In the wake of the DOJ v PRH trial, in which publishers admitted they don’t provide equal marketing support to every book, many authors wondered what, in fact, a publisher is good for. In an Ingram-hosted discussion about the overall health of book publishing today, this challenge was addressed in an indirect manner as three experts in the publishing community discussed opportunities and challenges they see on the horizon. While 2021 was a historic year of earnings and profits for traditional publishing, that success isn’t likely to be replicated this year. And most professionals recognize that the game has radically changed around how to effectively market books, especially post-pandemic.
How can book marketing be scaled? This question doesn’t have a straightforward answer, but everyone saw the need for innovation in the industry. Molly Stern, the founder and CEO of Zando, a new startup publisher, is partly solving this challenge by working with brand-name partners on specific imprints, like Gillian Flynn Books, SJP Lit (SJP is Sarah Jessica Parker), and Crooked Media Reads, among others. Stern has a long history of working at the Big Five and said, “Publishers really got very comfortable saying to an author, if you don’t have an audience, if you don’t have a platform, we don’t know how to publish you. … We take great pride in telling authors, you can be an author, and it’s our job to provide platform and opportunity for you.”
Zando leverages the platforms and partnerships of its publishing stars; when it acquires a new book, ideally the values of that writer’s work align with the values and mission of the imprint it’s published under. “You want it to be clear, this is a Gillian Flynn novel,” Stern said, meaning there shouldn’t be another partner who could or would publish such a work. This approach requires discipline, Stern said, because not every book their team loves will always fit with one of their established partners.
Stern says when she began working in publishing, she could hold a lot of strong opinions about a book and make decisions alongside about 20 other people who cared what she thought in her publishing division. “And that was a powerful way to be. You felt very much like a gatekeeper, a tastemaker, and you hoped the world cared. Now what you feel is this incredibly dynamic consortium of tastemakers [e.g., #BookTok, podcasts, book clubs]. And the very exciting thing to contemplate is how do you harness that?” she said. “We talk about it all the time in our industry, really figuring out how to leverage that new set of communities, the new tastemakers.”
Later in the session, Stern told a story about Zando’s first hit, The Butcher and the Wren by Alaina Urquhart. While Stern did say the company doesn’t expect authors to provide the platform, their first hit is by an author with oodles of platform. Urquhart is the host of a true-crime podcast that has 200 million downloads and terrific fan engagement. Stern said, “We saw the opportunity to support Alaina in developing her book and leveraging her extraordinary audience who really believes in her gifts and what she’s communicating.” After the author did a cover reveal on Instagram and mentioned it on her podcast, pre-order copies were selling every three seconds, leading to 43,000 pre-orders in a week.
Earned media is still enormously valuable for book marketing. Paid influencers? Not so much. Stern said that serious and reputable book features and criticism—such as those offered by established media institutions—still drive sales. “Our attention is so fractured, it doesn’t have the influence it once did, but it still matters.” What is of course enormously powerful right now are communities like #BookTok, where people recommend a book that feels authentically related to them. But there’s also “inauthentic” influence on social media, Stern warned. “A lot of people [in publishing] want to talk about, let’s align with a celebrity, let’s pay them something, let’s make sure there’s an ad tag on their Instagram post, and go forth and triumph. But that’s not how books work. Books are about a deep sense of connection or ideas that change the way you think. And you could only be persuasive in that modality.”
In a bit of good news, publishers are seeing sales happen across the full spectrum of the retail environment. Meaning: Amazon doesn’t have as big a chokehold on sales as one might think. With Urquhart’s book in particular, Bookshop saw its highest pre-orders since the inception of the platform. Stern says Amazon also got a big chunk of sales, but Barnes & Noble, Target, Walmart, and other booksellers also enjoyed pre-orders—basically, everywhere books are sold got a piece of the action. “It is almost a new retail environment,” Stern said. “We’re thinking about direct to consumer, we’re thinking about how our partners can partner with booksellers, Bookshop, anybody who is retailing books.”
A future challenge will be ownership of audiences, said Phil Ollila, an executive at Ingram Content Group. If publishers build access to audiences and develop them (that is: build direct-to-consumer strength via email, social, and other channels), then publishers will be the ones influencing purchasing decisions and where those purchases get made. “They can select which channels of distribution they’re going to favor” rather than leave everything in the hands of retailers. “For booksellers, part of their future role will be in audience development and in some way supported by the publishers,” Ollila said. “It’s going to be fascinating to watch. Sales and marketing and audience development is where innovation is going to happen.”
All panelists agreed that independent bookstores have been incredibly successful these past couple years—upending many assumptions about the business. According to the Association of American Publishers, physical retail sales increased by more than 40 percent in 2021. Allison Hill, CEO of the American Booksellers Association, said many people think it’s hard to open an independent bookstore, but more than 300 opened during the pandemic, and ABA’s membership increased by 20 percent. “That was something no one saw coming. There’s the assumption that if you have a physical bookstore, it would have four walls and a roof. Well, we’ve seen all kinds of fluidity … from mobile to pop-ups and variations and hybrid models.” Stern said she’s seeing bookstores opening up around values, around identity, around community. “That’s almost a retro approach to bookselling,” she said, given the rise of the chains in the 1980s that were meant to serve everyone. “I’m really excited about the regionality of these stores, and we can all really celebrate the way these stores bring you in.”
However, going into the last quarter of the year, one challenge is “people power,” said Hill. A labor shortage during the biggest sales quarter of the year can be harmful for sales, especially when bookstores lose workers with institutional knowledge and expertise at handselling. The leading US wholesaler and distributor, Ingram, is dealing with related issues; Ollila said that due to weakness in the supply chain and problems with inflation, Ingram is rethinking approaches to getting books into the hands of readers and expects to perform more drop-shipping, direct to customers, on behalf of publishers and bookstores. But the fact that book sales in 2022 are not expected to drop to pre-pandemic levels is, Ollila argued, a testament to publishers’ skills. “We’ve become better booksellers, and we’ve become better marketers.” Still, one might wonder: How much do publishers have #BookTok to thank for continuing buoyant sales?
Bottom line: “The barrier to entry to creating books is quite low. The barriers to selling books are actually quite high,” said Ollila, speaking to the challenge of consistently and sustainably getting attention and word of mouth for any book. “It’s easy to [acquire] a book; it’s hard to have good editorial. It’s easy to have an author; it’s hard to have an author who’s marketable. All of those things are going to be the purview of publishing companies,” he said, arguing that scale does matter in publishing success. Stern said, “The margins in publishing are so thin. … Your obligations aren’t just to hire, but to publish more effectively. … It’s my obligation to succeed [as a publisher] because you can’t pay anybody if you can’t.”
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.
