October 16, 2006
Does this describe you?

You go to the bookstore and you run your hands over the spines of the books and you go, "Ah-ha! This one's by Putnam. I'll buy it!"

I didn't think so. You probably buy a book by author, someone you've read before or something you've heard might be good, whether through word of mouth or a book review. Publishing is filled with brand names. Stephen King. John Grisham. Sue Grafton. Robert B. Parker.

It's not the case in nonfiction as much, although there are certainly some, like Tracy Kidder and McCullough.

Yet, to book distributors and to bookstores, the publishing houses in many ways are brand names. Clearly they are to distributors, especially the big two, Baker & Taylor and Ingram. They know if the book is published by one of the big 6, which are Random, inc, Warner, HarperCollins, St. Martins, Viking/Penguin and I guess the 6th would be either Kensington or Hyperion, that they can count on a certain level of quality and a standard set of business practices (probably more important to them than that ephemeral thing we call quality in terms of the written word).

That isn't to say there aren't smaller independent publishers that are highly regarded as well. Several come to my mind: Carol & Graff and Poisoned Pen Press come readily to mind, although I don't know who distributes PPP books. Llewellyn Worldwide, for nonfiction, seems to have an excellent reputation and hopefully will for their fiction.

It's not always the case, though. We as authors want to become brand names--it helps sell books and audiences will come looking for a "Mark Terry" book, for instance, just as they may look for a "Sue Grafton" book. We as writers though, may also want to be associated with a "brand name" publisher, not only because the "brand name" publishers have deep pockets and great distribution, there may be ego issues, as well, the "Yes, my book is coming out from Bantam," for instance, although I haven't run into too many authors that talk enthusiastically about their publishers, although some do. It can often be an antagonistic relationship, or, perhaps, authors are just terminally discontent and ungrateful.

I don't hear authors talk about it too much. When my first book came out some nosy people asked me how much money I got from the $17.95 they were forking out for "Catfish Guru," and were pretty astonished when I said, "About $1.80 per book." 10% for trade paperback is about the norm, with hardcovers being about 20% and mass market being somewhere in the range of 6% to 8%. Think of thoat for a moment if you think you're going to get rich writing novels. Your paperback original sells for $7 and you get 48 cents for every one that sells and you sell 100,000 copies and you get $48,000 and your agent gets 15% and the government gets approximately 30% and pretty soon you're down to around $24,000 and let me tell you folks, 100,000 copies is a lot of books. That's VERY successful.

But I digress.

Best,
Mark Terry