Celebrity authors, AI, cost of living and other bad news for traditionally published authors
I have been following the publishing industry for over 15 years, in particular how technology has transformed it. So, perhaps that puts me in a decent position to say that I think a few really important things are converging - and I'm sorry to say, this seems to be at the expense of many traditionally published authors. Strap in.
Last week, Ellen Person-Hagger wrote about the 'deflating' experiences some traditionally published authors can have. The reasons sound pretty familiar to me - one being inconsistent impact of marketing, author Ross Raisin says. “I think my books have got better, but the noise around anything I write has diminished.”
Also, author advances make for vulnerable financial realities for many. Yara Rodrigues Fowler said that on realising “how badly paid” writing is it has led her to think: “what’s the point of writing another one?”
And the authors in this Guardian piece have had critical praise, great reviews and decent sales. This clearly resonated with many, many authors as this article did the rounds on social media.
It is easy to come to the conclusion that traditional publishing just doesn’t serve many of its authors well, certainly not debuts or mid-list authors or those who can't turn out a book every year. Only the most naive of writers expects to get rich quick, most that I talk to are painfully realistic - they write in the spare time around their full- or part-time jobs, they are downsizing, and running side hustles to make ends meet.
So, it's hardly surprising that when the latest celebrity 'author' news breaks in The Bookseller there is collective anger (despair). We are seeing a steady flow of celebrities, be that Keira Knightley, Boris Johnson, Gillian Anderson, Stanley Tucci or the social media influencer de jour gobbling up huge advances and benefiting from generous marketing budgets.
Which established children's author wouldn't be miffed to see Keira Knightley's deal announcement and her book being lauded already as a modern classic?
The large marketing budgets for celebrity 'authors' take up human resources too, namely the marketing team who will spend a disproportionate amount of time executing these campaigns. And there is a limited pool of book marketers, who despite absolutely wanting all the books they work on to be successful, are forced to prioritise some books over others. They have to accept disappointing sales for some of their authors. As a big publisher, these disappointments are factored into their business model, with little consideration that they relate to authors' finances, livelihoods and careers.
The other significant thing that has changed the landscape over the last 15 years has been the growth of self publishing. Now, this has been a boon for many writers who have either been let down by traditional publishing or have decided to bypass it completely. And honestly, I am all for the democratisation and access self publishing offers writers to reach their readers (and build careers). And no, I don’t think it’s an easy option, and nor is it for everyone, but given the upside is so significant I can understand why many traditionally-published authors are telling me they are contemplating experimenting with it or already doing so.
I think it's worth mentioning too that the self-published community includes an incredibly positive, forward-thinking, innovative group of authors. I gave a talk last week at the ALLi online conference which involved me researching 5 self-published authors who have built businesses around the worlds they have created in their books, using the likes of Kickstarter, Patreon, Ream Stories, book boxes, direct mail and much more. You can watch my presentation here, if you're interested. These authors are very impressive.
But, what is stark to me is that traditionally published authors are at the mercy of their publishers, they're asked to do marketing without ever knowing if that activity has been effective, they're hamstrung from experimenting on almost every level - it feels like publishing is happening to them. While self-published authors are driving their businesses forward - they are all micro-publishers - so they are fast-learning, data-driven and very responsive, because they can be.
And finally, the other thing driving rapid change right now is AI. In all honesty, I'm not sure we have any idea of what the ramifications of AI are going to be yet, but what I see so far worries me deeply. Worth a reminder that I have been excitedly pushing for publishers to innovate more and find ways to embrace digital to create new revenue streams, find new readers, offer more to authors and ultimately sell more books, so I'm no luddite......but... convinced, I am not.
Here are a few authors who've had a brush with the unpleasant side of AI, firstly author LR Lam who found out one of her books had been fed into a LLM to create chapter summaries. Author KA Tucker found an AI-written version of one of her books renamed and readily available on Kindle Unlimited. I am starting to see things like this happen regularly, and I wonder how big publishers are planning for this and communicating the processes they have in place to protect their authors. Or if they have processes in place?
But, we are seeing daily announcements from big publishers embracing AI and allowing their 'content' to feed LLMs. Now which writer isn't excited by the prospect of their 'content' being fed into 'machines'? #Sarcasm.
My fear is that big publishers are being schmoozed by AI tech bros who absolutely don't have our industry's interests at heart, they just want a lot of well-edited quality content to counter the shitty stuff that's in there. Publishers have dollar signs flashing in their eyes, driven by a short-term cash grab at the expense of their business model long-term.
And that's before I mention the proliferation of AI art (ugh), AI book marketing, AI social media creation and much more. We seem to be moving rapidly towards an automated world of machine-generated content which is the antithesis of everything I thought our industry held sacred.
But, if we thought self-published books had filled up the virtual bookshelves, you ain't seen nothing yet.
Perhaps I have come to far too negative a conclusion about the convergence of the cost of living, celebrity authors, self publishing growth and the impact of AI on traditionally published authors? Time will tell. What I am certain of is that AI will impact us more rapidly and in ways we won't be able to quantify, and given the big 5's history around innovation, I am not overly confident about how they'll handle it.
Despite the confidence expressed by the CEOs at Frankfurt Book Fair, authors don't feel like they are being prioritised by big 5 publishers - or did they mean BIG authors are being prioritised? Personally, I think many will continue to feel anxious, dispirited and resigned to the limitations of traditional publishing.
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