This truth is great because publishing companies now know how to put books in front of readers. Books not only appear in bookstores and the modern equivalent of the newsstand, but also at grocery stores, video stores, and discount department stores like K-Mart and Target. Anyone can buy a book at any time of day in every city in this country. (Even my small town of a few thousand has a Circle K open all night, with a few bestselling paperbacks on a rack near the biker magazines.) ²

I promised, in my last editorial, to do a series on publishing and how it affects the reader. And nothing, I think, affects the reader more than the way publishers do business.

Publishing has always been a business. It simply used to be a lot more Mom & Pop than it is now. One hundred years ago, Scribner and Putnam were real people. They worked upstairs from the editors, sat in on editorial meetings, and occasionally made decisions from their heart rather than their pocket books. Nowadays, heart is still involved, but it is removed from the center of power. Publishing has gone corporate -- and corporations are concerned with the bottom line.

The easiest way to see this concern is in trilogies and bestsellers. Let me deal with trilogies first, since this is nearest and dearest to my own heart. ³

Publishers make their money in a variety of ways (such as selling subsidiary rights), but the main way they make their money is the same way other product-oriented businesses do: through sales. If the sales of a particular product are low, then that product is discontinued.

Sometimes writers are considered a product (more on that later), sometimes individual books are, and most certainly, a book series is. In order for trilogies to be successful, their sales arc must run like this: Book One must sell to expectations. Book Two must sell as well or better than Book One. Book Three must continue that upward spiral.

Most fantasy readers have noticed that many writers publish Books One and Two of a trilogy and Book Three never makes it to print. What has happened in that case is this: Book Two sold significantly fewer copies than Book One. The publisher looked at the bottom line, and decided that it was more cost effective to anger one writer and a few thousand readers than to publish Book Three. Simply put, the sales of the series didn't justify the cost of producing the third book.

[What you can do, as a reader, to prevent this from happening is simple: Buy Book One when it appears on the stand. Buy Book Two when it appears as well. Even if you don't read a series until it's complete, buy the books. Otherwise, you might have to scour used bookstores for copies. If you like a series, buy copies for your friends. And remember that sales of the second book are more important than sales of the first. The second book's sales must remain the same or increase.]

Let me show you the other clear area of corporate bottom line at work. And this one, unless you've owned or worked a business, seems counterintuitive at first.

Bestsellers are a marketing category. Books bought for a lot of money are exptected to generate a lot of money. Publishing is a haphazard business: no one has done complete studies (and probably no one can) on what makes a book catch the public imagination. Publishers send out hundreds of books each year, hoping that most of them will sell to expectation, and that a few will sell beyond expectation. Books that do not sell to expectation still sell a lot of copies. But those copies aren't enough to recoup the publishers expenses. ⁴

People who writer bestsellers are Brand Names or wannabe Brand Names. If the bestseller doesn't meet expectations, then the author's name value goes down. Many writers become (in rock 'n roll parlance) one-shot wonders. Their book goes out at 200,000 copies, sells only 50,000 and the writer is never heard from again.

Smart writers change their name and try again. ⁵

Every year, Publisher's Weekly publishes a list of the big books that succeeded and the big books that failed. Failures from 1995's list include Robert James Waller's Puerto Vallarta Squeeze, R.L. Stine's adult book Superstitious, and Philip Roth's award-winning Sabbbath's Theater. Those folks won't have to change their names because they have a track record. But I wouldn't trade places with Eric Zencey, whose novel Panama was supposed to be the next Alienist, and only sold one quarter of the promised 100,000 print run. He'd better hope the book does better in paperback than it did in hardcover. If it doesn't, he might search for a pen name a little farther up the alphabet.

Who pays for these failures? Ultimately you do. All these trial balloons make their way into the average cost of a book. But before you start complaining, let me warn you: the cost of these trial balloons is minimal to everything else you're paying for when you slap down your $24.95. And that subject, too big to handle in this month's space, will be the focus of next month.

Since publishing is a big business and it does, of necessity, concentrate on the bottom line, a lot of books disappear. A lot of series end in the middle. A lot of authors are one-shot wonders. Sometimes I find it amazing that so many writers make it at all. But books do succeed, and those that do usually have good stories, excellent covers, and wonderful word-of-mouth.

As readers, you can't do much to help the bestsellers. The numbers involved are so great that one person cannot make a difference. But with every other type of book, from mainstream to romance, from mystery to science fiction, your dollar counts. A book is only on the stands for a few weeks (I'll discuss this more next month), so buy it when you see it. If you like the books, buy extra copies from a bookstore that sells new titles. (If you buy from a used store, it doesn't help the book's sales figures.) Tell your friends about the book in a timely fashion, so that they can buy the book during its few weeks on the stands.

But one of the best things you can do if you like a book doesn't cost you a cent. Check the bookstores in your area. Some will have that book and other won't. In the stores that don't, ask why not. Check to see if the book is on order. If it isn't, request a copy. You do not have to special order (although that's always nice. Remember though, that if you special order, you have to buy the book). Bookstores keep a tally of requrest, and sometimes when even one person requests a book, the store will order it. Many times, the book is in the back and has never made it to the shelf (more on that next month). The clerk might pull the book out of its box and put it where people can buy it.

One of the best things you can do if you like a book is generate word of mouth. Review the book for the local paper. Have friends in other cities request copies at their local bookstores. Place a notice on a computer bulletin board. If you succeed in generating word of mouth about a book, it will stay on the stands longer. Bookstores will reorder, and the book will stay in print.

One final suggestion: if you like a book and want to give it as a gift, buy the copies when the book is on the stands. Buy a few copies at the chains and then buy the inventory of your local independent bookstore. The independent will usually reorder. The individual chain stores usually won't.

You may think these recommendations are small things, but they're not. They matter. Most readers don't realize that they can affect a book's shelf life, but that they have to do so within a prescribed time. Even though we, as readers, think of books as permanent, to publishers, booksellers, and even some authors, books are product. And in business, product must either sell well or be replaced with something that will.

Publishing is a business for good or ill, and no amount of griping will change that. Instead, understanding that business and using that understanding to your own benefit as a reader will keep the books you like on the shelves longer -- and will enable that writer (or that type of book) to be published again.

Next month, I'll tell you why the books you read cost five times more than they did fifteen years ago -- and what it wold take to bring the prices down. And please do remember to send me any questions you might have. I'll try to address them as I go along.

Copyright ©1997 Kristine Kathryn Rusch

1. Of course, if you read the history of Fitzgerald and Perkins, you realize that in some ways Perkins did cut Fitzgerald loose. His books never sold to expectations and, even though he once defined a generation, by the early thirties that generation was being blamed for all the world's ills. Perkins continued to buy Fitzgerald's novels -- or at least, to advance him money on them -- but the money decreased as time went on. Gradually Fitzgerald, like all writers who are profligate with money, and whose success diminishes over time, turned to Hollywood. And there he died, revised and rewritten by writers who lacked his stature and his sense of story but who knew how to meet a deadline with a minimum of fuss.

2. Publishing has grown into such a large business that the number of new titles has increased dramatically. In the forty years from the end of World War II to the end of Ronald Reagan's first term in office, the number of new books [hardcover and paperback] published per year grew from 6,548 titles (in 1945) to over 51,000 titles (in 1985). Or to put it in terms a science fiction reader can relate to: in 1945, an sf devotee could conceivably read everything published in the genre. That is simply impossible today.

3. I am in the process of writing and publishing a fantasy series. Bantam Books published the first book in The Fey, The Sacrifice, in January of 1996, and the second book, The Changeling, that June. They'll publish the third book toward the end of the year. Since I hope there will be a fourth and fifth book, I am watching the sales figures closesly, and keeping my fingers crossed.

4. This is the same sort of accounting that gets so much press in the film industry. If you think of Waterworld and how much money it cost versus the amount it brought in, you have a good idea of what I'm talking about here.

5. F&SF writer Kit Reed has an open pseudonym (Kit Craig) for her suspense novels. Mystery writer Barbara Michaels has to bestselling names. The late romantic suspense writer, Victoria Holt, had three bestselling names -- out of at least six different attempts.

Next week's columnist is unknown at this time.