My *plot hole* in last week's incendiary post

Or, track record and the bookstore component

Last week I hit ‘publish’ on a fairly fiery lil’ post.

To summarize, the main thrust of that post is that publishers put a tremendous emphasis on the author’s sales track record in order to make a buying decision about their next book, which very much feels like Fake Math, as the two books are distinct things, and the average consumer at a bookstore who’s going to make a buying decision isn’t going to be influenced by this at all.

The result? Sales of One Book mean Another Book has a decreased chance of ever seeing the light of day, regardless of its merit (and by merit I don’t mean literary quality, or at least not exclusively—I mean selling potential, market appeal, timeliness, hook, etc.). My whole point was that each book should be considered based on its own perceived potential, and not squashed before it gets out of the gate by numbers associated with a previous and completely unrelated book.

This emphasis on the author’s name being branded as a failure as a result of this Fake Math is terrible for authors, which I go into plenty in said article.

However, though I 100% stand behind my main point—that authors’ Next Books should not be punished for sales of Previous Books, because that’s very silly and harmful—when the comments started flooding in, I realized I had a very big plot hole.

Today’s post is to 1) acknowledge that plot hole, and 2) offer a little tossed salad of thoughts.

The plot hole in question

In the previous post, I made up a whole imaginary scenario about “Bob,” the consumer who walks into a bookstore and picks up an author’s book. I tried to illustrate with a bit of silliness that the track record of the author’s previous book is completely invisible to Bob, and entirely irrelevant as he makes his buying decision.

HOWEVER. What I failed to acknowledge in my post is that Bob is not the customer of the publisher.

Bob is the customer of the bookstore.

The bookstore is the customer of the publisher.

And book buyers at bookstores are looking at track record to help make their decisions—which can’t help but have an effect on how publishers view the potential sales of an author’s next book. If the publisher knows bookstores won’t buy the author’s Next Book (whether it’s not at all or not as much) because Previous Book had ‘soft sales,’ they are of course going to weigh that heavily into their own buying decision.

In other words, publishing houses are looking at track in part because that’s how their buyers (bookstores; not consumers) will be approaching the title as well.

A salad of thoughts

I do not have a neat, logical stream of thoughts at this point—though I wish I did. I want a clear flow chart of how to solve this problem—and yet I do not have that (darn!). (Anyone????)

I still think track record is not a fair predictor of how an author’s Next Book will perform. I will stand by that, tyvm (and see examples in Previous Fiery post of authors breaking out with a book after previous ‘soft sales’ ;).

So here are my very preliminary and slightly unbaked thoughts on this! (And I’d love to hear you all chime in the comments and educate me ;):

• If a book buyer at a bookstore is considering what to stock, and an author’s Book 1 didn’t sell, AND an author’s Book 2 is similar in vibe and look (perhaps it has similar cover art), I can understand why they’d be deterred from stocking second book. That feels entirely reasonable to me.

• Book buyers know their customers. Not all bookstores serve the same communities and readerships! So they might take a risk stocking something more unusual (for example, a fluffy thriller romance in a bookstore that gets lots of more lit fic readers), realize it didn’t do well, and choose not to take that risk on the author’s next book. And please don’t misunderstand me—if a book buyer doesn’t think Y book will sell in their store for X Y and Z reasons, that is entirely valid. And there could be a decision where author’s book Y is quite similar to their book X which didn’t move any copies, which, okay! But… (cont)

• …I’d also beg the consideration—is it really that the bookstore’s customers didn’t like it? That can for sure be the case. But could it also perhaps be that they didn’t find it? Or know it was there? Or…? I’ve been in bookstores where my book went straight to the appropriate shelf and was filed away alphabetically. And, as a debut struggling for visibility, that means that likely no one will find that book unless they’ve already heard of me, and go looking for it on purpose. And, at this point in my career, erm… no one has heard of me. 😂 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

• Which brings me to this—there is limited ‘front display space’ in bookstores. I understand that not all new books will make it onto those front tables or displays. ALSO, for debut authors, this does hobble them out of the gate, and it would be nice if that was weighed when looking at soft sales. And who knows—maybe it is!! (Booksellers, feel free to chime in in the comments! ;)

• To me, in the scenario where a bookstore will be less likely to risk stocking Book #2 when Book #1 didn’t move copies, this is where the publisher can use their savvy. If Book #1 failed, even if Book #2 sits in a similar genre space, it can be packaged differently. Completely different cover vibes do make a difference. Booksellers are making very rapid decisions about what to stock in their store, choosing from thousands and thousands of books often based on a quick glance at the cover—there’s simply no time to review each title in a more ‘thorough’ way or they’d never go home at the end of the day. If they look more distinct, perhaps book buyers would be more willing to try again.

• Sales reps (from the publisher) can also make a huge difference. If they indicate to the book buyer that the publisher is really excited about this title, it can sometimes ‘outweigh’ the ball and chain of previous soft sales.

• In other words, track record, even at the bookstore level, is not a 100% predictor of that bookstore’s purchases. A stellar cover, a sales rep who really talks the title up, publisher investment that’s communicated to the bookseller on a given title—can all make a difference when it comes to getting their New Book in stores after Old Book ‘failed.’

  I found this quote really interesting from this article by Fisher the Bookseller that y’all should 100% read (linked):

  

  He also clarifies that, when looking at track, if the author’s debut sold even one single copy, he’ll bring in their next. Here’s what he has to say (and again, go read the whole article!):

  

Fascinating. I’m learning!!

Narrow on both sides - or ‘the glut effect’

Another thing I’ve been hearing from many people, booksellers included, is that too many books are being published. I’m not saying I agree with that—in fact, Vera Kurian literally had an article about that this morning!—merely that it’s a sentiment that’s out there, and that I can comprehend. Thousands and thousands of books are being published every season, and bookstores simply can’t stock them all, nor can all of them ‘succeed’ (seriously read Vera’s take on this—she is extremely smart and nuanced and looks at this from quite a few angles).

Still, I’ve read multiple times about how fast book buyers have to be when making decisions about what to stock. The catalogs from publishers are immense. They can’t dedicate a ton of time to considering every book. So a grabby cover is SUPER important, for example.

Reading about how book buyers have to deal with this glut of titles and make rapid-fire decision made me think immediately of… *drum roll*… the query inbox.

Yup. As an agent, there is a glut of material for me to go through (and I mean ‘glut’ to be purely descriptive of the sheer quantity). Efficiency is paramount if I’m going to succeed in getting through all the queries and pages that are sent my way before I, erm, die. 😂 In a weird way, a bookseller looking through a catalog feels very similar to an agent going through the query inbox. They’re spending a tiny fraction of time on each book and quickly judging the viability of that book in their store.

Querying on one end. Quick book-buying decisions on the other end. Visually, I’m imagining two funnels, connected in the middle with a narrow end on either side. In the middle is the huge amount of books that are being published. And on either end of that book’s life, snap decisions are being made—one by an agent, one by a bookseller. Only a few make it in; only a few make it out.

I don’t have thoughts more elaborate than this—I just found it really interesting to think about that ‘narrowing effect’ that happens in any situation where there is a huge abundance of material and not enough resources to allocate equally to all of it. (Not that equal allocation should be the goal—just observing here ;).

In conclusion

I still think overemphasis on track is a gigantic problem. I still think there can be (and often is) fake, falsely predictive math to it. And this is in no way an attack on book buyers / booksellers, who are doing their best to stock books they think will sell and surviving on passion and thin margins.

But returning to my point, I will die on this hill today and tomorrow and the day after that: a new book by an author should be given its own chance. It deserves that chance from editors and booksellers. And when I say ‘deserves that chance,’ please understand I mean it deserves to be considered on its own two feet (and accepted or rejected on that basis)—not considered through the lens of the failure of a previous book.

I know the result I’d love to see in the industry. But how do we change the culture of emphasis on track? And what am I missing in my understanding of this whole problem? Thoughts, commiserations and challenges to my argument most welcome. 😂