Canelo / Arts Council England

Canelo / Arts Council England | 

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Literature in the 21st Century: Understanding Models of Support for Literary Fiction

publisher £2214. Minus the distribution fee, this comes out at £1660.50, 

or £2.76 a book, which covers the production costs and leaves a little 

over. However, if the bookseller then returns 300 copies the publisher 

would be billed for the £1077 those copies represent. The distributor 

keeps their cut, but for the publisher any gain has been wiped out, they 

are looking at a serious loss on those copies and now they have the 

unsold stock to deal with. Sales of the remaining 1400 will have to go 

through indies, events, direct and online. These routes can all work, 

but each has challenges of its own. Whichever way one looks at it, this 

system of bookselling leaves little for either the publisher or the author 

to survive on. 

Aside from the picture described above, many writers are starting to 

question what it is publishers do. The extensive ‘Do You Love Your 

Publisher?’ survey found that most authors were happy with their 

publisher’s editorial and design work – 70% thought it was good or 

excellent.

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 Few, however, felt communication, feedback or marketing 

was up to scratch. If authors are to be supported, their books must be 

too – and the sense was that this aspect of publishers’ work was being 

neglected. In our survey, 82% of respondents felt that publishers were 

investing less resource into marketing than they used to, or needed 

to. Writers felt, broadly, that publishers were largely abrogating their 

marketing responsibility. 

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http://www.thebookseller.com/news/authors-call-better-communication-publishers