LitKicks Summarizes the Book Business

For a while now, Levi Asher has been trying to answer the question Does Literary Fiction Suffer from Dysfunctional Pricing? and today posts an interesting summary.

There’s a lot to unpack here—whether publishing is profitable as a business (it is), what the book business is (conglomerates, U.S. divisions, literary publishers), and how profitable each of these sections are.

The part I want to focus on is on American Literary Fiction Publishing:

Question: Is the North American literary fiction market profitable?

Answer: As far as we can tell, no, it’s not.

Does literary fiction sell well? Sometimes it does, and more often it doesn’t. There have been big recent success stories — The Road, Cold Mountain, The Kite Runner, Lovely Bones, but the small list of literary monster sellers can’t compare with the wider list of genre fiction superstars from Danielle Steel to Stephen King to J. K. Rowling to James Patterson to Nicholas Sparks to Dick Francis to Janet Evanovich to Stuart Woods to Dan Brown to Christopher Paolini to Elmore Leonard to Terry McMillan to Lauren Weisberger to Michael Connelly to John Grisham to Tom Clancy to Michael Crichton to Patricia Cornwell. Our most celebrated literary authors and most acclaimed new novels often sell in the low five-figures (hardcover and paperback runs combined). Worse, books that are critics’ favorites and even reader favorites often sell in absymal numbers. Many literary novels, especially debut novels, never sell more than 2,000 copies.

Thankfully, Levi sniffed out the truth about literary fiction sales. Publishers are bullshit artists, especially when it comes to print-runs and sales figures. (The typical multiplier for both is 4—seriously.)

This situation is even more bleak when you focus on literary fiction in translation. Sales rarely hit the five-figure mark, much more frequently residing in the 1,200-1,800 range, with sales of 400 copies or less not being all that uncommon. Why this is the case is a long, involved discussion with many variables, prejudices, and unprovable hypotheses.

What’s important to point out is that sales of 1,500 copies of a translation is very definitely not profitable. Including salaries, production, design, marketing, translation, author advances, distribution, and overhead costs, a translation generally runs a publisher about $35,000. Sales of 1,500 of a $24 hardcover would net a publisher about $18,000 in revenue. A ways short of the $35,000 invested . . . (Not many Investment Bankers out there support a ROI of -50%. At least not many who are still employed.)

This situation results in a sort of economic censorship (thanks to Esther Allen for that term) in which publishers shy away from translations because of the fact that they’re very, very likely to lose a wad of cash on these books. It’s for that reason that most translations are done by independent, university, and nonprofit presses such as Archipelago, New Directions, Dalkey Archive, NYRB, Univ. of Nebraska Press, and soon enough, Open Letter. Through subsides—from foreign governments, our government, foundations, individuals, business, etc.—these presses are able to offset these losses and continue importing culture to America.

Being personally involved, I think what these presses do is admirable and crucial, and I hope that more people start funding literature in translation. Looking at Levi’s analysis, I can see how mega-corporations looking to expand profit margins will put more resources into the products that sell at the expense of publishing international works, creating an even greater need in our culture for independent/university/nonprofit presses.