"Books," I said, "are like a science experiment without a control. If a book is successful, everyone is quick to take credit for it, and when a book fails, everyone scratches their heads, but no one can explain why either happens because publishers can do the exact same things for two different books and get two very different results."
My friend said, "I get it. Publishing a book is an unreproduceable phenomenon."
I liked that term so much I wrote it down.
Every book is released into the world under unique circumstances. Some of the things that factor into a book being published are:
- Type of book
- How it's written
- Who the author is
- Date of release
- Amount of advertising
- Amount of publicity
- Amount of marketing
- Publisher enthusiasm
- Bookseller enthusiasm
- Fan enthusiasm
- Library enthusiasm
- Cover art
- Print run
- Catalog placement
- Size of advance
- Foreign sales
- Movie sales
- Coop budget
- Distribution
- Similar releases
- Market saturation
- Price
- Word of mouth
There are many other factors as well.
Now common sense would say that many of these factors are within a publisher's control, so the more that they do, the better off the book will be. But there are so many factors that even a big book with huge expectations can, and often does, flop.
So the current publishing model is to do the bare minimum, and see if magic happens on its own. And magic happens often enough to keep everyone in the game, trying to figure out how to reproduce it.
But that's the problem. Publishing is an unreproduceable phenomenon.
I once compared publishers to those Skinner pigeons who pecked a lever that offered a treat at random intervals. The pigeons kept pecking, even though their efforts didn't yield any direct, controllable results.
If we add to this situation the poor business model of booksellers having no accountability for sales (because of the return system) then the amount of risk a publisher must take goes up, along with the amount of money needed to be spent to earn money.
Suddenly we see why a 50% sell through has become acceptable, and why authors who follow their publisher's advice to the letter---or even do more than their publishers require---often find themselves without another contract.
If it's true that no one really knows what they're doing, and that luck is ultimately responsible for a book's success, then it really shouldn't matter what the author does because fate will decide what happens. Just write the best book possible and cross your fingers, right?
Well, sometimes that works. Sometimes you buy a single lottery ticket and win. Sometimes you buy ten tickets a week for thirty years before you win. But most of the time you never win.
Which begs the question: what should authors be doing is no one really knows what to do?The answer is easy. You have to do everything you can to become your own unreproduceable phenomenon.
You'll do some things that work, and other things that won't, and when success comes you'll hopefully be smart enough to know that it wasn't any specific thing you did that made you a hit, but more likely a combination of things plus luck.Luck doesn't mean you can stop trying. Luck means you have to keep trying until luck happens.