Crisis management was the reigning publishing paradigm when, in 1998, George Soros’ Open Society Institute funded the Authors Guild Midlist Book Study. So it was slightly ironic when, at a meeting last month featuring study author David Kirkpatrick, several participants pronounced the midlist in satisfactory health and certified that it had never been as well published as it is today. Despite objections from S&S’s Alice Mayhew and Walker’s George Gibson (who had reservations about too many books being published), enthusiasm for the quality of midlist publishing came from the likes of panelist Roxanne Coady, the lone bookseller on the panel (B&N having apparently not acknowledged their invitation), who raised eyebrows when she waxed sanguine over the book section of Entertainment Weekly and pouted that a certain glossy publication devoted solely to books was simply “not trashy enough.”
Of course, the study did note that while the number of titles has not declined, midlist market share has suffered as mega-sellers have gone through the roof but midlist numbers have remained flat. The crux of the issue, Kirkpatrick concluded, was that chains, superstores, and online booksellers might have miles of midlist on the shelves — in fact, linear shelf space devoted to sale of trade books in this country, if laid end-to-end, would stretch from NYC to Caracas — but those books are lost without heavy marketing support. And, chain-store merchandising policies being what they are, the cost of marketing new books has soared into the stratosphere. He noted that publishers’ marketing budgets for midlist titles typically amount to less than $5,000 to cover advertising, book tours, and other promotions, but that it can take $10,000 just to get a book slapped on the table at the front of your local superstore. Declining library purchases and dwindling indie booksellers, Kirkpatrick said, have done nothing to help matters.
Peter Osnos then stole the show when the discussion turned to author advances. He told would-be authors that writing a book is crazy, big advances are bunk, and a day job is a writer’s best friend. A prime case in point was Tina Rosenberg’s Pulitzer- and NBA-winning The Haunted Land. Sales were in the respectable teens when the awards and rave reviews arrived. Then another 30,000 copies or so were shipped — 70% of which were returned. The upshot was that some titles, no matter how worthy, may simply not be meant to sell more than 10,000 copies. The debate then veered abruptly into the sphere of grants, foundations, and fellowships, indicating that the real crisis was not midlist publishing but indeed how to pay the mortgage and feed the kids.
