Chances of a new author

I'll argue the opposite. I download WAY more music (both purchased and free) than I ever bought at the record shop. I've found some of my current favorites by following the "If you like... then you might like..." links to people I'd never heard before. It's easier and less risky for the listener to take a chance on someone new. The same will be true of readers and writers.

The only thing that's changed/changing is how books get delivered to the reader. People are still reading and people are still writing.

I agree with Chris. The models are changing but people still read. I think chances for a new writer to be published are as good as a new writer makes them. Getting published traditionally is hard. It's always been hard and will always be hard.

What I'd like to see is more authors getting their breaks with E pubs (even with the big name publishers). They can afford to take more chances here and if you take off in e pub you get offered a print contract.

(those are all the opinions of someone who does not work in the industry)

Getting published is not a lottery. It's impossible to determine the "chance" of someone getting published, because all people (and manuscripts) are not created equally. Someone who works his ass off learning the business and honing his craft, who writes a great story and presents himself professionally, and who approaches the pursuit of publication with realistic expectations and steeled against rejection is going to have a great chance of being published. Period.

There are a lot of agents out there. There are big publishers, independent publishers, e-publishers... and there will probably be models created in the coming years we haven't dreamed of now. I'd say the outlook is changing, but still positive.

It's the zombie apocalypse that's going to kill books. Zombies don't read, and they hate the taste of paper and ink.

So, either that or the Borg invasion.

Eddyz Aquila said:

Yes, there are many other threads about this, but this is because of the recent changes in the industry.

With all the Waterstones, Borders, HMV.... going down, what are the chances for a debut author to become published nowadays? Would they still be the same as before, would they be lower, would they be higher?

I'm asking this because there is a lot of change and reinvention in the market, and not all of it is good. Consider the bankruptcy and problems of independent booksellers and even large ones, this means less publicity and availability of books so that means lower sales. Lower sales means lower risk taking by the publishers... and so on and so forth, a never ending bad karma cycle.

I'm not the one with the doom and gloom, books are still sold like bread out of the oven but it's the chances of a new author that I'm worried about.

Thoughts?

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Were you going to sell your book to Borders or Waterstones?

Look, these places have nothing to do with publishing, or with buying books. People can believe it or not, but there was never a chance that all the chains were going to survive. I suspect even B&N will go under eventually. It's good business model short term, and a horrible business model long term.

Last time I checked, books sales were down only a tiny bit, well within norms. The problem with Borders, with Waterstones, with B&N, has nothing to do with books selling, but with the business model they used. They all thought the good times were going to last forever, they took out needless loans, and made very expensive decisions when times were good, and can't pay for them now that times are bad. They overextended, pure and simple.

From what I've read, none of them are in trouble because of book sales themselves, but because they did really stupid things when the economy was booming.

Books are still going to sell, and sales are fine. As always, you chances are just about 100%, if you write a really good book, and just about 0%, if you write a bad book.

Eddyz Aquila said:

I'm talking hypothetically here where the author has a publishable manuscript and one that can sell. I was referring to his chances of seeing his book on the shelves with those details in mind.

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If publishable and sellable, then it will find its way into the readers hands in one way or another.

Of course, not all publishable and sellable manuscripts are created equal either. There are also the factors of the publishers marketing plan, competition with similar books in the genre (who wants to launch a vampire book the same week as Stephenie Meyer?), market conditions, and just plain old luck. I'm not sure the demise of brick-and-mortar stores changes any of that. (But as amrose said, I'm not in the industry. I'm happy to be educated by someone more knowledgable).

Eddyz Aquila said:

I'm talking hypothetically here where the author has a publishable manuscript and one that can sell. I was referring to his chances of seeing his book on the shelves with those details in mind.

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I strongly suggest you sign up for Publisher's Marketplace for a month so you can get a clearer picture of the deals being made. Books are still selling just fine. Books by debut authors are selling just fine.

You'll also see that B&N's sales are up 67% from a year ago.

Worry about the only thing you can control: your writing.

On shelves? Probably less chance. As others have pointed out, the market is changing. But the proliferation of ebooks means it's probably easier to get published now than at any other time in history. Compared to print, e-presses have very little in the way of startup costs, and a lot less cost to produce a finished product (yes, they still have to spend money to edit and promote--those that do--but it's still less than having to do all that AND pay for a print run). So they can afford to take risks on projects that print presses can't.

People talk sometimes about the lower quality overall of e-books, and to a certain extent that's true--being able to put out a book easily does mean that SOME (for godssake, not ALL) e-presses aren't as choosy about their product. But the upside is that niche books have a better chance of getting out there.

It's such a subjective business and I hold to the following notion: if you write something that is mind-blowingly awesome it will find a home and people will buy it.

Publishers aren't going to stop publishing books. Businesses don't stop doing something that's profitable just because the landscape of risk changes. The shift from physical to ebooks means they can take more risks, not less--no worries over printing costs, shelf space, returns, etc.

What will change is the way authors are compensated. Advances will probably become increasingly rare. Many e-pubs don't even pay advances at all, which is part of what enables them to take more risks--there's little outlay upfront.

I'm not excited about the vanishing advance. Ultimately, I think it'll lead to even fewer fiction writers who actually write for a living (not that the number is high now), and encourage writers to write for quantity rather than quality, in order to have as many titles out as possible earning royalties.

It also has implications for the evolution of fiction. Writing a novel is a long, lonely labor of love. If a) the barriers of entry (to publishing) are significantly lowered and b) the system rewards the prolific, then I think we'll see an emphasis on shorter fiction, fiction that doesn't take as long to produce, and a gradual diminishing of quality.

Chances of a new author getting published? Better than ever.

Chances of a new author getting an adequate advance and making a career out of writing fiction? Probably worse.

Again, I agree with Chris here.

leahzero said:

It also has implications for the evolution of fiction. Writing a novel is a long, lonely labor of love. If a) the barriers of entry (to publishing) are significantly lowered and b) the system rewards the prolific, then I think we'll see an emphasis on shorter fiction, fiction that doesn't take as long to produce, and a gradual diminishing of quality.

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All this has already come to pass. Ebooks via amazon/kindle, smashwords, and so forth are fairly easy to format and put up for sale. The prolific authors and the authors converting their extensive backlists into ebooks are seeing money coming in. And there's been a long-running complaint that many ebooks aren't very well written (ymmv, naturally).

Ebooks are evolving publishing. Writing is still a labor of love, but it's getting easier and faster to get stories to the readers. A writer can write a short story in a few hours, edit it, format it, and post it up for sale and potentially see returns the same day. Writers get royalties faster and readers get the stories they want to read faster.

EDITED to add: It's the project triangle, really. You want stories to be cheap price, delivered fast, and good quality. Pick two.

Look at any book with hundreds of reviews on Amazon, and you will see that many of those reviews are one star. Even top sellers don't appeal to everyone. So this is where luck comes in: finding an agent who thinks your book is worth five stars AND is worth her time to sell it. So the question is really not getting published (as you can self publish in any case, or find a small publisher if your book is good enough) but getting published by a major publisher AND selling a lot of books. The odds? Probably a thousand to one against. But like playing the lottery, you can improve your odds by sheer persistence. By writing not just one good book, but many. By winning awards. By meeting people in the business and getting your name recognized, because just getting people to read your stuff is a very high hurdle.

Eddyz Aquila:
Consider the bankruptcy and problems of independent booksellers and even large ones, this means less publicity and availability of books so that means lower sales.

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Like Jamesaritchie said, book sales are actually holding pretty stable at the moment and the problems being faced by independent book stores and the chainstores are actually not driven by a lack of public demand for books, but by a combination of:

- competition from supermarkets, who are able to sell more copies of the biggest name authors for lower prices;

- competition from Amazon, which does not have the same lease costs that the independents/chainstores have nor the high personnel costs and which had first mover advantage in the on-line market, which has given it the ability to negotiate (or in some cases, seek to impose) deep discounts on publishers which aren't otherwise available;

- higher costs in physically stocking books;

- higher lease costs;

- personnel costs.

The problem isn't that people don't want to buy books. The problem is that people want a bargain on books so if there are 2 outlets selling the same book and one is 60% cheaper than the other one, then they're going to go for the cheapest.

There's a really good book that looks at the fiction publishing industry and how it operates in the UK and US - Merchants of Culture by John B. Thompson. I'd strongly suggest that you read it.

Eddyz Aquila:
I'm talking hypothetically here where the author has a publishable manuscript and one that can sell. I was referring to his chances of seeing his book on the shelves with those details in mind.

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People keep talking about technology and ebooks replacing print books. Personally, I don't see that happening. There are some people who like printed books (I know that I prefer them to ereaders at the moment).

The issue is whether the retail side of the industry can come up with a physical presence model that works more economically for them, e.g. by using POD technology in store to print books there and then. Amazon is, ironically, taking a look at running some physical shops with directly available stock.

Contact lenses and laser eye surgery haven't replaced spectacles. The techologies exist side by side.

Eddyz Aquila:
The lower the advance the lower the interest in promoting the author to get the advance back. An advance is both a risk and a secure investment. The publisher wants his money back, the author wants to get his money back as well through promotion and more books.

When this disappears, there's an even lower incentive to produce very high quality books when you can produce a decent/good book fast just to sell it.

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I disagree.

Author A might have a lower advance from Simon & Schuster than Author B but both will have the same quality product. The difference is that while Author B might have his/her books on the 3 for 2 table and in Tescos and Sainsburys, Author B also faces more pressure to get the sales to justify the publisher's investment. If Author A's sales exceed the expectations of the lower advance, then S&S is more likely to increase their marketing budget for them the next time around.

Finally there's the fact that the big commercial shareholders all have institutional investors and shareholders who want them to make money. Publishers that start putting out shitty books with low production values get punished in market share and in turn in sinking share prices.

MM