Amazon’s 2012 bestseller list shows publishers and authors need each other
From Paid Content:
Amazon released its list of the bestselling books of 2012 on Friday morning. The list is a great summary of one of the key themes in book publishing in 2012: Self-published authors and traditional publishers need each other.
In October, Publishing Perspectives editor-in-chief Ed Nawotka wrote a story that’s stuck with me. “What Author Could Possibly Need a Publisher?” appeared in Publishing Perspectives’ Frankfurt Book Fair daily (PDF). The story was about 50 Shades of Grey, the erotic trilogy by E.L. James that began its life as Twilight fan fiction and was then published by a small Australian publisher before being snapped up by Random House’s Vintage in a seven-figure deal and widely distributed. Nawotka wrote:
“Simply put, amid the continuing economic recession, the publishing industry needed Fifty Shades of Grey. James didn’t need a publisher as such, but once she turned to the pros, her relatively modest success was turned into a maelstrom of money. And, for 2012 at least, put bestsellers — and one might argue, the publishing industry itself — back in the black.”
. . . .
I don’t want to downplay the success of these titles before they were traditionally published and distributed in print. 50 Shades, Bared to You and The Marriage Bargain all hit the New York Times ebook bestseller list before being acquired by big publishers. The 50 Shades trilogy had sold 250,000 copies, mostly as ebooks, before it was bought by Random House; The Marriage Bargain sold over 150,000 copies as an ebook in its first three months of publication, before it was bought by Simon & Schuster. But the books either weren’t in print or were only available via print-on-demand. In June, Sylvia Day told BookPage:
The biggest and most obvious advantage to traditional publishing is the print run and distribution for Bared to You. There’s no way I would’ve come anywhere near 500,000 print copies, nor would Bared have ever been found in Walmart, Target, Costco, BJs, Kroger, etc. as a self-published book.
Link to the rest at Paid Content and thanks to Sean for the tip.
, Amazon will pay Passive Guy a small affiliate commission on any of your purchases.
Precisely. And without my state lottery and its voluntary tax on poor people, I’d never have a dream of winning a $500,000,000 PowerBall jackpot.
I thought that if you paid the extra distribution fee or went with Lightening Source that you then got into the same catalogue that stores order books from to put in their stores. If your book was selling like these books did, would these stores not find you in the catalogue to order?
Yes, that is true on those indie publishing POD options getting into catalogues that bookstores can order from. However, POD has limits. If something hits best seller status like that, the POD system gets swamped with orders for the books, can’t keep up, and that causes sales to die off. If a bookstore wants to order it, but there is a month backorder on it, it will not get ordered for fear the fad would have passed by the time they get their copies.
The bulk of her sales came from ebooks. I’ll be more interested to see how Wool’s special deal plays out. Now that would be a combo of interest to me, to have a publisher pick up the print book sales and distribution. That’s what they are good at. It also shows the leverage a successful indie publishing experience can create with the traditional publishers.
Put the publishing industry in the black, but as shown in an earlier article, that’s no guarantee that James didn’t lose some money over the deal.
Exactly.
Exactly Liana echoed. James lost potential money.
Not only that, but that’s too broad sweeping of a statement to make. It put one publisher in the black, not the whole publishing industry. And enabled that publisher to give some nice advances to their employees.
*snort*
While publishers *can* offer value–namely print–I wouldn’t go so far as to say authors *need* them anymore. If the apocalypse came, and all publishers went the way of the earth, I’m pretty certain authors would still find ways to share their stories.
However, without content to publish, publishers wouldn’t fare very well.
Publishers definitely need authors and always will.
Authors… it depends on what you want. If you want to be the next J.K. Rowling, then yes, you’ll need a publisher who can provide you with good print distribution. (Not that there’s more than a fair chance you’ll actually get that out of them.) But if what you really want is just to make a good living and maintain control of your creative property then you definitely DO NOT need a publisher. In fact, a publisher is more likely to do you harm.
Writers do not NEED Publishers anymore. They need someone to sell their books. They can publish themselves.
They may, in some cases (I believe erroneously), WANT a Publisher, but they no longer need them.
Just the facts.
Let’s think of a few other ways to spin this:
Amazon saves publishing – essentially all of the profits for trad pub mass market fiction in 2012 came from a handful of books that were originally self-published ebooks, a situation made possible by Amazon’s Kindle. Do the math, take away the profits from those books and trad pub had roughly a break even year.
Publishers loses millions due to inabilty to figure out what customers want – figure out how much the publishers could have made if they had signed these noob writers to the usual contracts.
James, Day, and Probst ripped off by big pub – self-pubbed authors bring sure-fire success and get measly advances in return.
“The list is a great summary of one of the key themes in book publishing in 2012: Self-published authors and traditional publishers need each other.”
I just have to say, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Writers whose self-pub books are rocking the bestseller list are not like all self-pub authors. What works for them isn’t the same as what works for everyone else. Can traditional publishers survive off of that? Because self-pub authors can survive without them.