Terms to Know: Lead Title

All books are created equal.

Some books are more equal than others.

When publishers talk about a lead title, they're referring to a book (often, but certainly not always, by a début author) that they believe has the potential to blow out in terms of sales. These aren't the books by established hot shots or memoirs/self help books by celebrities; these are those front-of-store, gotta-read titles that seem to erupt out of nowhere. But nay! They do not appear ex nihilo, cats and kittens, but rather, they are built and designed: they receive six-figure marketing budgets, co-op dollars, aggressive publicity, additional sales materials. In short: the works.

Now, to be fair, it's not possible to engineer a bestselling title without the reading public's participation. A Big Six publisher could throw millions into marketing and co-op and not come anywhere close to breaking even if the consumer doesn't participate (i.e., purchase the book). That said, we all (as consumers, anyway) are much more easily manipulated than we would like to believe, and there is a direct correlation between the amount of money, time, and energy that a publisher puts into a book—a lead title—and that title's performance in the market.

Some lead titles flop terribly. Most, I think, break even, depending on the amount of money sunk into the endeavor. A few (far more than the average for books in general, but still not a huge number) become major bestsellers, and I'm inclined to believe they wouldn't have had they not had the big budgets and know-how of a large publishing operation. When the publisher pays for those big stacks of books at the front of Borders or Barnes & Noble, lines up interview after interview with major media, and advertises in magazines and locations you're likely to read and frequent, aren't you going to pick up that book and at least read the dust jacket? That's half the battle, friends: getting you to pick up the book. The publisher believes the content is enough to win the second half of the battle (getting you to bring the book to the register), but first they have to spend enough money to make it easy for you to find.

Not all major titles are/were lead titles (Harry Potter—the early books, anyway—being a good example), but classifying a book as such is a way of allocating funds and marking which books are believed to be wildly successful before they even ship out to stores. Is it fair? No. Is it practical in this industry? Absolutely. And by no means are the non-lead titles of the world doomed to failure—they are, as I said, "equal"—but they're not as equal as the titles that receive substantially larger investments of time, money, and effort, and the odds of their doing as well sales-wise is very slim indeed.

Prithee, Inform Me: What's the Best Writing Advice You've Ever Gotten?

Mine was from a former college professor, who told me: "There is no thinking except in the writing. There is no writing except in the rewriting."

Share yours in the comments!

Death of a Format

As we progress further into the Most Glorious Digital Age, mes auteurs, I can't help but feel that some book formats and practices are going to be made obsolete. Now, before anyone gets started with "Kindle-this" and "iPad-that," I'm not suggesting that 1.) these changes will render print books in general obsolete, or 2.) these changes will be specific to any one e-reader, company, or file format.

They are as follows: large print and audio books (as they currently exist) are goners.

Large print books are going to fold relatively soon simply because e-readers offer something that physical books don't and can't: resizable font. If the characters on your Kindle or Sony Reader or iPad or what have you are too small to read, you can zoom in; no such luck with a paperback. And as more and more older folks begin to adopt electronic readers, the market for paper-and-ink large print books will continue to dwindle. Eventually, everyone who used to read large print books will have either converted over to e-books or will have died, leaving only those who grew up with electronic books as the norm.

How long will this process take? Beats me, but I know that large print book sales have been on the decline for a few years now and their profit margins are shrinking. I'd be surprised if large print books are still sold by major New York publishers five years from now.

Audio books are a different animal altogether: they're not being directly threatened by e-readers like the Kindle or the Nook, but their audience is dwindling as libraries (major customers in the audio market) are closing and downward pressure on pricing in the music industry means fewer and fewer people are willing to shell out $40 or even $50 for an unabridged audio book.

In my opinion, the future of the audio book lies in the paid download (à la the iTunes store model or a subscription model like Amazon's Audible). As we move away from physical media for everything from books (Kindle, iPad, Nook) to music and movies (iTunes, Audible, Netflix's "Watch Instantly"), I think the physical, compact disc audio book is going to go the way of the dodo. Unlike the print book market, which will actually continue to thrive for awhile in the YA and children's segments (chiefly because most parents can't or won't by a $200+ device for accident-prone children to read on), audio books haven't taken hold with that demographic because its constituents either haven't bought a CD in years or are unsure as to what CDs actually are.

What do you think, gentle readers? Am I right or am I right?

Round Up Day

Round up time, with Laura visiting from Combreviations:

Look me in the (metaphorical) eye, reader types, and tell me you don't want to become a writer, at least in part, for the celebrity. Selfish, selfish ends. But then you can join the ranks of Evangeline Lily and her children's book, or Peaches Geldof and her not-children's book. You could score Bridget Jones' Diary like Lily Allen, or revel in cliches like Kazuo Ishiguro. You could talk fiction, like Jeffrey Eugenides, or rank 20th century gothic fiction, like Carlos Ruiz Zafon. Your senior thesis could be published, like David Foster Wallace! Or you could encourage college students to be nice, like Jeff Bezos. Hell, you could be popular for all time, like James Bond.

Now, to be fair, most writers don't become famous (not like Laurell K. Hamilton, who gave a great interview). But sometimes you can still get access to the secret Vatican archives, or respond to Israeli news. And you're always free to judge the New Yorker's list of writers under 40, or make your own list of writers over 80. Or discover yourself as an element on the periodic table of writers. And even if you never make it, don't be sad—you can still be part of storytime with B&N.

Plus, hey, if you're here, you're probably literate, which says that you had good access to books as a child (and maybe no live music in your library). So don't go fret to your therapist, especially if it turns out reading poetry is more beneficial than therapy. Everything is probably your sister's fault anyway. So read your Guns N' Roses vook, pull out your e-bible, become the mayor of your local bookstore, be sure to retitle your book for maximum click through, and we'll see you next week!

Prithee, Inform Me: Query Theory

I've oft wondered, meine Autoren, what your tips, tricks, and techniques are for writing query letters. Do you personalize every one? Do you mention a book or two from the agent's list you particularly enjoyed? Do you start your queries with rhetorical questions or pleas for leniency?

Whatever works (or hasn't worked!) for you, please share in the comments!

The [Your Name Here]'s Daughter, Revisited

I've covered the topic of The [Your Name Here]'s Daughter (a.k.a. The [Adjective] Wife) before, but as the trend (to my continual consternation) continues, I figure it bears revisiting.

Publishing is fraught with trends. This is for two reasons: one, would-be authors (who are also readers) see successful books and want to write similar books in the hope that they will also be successful, and publishers (who always want The Next Big Thing™) see successful books (either theirs or their competitors') and want to publish similar books in the hope that they will also be successful. (It's a vicious cycle.) Unfortunately, only a small percentage of these books catch on and become bestsellers, the rest fail to earn out their advances, authors and publishers everywhere are confused, and the process begins again when a new trend starts to catch on.

I generally advise you, gentle readers, not to play the trend game because 1.) the trend will likely be exhausted by the time your book comes out, and 2.) even if it isn't, there's no guarantee your book will be one of The Chosen Ones that readers everywhere simply MUST HAVE. Which trends in particular do I think are nearing their ends? Well, I'm glad you asked.

· The [Your Name Here]'s Daughter/The [Adjective] Wife. Archetype: Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife. I recently mentioned my personal grievances with this trend to a colleague, who simply responded, "Yeah, but The [Your Name Here]'s Wife sells!" (The trend, not any title in particular.) Which is true! At least, it's true for now. As the market becomes saturated with this particular variety of women's fiction, however, I think more and more consumers will turn elsewhere for new reads.

· Vampires/Werewolves. Archetype: Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series. No, really. Authors who have already established themselves as brands with this subject, like Meyer or Charlaine Harris, can pretty much continue to write vampire novels until the turn of the century. You, who are just starting out, do not have this luxury. Vampires and werewolves will always be cool, but they won't be as cool as they are now for a long time. Putting werewolves in space or making vampires fallen angels will not increase their coolness. Trust me.

· Mash-ups. Archetype: Seth Grahame-Smith's Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. More or less the exclusive province of Quirk Books, this relatively short-lived trend probably won't survive long after the publisher's release of Android Karenina later this month.

· Anything based around the world ending in 2012. Archetype: Too many to count. As you might expect, this trend will cease to be cool on or around January 1st, 2013.

While I don't want to tell you what to write, you might notice that the women's fiction and YA crowds are well-represented here. This means (as usual) two things: first, they're bigger markets, so you're more likely to sell a greater number of copies if your book succeeds, and second, they're bigger markets, so there's a lot more competition. O, the cruel double-edged sword of publishing!

Incidentally, it also might mean we need a few more non-YA bro-oriented books out there. Just saying.

Terms to Know: Billing vs. POS

Reminder: the deadline for guest post submissions is 11:59 pm on Wednesday, June 16th!

As I've mentioned before, one of the strange nuances of the book publishing industry is that virtually all stock is returnable; that is, almost all the books we ship to retailers can be returned for full credit if those retailers are unable to sell them. There are some exceptions: for example, most mass market paperbacks are "stripped," not returned, meaning the retailer only returns the torn-off covers to the publisher (hence the "if you bought this book without a cover" warning found on the first page of many paperbacks). There are also some markets, dubbed "special markets," for which stock is almost always non-returnable (e.g. museum gift shops, home shopping networks, home goods/cooking stores).

Because books can be (and so often are) returned, publishers need to make a distinction between sales to the retailer ("billing," or gross sales) and sales to the customer ("POS" [point of sale], "through the register," or net sales). The difference between these two numbers is the returns, and the ratio of net sales to gross sales is known as sell-through (expressed as a percentage).

For most brick-and-mortar affairs (especially the large chains), sell-through of roughly 80% is considered very good. Much less than that, and it's clear the account took more books than it can sell; much higher, and the account will probably consistently run out of stock, which means both the publisher and the retailer will lose sales while time is wasted in reordering, shipping, and restocking. (In case you're curious, on-line retailers like Amazon generally maintain a much higher sell-through rate, somewhere in the neighborhood of 90 – 95%. This is because 1.) they don't need to maintain those big piles of books at the front of the store, and 2.) Amazon doesn't offer the same instant gratification for physical books as a brick-and-mortar store, so their shipping delays allow them a sort of buffer zone when it comes to reordering and restocking.)

Ideally, each title will have good billing and sell-through, but occasionally you see titles with abnormally high return rates, distressingly high sell-through (sounds crazy, doesn't it?), low billing (or no billing, in the event of a skip), and so on. The sales game is a tricky one, and it's doubly true for book sales. Half the battle is getting the book into the store; the other half is getting customers to bring it to the register.