Publishing is eating itself...
(again)
Hola Fahrenhistas,
This week we’ve mainly been sitting back eating popcorn and watching the CEO’s of the biggest publishing companies in the world doing their level best to look like raving imbeciles and managing to offend their staff, their authors and their readers all at the same time.
Frankly it’s the only thing anyone in publishing has been talking about all week.
For those of you who aren’t massive publishing geeks like us, here’s the short version of the story….
Once upon a time, there used to be 6 huge publishing corporations (The Big 6) then the biggest of them (Random House) bought the 2nd biggest (Penguin) and The Big 6 became The Big 5 - they changed their name to Penguin Random House (yup, they were up all night thinking up that name) and thought about what to do next.
What they’ve decided to do is buy the 3rd biggest corporation (Simon & Schuster) and turn The Big 5 into The Big 4 (do you see where they’re going with this?).
To their credit, the US government has decided this might be a bad idea and has launched an anti-trust case in an attempt to stop the take-over from happening.
This in turn has led to the CEO’s of both corporations appearing in court this week where they tried to argue that this really wasn’t all that big a deal and that the multi-billion dollar corporations they run are really just like small family affairs where there’s no over-arching strategy, where staff are happy to be paid slightly over minimum wage and where authors were treated like royalty - one of them even testified under oath “author advances below $100,000 were relatively rare” - which frankly came as a huge surprise to the vast majority of their authors who have to hold down 2nd jobs to make rent every month.
There’s way too much to go into here but if you want to know how publishing REALLY works at the highest levels go and read the excellent daily coverage being published on Twitter by John Mayer (@JohnHMaher).
One thing that did stand out though was a quote from Markus Dohle (the CEO of Penguin Random House) - it genuinely might be the only actual fact that came out of his mouth all week - and it is this…
“25% of our customers buy 80% of our books”
It’s true for PRH and it’s true for Fahrenheit - I suspect it’s true for every publishing company in the world.
The fact that you’re even reading this newsletter means you’re a BOOKISH WEIRDO - you live in a world where people always have their head in a book and you know what a TBR pile is.
The truth is that most people don’t give a monkey’s about books, especially in times like these when money worries are knocking at everyone’s door - it’s this simple fact that keeps publishers like us awake at night - what can we do to engage the most loyal 25% of our readers - the ones that keep our heads just above water?
Mainly all we can really do is to keep publishing the best books we can find and to stay in touch (like this) to remind you how much we appreciate and rely upon your support.
So, speaking of the ‘best books’….
The big news last week was that we’ve got a brand new book headed your way from noir legend Anthony Neil Smith.
Slower Bear will be published by our Fahrenheit 13 imprint on Friday 19th August in eBook, Paperback & Limited Edition Hardback editions.
As a special bonus if you order SLOWER BEAR this weekend you’ll qualify for our special pre-order pricing.
And if you haven’t discovered Anthony Neil Smith yet you can check out his previous Fahrenheit 13 releases here…
And that’s not all in ‘best books’ news
You can pick up everything in our David Nolan Collection this weekend (books & merch) with 15% DISCOUNT - no need for a promo-code the discount will be automatically calculated at the checkout.
We’re also giving you all a MASSIVE 20% DISCOUNT ON ALL MERCH this weekend if you use promo-code MASSIVE20 at the checkout.
Okay that’s all from us this weekend, we’re off to spit feathers at some corporate publishing numpties and hopefully figure our where our career choices went wrong all those years ago.
We kiss you
xx