How big is a big hit? Bertelsmann, which owns Penguin Random House, has provided an update on their third quarter sales. The press release discussing the numbers noted that Alchemised “sold more than 300,000 copies across formats in North America in its first week, making it one of the most successful adult debut novels of all time.”
One of the things that is hard to grasp from the outside looking into publishing is how a few titles and authors make the bulk of all sales for a publisher. For example, Bloomsbury’s sales dipped 20 percent this year. Why? For one, there was no Sarah J. Maas release, something PW alludes to as it notes “the consumer division performed according to expectations considering the stellar year it had last year led by Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses series.”
In Canada, Douglas & McIntyre, a literary publisher, explained how a single book (The Sentimentalists by Johanna Skibsrud) allowed their company to keep operating another year after it was nominated for the Giller fiction prize. And ECW Press editor Jen Sookfong Lee said in an interview that Waubgeshig Rice’s Moon of the Crusted Snow, which was a big seller in Canada, still pays her salary.
There are basically a few giants in the field who like kaiju chomp through bookstores while the rest of writers are about the size of a cat. I often see people on social media asking why certain bestselling books are getting a sprayed-edge edition or why seemingly endless amounts of money are being poured towards an already successful author. The answer is that a publisher directs their resources towards the cash cows with the hope of generating even more profits. If a book sold 300,000 copies it would be silly to say stop marketing, don’t spend anything else on a hit.
There have always been blockbuster books. But publishing also had plenty of midlist writers, steady sellers who did not rise to the level of sales of mega stars. Factors have steadily altered the publishing landscape. Distributors are more wary about orders, so are bookstores, customers are careful with their money, and this trickles up and down the food chain. And publishers are really gunning for kaiju.
It is therefore probably no coincidence that there is such a huge focus on debuts, with the hopes that they will prove to be the next big thing, something that Sookfong Lee discusses in the article I linked to above. Or that editors have now started to look at popular self-published authors and even fanfic authors in the hopes of minimizing their risk. Bloom Books, for example, has often pursued popular self-published authors and acquired their print rights.
Usually when I talk about this stuff some people tell me they feel like throwing in the towel. After all, kaijus are massive and cats are not. But although I have many concerns about the future of midlist writers – enough that they keep me staring at the ceiling at nights sometimes – I feel it helps to know that publishing is full of cats. By that I mean that you should not take the performance of your books as indicative of the value of your own self. When my writer friends tell me “I’m a big failure” I always say no you’re not, if your book failed to find an audience it doesn’t mean you are now worth 10 percent less as a human being.
Trust me. My novels have done well, and they’ve also sunk into the ocean of books. This time of year, when ‘Best of’ lists are released left and right, when publishers are proudly announcing their top hits, I think it’s good for everyone’s mental health to remember that kaijus are cool and they do help keep the lights on at many companies, but cats are also loveable. Some of my favorite books this year included The Voice of Blood and Kalivas! Or Another Tempest. Both are small press titles. Marvel at the kaijus, but also keep smiling at the scrapy cats.
Reminder that The Bewitching is on sale now or check it out from your library.