The Book Trade in the 21st. Century

The face of publishing in the new century is not all that one could wish for. Each year, it becomes more difficult for all four legs of the book trade table to hold things together in their corner - authors, publishers, booksellers and readers. All four need good health in order for the whole industry to stay healthy, as is true for the human body; if either the head, body, arms or legs give up the ghost, the rest of the body is in serious trouble.

Current data shows some thought-provoking information:

~  There are over 130,000 new titles released each year, in the UK alone. Over 190,000 in the USA.

~  Of the roughly 1.5 million books currently in print, about half did not sell one copy last year.

~  In the UK, the average book sells only about 250 copies a year.

~  Twenty five percent of the smaller independent bookshops have closed in the last ten years, and the pace is accelerating.

~  The major bookshop chains in the UK nowadays insist on at least 50% discount from publishers, the supermarkets want something above 80%, and the book clubs even more. Is there any other industry that can cope with 80% discounts to the retailer? This is not tenable in the long run. The supermarkets in particular are a problem; they treat books as they do any tube of toothpaste on their shelves. Unfortunately, there is a vast difference between the creation of a tube of toothpaste and a book, and the survival of books depends on someone in authority realising this and doing something about it.
Nevertheless, the position at the moment is that the supermarkets hold sway, and, like any other corporate body, their prime objective is to produce the best dividends possible for their shareholders. Nothing wrong with that, in principle, it’s just that current legislation allows this to happen, whatever the cost to the producer(s).

~  Libraries are finding that they have fewer and fewer readers, while funding decreases as well. The reasons aren’t clear; people’s spending power worsens and they buy fewer books, but it’s puzzling that libraries also see a significant drop in lending rates.

Whatever the reasons and whatever possible solutions there may be, all in all, book life is tough. If the bookshops are fighting to survive, by reducing stock levels (as at 1st July 2005, Bookseller magazine reports that Waterstones branches have been instructed to order only one copy at a time of books other than the top selling items), and demanding higher discounts, this reduces the publishers’ income, which then affects authors accordingly.

Self-Publishing and Print On Demand

At the same time, the publishing process has become more and more accessible. Print On Demand (POD) technology has been a real breakthrough, and self-published books are definitely accessible without breaking one’s pocket and requiring a second mortgage (that’s a joke - don’t even think of that route to produce a book - it’s financial suicide). This is fortunate, because publishers generally are taking on fewer new books - even from their existing authors - and concentrating on the major blockbusters. It is understandable if you look at the situation from a commercial point of view: if an average book is going to produce something like £250 income in a year, does it make sense to spend literally thousands of pounds in producing and printing it? No business can survive that way.

On the other hand, although (POD) has made smaller print runs more viable, it doesn’t really change the production side of publishing. For an author to publish his one book, he would need to learn the whole publishing process to quite a large extent, then buy the software needed to typeset the book and mould it into something that a printer can feed to his printing system.
Although it’s technically possible to give some printers a word processing file and have them pat it into a book, that’s not the simple answer that it seems to be. You would have a far better chance of success with a professional page-layout program, such as the industry standard Quark Xpress (about £1,200 for that) or a more recent and more up-to-date equivalent, Adobe InDesign at about half that price. Throw in the editing, cover design, and a few other bits and pieces, and you’re looking at anything up to £3,000 without blinking, and that’s before you learn all that’s involved, how to work the software and cope with the inevitable mistakes made along the way…
Yes, a relatively good quality book is not too difficult to produce, but one that’s up to the standard that you yourself would be prepared to fork out a tenner for in a bookshop - that’s another story.

All told, self-publishing is quite a tall order, albeit well worthwhile. You’ll catch a glimpse of what’s involved if I tell you that one of the many self-publishing books on the market at the moment - a very good one, one that I insist on keeping in our library - has 458 pages in it. The updated edition is probably even bigger. The book is “The Self Publishing Manual” by Dan Poynter, and is recommended reading for any potential self-publisher.

Assisted Self-Publishing

Once you’ve read that book, my next suggestion is that you find someone in the publishing business who will actually help you by doing some or all of the processes for you... my reasons are listed more fully in the PDF files accessible by clicking the icons below. There are pages and pages of information there, but it still isn’t a patch on all that’s involved.

Whether you come to us for your assisted self-publishing project or go somewhere else, I strongly urge you to do a thorough check first of all (asking your local bookshop manager as well, for advice in need) - to ensure that you avoid the vanity publishers. There are many reasons, but one stands out - bookshops will not take books from the vanity presses; they know the quality one way or another is not there. And, why should they? There are hundreds of thousands of “real” books around, that stand a far better chance of  getting sold.
Not that you are guaranteed to get into the bookshops in any event, but you definitely won’t, working through a vanity publisher. If you want a product that you can genuinely be proud of, find an established trade publisher that does assisted self-publishing as well, like we do, and have a look at samples of their past work as well.

Click on the icons below to open the relative PDF files.

Print and / or save the files, to read later; there’s over thirty pages between them, in all.

If you don’t have Adobe Acrobat Reader with which to open PDF files,
visit their website (www.adobe.com) and download the free Reader. It’s essential for any web-surfing nowadays.