Updated: Dec 29, 2020
The sales data in traditional publishing for 2018 pointed to some surprising trends. If you want to know what the industry is looking for in 2019, last year’s data is an indicator. I gathered this information from publishers.org and Publishers Weekly.
I’m not going to bore you with numbers and percentages—well, I don’t know if you’ll be bored, but I know I will be—so here’s a quick roundup of the meaning behind the 2018 sales data:
Paperback books are still the most popular format.
Audiobooks are the fastest-growth category.
Adult nonfiction is the highest-growth category.
Adult fiction took a dip, but only 1.2%.
Children and YA fiction saw slow but steady growth.
What were the biggest selling subjects of 2018?
Partisan politics
Politically-related memoirs
Diversity initiatives
“Rise and resist” canon
LGBTQ-oriented fiction and nonfiction
Children’s books focusing on diversity
Kids Rule
Publishers are hungry for warm, joyful fiction in children’s books. A book published by Roaring Brook Press called Be Kind did very well. It’s a simple book about, well, being kind, geared to ages 3–6. Another big seller in children’s books was about cultural diversity, All Are Welcome, published by Knopf Books for Young Readers. The success of both books came as a surprise to their publishers. And hence, a trend is born.
Hulu and Netflix and Amazon, Oh My!
In a country with a population of approximately 328 million, 45 million people read 11 or more books in 2018, while 90 million read one to 11 books, and the rest didn’t read any.
How do the Big 5 choose what they publish? Some point a finger of blame at streaming services. Author Margaret Atwood was so jazzed by the success of the TV adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale, she has decided to write a sequel to the 1985 novel. Cha-ching.
The Big 5 publishers—Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House, and Simon & Schuster—are looking for the possible TV adaptation with every book they publish. But at the smaller publishing houses, it’s a different story.
“TV has no bearing on anything we’re doing,” says Mieke Chew, New Directions Press co-director of publicity. According to Chew, New Directions’ authors don’t expect to hit the New York Times bestseller list because the publisher doesn’t print enough books to qualify. Chew says her company is “built for a completely different long game. The whole back list was built around this idea that each book will become a classic. We don’t think about films, we want the Nobel.”
Where Have All the Critics Gone?
Another challenge to the industry is the slow but steady disappearance of credible book critics and the rise of listicles—a piece of writing consisting wholly or mostly of a list. Many critics have turned to blogs where they drop listicles and best-of roundups that “lack robust conversation around books,” says Chew.
The future of any publishing company is dependent on making audiences aware of its books. In a noisy world populated by people who are bombarded with images and sounds, bringing attention to a book is tricky and time-consuming.
Hey, Where’s My Money?
In traditional publishing, there is limited time and money. How has the industry dealt with these limitations? By publishing fewer books across all categories, publishers can give more attention to the authors and books they promote. And what’s wrong with that? Really fine manuscripts and talented writers get passed over. Midlist authors—those who write the books that are not bestsellers but are strong enough to economically justify their publication—don’t get contracts that provide them with enough money to earn a living.
More money for authors would be nice, like better royalties on hardcover and digital sales. Says Stonesong literary agent Melissa Edwards, “The author and the publisher should be partners in the process… and should be making similar amounts of money on every book.”
That sounds reasonable.
What’s the Plan for 2019?
You might be surprised by the trends for 2019. Will publishers be appealing to avid readers? No. Small publishers want to focus their efforts on those readers who only read one to 11 books a year. They hope to entice them by offering books with broader diversity and appeal.
Atria Books editor Daniella Wexler hopes for increased emphasis on integrity and principle throughout the publishing industry. Wexler boils it down to these areas that require improvement: “How we publish, why we choose the things we do… how we treat our employees, who we hire, how we interact.”
If traditional book publishing is to thrive in this country, publishing houses must diversify in both the content of the books and the faces of the authors they promote. The silver lining—I sense that these changes could be an advantage to a clever and talented author. Like you. Follow publishing trends. Track what the smaller publishers are looking for. This could be your year.
So in my last blog post, I discussed how, often, writers neglect sensory descriptive language in their work. Keeping in mind that we have five senses--sight, smell, taste, hearing, and touch--many writers fail to incorporate all or even most of these in their writing. If you remember, I wrote this for you:
Steven entered the downtown bistro where he was to meet Elizabeth. He nudged his way to the front of the group of patrons waiting to be seated and scanned the room for her.
“Can I help you, sir?” the hostess says. At that moment, Steven spots Elizabeth.
“I’m meeting someone and I see her now,” Steven says and walks toward the table, smiling at Elizabeth as he approaches.
“I hope you haven’t been waiting long,” he begins.
Elizabeth smiles warmly. “No, I’ve only been here about five minutes. It’s great to see you.”
I intentionally scripted this scene with no sensory description. I included nothing that gives the reader a genuine sense of entering a downtown eatery. Since Steven has to work his way to the front of the patrons waiting to be seated, you can infer that this is a busy place. What senses could come into play in a busy restaurant scene? What about smells? Can he pick out specific dishes or ingredients? What might he see when he scans the room? Employees? Patrons? Doing what? Is it noisy? What does he hear?
I have played with this scene to punch it up. I cheated a little by adding a short introductory description of Steven's approach to the bistro. Here's what I came up with:
Steven hunched his shoulders against the chilly wind as he approached Trish’s Treatery, a popular downtown bistro where he was to meet Elizabeth. Upon entering, he steeled himself against nasty looks and began to wiggle his way to the front of the dense flock of business men and women waiting to be seated. He emerged as though a butterfly from a cocoon, to view the bustling sight before him.
A no-nonsense hostess approached him, scowling. "Can I help you, sir?" Plates and glasses clinked, patrons talked and laughed, servers announced today's specials, and somewhere beneath it all, Michael Buble' sang "Haven't Met You Yet."
Steven leaned toward her and raised his voice to be heard above the din. "I'm meeting someone who's already been seated." Satisfied with this explanation, she nodded and returned to her reservation desk.
Servers in their pale burgundy uniforms hustled from kitchen to table and back again at an athletic pace. The air teemed with tantalizing smells Steven knew well; he could identify Trish’s signature risotto with andouille sausage, the portobello mushrooms with crab stuffing, and the grilled grouper with roasted garlic aioli. His mouth watered as a margherita pizza raced past carried by a 5-foot-tall server named Jenna who beamed with what Steven could only interpret as pride.
Scanning the convivial scene, he recognized Elizabeth’s silk charmeuse scarf before he even saw her face. Purchased in Paris when she was on a business trip with her law firm, Elizabeth wore the vibrant, spring-blossom-themed accessory year-round. Steven picked his way through the room, past the tables and diners, sidestepping as an elegant woman pushed back her chair to retrieve her clutch from the burgundy carpet beneath her seat.
As he approached her table, Elizabeth raised her eyes to him and smiled, flooding him with a warmth he had not felt since they’d separated three months earlier. The mere sight of those green eyes caused his hands to tremble.
OK. Love it? Hate It? Too much? Yes, maybe. At least I hope you agree it offers more to grab onto than the first version. I bombarded the senses--chilly wind, the crush of the patrons, the obstacle course of the dining room, voices, music, clothing colors and texture, and the mouth-watering entrees.
Enliven your writing by stimulating the readers' senses. Make them feel as though they are in each scene with the characters, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching what they are seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching. A short story or novel should play like a movie of the mind, don't you agree?
Most requests for my editing services have been for novels and short stories, and to critique personal essays. The personal essay, which is a subcategory of memoir, is more akin to fiction that autobiography, but that’s a discussion (or disagreement) for another day.
Each writer’s style is as unique as a snowflake. But one piece of advice I find myself giving often is the ever-popular, never-to-be-forgotten “show, don’t tell.” As hackneyed as it might sound, this is excellent advice and an aspect of fictional writing that still gets swallowed in a sea of dialogue.
Authors remember to address the big elements of storytelling: characters have names, jobs, and life roles like wife or father, boss or best friend. They speak to other characters and move from place to place. They do things and things happen to them.
But often, scenes scream for greater narrative depth—descriptions of lighting and shadow, smells or odors, noises, textures, and temperature.
The irony of this “show, don’t tell” thing is, it subconsciously places the burden on visual (sight) description. Humans have five glorious senses that, under ideal circumstances, work together to give us a 3-D impression of our world.
Sight is the sense writers use most heavily because it’s the easiest. How people look, how things look, how places look—stories get bogged down with lots of looking and seeing. But this is not how the human senses operate in real life.
Consider a scene that takes place in a restaurant. A character enters, scans the room, spots the character he is looking for, and walks to the table and sits. That scene might be written like this:
Steven entered the downtown bistro where he was to meet Elizabeth. He nudged his way to the front of the group of patrons waiting to be seated and scanned the room for her.
“Can I help you, sir?” the hostess says. At that moment, Steven spots Elizabeth.
“I’m meeting someone and I see her now,” Steven says and walks toward the table, smiling at Elizabeth as he approaches. “I hope you haven’t been waiting long,” he begins.
Elizabeth smiles warmly. “No, I’ve only been here about five minutes. It’s great to see you.”
Now, I just wrote this and it is intentionally barren of descriptive words. How could I punch this up to bring this scene to life? What would draw readers into the scene? What’s missing?
In Part 2, I’ll focus on using each of the five senses to create greater narrative depth. I will rewrite the scene implementing all five senses.
You Can Help Me
Please share your ideas for adding sensory description to this bistro scene. Besides sight, what can we do with sound, touch, taste, and smell? Write a comment to help add color, noise, odor or fragrance, texture and so on to wake this scene up.