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1/6/08 14:05![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
madrobinsMonique Stevens wrote me a couple of very nice notes buried in the comments section of another post. I thought I'd answer her questions here, in case anyone else was wondering about this stuff:
Okay, basically: hardcovers have a very different print run from mass market books, and they're sold very differently. Hardcovers (unless you're Stephen King, Nora Roberts, or another of the handful of current bestseller types) sell in bookstores, by booksellers. If you're lucky (see Stephen King, Nora Roberts, etc.) your hardcover might also sell in supermarkets, at airport bookstores, at Costco, etc. Otherwise, bookstores. A hardcover like Point of Honour, which might have a total print run of 6000 copies, doesn't have to sell that many to be successful. And at the chain bookstores many new books are shelved in the "new hardcovers" section, as opposed to the "new SF" or "new romance" or "new mystery" section. Bookstores are generally populated by people who want to look at, and perhaps buy, books. So the chance of Point of Honour, shelved face out in the relatively neutral "new book" area, being seen and picked up, was fairly high. Plus, a mid-list book like PoH only prints about 5000-7500 copies total. The sell-through on the Sarah Tolerance books (that is, the number of books printed that were sent out to bookstores and actually sold to human book readers) was very high. By the way: putting a book on a special "pay attention to this book" table or display usually costs the publisher something--unless a bookseller at the store has read the book and adored it and is handselling it to everyone he or she meets.
When the book goes in to paperback, however, everything changes. For paperbacks (as I understand it--and my data is now 10 years out of date, although I suspect it's still valid) booksellers want a classification: romance or suspense or technothriller or paranormal romance or pastoral-historical-comical or something (Shakespeare was so prescient). And the cover image should reinforce that categorization. This is where (I think) my editor erred. In her mind I think that Point of Honour was allied with the romance market. Why not? It has the clothes, it has a female protagonist, it has a romance, albeit an unhappy one. In my mind, as I was writing it, it was historical mystery. Even so, when I handed it in, I said flippantly, "I'm handing you a marketing nightmare." Because the book is neither one thing nor another nor even a third--maybe if I hadn't made it an alternate history historical it would have fit more easily on the historical mystery shelves. But the real problem--beyond categorization--is the way that paperbacks are sold now.
A history digression: back when dinosaurs drove Volvos and I was young, downlist and midlist paperbacks were sold everywhere. All through high school, when I lived in a town with no bookstore, I haunted the drugstore and supermarket because they both had spinner racks that were replenished monthly with all sorts of stuff: SF, fantasy, romance, mysteries. I am stunned to remember how much of my allowance I spent on books, because the local library was fine about serving up my romance fix, but failed utterly with SF. Sometime in the early nineties (I think) that began to change. I can't recall if it was the distributors or the stores themselves, but they started wanting only the sure-sellers. That meant books that were geared to their market (mostly romances, big suspense books, a few SF or fantasy bestsellers). Which meant the midlist was consigned to bookstores.
A paperback book used to be an impulse purchase. You'd go to buy milk, a box of Tide, and some doughnuts and come out with something to read when the kids are in bed. Now, the majority of paperbacks are "destination purchases," meaning you have to go to a bookstore to find them. Which means a huge potential readership isn't finding the midlist books, and many potential readers just don't seek out books. (Some other time ask me about comic books, because a similar thing happened there, too.)
So: a hardcover has a chance to do well because the people who go looking to spend money on books have a chance to find it. A paperback book, if shelved in places where its potential readers won't find it, and without support from the wider market, may fail. Clear as mud? Yeah, to me too.
I hope I'll find a publisher; I need to look a little harder than I have been doing. But doing Print-to-Order myself is a can o' worms I'd prefer not to get into. With two kids, a job, and writing to do, having to become my own publisher (including promotion, distribution, editing, proofreading, etc.) is not something I yearn to take on.
I too call them "Regency noir," or less flippantly, historical mystery. Point of Honour was very deliberately mapped on The Maltese Falcon, and I wanted to have the elements of noir in the books: a fatalistic acceptance of a flawed and dangerous world, humor, and honor. To me the core moment in Maltese Falcon is when Sam Spade says (I am paraphrasing wildly here): "When a man's partner is killed, he's supposed to do something about it. It doesn't matter whether you liked him or not. He was your partner, and you have to do something about it."
I also--since I spent years writing Regencies when I was young, and am by nature a contrarian--really itched to get at the other side of that glittering picture: the sordid underbelly of London at the time. I certainly wanted the books to be dark, so if I succeeded, I'm happy.
I am still trying to figure out why the more expensive hardcover would sell better than the less expensive mass market paperback (Excuse my utter ignorance of publishing. No doubt there is some obvious answer that is way above my head.)
Okay, basically: hardcovers have a very different print run from mass market books, and they're sold very differently. Hardcovers (unless you're Stephen King, Nora Roberts, or another of the handful of current bestseller types) sell in bookstores, by booksellers. If you're lucky (see Stephen King, Nora Roberts, etc.) your hardcover might also sell in supermarkets, at airport bookstores, at Costco, etc. Otherwise, bookstores. A hardcover like Point of Honour, which might have a total print run of 6000 copies, doesn't have to sell that many to be successful. And at the chain bookstores many new books are shelved in the "new hardcovers" section, as opposed to the "new SF" or "new romance" or "new mystery" section. Bookstores are generally populated by people who want to look at, and perhaps buy, books. So the chance of Point of Honour, shelved face out in the relatively neutral "new book" area, being seen and picked up, was fairly high. Plus, a mid-list book like PoH only prints about 5000-7500 copies total. The sell-through on the Sarah Tolerance books (that is, the number of books printed that were sent out to bookstores and actually sold to human book readers) was very high. By the way: putting a book on a special "pay attention to this book" table or display usually costs the publisher something--unless a bookseller at the store has read the book and adored it and is handselling it to everyone he or she meets.
When the book goes in to paperback, however, everything changes. For paperbacks (as I understand it--and my data is now 10 years out of date, although I suspect it's still valid) booksellers want a classification: romance or suspense or technothriller or paranormal romance or pastoral-historical-comical or something (Shakespeare was so prescient). And the cover image should reinforce that categorization. This is where (I think) my editor erred. In her mind I think that Point of Honour was allied with the romance market. Why not? It has the clothes, it has a female protagonist, it has a romance, albeit an unhappy one. In my mind, as I was writing it, it was historical mystery. Even so, when I handed it in, I said flippantly, "I'm handing you a marketing nightmare." Because the book is neither one thing nor another nor even a third--maybe if I hadn't made it an alternate history historical it would have fit more easily on the historical mystery shelves. But the real problem--beyond categorization--is the way that paperbacks are sold now.
A history digression: back when dinosaurs drove Volvos and I was young, downlist and midlist paperbacks were sold everywhere. All through high school, when I lived in a town with no bookstore, I haunted the drugstore and supermarket because they both had spinner racks that were replenished monthly with all sorts of stuff: SF, fantasy, romance, mysteries. I am stunned to remember how much of my allowance I spent on books, because the local library was fine about serving up my romance fix, but failed utterly with SF. Sometime in the early nineties (I think) that began to change. I can't recall if it was the distributors or the stores themselves, but they started wanting only the sure-sellers. That meant books that were geared to their market (mostly romances, big suspense books, a few SF or fantasy bestsellers). Which meant the midlist was consigned to bookstores.
A paperback book used to be an impulse purchase. You'd go to buy milk, a box of Tide, and some doughnuts and come out with something to read when the kids are in bed. Now, the majority of paperbacks are "destination purchases," meaning you have to go to a bookstore to find them. Which means a huge potential readership isn't finding the midlist books, and many potential readers just don't seek out books. (Some other time ask me about comic books, because a similar thing happened there, too.)
So: a hardcover has a chance to do well because the people who go looking to spend money on books have a chance to find it. A paperback book, if shelved in places where its potential readers won't find it, and without support from the wider market, may fail. Clear as mud? Yeah, to me too.
I am sure you will find a publisher eventually or maybe you could use a "print to order" online publisher.
I hope I'll find a publisher; I need to look a little harder than I have been doing. But doing Print-to-Order myself is a can o' worms I'd prefer not to get into. With two kids, a job, and writing to do, having to become my own publisher (including promotion, distribution, editing, proofreading, etc.) is not something I yearn to take on.
By the way, I was wondering how you would classify the Sarah Tolerance books, i.e. Regency Mystery/Romance...etc. I was thinking of something along the lines of "Regency Noir". I am a big fan of both Regency and medieval literature as well as classic films, especially 1940's noir. In your novels and one other series that was also discontinued I felt I had finally found the perfect marriage between the two, but with the sexy twist of the hard boiled detective being a woman and with an "homme fatal" instead of a "femme fatale". I don't know if you agree that the books are as dark as I make them out to be, but that is how I read them, especially Point of Honour. I really hope to read the third installment.
I too call them "Regency noir," or less flippantly, historical mystery. Point of Honour was very deliberately mapped on The Maltese Falcon, and I wanted to have the elements of noir in the books: a fatalistic acceptance of a flawed and dangerous world, humor, and honor. To me the core moment in Maltese Falcon is when Sam Spade says (I am paraphrasing wildly here): "When a man's partner is killed, he's supposed to do something about it. It doesn't matter whether you liked him or not. He was your partner, and you have to do something about it."
I also--since I spent years writing Regencies when I was young, and am by nature a contrarian--really itched to get at the other side of that glittering picture: the sordid underbelly of London at the time. I certainly wanted the books to be dark, so if I succeeded, I'm happy.