Shop Talk

I had some interesting conversations while at the recent conference in Washington, D.C.. One such conversation, with the Director of Sales for one of my houses, was particularly sobering. He said that they’d just run the numbers on all their New York Times bestselling authors for the year to date, and that the sales of every one of them were down between 15 and 30% compared to last year.

Think about that. James Patterson: off 21%. A big selling romance writer I won’t name since she gave me the figure herself: off 30%. This director of sales says he’s been in the business for 30 years and he has never seen a downturn like this. You know how bookstores will sell something like, say, Dan Brown at 40% off? It’s a “lead loss.” The bookstore takes a loss on the bestseller in order to lure buyers into the store. Normally, readers will buy the lead loss and four or five other books. Now, they’re buying the lead loss and just walking out. Not good.

He does say he’s hopeful things will turn around this fall. But here’s the part that worries me: It seems all the houses have been holding back the books of many of their traditional big sellers, hoping the market will improve later in the year. So there are going to be lots of books by big-name authors coming out this fall. And as my source said, they’re going to cannibalize each other’s sales.

Unfortunately, I have three books coming out this fall—one paperback original, one paperback reprint, and one hardcover original. Not good news. Not good news, at all.