Nobody knows anything
I’ve heard it from a few of my favorite writing mentors over the years: Nobody in this business knows anything. My hero William Goldman (The Princess Bride, of course) says the same about the movie business.
No one–not the writer, not the agent, not the editor or the publisher or the publicity department or anyone else on the production side of the equation–can say for sure which books will take off and which will sink. You can do all the right things, but readers still might not be impressed. Or you can accidentally write the year’s sleeper hit, and then everyone does the happy dance.
So I was interested in reading this article from the New York Times, which pretty much says the same thing. The nice thing is for once you can read about the real numbers–advances, print runs, etc.
Pretty eye-opening stuff, whether you’re a writer or a reader.
Technorati Tags: Writing, Publishing, Authors, Publishers, Books
May 14th, 2007 at 6:48 am
Great article. Proves the point you really need to love the work, because there are no certainties in the publishing industry.
May 14th, 2007 at 8:25 am
“…it’s a casino.” Yes. My brother, who holds an MBA, asks me every so often, with genuine interest, how my book sales are going. I have to answer him, in total honesty, “I have no idea.”
I DO know which libraries have bought it, and if someone’s checked it out, and when it’s due! (thank you, WorldCat)
But retail sales? To people I don’t know, who don’t communicate with me afterwards? All I can say is that Amazon keeps “re-stocking” it.
But this is my first book. I haven’t even received a royalty statement yet. And to be completely honest, I’m more excited over the fact that a girls’ book group at a Michigan library has chosen my book to read in July!
Readers are the best currency.
May 14th, 2007 at 8:28 am
Sara, that’s so cool about the girls’ book group. I think those kinds of connections have a value apart from sales. Who doesn’t want to think of their book being read and discussed by some group of bright reader girls?
Heather, right on about needing to love the work. Especially since even after you get a book published (as Sara mentioned), it’s a long time before you know how it’s doing or you see any money beyond your advance. So you have to be self-motivated to write your next book and the one after that, believing that they will have an audience. Being a working writer means learning to live with delayed gratification. But if you love the work, then the work itself is its own reward.
May 14th, 2007 at 10:31 am
This article was dead-on, and yet even with that information, I’m still left with the conclusion that the publishing business is just so squirrely(sp?), you just have to make the committment you suggested and just keep on doing it because you love writing.
In graduate school I co-authored a book that even I thought was boring (my family wouldn’t even read it), yet it was successful, although being an academic book, nothing finacially I could retire on. But it gave me the confidence to keep on writing.
About 6 years ago I toiled hard on another non-fiction book and it was very popular with agents and I had a hard time selecting an agent. I went with the one most rah-rah about it and he did have publishers knocking night and day on the door, with all kinds of comments of the next big thing etc. But everyone of them also wanted it tweaked in their own way. We finally went with one who then refused to make the committment until I did lengthy and very time-consuming rewrites, which then led to more and more rewrites until the book almost didn’t resemble the original manuscript at all and I was very unhappy with it. After all that, the publisher backed out. Lesson learned.
A year ago I finished a long novel, and again lots of agent interest (wasn’t going back to my previous agent) and insistence even from some of them. I was thrilled. Narrowed down to 2 agents and then it began again: both were insisting that if I made some changes, they could sell it in a heartbeat. However, the changes that each wanted were contradictory and I was confused about which way to go and I also wasn’t interested in repeating my earlier mistake. So it sits in my file drawer waiting for the dust to settle from some life events when I will have time and I can decide what I want to do with it or figure out how to reconcile the contradictory feedback from it. Or just write a totally different new one.
There are lots of good writers out there, who for whatever reasons, never get their stuff out. Then there are the books that make you wonder why in the world did this get shelf space. There just is not any logic to the publishing biz, but if you like to write, you just keep on doing it anyway.
May 14th, 2007 at 11:36 am
Conversely, we can make the assumption that “Somebody knows nothing” and of course, “I know Everything.”
May 14th, 2007 at 11:43 am
Well, yeah, Patrick. Goes without saying.
May 14th, 2007 at 12:38 pm
Well, it could go without saying, but I like to say it anyway, just in case someone didn’t know I know everything.
May 14th, 2007 at 3:14 pm
Sara: Exactly.
May 14th, 2007 at 4:53 pm
Barry: glad to know I’m not alone. Although I don’t see why in this age of Google Alerts that the Bat signal in my office can’t go off every time one of my books sells.
May 14th, 2007 at 6:32 pm
Oh, my gosh, do you know how much all of us would pay for something like that?? Why are you tempting me?!