Author and publisher, Zetta Brown’s recent blog, “Authors! Can’t find your book in a bookstore? You may be luckier than you think!“, got me to thinking–no pun intended–about the old law of economics, that of supply and demand.
With bookstores and sellers tightly adhering to what seems to me, an outdated mode of purchasing books from publishers, and authors who choose to self-publish–that of retaining, if not demanding, the opportunity to return unsold books they have received from us–I wonder what would happen if publishers and authors began to print less books.
A blog post, “A Woeful Truth About Publishing,” at Champagne Books explains this paradoxical phenomenon in detail.
In short, I am asking, “How would economic market respond if publishers did not make books so readily accessible?”
In using the term, economic market, I do not mean only readers.
In fact what I am proposing is that writers consider “How, both chain and independent book stores, Walmart, Costco, Target, Amazon, and even Hollywood film producers, directors and screen writers would resp0nd to a seriously short supply of well-written, engaging and entertaining novels and short stories to sell and from which to cull ideas from their next project?”
Everyone seems to be making money from the stories we authors and writers craft except us.
Yes, there are those agents who garner $4 million plus deals and more for the authors they represent.
But we all know the writers who receive those deals not only work hard and long, and make huge sacrifices of which many of us would cringe should we learn the truth of what they offered in alms for such a monetary boon.
These authors are also few and far between. I will not mention the many publications relegated to mid-list sale due to these enormous contracts with their heavy financial demands.
So back to my point of the old axiom that, short supply = high demand= higher price.
Why do publishing companies make available so many titles and of the many novels they bring to print, why so many copies?
And back to my first question, “Why allow book stores to take books with the supposed intent to sell them while demand the ability to return any remainders that consumers do not purchase?”
This question takes me to an even deeper consideration.
Why are there so many people willing to work day and night for years on end crafting and sculpting a novel, into which they pour their heart, soul and mind only to offer it up for less than free?
Let us remember that a literary advance in most cases is but a high interest loan.
I wonder what would happen if we took the time to write the books that we love, sank into the process and enjoyed ourselves rather than rushed to appease publishers and literary agents to whom we have sometimes sold our soul.
The idea that the publishing company that offers you the advance will also invest more money in promoting and marketing a work for which it has paid out an advance has been proven not to occur a thousand times over.
If sales of your book do not earn back your advance and then some, you the author have now succeeded in becoming an author who has less chance of being offered a second contract than an unpublished fiction writer.
Perhaps the reason publishers are not squeamish and show no financial remorse in flooding the market with tons of well-written books in a society where money is growing scarcer by the minute, and time to read them at none to nil because we writers do not value our time, never mind our creativity and sadly, ourselves.
I wonder what would happen if we began to value our work and give ourselves and long and warm hug?
Any ideas???