Book publishing will have rarely have had a better two years than during the Covid-19 pandemic. In fact, all told, it's rarely had a better decade.
Links of the week May 2 2022 (18)
Our new feature links to interesting blogs or articles posted online, which will help keep you up to date with what's going on in the book world:
2 May 2022
I base this bold, perhaps surprising, analysis on the latest figures from the UK Publishers Association, which show that sales of books, journals and rights grew 5% in 2021, ending the year on a record high of £6.7bn. That 5% figure builds on the 2% growth reported for 2020, and the result means publishing exits the crisis almost half a billion pounds bigger than it was before the first lockdown. For those who require a longer-term perspective, the stats are even better. Back in 2011, the big number was less than £4bn-meaning, if you believe the two figures are collated broadly on a like-for-like basis, that UK publishing has grown by another half in a decade. Along with the growth, change has also been a constant: exports make up more than half that overall number, and it is likely that digital will soon overtake print.
As 2022 began, the U.S. trade publishing business was dominated by what has been called the Big Five-Simon & Schuster, Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Hachette Book Group, and Macmillan. Before the Penguin-Random House merger in 2013, that group was referred to by PW as the Big Six; if a court battle between PRH and the Department of Justice allows PRH to acquire S&S, a deal that the government blocked in November 2021, it could shrink to the Big Four in late 2022.
The shape of trade publishing in 2022 began forming just weeks before PW turned 125 in 1997. In December 1996, the Penguin Group, backed by parent company Pearson, acquired the Putnam Berkley Publishing Group from its parent company, MCA. Pearson paid $336 million for Putnam, which had sales of $276 million. With that acquisition, Penguin%u2019s trade revenue hit $871.5 million in 1997.
The news earlier this week that Stephen Lotinga is due to step down as chief executive of the Publishers Association was presumably timed to coincide with yesterday's AGM, but there may be some questions around how the decision on his successor has been made.
The latest figures from the PA's own industry survey (The UK Publishing Workforce: Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging in 2021 released on 25th March) show an increase in the diversity of the book trade workforce, with over half of those in executive leadership and senior management positions now female, and increased representation of people from ethnic minority groups (now 15%), so it's legitimate to ask why the PA's own leadership doesn't reflect this trend. I have been in the industry long enough to have seen five PA chief executives come and go - and all were men. Is it not perhaps time for a change? The BA is now headed by the always excellent Meryl Halls, the IPG by the very experienced Bridget Shine, and women are beginning to fill up the top jobs in publishing again, as in the 80s and 90s. And while women are well represented on the PA's governing body (though ethnic representation remains elusive), the search for a new chief executive has been so opaque that we have no way of knowing if there was any attempt to recruit a more diverse candidate.
Books are one of the first entertainment technologies-and one whose fundamentals are essentially the same since Gutenberg rolled out movable type to revolutionize printing in 1440. Given the stability of the format, it's amazing just how much there is still to talk about, and how vital book publishing remains even as many newer technologies have come along.
Last year is a prime example, as unit sales of print books were the highest ever recorded by NPD BookScan since our current method of collecting data began in 2004. Led by growth in adult fiction, annual print volume in the U.S. reached 826.6 million units, rising 9% over the prior year. It's the first time annual sales volume exceeded 800 million units.
Approximately 130 people, as well as others listening online, attended the Book Industry Study Group's first in-person annual meeting in three years, held April 22 in New York City. The meeting focused on the impact of the pandemic and continuing efforts to make the industry more inclusive.
Hachette Book Group CEO Michael Pietsch delivered the keynote and framed his remarks through a "best of times, worst of times" lens. On the plus side, Pietsch cited several positive trends: higher-than-expected book sales over the course of the pandemic, an increase in interest in reading, higher backlist sales fueled in part by more online sales, consumer support for different formats, the ability of publishers to adapt to remote work, the increase in sales fueled by social media, and publishing's commitment to produce more works by people of color. "We learned we were more adaptable than we knew," Pietsch said.
The international circuit begins each year with two spring fairs: the Bologna Children's Book Fair and the London Book Fair, typically held in March and April, respectively. The several book fairs of the summer and fall follow: Beijing International Book Fair and Frankfurt Book FairWorld's largest trade fair for books; held annually mid-October at Frankfurt Trade Fair, Germany; First three days exclusively for trade visitors; general public can attend last two. held, respectively, in August or September and October. The fairs rounding out the year include those in Guadalajara, Mexico, and Sharjah, UAE. A slew of other fairs are also of some international, but primarily regional, importance, including those in Abu Dhabi, Brussels, Buenos Aires, Bogotá, Cairo, Gothenburg, Istanbul, Jerusalem, Kyiv, Leipzig, Montreal, Moscow, New Delhi, Paris, Prague, São Paulo, Seoul, Taipei, and Thessaloniki. One could spend the entire calendar year just traveling to book fairs.
Sometimes world affairs intervene to create challenges for the fairs, such as in the fall of 2008, which saw, first, the Russo-Georgian war in August and the global economic collapse in September. The impact of both events was apparent at the 2008 Frankfurt Book FairWorld's largest trade fair for books; held annually mid-October at Frankfurt Trade Fair, Germany; First three days exclusively for trade visitors; general public can attend last two., where the stands of Greece, Iceland, and Ireland stood nearly empty as a result of the economic crisis, and the Georgian stand, in close proximity to Russia's stand, staged a days-long protest in which Georgians bombarded the Russian stand with paper airplanes made from pages torn out of Russian books.
An online survey by the Society of Authors and the Writers Guild of Great Britain found that many authors end up out of pocket if they sign deals with ‘hybrid' publishers.
The Society of AuthorsThe British authors’ organization, with a membership of over 7,000 writers. Membership is open to those who have had a book published, or who have an offer to publish (without subsidy by the author). Offers individual specialist advice and a range of publications to its members. Has also campaigned successfully on behalf of authors in general for improved terms and established a minimum terms agreement with many publishers. Recently campaigned to get the Public Lending Right fund increased from £5 million to £7 million for the year 2002/2003. Regularly uses input from members to produce comparative surveys of publishers’ royalty payment systems. http://www.societyofauthors.org/ (SoA) and the Writers Guild of Great Britain (WGGB) are calling for reform of the "hybrid"/paid-for publishing sector, in which the writer both pays for publication and hands over the rights to their work (as opposed to self-publishing, where rights are retained by the author), after finding that the average loss for a writer engaged in such a deal was £1,861, with some participants reporting losses as high as £9,900.
Of 240 authors who responded to a joint online survey from the two authors' organisations, conducted over eight weeks between February and April 2021 as part of the report titled Is it a Steal? An Investigation Into "Hybrid"/Paid-For Publishing Services, published with the support of the Authors' Licensing & Collecting Society (ALCS), 125 accepted a "hybrid"/paid-for deal. Among those, only four respondents reported making a profit, while 61 reported making a loss. A mean average of 412 books were sold per deal, with 42 writers selling 100 books or fewer.
Since my debut novel, Other People's Children, was published last April, I've been thinking a lot about who gets to tell which stories. Some of my readers don't seem to think that I should have been allowed to write the book that I wrote.
I'm probably not the first new writer to obsessively read their Goodreads reviews. I know that it's not good for me, but, well, we've all done plenty these past few years that isn't good for us. My publisher's sales force preferred to use initials on the hardcover. Many reviewers wrote that they didn't realize RJ Hoffmann was male until after they finished the book and read the bio or noticed the picture on the jacket. That pleased me. Some of the most impactful characters in the book are women, and the assumption that I was also a woman suggested that I had succeeded, at some level, in writing those characters well. My favorite reviews remain those that refer to me with female pronouns. I was troubled, though, by the reviewers who found it problematic that a man wrote the book.
At least once a month, there's a big discussion online about something or other that has happened in publishing. It might be about where novelists find inspiration, or how authors use sources in nonfiction, or the research practices of journalists versus academics, or the intent of a memoirist, or how much power and influence your average author has. Regardless of the topic, one thing I've noticed, which tends to run through all these discussions, is a series of common misunderstandings and misconceptions about how modern trade publishing actually works.
It makes sense, in a way. Why should your average non-author know what an author actually does in the process of writing, publishing, and promoting a book? Most representations of authors and the publishing industry in popular culture, from television and film to characters in books themselves, do not reflect reality. It's a fantasy, and people project onto that fantasy. They see Carrie Bradshaw enjoying a book party that costs more than most people's weddings, and assume that a toned-down version of this must await most authors at the end of the publishing rainbow.
Yes, every now and then a first-time author who is not already famous will get a big seven-figure advance. But these are usually hot young novelists, and are quite literally one in a million. They were the exact right person in the exact right place at the exact right time. For the rest of us - the remaining nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine-hundred and ninety-nine - the reality is very different.
The number of books read by children is increasing, analysis completed as part of the annual What Kids Are Reading Report (WKAR) from learning and assessment provider Renaissance Learning has revealed. However authors warn "recent years have seen a worrying decline in children and young people's reading enjoyment".
A survey of 1,088,136 pupils across 6,049 schools conducted between 1st August 2020 and 31st July 2021 found approaching 22 million books had been read by them in total, 11% more than reported in the previous year.
Despite the increased number of books being read, however, the report%u2019s authors noted that %u201Crecent years have seen a worrying decline in children and young people%u2019s reading enjoyment,%u201D with enjoyment at an %u201Call time low%u201D at the beginning of 2020, according to findings from a survey of just over 42,500 pupils by the National Literacy TrustUK-based organisation which has campaigned since 1993 to improve literacy standards across all age groups. Excellent research information and details of the many initiatives the charity is currently involved in. www.literacytrust.org.uk. It also has a useful page of news stories on UK literacy, which links to newsletter http://www.readitswapit.co.uk/TheLibrary.aspx presented in the WKAR report. While almost three in five (58.6%) children aged between eight and 18 enjoyed reading in 2016, this had decreased to just 47.8% (a drop of more than 10 percentage points) by early 2020, according to the findings.
David Gordon on the long, rich history of private eyes - and why contemporary novelists keep on turning to them.
I am a lifelong lover and obsessive consumer of all kinds of genre fiction in many mediums, from the original Star Trek series to yakuza and samurai films, from JG Ballard's sci-fi nightmares to PG Wodehouse's sparkling farces. But if there is one genre form that attains a kind of Platonic perfection, the genre of genres, I believe it has to be the mystery, specifically the detective story.
Joël Dicker is often dismissed as a popular fiction writer not to be counted among the literary greats of his era. On the other hand, almost everyone acknowledges his business acumen. The Geneva native is one of the ten most popular authors in the French-speaking world. His popularity among readers outside Europe brings in substantial financial rewards, thanks to the translation of his books into 40 languages.
Dicker has sold 12 million books around the world. Given that author royalties are about 10% of the book price, and that his bestseller La Vérité sur l'Affaire Harry Quebert (The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair) sells for over €20 (CHF20.70) in France, it's easy enough to do the maths.
The 36-year-old is certainly a wealthy man. His fortune has now allowed him to set up his own publishing firm, Rosie & WolfeExternal link, which was launched in Geneva this February. His sixth novel L'Affaire Alaska Sanders (The Alaska Sanders Affair) was released through his own publishing house on March 10 (no date has been fixed for the release of the English edition).
There are some hard ethical questions in the writing of crime fiction.
For me, the most difficult one is how to portray violence.
For one thing, should you depict it all?
And if so, how do you do it with some sense of morality?
I wrestle with this issue all the time. It's a fine line to walk. On the one hand I don't want to sanitize violence-I don't like presenting murder as a parlor game, or worse, a video game in which there are no real consequences. On the other hand, I don't want to cross that thin line into what might be called the pornography of violence, a means to merely titillate the worst angels of our nature.
When I started writing what would become my debut novel, Happy for You, in 2015, the Cambridge Analytica scandal had not yet happened. I wanted to write about technology-specifically, internet technology-which, at the time, was still awash in techno-optimism, but which I was beginning to suspect was having some negative effects on my brain, on my sense of being. A story started to emerge: a woman in her early thirties leaves a PhD program in philosophy for the glittering world of tech-a job at the third-most-popular internet company. There, her team is tasked with developing an app that measures user happiness-an idea that, seven years ago, felt thoroughly speculative.
Immersed in building a character and a voice and a narrative arc that showed how the experience of trying to quantify emotions had changed the narrator, I didn't think much about the fact that the technology itself would hardly stay static over the several years required to write a novel. Which led to a craft question I had not previously considered: How do you write about a subject-in my case, technology-that is constantly changing?
As I came to realize, this was a two-fold problem. First, there was the actual hardware and software that was always advancing. When I began writing, I thought I was writing about a futuristic technology-an app that attempted, through a series of biometrics and user surveys, to assess one's emotions; now, while the technology is not quite as advanced as in my novel, these kinds of apps are more or less reality. And second, there was the ever-developing political context of internet technology, which, as I was writing, rapidly moved from personally unsettling to geopolitically destabilizing.