thousand millions of dollars? That’s $1 million a thousand times over. And that’s not even considering the super billionaires who have hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars to their name. Surely one would lose all sense of proportion if endowed with such a fortune. I mean, how much would a billionaire be expected to tip on a cup of coffee? Come on, at least a hundred dollars. Having a billion dollars must be similar to being incredibly tall. Imagine being thirty feet tall. How could you not look down on people? How could you possibly be normal? (Answer: billionaires are not normal and of course they look down on the little people.)
So, no. I don’t get big numbers. And that’s one of the reasons I don’t understand publishing. The logistics of distribution is another. And how they decide what to publish and how much to spend on promotion. Most of all, I’d like to know who is the fleeing woman they always photograph from behind on all those covers?
Okay, those are mysteries to me. But let’s talk about what the publishing industry could do to make me happier. Here are a couple of simple ideas.
1. Why don’t publishers sell e-books and audiobooks together? Or hardcover and e-books, for that matter? Make it a package deal. They could charge a little bit more and satisfy readers and writers alike.
2. And speaking of e-books, why don’t they sell them for $4.99? Or $5.99? Right now the hardcover edition of my last novel, Bombay Monsoon, sells for $12.99 on a certain online behemoth portal, while the e-book version sells for $9.99. That’s a mere three-dollar difference. Why not reduce the price of the e-book and sell more copies? Furthermore, the paperback is selling for $11.50. No wonder no one buys the e-book.
For a reason I don’t understand, the e-book version of my third novel, Stone Cold Dead, sells for $11.99! Maybe people would buy it if it didn’t cost more than the trade paperback of Bombay Monsoon.
3. There must be some way to improve sales reports. I would wager a lot of money that no one’s royalty report is accurate. Of course we always have the option of paying for an audit of the reports, but really? Who has the money or patience to do that? And never mind that it would surely tick off your publisher who would probably never want to work with you again after that.
4. Why do authors have to do all the publicity for their books? Or, if publishers abdicate the publicity portion of their duties to the author, shouldn’t the royalty rate be adjusted in favor of the author? Just a little?
5. Why is it verboten to use a font other than Times New Roman? I get that we don’t want Comic Sans, but wouldn’t Verdana be okay once in a while?
6. By the way, does anyone really understand how paper is made? I mean how do they get the sheets of paper to line up perfectly? Do they pay some poor schlub to tamp the reams on a desktop a couple of times to even them out? And who winds toilet paper and paper towels around the rolls? That’s got to be a tedious job, though not one directly involved in publishing.
7. Finally, I’d like to know why publishers are sharing in the $1.5 billion copyright settlement from Anthropic? The books stolen do not represent lost sales. Or, rather, even if they did, then the publisher has lost out on a grand total of $9.99 for the e-book. That’s the sum of the damages. Anthropic only stole the book once, after all. The true injured parties here are the creators of the work. Their words and ideas were stolen and used to train the AI engine, not the sheets of paper paid for by the publisher and tamped down on a desktop by some underpaid paper-straightener at Penguin Random House or Simon & Schuster. Writers could really use some of that relief. You’d think publishers would recognize that and forgo their share.
DISCLAIMER: If any publishing executive reads this post, please don’t hold the opinion expressed in point 7 above against me. An AI bot wrote this post.
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