Questions I hope you're asking

This is a slightly modified version of something I posted to DorothyL this morning.

Something I've come to realize lately is that in many ways, this isn't that big a business. Sure, we've know all along that there are many hardcover mysteries for which sales of five, six, eight thousand are considered good numbers -- successful, profitable, etc. At some companies at least; there are the Simon & Schusters of this world who say they won't stoop to that level. But on the other hand if every single St. Martin's Minotaur title were selling north of eight, nine thousand copies -- i.e. just a couple more thousand each -- with, of course, a few titles selling much more, that company would be happy.

Like I said, I've known this, but some of the implications of this have only become clearer to me recently. For one thing, it's now more evident to me than ever before that all we really need to do is to change the behavior of a comparatively small group of individuals in order to create a publishing business more to our liking. You know what I mean. We all hate the part of the business that throws too many resources behind books that aren't nearly as good as the books that are being overlooked and drowned out of the marketplace. We hate this, but we understand that we can't change publishers' behavior at the top of their lists: we're still going to see them spend way too much money to push bland mediocre generic marketing-department-driven books. Some of which we likely enjoy -- but even so, you know what I mean. That's just the way big corporate publishers are (no matter how foolish).

On the other hand, we ought to be able to affect everything else -- the "midlist" or the bottom of the list or whatever you want to call it. The reason we ought to be able to make a difference here is that the numbers really aren't that big -- again, just a couple more thousand copies per title, the movement of just a few dollars out of some distribution channels into other, more productive ones, etc.

There are 3,000 plus folks on DorothyL. Put together the customer lists of a handful of even the smallest of booksellers and you'll get to that number pretty easily. Add up the number of public libraries in 10 states and you'll get to 3,000. The point is that changing the behavior of 3,000 book buyers is all you need in order to create vast changes in the way that mysteries are published in the United States. And if you change just a few things about the way mysteries are published, distributed and sold, you open up many more opportunities for better, more substantial, quirkier, more interesting books.

So I'm reading all the various comments here about buying books in various formats, and why we're making these choices with all this in mind. And I'm asking myself what kind of business do we want this to be? What books aren't being published or aren't being published well? How do we want books to be sold? Can library buying practices change?

I have some vague ideas about all this, which I hope to have an opportunity to develop in the weeks and months to come. And, I except, each of you might have a few ideas too, if you stop to think about it -- which I hope you'll do.

Stocking the store

A woman working on a dissertation on cozy mysteries asks:

What are the rules (if any) in your bookstore regarding purchasing self-published books? Does your bookstore purchase any self-published books? How do you make this decision? I'm also wondering if there are any rules that apply to books produced by small presses. Are they less likely to be purchased by your bookstore, more likely, or is there no difference between small press books and large press books when it comes to placing them in your store?

Here's my response:

At The Mystery Company, the rule on self-published books is that we look at them one at a time.  We will stock intriguing, well-produced and properly priced self-published books that are offered to us on competitive terms.

The sad fact is that setting criteria like this -- 1) well-produced, 2) properly priced, 3) competitive terms -- virtually insures that self-published books eliminate themselves from consideration, even before we get to the question of "intriguing."  Let's face it: most self-published books aren't intended to be stocked in stores and we know this because most self-publishers have made little or no effort to figure out what being stocked in stores means.

I think you're asking the wrong question, though.  The real question is not whether stores will carry these books but whether readers will buy them.  Like any business, we are responsive to our customers.  Will our customers be interested in a self-published title?  If yes, then we have to be interested.  If no, then we don't have to be interested.  Are readers interested in most small press titles?

In fact, we stock and sell many titles published by small presses -- and some presses that were small in the recent past but aren't so small today.  Poisoned Pen, Rue Morgue, Crippen & Landru, my own Crum Creek Press/Mystery Company, Felony & Mayhem, Ramble House and others have supplied titles that in the past 12 months have outsold many, many titles published by the big guys.  Among the most fun titles we've had to sell in the past year are self-published: Mark Schweizer's choir mystery series.  By MWA's rules, he counts as self-published.  Of course, rules that label someone like Schweizer a self-publisher are bizarre to start with -- but that's a different discussion.

At one level, there's no difference between stocking and selling titles from self-publishers, small press companies and the multi-national conglomerates; if we didn't sell these books we wouldn't be in business at all.  But at another level, there's all the difference in the world: dealing with a plethora of authors and/or small companies, many of whom have idiosyncratic if not outright whimsical ideas about what it takes for a bookstore to successfully sell its books, makes this a very difficult landscape in which to make decisions.

Teaser turn-off and the definition of a cozy

I wonder if anyone else had the same experience with Scott Frost's Run the Risk that I did. I read the paperback edition, and in terms of the novel itself, I basically liked it. It's not the most plausible book out there, but it's fun.

HOWEVER, for me, the whole experience of reading Run the Risk was ruined by the teaser chapter for the next book in the series, the last six pages of the current Berkely paperback edition. The problem? After an emotionally exhausting case that involves the kidnapping of homicide detective Alex Delillo's own daughter, we find out in these six pages that the next book is going to be about the brother Delillo doesn't know she has. The bit we get is vague and there's probably a sensible explanation for her confusion. But for me, this is a real turn-off.

Delillo is a homicide detective -- a professional -- so Frost shouldn't need to resort to this kind of personal connection once, let alone twice. Delillo isn't Jessica Fletcher; she doesn't need an excuse to be involved in a mystery. On the basis of this teaser, I doubt I'll ever read Frost's second novel, unless someone I trust persuades me otherwise.

We talk (a lot) about the difference between a cozy and other kinds of mysteries. One of the defining features of a cozy series is that the detective has that personal stake in the murder -- otherwise he or she has no reason to investigate. With a professional, it's exactly the opposite: when there's a personal stake, sensible rules of professional conduct suggest that the officer step aside and let others conduct the investigation. Under this definition, then, it seems to me that Scott Frost's series featuring LAPD homicide detective Alex Delillo is best described as cozy.

Discounts and dealing with booksellers

Another email discussion list that I've been reading is Murder Must Advertise (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MurderMustAdvertise/?yguid=28841185). Here are a pair of posts that I contributed recently, on the issues of discounting and the relationships between stores, authors and publishers"

On Jan 10, 2006, at 4:02 PM, MurderMustAdvertise@yahoogroups.com wrote:

"The reason I have my books linked to amazon is because they are almost always on sale there (at 32% off) so it is a better buy for my readers."

Janet's comment something I hear a lot, and it's among the more disheartening things that I hear.

I address this in part in something that I've posted on my (very intermittent) blog, and it's an issue that I talk about whenever I have the opportunity to reach a group of committed readers. Here's a link to the blog entries; scroll down towards the end for the part that directly addresses discounting: http://mysterycompany.typepad.com/jimhuang/

The main point is this: low prices come from somewhere, and they have consequences (to quote John Dicker, the author of THE UNITED STATES OF WAL-MART).

If all you're interested in is a low price, then you can't at the same time expect authors to be paid reasonable royalties, publishers to spend reasonable amounts of money to promote books and neighborhood independent bookstores (and even big box chain stores) to carry any midlist books. Where do low prices come from? The come out of the margin necessary to do all of these things.

The consequences are even more severe. If all you're interested in is a low price, they you can't expect midlist books to be published and distributed in any sensible fashion. Before long, these books won't be published in the first place, and the stores that depend on being able to sell these sorts of titles won't be able to stay in business. All we'll have left, in terms of publishing for a "mass market," is bestsellers.

Think that's too apocalyptic? Think about why most of the big mass market publishing companies have in varying degrees walked away from the genre. Why doesn't Pocket Books have a mass market mystery publishing program? Discounting isn't all of the reason, but I believe that it's a very significant part, more significant than most people realize.

Two other things:

It's interesting to see how titles that should be published as traditional mass market paperbacks (with a suggested retail price of $6.99 or so) are being published instead as trade paperbacks for $13.95 or so. As far as I can tell, Amazon doesn't discount mass market pbs, so readers pay full price for these books -- reluctantly, since there's an appearance of a better deal on other titles. Amazon does discount the trade pbs, creating an impression of getting a bargain -- 32% off sounds like a good deal. Until you realize that 32% off $13.95 is $9.48 or, in other words, $2.49 more than you would have paid had the book been published in the right format to begin with. (Incidentally, in my store's discount program, the discount applies to all books, regardless of format.)

Finally, while it's true that Amazon discounts some titles, bear in mind that many more are sold without a discount and Amazon also imposes a surcharge on many small press titles (and even older titles from big companies. Amazon gives, but it takes away as well. (And I won't even get into the whole issue of the Amazon Advantage program, and the competitive issues that program raises....)

If you'd like to see a particularly weird example of how Amazon discounts/fails to discount/imposes a surcharge on books, take a look at how it sells Alan Gordon's Fool's Guild series of medieval mysteries -- THIRTEENTH NIGHT, JESTER LEAPS IN, WIDOW OF JERUSALEM and ANTIC DISPOSITION. (The middle book in series, #3, DEATH IN THE VENTIAN QUARTER, is out of print at the moment.) How well is Amazon serving buyers interested in Alan's work?

FOLLOW UP POSTED ON JANUARY 12:

"At one point, I went down the IMBA list and I sent out promo copies of one of our books...THREE STRIKES YOU'RE DEAD by Robert Goldsborough. I then called the stores to follow up. I offered promo materials, reinforced my terms and had three stores take me up on it. I actually had a couple stores tell me they don't deal with small press pubs. Now I don't consider us small press, we have published over 100 titles now and we have bent over backwards to accommodate the Indy stores. How do
we get them to acknowledge us?"

I'm one of booksellers who ordered this title. Took me five, six months to do it, but we now have this book displayed in the store in a way that the author and the publisher should be happy with. We've made it our reading group selection for February, and I'm looking forward to hearing what my customers have to say about it.

There's far more to say on this topic than I could possibly cover this morning and still do my job, but here are a few quick points:

Be persistent, patient and polite. The latter really matters. You'd be surprised by how few pitches are polite and respectful.

Don't ask for support from a store if at the same time you're working to undercut the store -- that's why the Amazon-only linked websites are so problematic, and may even extend to the Amazon Advantage program (about which I'm more than a little conflicted). If you're an author, are you supporting your local store when you're asking for that store's help?

Karen writes that she doesn't consider herself a small press. Bear in mind that your competition isn't any random other small company, it's Random House, a company I've been dealing with directly for 18 years. It's not just that RH is larger, but because I have a long relationship with RH, it's a little easier for me to be confident about every aspect of dealing with them.

I know how to order Random House books, I know the discount schedule, I know what the books are going to be like (both in terms of literary quality and physical quality), I know what the company is likely to do (and not do) to help me sell their titles, I know how to return their books (they're already set up in my shipping system), I know how to send payments to them (they're already set up in my accounting system), etc. That's a lot of "I knows" that I probably don't know about most small presses.

This is why persistence matters. Your message may not get through the first or even the fourth time, but if you have a strong message, it will get through. Sooner or later, all those "I don't knows" will get turned into "I knows."

It's remarkable how few pitches I get from small presses help me with this kind of information. Are your books sold on competitive terms? If they are, why isn't that obvious? Can I easily find your company's terms? Are they listed in the American Booksellers Association handbook?

What are competitive terms? For trade books -- hardcovers and trade paperbacks -- Random House sells at 46% off with free freight.

Bob says his publisher is difficult to deal with. I hate to put it this simply, but that's pretty much an automatic case: I don't deal with publishers that are hard to deal with. Why should I? There are plenty of companies whose policies, practices and terms indicate they might actually want my business. A company with un-competitive terms or that throws up roadblocks is telling me that they don't want my order. You don't have to be at 46% and free freight, but you'd better be close.

This isn't rocket science. Where most publishers (big and small) fail is in the basics. Providing clear and complete information in a timely fashion, making it easy to order, selling on competitive terms, packing carefully, shipping in a timely manner, sending statements predictably, making returns straightforward, making it worthwhile to receive and use credit received, etc.

Booksellers aren't as hard to work with as you think. You just have to be willing to work at it.

The independent's role

Here are a pair of posts that I sent to DorothyL, a mystery lover's internet discussion list (http://dorothyl.com/). I think that what I'm writing about will be clear from context -- at least I hope it will be. These are my responses to some comments about Amazon, independent bookstores and chain bookstores, comments that didn't give independents enough credit for what we do in relation to the other channels. The "Lewis" that I start out addressing is Lewis Perdue, author of DAUGHTER OF GOD (though it''s not really important that you know that, or any of the other folks I'm responding to).

Posted to DL on 12/9:

Lewis writes that Amazon "allows continual residual sales of books that would otherwise be OUT of print." I disagree, at least in terms of what comes from the major publishing companies. I believe that the effect of Amazon's "residual" sales isn't going to be enough to keep books in print without a community of independent booksellers who are also pushing those titles, keeping that backlist alive.

Lewis also touts Amazon's keyword searching versus dealing with a bookseller. Yes, this is valuable for some situations. I recognize this enough to try to make this function available to my customers, though my technology isn't up to Amazon's standards. Try visiting http://www.themysterycompany.com/search.htm and type in something like "New York" to see what I offer.

But the real value of an independent is the kind of "out of the box" recommendations that only we can make.

When I talk to my customers, I can sell the obvious ("if you like Patricia Cornwell, try Kathy Reichs"), but I also know how to successfully recommend Alan Gordon's THIRTEENTH NIGHT or Colin Cotterill's CORONER'S LUNCH to someone who wouldn't ever think of trying something with the characteristics of those titles. You can't do a keyword search for something that you wouldn't think of in the first place. I can't tell you how many customers have said of THIRTEENTH NIGHT that they wouldn't have picked it up if I hadn't recommended it and have gone on to buy all the rest of the books in his series. (That's a lot of the reason why I brought this title back into print when St. Martin's let it go.)

Look, Amazon does a lot of things well. I don't dispute that. But no one is designing policies and practices to put Amazon out of business. That's why we're talking about independents right now, which ARE endangered. The issue today is what kind of industry we want this to be, and what effect the shape of the industry will have on the choices we're offered as readers. Amazon will be around for a while. Let's hope that independent stores will be too.

The folks in Bentonville and folks like them at Costco, AMS, Kroger, etc. are having a direct effect on what's being published and how books are sold. The effect is a bad one, targeting the kinds of books that many of us like to read and talk about here. I believe that the only force in this business that is inclined to fight back are independent booksellers. That's why your votes -- your dollars -- matter so much.

A week ago here, we had an exchange of messages about the Wal*Mart world, in which Lewis wrote:

"While editors and reviewers _claim_ to want the original and creative things that READERS truly DO crave, the sad state of affairs is that banality begins with editors who are too afraid of publishing something that is not derivative"

I agree that there's a lot of fear in big publishing companies. But that's not the the real problem. It's the lack of ability among publishers -- as institutions -- to talk to talk to their customers (booksellers) about anything other than a bestseller or something with bestseller potential or something that "transcends the genre." After all, the big publishers do publish a lot of books that we approve of. Often, it's their own inability to sell what they produce that's the problem.

MJ Rose talked about choice fatigue, which I agree is a real issue, but what's the alternative? Better that there are too many good choices for readers than too few. If you believe that the way to succeed is to reduce the number of choices, then we might as well pack it in now. We all lose out (even publishers) in a world of fewer choices.

She goes on to write:

"No matter what the publisher publishers it really is the bookstores and reatailer who chooses which titles to give carry and to agree to give attention to. I know publishers who have stood on their head and promised the moon but the bookbuyers don't like the book and won't stock it -or take a big position on it. And in order to really change the retailers mind costs upwards of $200,000."

Here, in a nutshell, is everything that's wrong with the business. The relationship between publishers and booksellers is such that publishers only know how to try to buy our attention with dollars. And even then, publisher dollars don't end up counting for much because they're backed by so little credibility. After all, are we going to believe anything that a publishing company tells us when, for example, they work so hard to cover up or misrepresent basic information about books such as the authors' identities? (Michael Barron and Elizabeth Bright, to cite two recent examples.)

Dollars aren't the only way to launch an author. It's really just a matter of trust. While there are few individuals in the publishing business whose word I trust -- a few editors, a few sales reps -- that number is remarkably small. It shouldn't be this way. My business' relationship with publishing companies would be very different -- and, I think a lot more profitable on both sides -- if those companies knew better how to talk to me about the kinds of books that appeal to my customers.

Publishers would do well to find folks (inside their companies or hiring from the outside) who understand categories and know how manage their brand in a way that's credible to the rest of the industry. It isn't a matter of dollars. It's a matter of publishing and promoting and selling in a way that fosters trust rather than confusion (and sometimes outright hostility). In most big companies, what they're doing wrong is pretty obvious. It doesn't take a rocket scientist (or hundreds of thousands of dollars) to see how they could do better. On the other hand, even if a Time Warner were to hire me or someone else who truly understands the genre to be their mystery maven, there are so many other institutional roadblocks inside that company that it may be hopeless. A few years ago, a smart person at another small publishing company (not so small these days) said to me that it's impossible for a publishing company to be both bestseller oriented and midlist oriented at the same time. When I heard this, I thought he was wrong. Now, I'm not so sure.

Here's a curious situation that I find really telling. Simon & Schuster doesn't even trust its US sales force to handle its own British imports. Bernard Knight's medieval mystery series is one of those solid, steady sellers, well-liked and popular, but not popular enough to ever be New York Times bestsellers. This series is published by Simon & Schuster UK. But instead of importing them into the US and selling the books through Simon & Schuster's US sales force (which it tried briefly), these books are now available to US booksellers and readers through a different middleman. Why? I think it's because at some level, S&S in New York knows that it doesn't know how to sell a series like Knight's here. Either that or they can't be bothered -- which doesn't reflect any better on the abilities or inclinations of this multinational, multi-billion dollar media conglomerate and its own product. (It happens that I like my Simon rep, who at times has been really helpful to my store. This isn't in any way a comment on my personal relationship with this company.)

This is way longer than I intended to write this morning (now afternoon). When you're shopping through this holiday season, and beyond, I do hope that you'll think about where you're spending your money, and what you hope this industry will look like in the future. As Nicki writes, your dollar is your vote.

------

This is a follow-up message that I posted on 12/12:

A lot of this discussion has been framed in terms of how a few individual store staffers have treated individual writers, and how Amazon might "offer for sale" a writer's books while a particular independent store might not "stock" (a very different concept) the same title. I don't think that this is the right way to look at the relative of merits of independents, chain stores, big-box discounters and online retailers. As Lev (I think) says, it's a mistake to over-generalize. I've shopped in two chain bookstores in the past few weeks, and I've found attentive, polite and helpful staffers in each of these stores. But despite these experiences (and despite the fact that I also believe that the leadership of at least one of the chains -- B&N -- has some good ideas about the industry in general), I harbor no illusions about these chains stores' interest in promoting and selling the kinds of books that we like to talk about here.

Stuff like what Gene is offering to stores is worth doing because it's about the only thing that writers and stores can do right now to overcome structural obstacles that stand in the way of writers reaching readers. But these kinds of arrangements create their own difficulties, and don't attack the root problem: those structural obstacles. That's where I think that independents can make a real difference, but only if we get your support. As I said, independent stores are the only force in the business fighting for the kinds of things we want to see happen in publishing.

Gene may like Amazon's prices (even though his own book isn't discounted at Amazon). Sam's Club's prices are even better. But the point that John Dicker, author of THE UNITED STATES OF WAL*MART makes, is that low prices come from somewhere, that they have consequences. Nicki wrote here about free trade coffee. The analogy holds for publishing.

Besides, my free shipping policy is even better than Amazon's: order even just one new paperback book from me, and I'll ship free to any address in the US. I hope that you'll order more than one at a time, because, as you can imagine, I don't make money off an order like this. But if that's what you need at a given moment, that's what we want you to have. I don't think you'll find that offer easy to beat, and in general we believe that our store's policies -- free shipping, discount program with a very low cost to join (in comparison to similar programs at the big stores), a large selection of used books, occasional specials (like 20% off right now on the new Sue Grafton), 24/7 website shopping, etc. -- add up to a good value for buyers. Give us a try sometime: www.themysterycompany.com

I know, however, that perception works against us, that most people believe that you'll spend more in a place like ours. As a result, people do decide to buy elsewhere. Those decisions may put us out of business. If just 7 people each day decide to buy one new hardcover mystery each somewhere else, then I can't pay my rent for the day. Especially lately, I do think that even some well-meaning folks who want to support us are making the decision to shop elsewhere. I'm more than a little worried about this. Which is way I spend my time posting messages like this here.

Getting started

After I gave the keynote speech at Of Dark and Stormy Nights, a conference for new and aspiring writers last month, a number of people asked if I'd post the text on the web. This blog and the rest of my website, located at www.statelyhuangmanor.com, are the result. I'll use this webspace to gather up some of what I've written and said about mysteries, the business of books and whatever else comes to mind.

To kick things off, here's the text of the Dark & Stormy keynote. Post your comments via this blog entry.