← How I Write
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- [00:00]
A
David Shelley's on the show today and he's the CEO of Hachette, which is one of the big five publishers. And what I want to do in this conversation was talk about two things. The first, how should writers go about navigating the publishing industry? And second, how does the publishing industry actually work? And who better to learn from than somebody at the top of the field, Somebody who's been working in book publishing for 30 years, whose company sells roughly 220 million books every year and does three and a half billion dollars in annual revenue. When you think of school, what comes to mind? For me, it was lectures, homework, sitting at a desk. See, the standard model looks something like this. You go to school and you sit through six hours of worksheets and then you come home at night and do a bunch of homework. And the worst part is it doesn't even work. 54% of Americans read below a sixth grade level. That's over half of Americans. We need something new. And that's why I'm excited to have Alpha School as the flagship sponsor for how I write. At Alpha, you go to school and do all your academics at only two hours per day, so that then you can spend the rest of the day learning life skills like launching a business, writing a musical or giving a TED talk. You know, the kind of things that make you a capable and well rounded person. And it's working. They have academics figured out. Alpha classes test in the top 1% nationally. And more than 90% of Alpha students say they love school. Now. I used to live in Austin, where Alpha School started, and I was consistently blown away with what was happening there. I personally mentored a bunch of Alpha students, and what stood out to me is how much the team believes in the potential of kids way more than what I ever got in school. Alpha's approach and the success it's already having is why it's the Most talked about K12 school in the world right now. And it's also where I want to send my kids to school one day. So if you want to learn more, go to Go Alpha School. How I write. What do publishers actually do? Like, if I came to you and I said, okay, what are the four or five things that you're going to do? I'm sitting here, I've just written this book, can't you just like, go to the printer and Just like print 364 pages of the book and like package it on top of it and then like, send it to Barnes and Noble? I don't understand why I need a publisher.
- [02:13]
B
Okay, so my answer to that is a great question. There's about 200,000 new books published each year in the U.S. i'd say our main purpose is to make people realize they want your book. So you think 200,000 books. Like, it's so many books, what our skill is. And this is not one thing. It's a number of different things. Making bookstores feel they want to stock your book. Making the book look a way that when you go into a bookstore because you want to buy the book, talking to the press, so that there's press articles that make people be, oh, I need to. You know, or a podcast or whatever. I need, you know, I need to buy that book. Doing advertising that makes people, you know, consciously or unconsciously aware of the book. Making the book as good as it can be before any of that stuff happens. That's a huge part of what we do. And then I guess finally, it's like actually shipping the thing out.
- [03:12]
A
Yeah.
- [03:12]
B
To. So I was actually talking to friends the other day, and I just said something like, oh, we've got about 400 people at our warehouse. And they were like, oh, what? Like. And it was like, yeah, we've got 400 people. We ship, like, 150 million books a year. And they were like, what, just books? I was like, yes. Like. Like, that is. It's not. Nothing like, let's just put it that way. So I think that is another thing that's sort of hidden. Like, a hidden thing. Like, if you go to our warehouse in Indiana. Lebanon. In Indiana. Amazing team. It's vast. It's vast. Like, and they are shipping books every day of the week out to 220 countries, whatever, every. You know, sort of constantly. Constantly. Books, books, books, books, books. But I'd say sort of reputable publishers are able to not only, like, make people make your book as good as it can be, make people want your book, get the book into stores, but also, like, physically. Physically ship it around the world, you know, print it. Well, like, we work with the best printers. We have the best standards. Like, you know, just taking some geeky thing, like typesetting. You've got a ton of books behind you. Like, looking at the sort of quality of the books, the quality of the paper, the quality of the type.
- [04:33]
A
What I'm looking at here is the difference between the colors on various books. Some of them fade with sunlight, and some of them really stand the test of time.
- [04:47]
B
Yeah. So, I mean, we have, like, very skilled manufacturing departments, and their job is to make sure. That books do stand the test of time and that they produce something. I mean, particularly in the. I don't know how familiar with. With the romantasy space, but. So this is a big genre at the moment.
- [05:07]
A
Not something I can say I read very much.
- [05:09]
B
Okay. But like. Like, this is a big driver in our industry.
- [05:11]
A
I know it's huge.
- [05:12]
B
Romance and fantasy. Romance and fantasy. There's this huge trend for these sprayed edges. They're called spreadsheets. So, you know, like the edges of a book, like, they started off with, like, they might. You know, we might be like, spray them red. So it started like that. Or sprayed them black and people. Oh, that's neat. Now there's, like, patterns on them. And. Have you got any like. Yeah, like this? Exactly like that. So that's actually kind of. Exactly. That's a simple version. So. But now there's, like, characters on here. Patterns. We. We've got these really cool Twilight ones where you flip it one way so you get like. So you go like that, and you get a picture of Bella, you know, the female character. You flip it that way and you get Edward.
- [06:01]
A
Oh, how about that?
- [06:02]
B
The male character. So it's like. It's insane. Now, the skill of what you know and what could be. And the artistry of what could be done. Wow.
- [06:12]
A
Yeah. I remember when I was a kid, there was series. You definitely know it. The Series of Unfortunate Events.
- [06:17]
B
Oh, yeah, of course.
- [06:18]
A
Loving the Snicket you guys published.
- [06:19]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I published him.
- [06:20]
A
Yeah. That's why I was top of mind. And the. The. The edges on the side, they were kind of jagged and a little bit rough.
- [06:28]
B
Deckled.
- [06:29]
A
Deckled. There's a. There's a word for everything. And I remember I picked up those books because I just really liked how the paper looked. And then it was from there that I ended up reading that series.
- [06:40]
B
I. I think that is something that as publishers, we can do, you know, like, that is something that we offer. So in terms of your question, like, what are we doing? Like, that is something. We can do that. As I say, you know, self publishing is a great option. You could do lots of things, but you can't. It feels unlikely you could do that.
- [06:56]
A
Well, you've been working in the publishing industry for a long time, and you've seen it from all different angles. And I'm wondering, what advice do you have for writers who want to get their book published, who want to navigate this industry that is, at times, a little bit daunting.
- [07:12]
B
Yeah. I'm coming up for my 30 year anniversary in publishing. So I guess and my advice, I suppose for writers will have changed during that time because when I started literally my job was I was an editorial assistant. And one of my jobs was at that time the Internet did exist. It was 1997, but barely everyone sent their submission in as a hard copy, you know, so the protocol then was like two sample chapters and a synopsis. Wow. And I had this massive stack. Every morning I would come in the office, there'd be this huge. The post person would like deliver this huge bag of mail and it was my job to go through. We called it the slush pile. Fast forward from then to now and I think things have got sort of harder and easier for writers now. I think there are more opportunities for writers because back in those days the, there were no digital publishing options. And I think what digital publishing has done is kind of open up the industry more for writers. So it used to be very gatekept, I would say it used to be just larger publishers generally. And we would read the submissions and take them on or not take them on. If you didn't take them on, there really wasn't a route for writers. What we've got now is a, I think a more exciting landscape for writers. There are a lot of smaller publishers now because digital publishing has lowered the barriers to entry. So there's a lot of startups, more startups than any time in my career. We also have like digital imprints like say Bookature, which is the US UK imprint, where they take. They don't go through agent. Well, they do go through some agents but they take direct submissions as well. They have a digital first model so it enables them to take more chances, more risk.
- [08:57]
A
When you say digital first, do you mean that it's focused on ebook, Kindle, stuff like that?
- [09:00]
B
Exactly. So what their commitment is to authors is we'll publish your book in ebook, in audio. We'll see how it goes. If it does well, we'll give you a print, you know, we'll do a print edition. And that is now the, you know, I'd love us to be unique. That's. We're not unique there. There's a number of publishers who do that and some of our most successful authors actually started off as self published authors. So we have taken on, I mean, Callie Hart, I think Callie Hart, who wrote this. No, Quicksilver, self published, did enormously well. We then signed her up. She's one of our biggest authors. That is a wonderful story. It's not a unique story either. So my advice to writers would be, do not be deterred. This sounds like a crazy thing for me to say as a publisher, but publishers don't know everything. Even if you get rejections from all the houses, that doesn't mean that your work won't find an enormous audience. I've seen time and time and time again, authors say, okay, I've had all these rejections, but I believe in my work. I'm gonna self publish it. And there are countless examples of those books doing really well.
- [10:07]
A
Totally.
- [10:08]
B
And us as publishers, coming with our tail between our legs and saying, we got it wrong. Forgive us, forgive us, forgive us. And it is like that Hollywood expression, no one knows anything. I think I would say my best advice to an author is do not think that we know everything. Do not think that we think we know everything. Listen to your guts. I mean, I find that in my career, like, listening to my gut, I would pass that to writer. Or listen to your gut. If you feel you've got a story that is resonant and can reach readership and it doesn't take that many resources to self publish something these days. It's actually surprisingly cost efficient and you have the resources to be able to self publish it, then do that, like, give it your best shot. There's some really inspiring examples of authors who very successfully self published.
- [10:57]
A
I taught writing for six years, and the biggest trouble that my students faced was writer's block. They had so much trouble getting ideas from out of their head and onto the page. But you know what's weird? People don't get talker's block. Like, if you just talk out your ideas, it works. That's why I love Whisper Flow and use it for my writing all the time. It's super easy. Press a hotkey, and you just talk, and all of a sudden the ideas show up on the page. There's no ums, there's no sloppy punctuation, just a draft that you can work with and shape into something amazing. And since I'm no longer tethered to the keyboard, I can write on the move. And the biggest thing is that I trust it. Look, I love Siri. She and I go way back. We've known each other for years, but sometimes I wonder if she even passed 4th grade English class because she can't even get punctuation right. But Whisper Flow automatically cleans up all your mistakes, digressions, and weird little vocal fillers without losing everything, any of the substance. That's why I love Whisper Flow. I use it every single day. And I recommend it to every writer I know. And you can try for free at Ref Whisperflow. AI how I write. And can you explain to me how the agents work? Because my sense is you're talking about direct submissions. So the majority of the people who end up working with you, they've worked with an agent and then with that agent, they've then come to you, is that right?
- [12:16]
B
That's right. And like, a lot I'd say, like I mentioned this house, you know, that we've got book at your. And their thing is like, we take direct submissions. That is fairly rare now because. And that is to do with volume of submissions and just editors having enough time to be able to do a good job for the. For the authors they do publish. So. And what agents in theory do is to find, you know, sort of the creme de la creme, to find books that they think are, you know, can find a readership and to submit themselves. But I say agents don't know, you know, like this. I know so many authors as well who don't find an agent and who go on to be enormously successful.
- [12:56]
A
Right.
- [12:57]
B
So agents hit rate is no better than publishers hit rate. But yeah, the agents will then have personal relationships with a lot of the editors. The skill of a good agent is knowing I think this book can really connect with this editor. I think this editor will be great at bringing it to market. And this house will be a particularly good house. And then they're very good at representing the best interests of the writer, like getting the writer the best deal, negotiating good royalties, sort of making sure that they often will handle maybe film rights or translation rights, like making sure that that author is published around the world. And again, there's no one size fits all. There are some authors who like to do all that stuff for themselves. But agents can be a good agent, can be brilliant for an author in terms of finding this wide readership around the world by selling all those rights. And also sometimes I have to say, an agent can be useful in terms almost like a mediation role between author and publisher or having someone for each to bounce something off. They're working for the author, they're working for the interest the author. But a good agent sometimes have, in my experience, have said to an author, you know, an author might hate the COVID a publisher wants to put on, and the agent sometimes has said to the author, actually, I think this cover could really work in the market. I think you could sell more copies of your book and vice versa. Sometimes an agent will say to us you want to put this cover on. I think this cover sucks. Like, my author thinks it sucks, but I think it sucks as well. So, like, it can go both ways.
- [14:23]
A
How do you think that authors should work with publishers when there is a bit of a disagreement in terms of how the book should be packaged or presented, what the COVID should look like? Because if I'm an author, let's say that I've written a book now, I don't like the COVID I'm not happy with the COVID and I want to switch it up, but it's like, big publisher, scary. Oh, and also, I don't want to hurt my reputation in the future. I'm trying to play an iterated game where if I'm working with you guys, I want to publish book 2, 3, 4, 5. How would I navigate that?
- [14:58]
B
It's a great question. And, you know, as I came up as an editor, so I've experienced this firsthand a lot of times. I tend to, well, two things with the authors that I work with. One is I like to have a relationship of absolute honesty, you know, and sort of almost sometimes radical candor, like, on both sides. Let's just be totally straight with each other. So I personally always welcomed it when an author was totally straight with me and would say, I hate this cover, or I really don't like. You know, and they often would just. In business relationships generally, I think it's always better to know exactly what someone's thinking. Like, I come from Britain, where people are sometimes a little obtuse and, you know, not. Don't always say exactly what they mean. You spend time there. You know what I mean? So. And I actually love being in this city because people are generally pretty durable.
- [15:43]
A
I was reading one of your interviews, and you were talking about what it's like in England. And sometimes they'll tell you something, but what they're saying is actually the opposite, so you have to listen more to subtext. Whereas the New Yorkers are just exhausting.
- [15:55]
B
So working with an author in that. I love it when an author's like,
- [15:59]
A
is it two countries divided by the same.
- [16:00]
B
Yeah.
- [16:01]
A
Yes.
- [16:01]
B
Yeah. I mean, it's true. It's true. Particularly over there. Sometimes people would sort of dance around it, but I really like it when an author's totally direct the way I would always try and reframe it or frame it with them because they're actually on both sides. There's a lot of talk about liking a cover or not liking a cover. You know, I don't like this cover. I Don't like this. I don't like green. Like, you know, I imagined it this way. I would always try and reframe it. In terms of how can we sell the maximum number of copies, whether we like the COVID or not? That's kind of not the point. I mean, the biggest marketing genius I've ever worked with is James Patterson, who we publish over here. And he has this brilliant phrase, copyright James Patterson of in terms of covers, I see it, I want it. That's when a consumer walks into a bookstore ever, I see it, I want it. And that. That really resonated with me. I see it, I want it. And that does not necessarily always mean it's the most elegant cover or the most like, you know, sort of like, it's actually, I see it, I want it. And there was a piece of research that was done a few years ago. People when they're looking at, you know, like a table of books or a bank of books, an average dwell time is two to three seconds. So you have to think about it in that context that the most beautiful cover may not be the COVID the pops of theater. You want the COVID to pop, you've got very little time to get people. I think of it as like a Trojan horse. I've sometimes talked to Wright about that. It's like, it may not represent absolutely accurately what your book's about, but it's a Trojan horse. Like, if people don't pick your book up, they won't experience it. And if we have a literal thing of what the book is, it might not be the right thing for people to pick the book up. So I would always try and frame it with writers in terms of like, you know, how do we sell the maximum number of copies? I would sometimes work with writers who occasionally would say, actually, my aim is not selling the maximum number of copies. That very occasion that was the case. And I would obviously argue as a book publisher, I would like to sell the maximum number of copies. I have been in situations where it's like, okay, well, we are going to need to compromise then, because the aim is something a bit different. I might say, like, okay, for the hardcover, you know, your aim is to, you know, make it beautiful and get it in the hands of literary reviewers and stuff. And then for the paperback, let's try and sell us the maximum number of copies. But generally, I find in terms of authors, I would say, be quite straight about it with your editor or your publisher. I think it's the same in any business dealings. If people are rude on either side, that could damage a business relationship. If you put your point in a polite, straightforward way on both sides, then generally, I don't think there's any problem.
- [18:47]
A
It's gonna vary a little bit from writer to writer, but how much should writers be focused on? Making money, Making a buck versus, hey, I'm here to make art. And there's this assumed conflict between the two of them. You can either make as much money as you want, or you can make great art. So talk to me about that trade off, I think.
- [19:09]
B
I mean, I've worked with a wide range of writers, and their motivations are really different. It's like there is no one size fits all. There are some writers, I mean, okay, a favorite writer of mine, this, this guy from the early 20th century, Ronald Furbank, amazing writer. He wrote kind of, you know, proto experimental queer novels. Like, they're like, insane. Like, when you read them now, like from the 1920s, they're like, it's insane to think that these were 100 years ago. He. He did this in the full knowledge. There was no market for experimental, proto queer novels in the 1920s. There was literally no market. He had them privately produced, he had some money. But his aim was to write these books that he thought were important and indeed did turn out to be highly important. But his aim, even now, he's got a very small readership. And then there's other writers whose aim is to connect with a wide number of readers and to create stories that really resonate with a lot of people. So I would say there's a real spectrum. And I've worked. That's the fascinating thing about our industry, that there is no right. There's no right answer. Right.
- [20:26]
A
If you walk into a trading floor and you ask people, what are you trying to do here? Basically, every single person will say, we're trying to make money. Yeah, we're trying to make as much money as possible. You walk to a writer's conflict, you say, what are you trying to do here? The range of answers is so wide.
- [20:40]
B
Totally. And it also depends on people's individual financial circumstances as well, and their aims and ambitions for that. You know, I've seen writers who are incredibly attuned to the finances of their art, you know, and writers who have literally no idea whatsoever. You know, I, I've. I've talked to a writer before, and I was talking to him about his royalty statement and he said, oh, God. He said, yeah, all that paper. I said, yeah, the, you know, the paper that comes every six months. He said, I Just rip it up and put it in the bin. And I was like, oh, that's got all the information about how many copies he sold. He said, I just don't want to know. Yeah, so it's like versus versus authors I know who are like, why am I finished royalties at this level? Or kind of, you know, know every. Every last, last detail. I think what all the writers have in common is some sort of love of storytelling, I would say, or some sort of love of. Love of communicating, put it that way. Love of communicating. Some people want to communicate to a small number of very. In the know, you know, sort of, you know, very cerebral people or whatever. And some people, their passion is to reach a really wide audience. And you know, back to the James Patterson thing, like, part of his genius is. And he's very evangelical about this, is like, let us tell stories to the widest number of people. Let the widest number of people enjoy the magic of storytelling. And that for me, there's something very pure and artistic about that. You know, people often will see someone reaching a wide number of readers as a sort of commercial enterprise. But actually there's something really artistic.
- [22:22]
A
It's very Warhol esque.
- [22:24]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's very war. Exactly. That's perfect comp. Like, how do you. How do you make art? You know, how do you make art really, really accessible? And that, that is. And actually what I would say another thing that does probably unify all the writers I've worked with, they're all really smart and interesting. So whatever their motivations, whatever, whether they're commercial people, whether they're non commercial people, I don't think I've worked with a writer who isn't both A smart and B, interesting.
- [22:54]
A
Yeah. I was thinking about books as art versus books as products. You know, a lot of times we think of books as, oh, my goodness, this is art. This is my expression. And there's a lot of people who I've had on the show who I would put in that category. Richard Powers, Ocean Huang. And then I was at Barnes and Noble walking back from the Nets game a few months ago, and I'm looking at the books on front, and there's this one book, super popular, everybody would know it. And I'm looking at this book and. And I'm like, that book has sold really well, but it's not a work of art, it's something else. So I'm sitting there, I'm thinking, I'm trying to come up with a word, and I'm like, that book is a product. That book took a problem that people had, came up with a very, very simple, clear answer that worked for a lot of people. And it's almost like you could ingest this book like a pill and it would solve your problems for you. And that's why it sold so well, I think.
- [23:51]
B
Yeah, I mean, I mean, one thing I love about the industry is where creativity and commerce meet. Like it's both. And actually I remember so my, I mean, very long time ago now when I was at college, one of my tutors who was very brilliant was a poet. And he talked to me at the time, I always remember this, this guy, Craig Crane, he talked to me about the similarity between poetry and advertising copywriting. And he was saying, in both cases, it's the best possible words in the best possible order.
- [24:21]
A
Nice.
- [24:22]
B
You know, and it's so, it's like even when you're talking about a product, it's like poetry as well. Like it's. If I think about what you might call a product, like, I don't know, a really effective self help book or whatever, there's real art to that. Like the best possible words in the best possible order. That art of communication. So I see, I see all the, I think everything we publish in an artistic sense, I think there's artistry there. You know, even if, even when it's designed for a very wide audience, when it's got a sort of functional purpose, there's something, I mean there's actually these British gardening books from decades ago, these people, the Hessians, millions and millions of copies sold. They were just literally how to plant roses or whatever. You know, the Brits love gardening. So it's like only in Britain maybe would these books sell millions of copies. But like this guy was, and you look at, you would look at these books and these are just very functional gardening books. But he had the unique ability to communicate gardening advice in a way that was really understand that the human brain could understand in a way that no other writer could. And to this day, these books, you know, selling lots of copies. So I think even when you're looking at something that seems very functional, seems very product, like it's like he was an artist as well. Like he, he was a, you know, he, he really knew.
- [25:40]
A
So if I'm an author, in what ways should I be thinking about the packaging and the sellability of my book?
- [25:48]
B
I think that totally is dependent on what your aim is as an author. So. Okay, so I'll do a different scenarios. If you are an author, like I Was mentioning Ronald Furbank, an author who's really intent on creating something that matters. Don't think about that at all. I would honestly say, like, if your intent is to create something of lasting artistic worth, if you're not bothered about the financial side of things, then I would actually. I think it's actively helpful to put that stuff out of your mind. If you.
- [26:22]
A
Should I have a partner who I work with who's maybe an agent or somebody, or should I just say, you know what? I'm making art.
- [26:28]
B
Make the art. Then, yeah, sure, send it to an agent. And the agent can be like, this is how I think I should talk about your art and talk about it to a publisher. So a good agent in that scenario would be like, I see something artistically very interesting here is really different. Like, it's very out there. But they will then talk to a publisher about it. I'm thinking, oh, you know, if it's like, you know, Patricia Lockwood or Ocean Vuong, you know, people, innovators, like, people who do something really, really different, they can then talk to a publisher about it and say, this thing. You haven't read anything like this before. This is. This is something completely new. And they will have. And the publisher, they'll find the right publishers who are open to that. But you, when you're writing, do not think. I think it's actively. I've seen too many writers like that actually try to then think what's commercial and it dilutes their art. So if you're that sort of writer and that's what's important to you, then I think, be very pure about it. If you're the kind of writer who's like, I want to reach the widest possible readership, then you should read as much as you can. You should go to as many bookstores as you can. You should analyze bestseller lists. You should look at, you know, covers. You should look at what's working out there. I mean, I. I've seen, you know, Lee Child. You know, I. I know Lee a bit. I haven't worked with, you know, we don't publish him, but came on the show. Okay, great. And then, well, you'll know him like, he wanted to reach a lot of readers. He wanted to be very commercially successful. He's an intensely smart guy, as you know, and he did a lot research. So I think, you know, if that's your aim, then, you know, really do read a lot in the field. Really do kind of look at what's. What really connects with people. Look at you know, reader reviews of things. Look in bookstores, look at which publishers are publishing in particular areas. I think for him, actually he chose his literary agent on the basis of this agent was really good with big commercial authors, had a great track record of like launching big authors. So like, yeah, do your research in terms of agents as well.
- [28:36]
A
So the core thing here is you just need to know what it is that you're going for as a writer. And it needs to be honest and it needs to be coherent.
- [28:43]
B
Exactly. And be super clear. And I think, don't be. I think actually this is the same in all life, isn't it? Sort of listening to feedback. But don't listen to too much feedback because I think the other thing I've seen is sometimes authors go off track because they've listened to too much feedback. There's a lot of noise in the industry, as you know, and sometimes feedback's totally well intentioned. Normally it's totally well intentioned, but it can knock someone off course. So I think. And that's another reason sometimes it's helpful to have a good agent because, you know, to be the kind of North Star. Almost like the agent will sometimes say, don't, you know, just let me deal with that.
- [29:23]
A
And what should I do with having an editor? So the publishers provide editors, I think, who can help you work through your book. Is it worth having my own editor as well? When is it worth doing that? When is it not worth doing that?
- [29:40]
B
I would say, look, if you have sold your book to a publisher, then I do not believe you need your own editor because the editor's job is to work with you and to shape your book and make it as good as it can be. If you have not been able to sell your book to a publisher or you're working on it and you think that could be helpful, again, there's not a one size fits all. I think freelance editor can be potentially helpful in terms of getting something into a shape to then interest an agent, to then interest a publisher. So that, you know. And I know a lot, a lot of good freelance editors used to work full time in publishers. I know bunch of them, I know a ton of them. You know, people for whatever reasons have left the industry or want to work part time or whatever, retired. You know, I know some amazing editors who are freelance editors and do great work for authors. So that can be an uptrend if you have an agent. Agents often are really great editors. So that's probably something that's not talked about enough that a lot of the great agents I know do like three or four rounds of edits with an author before they go on submission. So there are some absolutely amazing editor agents. Not all agents. Some agents, their passion is selling things. Just selling things, or getting the best deal in terms of editors. I've got a strong view for authors. I've seen this go both ways. The kind of dream scenario is when there's a bunch of different houses that are interested in your book.
- [31:08]
A
Yeah, the bidding war.
- [31:09]
B
Yeah, the bidding war, you know. So my advice in that situation actually is pretty categoric, which is move heaven and earth to actually meet all the editors who are bidding for your book. Talk to them.
- [31:23]
A
So it's the editors at the publishing houses who bid.
- [31:25]
B
Yes. You'll have lots of relationships at the publisher. Your primary relationship will be with your editor and then the person above them, the publisher. That's a key relationship as well.
- [31:35]
A
And the publisher does what.
- [31:37]
B
The publisher runs the business unit. So if we've got, say, Little Brown, one of our.
- [31:43]
A
That's where you were publishers.
- [31:44]
B
I was Little Brown uk. So we've got, on both sides of Atlantic, Little Brown uk, Little Brown us. The publisher here is a brilliant person. Sally Kim, she's the publisher. Her job is she's running all the creative functions there. She's signing off on what books they publish, what covers go in, what marketing, what publicity. All the creative functions report into sales. Sally, she's got some very talented editors working in that team. So if Sally and Little Brown, the editor, were interested, it would be really key, in my view. If you're an author and you've got five other houses interested, try to have a meeting with the editor. And Sally or the editor, the things I would say to be looking out for really are passion that they get what you're trying to do, that they understand you, that they. There's that and chemistry with the editor. You will be working so intensively with that person. Like, I've spent more time with some of my authors than I have with my friends, like. Like, you know, like some of my good friends like you. This is a journey you're on together if it all goes well. You know, I have authors I worked with for decades, you know, went to their weddings, went to, you know, sort of hung out with them. Like you spent so much time with them. So I would say it's really imperative you find someone that you just feel almost like a. It sounds corny. Like a soulmate. You want a soulmate. You want someone who really gets you, who really understands you. Who's got your back, who's passionate, who's talented. Money's important, and money might be important, but in the long term, I would say the most important thing is that connection. So my advice to any writer in that dream scenario, or even if there's just one person bidding, like, try and meet them, try and talk to them to feel like, do you feel comfortable with this person? Are you going to. And the. The other key person often is the publicist. Because when you do, when you're an author, you're often spending a lot of time with your publicist as well. And then, obviously, then things can happen. Editors can leave, publicists can leave. But at least in the first instance, try and make sure that there's a connection.
- [33:54]
A
So just to be clear, the publisher, the editor, the publicist, they would all work for the publishing house that I'm partnered with. Yes, the publicist. They come in when and what do they do?
- [34:04]
B
So the publicist will come in. They might talk to you right at the start. So when you're acquiring a book, publicity weigh in. So say at the Little Brown acquisition meeting, the head of publicity there will be there and will say, we think we can get a lot of publicity for this, or we love this book or whatever. So they'll have a voice at that point, but really they'll come in force when the book is coming up for publication. They'll be calling newspapers. They'll be doing.
- [34:38]
A
Reaching out to me.
- [34:39]
B
Reaching out to you on your podcast. Kind of like Instagrammers. It's changed a lot, obviously, in the last few years, TikTok's massive. There'll be. It depends on the genre, it depends on the thing. But the publicist will really be largely responsible for making sure that there's buzz, that there's reviews lined up, that there's buzz. Also, increasingly with bookstores as well, publicity and marketing are trying to make sure there's buzz with the bookstores. So that matters as well.
- [35:10]
A
When I talk to friends, a lot of them feel like, oh, the publisher's just not gonna help me that much with marketing. And now, hey, you really gotta bring marketing into your own hands these days. How true or false is that?
- [35:25]
B
I mean, look, I'm wildly biased, aren't I? Cause I run a publishing company and I really love our marketing teams and I think they're great. So I guess I would argue, I do think we've got a lot of skills and expertise in Houzz. And that said, we've had happy experiences where our marketing teams have worked with an author who also has their own freelance marketing team. Team or person or freelance publicist. I would say generally, though broad brush, the publisher should be able to do that stuff for you. I would say there's a bit of a warning light if a publisher says to you, as an author, you need to hire your own marketing team. So I have heard that sometimes I think that's maybe a bit of a red flag because a good publisher should, in my view, be providing that service for you. You know, actually I'd say the field of, say, let's take business books. I'm a CEO. We've published other CEOs. There's type A personalities that, yeah, like
- [36:27]
A
Ray Dalio, when he did the whole principles launch, he must have had.
- [36:30]
B
Yeah. So there's, there's, there's, there's a combination of sometimes, let's put it delicately, type A personalities and financial resour. So we have had, you know, there are experiences sometimes where a CEO or whoever, like someone or let's say even a major brand or a really major brand author rightly will sometimes be like, you've got your team, they're doing their thing. No criticism. Like, that's great. But I want to just amplify this. Like, I just want to add this extra layer on top and that's fine.
- [36:58]
A
So let me try to add some structure to this because here's what I'm hearing that there's really three things that are going on. The first is there's what the publisher can do from a marketing perspective. And my sense is there's probably things around distribution that are distribution adjacent, like getting the end caps at Barnes and Noble, being on the front tables there, being on billboards, like, I don't know how to buy a billboard. Maybe you guys have billboard ad inventory with Clear Channel or cbs, whatever it is. So there's things that you guys can uniquely do as a publishing house. Then there's other things that authors can uniquely do. Those are probably going to be a little bit more grassroots. For example, when James Clear, when he did Atomic Habits, I think he had like 80 podcasts that launched that week. There's probably things around BookTok and Twitter and like clipping up different things that you've made about your book. That's more kind of guerrilla marketing tactics that are going to end up being more solo. And then the third one is, now I have a lot of money, I can break the bank. This isn't going to apply for early authors. This will apply more to people who do have that. But there are ways that then you can basically buy publicity on your own.
- [38:02]
B
Exactly. No, I think that's very well put, I think to your point, number two, the disruptive marketing. And actually, in all fairness, sometimes there are marketing geniuses that we publish and they will say, well, Jim Patterson being one of them, like, they will sometimes say, like you do things your way, that's fine. But I've got these other ideas that actually publishing has not. And James Clear is probably another one publishing has not done yet. And I want to do that as well. And sometimes I have to say as well, we have learned from that. We're like, ah, okay, we thought we knew everything, we don't. And you did this thing and we're actually now going to learn from that.
- [38:36]
A
Well, the fact of the matter is the world changes faster than any big organization can adapt. So at any point there's going to be new marketing channels that are on the cutting edge that I think are going to be available to any author.
- [38:51]
B
Yes, yes, exactly. And I think sometimes I think publishing gets a bad rap in terms of being traditional, being slow moving, blah, blah, blah. I think it's faster moving than people think. I think it's more dynamic than people think. But at the same time, sometimes it does take a bit of disruption. Like sometimes we do, we do get a bit disrupted from the outside and I think that's healthy.
- [39:12]
A
Should I go for the biggest advance when I write my first book?
- [39:16]
B
I'll give you two scenarios. I suppose I'll, you know, I'll anonymize both of them. Well known celebrity wanted to do a memoir. There were different offers and some of them were around. We want to position you in this way as, you know, a proper author. One offer was, we'll just give you lots of money. We don't really know what we'll do with the book, but we'll give you lots of money. The author went with the lots of money option and the book sank. And in my view, in that case, the author could have done better going with one of the publishers who had said, we have this vision for how to publish your book and how to reach a market. And in that case had said, actually, oh, I like these ideas, but actually, you know, I want this extra money. The author got that extra money, but the book sang. But then again, you know, I don't know the author's, you know, that person's financial situation. Like sometimes I think, I think if you, if your aim is just I want to maximize my amount of money right now, then probably going with the maximum amount of money is the thing. If you, if your desire is to build a long term career, I think it's highly important to listen to your gut in terms of who you're going to work well with. Who's going to be the best long term home for you. We have other publishers have often one thing is as the under bidder, you know, so the publisher offers a bit less but the author connects more with the editor or the author connects more with the vision of the house. I would say that can sometimes be a better long term strategy because sometimes the amount of money on offer is driven by other things. It doesn't mean necessarily if someone offers you a bit less money than someone else, that they love your book less or that they are going to do a worse job with it. Sometimes they could do a better job with it, but the other publisher just, I don't know, caught the finance director on a better day or have, you know, sort of whatever or very just keen just to fill a list or to buy lots of books. Ultimately, if you're building a long term career, everything evens out. If you are, you know, planning to do a long term career. If you do sometimes take a large advance and it doesn't work out, if the fit isn't right, if they don't really understand you, then that will cause some problems later down the line because then your track record won't be as good. You'll be more compromised when it comes to negotiating the new deal. That publisher might have lost interest, other publishers might versus where someone might be offering less. But be super passionate, have a real plan in place, be able to work with you to make your book as good as it can be. I mean, actually I'll give you another example where an editor, an author had a book. It was a very good book, but the ending just didn't work. Talk to different editors. There was one particular editor who was like, I know exactly what I think you should do with this ending. The editor and the author worked together and the book did enormously well. And a lot of what people were praising were like the atmosphere, the characters and the ending like. So people like that was an amazing twist at the ending. I never saw that coming. So it was a thriller. I never saw that coming. That was incredible, sold a million copies. So even though say the advance was minimal, in that case and the author could have got another $10,000 going elsewhere, they more than made up for it by, by that editor knowing exactly what to do with their book to reach the widest audience what do you think
- [42:53]
A
that James Dott has done so well with Waterstones and Barnes and Noble to get this resurgence of big blockbuster bookstores going back 10 years, it really felt like these big bookstores were in decline and Barnes and Noble seems to be doing very well. And I love Waterstones.
- [43:11]
B
I think if I had to pinpoint. James does a lot of things brilliantly. If I had to really pinpoint. The main thing is, I think he makes these. He's made Waterstones and is making Barnes and Noble into environments that are beautiful that you want to spend time in. And I would say prior to his arrival in Waterstones and in B N, they were bookstores, they were functional. Not that they were unpleasant places. They were. They were decent places. I think what he is able to do is to make them into this environment. Like, I want to go and hang out there, like. Like, I actually want to go and spend some time there, like in, you know, just taking. You've spent time in London and Water stage has these lovely, like, wooden tables, like kind of old wooden. I mean, it's rather like your environment here, actually. Like, he. He makes it into a space. You're like. It's almost like being invited into a lovely house or something like that. And he is able to, I would say curation as well. It used to be. And actually just a technical thing that used to happen, certainly in the UK was like, publishers used to kind of pay for space. And what it meant was that there was like a kind of commercial negotiation for space. So a publisher might be like, we've got this big blockbuster, we really need to get lots of copies out there. They would do a deal with Waterstones, but it wasn't necessarily the best book for Waterstones or its customers. And what James did was to say, construct new commercial models where it's like, look, if we're promoting a book, we have a different commercial model, but we will choose what we promote. You won't tell us, you know, you won't, like, pitch things. We will. You almost can't pitch things. We will read the books and we'll see what we think. We know our customers and we think we know what our customers like. We know how to kind of pick books that will really appeal to them, that might be different to books elsewhere in the market. What you think of as a big book buster might be different what you think. And he's been amazingly successful at that. And sometimes I have to say, he would champion books on our list that our salespeople hadn't necessarily thought were the standout book for the Waterstones team or the Barnes and Noble team will be like, we love this book. We pick it. And they'll sometimes as well. I have to say to us, but we don't think the cover's right. We think there's a different cover you could use for that book that would be more appealing to our customers. And. And often within amounts of copies they're talking about, we would say, okay, like, you know, we'll change the COVID We'll talk to the author and say, look, we love this cover. You love this cover. Barnes and Noble think that they can reach more people with this other cover.
- [45:56]
A
They're like Costco. They have enough money that if Costco tells a suit manufacturer, hey, this is what we want. The suit manufacturer basically has to bow down.
- [46:04]
B
Yeah. And also. And also, I would say more than that, it's like they know their customer better than we do. I like to think that we know book customers. I like to think, you know, authors, when they write their books, they have an idea. But really, it's the retailers who understand their customers better than anyone. So if James says to me, I don't think you've got the COVID right, I would agree to that because I trust his expertise more than the, you know, sort of commercial money question. Like, it's like, okay, he kind of knows what he's talking about.
- [46:35]
A
Can you tell me about this observation that you made, which I think is really interesting, about how many successful writers have a strong moral sense about them?
- [46:46]
B
So this is maybe in my experience of working with authors, I think there's something that, as humans, we gravitate to when someone has a really clear view of things and has a strong sort of moral anchor almost. I mean, I will illustrate this. I have the great privilege of having worked with Mitch Albom. And what fascinates me about Mitch is like, he just has. I find him as a person and as a writer, like a seer. Like, he's like a seer. Like, he really sees things that I don't see. Like, he guides me.
- [47:27]
A
It almost seems like he's anointed.
- [47:29]
B
Yeah. Yeah. It almost feels like, where does this come from? And I think. And that, you know. And he's obviously been wildly successful all around the world as well. And I think. I think that readers. I think we like. We like it when someone has a sort of moral universe, that there's an integrity to it, that there's something coherent. I'm thinking, like, again, like, thinking about C.S. lewis and Narnia, you Know, as a kid, like, I love that. That's that series. And I think I. And I wasn't thinking, you know, only later did I realize, oh, he was, you know, Christian and, you know, sort of Christian theology, whatever. But there was this sense of, like, Aslan had this immense presence to him and that there was this. This sort of system of values that was really compelling. I think Lord of the Rings as well, like some of. Sometimes, like in science fiction and fantasy particularly, I think there can be these kind of moral universes. And I think there's something. There's something almost seer, like, about great, great writers that I think is sometimes in the subtext of their work. It's not sort of in the text. I'm thinking, like Sally Rooney, for instance, like, there's a subtext to her work. There's a. I'd say a very strong moral underpinning.
- [48:51]
A
Yeah. I'm just looking at my bookshelf here. I see Camille Paglia, I see Michel Hwellbeck, I see Rilke, I see Nietzsche. When I look at those, think of those writers, I think of a strong point of view about how the world should be, how the world shouldn't be, what we should do, what we shouldn't do. And feel free to disagree with them, of course, but they have a sense of right and wrong. They're not indifferent about the world.
- [49:21]
B
Yeah.
- [49:21]
A
And that shows up in the writing and it divides.
- [49:23]
B
I think some of the biggest IP of all time is like that. If I think Narnia, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, like Disney, like, so the strongest creative IP of all time has that. I can't actually think of an exception to that. I can't actually think of one where it's like, you know, you're not really sure. Like, you know, or there's no, you know, it's a good story, but there's no there there. I think that's when you think about morality as well. You know, I spent a lot of my career in mystery and thrillers. With mysteries, it's really strong that the villain gets brought to justice. In every single one. Like, I've published hundreds of books. In every single one, the villain gets brought to justice. Like, the villain does not escape. Like, the villain does not prevail. Well, actually, maybe Patricia Highsmith, talented Mr. Ripley, is a bit of an exception, you know, but, like, I wouldn't actually place that in that category. Like, so I think there's something immensely appealing for readers of, like, that, that that is what happens. Justice is served. Yeah.
- [50:32]
A
That story is Phenomenal.
- [50:34]
B
The talent in the talent.
- [50:36]
A
Holy cow. I haven't read the book, but I've watched the movie and it is so good.
- [50:40]
B
And maybe that's even. That's got its own. Because there's own sort of morality to it. It's a different sort of morality.
- [50:47]
A
Yeah. Tell me about mystery and thrillers. Just break down what you've learned about each genre and how those genres are the same and different.
- [50:57]
B
So mystery, as I say, there is a crime is committed 99% of the time, a murder or several murders. And there is a puzzle element to it, like who committed the murder, why did they commit the murder? And there is usually a. Almost always some sort of protagonist involved in working that out, whether it's an amateur detective, whether it's a private eye, whether it's police, like Sherlock Holmes. And like Sherlock Holmes is, you know, an archetype for that. But there is some. And again, I think is, you know, I'm personally passionate about this. I've worked, you know, amazing Mystery author Val McDermott, I work with Patricia Cornwall. Like incredible authors in that field who are true artists and, you know, true poets as well. So there's enormous amount of artistry in that field. But it's like a haiku. Like a crime will be committed and a crime will be solved. But, like, how that happens, there's so much. There's so much texture, there's so much nuance, but that is a thriller. A great thriller writer I worked with years ago, Jeff Abbott, he put it to me, his books were the most dramatic moment of an ordinary person's life. So actually, thrillers take more different forms. I guess there is the sort of what you call a domestic thriller. Like an ordinary person happens to get swept up in a heist. An ordinary person is walking down the street and something dramatic happens. Or it can be like spies or it can be, you know, sort of. We purchased a guy, Mick Herron. I don't know Mick Herron. Great spy series. It can.
- [52:44]
A
I'm thinking of Gone Girl.
- [52:46]
B
Gone Girl is like a domestic thriller.
- [52:48]
A
Gillian Flynn and that.
- [52:50]
B
And that was like, so innovative as well. And also literally, you know, that's, I think, really literary in tone. Very, very clever. And a thriller, I think, will have a lot of twists and turns. I think the key thing in a thriller is expect the unexpected. I think what people read thrillers for. Again, there's resolution at the end often, but good doesn't always prevail in a thriller. A thriller will be twists and turns. You didn't see that Coming. You didn't see that coming. You never expected that. Very fast paced, often very televisual in a way, like things exploding, people shooting each other unexpectedly, a man with a gun and I guess sort of adrenaline, some sort of adrenaline associated with thrillers.
- [53:35]
A
And now talking about horror, horror, it seems like it's coming back.
- [53:40]
B
It's definitely coming back in a different way though. So I think. So if you look at sort of traditional horror. So when I started in publishing, a horror novel might be like. There was literally a horror novel called Slime. And there was like a bunch of slime that like, kind of like slimed itself on people. Like, I would say there was. It's maybe, you know, sort of. It was like schlock. Like, can I use the words? You know, sort of. But then also, to be fair, like, I mean, the great genius in this field is Stephen King. And Stephen King, I think is a timeless genius and other, other authors as well, but. But he is a timeless genius in that way. And it would be. And he, he. I think he's outside category actually. But his thing, you know, the sense of menace, this sense of unease, this sense of, you know, sort of like just something just you've. Within the pit of your stomach. It's almost like a visceral. I'd say horror for me is almost rather than about subject, is about a feeling it evokes in the pit of your stomach of dread, like being on a fairground ride or something. The latest round of horror is more like we've seen queer horror, we've seen feminist horror. We've seen almost like sort of things subverted, like universes where.
- [55:01]
A
Why would that work in horror? Like you're talking about subversion and you're talking about horror and it's not clear to me why the Venn diagram between those should be so big.
- [55:12]
B
I think because horror itself is a subversive genre. So in horror unlike any other, this is the first time I probably thought about this. It's slightly unformed thoughts. But in horror, I think it's anything goes. Like it could be a load of slime, it could be a demonic dog, it could be whatever. There's almost, I think, fewer rules than any other category. Good does not need to prevail in horror. Like things it deliberately should be shocking. So you almost. It's almost a genre where it lends itself to innovation. I think when you've got something where there aren't rules, you know, whatever, then I think you've got a young generation of, you know, feminist Writers, queer writers being like, well, I'm gonna, you know, I. It's right. It's absolutely ripe for subversion. A lot of genres you're relying on likability. I think horror, that's not a thing. It doesn't need to. I mean, maybe they're like. What do you mean?
- [56:07]
A
Likeability. The likeability of the characters.
- [56:09]
B
Yeah, so. Or not even likability, relatability. Like if you're looking at a literary novel, you know, crime novel, you know, sort of like. Like sometimes like that you want to be in with a character with horror. That's not really a thing because the thing is slime or it's kind of attack birds that attack or it's like, you know, a giant vat of radioactive material or it's whatever kind of shape shifting kind of. You, you're. It's almost like more conceptual. Yeah, conceptual and visceral. So you're not. You have characters and the characters are important, but that's not the thing. And the characters, often you want them to act in surprising or disgusting or morally upsetting ways.
- [56:56]
A
This is really good. Can I ask you about a few other sections of the book publishing history? Children's books.
- [57:02]
B
I mean, children's books, I think is. I think it's such a wide spectrum. It's not the field I grew up in, but I've been CEO for some time and I spent a lot of time with children's authors. They've explained to me as well, it is not one thing. Children's books is not one thing. Picture books, there's picture books, there's middle grade, there's ya, and even within that there's all different sorts of things. I think children's anchoring is really important. So whether it's a picture book, whether it's a middle grade book, whether it's a YA book, that there's a sort of coherent universe and it's to some degree maybe a safe universe for a child to inhabit. Let me show you this.
- [57:51]
A
It's really fun just having a bunch of books.
- [57:53]
B
Yeah, you've got a great bookshelf.
- [57:54]
A
You know, I've never, I've never picked up a book from the bookshelf in an interview here. This is like my 30th one here.
- [58:01]
B
Yeah, you better pick.
- [58:03]
A
So this is my favorite children's book from growing up. It's called Flight, and it tells the story of Charles Lindbergh and his spirit of St. Louis. And so as you were talking about it, I was like, what is it that I loved about this. And I think one of the things about children's books is because it's so rooted in pictures, as a kid, you could really imagine that scene. And.
- [58:26]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [58:27]
A
Like, I remember looking at this image when I was a kid and just thinking of the.
- [58:32]
B
Wow.
- [58:32]
A
I can't even imagine you're now flying across the world. And I remember thinking of this right here.
- [58:40]
B
Well, the illustrations are great.
- [58:41]
A
They're really good. So this is Lindbergh, middle of the night, he's flying across the Atlantic by himself. And I remember just the terror of what it must have been like. But you can go through that sort of movie in a children's book really fast, in 5 minutes, 10 minutes before bed, and then presumably you're kind of dreaming on it. Yeah. And so I have these very intimate relationships with children's books in a way that I don't have with books that are just text.
- [59:11]
B
Well, I'll tell you, there's this really interesting sales dynamic that speaks to that, which is that really beloved picture books, they can keep growing in sales.
- [59:21]
A
Because I'm buying that for my kids.
- [59:23]
B
Exactly. So that's exactly what happens. That it's like people will read them as kids, they'll stay with them in this incredible way. They will then buy them for their kids, kids in their life, whatever. And it's this kind of mushrooming effect that is just quite extraordinary. Like there is no other. I would say there is no other category like it. And they can often start off, I would say, you know, I thought of countless picture books that start up, will print a thousand copies. Fast forward 40 years and you sold 10 million copies. I can't think of another category quite like that where it's literally just like kid after kid after kid after kid becomes an adult.
- [60:03]
A
So is the movement of the back catalog in books made for kids different than the movement of the back catalog for books made for adults?
- [60:12]
B
Totally. So the back catalogue in kids accounts for a lot more than it does often in adults. And there will be particular titles. It's a little bit. I mean, upsides and downsides. The downside, if you're an author, it can be, in terms of the back catalog, a bit feast or famine. So there are some books that, for whatever reason, just capture people's imagination. So in children's. Yeah, the back catalogue is really, really important.
- [60:39]
A
Right, right. And how is publishing different? Let's take three markets. France, UK and America.
- [60:49]
B
UK and America, very similar. France, very different. So I would say, you know, obviously I've got now experience on both sides
- [60:58]
A
Hachette's a French company.
- [61:00]
B
Hachette's a French company and pretty federal in terms of. We've got France, Spain, uk, US are key markets. UK and us, I would say fiction. The markets are very similar. Something I don't know, you think of an author that Michael Connolly works really well in the, in the UK and the us, like it's unusual probably to find an author who works, really a fiction author who works really well in one and not the other, unless it's some guy writing about the American Civil War or something like that, which is unknown to British people or some. The kind of very British humor or something like that. So those, those, those broadly say fiction, very similar, non fiction, quite similar. If it's like, you know, he talked about James Clear, Self help, that sort of thing. Like that's pretty similar, but then different in some fields. So sports, very, very different. Very different cookery, often very different. You know, Ina Garten, really big over here, not very well known in the uk. You know, Jamie Oliver, very well known in the uk, not so well known over here. Like some, some regional stuff like that. But broadly uk, you are similar. One difference actually, interestingly, which I think is a historical difference, is Americans love hardcovers, British people love paperbacks. So in Britain the hardcover sales will be fairly small and then the big markets, the paper bag. Whereas in the US it's pretty much the other way around. The hardcover is often the biggest format and then the paperback smaller.
- [62:38]
A
And just to confirm what generally happens with the book is the book comes out and then that hardcover will be the only option for nine months, a year, and then there'll basically be a second launch at some point to launch the paperback.
- [62:52]
B
Correct. Although in the us, if something's going really well, often a US publisher will extend that. That does not happen in the uk.
- [62:58]
A
And the hardcover is good because there's. It's more expensive. Bigger margins.
- [63:03]
B
Broadly, if some. When something's going well. When something's not going well, it can be worse margins. So, you know, because if those books don't sell, it's more costly and etc. But yeah, like if, if you've got, if you've got a book that's doing really well and it's doing really well in hardcover, that. And it's good for the author because the author gets a higher royalty for the hardcover because of the price than they do for the paperback. So there's a sort of built in, I would say, advantage of the US market that the consumers seem to prefer that. That Format, I would say that may be shifting a little bit. And there's. I mean, I think we also, you know, this is maybe a kind of social thing, but, like, being conscious that, you know, people don't always have a lot of money. Mass market. The mass market format in the US has now been sort of discontinued. So the stores have basically said, we don't want mass markets.
- [63:57]
A
What does that mean?
- [63:58]
B
So they used to be, you know, the very small paper bags, the smaller, like, you know, that you could fit in your pockets. Yeah. So those were. Those have, like, diminished over the last few decades.
- [64:10]
A
I hate reading that kind of book. They. They. The form factor makes it way harder to read.
- [64:20]
B
Like if you got. Yeah, that. That format. Yeah, exactly. You see, personally, I quite like that because I do sometimes, like, literally to put a book in my pocket. But I don't know.
- [64:30]
A
Let's compare these two. This, to me, is like a mass market. They tend to be smaller.
- [64:34]
B
Yes, exactly.
- [64:36]
A
But. But my issue is how fast they close.
- [64:39]
B
You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, they do.
- [64:42]
A
They snap shut the. There's a book, the Technological Society by Jacques Allule. I remember buying that, the mass market paperback, and being like, I can't read this just because of the way it's printed. But then if you look at this, you see how it sits flat, whereas this one doesn't. It's almost the same. Maybe.
- [64:58]
B
Maybe I'm seeing in real time the American consumer react. This is like. This is fascinating. Like, maybe I hadn't actually considered the opening and closing of books. Maybe this is. This is what.
- [65:10]
A
This is wonderful.
- [65:11]
B
Americans like to have them. No, I mean, I mean. And look, that's. And I think as publishers, I see our role is reacting to consumer behavior and giving consumers what they want. And consumers, you're right, consumers want that. They don't seem to want that.
- [65:24]
A
And so I didn't realize that the mass market paperback was a thing. But so many of the books I've bought that I've been like, I can't read. This thing is the mass market paper.
- [65:32]
B
So. So that has now gone. That is now gone, basically. And yeah, there's an enthusiasm for hardcovers and there's some enthusiasm for what we call trade paperbacks, the bigger paperbacks as well.
- [65:45]
A
I bought this right when I was walking to Eton College outside of London for.
- [65:50]
B
Oh, okay. It's a lovely little. Yeah, it's the lovely little addition. You asked about France as well. France is very different. So there used to be a sort of truism in publishing that if you sell translation rights to France, you probably won't sell them anywhere else. And if you sell them everywhere else, you probably won't sell them to France. So, and this is again a truism, but the French market does tend to be a bit more cerebral. It does tend to be a bit more intellectual. They are broadly very interested in, you know, big themes. Philosophy.
- [66:26]
A
Yeah, the philosophy. Bookstores in Paris and Montreal are so good. Yeah, we don't have that in this.
- [66:32]
B
We don't. It's a different. It's a different culture. I mean, you know, I spent a lot of time in France dealing with French people. I think culture is taken very, very seriously there. And I think books are taken very, very seriously. And so there's a certain part of me that's quite envious of that. You know, they have like a books minister. They have like, you know, you know, they really center it in their culture in a way that we don't in the US or the UK actually. So. But yeah, and look. And actually, to be. To be fair, you know, French readers do love Romantasy. They do have sprayed edges. They do. They do all these things. Michael Connelly is big there, like, so all of that is true. But I would say there's a. Definitely there are some authors who are huge there, that are huge. Nowhere else that there may be more intellectual.
- [67:21]
A
One thing that I'm surprised about in the publishing industry is that the industry writ large has not embraced the economics of bundles. And TV people understand this super well. Right. Like, this is why the cable bundle works so well. You can just bundle a bunch of stuff together, People pay more for it, and amortized across all the different consumers, you make more money. What you haven't had in the publishing industry is I would love to buy multiple units of the same book, but I get the ebook, I get the hardcover, I get the audiobook, and I can do one purchase all three. The closest thing that the industry has right now is you can buy a Kindle book on Amazon and then get a discount on the audiobook, which is nice. But, man, I would love to just buy book bundles. And my friend Paul Millard, I have to give him credit for this, for this idea that hasn't happened. And it seems like an obvious thing that publishers could do.
- [68:20]
B
I think it's an interesting question. It comes up every so often. We think about it every so often. I think stepping back, our job is to make sure that our authors and our shareholders get the best return so that authors make the best living that they can. Our Shareholders are happy with us. We're maximizing the value of the precious creative content that we publish. So far. I personally haven't. And every publisher operates differently, everyone's got different views. I personally haven't seen a sort of compelling economic model that would work well for both consumers and creatives that would allow that. And you may well, you know, want that. It's not something. And as I say, we try to listen to the market, we try to listen to what people.
- [69:16]
A
It's not something people ask for.
- [69:17]
B
It's not something that we've seen a lot. We have seen other things like, you know, we do to some extent work with kind of streaming type models. So like, you know, Kindle Unlimited for instance.
- [69:28]
A
Spotify now.
- [69:29]
B
Spotify now. So I would say there's more appetite for that model. I say from a consumer point of view, what we see, and we do quite a lot of consumer research, we've definitely seen consumers say we like to have the ability to have content delivered to us like this, to have that sort of choice. And we obviously then need to think, well, how can we do that and also ensure that we're not selling the farm. But that definitely, I would say has been more of a focus for us in terms of what people's appetite, you know, what consumer appetite is. And there is definitely, I'd say I put you in the sort of top 1% of bookishness. And I'd say I mainly get that question from the top 1%, you know, the people. I bet you buy a ton of books in all different formats. I can see that you're a very book, you know, you're a proper top echelon book lover, I suppose where the sweet spot for, you know, and we're obviously trying to serve you and your 1% of amazing book lovers.
- [70:28]
A
Right. But you need to serve the best.
- [70:29]
B
We need to serve. We need to serve them, you know, so, so, so. And actually what's been exciting for some of the other, you know, just take some of the more streaming type things. We know that I think I've got this statistic correct that with James Patterson that say for Spotify listens that for the audiobooks, for the audiobooks that there's a large percentage of those that are younger listeners who've never listened to a book before and we know that there's a large percentage who've never, you know, not regular book readers or lovers. So sometimes we're always trying to serve all sorts of different markets. But it is exciting on a sort of commercial level and I suppose a societal level think, wow, we can reach people who, you know, this is not normally what they do.
- [71:16]
A
My sense is that ebook growth, it's still growing, but it's been slower than a lot of people thought it would have been. Maybe going back 10 years ago. And now a lot of the growth in the publishing space is with audiobooks.
- [71:31]
B
Correct. I think there's actually a very nice scenario. Yeah. Because I was obviously there when ebooks were exploding and we didn't know where it was going to go. We thought there was a scenario definitely where we thought is this going to be the end of print books? That was a real thing. That was a real thing. That was a real emotion at the time. We did a lot of kind of catastrophe planning. What's been amazing to see actually is younger generation back to physical, back to physical books. So Gen Z, Gen Alpha, there's a large percentage that really love the physical books. We did these wonderful books in the uk, Heartstopper by Alice Oseman. It's tied into a Netflix series. It was incredible to me to actually to see the percentage of physical to digital. So it was a very younger readership, very, very younger, you know, readership. And the younger readership was like overwhelmingly physical. I mean they were graphic novels so it lends itself to physical but overwhelmingly physical. We hear sentiment all the time from younger people of like I like physical books and I think, you know, for us that they're more. Well you obviously value them. They're beautiful objects but they're kind of utility for younger people. Often it's almost like beauty and I was going to the sprayed edges. They're beautiful things.
- [72:51]
A
I think there's beauty and also signaling. If I'm bringing a book out and I'm reading on my phone, I can't signal, man. I'm a book reader but all the time on weekends I see people walking around coffee shops, restaurants reading a book and it's almost a fashion story.
- [73:08]
B
I think it's that and I think it's also. I'm really intrigued again as a non digital native, I grew up in an analog world. My relationship to digital actually is very different to digital natives. And I think digital natives, you know, Gen Z, Gen Alpha will preemptively be selecting to do analog things sometimes and I think it's that as well. I think it's actually mental health related sometimes it's like actually time off a device is good.
- [73:38]
A
Totally.
- [73:40]
B
Time with a physical book is good. So it's like kind of healing, a healing thing as well. So yes Definitely we've seen ebooks, but I think ebooks have plateaued in a nice way in terms of like they serve a number of different needs. They serve the need of actually someone who doesn't have. Who's a really prolific reader. So these are different profiles of people who love ebooks. Really prolific readers maybe don't have that much money. There is obviously an investment in an E reader, but once you've made that investment, they will often look for special deals, things like that. They'll be able to load up their E reader that older readers. The font size, I'm definitely struggling with this myself now. Font size is really, really important. E readers, you can vary that. So it's invaluable portability. You can get any book, anywhere, anytime. So there's that sort of reader. There's also now younger readers coming into on ebook. But it's sort of nice that you might. And then an audio, as you say, it's everyone and it's actually a lot of younger men coming in. It's the only area where we're seeing a lot of male entrants to the market.
- [74:49]
A
Back to the bundle point earlier to put a finer comb on it. The thing that makes audiobooks and ebooks different is that there's zero marginal cost. But from my view of the industry, they're not treated that differently in the publishing industry. Hasn't looked at them and said, hey, these are zero marginal cost products. Let's treat them very differently. They're sort of treated like the same. And I think that there's ways to get creative. Obviously I'm outside the industry, so I'm just thinking about stuff. I don't have skin in the game here, but one thing that you could do is maybe say, hey, a book is coming out, we're going to have a discount on the ebook in the first week and then the price will rise over time and then that way it makes it more likely that people read the book right when it's come out. And all this to say it seems like there's opportunities to experiment here that aren't being done.
- [75:45]
B
Yeah, I mean I obviously. Sorry, my slight though I can feel my lawyer on my back here in terms of, you know, like how we speak about this. But I would say broadly speaking, we have definitely seen. I can only talk for Hachette. We saw a massive surge in costs post Covid. So the whole supply chain, paper, shipping, printing, everything, like a massive surge in costs. We look at everything in the round. So we don't. We have to look at, you know, just our whole cost base. So to your point about sort of marginal costs or whatever, we have to look at the whole thing. So it is definitely the case in the last few years that print books have got enormously more expensive to produce.
- [76:26]
A
By how much?
- [76:28]
B
Oh, by. I mean, it depends on the different sort of format, but like, 30, 40% in some cases. So. And we have, again, not to be too specific about it, we have some formats that are loss leaders and some formats that are more profitable. And, I mean, I guess it's like when you're an airline and you've got some seats that deliver you more value
- [76:47]
A
than others, they just make money from the credit cards.
- [76:49]
B
Well, yeah, you kind of are like, you know, you kind of like, you know, like anything. It's like some things you might be running at a loss with. And there's a, you know, not to be specific about, but there's a truism in the industry that 80% of books lose money. You're always trying to look at things in the round. With ebooks, you can do some great things in terms of offering special deals in order to incentivise readers to discover an author's work. So I think anyone who spends a lot of time on ebook platforms will see some of those deals or, you know, book bob, things like that. You'll see. You'll see special deals.
- [77:25]
A
Well, to your point about the power law in the industry, I was looking at the Department of Justice lawsuit against the Penguin, Simon and Schuster merger, and I thought these stats were interesting. So more than 85% of authors never earn royalties beyond their advance. And to your point about the power law, books with advances of 250,000 or more comprise only 2% of all acquisitions, but account for 70% of all advanced spending. So basically, you just have a small number of books that get the majority of the advances and the profit for the companies. And that's just how the publishing industry works.
- [78:08]
B
Yeah, I mean, you're kind of. People from outside the industry come in and say, oh, why do you have advances? Because actually, if you just did royalties, you could, you know, you could have a different sort of system. Obviously, the market dynamic, you know, it's. It's a competitive market and advances all the way. I guess it's the same as the music business or the TV business or whatever. But, yeah, there is definitely, I would say, a sort of feast, you know, feast or famine element to it.
- [78:36]
A
Only 35 out of 100 books turn a profit. The top 4% of profitable books generate 60% of profitability. So 4 for 60. As the Penguin Random House CEO put it, publishers are like angel investors. Then Marcus Dole, CEO of Penguin Random House said, we invest every year in thousands of ideas and dreams and only a few make it to the top.
- [78:59]
B
Yeah. What I would say some of the nicest bits in my career. People often assume, oh, it's the books that have the highest advances that always do well. And that's not the case. Some of the nicest bits in my career have been where there's a book, you know, small advance, an editor very passionate about it and it's got, you know, take a book like where the Crawdads Sing. Yeah, you know, we, so we published that in the uk. Penguin Random House published it here. Wasn't a huge, was not a huge deal at all, but, you know, one of the best selling books of the last 20 years. You know, there's a lot of books, I would say, that are bought at, you know, sort of all different advanced levels, sometimes low advanced levels that then go on to massively smash all records. So I would say again to your point about, you know, authors or whatever, as an author, you should not ex, you should, I mean, you can't really, you could ever know what to expect. But just because a publisher hasn't paid a ton of money for what does not mean your book might not be an enormous bestseller.
- [80:00]
A
Last question. I'm an author. I'm thinking about what publisher to work with. Why should I work with Hachette?
- [80:06]
B
Well, we are the most, we have the most different sorts of lines of any of the large publishers out there. So we go from incredibly specialist publishing. Like we've got the world's biggest. Jessica Kingsley, which is the world's biggest specialist publishing for autism and gender diversity as well, and Chinese medicine. So we've got that and we publish Michael Connelly and James Patterson and, you know, kind of huge authors. Helen Hildebrand, which publish in the uk. Yeah. Sort of different authors. Uk, us. But like some, we, we have a vast spectrum, I would say, of different sorts of publishing. And I like to think as well, everyone's biased. I'm massively biased. I like to think we have a range of business models, a range of different approaches as well.
- [80:55]
A
What do you mean?
- [80:56]
B
So as I said, we've got this imprint bookature where any author can look it up online. As I say, they are one of the few imprints that accept mainly all. Most of their authors are unagented and you can submit things, everything will get read Everything will get assessed. Their model is different in that they offer a much higher ebook royalty than the industry standard. So it's a no advance, all royalty deal. But because they're not paying money on advances, their royalties can be higher. So for a writer, it's sort of betting on yourself, I guess. If you trust them and you trust yourself to reach a large readership, you will receive a bigger slice of the pie than you would otherwise. So I think it's 45% net receipts, royalties. So we've got that business model and then obviously we've got the sort of absolute kind of traditional business model of we're competing with other large publishers, et cetera, and then we've got the very specialist bits of publishing. So I would say Hachette, there's something for everyone there, like whatever sort of writer you are, whatever sort of field you're operating, and you will find an imprint or an editor who is really great in that area, who can find a market for your work. I would obviously say as well, we do, you know, I feel we do a great job with our marketing, our publicity, our covers, our distribution, all of that. But to be fair, a lot of our competitors do as well. I think maybe. Another thing I would say is we are more and more sort of global company. So I'm across US and uk, so I'm CEO of US and uk. We're coming together a bit more if you want, you don't have to. We have some authors. We publish in one territory, not the other. That's very common. But increasingly we're doing more and more sort of global deals. We're working more with our cousins in France, in Spain. So I'd say we're probably maybe the most global of the publishers as well, in terms of, of reaching a kind of global readership. And I would say we're pretty innovative on the digital front as well. There's obviously, we're obviously learning new things. We're not perfect, but I think that would be a strong reason to come to us as well.
- [83:25]
A
There we go. David, Charlie, thank you very much.
- [83:27]
B
Thank you. This has been a pleasure. Thank you so much.