Paper(back) Dollars
CHASE, EDWARD T.
Perspectives PAPER(BACK) DOLLARS BY EDWARD T. CHASE The dominant force in American trade book publishing today is the awarding of fantastically high advances against royalties for paperback...
...Hopefully, too, the now frequently hard-to-handle-and-read physical product would be improved...
...But this is easily repairable, end nowadays the migration of editors between hardcover and paperback staffs is commonplace...
...The present system remains apparently inviolate because of mutually fortifying knee-jerk rituals in trade book publishing grounded in economic interests...
...The dam could burst if a few of the ritualistic conditions I have described were changed...
...Theoretically, of course, there is no reason why the same book released first in paperback could not be reviewed, but that has not been the convention...
...The public would have immediate access to new titles at a fraction of today's prices...
...Again, theoretically there is no reason why a book published first in paperback could not be advertised...
...On top of that, the mass paperback rights have gone for $369,000...
...berg's The Fall of America, a paperback original, made the front page of the Sunday New York Times Book Review of April 15, and an Angus Wilson paperback original had a full-page review in the same issue...
...The probable adverse consequence would be a reduction in the variety and range of trade books published —fewer experiments, fewer special books...
...It is increasingly considered economically unappealing to publish qualitatively eligible books that lack mass paperback sales potential, unless they happen to have book club possibilities, an institutional market, or very low production costs...
...Indeed, it may seem odd that new books are not being published first in mass paperback editions—the standard rack-sized volumes priced under $2.25 (but going up), available in drug stores, newsstands, chainstores, and the few honest-to-God bookstores that still exist in this country...
...But this is an argument against bad taste and poor editorial judgment only, not against imaginative experimentation...
...The mass paperback publisher, on the other hand, has to concentrate on the million-copies-plus seller, the blockbuster that can carry the rest of the house's monthly list by creating the substantial sales characteristic of giants like Bantam, Dell, NAL, Fawcett, Pocket Books, Avon, etc...
...The paperback houses do serve selected special markets with their so-called category books...
...The result is derivative publishing, a serious cultural loss, for meritorious books are lost in the shuffle...
...The book clubs, especially the Book of the Month Club, the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest Condensed Books, further perpetuate—and are perpetuated by—the present system...
...Decisions often consist of oversimplified analogizing from the last or next-to-last blockbuster...
...Hence established writers like Philip Roth have begun making deals for paperback originals to avoid sharing their advances and royalties...
...Last month a new record of $1.5 million was set by The Joy of Cooking...
...Last year, the most dramatic financial success of all was the outsize trade paperback, The Whole Earth Catalogue, selling 1.1 million copies at $5.00...
...Perhaps this half-step toward paperback-before-hardcover publication—which seems to preserve everyone's interests—is the expedient the publishing industry will adopt for the immediate future...
...Nonetheless, the revolution reversing the order to paperback before hardcover is not yet around the corner...
...Meanwhile, dismayingly disproportionate rewards, both monetary and in reputation, accrue to paperback "blockbusters," often pure trash or virtual nonbooks...
...This year, the most talked-about event has been the sale of over 90,000 copies of Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow in a $4.95 Viking trade paperback issued simultaneously with the hardcover edition (5,500 sold, 7,500 in print as of this writing...
...For starters, with rare exceptions only new hardcover books are reviewed...
...This kind of pressure leads to a rationalization throughout the publishing process that focuses editorial resources ferociously on the potential big ones...
...A prime sociological consequence of this is the rise in prestige of subsidiary rights directors, now sometimes the most glamorous and important figure in a house...
...The most important prop of all for the existing structure, however, is the practice 1 noted at the outset: the payment of huge advances for paperback "leaders...
...For it is also the hardcover books that tend to be advertised...
...The trend portends a reversal of the industry's ancient practice of printing books in hardcover first and in paperback 6-12 months later...
...This is not to make any judgments about the calibre of our writers or the quality of our best books, but only to point out the brute reality of the publishing business in America: Paperbacks dominate the market, selling on the order of 300 million a year...
...Still, one of the major developments in publishing is the so-called trade or quality paperback ?the generally larger-sized, relatively expensive ($2.95 and up) editions sold not via wholesale mass distribution but essentially like hardcover books, with an emphasis on college bookstores and specialty outlets...
...It is a notorious economic fact of life that hardcover publishing is profitable only by virtue of the subsidiary rights income, principally from paperbacks and book clubs...
...In fact, the amount of paperback advertising in the review media is growing and, interestingly, soft-cover books have been receiving measurably greater editorial notice of late...
...It is often argued, in addition, that most paperback houses do not have an adequate editorial staff to select and prepare books for initial publication, since roughly two thirds of all paperbacks are reprints of hardcover titles that have already been through the publishing mill...
...some of the smaller outfits confine themselves exclusively to genres such as Westerns, Gothics, mysteries, nurse books, science fiction, etc...
...It has crystalizcd the tendency of younger readers to purchase only paperbacks, and many of their well-heeled elders are now saying they'll wait too for the book to come out in paper...
...And book club sales are the second most lucrative source of subsidiary income for hardcover publishers...
...The rising cost of hardcover editions?10, $12, $15, even $20?is clearly giving most book buyers pause...
...Authors (and their agents, an inestimably powerful force in the industry) hardly relish seeing up to half of their paperback income go to the hardcover publisher...
...Topical books would benefit from the shortened lead-time...
...Hardcover editions would then play a secondary role, being issued later and earmarked primarily for library use, or they would be specialties like coffee-table books and deluxe gift volumes that are not feasible for paperback...
...Even here, though, there is a compulsion to stick with the tried and true?further evidence that market pressures in a paperback-first system might well stifle variety...
...Paradoxically, the factor chiefly responsible for perpetuating the current arrangement—namely the dependence of hardcover houses on their percentage of the paperback advance against royalties—may in the end militate most strongly to transform the system...
...Perspectives PAPER(BACK) DOLLARS BY EDWARD T. CHASE The dominant force in American trade book publishing today is the awarding of fantastically high advances against royalties for paperback reprint rights...
...Authors would enjoy higher royalties and advances (without sharing) as well as the satisfaction of vastly larger printings and distribution...
...It was ever so, more or less, but the ascendance of paperbacks over hardcovers could intensify the trend...
...Their raison d'etre is that their selections are a bargain compared with regular trade editions, an advantage they could not enjoy over paperbacks...
...For example, Allen GinsEdward T. Chase, a contributor to Harper's, Atlantic, and other magazines, is an editorial executive with a large New York publishing house...
...because of the vast oversupply, they cannot be stocked, displayed or sold in sufficient quantities to meet costs...
...Typically the hardcover house gets half the paperback advance and subsequent royalties, when and if the advance earns out...
...Although a number of obstacles remain to be overcome before that occurs, the huge advances are already having a powerful effect on the relative market status of trade book houses or, more precisely, on the disposition of resources within the industry...
...True, the curse of modern publishing is that too many titles are brought out each year with little excuse for their existence...
...Authors and agents, accordingly, wish to see their books in hardcover so that they will be reviewed—and advertised...
...From 1963-71 paperback sales rose 162.1 per cent, as against 114.1 per cent for hardcover...
Vol. 56 • May 1973 • No. 10
