It's the End of the World for a New Year

(Cross posted on Genre Bender)

If you've been paying attention to the publishing world lately, you know that they've been predicting Armageddon for all of the past November-December. As the economy hits the skids, publishers haven't been immune from the bird-flue epidemic of layoffs and cutbacks. Since Harper-Collins' executive announcement about not purchasing new manuscripts leaked out, it's all been doom and gloom.

Well, genre sales have gone up this past Xmas buying season. You wouldn't know that except for actually looking at bookscan data (no, I don't have access, but those who do tell me it's true).

But things aren't all rosy. Since the 70s, genre publishing has been on a downhill slope. This was made manifest to me by going to a panel honoring Betty Ballantine at the 2007 World Fantasy Convention. Part of that panel interviewing and honoring her covered how the industry has changed since she helped start Ballantine Books. Of the major changes, print numbers and sell-through (how many actually sell) have been the most drastic (besides the switch from paperback to hard-cover and the rise of the trade paperback). In the 70s is wasn't uncommon to print 30,000 books for a new author and sell 90% of those. These are numbers a best-selling author would envy today. 30M (30,000 in print speak) books is the same as the combined total of the first, second, and third printings of a new author. And 70% sell through is considered good.

Here are two blog posts that shed light on not only the current state of genre publishing but also the history of how we got here (thanks, BTW, to Jay Lake's link salad).

First up is Charlie Stross' Why SF & F novels are the length they are.

Here's another from Scrivener's Error on the Publishing Squeeze.

Hope that helps with perspectives. As for me, I'm going to spend my Xmas Borders' gift cards as quick as possible and hunker down on the new work for the new year. Here's hoping with have happier news to talk about at the end of 2009.