WHY WRITE BOOKS?
Netboy, Anthony
Why Write Books? By Anthony Netboy ARE YOU planning to write a book? Two recent news items carry striking significance for every American interested in books. Item one: A Washington survey of the...
...But so far, we have not developed a "mass culture" based on a genuine and widespread love of literature, philosophy, and the arts, which the Romans displayed in the great period of the Caesars...
...That book writing has become a great financial gamble is admitted by most publishers...
...These cheap items are in the same class as magazines—usually displayed on the same kind of rack—and are largely selected for their appeal to the lower-browed audience...
...With the present high overhead in publishing offices and high cost of manufacturing, a publisher figures that he must sell at least 1,000 copies to break even on the ordinary book...
...Since a new book costs $3 or more, it is out of the price range of perhaps 90% of American families...
...The former, therefore, rarely gets a break unless his material, if non-fiction, is timely or sensational, or, if fiction, excited the enthusiasm of the publisher to the point where he will advertise it extensively...
...Without advertising, a book cannot hope to attract an audience, and sometimes even titles advertised widely fail to make money...
...In the present state of the book market the returns generally do not provide adequate financial reward for the time and the effort, except for textbook authors or writers with an established following, such as Kenneth Roberts, Van Wyck Mason, Sinclair Lewis, Ernest Hemingway, or John Gunther...
...Except for such distinguished exceptions as the Betty Smiths and Lillian Smiths, nearly all are flops...
...Despite the dismal outlook, from a monetary standpoint, there are compensations in book writing— and even riches occasionally...
...Half goes to the author...
...Although it is dangerous to generalize, here is the fate of the average volume by a writer who does not have an established following...
...The average American is a voracious reader, but he generally reads only newspapers or magazines...
...And when a book is a success, the earnings may be huge...
...Item one: A Washington survey of the impact of television shows that about 30% of those interviewed now read 30% fewer books than before they had television sets...
...He may go to books to find specific information, but not to seek amusement, relaxation, or mental stimulation...
...The publisher usually does not know until the work is on sale whether it will be a hit or flop...
...What is the basic cause of this depressing state of the book business...
...Here, as in other phases of the business, only the established writers generally make important money...
...The reading and entertainment habits of Americans are the root factors, although the overpricing of books has contributed to it...
...These findings only confirm what the book publishing industry has accepted as fact, with increasing gloom, for some time: The book buying public is dwindling steadily, creating critical problems for publishers without textbook affiliates, bookstores that try to stay out of the gift and greeting-card business, and, worst of all, serious writers who spurn the production of light and meaningless fluff for the mass magazines and prefer to write serious novels, biographies, and other non-fiction...
...If he has received an advance of $1,000, that may be his total earnings...
...The reason...
...And only a few hundred books make the best seller lists every year out of the 8,000 to 9,000 published...
...The hits are often surprising...
...On the other hand, a novel that hits the middle or top of the best seller lists is usually purchased by the movies, with great financial returns for all concerned...
...In this respect American civilization is similar to the Roman—practical, mechanistic, successful in war and empire-building...
...The bulk of the buying is now concentrated in the Christmas season when books are bought for others...
...The books which Americans read mainly come out of the public or rental libraries...
...A club selection sometimes also has a good bookstore sale...
...The radio and television, along with the movies and sporting events, provide his entertainment...
...Some set the mark somewhat higher...
...New books are purchased primarily by inveterate devotees of culture...
...Hence they have to be sold by the hundred thousands to make any money for him...
...Since only a very small percentage of new books attain such sales, obviously the majority lose money for the publisher, and the author derives little cash...
...The book business is like the theater...
...Calculated on a time basis, the writer would have made much more money laying bricks at $3.50 an hour (Washington, D. C. rate...
...The state of the book business is a sad commentary on American culture, and is accepted as corroboration by Europeans of their suspicion that we are a rather primitive, philis-tinic, materialist people...
...announced a new wrinkle in publishing...
...Those that do better are extraordinary exceptions...
...Standard arrangements give him a half cent per copy royalty on pocket books...
...Certainly our failure to support the book-publishing industry is a striking symbol of this phenomenon...
...But the author cannot expect much additional revenue from a 25 or 35 cent reprint...
...Rare is the volume that gets into the "bestseller" bracket, and some of those sell only 150 copies a week and eventually not over 7,000 or 8,000...
...This season they are issuing five new books—fiction and non-fiction—in two simultaneous editions...
...The shining exception to this lugubrious trend are pocket books...
...The book may be a novel or non-fiction...
...Even many of the more serious pocket books are dressed in lurid covers to disguise the sobriety of their contents...
...No matter who the publisher is, he will give the author without a following less consideration than the one who has a number of "guaranteed readers...
...Projected on a nationwide basis these figures would indicate that most adults in television-owning families—and there are four million of them—have pretty much stopped leading books...
...A $3.50 book which sells 7,500 copies will earn for the author, under current royalty rates, about $2,000...
...While the rest of the industry is sagging, pocket book publishers have been expanding rapidly...
...Item two: The Gallup organization report on the reading habits of adults in the United States and four European countries revealed that although we have the highest proportion of college and high school graduates, we also have the lowest proportion of book readers...
...One, paper-bound, sells for a dollar, and the second, alike in all other respects, has the conventional hard cover and sells for $3 or $3.50...
...The two largest— Book-of-the-Month and Literary Guild—pay the publisher $70,000 for the privilege of printing the book...
...In justifying this experiment, Simon & Schuster hope to extend the market and thus increase the earnings of authors who shy away from writing books because of the higher remuneration offered by the movies, radio, and mass magazines...
...The typical writer of a first novel is doomed to have a heart-breaking experience...
...Simon & Schuster, one of the most aggressive merchandisers in the business, lately ANTHONY J. NETBOY knows the book trade from many angles—as an author, free-lance editor, consultant to Book publishers, and literary agent He is co-author of "Water, Land, and People" which Knopf will publish in the fall...
...To be a success these days, a book must rise to the top of the best seller lists (which means total sales may run as high as 100,000 or more) and/or be selected by a top-notch book club...
Vol. 14 • May 1950 • No. 5
