From The Bookseller:
This year’s Bologna Children’s Book Fair began with “a positive vibe” for many UK fairgoers, despite some anticipating a “rocky road” ahead as the impact of Brexit begins to hit their businesses.
. . . .
Usborne UK and commercial sales manager Christian Herrison noted a “positive vibe” at the fair, and said Brexit had rarely been mentioned in meetings at the fair. But he added: “I’d say Brexit is not at the forefront of people’s minds, but it’s there. It’s a concern. The only effect we’ve felt is the drop in the pound, which is hurting lots of publishers and making print buying more expensive. We will have to review r.r.p.s and how we produce books, and consider things such as whether we can afford to put as many stickers in our sticker books.”
United Agents’ Jodie Hodges echoed Herrison’s concerns. She said: “I worry about the costs of expensive books: picture books, novelty, pop-ups, board books etc. If the pound continues to suffer then the costs associated with producing these books will rise and inevitably start having an effect on authors and illustrators… It’s possible that advances and royalties will be hit.”
Hodges also pointed out the “Catch-22” for illustrators: they “are already barely earning enough from their advances and royalties, and they are also discouraged from publishing too widely for fear of cannibalising their own sales (domestically and internationally)… If it becomes even harder [for them] to earn a living from books then this will become a bigger issue.”
Agent Ben Illis said “the path ahead is a rocky one”, and he too envisioned a squeeze on authors and illustrators as publishers’ costs rose. Yet there may be a bright side, he said. “This may provoke a shake-up in the standard terms of agreement between authors and publishers. It may even open the door to some interesting new contractual models, which many would say would not be before time.”
Link to the rest at The Bookseller
Am I missing something? I don’t see why the drop in the value of the pound would hurt publishers overall. Yes, having books printed in China probably costs more, but that would be balanced by foreign sales. I’m currently earning more pounds from my American sales, and so must they be.
I don’t understand this. The first meaning of publishing wide that occurs to me is publishing, for example, in both the UK and US. How do UK sales cannibalize US sales, or vice versa?
The second meaning that occurs to me is selling through different vendors. Again, how do sales at Chain A cannibalize sales at Chain B?
Finally, publish widely for illustrators might mean collaborating with several writers. If there is a book out by Bob and Mary and a book out by Jane and Mary, I can see that sales of one might cut into sales of the other. But what does Mary care?
Could someone smarter than me please explain why it is a bad thing to be widely published.
The only thing I could think of is the trad-pub dilemma we’re already watching them suffer under.
The old ‘If I have the same thing in different formats then the cheaper format will kill the more expensive ones’ problem.
What they can’t seem to notice is if they don’t have it in the format the reader wants they will lose the sale — no matter the price-point of the media they had that the reader didn’t want.
The other (also trad-pub) ‘cannibalising their own sales’ is them thinking that if they have too many books out there it will equal less sales per book/total instead of more. (Only true if the readers they don’t want/like to read them in the first place.)
To be honest I’m not sure how an illustrator can cannibalize sales, as I’m skeptical that they’re “names” the way the author is.
Thinking back to my childhood, I’m sure I noted the names of some illustrators, but at the end of the day I wanted to read the adventures of “Clifford the Big Red Dog” and wouldn’t have cared if the illustrator was swapped out — so long as Clifford and Emily Elizabeth looked as they were “supposed to.”
I share your confusion; I don’t see how illustrators are hurting themselves by working on Clifford and Madeline and Curious George.
Maybe the publishers could move out of Central London, and cut their overheads.
… “are already barely earning enough from their advances and royalties” …
Then they were in trouble already and they’re now entering the ‘adapt or die’ phase.