Goodbye Big Publishers? The book world is changing...

There's been a lot of chatter lately about the demise of 'traditional' publishing as more and more bookstore chains go under and 'big' publishers consolidate. Change of course is inevitable, and much of the talk of ebooks displacing print books appears to be coming true. But with change there is pain in restructuring, and some standards that many will bemoan as they disappear.

Big publishers as gatekeepers kept a lot of would-be authors from ever getting published. This may not necessarily have been a bad thing. Doing so helped ensure readers were provided with products they could be reasonable sure met minimum quality standards. This was done by creating an efficient machine run by professionally trained editors, cover artists, marketing and sales gurus, management and accounting staff, and technology experts to...

1) Choose and edit books to be engaging and well-written
2) Package books in enticing covers that matched their marketing venue
3) Develop and maintain marketing venues to attract and service readers looking for worthy books.

When Amazon and Smashwords and other services provided a quick and cheap and easy way to get books published, average-Joe authors suddenly gained direct access to make any book – no matter how innovative or terrible – almost instantly available to readers. This effectively eliminated the big publishers as gatekeepers ‘standing in the way’ of all the average-Joe wannabe authors out there.

However, distribution services like Amazon and Smashwords do not provide the publishing house production services of editing and cover art, nor do they provide any marketing beyond the basic web site product sales page with inherent category search. When it comes time for average-Joe author to figure out how he’s going to get his book professionally edited and formatted, and his cover professionally produced, he has two choices. He can either buy all the necessary software and learn how to do it all himself, or he can pony up a couple thousand dollars to pay others to do it. Which option will average-Joe author choose? For most people who want to get published, the do-it-yourself route (done right) looks like way more trouble than it’s worth and way more expensive that it’s worth. So most people will either throw up their hands and give up, or just pick the quick-easy-free way to get their book published, which involves no editing and just a rudimentary ‘freebie’ self-designed cover. To justify this, average-Joe author rationalizes that readers don’t really care about typos on every page, or whether the story makes sense, or whether it’s interesting, or whether the cover looks like a two-year-old did it with Crayons.

Once in the marketplace, average-Joe author’s book will have no respected reputation of a big publisher to stand behind it and promise the reader that it’s going to be worth the time and money to read. And not only will average-Joe author’s unknown-quality book be competing with way more books from other average-Joe authors, it will be competing for attention and money from a slowly shrinking readership that is shrinking due to other entertainment options (video games, TV, and other electronic distractions). Thus the average reader will be overwhelmed by a flood of books by unknown authors without any reputation whatsoever to promise that their books are worthy products.

Some self-published authors are enjoying success – an exception to the rule of self-publishing as a model in failure. Those frequently mentioned include J. A. Konrath, Amanda Hocking, and Ruth Ann Nordin, to name a few. These authors seem to have one or two things in common.
Konrath has had previous experience with a big publisher and a resulting author reputation to build on.

Hocking had one book published by a small indy publisher, and then apparently took the reigns with the rest of her books. She’s a prolific writer with several multi-book series. All her series feature similar short one-word catchy titles and color-coded generic cookie-cutter covers that are visually interesting but similar enough to ‘brand’ her series so that the title and cover instantly say ‘Amanda Hocking.’ Her assembly-line style theme and packaging to streamline her production process as well as make her books instantly recognizable is smart marketing.

Ruth Ann Nordin has nearly fifteen titles and uses purchased photos to create her covers. She may even have a service produce her covers. In the beginning, she probably spent more on her covers than she made in sales royalties, but at least she didn’t go the cheesy route and use crappy covers that screamed ‘amateur.’ She also has been blogging for quite a few years to promote her writing and to promote self-publishing. Now her investment in time and money appears to be paying off.

The point of all this is, getting published or going the self-published route both take a tremendous amount of time and effort. With one, you have to sell your work first, then wait a long time to get your work published. With the other, you have to publish your work, then wait a long time to sell it. Either way requires perseverance and a tremendous faith in the work. Anyone who is easily discouraged will give up before success is realized. Anyone who looks for the quick and easy solution without taking pride in their work to ensure it delivers in both packaging and content will fail because the product will be perceived as inferior. Anyone who thinks it will be a piece of cake becoming a successful author – and in this reference, ‘successful’ means selling more than 5,000 copies of a title – is in for a disappointment. Only the author who has good product and sticks with it to look for great ways to publicize and sell that work will see the kind of success the ‘exceptions to the rule’ appear to be now enjoying.

Authors ask, "Why isn't my book on the shelves at Barnes & Noble?"

For all you authors self-published or published by small independent publishers, who are wondering why Barnes and Noble bookstores don't put your print book on their shelves, here's the (probable) reason. It is a little-known secret that we feel is necessary to expose and explain.

Our goal in doing so, in part, is to help put a stop to all the naysayers who claim that print-on-demand books are inferior and come from self-published authors who do a poor job of publishing their own books, or from publishers who are just out to scam authors. This claim of course is not true of all self-published authors or all independent publishers.

Some authors go to great lengths to make their books the best they can be. They hire professional editors and cover artists to package their manuscript in a printed format that is both pleasing and worthy of reading. The same holds true for many independent publishers. (And by 'independent' we mean publishers who are not a huge corporate entity like Random House for instance.) But there are vanity and subsidy publishers who charge all their authors for publishing services, with plans to make money entirely off the authors instead of sales of the books to readers.

That IS NOT how legitimate publishers operate. Any small publisher can be legitimate by choosing books to publish they consider well-written and marketable. These publishers might not have the force of a huge corporation behind them, but they are nevertheless legitimate publishers who will publish your book at their expense and do what they can to help sell your book in exchange for a percentage of earnings from those sales. You just have to look carefully to make sure you find one of these legitimate publishers that is suitable to handle your book.

Now, back to the Barnes and Noble question. (By the way, this information is available on the bookseller's web site, but we are broadcasting the major points to answer this question for the benefit of authors everywhere.) It is a complicated explanation, so bear with us...

CORPORATE WAREHOUSING. Barnes and Noble warehouses all the books that can be ordered by their individual bookstores. B&N Corporate chooses which books to warehouse from the 'books in print' catalog that comes out every 180 days, or approximately every six months. Books get into the 'books in print' catalog by being assigned an ISBN and having the 'metadata' for the book (ISBN, title, author, cover image, retail price, etc.) sent to the ISBN gatekeeper, Bowker. A self-published author can either purchase an ISBN from Bowker or use an ISBN furnished by a self-service book printer like Lulu or Createspace. Depending on when the book becomes available in print and when the 'books in print' catalog comes out, it could take up to six months for a book to end up in the 'books in print' catalog.

BOOKLAND BARCODE. Barnes and Noble requires a 'Bookland' barcode on the book that is a UPC barcode for the ISBN plus the retail price of the book. If the retail price is not included on the barcode, then the book will not be considered for B&N's warehousing. Specific print-on-demand printers like Createspace DO NOT give the option of including the retail price in the barcode. In this case, B&N suggests the publisher go to a barcode provider and get stickers printed with the ISBN plus retail price, to be affixed to books before they will be ordered by B&N for warehousing.

STORE RETURNS. Barnes and Noble requires that the publisher or whatever distributor the publisher uses accept returns in case books ordered by bookstores do not sell within a given period of time. The books are then sent back to the publisher/distributor at the expense of the publisher/distributor. In the case of large publishers, books are remaindered (destroyed). Because POD printing is predicated on the idea that the book shall not be put into printed form until the book is ordered (paid for), printers like Createspace do not accept returns. If a publisher wanted to be able to accept returns, the publisher would then have to become his own distributor and order a short run of books to be available for ordering. In that case, the publisher would have to warehouse his own POD books IN CASE they might get ordered by B&N for warehousing - which totally defeats the purpose of POD and the impact on the environment. So, if you use a self-service printer like Lulu or Createspace, you're going to have to order your own books, pay for shipping, warehouse your books, then hope they get ordered by B&N - with the understanding there's no guarantee they ever will get ordered.

QUALITY CHECK. Last but not least, Barnes and Noble requires a catalog from each publisher who wants to be considered a 'vendor of record' - a book distributor where B&N can order books for their central warehouse. For individual self-published books, B&N Corporate will consider books on an individual basis. If they don't meet all the criteria above, plus pass B&N's idea of minimum quality, they won't be accepted for warehousing.

There are some various other requirements, but these are the major ones that stop most small publishers and self-publishers from getting their books onto Barnes and Noble bookstore shelves. This of course does not keep the books from being sold through B&N's online retail bookstore. But it does keep them off the already overcrowded shelves of physical bookstores.

Deciding to absorb all the expense and headaches involved in trying to get a book onto the shelf of a Barnes and Noble bookstore suddenly doesn't look like a winning proposition. Instead it looks like a recipe for losing money quickly.

And that, author friends, is why your book isn't on a bookstore shelf.