Let's talk about book sales...

The dreaded track record, retailers, and luck!

One of the things that I know authors, editors and pretty much everyone in the industry worry about, obsess over, and strive for, is sales. Of course we do – publishing houses, as well as being creative hubs (which I do believe they are) are also businesses, and it is this marrying up of head versus heart, corporate strategy versus gut-based thinking, dream-making versus dream-crushing (I could go on but I think you get the picture!) that is often an incredibly challenging part of the industry. We are a creative industry, we do want to nurture talent and seek out new talent, but we are also a company that has to make money to stay afloat, and so that means we have to sell books.

Some companies (most of the large companies) also do now make money from non-book products (like notepads, jigsaws, world-building merchandise such as maps and prints of book jackets that might accompany special editions) but obviously the vast majority comes from selling books across formats (across territories). And as an editor, my main goal is to get books into readers’ hands.

I have aways been an avid reader, and I have always believed in true commercial publishing. I have never been a book snob, and I think (and of course the research and statistics back this up) that it is crucial to get children reading from an early age, and that this can make an enormous difference to their life. I want the books I publish to entertain people, to transport them from their current circumstances (because let’s face it, we all need that sometimes and it can actually be life-saving) and I want them to be read as widely as possible. Therefore, I need to do everything I can to get those books to sell.

But, as you know by now from my previous posts, it is not all up to me. I am reliant on our sales and marketing teams, and they are reliant, often, on retailers, from Amazon to Tesco to The Works to your brilliant local independent store, to Waitrose and Waterstones and WHS and bookshop.org. and more (these are in the UK). A sale is a sale, and frankly I do not mind where it comes from, or in what format, as long as it comes! One thing that is hard, though, is the way this system works and so I wanted to explain a little bit of it here (with the caveat that I am not a sales person or a Managing Director, and there are things I admit I don’t know or have full visibility of. If you have corrections or comments then please do pop them below and we can all learn from each other).

For debut authors, they come to the business with no track record. We estimate what we can sell, based on the passion for the book, the widespread commercial appeal of it, the genre, other comparison books (more on this in my post about what really goes on in an acquisitions meeting), and the market at the time.

For authors who have been published before, there is what you might hear talked about as a ‘track’ i.e. a track record. For some, top-selling authors, this is going to be strong, and high sales and growing readerships are, obviously, partly what makes an author valuable to the publishing house (along with their talent and themselves as a person) – in most companies, a lot of the revenue actually comes from a small percentage of the bestselling writers. Sometimes, authors move from one publisher to another, (an editor might call this ‘poaching’) and that could be for a number of reasons – their editor has left, they are being offered a lot more advance money elsewhere, they want to break into a territory their current publisher isn’t quite conquering for them, they feel their sales are declining or stagnating, they want a new jacket approach, a personnel clash, etc – any number of things. This move can mean a loss to the current publisher, though any existing books and contracts stay with the first publisher (except in unusual circumstances, which sometimes can be negotiated), and backlist books can sell incredibly well (better than new frontlist, at times).

For other authors, who might not be selling quite as well, the track is something that I know people worry about. The main reason for this, in my view, actually comes from retailers (and in turn from the consumers and just the world we live in, I suppose) not from the publishers themselves – if, for example, we take on an author who has previously sold very well in a certain retailer, let’s say Tesco, then we know that we have a pretty good chance of getting Tesco to agree a similar slot for that author. Supermarkets have different promotions within them, e.g. Tesco has the Mail Book Club, where you get a copy of the book with the newspaper, and they have different store placements (number of stores, volume of copies, etc). For example, some people might be stocked in only 200 of the total stores, some people might be stocked in all 700-and-something (I cannot remember the up to date number now sorry!) Publishers pay for these placements, but the retailer also makes the decision, so if they see an author has not previously sold well in their stores, it can mean they don’t want to stock it. To the big retailers like supermarkets, books are a really small part of their overall business (as you can imagine) and although the book buyers are lovely, they do see the books as products (as they should really; that’s their job). All of the above applies to pretty much all supermarkets I think, and places like WHS (who have the Richard and Judy promotion, again this is something a publisher has to pay for to be a part of, if your book is chosen by R+J). We (our sales team) pitch a limited number of books to the supermarkets each quarter, then we wait to hear if those get selected, and then it is the editor’s job to relay that news to an author and agent. Often, we decide on the strategy at acquisition and to be honest, that strategy should ideally be relayed to you as an author early on in the acquisition process - for example, if we know we want to try to get supermarkets on board, we will try to tailor a jacket to be more ‘supermarket friendly’ and I might let the author know we are pitching. If though, it is not possible, it’s important that an editor does not over-promise to an author on something they cannot deliver (I think personally this is sometimes where problems arise). Supermarkets are big volume drivers, but they are also costly, and today, the rate of returns is high - so it doesn’t make sense for publishers to put tons of books into the shops only to get them back and lose money. Supers have also cut down on their space, meaning there are fewer slots, and they take fewer risks (so they stock a lot of big brands because they know they will sell). It comes down to much wider challenges such as the cost of living crisis, consumer behaviour, etc, that I’m not really qualified to write about, but you can see where I am going with this - none of this is down to a book not being a great piece of work, and it’s important as a writer to really try to remember that.

For retailers like Waterstones and indies (independent bookshops), the publishers do not pay for placement, and it’s really down to how much the publisher pushes the book to the retailer, and how receptive the retailer is. They of course choose books they love and they want to sell, but some genres work better than others, there is still limitations on space and stock control to consider, and they have to make good bets. Waterstones do a book of the month promotion (and a thriller of the month, SFF book of the month, non-fiction book of the month too) and these are books the buyers have genuinely loved and books they think will have broad appeal. Waterstones can be incredibly supportive of authors, making or breaking a book, but they cannot do that for every author, and so it is a hard balance. If historically, an author’s sales figures are low, but they publish a new novel, and the buyer reads and loves it, this can really turn the tables for an author’s career and I have definitely seen this happen. But you do need your publisher to be getting it into that buyer’s hands, and again, with the sheer amount of books published, this presents its own challenge! Often Waterstones will take fairly small quantities (e.g. 20-200 copies) and sometimes they might take thousands, give the author extra support such as blog placements or newsletter blasts, and do window displays, etc - but honestly for the vast majority of novels the number you might initially see Waterstones take could be relatively low - because they want to try it out, because space is limited, because there are SO. MANY. BOOKS. Remember though that people can always go in and ask for Waterstones or an indie to order up a book, and in my experience, Waterstones and indies are often incredibly supportive when it comes to book launches, supplying stock and space and help on the evening (so I recommend if you are thinking of having a book launch! I don’t think I’d want a book launch in amongst the frozen food at Tesco…)

For well-known, individual booksellers like Goldsboro for example, we present to them a few times a year (so they come into our office and we present key titles to them with a slideshow and proofs) and we also sometimes do Independent Bookshop nights where lots of buyers come and pick up proofs from tables, and we tell them a bit about the books themselves (very occasionally authors might come, but literally a handful, less than 5 authors in my experience). And different publishers do all of this differently, I can only speak to my own experience in 2 of the big 5. We also regularly do proof drops with authors, around their local areas (you can also do this alone as an author, but sometimes a publicist or editor will come) - this means popping into local shops and giving the individual booksellers proofs, or early copies, or just telling them a little about the book and offering to come back to sign copies when the book is out. Indies can be wonderful at championing your books, and I recommend going into your local and supporting them (whether you are a writer yourself or not!). Indies can be amazing at supporting local authors, and our sales and publicity teams build relationships with those shops too, which can in turn be really valuable to our authors, I think.

When it comes to Amazon, we do not present – everything sells through Amazon, and it can of course be a huge volume driver. What we do do is the behind-the-scenes stuff – the metadata (meaning, in a very simplified nutshell, that we look at what consumers are searching for on Amazon, and try to make your book come up in those searches), the advertising, the page descriptions and photographs and what we call the A+ (the big images beneath your book), and all of that can make a really big difference and be a key tool (self-published authors do this themselves, I think). Amazon doesn’t care about a track record, as far as I’m aware – they care about the algorithm, and the views per page, and so we do our best to drive as many readers to the pages of our books as possible. We cannot control the physical pricing on Amazon – they often price match, meaning if your book goes into The Works and they price it at £3, Amazon might see this and do the same. We can control ebook pricing manually, but once a physical RRP is set we cannot change it. We also do things like pitch your book for ebook promotions, but again this is a big topic so I will do another post on it at some stage.

So, all of this ramble is actually background to what I wanted to talk about, which is to do with the dreaded ‘track record.’ I don’t think it’s very useful for me to lie to you as readers of this Substack and say that it doesn’t ever matter, because sometimes, sadly, it does. I don’t think any of us as editors like this, really, but we do understand it, and there are certain things we can do to try to get around it. I also think it’s worth saying clearly that a track record that isn’t high is generally NOT your fault as an author – everyone reading this knows that some books don’t get tons of marketing support, that sometimes the market is just really, really hard, or moves on; that small presses don’t have the reach of big ones, that excellent books can tank and not so good books can sometimes do really well – I really want this newsletter to be transparent and those things are all true. There ARE things you can do as a writer to work as a brilliant partner for your publisher and grow sales alongside them, but that needs a whole other post. So, if you have a ‘record’ that might feel unfair but is what it is, sometimes, a publisher might suggest changing your name and releasing more books under a pseudonym. I have seen this done countless times, often very successfully, and you would be surprised by the number of authors you now think of and know as big bestsellers who wrote books under different names before. I actually love the way people’s careers can change overnight in publishing, I find it quite hopeful, but I also appreciate the argument that why should authors have to change their names, and how frustrating this might feel, I really do get it! But working within the parameters of where we are now – this does happen and can be a good move.

Sometimes, moving publisher can also work – you might find you have a team behind you in a new place that are more dedicated to you, for whatever reason (more space on the list, different personnel, different visions for how to sell your work) and I’ve seen that work very well, too. When books come in from agents on submission, and an author has previously been published, we do always look their sales up using BookScan, but generally we can only see physical, and estimates of digital (but I often ask the agent to share the ebook and audio numbers with me, as the previous publisher will have these on their internal systems). The teams will pretty much always ask for this, and all publishers should have access to physical sales with a BookScan login (which the company pays for - not all agents can access this, and most authors do not).

Changing genre can also work – but only do this if you want to and feel capable of it and excited by the shift, is what I would advise. I’ve also sometimes seen authors switch to different agencies and end up having more success, but this is a very personal decision, and there are lots of factors to consider (though it is true that some agents have reputations for getting more competitive deals).

There are also authors who don’t have a string of successes behind them, but do have a very passionate editor and a team willing to listen to that editor, and I have made the case before for writers without a great record but who I really, really believe will go on to have huge hits, and then of course, it’s us taking a chance on that (publishing is a gambling business!) And often, lots and lots of writers with low/lowish tracks are taken on by publishers - but it just might mean that there is a limit on the level of advance we might be able to pay (again, that does not mean you might not earn more in the future).

Is a lot of this frustrating and can it feel unfair? Yes absolutely.

Is the publisher and editor on your side and do they want success for you? Yes absolutely.

Our goal is to help you reach readers, and sometimes that works, and, very sadly, sometimes it doesn’t. We get frustrated with retailers in the same way writers probably do, and retailers probably get frustrated with publishers too! But it’s important to remember that we are all trying to do the same thing, ultimately, and that getting books into readers hands is always a good thing, and that (I do believe this) excellent writing and dedication will usually pay off. A lot of it is luck. But then isn’t a lot of life luck, too?

As an editor, I really hand on heart want the very best for my authors, and I am GUTTED when I cannot make that happen. I am pretty sure all the editors I know feel exactly the same. And as an author too, I totally understand how hard it can be to feel as though you are fighting for space in a world full of books, and that low sales are rarely your fault, and that a lot of it is out of your control.

I will write another post about what you CAN control soon, as I think and hope that will be helpful for some people who are reading, and as always, I really hope you find this post helpful too - it’s never intended to be dispiriting, but I believe knowledge is power and - to flip things around - yes we live in a world where there is competition and there are a LOT of books. But, then, to end on a positive note, we live in a world with a lot of books. And ultimately, that’s a good thing.

Thank you for reading. And to those of you who have commented and messaged in response to my post about being on submission, sending you luck.

Phoebe x

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