The Book Deal Diaries #3
The business of books and the book proposal
I have so much to impart on this process, sometimes it can be difficult to know what should come next!! However, it is not a linear process, so I am going to intersperse some of the more ‘personal’ pieces with practical advice and guest interviews. I do hope you enjoyed my first one last week with highly successful self-help author Beth Kempton. There is much more to come…
Today is more of a practical piece, as I delve into the business of books and the importance of a book proposal (for non-fiction and memoir), then I will continue next week with one of the key steps if you are hoping to pursue a traditional publishing deal: getting an agent.
How many of you are hoping to do the same thing?
The business of books
So first, the business of books. Take a deep breath (and then don’t get disheartened - read on for the hopeful stuff!!)
According to Publisher’s Weekly (albeit some years ago):
Here's the reality of the book industry: in 2004, 950,000 titles out of the 1.2 million tracked by Nielsen Bookscan sold fewer than 99 copies. Another 200,000 sold fewer than 1,000 copies. Only 25,000 sold more than 5,000 copies. The average book in America sells about 500 copies. Those blockbusters are a minute anomaly: only 10 books sold more than a million copies last year, and fewer than 500 sold more than 100,000.
Which bit stands out for you? For me it is the proportion that sold fewer than 99 copies. If you consider that with a traditional publishing deal you may have a royalty in the region of £1.50 a book (after you have earned out any advance), that gives you total ‘earnings’ of £150. Hmm. Whilst many of us aren’t in the book writing business for the money (and it’s easy to see why), it’s still pretty sobering.
Whilst these particular stats will have changed in a lot of ways with the surge in e-books and audio, it still gives a highly relevant flavour of the issue.
Books are a business.
Stating the bleeding obvious? Perhaps, but it is a good lesson to have embedded from the outset. I imagine very few writers set out thinking that their first book will be the golden ticket, enabling them to move on from whatever current iteration of their own story they inhabit (version 17.8 perhaps). If you are a writer that thinks like that, then I wish you the best of luck, with all sincerity, and know that this can happen for some.
Many creatives start out because their creative work is a passion project, and the hope is that it may provide a way of sustaining a lifestyle at some point. For me, I started writing for several reasons: because I enjoy it, because there is something about leaving a legacy, because others kept telling me they love my words, because I can’t not…
The reality is that alongside the writing, whether you self-publish or are looking for a traditional publishing deal, there is so much that sits alongside the writing: structuring, placing, marketing, PR, social media, pitching, understanding the competition…much of which you can get help and support with.
So how, as writers, can we best help ourselves? How do we even begin to defy the doom-laden statistics?
