Smart Advice from Smart People

I found myself falling through a blog hole over at Kristine Katheryn Rusch’s blog yesterday, going back and reading earlier posts she kept referencing. Along the way, I discovered a three-paragraph section that was immediately snagged for my thesis:

Then there were the series that I had to abandon because of the changes in publishing.  In the 1980s and early 1990s, book publishers loved series.  More than that, they loved poaching series from another publisher.  Publisher A couldn’t make your series work? Publisher B was happy to snatch up the next book—mid-series—and prove to Publisher A how stupid their marketing department was.

But with the collapse of the distribution system in the late 1990s, the consolidation of publishing houses, and the layoff of countless employees, suddenly this poaching practice stopped.  A series wasn’t doing as well as it could for Publisher A? Well, then no other publisher would touch it.  A series was doing passably well for Publisher A? Then no other publisher would want it mid-book, because they’d have to grow the series—and that wasn’t a guaranteed bestseller.

I had one series die in that mess, but I saw the warning signs on the wall, so I wrapped up as quickly as I could.  I sold three other series in that time period, and they continued for years—into the new century, when a new problem struck with two of those series: they weren’t growing fast enough.

The Business Rusch: Popcorn Kittens. Kristine Kathryn Rusch (2011)

There’s a lot writing about the shift towards series as a publishing strategy in light of technological change, but this is the first that’s really shown the movement back-and-forth.

The interesting thing here is not necessarily what I’ve discovered, but how I discovered it: I stumbled over this section through a process that was at least partly procrastination rather than productive work. Which is something that I’ve been thinking about ever since I put up the post about bookstores on Monday–the internet is great at delivering things we want, but not so good at the serendipitous find.

There is a great pleasure in browsing bookstores, just as there used to be great pleasure in browsing DVD racks and music stores. You don’t always find the thing you’re looking for, but you’ll occasionally trip over something unexpected at exactly the right time.

Mike Shazkin’s recent post about the 7 Ways Book Publishing will change is a great read (albeit one that’s influenced by his relationship with the distributor Ingram). I wanted to pull one entry out for here because it’s a really useful way to look at the the shifts in book retail:

Books have a ton of characteristics that make them perfect for online shopping. You want to shop from a full selection no store has. It is very seldom when you must have a book right now. And books are heavy, so you don’t really want to carry them around if you can avoid it. The view from here is that it will continue to be very challenging to make physical book locations commercially viable.

As a bookish person who has a bunch of friends who work in book retail, many of whom are doing it tough right now, that’s the kind of idea that’s not going to entirely welcome as a thing posted here on the blog. Especially since Shazkin suggests the people who are going to compete with the big river will largely be other big retail outlets who are moving into the online space (Walmart and Costco in the USA – god knows who our local equivalents will be here in Australia).

Of course, I’m not in book retail directly, so there’s a bit of upside/downside there. For one thing, the move away from limited-shelf-space stores is actually a net plus for writers who have a deep backlist, and it’s noteworthy that Shazkin sees a growing attention on backlist in traditional publishing as one of the coming changes. I’ve mentioned this one before, looking at the ways in which the tactics of series shift when prior books are easily accessible, and it’s a big thing to wrap your head around if you’re looking to make money from writing in the next couple of decades.

On the flip side, the loss of bespoke stores also means writers are losing advocates who know their local consumers and tastemakers in the form of booksellers who knew their shit. When everything is available all at once, rather than a curated collection, it becomes trickier for potential readers to find their work.

I’m intrigued by how this will affect the way writers operate online. While this shift has been underway for years, I suspect we’re hitting a period where writers actually have to think about how they’re going to find new readers as part of their ongoing business model. The indie side of things is already hip-deep in it, figuring out the online advertising platforms and how to make them work, utilising search and SEO to make their books stand out.

The really smart ones (well, Joanna Penn) are already looking towards the changes in search that are comming, such as the gradual uptick of voice-activated search tools that don’t require us to type things into a google bar.

In short, conversations about author platform that used to revolve around how do I speak to my existing readers and make them hardcore fans will need to start incorporating the acquisition of new audience as well.