I\u2019ve complained often enough in these emails about the shabby treatment experienced by too many writers at the hands of agents and publishers. And I\u2019m right to complain.<\/p>\n
If an agency allows writers to submit via the slushpile, as they nearly all do, that agency has an obligation to treat those writers with some basic courtesy. If a publisher takes on a book, they have a duty of basic professionalism in the way they handle it and the author.<\/p>\n
But this email has a different theme.<\/p>\n
The fact is that publishing is a tough trade. Hours are very long. Pay is modest. Advancement is slow. Bright graduates entering the profession will find themselves falling behind their peers in countless other fields. You get the kudos of working in a cultural industry. You also get the flipside, the crappy pay and conditions.<\/p>\n
All this is widely known. It\u2019s the theme tune playing gently behind every other discussion you hear in publishing.<\/p>\n
Why, authors ask, are publishers not more active in marketing their books?\u00a0<\/strong>The sotto voce answer: everyone works too hard as it is; most books don\u2019t repay any real marketing effort; no one has time or money or energy.<\/em><\/p>\n Why, authors ask, are advances mingy and possibly falling? <\/strong>Why has the option of self-publishing not forced publishers towards a more equitable share of e-book royalties? The sotto voce answer: everyone works too hard as it is; there\u2019s not enough money to go round; we can\u2019t pay authors more because we don\u2019t even pay ourselves enough.<\/em><\/p>\n Why, authors ask, do big publishers feel so conservative, so safe in their selections?\u00a0<\/strong>Where\u2019s the radical, risk-taking creativity that ought to be the lifeblood of the industry? The sotto voce answer: everyone works too hard as it is; most novels don\u2019t make money anyway; small print runs are loss-making; everyone wants to be risk-taking, but we\u2019ve got to look after the profit and loss.<\/em><\/p>\n Every now and then, however, these sotto voce conversations burst into the open. They did so recently where, as it happened, four American editors announced their resignations more or less simultaneously. The four were Hillary Sames and Angeline Rodriguez at Little Brown\/Orbit,\u00a0Erin Siu\u00a0at Macmillan Children\u2019s, and\u00a0Molly McGhee\u00a0at Macmillan\/Tor.<\/p>\n The match that lit the fire was McGhee\u2019s commentary around her resignation, which she posted on Twitter. She wrote:<\/p>\n Today is my last day at Tor Books. My promotion request was denied and as such I am leaving as my first acquisition \u2026 debuts at number three on the NYT Bestsellers list \u2026 this should be a \u201cgreat beginning\u201d not a heartbreaking end.<\/em><\/p>\n But it has been made clear to me that I would need more \u201ctraining\u201d before being promoted from an assistant position and that it would be unrealistic for me to leave the admin duties of assisting any time in the next five years. After eight years of experience working in the publishing industry, I decided ten years of assisting would be my limit, let alone fifteen.<\/em><\/p>\n She went on to identify the technophobia of more senior staff as a big part of the problem \u2013 so assistants were expected to handle the tech cores that their seniors couldn\u2019t handle.<\/p>\n Neither McGhee nor the others criticised their firms or their imprints in particular. On the contrary, the wider discussion around the issue recognised that these issues were industry-wide.<\/p>\n I\u2019m on McGhee\u2019s side here. Fifteen years as an assistant? Ten even? I\u2019d never have done that, not in any industry, and not for any money. At Jericho Writers, we wouldn\u2019t dream of imposing that kind of eternal serfdom on our juniors. People want a sense of flourishing, of expanding, of creative possibility. And so they should; you only live once.<\/p>\n It\u2019s common for more senior publishers to sigh wisely and admit, yes, theirs is an industry where money is always tight and margins low. But that\u2019s not actually true. Publishers have been boasting record profits. Penguin Random House has an operating margin approaching 20%. That\u2019s an astonishingly fat margin for a mature industry with no meaningful barriers to entry. Truth is, that margin is suggestive of oligopoly, not competition. Walmart has a margin of under 5%. Amazon Retail has a margin of around 2%, and its international retail business, until recently, was lossmaking.<\/p>\n So in a way, those sotto voce conversations are missing the truth. Here\u2019s a slightly more accurate version of one of them:<\/p>\n Why, authors ask, are publishers not more active in marketing their books?<\/strong> The sotto voce answer: We make a lot of money; we want to go on making a lot of money; our business model is to recruit smart people, pay them badly, work them hard, and keep them in junior roles too long; along the way that forces a lot of compromises \u2013 on marketing and lord knows what else \u2013 but we\u2019re going to continue to operate like that, because our shareholders really, really like their dividends and we\u2019d absolutely hate to disappoint them.<\/em><\/p>\n So yes, Molly McGhee, good for you. The only way pay and conditions will change in publishing is if enough people protest or quit or insist on change. I don\u2019t actually see that happening, but sometimes you just have to take a stand, no matter what.<\/p>\n And for authors: is there a takeaway in this? Is there some actually useful purpose to this email?<\/p>\n Well, yes, I think there is. When you deal with the industry, you need to know that pretty much everyone you deal with is overworked and underpaid.<\/p>\n So reduce their burden, don\u2019t add to it.<\/strong><\/p>\n Make sure the draft manuscript you submit is in spanking good shape. If you have thoughts on cover design, put those together in a professional one-pager that your editor could simply forward to their cover designer. If you have an important meeting, send out an email summary of points from that meeting, because no one else is likely to do so. If you don\u2019t like the way your ebook is being set up, then offer your thoughts in the kind of email that can just be approved and actioned. If you meet a bunch of people at some industry conference, then take notes on who you\u2019ve met and send nice-to-meet-you emails to anyone significant.<\/p>\n Honestly, there\u2019s a limit to how much difference you can make by being a hyper-businesslike author, but it\u2019s still better to be that than the opposite. Quite apart from anything else, it creates goodwill amongst your publishing team and that goodwill is always valuable.<\/p>\n That\u2019s it from me. I will find a merrier subject next week, you just see if I don\u2019t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019ve complained often enough in these emails about the shabby treatment experienced by too many writers at the hands of agents and publishers. And I\u2019m right to complain. If an agency allows writers to submit via the slushpile, as they nearly all do, that agency has an obligation to treat those writers with some basic<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":6758,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29292],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-harrys-friday-email"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n