How to be ecological and promote fiction
Amazon and Abebooks have spawned a flourishing 'nearly new' book market. It's different from remainders, antiquarian and charity markets in that the volume of transactions is skewed in favour of relatively new product. From an ecological perspective, why only sell each book once for it to go yellow on some bookcase? Maybe the first buyer will never even finish it…
Here's the kernel of an idea: suppose one title retails for £8 and the bookshop buys copies at £4.80, making the retailer 3.20 per copy gross. Suppose then he can buy back the book for a credit note of £2. He then sells it second hand at £5 (close to wholesale new price, and equivalent to £2.25+p&p on Amazon Marketplace). Then he buys it back third-hand at £1.25 and sells that copy for £3.75. In this way the shop makes a total markup of £3.20+£3+£2.50=£8.70 (more than the RRP of the book). In addition he has issued vouchers for £3.25 which must be spent on merchandise, so these will bring in say 40% of £3.25 or £1.50 (even more if they buy second-hand!).Clearly, this second-hand market is not marvelous news for publishers who can see their own books on Amazon offered way below new, sometimes only days after publication. One likely problem is that customers may mostly sell back the books they like less, so booksellers won't want to take back just any book. Which is where fiction comes in. Many secular bookshops have found that reading circles can give customers an opportunity to get more out of reading: to have attention drawn to what other people see in the writing, as well as forcing themselves to put their thoughts into words.
But how to create the demand? Launch and enroll TWO book circles: the first circle chooses a title of the month, and all the members buy it new. The second circle studies the same book two months later, and hopefully buys the copies off the first circle. Then the bookshop re-sells the book through bricks or clicks. Fiction and biography is more likely to work than other more earnest genres, because these are rightly the preserve of churches. Running Bible studies is not the future for retailers. The other advantage business-wise is that fiction aims at a broad market and is potentially addictive, while there is a limit to the number of parenting books or how-to books a person can usefully read. Finally a modest plug for our list: no need to start with fiction written for the American Midwest!
The future of the book production surely involves more print-on-demand product, which are inherently more expensive than mass-produced runs. Think back to the 1960s model where literary publishers launched with hardbacks, and the more successful titles were then licensed to mass-market merchandisers like Penguin. In the 1990s it became easier for smaller publishers to treat midlist books as mass market, no doubt helped by the net book agreement. But now the invasion of the book market by nonspecialist discounters makes the mass-market narrower - only a few titles deserve the mass-market treatment - and winner-take-all. The difference between midlist and niche is being squeezed and this new regime is making 'first editions' p-o-d i.e. more expensive. Expensive opens the way for a second-hand market and the figures given above become even more relevant for a future where books start out with an RRP of £15+. Sophisticated digital rights management could also allow a serial number to be printed, so that the book would say that it is number 1007 printed on such a date and become more collectible than facsimiles produced later with high serials. This is not confined to fiction, but I do predict that old novels will be more worth collecting than say old parenting books. As for commentaries and scripture versions, I find that these work very well as e-books (but that's another issue).
Some an hundredfold
I recently had reason to lament the attrition rate of independent bookshops (Yes, I know chains are not exempt...). Retail has always been tough but maybe there's encouragement in the Parable of the Sower interpreted with a booktrading spin.
'Some fell on the path', interpreted by Jesus as those who did not even understand. So many books on our shelves. Impossibly more out there at the wholesalers. How many of them do you claim to have understood? Thank goodness for core backlist that we read when were younger and had time!
Stony ground: a store enthusiastically orders a stack of a challenging new title that churches really need to hear! Window display. POS materials. But clients don't want change, much less pay to read about it - too soon it is time to go back to feelgood stuff ordered prudently; or maybe back to a conventional job.
Thorns: worries, the deceitfulness of wealth; hmmm, not many bookshops are feeling the second these days. Is the most dangerous mistake to reduce Christian bookselling to marketing tactics and the risk of failing to pay rent and payroll?
Good soil allows the return on a single seed to reach 30x, 60x even 100x: extraordinary, and so it is with a bestselling book. Some fruit is measurable in the till and some is reaped in changed lives. Have you ever considered what a bestseller should feel like in your shop? Let's set the bar for Christian books at 100,000 copies sold in the UK: Suppose that 20% is sold online and 40% iin secular bookshops; that leaves 40K in Christian bookshops. If the top 120 bookshops speak for 70% of the CBA total, that means 230 copies sold per larger shop. My guess is smaller shops would sell at around 70 copies. Not many Highland Books have achieved this!
How might it happen? The parable speaks of the man who hears the word AND UNDERSTANDS IT. The sign of a true bestseller is that sales do not fall away after an initial rush but trend upwards instead. Different human networks pick up on it, understand it, and internalise it. Bookshops are where bestsellers are created, as we all know, but it's not by marketing hype so much as the insight of those who serve there.
Two parables for a publisher
Have you ever wondered what the crucial difference is between two rather similar ‘Parables of the Kingdom’ in Matthew chapter 13: I am thinking of the parable of the treasure hidden a the field and the merchant in search of fine pearls?
I have heard various theories, but the one that convinced me most was this: the treasure hidden in a field makes commercial sense whereas the merchant only makes sense spiritually. For the investor who buys a field containing a hidden treasure is buying an instrument with a built-in profit or margin of security. In modern terms, he could be thought as having an informational edge. The bottom line is that he can always sell the field and keep the treasure.
On the other hand any normal jewel merchant only buys the pearl of great price if he thinks he can sell it on at a profit: but to put 100% of your capital into any one jewel is horribly risky at best and if you love it so much that you can never bring yourself to sell it that's commercial suicide! This purchase is an act of passion.
The point is this: discovering the Kingdom of God has at the same time to make sense and to be an act of passion.
The application to a publisher is clear: Highland is a merchant in search of fine manuscripts: but the challenge is to keep in balance the commercial sense and the passion aspects of this calling. And when in doubt the passion must trump the commercial, because the other way round is just too dispiriting.
Anyone for biography
Just back from the International Christian Retail Show 2006 in Denver, I was amazed at how few Christian biographies were on the stands, except perhaps with the self-publishing imprints.
There have always been plenty of problems in writing Christian biography: the market expects that 'Christian biography' be (vaguely) different from biography about Christians because certain things are expected to be left out and others worked in. Typically, Christian biographers may allow some Biblical anchor to organise the whole, showing perhaps how God proves faithful to his promises. On the other hand, secular biography is often fuelled by 'juicy bits': the underside of great public events, gossip and even put-downs of other famous people. The other permanent issue is that (as Paul said) "the letter killeth": it is so hard to encapsulate the spiritual and supernatural on the printed page without losing something essential. And it is easy to come over as boastful.
Publishers know that it is easier to sell biographies when the subject is famous or even infamous. So are there not enough famous Christians around? Or do they live in countries which we in the West don't know about? Or should we blame the usual scapegoat, postmodernism, on the grounds that models and heroes are considered passé except in comic book fiction of course where they are huge! Finally in these days of ubiquitous flights, TV and business trips, missionary stories are less exotic.
We at Highland certainly wish to carry on publishing biography: but our problem is that the very famous are likely to head for our larger competitors while we do need to establish a perceived difference between ourselves and self-published materials. The easiest thing (which we have done quite often) is to separate the function of author from the subject, even if it ends up being written in the first person. The other practice is avoiding the hard-to-market situations: mostly these can be summarised as extreme versions of ordinary problems most people face (bereavement, rejection, redundancy, depression, disease, bad genetics). What we have found ourselves drawn to are stories of bad/tough guys who are found by Christ.
Can you think of some story-lines that we should be covering that are different from tough conversions and yet not about the very famous or from those facing horrible problems? Are there any great preachers or church planters that we should cover?