So, What's Wrong with Mystery Publishing Today?

It seems that listservs and online conversations have been taken over by writers who do a lot of complaining about the publishing industry and everything that's wrong with it. As many readers of Mysterious Matters know, one of the reasons I started this blog was to counter a lot of the misinformation out there, as well as provide the publisher's perspective. We supposedly have an advocacy group, the AAP, that is supposed to disseminate information on what we do and how we do it, but honestly I think the organization is useless, and I so rarely see editors or publishers get to stick up for themselves. 

Typical criticisms:

• We publishers are greedy.
• Our practices "hurt" authors.
• We're unwilling to take chances.
• We don't do enough to support the books we publish.
• Our contracts are too "restrictive."
• We're outdated, outmoded, and bordering on useless in an age of e-publishing. (Take that, you lousy publishers!)

Frankly, I don't get the witch hunt. I'm not quite sure why this industry - which exists to entertain, enlighten, and educate (noble goals, I daresay) - comes in for such brutal criticism. From the online conversations, you'd think we are the equivalent of the fraudulent banks who cost taxpayers billions, or deeply in bed with the oil interests, which are posting record profits in the billions. 

Don't get me wrong. Like all industries, we have our problems. So, if anyone is interested in one editor's take on these problems  - from the publisher's perspective - please read on.

1. There are simply too many books being published.  I'll have to confine my thoughts to the mystery world here, to keep length under control. Mystery is one of the most popular genres, and because the genre has so many readers it also has many aspiring writers. (Note: I don't use the term "author" until someone other than the "writer" him/herself has decided the work is worth investing in.) The market simply cannot absorb all the books that are being published. Writers get their big break with a major house (or even a smaller one), and then complain that they're not selling millions. And we're not happy about that either, folks. Every book is signed with the hope, the expectation, that it will be a hit. We're not manufacturing Coke syrup, here; there's no recipe or process to follow, and each work is a unique product that requires attention rather than a template or assembly line. The current onslaught of authors getting back rights to work that have long been out of print, and then actively promoting old books online and elsewhere as ebooks, clogs up the discourse and makes it even harder to get attention for someone new. The floodgates have opened and we're at a point where the information overload is too intense for most people to deal with.

I know, I'm going to have a lot of writers screaming at me that they deserve the rights to their books back once they go out of print, and I wouldn't argue with that. But what a lot of people don't realize is that books go out of print for a reason: Demand for them is either weak or nonexistent. So many of the people I see hawking their books relentlessly were never household names to begin with, and honestly I doubt that all the hawking in the world will turn them into bestsellers now. They have a right to do this, of course, as we live in a country of free speech. But know that all of this is making the difficult task of breaking new authors even more difficult.

2. Most mysteries are simply too long.  As you can imagine, I read a lot of them, both in manuscript and in printed form. One of my early mentors was a merciless cutter of useless dreck in manuscripts, self-indulgent passages, useless exposiiton, and so forth. I have followed in his footsteps, and I know that the books that I publish tend to come in shorter than the norm (in word count). But so many books that I've read in the last five years are just too long, which makes the pace sag. But then we get into the issue of having to charge a certain price for a book just to break even or make a tiny profit; and readers expect a certain number of pages for that book - which puts us into the bind we are in. The solution is nice large type, more leading (space between lines), and larger margins, which will allow us to have the "required" number of pages while charging the price we need to charge. And then we get reviews on Amazon saying how we've padded the book, how the savvy reader has seen through our ruse, etc., ad nauseam. 

But I think a book that's too long has a strong (if unconscious) effect on the reader. It doesn't make the reader want to pick up more by that writer. Again, people are going to scream at me that they need space to build characters, set the scene, etc., but you don't need pages for that - you need skill. 

3. Too many series contracts are offered before a book/series has proven itself. A contract for multiple books is the brass ring for writers and agents. I almost never give them and think we'd be better off making sure that Book #1 is a hit before publishing Books #2 and #3. Additional series books by people whose freshman debut hasn't burned up the charts only add to the logjam of too many books. 

But Agatho, you scream, publishers need to be supporting writers! You publishers need to nurture and care for them. Books 1-7 might not sell anything, but Book 8 could become a bestseller!  Yes, it's true - I know Sue Grafton has said no one paid any attention to her until Book 7 or 8. But tell me, aspiring writers: Do you think it's OK that your manuscript isn't picked up so that we can continue to publish a writer whose books are limping along? Or is it better to say, "You've had your chance, now give someone else a shot at it?" 

4. The agent/contact system has gotten way out of control. I'm not here to diss agents. I've known some great ones (usually former editors), some mediocre ones, and some downright frauds. But this whole "getting published on the basis of connections or affiliations" has got to stop. The quality of the publishing has gone down. I have read precious few books in the last few years that make any sort of contribution (Mr. Peanut by Adam Ross is one of them, Burial of the Dead by Michael Hogan is another). My workload is heavy, but I look at all the queries that pass my desk (and we accept unagented submissions, so I get a lot). I really believe that I, and other editors, should be making our own decisions regarding what's good and what's marketable, as opposed to having agents do it for us. It is such a bizarre system - Agents are supposed to somehow "channel" us based on what is usually a very surface relationship, to let us know the manuscripts we will "like."  Huh?  Hey, I've had many a free lunch and plenty of martinis on agents, so that's fun, but I really think it's gone too far. Having the agent in there adds to the price, adds to the cost (typical for any middleman), and just makes things a lot more difficult for everyone.

I suspect that my colleagues at the larger houses, who have roomfuls of unrequested manuscripts thrown onto the floor, would disagree with me. They'd say that agents serve the purpose of separating the wheat from the chaff so that we don't have to. And I suppose they are right to a certain extent. For instance, an agent would never have sent me the "Adolf Hitler as a teenage detective" proposal I got a number of years ago. But I want to be making the decisions, and I'm willing to do it without agents sending me a lot of stuff that is frequently no better than the unagented stuff that comes in over the transom. This is one of the pleasures of working for an independent publisher, I must say.

5. Writer expectations are simply unrealistic.   Everyone, and I do mean everyone, who gets a book published wants to see it become a best-seller. And yet the truth is, due to the massive overload of books being published each year (see #1 above), very few people accomplish that. Much debut fiction sells under 3,000 copies, and a lot of books might top out at 1,000 copies. Writers envision themselves sitting in their delightful farmhouse in New Hampshire (which they have purchased with advance/royalty money), and tapping out those best-sellers in between cups of coffee and walking the dogs. It's a dream scenario, much like the kids who think they can make a living playing professional basketball/baseball/ football [insert other sport here], or young musicians who think they will be the next Madonna. The odds are tiny, tiny, tiny. And a lack of success is often met with an intense bitterness and anger directed at publisher, or agent, who somehow becomes "responsible" for the writer not achieving his/her dream lifestyle. The Bitter and Enraged take to the Web, bad-mouthing us in every forum and vowing that they'll make that million by doing an ePub, selling it for 99 cents, and showing us corporate assholes how wrong we were. I get your frustration, I really do - but might you remember that WE took a chance on YOU - paid to have your book edited, designed, printed, warehoused, and distributed - and that not a penny came out of your pocket? That's because professionals believed in your work and put their jobs on the line to support you. When you get your rights back and sell the work, you are profiting from our work and investment - and we get nothing.

6. Unending self-promotion by relative unknowns builds resentment. When I wrote a critique of the DorothyL listserv (mystery literature e-conference) a few years ago, I was amazed by the number of readers who wrote to me saying how sick and tired they were of seeing writers use it as a publicity device. I wrote back to a number of them asking if they ever posted a review; many responded by saying that the presence of so many writers is intimidating, and they felt they could not offer an honest opinion of what they'd read. Hmmm. Is this how we want readers to feel? Do we want to ram books down their throats, or do we want them to come begging for the books?  As writers and editors, we put ourselves out there each time we publish something, and criticism is inevitable. A book I published a few months ago just got a vicious 1-star review on Amazon.  Yuck. That hurt, but it's part of the game. I don't think that quenching any attempt at serious conversation has a positive effect. In fact, it has the opposite effect of sending our most important constituency - readers - underground. 

But Agatho, you say through clenched teeth, our publishers aren't doing anything for us, so we have to do it for ourselves!  Yes, you are right. But see #1 above.

7. The media refuse to give books the attention they deserve. As a culture, we're so obsessed with movie stars and athletes that all forms of media - especially TV - really don't give a rat's rear end about books, unless they are "written" by movie stars or athletes (ha!). The NYT Book Review is an exercise in sheer snobbery, turning its nose up at anything that aims to be popular. Newspapers don't want to carry stories about local authors anymore; magazines are happy with a blurb about the latest Mary Higgins Clark or Janet Evanovich. This is our own fault, as an industry. We should be advocating for more, better, and more interesting coverage of books beyond "phenomenon" books like Twilight, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and Harry Potter. 

Comments

[Puzzlehouse]

Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, and Yes. Great post!

[Pepper Smith]

No screams from this corner.

[Maxine]

Yes, good points all round. I left Dorothy L many years ago because of all the BSP and OT comments. And totally agree about the tsunami of self-"published". As a reader though, I like the idea of authors publishing out of print books, so long as they are in my reading niche!

[Lexi Revellian]

1. Let readers decide – popular books will rise, unpopular books will fall and not get in the way. The volume of books isn’t a problem, just as the millions of humans out there don’t stop most people getting married.
2. Hmm – don’t know about this one. Seems you should do what you believe in.
3. I’d be downright frightened to be offered money for a book I haven’t yet written. Eek!
4. Er – publishers handed over the slush pile to agents. Stupid move. Now they are complaining about it?
5. I couldn’t find an agent, let alone a publisher. I’ve sold 44,000 ebooks in a little over a year. Did I have unrealistic expectations when I queried agents? You tell me.
6. In my experience, what sells books is word of mouth. And fairy dust. Your books need to be sprinkled with lots of fairy dust.
7. I refuse to give the media the attention it deserves…so I don’t know what they are up to. No comment.

[Bernadette]

Thought-provoking post, thanks. As a reader and book blogger I am well over authors telling me how good their stuff is and getting cross if I don't immediately respond positively to their promotion. I've quit the Dorothy L list and unfollowed many authors on twitter for this reason

[Ziv Wities]

So, a question. How good are most of these surplus books getting published? When you say there are too many books - are there too many *good* books, or too many mediocre ones?

Because I'm not sure why mediocre books would be published in the first place, given the range of new authors and the existing backlist of great mystery fiction. Whereas if the books are generally of good quality, I'm not sure how readers get to have "too much" of them, nor how they might get beaten out by yesteryear's failures. I'd also sincerely hope that a publisher has the resources to carry a bit more publicizing clout than the average self-promoting self-publisher.

What I'm hearing you say - and I'm very much in agreement - is that in the industry, there's way too much noise, to very little signal. But isn't boosting the signal - and helping authors hammer and polish books into something truly enjoyable and worthwhile - the very definition of the publishers' job?

If publishers are seriously finding themselves hurting from the competition with self-promoters and re-selling of the books that they themselves couldn't market well in the past... Doesn't that speak rather poorly of the publishers' success at their most fundamental job description?

[Jess]

Excellent post. I totally agree with points 1,3,& 4. I'm pretty pessimistic about the country in general so I'll say the writing and publishing industry is broken--just like everything else.