Is Publishing Still Relevant?

Publishing your first book can be a laborious, lonely and long task that can take years  before you finally see your work in print. Publishing has become a difficult and frustrating task, as publishers are becoming increasingly selective. But publishing can also be like throwing spaghetti at a wall: keep at it long enough and eventually something will stick. I learned many lessons in publishing three books, and want to share these with first-time authors as you bring your own books to market.

First off, here’s a hard lesson you need to understand: In a free market economy, art is only viable if it’s commercial. You may have the best idea in the world, but if no one will buy it – if it won’t sell – then why should you bother writing it? Michael Larsen wrote in How to Get a Literary Agent (2006), “You are free to write whatever you wish. But to be a successful author, you have to write what people want to read.”

The sad fact is that Americans are reading fewer books. We have so many more competing options now: Facebook and Twitter, the Internet, magazines, movies, hundreds of cable television channels, and video games. People have so little time that it’s difficult to get anyone to sit down to read 300 pages of text. Why do you think magazine articles are getting shorter? Extensive exposés like you see in the New Yorker are rare. Readers just don’t have the time for lengthy content. More people want things in 140 characters…or fewer.

Yet good books that interest readers and have a targeted audience keep selling. Who says books don’t matter? A book can still set the world on fire! Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation (2001) changed our awareness of how Americans are eating – and fast food restaurants responded by offering healthier choices. Elaine Pagels of Princeton University has contributed immensely to biblical scholarship, making the early Christian church and its many gospels accessible to general readers with The Origin of Satan and The Gnostic Gospels. 

Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) gave intellectual and moral strength to the budding urban renaissance movement, which in turn blocked Robert Moses from building an elevated expressway through the heart of Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. The Village is a vibrant urban neighborhood to this day because it was preserved. 

Despite the Great Recession, which fundamentally and, I believe, permanently changed the way many Americans read from print to digital, books continue to sell. Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs (2011) was a huge hit. Everything Malcolm Gladwell touches seems to turn to gold. Yet those enormous blockbusters are becoming fewer and fewer. There are an explosion of titles coming to market thanks to self-publishing, and the idea of a mass market is withering.

We’ve entered into an era of niche publications. Chris Anderson wrote in The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More (2006), “The era of one-size-fits-all is ending, and in its place is something new, a market of multitudes. Increasingly, the mass market is turning into a mass of niches.” Most books are now part of the “long tail,” and fewer reach bestseller status (however you define bestseller). Most of us have to set our expectations realistically: our books will only sell a few thousand copies if we’re lucky, and only by targeting our specific market, our followers and our social networks.

So yes, books are absolutely still relevant. People are still buying and reading books, and reports of the book’s death are greatly exaggerated. But authors have to approach publishing with realism, rather than grand dreams of New York Times book reviews, huge royalty checks, and a house in the Hamptons. It’s a new world out there.

Garrett Peck

www.garrettpeck.com