So What Happens After You Can’t Sell a Book? Part 1

I published my first book in 1999 and my second book in 2005. I have written four books since then—not a bad track record when you’re working full time. I self published two because I couldn’t find an agent to represent me, and am now shopping two more in the hopes of finding an agent. All these books are decent reads and the book on Pauline Pfeiffer is, IMO, excellent. So this will be a series on what I have learned over the twenty years about writing and what you do when you can’t sell a book to save your life.

First we will start with the negatives because this is just the reality out there, and I believe in facing issues head on. The marketplace has changed and whittled itself down to nothing. When Borders was in full swing and Barnes and Noble wasn't hanging on by its financial nails, you’d have a big marketplace to sell your idea. Sure, publishers were looking for blockbusters, but they could also carry a number of books that had decent sales but weren’t going to be the next Harry Potter. More marketplace, physical marketplace, meant, in simple terms, shelf space for one’s book. Then Borders went under and Barnes and Noble continues to struggle (at least in my local Barnes and Noble they seemed to have returned books to the floor as opposed to stocking lots of toys and stuff with higher mark-ups), and the marketplace became Amazon and airports. Amazon treats books as widgets (literally like books are akin to hair brushes), and airports only stock blockbusters and the Oprah sanctioned “thoughtful” books that were supposed to speak to your soul. Your book has no place here.

But, but, you say, Amazon. Well, this is where it gets tricksy, because if publishers want to capitalize on whatever sales they can glean from Amazon (remember their physical--not cyber--marketplace has shrunk to the size of a pea), then it behooves them to take advantage of Amazon’s algorithm. If you buy this book, you will like THIS book. All of this is math, and let’s add another reason why I hate math. It tends to aggregate types of books together, which is fine and dandy to a point, but it also does nothing for that book that isn’t easily categorized. These are the sort of books I tend to like because, hello, this means said book isn’t formulaic crap. And sadly, in the latest push to get books out there, many of the authors I used to love are writing formulaic crap. More on formulaic crap in another post.

Basically if you have two feet of space to sell books, what are you going to sell. The latest J. K. Rowling book or the latest book by an author who has only had minimal success in the marketplace but who is a good writer and could build a following? Or not. There's a bit of the roll of the dice there. Guess who gets the spot on the shelf? This is just common sense. But THIS is the reason why publishers aren't selling books outside of their top twenty sellers because the shelf space has become minimal.

But. But. Amazon has zillions of terrabytes worth of books to sell. How do you find those books? I assure you, I have never turned up in an Amazon algorithm in my life. The books with more sales always rise to the top. It's self-defeating. Your book doesn't sell because it doesn't sell. But if it were in a bookstore and you browsing around the shelves and you happened to be a foodie and, look, there's a mystery about a chef. Hmmm. Of course, you can't do that now because my books don't have space on any shelf at the moment, but certainly there was a time when that was possible.

What the publishers now want is a book by a tried and true author who will have sales out the gate, like Michael Connelly in the crime fiction world. A Harry Bosch novel will sell. It just will. A book by a no-name author with a character whose name is Larry Mosch? Not so much.

What about the independent book stores? They are coming back interestingly enough (and, yes, Amazon is now toying with brick and mortar stores but IMO is only a bigger and better airport bookstore without the planes). And again, limited shelf space.

Where do we go from here?