Forum / Facts about book publishing

• 
  Ann Bogle

  Mar 14, 02:00pm

  Over the weekend I attended the Creative Nonfiction Conference at The Loft in Minneapolis. The cost was $250. It covered lunch on Saturday, four sessions Saturday, two sessions Sunday, and the opening reading on Friday by Toi Derricotte (the reading was free and open to the public). There were writing panels, but I chose only publishers' panels. I learned quite a lot about publishing (in any genre) from representatives from Milkweed Editions, Graywolf Press, Minnesota Historical Society Press, Borealis Books, and an acquisitions editor from Penguin. We learned about print runs, agents, advances, number of submissions, selection process, ebooks, publicity, platform, ideal readers, self-publishing, and other topics.

  Milkweed receives about 2,000 mss. per year and publishes 1% or 20 of those. Graywolf receives 3,000 mss. per year and publishes 1% or 30 of those. Both are nonprofits and depend on grants for their financing. A respectable print run is smaller than you may think -- only a thousand cc. or so for poetry, a bit more for short story. Collections of essays, short stories, and prose poetry are still regarded as a tough sell. B/w books cost the publisher $4,000 or so for a print run, depending on its size. Advances range from $5,000 to $100,000 at Penguin with a few higher-end exceptions. Royalties that pay 10% begin after about 10,000 copies have sold. Agents receive 15% of all profits paid to the author. If you are submitting to an academic or independent press, you may do as well without an agent. You can read about deals at Publisher's Lunch.

  If anyone has questions or answers, please post them here.

• 
  David Ackley

  Mar 14, 04:17pm

  Thanks for posting this, Ann. It's interesting, albeit slightly depressing reading. (Odds of acceptance at even a small publisher 2-300 to 1. ) I don't have any questions, but would like to read more, if you picked-up other information you think worth sharing.

• 
  Susan Tepper

  Mar 14, 04:31pm

  What Ann found out at the conference is sobering indeed.
  But there are alternatives to these particular presses who are still operating "the old way."

  Now many small presses do much smaller initial print runs, and many use print on demand, with as few as 25 books required initially. And many will distribute the books thru Amazon, Ingram, B&N, etc.
  These are legit independent presses who are publishing some of the best writers and work out there.
  So do not despair.
  Check out the online mags who publish books. Many opportunities via those are available.

• 
  Christopher Allen

  Mar 14, 04:54pm

  A timely post, Ann. Thank you. I've been researching publishers all day for one of my projects. I'm tired and a bit depressed about the whole thing. I'd love to publish the episodic novella as an ebook. There are so many ebook publishers out there. Who's to know which are legitimate and which are scams?

• 
  Susan Tepper

  Mar 14, 05:12pm

  Chris, there are loads of small press publishers out there. Hundreds more opportunities than the commercial presses who have merged and gotten much smaller in terms of less individual imprints.
  Many good small presses run contests, many just take submissions. Kathy Fish just found a small press publisher. I think that is excellent and promising news for we indy writers. Meg Pokrass has a small press book out. I have a small press book out. The opportunities are out there.

• 
  Ann Bogle

  Mar 14, 07:28pm

  David, there is more. Agents are mostly based in New York -- the idea of agents based outside New York was the subject of a joke. They receive about 10,000 mss. per year (perhaps that number includes queries). The word "project" was in force. Of those, an agent agrees to represent 0-3 new writers per year. Most agents do not represent short story writers or poets. I meant to ask but forgot to ask twice whether the houses ever get agented poetry. This was a burning question put to me, but not my burning question. I got distracted.

  On the way home on Saturday, full of encouraging information about creating a platform for oneself on the internet -- publishers like blogs, for example, especially when you can demonstrate a fair amount of traffic and readership at a blog (something I can do) -- I was jazzed thinking of my numbers. Ana Verse has had 25,000 visitors and has more than 1,000 followers at Facebook. But the next day I was depleted thinking of numbers. Fanbase is numbers and it MAY but does not necessarily translate to sales. So-called big books (an example was Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way) end up carrying or financing small books (books that do not sell well but that have literary merit). Penguin acquired a memoir by an established author, Nahid Rachlin, called Persian Girls for $5,000. The book became a top seller, but the advance could not be renegotiated.

  Ebooks are changing publishing. They are very cheap to produce but sell for almost as much per copy as paper books. The Authors Guild is currently involved in negotiating higher pay for authors based on ebook sales. The worry in the industry is that an author such as Stephen King will decide to produce his own ebooks and keep a nearly 100% profit.

  On the other hand, the industry in general (and Margaret Atwood in her talk linked recently at Fictionaut and on Facebook) view(s) self-publishing rather favorably. I wanted to learn more about self-publishing in view of changing technology and reception of those books. Writers, I find, do not accept self-publication as gladly. Negativity about self-publishing including blogs is not coming from the industry; it comes from writers. Distribution of self-published books is still a major hurdle.

  Christopher and Susan, authors are increasingly financing their own books through imprints -- independent publishers -- who are increasingly asking financial contributions from the authors. Some of them also issue, besides print-on-demand copies, ebooks.

  What weighed me down to think about is the investment the writers make in writing nearly camera-ready books only to be rejected. Even books that are accepted may generate little revenue. The author is responsible for perfecting the ms. as there is very little budget available at most houses (small or large) for editing. Editors mostly work at acquisition and marketing. If we worked at a shoe factory, our work might be mostly unsung, but we would be paid. There is something about writing that causes us to feel that we should receive praise and acknowledgment even of minor efforts. In that way, to work on a book for seven years, to insist on its quality and purity in every phrase and line (the poets at the conference in discussing writing nonfiction admitted that they fuss over their line breaks in prose!) is sad partly because we expect great things of writing, greater than of t-shirts (if we worked daily at making those). Alas, I once applied using my actual one-page resume (with my degrees and cities listed on it) to work at a t-shirt shipping warehouse. No dice.

• 
  Susan Tepper

  Mar 14, 07:50pm

  Ann, yes, to everything you said here. But there are still loads of small press books coming out everyday. Art has always been hard, even back to Michelangelo's time. Artists relied on commissions to pay them. Most starved. Most starve today. But if you want a book because you feel your work is deservant of that, then start your own imprint and find a printer. Poets and Writers lists them in back of the magazine. Most presses are started precisely that way. Publish your book and a few friend's books. Now you have a press going, and you have a book of your own. I refuse to be bogged down by what is happening in publishing. If you want something bad enough, there is always a way.

• 
  Susan Tepper

  Mar 14, 07:54pm

  PS on the agents: lots of good agents are on the west coast and in between. Many friends of mine have used agents outside NYC with fabulous results. I know someone who used an agent in the UK and got a great book deal.

• 
  Ann Bogle

  Mar 15, 04:27pm

  http://www.pw.org/content/publishing_in_the_twentyfirst_century_an_interview_with_john_b_thompson

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Mar 15, 05:25pm

  Ann, this is a fascinating thread and the interview with John Thompson is worth a read from everyone interested in publishing their work. A look at the failures of the industry is the first significant step in transcending them. And what better time than now ... when the industry itself is foundering and the rules of the game are changing at an accelerating pace?

  Thanks for this.

• 
  Shelagh Power-Chopra

  Mar 17, 01:35am

  Found this interesting on the topic: http://www.pw.org/content/publishing_in_the_twentyfirst_century_an_interview_with_john_b_thompson

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