Debut Novels Failing to Launch

Stephen Palmer said:
Advice for all. Not an easy read...
www.esquire.com

Why Are Debut Novels Failing to Launch?

For first-time writers, it’s harder than ever to break out. That poses an existential crisis for publishing—and disturbing limits on your access to exciting new voices.
www.esquire.com www.esquire.com
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all i can say, to all writers, is support your indie bookstore. We are the only ones still championing mid-list and low-level sellers, where the algorithm of sales isn't what drives us. We're championing Nicholas Binge. Alan Murrin and Leo Vardiasvhili at the moment, debuts who are doing very well for us. It's about passion and belief.
 
Jo Zebedee said:
all i can say, to all writers, is support your indie bookstore. We are the only ones still championing mid-list and low-level sellers, where the algorithm of sales isn't what drives us. We're championing Nicholas Binge. Alan Murrin and Leo Vardiasvhili at the moment, debuts who are doing very well for us. It's about passion and belief.
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In the last couple of years I've found indie book stores more welcoming amd supportive than Waterstones. Yes - definitely support local indies!

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Jo Zebedee said:
Waterstones managers no longer select books, to the extent they used to - it’s all central now
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Yes, things have changed a lot since my day. I spoke with an old colleague at the Exeter branch last week, and she said the buyers are the important figures. We spoke about I Am Taurus. Alas, the discount offered by John Wiley Distribution is only 35%.
 
I've never read "On The Road". Do I want to? This article makes me want to less.

Also I'm surprised a progressive profession like publishing settled on a sexist term to describe breakout debuts.
 
I thought I posted this earlier, but suffice it to say that I've developed a weary resignation about this kind of thing now. Another article (undoubtedly accurately) describing how publishing is crashing in flames doesn't surprise me at all. I realise that there are multiple factors here, but trying to sell books like 2-minute TicToc amateur comedy skits wasn't ever destined to end very well.
 
Jo Zebedee said:
all i can say, to all writers, is support your indie bookstore. We are the only ones still championing mid-list and low-level sellers, where the algorithm of sales isn't what drives us. We're championing Nicholas Binge. Alan Murrin and Leo Vardiasvhili at the moment, debuts who are doing very well for us. It's about passion and belief.
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I wish there were more indie bookstores around! Precious few if any in my area. Hardly even any used bookstores near me.
 
Every hopeful should be aware of what they are up against. The dose of potentially demoralising realism is this:

Number of books published each day​

  • Based upon a total annual number of 4 million books published each year, it can be estimated that almost 11,000 books are published daily.
  • This works out to around 457 titles an hour and 8 titles a minute.
  • The total number of books published includes all types of releases, from recognized authors by major publishers to unknown authors with independent publishers.
  • Within the US alone, approximately 2,700 new titles are released daily.


The whole article:

Number Of Books Published Per Year – Word Finder by WordsRated

wordsrated.com wordsrated.com
 
My suspicion is that, after having got rid of the midlist (not entirely deliberately), publishing increasingly relies on small numbers of huge-selling "phenomenon" books or small subgenres. The quality of these books is pretty much irrelevant to how well they do, although that is not at all to say that they're all bad, and the originality of the basic concept is often important. However, I suspect that publishers just do not know what will become huge and what won't. For instance, combining a school story and a fantasy story could work well, but that wouldn't explain the success of Harry Potter (and the Potter books certainly weren't the first to do this). And if a book doesn't become big enough immediately, it's quicker to dump the author and move on to another. After all, there are a lot of aspiring authors out there.

(Quite why debut novels are fetishised in this way I don't know. Why does it matter so much that it's someone's first book and not their fifth that's really good? Anyone who's tried to write a novel knows that it isn't an all-or-nothing matter: many first novels are weak but show promise. But that's not how we do it these days.)

That said, there are areas where certain demographics are reliably interested in books and can be expected to read a lot and talk a lot about what they read - free advertising. "Booktok" is the obvious one. The problem with this is that there are a lot of people who like to read and don't fit the stereotype (and in fairness this is a stereotype) of avid readers who talk about books a lot on the internet: young, female, probably white and middle-class and probably self-consciously "alternative" in some way.
 
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I'm more at the coal face of this at the moment, as a book shop owner, and here's a few observations

Who are the customers? Whilst there is a sense that it's all become tik-tok, that's not the case - it's one market that's doing very well, but it's only one segment of the shop. They are mostly female, mostly young, but across a vast range of interests, and demographs.

Other than that, we have such a range of customers from men who like their non fiction (and, yes, they like their space ship books, too - but that doesn't represent the bulk of sci fi sales and my sci fi readers are evenly split - that's not so much with fantasy at the moment, where the traditional stuff is mostly selling to blokes, as a high percentage of the female market seek out the booktok romantasy style)

grandparents who like their grandkids to be reading
Families
young people who read more than most people actually realise
Fiction is still the best selling section (although at christmas this skews more towards non fiction. making them closer to even), with crime being the biggest sub genre (most romance is online these days, but it still dwarves all other fiction areas)
For us, Irish publishing is critical - and it is a market that does celebrate great debuts, and has good infrastructure in terms of review places, festivals, and word of mouth vehicles.

But the mid list is what's suffering, particularly in fiction. The supermarket model is terrible for pretty much all sectors of retail - they killed the magazine market, have damaged books wholely, and don't talk to me about trying to get a shin bone for the wee dog... - and, really, we should do everything we can to actively not shop there. For choice, jobs, range, the planet and sustainability.
 
Jo Zebedee said:
Who are the customers? Whilst there is a sense that it's all become tik-tok, that's not the case
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You know this better than I do, but I agree that there are loads of potential readers out there, many without a significant internet presence, some not on the internet at all, at least in a book-related way.

Jo Zebedee said:
But the mid list is what's suffering, particularly in fiction. The supermarket model is terrible for pretty much all sectors of retail
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Definitely.
 
I've looked at the supermarket shelves and they are selling new novels for less than I can get my author copies from amazon. :(
Mind you a lot, but not all, of it looks like beach bag holiday reading.

I've not really launched the book yet, just local bookshops and a couple of signings. I have though been approached by an award winning screenwriter who read it and wants to do a screenplay of it, which is a positive for the "slow networking" approach. rather than the "Blammo launch then deep 6" thing that seems to happen a lot to authors.
 
Astro Pen said:
I've looked at the supermarket shelves and they are selling new novels for less than I can get my author copies from amazon. :(
Mind you a lot, but not all, of it looks like beach bag holiday reading.

I've not really launched the book yet, just local bookshops and a couple of signings. I have though been approached by an award winning screenwriter who read it and wants to do a screenplay of it, which is a positive for the "slow networking" approach. rather than the "Blammo launch then deep 6" thing that seems to happen a lot to authors.
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Lovely news, congrats.

Supermarkets pay the authors a pittance, take the bestsellers only and are a disaster for writers :(
 
In the last few years I've only used a****n for what I can't get elsewhere - books and music too. Oppose the billionaires.

Debut novels tick that magical box that all advertisers of things for sale wish to tick. New. New reliably sells anything which is new, whether it be a debut novel or baked beans in a white wine sauce.
 
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