The Longest Mile

By Andrew Grabois - Feb 11 , 2008

Ever wonder why the technology-fueled productivity gains of the 1990’s that transformed the U.S. economy seems to have bypassed book publishing? Doesn’t it feel like it takes longer than ever for your book to get to market?

Rachel Donadio tries to explain this paradox in an essay that appeared in the Sunday New York Times Book Review. Speaking to a number of publishers and industry insiders, Donadio found that while the rest of the world is living by Internet hyper-time, book publishing is actually slowing down. The reason, everybody tells her, is marketing.

Except for quickie, ripped-from-the-headlines titles, and embargoed celebrity bios, most books take at least a year from the time of submission to reach your local bookstore. This is because, Donadio learns, publishers have to methodically build a groundswell of interest and support each step along the way.

Donadio did a good job of getting publishers to open up about the mysterious thought process that informs their decision-making. This is what they told her:

• Publishers still rely on buzz and word-of-mouth to sell books

• Word-of-mouth campaigns must try to reach their target audiences through the noise and din of information overload, and, therefore, must be planned months in advance

• The lead-time is longer for non-established authors and topics without an obvious audience or “need”

• Each stakeholder in the process, including editors, sales reps, retail buyers, magazine editors, and TV producers, must be persuaded in turn that they should enthusiastically support (if at all) a book

• Barnes & Noble and Borders make their buying decisions six months in advance of publication date, and decide how many copies to buy based on the author’s track record and expected media interest (Donadio was told that it’s sometimes easier to sell a hyped, first-time author than one who has already published one or two books that were modestly successful).

• Big-box discounters like Wal-Mart, Costco, and Target (where so many books are being sold these days), reserve room on their tables each month, so if a publisher misses the target date, they have to wait another four to six months to publish

• Publishers will change publication dates to avoid having to compete with blockbusters or other books on the same subject

• Publishers try not to publish fiction during the fall of presidential election years or when the harsh reality of war, terrorism, and natural disasters, rear their ugly heads

Donadio’s essay did not get the attention I thought it would. One of the few to weigh in was David Rothman of Publishers Weekly. In his blog, Rothman suggests circulating electronic versions of books to create optimally timed buzz, get user feedback, and predict demand. This is an interesting idea that could accomplish a number of things, but how does it speed up the publication process?

The problem faced by both authors and publishers is not only that there is a thicker information fog to penetrate, and a long lead-time required for distribution, but that there are simply too many books and too few top-tier publishers that everybody submits their manuscripts to. Over 200,000 new books are published in the U.S. each year, including about 50,000 from the dozen largest trade houses and the 150 largest university presses. That’s 25% of annual U.S. book output published by 0.2% of publishers (according to Bowker, there are 83,000 active U.S. publishers). Like so many other supply and demand relationships, the top-tier publishers become more desirable as they become more selective.

Perhaps the answer is to look beyond the same blue-chip publishers to others that can give more support to fewer titles. There are about 10,000 mid-sized publishers that maintain active catalogs of between 10 and 1,000 titles. And maybe some of those 70,000 small publishers that exist only to publish one or two self-authored titles can add books by other aspiring authors to their catalogs.

The only way to eliminate the publishing bottleneck is to widen the neck.

What’s your best shot at a solution to getting books to market quicker? I’d be interested to know your thoughts . . . .