July 7, 2007
My website is being totally revamped professionally this month, and yesterday I was tinkering with an author Q&A. One of the questions I asked myself, or was going to ask myself was:

You write nonfiction and fiction. Which do you like best?

My answer, I guess is:

Well, I love writing fiction. It's a passion, my own mental trampoline that I bounce on. It's creative and satisfying. As for nonfiction, I enjoy it. It's stimulating. It pays. It's how I make a living and I like doing it, and it allows me a lifestyle that I love. That said, I don't like the "business" of fiction writing very much compared to the "business" of nonfiction writing.

I was having a conversation in my head the other day about the notion of forming some sort of publishing company, and, just like for this Q&A, asked myself what kind of things you would consider publishing? Novels? And my immediate reaction to that was: Only a crazy person opens a publishing house dedicated to fiction. It's a money loser right out of the gate.

That said, all-fiction publishers make money. Some of them do, anyway. But consider the industry. You're selling a product in an already crowded market dominated by brand names in terms of writers, publishers and booksellers. It's a multi-tiered selling system with publishers, sales staff, multiple distributors and booksellers. The largest publishers, distributors and retailers, whether Borders, Barnes & Noble or Costco, Wal-Mart or Meijers can buy books, generally from the largest publishers through the major distributors, in bulk through centralized warehouses, which allows them to get deeper discounts, which allows them to offer books at lower prices.

The discounting aspect of books, especially in fiction, makes accounting a nightmare. It's doubtful if anybody anywhere knows how much money a specific fiction title actually makes because so many different vendors sell it at so many different prices at so many different times. And royalty checks tend to reflect the lowest common denominator, if you can figure out royalty accounting at all.

If the retailers don't sell the books within a very short timeframe--a timeframe that in most cases is a couple weeks (not unlike, say, milk or produce at a grocery store)--the retailer returns the books (product) to the distributor and/or publisher for a refund and/or credit toward the next batch of sales. Which I suppose is better than a grocery store, which just throws out the rotting produce at a loss. The profit margin is negligible. The U.S. tax structure has made it expensive for publishers to store books for any length of time, which decreases a book's shelf life, which leads to books being "remaindered," which floods bookstores with hard copies of novels selling for below the price of the mass market paperbacks.

No. I vastly prefer the business aspects of nonfiction. I do the work. I get paid for the work. This may change in the future. Magazines and corporations that hire me make their money through advertising revenue and subscriptions and sales of their products. Some have deep pockets. Some do not. But in the case of the nonfiction, actual sales of the final product are not my responsibility, and the people who hire me to do this work have absolutely no notion that I should. In fiction, that's now a given. The producer of the product--the author--is not only expected to write the book, but spend money on a website, offer a blog, send out mailings and newsletters, talk at libraries, Rotary Club meetings, give book signings, attend conferences, give TV and radio interviews and a whole myriad of other sales activities. And what's more, they're predominantly expected to do so on their own dime, even though even a tiny bit of that will be double, triple or more than the book advance.

Well, I think that's too long and complicated an answer for a simple FAQ or Q&A on my website, so I think I can skip that one. On to: Where do you get your ideas?

Paul Guyot says his muse is named Lloyd the Terse. Mine must be named Larry the Loquacious.

Best,
Mark Terry