Sometimes I forget exactly how saturated I am in the publishing industry, at how familiar all the jargon and the genres and the buzz is to me, while the people outside this world, the ones buying the books, are lucky if they can name ten books publshed this year that don’t have the words “Harry Potter” in the title. Even the readers one comes across on the internet are better educated about the industry than most — the internet readers are the ones likely to visit an author’s webpage and know something about the style of books published by different publishing houses. (My mother, for instance, probably reads a dozen books a month, and would be hard pressed to name a single publisher).
But the average reader, the reader on the street, now there’s a person whose mindset I’ve had a tough time accessing since i entered this business. I just can’t think like them anymore, and I have a difficult time trying.
These are the people who toss about the phrase “Harlequin romance” as a generic, like Q-Tip or Kleenex. (That sound you hear is Harlequin cheering).
These people are the ones at parties who tell you they “would never read a romance,” only to later admit that Nora Roberts is their favorite author. Turns out that they thought all romances have a cover featuring Fabio clutching to his chest a half-naked bimbo in a bodice.
These people are the ones who would probably really like Silhouette Bombshell, if they ever bothered looking for action adventure novels on the category romance racks (which they wouldn’t, cf. bitch in bodice).
These are the people who think Paris Hilton really wrote that book.
These are the people who think all authors are as rich as JK Rowling, who think all books get made into movies, and would start looking through you and blinking if you attempted to explain the difference between various subgenres.
These are the people (and I swear I’ve actually had this experience) who think “fiction” means fantastical elements — talking dogs, time travel, aliens, fairies, monsters — and “non-fiction” means Maeve Binchy and Richard Russo. And don’t try explaining novels to them, either, they’ll just insist that their precious “non fiction novels” really did happen to all the people who wrote them. In which case, I really gotta meet Carl Hiassen.
These are the people who haven’t a clue about motif, or POV, or head-hopping (one reader asked me the other day if “third person point of view is one of those books where three different people use ‘I’ — because I hate that”) or dialogue tags, or any of the other craft issues I obsess over daily.
These are the people who will be deciding whether or not I get paid next summer. Makes me look at marketing in a whole different light. Everything I know about the industry, everything I learned to get in and market my book to publishers isn’t going to matter at all to them. They won’t care if it’s a mixture of romance and suspense and collegiate fiction and chick lit and whatever genre-bending buzzword they want to stick on after that. I’ll be lucky if I can nail down what I mean by “fiction”.
Of course, it’s not like it’s easy to understand this industry even if you’ve been in it for a while. Take my publisher, Bantam Dell. Bantam Dell is a division of Random House that publishers adult fiction and non-fiction (as Shauna Summers said in Reno, everything from Stephen Hawking to Danielle Steele). It’s made up of Bantam Books and Dell Publishing. Under this umbrella is also the Dial Press, which I think publishines more literary works, and Spectra, which does the sf and fantasy stuff. If you are published by this company, then the little publisher insignia on the side of your books can say all sorts of stuff, depending on imprint and publishing format, including: Bantam, Dell, Delta, Delacorte, etc. etc. I think I’ve figured out a code, but I could be totally wrong. Bantam books say Bantam in hardcover, trade and mass market. Dell books say Dell in mass market, Delta in trade (sometimes!!!) and Delacorte in hardcover. Diana Gabaldon’s hardcovers say “Delacorte.” So will mine. Luanne Rice’s say Bantam. Okay, so far so good.
However, once upon a time in the Kingdom of Bertelsmann (whether before or after Dell joined with Bantam or became part of RH has since been lost to the annals of history, or at least to this author’s Googleability), the Baronet Dell sold/transferred/gave/ransomed/indentured/whatever to King Random House a children’s imprint called “Delacorte Press Books for Young Readers,” which is now a lovely lordling of Random House Children’s. So thus it is that there are two Delacorte Presses at Random House: Bantam Dell Delacorte hardcovers for adults, and Random House Children’s Delacorte Press for Young Readers.
But does the average person on the street know this? Would they care even if they did? Heck, I can hardly understand it, and I’m writing for these folks! So I’m thinking not so much. I just write a really good story and people pay for it and enjoy it and Random House makes money and gives some of it to me and everyone’s happy.
Right?
October 20th, 2005 at 1:45 pm
Not just some of it, but a pretty good portion of it, considering your advance (which everyone in the industry has heard of). But guess that’s where the worries come in — after such a pre-payment, the publisher’s expectations must be as high as they get. Hope you don’t sink next summer. It’s time for them to give out bigger advances. We aren’t flipping burgers here, after all
[Reply]
October 20th, 2005 at 2:27 pm
Naturally, I’m hoping that it’s not a good portion of it but rather just what it sounds like, an advance against the royalties I’ll eventually earn. And I’m going to do whatever I can to make sure it happens.
I heard a bestseller recently said, “If you’re earning out your advance, your advance isn’t big enough,” but that idea terrifies me. Thanks for the well wishes. I’ll take them as I hope they were meant.
[Reply]
October 20th, 2005 at 2:55 pm
Ah, the green-eyed monster comes forth again. We’ve seen her here so many times.
Everyone needs to get over the fact that Diana got a great advance and just focus on the quality of her book. Obviously a publisher wouldn’t have put their faith in her ability to sell if it weren’t a kick-ass story. I, for one, can’t wait to read it.
[Reply]
October 20th, 2005 at 10:07 pm
It’s really difficult for me to hold the reality of books in my head. We know far too much, and that’s why we freak over bad reviews on the web or in RT. The percentage of people who actually look at the reviews, let alone heed them, are miniscule. It’s actually a relief in some ways, because without a gazillion dollars, there’s nothing I can do to make a difference. I’m still not convinced that all the pushing and plotting done by some with the time and energy, is worth it. And so far, no one’s come up with any real numbers to convince me. Again, it comes down to writing the best book you can, and enjoying the process. Because everything else is voodoo.
[Reply]
October 21st, 2005 at 7:26 am
First Anon, I hope Diana sets the example, too. By being successful and proving that the big advance should, and will, become a natural thing in the publishing world. Too many authors got nice advances and failed to sell through, and that is sad.
Second Anon (does that make me the Third?), I think the green-eyed monster isn’t just about the advance, but about the talent. Because the advances don’t just spring out of nowhere. The reason is the book. You’ve got to be talented, and talent often makes its owner surrounded with more jealousy than beauty or wealth.
[Reply]
October 21st, 2005 at 9:47 am
Hi Diana,
I lurk on your blog from time to time, but I had to post something on this topic. I must say that I think you are incredibly brilliant. I received a National Merit Scholarship to college, but I still read your stuff and go ‘woah…she’s really terribly clever- me feel dumb’, lol. That said, however, I think you have an approachable wit/intelligence that will go over well with the masses. After all, most of us want to be entertained as readers and you are always entertaining. (Loved the bit about pulling your bro out of college so fast the keg would leave skid marks, lol.)
So, there be my two cents (from a realtively masses-like gal)
[Reply]
October 21st, 2005 at 1:40 pm
Diana–you have the ability to turn off anonymous comments here, if you like; just saying, not recommending one way or another, but I just noticed three anonymous unsigned comments. And don’t worry, no one has any idea what your advance was or wasn’t . . . I wouldn’t even know where to go to research that, and I don’t read Publishers Lunch, because it’s too much like going to a meeting at the company where I used to work as a programmer and trying to stay awake while they gave all their marketing info. ; )
I *have* actually noticed all that stuff about “the average reader,” as well. It’s been going on for years. People I know call it a “fiction novel” [sic] and believe that celebrities write every word of their own books, and slap me if I show them a website that suggests possibly Ron Goulart ghosted Shatner’s novels. At a book signing, one man collared me and demanded to know what I thought of Sidney Sheldon. To him, Sid is the epitome of perfection, and if you don’t say you write just like Sid, you are nothing.
All I could remember is that Sheldon helped create “I Dream of Jeannie.” That didn’t impress the man.
But people have NO CLUE how this industry works. In fact, my teachers up until college always would say to me or to my mother when passing back my essay or short story that they’d read aloud to the class, “You should have that published!” (*grin*) They actually believed that it was an easy thing to sell one’s juvenilia to New York. All that meant was that mine was the least bad in the class, of course.
My best friend in college found out that I wrote novels, and said, “Hey, if YOU can do it, *I* can do it!” (Yes, she’s that way, despite my being another National Merit Scholar, as mentioned earlier on this thread. Most people act that way toward me. If even *I* can knit a Dr. Who scarf, why, then, *they’ll* get a box of Brillo pads and effortlessly knit a car! And it’ll wash itself whenever it rains! *wry grin* It’s something about the low-key way I come across, I think.) Then she proceeded to tell me all about how she would offer her Fiction Novel [sic] for a bidding war among publishers, and showed me sketches for the pictures she was going to draw and send along, “because that’ll be different and get their attention.” (She planned to write a fantasy novel.) She used to brag about how she didn’t need to know about grammar, for if she could talk and make herself understood, it would work the same way on the page. She wouldn’t listen to me nor read _Writer’s Market_. She finally got straightened out at Armadillocon here in Texas, and came back to tell me all the same stuff I had been telling her that had gone in one ear and out the other. I didn’t say “I told you that,” because she didn’t even remember hearing me tell her. : )
But as I said on my LiveJournal a few posts back, people don’t want to know stuff. They don’t want you to inform or educate them about something unless they ask a specific question about it. They’ll go find out if they do want to know, but if you try to explain, you become a know-it-all and they stop listening. So it’s kind of a lost cause, as you already said. It’s like explaining algebra to a group of bored ninth-graders. The ones who care can already do it, and the rest don’t see the point. *GRIN*
You make another salient point: readers aren’t so bothered by the stuff that agents and editors watch for. Readers can enjoy reading prose that clunks along with adverbial dialogue tags, even Tom Swiftie-worthy ones, and they have NO idea that they’re seeing “head-hopping” or that the author just did a flashback. The important thing to them seems that you just tell a good story and don’t “slow it down too much” with whatever it is that slows down their reading speed. The ease of reading seems to be another important issue. Outside of that, I suspect the reading public just “knows what it likes.” It’s all, as hubby says to me all the time, a crapshoot.
Sounds like you rolled sevens!
[Reply]