A couple or so Book Festivals ago, A. L Kennedy (about to come out as a stand-up comic) bemoaned the lives of authors sent by publishers to, well, not exactly lie abroad about their books, but promote and push them to potential purchasers in various places.
Fast forward to 2009 and Mark Le Fanu, Chair of the Society of Authors, finds himself in a Peppers Theatre at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, positively packed with writers dealing in their individual ways with the impact of recession.
Le Fanu attempted to strike a positive note; book buying in the UK. has not (yet) been hit as hard as elsewhere, notably the US. Britons, however, both publish and buy more books per year than almost any other country - including the US, making the true situation more difficult to accurately assess.
Eight and a half thousand British writers are members of the Society of Authors, which represents their interests individual and collective to publishers, agents and the book trade in general. A glance at the shelves of Waterstone's, Blackwell's or almost any other book shop reveals the stark reality of one publisher's analysis that book-selling, like any other supply industry, depends on a delicate balance of ‘inventory' and ‘rent' - i.e., the flow of stock must be such to cover the outgoings on which staying in business depends. Declining sales may mean redundancies, shrinking back-lists and fewer new authors taken on. Revenue and profit appear to be dependent on a smaller number of authors, bad news for both new and ‘mid-list' writers, whose books may sell, but in lesser volume and require more effort to promote.
There is some good news; independent publishers such as Canongate, Profile and Signal make up 50% of book sales, and with the exception of Barak Obama, few of their writers are household names.
But it has often taken four or five books for a writer to "break through" to public consciousness and acceptance. It is an increasingly open question whether, especially in a recession, publishers have the resources or will to back an author through so lengthy an introduction.
Even for established authors, contracts and royalties can be difficult areas; contracts may try to tie up "all future technologies" as publishers try to anticipate the next "big thing" in media technology. Meanwhile, smaller publishers continually struggle with cash-flow and related issues which impact on the proper and regular payment of royalty cheques.
Technology, of course, has also produced the "curse of EPOS" (electronic point-of-sale) which records book sales and "electronically tags" an author's perceived value. Which of course means authors have to promote and push the harder to maintain, never mind gain, recognition.
Publishing could once have been regarded as a form of gambling; authors were the bloodstock publishers nurtured in hope they would one day repay the attention. Modern accounting practice has changed this in many ways, and now it is authors, rather than publishers who must promote and thereby sell books. Perhaps stand-up comedy is a more alternative approach than it might at first appear.
Copyright Bill Dunlop 2009
First published on EdinburghGuide 2009