by Sandra Parshall
“Readers don’t care who the publisher is. All they care
about is getting a good book, regardless of the publisher’s size.”
That’s nice to hear—and I hear it a lot.
But is it true?
For some readers, undoubtedly. But all the evidence—sales
numbers—points to either a bias against books published by small presses or a
complete ignorance of/indifference to their existence. As a crime fiction
author with a small/medium size publisher (Poisoned Pen Press), I’m most
interested in my own genre. But aside from romance, it happens to be the most
popular genre. Why don’t small press writers snag more of those readers?
Recently I asked friends on Facebook, “Why don’t good small
press books find a wider audience?”
The question generated a lot of responses from readers,
writers, a couple of small press publishers, and a current and a former bookseller.
The answers all boiled down to two points:
Small press books don’t
get enough promotion, so most readers never hear about them. (“If few
people hear of a book—even a great one—how can it sell?” asked Jean
Harrington.)
Small press books are
not available in most bookstores, so for bookstore browsers they might as well
not exist. (“If they don’t see the books, they won’t buy the books,” said
Dru Ann Love of the popular blog Dru’s Book Musings. “It’s all about placement and signage
and word of mouth.” Author Karen E. Olson commented, “It’s all about distribution.
If a book is going to succeed it needs to be everywhere.”)
Lack of availability was a problem for many who commented.
Book buyers are accustomed to going to a store and finding a book the day it’s
officially released, or finding a pre-ordered book from Amazon in their
mailboxes on publication day. This often doesn’t happen with small press books.
If readers can’t get a book right away, they’re likely to forget about it.
Avid crime fiction readers who spend a lot of time online,
reading DorothyL, review blogs, and authors’ blogs, may know about small press
books, but the average reader never sees those sources of information.
MARKETING AND AWARENESS
Pamela Mains, a former bookstore owner and avid reader, said,
“I found out about the books at conferences
by talking to authors and other readers. The average person does not have (or
take) this opportunity. Also, I follow the mystery award circuit for new
authors I may not have read before. These could be large or small presses.
Unfortunately, the public at large follows the big news publications. They
don't do the digging. I would hand-sell the books I loved to people who 9 out
of 10 times would come back and thank me for introducing them to a new author.
With the demise of the independent bookstore, this is rarely done anymore. In
my opinion, for small press books, it's still word of mouth and book clubs.
It's a slow burn.”
Tony Burton offered his
perspective as publisher of Wolfmont Press: “Marketing budgets are tight. REAL
distribution is expensive. If you use mass offset printing, there is a large
up-front expense and then you have to pay for storage, and pay taxes on the
books left at the end of the year. But, if you use print-on-demand, it is two
to three times as expensive as offset printing, so you either can't offer
bookstores the desired discount, or you have to overprice the book in order to
do so. Small presses can't bribe chain bookstores to put them into the choice
places. No co-op from most small presses.”
Author Susan Froetschel added:
“Marketing is now national and international. The population is expanding. But
each person can only read so much and there is more competition to reading as
an activity. Internet and other broad marketing efforts hit all. So much of our
audience is reading the same 20 or 50 or 100 books, more or less, each year. So
despite the increased population/audience, the need for new books has held
steady or even shrunk even as the supply has increased.”
Small press books are “hard to
find… through the clutter,” said bookseller and small press publisher Jim Huang.
“I say that even as a bookseller who's eager to offer a diverse and interesting
selection, including books from all kinds of presses. (Come visit the Kenyon
College Bookstore some time and see for
yourself.) It IS all about distribution -- it has to be possible for stores to
easily obtain books on competitive terms, something that many small presses
don't get. But it starts with awareness, even at the store level. The reason
the St. Martin's first novel has a better shot with us [than a small press book]
is that there's a sales rep walking in our door to encourage us to stock that
book.”
“What it comes down to,” said mystery author
Timothy Hallinan, “is a) marketing money that can be spent on more review copies,
a more personalized review approach, a bigger first printing, representatives
to call on bookstores and one or two who specialize, 24 hours a day, on Amazon
or B&N, a regional sales force, often free-lancers, who can be mobilized
behind a book the company particularly cares about, the budget to buy special
placement on Amazon or on front tables at B&N, etc. And b) I also think
there's a New York advantage; publishing people in the Big Apple are more
likely to know or have worked with some of the gatekeepers at the few remaining
print review outlets. Finally (and it's a slender advantage if it even is an
advantage) most big pubs still hew to the hardcover/paperback model, meaning
that there are two chances to work the same title, and once in a very great
while a successful PB follows an ignored hardcover.”
BOOKSTORES STILL MATTER
Although market figures show that only a third of book sales
are now made at brick-and-mortar stores, and some of those who responded to my
question said they never set foot in bookstores these days, placement in stores
is still important. Barnes & Noble may stock some literary fiction from
small imprints, but it stocks very few genre books from presses that aren’t
part of the big conglomerates. Yes, they’ll order a book for you, but you’re
not going to see it on the shelf when you’re browsing and making impulse buys. Independent
bookstores, with less space and less ability to take chances, may not stock many
small press books either.
People often ask me why they can’t find my books in chain
stores, and they seem to think less of me as a writer because I’m shut out of
that market. A couple of things are at work here, and the average reader has
little understanding of or interest in the economic realities. First, small
presses can’t afford to make the upfront investment in printing tens of
thousands of copies of every book, so they can’t distribute widely. They can’t
afford to pay the co-op money that chain stores demand — basically, payment for
shelf space and special placement within the store. Those books piled on the
table just inside the door or packed into end-of-aisle displays are there in
your path because the publishers paid to put them there.
THE PROBLEM OF REVIEWS
As for promotion, major publishers can run big ads for their
books and give away hundreds, even thousands, of advance reader copies to
generate buzz. They employ fulltime publicists to send out a ton of review copies. When the few book review
publications still in existence choose books to present to their readers, the
choices are overwhelmingly from large imprints. “Most
reviewers get covered over with books from major publishers,” Tony Burton said.
“If you work for a big newspaper or something like that, your boss will want
you to review the book that will probably show up on the front page of Amazon
or the end cap at B&N... we all know that the major news will be about
books that are talked about in People, Time, and the NYT, and usually NOT about
a book that was published by a company with 30 or 40 active titles in print.”
Mystery Scene and Crimespree
magazines and numerous blog reviewers do a great job of covering small press
crime fiction, but they reach a relatively small audience of dedicated readers
who care enough to spend time looking for new-to-them authors.
The industry and library magazines — Publishers Weekly,
Kirkus, Booklist, Library Journal — do feature small press books, bestowing
praise and starred reviews on many. Those reviews help library sales, but the average
person never sees those magazines and may be unimpressed by the review snippets
on book covers or Amazon. Many people want to read what everybody else is
buying, so a book that starts out with a bang, getting newspaper reviews, flooding
the stores and selling thousands of copies in its first week of publication, may
continue to sell for weeks, months, a year or more because a lot of people
reading it equals a lot of people talking about it. No small press can afford the
kind of push that the Big Six (or is it Five now?) can give the books they’ve
decided to turn into bestsellers.
SMALL PRESS WRITERS AREN'T ALONE
But they don’t give that push to
every book. The problem of under-exposure and lack of publisher promotion isn’t
limited to small press authors, Tim Hallinan pointed out. “The vast majority of
books published every year, by small presses and large, vanish without a trace.
I've written some of them, and they were all published by the so-called big six.
My six novels in the 1990s, which got stars in (literally) all the trades and
all that, never made it into B&N, nor were they in most specialty/
independent stores. No book I EVER wrote while Borders was in business was on
the shelves in their stores, including one that was nominated for a Edgar. Very
few small-press authors are much more invisible than a great many big six
writers; we labor in identical obscurity.” (Tim was dropped by a major
publisher just before his Edgar Award nomination was announced and is now
published by Soho.)
Digital versions of major print bestsellers also dominate
the e-book bestseller lists. But in this realm we’ve seen some startling breakthroughs
by self-published authors who have risen out of nowhere to outsell the
Pattersons and Grishams, at least for a while. So e-books, you might think, are
the great levelers, and this is where small press and midlist authors can find
their audiences. But no. I have yet to see the digital version of any small
press book break out on the paid e-book
bestseller lists. My first novel, The
Heat of the Moon, had an impressive run in the top spot on the mystery and
popular fiction bestseller lists when the Kindle version was briefly offered
free. It “sold” tens of thousands of downloads. But none of my books has come
close to selling that well for money.
If it were just me, or only some small press authors, whose
books consistently meet this fate, I wouldn’t have a mystery to solve. After
all, not every book will please a large audience. But when almost none of the small press books published make much money for
their authors, despite starred reviews and heaps of praise from readers who
have discovered them, I have to wonder if a general bias exists.
Do readers, consciously or unconsciously, feel that a small
press book is of lesser quality than one published in New York? That there must
be something wrong with a writer who can’t get published by a huge
conglomerate? That the story, the characters, the writing, must be substandard?
What do you think?
And how do you hear about small press books?
If you want to use the comments section to name some small press writers/books you believe deserve a bigger audience, feel free!
