Woke publishers ‘paid huge sums for books that flopped’ - Times article

[SirSamVimesCityWatch]

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/7ea5efaf-b36d-47d3-9418-f251e8f95376?shareToken=0b1e9d8a8e3ca314f562ed93f72ada34

Oh deary me.

"Flatiron also paid more than $3 million for the memoir of Elliot Page in which the Hollywood actor discussed his gender transition. The book sold fewer than 68,000 copies, according to BookScan."

That's a hell of a flop.

"Flatiron also paid more than $3 million for the memoir of Elliot Page in which the Hollywood actor discussed his gender transition. The book sold fewer than 68,000 copies, according to BookScan."

Shook

Major X post sorry 😂

Just doing some googling/ sums.

Apparently 30% profit per book (for the publisher) is about standard.

Lets say average sale price of $20. So $6 profit per book. 6 × 68,000 = 408,000.

$3,000,000 - $408,000 = $2,592,000 loss.

Fuck!!

And I bet a huge chunk of the 68,000 was bought by the publishers themselves.

Is it me, or is that the sound of many experienced and professional middle aged women desperately trying not to say the words 'I told you so'?

The huge, huge gulf between a virtue signal and actually knowing your customers and what they'll part with money for. Oh well, what a shame.

Bookscan results undercook the number of copies sold. The estimates are that Bookscan captures about 60-70% of books sold but there are whole categories they do not cover, I think including the books bought directly from the publisher and from some indie booksellers.

The writer and publisher know how many copies were sold (represented on a royalty statement but most publishers like PRH also have author portals where you can sign in and track weekly).

So it would not be accurate to say Page's book sold fewer than 70k copies (in one territory? That's not clear from the article) but is accurate to say it's a massive flop.

It would be funny if it wasn’t being subsidised by the less celebrity authors that actually do sell, what with their having skill at writing and something to say.

They promoted the hell out of that book too. Dread to think what the marketing budget was on top of the advance. Also, seems like people shared the articles to virtue signal but not actually wanted to spend their own money or time buying or reading the book that they promoted to others. It's all about optics isn't it

The toxicity of the current setup cannot be understated. A $3 million advance on one book to one author is 300 $10,000 advances on 300 books to 300 authors.

My opinion is that they need to stop paying advances to established authors and celebrities anyway, and move to just paying on a royalty-based model for them. They don't need the money, it would balance the books better at the publishing house and it would be fairer if publishers could put that money into new and emerging authors (I have seen first-hand how arbitrary the decision-making in publishing is).

I don't like advances as a system, it feels too much like borrowing money on the promise that I might be able to repay it one day. Only if you default on it through no fault of your own, your career is over rather than facing any legal action. And the success of the book is almost entirely down to the marketing campaign and not all books are marketed equally (not even slightly). I had an argument with my publisher once because I refused an advance on these grounds. They just couldn't fathom it.

There is no way a movie star or a celebrity needs $3 million more than Karen Smith the unknown author who has borrowed on credit cards to get her breakthrough novel professionally edited so she stands a chance of getting her first contract in the modern publishing landscape.

It was extremely unlikely that book by that author was ever going to recoup a $3m advance so I have to wonder in these sorts of cases whether the publishers' commissioning editors are getting a cut from the celebrity authors. Nothing would surprise me in the publishing world TBH, it looks like an amazing institution from the outside but it's really quite corrupt and morally bankrupt in key places.

Wonder if Munroe Bergdorf's book was one of the £££ flops? Anyone got access to the sales charts?

Turns out the handmaidens and TRAs don't a) read anything other than twitter and b) don't want to spend money im support of their cause.

Unlike GC people who quite often do both.

Surprise surprise.

Yes it’s even more striking compared to the surprise successes of various GC books which had no marketing campaign and even had trouble finding publishers at all.

And indeed, often had to contend with bookshop staff taking them off display etc.

There’s an interesting discussion about the publishing industry not publishing books that readers want on Meghan Daum’s Unspeakable podcast with NYT columnist Pamela Paul. It chimes with this thread.

Another editor said some of the new employees were out of their depth and many were “young people without previous publishing experience who struggled to write a professional email”. Some of the new hires are accused of signing huge book deals that flopped.

This might just be me, and I have no experience of the publishing industry, but if you're hiring someone with no experience who can't even write an email, maybe not let them sign off on 'huge book deals'?

Surely publishing was one of the least safe Industries to take up virtue signalling to this scale? It's different to, for example, M&S, who might seriously piss their customers off by letting men in the changing rooms but probably retain many who like the products and the convenience. But you can't actually force people (yet) to buy books they don't want to buy.

Did they really not realise that effectively silencing any dissent on gender identity does not = everybody finding gender identity navel gazing fascinating and wanting to read about it? They must be spectacularly out of touch.

It's just a case of giving the public what they want. Hollywood may slowly be coming to terms with it, and struggling sales of niche books should soon get publishers to realise that no one outside of publishing cares about these issues.

That book Grace Livery "A work of staggering penis" apparently had publishers fighting over each other to get the rights. That was a flop.

I've heard publishers contact people who do online comics on trans issues stating that they would like to publish the stuff as a book.

You get a lot of woke millennials (and now gen-z) working for the publishers who think that tweets equals sales. I've seen too many items with a lot of tweets saying "I'm buying this" not actually translate into real sales.

You get a lot of woke millennials (and now gen-z) working for the publishers who think that tweets equals sales.

Indeed. They all seem to read a lot (online), but not actual books (online, audio or otherwise).

Oh dear how sad
Never mind 😉

Are books that go onto libraries classified as a ‘sell’? Plus all the discount bookshops. So not making much on those sales I guess.

I think that’s key - the biggest book-buying demographic is middle-aged and older women. Young people with blue hair are more interested in watching Tik Tok videos than buying books.

You might expect publishers to know that.

Are you saying that its almost as if the apparently 'uneducated' read more?

It's an interesting one, taking aside the politics mentioned in the article, I can see why publishers thought these kinds of titles would be well-received and supported by the buying public.

Young Adult lists have done well as a growing market and it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that some of those young book-buying adults would continue with those interests, and buying habits into more mature adulthood. The question is why hasn't that happened?

Unquestionably publishing (certainly as I remember it in the UK) was not a diverse industry, it was also not at all a well-paid industry meaning that many who couldn't afford to stay in it moved on. It's certainly positive if the industry is genuinely trying to broaden its workforce, but that isn't going to happen in just a couple of years. Also if inexperienced editors have been allowed to sign off huge advances that the publishers won't recoup, that's a failure of senior management and I'm uncomfortable with the idea of the entire blame being hung around the neck of inexperienced staff.