A Publishers Weekly article in late July pointed out that no new novel has cracked the top twenty print bestsellers in the first half of 2016—that so far, the year lacks a new blockbuster novel similar to 2015’s The Girl on the Train. The article speculates that current events (the election cycle, terrorist attacks) may have squeezed out book coverage, but also that the division of sales between print and digital formats may be a factor.
We were very curious to hear what longtime industry observers or marketers might have to say about this dry spell. Is it just bad timing on the part of publishers, a meaningless blip? Or is there a long-term trend developing? Is it now more difficult to break out frontlist books?
Bestselling novelist M.J. Rose, who is a book marketing expert and runs the service AuthorBuzz, told us that the problem may relate to the increased price of ebooks and publishers’ cutbacks in marketing since the sales slump started—all of which predates election coverage. “We are not seeing any slowdown at all of sale-price books or indie bestsellers,” she says, pointing out that on social media, readers complain about high ebook prices and wait for books to go on sale through BookBub, Amazon, or Barnes & Noble. She thinks any frontlist losses can be tied to widespread discounting and training readers to wait for a deal—combined with the fact that readers just aren’t seeing as much PR and marketing for new books. She says readers are far more likely to buy what’s familiar—which is more likely to be a book that has been around for a year or two.
Longtime industry vet and visionary Richard Nash thinks it’s possible that publishers “backloaded” their big fiction into the fall this year. However, if one goes on the assumption that’s not the case, then long term he speculates we may be seeing the results of audience segmentation in the market—where general-interest fiction ceases to exist as we once knew it. Still, he says, “Books can go viral, can become tentpole franchises. But they don’t necessarily do so once every three months. So what I think you’re seeing … is simply the normal variability around the fact that if you’re only getting three to four viral hits a year, any given cluster or non-cluster could occur within a six-month period.”
Finally, we asked digital marketing expert Pete McCarthy for his take. He says, “The devil is in the aggregate sales data. Position on the lists cannot tell the story of whether the categories in fiction are actually up or down relative to themselves year over year. That would be the metric I’d be looking for.”
We were able to check Nielsen BookScan stats, which is one of the most reliable ways of tracking traditionally published print book sales. During the first quarter of 2016, frontlist adult fiction sales were down by 17 percent compared to 2015; during the second quarter, they were down by 4 percent. First quarter backlist sales were up by 4 percent compared to the prior year; second quarter sales were up by 9 percent. (Keep in mind these numbers are for print; they tell us nothing about ebook sales.) The fact that backlist sales are up while frontlist has declined does lend support to Rose’s theory that readers aren’t hearing about new books as much as before, or that they may be price sensitive and are waiting to buy. That doesn’t preclude Nash from being correct as well.
Bottom line: The bestseller dry spell may be over as quickly as it was pointed out, with the eighth Harry Potter book, the Cursed Child playscript (see Links of Interest below), which released on July 31 and sold more than 2 million copies within forty-eight hours of going on sale. There’s also considerable buzz surrounding Colson Whitehead’s new novel, The Underground Railroad, just announced as an Oprah Book Club pick and excerpted in a special print supplement in the New York Times last Sunday.
Paul Bogaards, executive vice president at Knopf, told us, “The dry spell is not indicative of a systemic breakdown or market correction … but points instead to the absence of a lightning strike. Good books continue to be published well, with many fiction successes in 2016—Noah Hawley, Emma Cline, Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney, Stephanie Danler, etc. That a novel has yet to ignite in 2016 suggests not a lack of appetite on the part of readers but instead the absence of a perfect menu offering. Additionally, blockbusters are imperfect bellwethers when it comes to assessing the overall health of our industry, mostly because they are outliers.”
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
