Dressed to impress

May 27

Only the Author is Punished

Author: Mayowa Tags:

“When a book “fails to meet expectations,” many are candidates for blame. But whether commercial failure results from market conditions, moon in Mercury retrograde, or publisher/editor/publicist/sales force/author malfeasance, the consequences are the same. Those with jobs keep them. Only the author’s livelihood is threatened. Only the author is punished.”

The quote above is from an eye-opening story in Salon magazine and it struck me so much I had to post about it. (Thanks to QT’ers for the link)

My first reaction was to mutter “balderdash” under my breath. Publishing employees get punished all the time. Haven’t the big six laid off hundreds of employees in the last eighteen months?

But then i noticed that this story was published in 2004, before the global recession that crushed the bottom lines of companies across the spectrum and forced them to streamline their bulky company structures (layoff anyone they could).

My second reaction was that the eventual success of a book depends on the author. You know, personal responsibility regardless of all the external factors and all that jive (I might be a closet conservative eh?).

But that too is dead wrong. Books can fail because publishers implement terrible (or no) marketing, because an editor who did not “get it” edited the best parts out, because publishers caved in to bookseller demands and chose a boring, typical cover, because booksellers shelved the book in the wrong genre, because publishers priced it to high, because publishers mistimed the market…the list is endless.

When publishers/booksellers claim that all their services bring the most value to the writing/publishing process and that this value is worth 90% of the profit, one have to wonder why more than 70% of books don’t earn out or why the industry earns more than 90% of profits from 7% of the books published.

Yet only the author is punished.

I am sure senior editors have to answer for flagging sales (especially at the corporate controlled big six) but overall I think the author bears the greater brunt of punishment given the low royalties. I should note here that a valid counter argument is that the publisher’s punishment is lower profits which trickle down into lower raises, salaries, jobs etc.

I still think there is a rather large nugget of truth in this quote though.

When the corporate overlords call in editors to explain why the house only made a hundred million dollars last year, I’m not entirely convinced that the conversation contains any empathy for the tens of thousands of author man hours spent writing and these days marketing the books that make up the sales.

How many bad covers or bad marketing strategies must a designer or marketer create before being taken to task for it? Even if the number is in the single digit, each one represents hundreds upon hundreds of ours of authorial effort and struggle.

What do you think about this? More accountability for industry employees or are things fair the way they are?