Long Barn Books Blog

Scott Pack argues in a comment to my last post that ’sales’ should mean ‘orders.’ He also says that lots of unsold books never get returned so no credits are claimed. In my view and experience this is nonsense. To begin with you cannot claim that if a chain, say, orders 2,000 copies of a title, those are ’sold.’ No, they are not, they are only lent. The chain, of course, tries its best to sell them but if it only sells, say, 300, that leaves 1,700 unsold. 6 months later or so, allowing a generous 200 to remain on the shelves and/or be damaged and unreturnable, 1,500 comes back to the publisher and the chain claims a credit for them. This means that the next time the publisher sells books to that chain, they won`t get [paid until the credit has been worked off. Do this too many times and you find yourself supplying free books to bookshops for a long time to come and guess what that does to the balance sheet and profits  ? Long Barn Books almost went under a few years ago because a certain book - I will spare the author`s blushes - ordered in incredibly well - to the tune of 5,000 plus copies. I printed 7,000 and of course I had to pay a rather high printers bill. Some months later, 4,800 of the 5,000 were returned unsold and credit claimed. I got no money from booksellers for any of our titles for the best part of 9 months while the credits were worked off. But I still had to pay the printers.

Tell an author they have ’sold’ 5,000 copies and they rejoice. Then they find out, as they easily can with a bit of effort, that of those 5,000 300 have actually SOLD and been taken home in paper bags, and they feel humiliated and let down. They also have a nasty financial shock coming when the ‘Returns retention’ kicks in.

Today`s Bookseller has Nielsen figures to August 18th of the number of copies actually SOLD through the tills of all the Booker longlisted titles. Ian McEwan has sold  well night 100,000 copies of ON CHESIL BEACH. Of the rest of the longlist only FOUR other books have sold in four figures. The other other 8 have sold well under 1,000 and in several cases, under 500. These figures are important because they are NOT UNUSUAL. Authors should be told them. Aspiring novelists should certainly be told them. This is not fantasy, this is the truth for very very many novelists, even those who have received rave reviews and been put onto Booker longlists. Once the shortlist is announced, the books which do not appear on it will drop out of sight and unless something else happens to them, the  booksellers will quickly return unsold stock. They don`t keep unsold hardback novels hanging round for long.

One lucky winner will clean up. Doesn`t matter which book wins. Ian Mc has already cleaned up. Otherwise - well, I just looked along my shelves at my hardback copies of last year`s Booker shortlisted titles. Can you remember what they were, had on heart, without googling ? I know I couldn`t.

I am not being a spoilsport here. Being long and then shortlisted is a huge lift for a novelist`s reputation - let alone spirits. I know because I have been. It can help a great deal in the future. That is just one reason why prizes are good.

But let`s have some truth about real sales. And while we`re at it, about print runs too. There is no Nielsen Bookscan to report those. They remain the last best kept secret between the publisher and the printer. The former may choose to reveal them. The latter would never dare.

It is very nice to read in this week`s Publishing News small publisher Tindal Street claiming a believable number of copies  sold of their Man Booker shortlisted title by Catherine O`Flynn. They claim just over 7,000. This is an extraordinarily good figure for a first novel, even on a Booker longlist - but a lot of major publishers would have claimed quadruple this  because they would not regard 7,000 as looking like enough. Well, set beside the winner of the Richard and Judy Summer Read - THE HOUSE A RIVERTON, it isn`t. That has sold over 315,000 which shows the power of R and J over MB - that and the power of an infinitely better book jacket. Tindal Street have proved that small independent publishers can get there - they are smaller as Long Barn - they only publish 6 books a year -and they have made the literary editors of the traditional Books Pages look up. Most of them ignore small indies - or they have until now. But the point is that with the advent of Nielsen Bookscan, which gives accurate day to day figures of books sold, there is now nowhere for publishers to hide. And when I say ’solod’ I do not mean sold into the shops, optimistically, on sale or return and all sitting there, I mean sold out to real customers who have paid over hard cash and taken their book home in a paper bag. Those are the ONLY figures that count and we can now all access each other`s real sales. They make fascinating reading.

Tindal Street may or may not have their novel on this year`s Booker short as against Long list but if they do, they will be presented with a problem, as will Myrmidon, the other small indie with a book on longlist. Because this is the point at which Booker and the book chains start asking for silly money to promote the books and have them on big display in all the shops. That`s the snag for a small publisher. Bungs are always a problem. Small - and indeed big -publishers can be asked to pay anything up to £45,000 to be ‘front of house’ in a major promotion - out of the question for most of us.

Meanwhile, let no one bother to lie to one another, to the trade or most of all to their authors, about sales. Real sales, as above. A recent author has been told by his publisher that his book, published earlier this year, has sold 6,000 plus copies. It may have sold that many INTO the shops, but Nielsen Bookscan shows that it has sold around 400 OUT of the shops, and half of those are of the airport Trade paperback not the original hardback.  What`s the point of the lie ? To look big. But those 5,000 odd books will be returned before long. Then a nasty clause  in the contract will come into operation whereby any money due on other editions, paperback and etc and will be subject to the ‘kept back against returns’  amount of money that may be due. i.e. he won`t get what he is expecting. And of course he will not earn out his advance by a long chalk. This may not matter to him - the publisher bears the loss, advances are non-returnable. It will have a marked effect on any future advance he may seek for a new book though, now that every other publisher in town can access the sales figures via Nielsen. So, no hiding place for publisher, author, agent or whoever. And that is nothing but a very good thing. The public at large  and even some in the trade always believe that most books  sell more copies than they do. Of course some sell in their hundreds of thousands. Most do not. And 400 is by no means a rare figure for a hardback novel. A lesson in reality to aspiring authors as well then.

This 10th anniversary limited edition is almost sold out. Originally published in 1997,edited and compiled by Susan Hill, it has a new cover, and a new Preface (as well as the original Preface). A paperback, strictly limited edition of 500 and there are about 34 left. We are NOT reprinting. These are selling to the USA more than anywhere. If you want to buy bag a copy do so now. They are £12, post free in the UK, £3 postage round the world. You can pay via Paypal -www.paypal.com - to sales@longbarnbooks.com.

Because it can`t be for money. Publishing group Quarto have just announced sales of 36.6 million pounds.. and profits of 1.6 million. Look at those figures again and then agree with me that it`s GOT to be for fun because if it isn`t fun, with that profit percentage who would ever bother ?

Long Barn Books makes a profit but that is mainly because 1. We do not rent any office space, so no overheads there. 2. The only people we employ are freelance, so none of the associated costs of having full-time staff and 3. I take no salary.

Scary.

We are always, always looking for good books to publish - well, so are all publishers and never let anyone tell you otherwise. It`s finding them. But we do actively go out looking, and we also create books in-house. We have a submissions form on the website. If you have an idea for a book, or a finished book indeed, in one of the categories we publish, then the place to go is that form. We prefer to have everything sent via this for the simple reason that it automatically sends an acknowledgment and gets filed in the right place. Otherwise, things sent in on general e-mail can easily get lost, or even not arrive.  We are always looking for good fiction but there is far more bad fiction about than bad anything else. Fiction is difficult to sell even when it is extremely good - you need a measure of luck as well as hard work in promoting. So we are very choosy - but a good novel will always find a home and we would love it to be with us.

I hate the phrase ’slush pile’. We don`t have one. It is insulting and it also implies what may well be the case - a huge pile of mss waiting to be read.. and waiting.. and waiting. So we report as quickly as we can on everything sent in. It may be days, it may be a few weeks but it certainly will not be months. If it is, something had gone wrong and we need a heads-up.

We have ideas ourselves. ‘We’ means me and my assistant and co-Director, and members of our Editorial Board. But we don`t by committee. I`m the boss, I decide and I carry the can. But we have an Ed Board meeting 4 times a year and new books and book proposals are presented then - if the highly experienced Board members have good reason for objecting to a book then I listen. I still make the decision but I wouldn`t go against their serious objections. That`s why they`re on the Board after all.

But Long Barn does not go in for meetings otherwise. You may get a message saying I am out but you will virtually never get one saying I am in a meeting. My co-director lives in London, I am in Gloucestershire at the epi-centre of small publishing, so we communicate constantly by phone and e-mail. From time to time we meet up, but we are never ‘in a meeting.’

How do we choose books ? They have to be in the area we publish, obviously. No poetry, no business books or self-help books or art books, academic or textbooks. Otherwise, another ‘obviously’ would be a rejection because we already publish/will be publishing, something very similar or know that another publisher will. That apart, we want a good idea, an original idea, one that grabs us. We need to say ‘ interesting’ and ‘I want to read this’ .. and also, of course ’we can sell this.’ and  sometimes’this fills a gap in the market.’ 

After that, there is just one thing really - a gut feeling. A thump inside that says ‘Yes.’ A light bulb goes on. Any analogy you care for. If a book, or a book proposal has that, then we will definitely look at it.

How do you know, you who will be submitting to us, if your book or proposal will provide us with our lightbulb moment ? You don`t. Even if you have studied all the requirements and even if all your friends and relations tell you it has lit their bulb. You don`t. So my advice is…. send it. Go on. You just never know.

Oh - and if we say no, please do not take it personally. That`s the first rule any writer or would-be writer MUST learn. Be disappointed. Then get up and try again. But do not take it as a personal rejection. Do not, do not, do not. If there were a skin-thickening lotion for aspiring writers, I would recommend it.

I was never a great fan of the Ottakars chain. Yes, some of the shops were  very good but the chains was a predator, responsible for the demise of many a small thriving independent because they sussed out the territory, saw that there was a good book-buying market and opened up across the road. Several friends of mine were forced to close as a result. So I didn`t mourn Ottakars. But if Borders goes to WH Smith that will make a very big difference 0n theHigh Street to choice for individual book buyers. Here is a list of books in no particular order.

The Dangerous Book for Boys

The House at Riverton

Pattie Boyd`s autobiography

Cookery books by Gordon Ramsay/Jamie/Anjum Anand

Second Glance. Jodi Picault

and anything by John Grisham/Bill Bryson/Lee Child and etc etc etc…Harry Potter times 7, Katie Price`s pony books and Jacqueline Wilson times 100.

That is what you will find and a few dozen more, front of house in W.H.Smith, Waterstones, Tesco, Asda and Sainburys and Woolworths. If WHS buys Borders, add them. I am not criticising those books, just saying that you will find them everywhere, variously discounted. But you will not find much else. If you have a small independent bookshop you will get a better selection but small - which indies generally are - means they cannot hope to carry much backlist. Even the top 6 big league publishers will find that there is nowhere for their backlist and their non-bestsellers any more. That will mean Penguin, Random, HarperCollins, Little Brown, Bloomsbury etc etc….you will find only the bestsellers on the high street. Borders sells the top 100, but it also supports non-obvious titles, it supports small independent and medium sized publishers, it has a decent range of backlist titles.

Those will by and large only be on amazon  and other internet booksellers in future.  Maybe this doesn`t matter. There are already far too many lookalike departments on the High Street,

But massed ranks of gold-blocked same-everywhere titles in WHS and Woolworths and Waterstones are BORING and if they bore me, think what they do to people who are not natural bookshop browsers.

The onbly hope is for Borders to have a management buyout under the excellent David Roche and his first rate team. In city terms they are not looking for a lot of money.

Come on someone, lend it to them quick.

Author Lizzie Grace is writing a book about marriage proposals and would love to hear your story if it is unusual or quirky - not just ‘on bended knee.’ One proposal took place on a remote beach in Australia - the young man hired a microlite to fly in the ring. If you had or made a marriage proposal in a very different and special way please tell us your story. It can have happened 60 years ago or yesterday, so long as it is remarkable - and although it would be nice if all the proposals were accepted, we`d like to hear about unusual ones even if they ended in rejection.

Please e-mail to editorial@longbarnbooks.com heading your message PROPOSAL.

Andrew Franklin, MD of Profile Books, said when announcing the company latest set of brilliant financial results, that the most important thing of all was that they were all having fun. Maybe he should have added ’still.’  He and I founded our companies around the same time and I am glad Andrew and his team are having fun because here at LBB we most definitely are. I started the company 11 years ago and it is rather different now. We have grown and we are continuing to grow quite fast. We will double in size next year, treble by 2010. After that we`ll see. But I am still having fun, still loving every minute of being a publisher.. only more so. A lot has happened this year. We have moved up a big notch by having Simon and Schuster sell our books. That means their reps and Special sales people take Long Barn Books to the Buying Managers of the chains and to the independent bookshops along with theirs and present them with the same emphasis, even though our imprint is not their. We also - and here I add, ‘at last’ - have a distributor, having joined S and S in being distributed from the HarperCollins warehouse. This has made a huge difference to me. No more packing. No more invoicing. And a lot more efficiency.

But it isn`t the backroom stuff that matters, it`s the fun and that all takes place in planning what books we will publish. We get submissions and read them. Sometimes what we publish come from those and we DO welcome submissions and we DO look a everything. I hate the phrase ’slush pile’. And we do NOT put our 16 year old work experience juniors onto weeding out the submissions either. I read everything that comes in, or my assistant, Jessica does, or one of our Editorial Board members. Occasionally I put something out to a Reader. So I repeat ALL SUBMISSIONS WELCOME but please do it through the submissions form on the main website.

We write and or compile some books in-house. And increasingly, I am going out looking for books in other countries, which larger publishers may have missed. We ae hungry for good fiction in particular and we go out looking, we don`t wait for the world to come to us. I have acquired UK rights in three terrific American novels this way - all will be published in 2008. Two are crime novels by the same author, one is a wonderful novel called EATING HEAVEN, which was a US bestseller in 2005. Looking for good books to buy is fun. We have modest resources and cannot pay huge advances. There is a standard LBB advance on £1,000 to absolutely everyone. But if a book has not acquired a UK publisher and one comes asking, the author/publisher/agent would usually prefer to go with a keen and enthusiastic small firm which gets behind every single one of their titles with the same fervour than not get a UK publisher at all, or get one who is just trying to fill up a list. Money is not always what talks.

The Booker prize longlist caught several of them on the hop. Well good. One paper rushes to admit that it had barely reviewed any of the books and scrambles together a sort of overall run-through.

I don`t read many of the books pages now - always The Times, generally The Guardian and that`s your lot - but last weekend I bought them all and did a quick survey. Yes, indeed, 96% of the books reviewed came from the major publishing houses. Of the smaller ones, Profile was well represented and new kid on the block Quercus - has a notice or two. Quercus does not count as a small publisher and though independent, as it is run by a man who has been a Big Cheese in publishing for a long time it was regarded as a Major Player by the liteds from Day One.  Small independent publishers were almost totally ignored.

It is assumed by the liteds (with honourable exceptions) that s.i.ps either publish the unpublishable, supported by Arts Council grants, or publish what the Big Six have all rejected. Either way, assumptions are made, books are not read or even sent out to reviewers and so the myth is perpetuated. Meanwhile, oh blush, oh shame, two small indies have books on the Booker Longlist.. heeelp, where the hell have we put the review copies, we did get them didn`t we, do these small chaps actually send out review copies, can they afford to, God, we`ve flogged them on amazon, someone get more quick. That sort of thing. Shame on them. But just lately, small indies are rising up and demanding attention. We are not all publishing Arts Council supported unreadables, we are not all picking up the dregs of the dregs rejected everywhere else. We are publishing some damn good books, by first time writers, by writers too long neglected, by writers from other countries whose books have been inexplicably ignored by the Big Six… and we are all doing it with passion and committment and professionalism and not a huge amount of money, because we love doing it, we want to put better books it there and publish them well. The book bloggers have long known that there are more books in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in the average liteds office. Time they caught up. If they have quotas, they should tear them up. Of course there are some rubbish small publishers out there - dozens of them. By their books ye shall know them. But don`t lump us all together. The Booker judges didn`t.

I keep thinking I will start a magazine for reviewing ONLY books from small independent publishers. I won`t of course, I`ve gone through the small-magazine thing and I`ll never do another. But I wish someone would. I wish someone would give me a regular page of a major newspaper and tell me to fill it with reviews of books only from small independent, week in week out.

I could too.

But they won`t of course.

Dove Grey Reader, an ace at getting past the bouncers on the door, has kindly done a crash course- Registering on LBB for Dummies. Here it is, if you are having technical problems or your name is Scott Pack.

Click on the “Register to comment link” on the right hand side of the blog

A screen appears asking for your name and e mail.

A password will then be sent to your inbox.

Follow the link back from the e mail to the log-in page and enter your new (and very odd ) password

A new screen appears asking for your inside leg measurements (joke) any details you want to fill in and you can also change the password to something less odd.

There is also a box to tick if you want the blog to remember you.

That should see you into the blog page with a comments box at the bottom ready to be filled in.