part the 5645564th.
WSJ.com - Penguin Rolls Dice With Novice Authors
Penguin, the publisher of such best-selling novelists as Tom Clancy and Patricia Cornwall, has taken an unusual gamble to prop up sagging profit: publishing more first-time authors.
About a year and a half ago, worried that book advances were getting too large, the company decided to cut costs by hiring more unknowns. First-timers typically command a smaller advance, the fee a publisher pays the author before a book is published, and, sometimes, before it is written.
“The industry has reached a point where the level of advances for best-selling authors has parted company with the revenue that those authors generate,” Penguin head John Makinson said in an interview last week...The shift involves risks for the 71-year-old publisher. Unknown writers generally don't deliver big, reliable sales. Their work is harder to promote to the public and to important booksellers like Barnes & Noble Inc. The strategy could backfire, leaving Penguin with lower costs but also lower sales. If a book bombs, the author doesn't have to pay back his or her advance...
But in recent years, Penguin has had some successes with new authors. Georgia nurse Sue Monk Kidd's first novel, “The Secret Life of Bees,” sold 4.5 million copies. “The Kite Runner,” the first book from Afghan doctor Khaled Hosseini, sold three million copies. Penguin said these books helped persuade it to publish more novice writers.
[comment redacted. More power to the first-timers.]
Tags: Books
Well that can't be anything but a good thing. Penguin should also bring back their small kids' series of books - a feature of my childhood. Simple explanations of all kinds of subjects.
Yup, do we really need the Saintly Allan Greenspans bio, for which he received a 9 million dollar advance? Or 200 new novels by first timers? I'd choose the 200 every time, no matter the author.
(Not that Greenspan's book will be on Penguin)
Excerpt of Greenspan's memoir, ghost-written by Rick Moranis