More on the economics of genre fiction
The story so far: last week Andrew Gelman had a post on a book that discussed the dominance of best seller lists and suggested that it was due to their increased quality and respectability. I argued that the quality and respectability had if anything decreased (here), posted some background information (here and here) then discussed how the economics of publishing from the late Nineteenth Century through the Post-War era had influenced genre fiction. The following closes with a look at where we are now and how the current state of the market determines what we're seeing at the bookstore.
As the market shrank in the last part of the Twentieth Century, the pay scale shifted to the feast and (mostly) famine distribution of today. (The century also saw a similar shift for musicians, artists and actors.) Non-paying outlets sprang up. Fan fiction emerged (non-licensed use of characters had, of course, been around for years -- Tiajuana bibles being a classic example -- but fan fiction was written for the author's enjoyment without any real expectation of payment). These changes are generally blamed on the internet but the conventional wisdom is at least a couple of decades off. All of these trends were well established by the Seventies.
With the loss of the short story market and the consolidation of publishing, the economics of writing on spec became brutal. Writing and trying to sell a novel represents a tremendous investment of time and energy with little hope of success. By comparison writing on spec in the Forties meant coming up with twelve to fifteen pages then sending them off to twenty or so potential markets. The best of these markets paid good money; the worst were hungry for anything publishable.
The shift from short story to novel also meant greater risk for the publisher (and, though we don't normally think of it in these terms, for the reader who also invested money and time). A back-pages story that most readers skipped over might hurt the sales and reputation of a magazine slightly but as long as the featured stories were strong, the effect would be negligible. Novels though are free-standing and the novel gets that gets skipped over is the novel that goes unsold.
When Gold Medal signed John. D. MacDonald they knew were getting a skilled, prolific writer with a track record artistically and commercially successful short fiction. The same could be said about the signing of Donald Westlake, Lawrence Block, Joe Gores and many others. Publishing these first time authors was a remarkably low risk proposition.
Unfortunately for publishers today, there are no potential first time authors with those resumes. Publishers now have to roll the dice on inexperienced writers of unknown talent and productivity. In response to that change, they have taken various steps to mitigate the risk.
One response was the rise of the marketable blockbuster. The earliest example I can think of is the book Lace by Shirley Conran. If memory serves, Lace got a great deal of attention in the publishing world for Conran's huge advance, her lack of fiction-writing experience, and the role marketing played in the process. The general feeling was that the tagline ("Which one of you bitches is my mother? ") came first while the book itself was merely an afterthought.
More recently we have Dexter, a marketer's dream ("He's a serial killer who kills serial killers... It's torture porn you can feel good about!"). The author had a few books in his resume but nothing distinguished. The most notable was probably a collaboration with Star Trek actor Michael Dorn. The first book in the series, Darkly Dreaming Dexter was so poorly constructed that all of the principals had to act completely out of character to resolve the plot (tip for new authors: when a character casually overlooks her own attempted vivisection, it's time for a rewrite*).
The problems with the quality of the novel had no apparent effect on sales, nor did it prevent the character from appearing in a successful series of sequels and being picked up by Showtime (The TV show was handled by far more experienced writers who managed to seal up almost all of the plot holes).
The point here is not that Darkly Dreaming Dexter was a bad book or that publishing standards have declined. The point is that the economics have changed. Experienced fiction writers are more rare. Marketable concepts and franchises are more valuable, as is synergy with other media. The markets are smaller. There are fewer players. And much of the audience has a troublesome form of brand loyalty.
Normally of course brand loyalty is a plus, but books are an unusual case. If you convince a Coke drinker to also to drink Sprite you probably won't increase his overall soda consumption; you'll just have cannibalization. But readers who stick exclusively with one writer are severely underconsuming. Convince James Patterson readers to start reading Dean Koontz and you could double overall sales.
When most readers got their fiction either through magazines or by leafing through paperback racks, it was easy to introduce them to new writers. Now the situation is more difficult. One creative solution has been apostrophe series such as Tom Clancy's Op Center. Other people are credited with actually writing the books but the name above the title is there for branding purposes.
Which all leads us back to the original question: Why did thrillers become so dominant?
They tend to be easily marketable.
They are compatible with franchises.
They lend themselves to adaptation as big budget action movies.
Their somewhat impersonal style makes them suitable for ghosting or apostrophe branding.
They are, in short, they are what the market is looking for. As for me, I'm looking for the next reprint from Hard Case, but I might borrow the latest Turow after you're done with it.
* "Is that a spoiler?"
"No, sir. It was spoiled when I got here."
p.s. I was going to tie in with a branding situation Slim Jim snacks faced a few years ago but this post is running a bit long. Maybe I'll get back to it later.
Showing posts with label Thrillers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Thrillers. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
The Decline of the Middle (Creative) Class
I suggested in an earlier post that the rise to dominance of the thriller had not been accompanied by a rise in quality and reputation. In this and the next post, I'll try to put some foundations under this claim.
Popular art is driven by markets and shifts in popular art can always be traced back, at least partly, to economic, social and technological developments as well as changes in popular taste. The emergence of genre fiction followed the rise of the popular magazine (check here for more). Jazz hit its stride as the population started moving to cities. Talking pictures replaced silents when the technology made them possible.
Crime fiction, like science fiction first appeared in response to demand from general interest magazines like the Strand then moved into genre specific magazines like Black Mask and a few years later, cheap paperbacks. The demand for short stories was so great that even a successful author like Fitzgerald saw them as a lucrative alternative to novels. There was money to be made and that money brought in a lot of new writers.
It seems strange to say it now but for much of the Twentieth Century, it was possible to make a middle class living as a writer of short fiction. It wasn't easy; you had to write well and type fast enough to melt the keys but a surprisingly large number of people managed to do it.
Nor were writers the only example of the new creative middle class. According to Rosy McHargue (reported by music historian Brad Kay) in 1925 there were two hundred thousand professional musicians in the United States. Some were just scraping by, but many were making a good living. (keep in mind that many restaurants, most clubs and all theaters had at least one musician on the payroll.) Likewise, the large number of newspapers and independent publishers meant lots of work for graphic artists.
I don't want to wax too nostalgic for this era. Sturgeon's Law held firmly in place: 95% of what was published was crap. But it was the market for crap that made the system work. It provided the freelance equivalent of paid training -- writers could start at least partially supporting themselves while learning their craft, and it mitigated some of the risk of going into the profession -- even if you turned out not to be good enough you could still manage food and shelter while you were failing.
It was also a remarkably graduated system, one that rewarded quality while making room for the aforementioned crap. The better the stories the better the market and the higher the acceptance rate. In 1935, Robert E. Howard made over $2,000 strictly through magazine sales. Later, as the paperback market grew, writers at the very top like Ray Bradbury or John O'Hara would also see their stories collected in book form.
Starting with Gold Medal Books, paperback originals became a force in 1950. This did cut into the magazine market and hastened the demise of the pulps but it made it easier than ever before to become a novelist. It was more difficult (though still possible) to make a living simply by selling short stories, but easier to make the transition to longer and more lucrative works.
It was, in short, a beautifully functioning market with an almost ideal compensation system for a freelance based industry. It produced some exceptionally high quality products that have generated billions of dollars and continue to generate them in resales and adaptations (not to mention imitations and unlicensed remakes). This includes pretty much every piece of genre fiction you can think written before 1970.
The foundation of that system, the short story submarket, is essentially dead and the economics and business models of the rest of the publishing industry has changed radically leading to the rise of marketing, the blockbuster mentality and what I like to call the Slim Jim conundrum.
Tune in next time.
Popular art is driven by markets and shifts in popular art can always be traced back, at least partly, to economic, social and technological developments as well as changes in popular taste. The emergence of genre fiction followed the rise of the popular magazine (check here for more). Jazz hit its stride as the population started moving to cities. Talking pictures replaced silents when the technology made them possible.
Crime fiction, like science fiction first appeared in response to demand from general interest magazines like the Strand then moved into genre specific magazines like Black Mask and a few years later, cheap paperbacks. The demand for short stories was so great that even a successful author like Fitzgerald saw them as a lucrative alternative to novels. There was money to be made and that money brought in a lot of new writers.
It seems strange to say it now but for much of the Twentieth Century, it was possible to make a middle class living as a writer of short fiction. It wasn't easy; you had to write well and type fast enough to melt the keys but a surprisingly large number of people managed to do it.
Nor were writers the only example of the new creative middle class. According to Rosy McHargue (reported by music historian Brad Kay) in 1925 there were two hundred thousand professional musicians in the United States. Some were just scraping by, but many were making a good living. (keep in mind that many restaurants, most clubs and all theaters had at least one musician on the payroll.) Likewise, the large number of newspapers and independent publishers meant lots of work for graphic artists.
I don't want to wax too nostalgic for this era. Sturgeon's Law held firmly in place: 95% of what was published was crap. But it was the market for crap that made the system work. It provided the freelance equivalent of paid training -- writers could start at least partially supporting themselves while learning their craft, and it mitigated some of the risk of going into the profession -- even if you turned out not to be good enough you could still manage food and shelter while you were failing.
It was also a remarkably graduated system, one that rewarded quality while making room for the aforementioned crap. The better the stories the better the market and the higher the acceptance rate. In 1935, Robert E. Howard made over $2,000 strictly through magazine sales. Later, as the paperback market grew, writers at the very top like Ray Bradbury or John O'Hara would also see their stories collected in book form.
Starting with Gold Medal Books, paperback originals became a force in 1950. This did cut into the magazine market and hastened the demise of the pulps but it made it easier than ever before to become a novelist. It was more difficult (though still possible) to make a living simply by selling short stories, but easier to make the transition to longer and more lucrative works.
It was, in short, a beautifully functioning market with an almost ideal compensation system for a freelance based industry. It produced some exceptionally high quality products that have generated billions of dollars and continue to generate them in resales and adaptations (not to mention imitations and unlicensed remakes). This includes pretty much every piece of genre fiction you can think written before 1970.
The foundation of that system, the short story submarket, is essentially dead and the economics and business models of the rest of the publishing industry has changed radically leading to the rise of marketing, the blockbuster mentality and what I like to call the Slim Jim conundrum.
Tune in next time.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Thrillers on Economics -- a quick digression
I've been working on a series of posts about the economics of crime novels (see here and here) and it got me thinking about economics in crime novels. I'm no expert but here's my incomplete survey.
George Goodman (a.k.a. "Adam Smith") once bemoaned the absence of business in American literature with the notable exception of John P. Marquand. With all due respect to the estimable Marquand (himself no stranger to the pulps), Goodman might have found what he was looking for if he had spent less time in high-end bookstores and more time in his corner drugstore looking at the books with the lurid covers.
Of the many crime novels built around businesses, the best might be Murder Must Advertise, a Lord Whimsey by Dorothy L. Sayers. The story is set in a London ad agency in the Thirties, a time when the traditional roles of the aristocracy were changing and "public school lads" were showing up in traditional bourgeois fields like advertising.
Sayers had been a highly successful copywriter (variations on some of her campaigns are still running today) and has sometimes been credited with coining the phrase "It pays to advertise." All this success did not soften her view of the industry, a view which is probably best captured by Whimsey's observation that truth in advertising is like yeast in bread.
But even if Sayers holds the record for individual event, the lifetime achievement award has got to go to the man whom many* consider the best American crime novelist, John D. MacDonald.
Before trying his hand at writing, MacDonald had earned an MBA at Harvard and over his forty year writing career, business and economics remained a prominent part of his fictional universe (one supporting character in the Travis McGee series was an economist who lived on a boat called the John Maynard Keynes). But it was in some of the non-series books that MacDonald's background moved to the foreground.
Real estate frequently figured in MacDonald's plots (not that surprising given given their Florida/Redneck Riviera settings). His last book, Barrier Island, was built around a plan to work federal regulations and creative accounting to turn a profit from the cancellation of a wildly overvalued project. In Condominium, sleazy developers dodge environmental regulations and building codes (which turned out to be a particularly bad idea in a hurricane-prone area).
Real estate also figures MacDonald's examination of televangelism, One More Sunday, as does almost every aspect of an Oral Roberts scale enterprise, HR, security, public relations, lobbying, broadcasting and most importantly fund-raising. It's a complete, realistic, insightful picture. You can find companies launched with less detailed business plans.
But MacDonald's best book on business may be A Key to the Suite, a brief and exceedingly bitter account of a management consultant deciding the future of various executives at a sales convention. Suite was published as a Gold Medal Original paperback in 1962. You could find a surprising amount of social commentary in those drugstore book racks, usually packaged with lots of cleavage.
* One example of many:
“To diggers a thousand years from now, the works of John D. MacDonald would be a treasure on the order of the tomb of Tutankhamen.” - KURT VONNEGUT
George Goodman (a.k.a. "Adam Smith") once bemoaned the absence of business in American literature with the notable exception of John P. Marquand. With all due respect to the estimable Marquand (himself no stranger to the pulps), Goodman might have found what he was looking for if he had spent less time in high-end bookstores and more time in his corner drugstore looking at the books with the lurid covers.
Of the many crime novels built around businesses, the best might be Murder Must Advertise, a Lord Whimsey by Dorothy L. Sayers. The story is set in a London ad agency in the Thirties, a time when the traditional roles of the aristocracy were changing and "public school lads" were showing up in traditional bourgeois fields like advertising.
Sayers had been a highly successful copywriter (variations on some of her campaigns are still running today) and has sometimes been credited with coining the phrase "It pays to advertise." All this success did not soften her view of the industry, a view which is probably best captured by Whimsey's observation that truth in advertising is like yeast in bread.
But even if Sayers holds the record for individual event, the lifetime achievement award has got to go to the man whom many* consider the best American crime novelist, John D. MacDonald.
Before trying his hand at writing, MacDonald had earned an MBA at Harvard and over his forty year writing career, business and economics remained a prominent part of his fictional universe (one supporting character in the Travis McGee series was an economist who lived on a boat called the John Maynard Keynes). But it was in some of the non-series books that MacDonald's background moved to the foreground.
Real estate frequently figured in MacDonald's plots (not that surprising given given their Florida/Redneck Riviera settings). His last book, Barrier Island, was built around a plan to work federal regulations and creative accounting to turn a profit from the cancellation of a wildly overvalued project. In Condominium, sleazy developers dodge environmental regulations and building codes (which turned out to be a particularly bad idea in a hurricane-prone area).
Real estate also figures MacDonald's examination of televangelism, One More Sunday, as does almost every aspect of an Oral Roberts scale enterprise, HR, security, public relations, lobbying, broadcasting and most importantly fund-raising. It's a complete, realistic, insightful picture. You can find companies launched with less detailed business plans.
But MacDonald's best book on business may be A Key to the Suite, a brief and exceedingly bitter account of a management consultant deciding the future of various executives at a sales convention. Suite was published as a Gold Medal Original paperback in 1962. You could find a surprising amount of social commentary in those drugstore book racks, usually packaged with lots of cleavage.
* One example of many:
“To diggers a thousand years from now, the works of John D. MacDonald would be a treasure on the order of the tomb of Tutankhamen.” - KURT VONNEGUT
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