Publishing: Where the Money Is...Not

Nicola Morgan just posted an interview with Lynn Michell, who owns the one-woman small pub, The Linen Press. It's a kind of a bittersweet interview for me because we see not only Lynn's passion and unwavering faith in the books she publishes, but also the depressing economic side to being a small publisher.

Me: What about the money side? People seem to think that publishers roll away with loads of profit. Can you spill the beans??

The financial challenge for a small publisher is formidable. Let me give you some figures:

- One book costs £4 to produce because I do small runs of 1000. I refuse to compromise on quality and I use environmentally friendly paper and ink.

- I charge £10 a copy

- Amazon takes 60% and I pay £1.75 to replace the book. If you do the sums, that's £6 for Amazon, plus £1.75 p&p, and the £4 production costs, so I am actually paying Amazon £1.75 for every book they sell. If readers ordered from my website I would make £6. [Good God - sorry, I can't help interrupting. That's horrible.]

- The big book stores charge me 50% mark up get a book onto one of those tables where people stop and browse. If I sell a copy, I make £1. Read more

So much hype gets parroted around over Dan Brown and every other Big Name Author, and people buy into the glamour. Hopeful writers, especially, want a slice of that golden pie, with the six-figure advances and so on. What they need to know, though, is that Big Name Authors are the exception to the rule. For every Dan Brown who takes baths in tubs of cash, marketing glitz, and Oprah recommendations, there are hundreds of writers who fall somewhere in the spectrum of publishing fame and fortune. I happen to be on the other end from Dan Brown, and so do these little presses and their authors with huge dreams, lots of hard work, and hardly anything to show for it, financially.

In a previous post, my friend Alex asked me a question along the lines of, "What do you hope to accomplish in publishing?" My answer to her is pretty much reflected in Nicola's interview.

I write niche fiction. I've always loved niche fiction, and I'll always love and write stories that cater to a small market. Tiny, in fact. None of my books makes for a good financial gamble for any of the NY publishers, which is why I'm not in the hunt for agent representation, and I'm not dreaming of a bigger, more lucrative contract. I'm not.

When Prizm contacted me, asking if I was interested in contributing material to help launch their imprint (they published a few short stories of mine in the past), I was at first petrified at the thought. "Jeebus, what can I write that's for GLBT teens? I'm not gay. I can't even begin to fathom how it is, coming to terms with an identity that could very well subject me to harassment, rejection, or physical danger." My love for adventure stories and historical fiction saved the day. I had to ask myself, "My bookshelves are bursting with all these great genre titles, but none of them has a young, gay main character. What if..?"

I never looked back. There's a lot of frustration involved in writing niche fiction and being published by a small press. The lessons never end, but I'm learning how to cope better each time, and I'm grateful for the stress (I really am a masochist), the anger, the frustration, and especially the loneliness that comes with being shut out or pushed to the fringe because no one's heard about me or my publisher.

I told Alex that every time I get shut out, the more I find myself strengthening my allegiance to small presses and their authors. We'll always be under the shadows of our better-marketed peers, but we fulfill a pretty important and still-ignored need. It takes us much longer to get our voices heard, but it happens, and I take a lot of pride in that.

Just look at genre GLBT YA. Little by little, people are finding out about it.