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 
Is there less appetite for risk or marketing resource in the 
publishing market today than there was?
82%
18%
YES
NO
Others close to writers found the same thing. Jonathan Davidson of 
Writing West Midlands said, ‘I know from talking to writers that they 
feel more of the risk is levered on to them, and a good deal of marketing 
work too.’ Nicola Solomon, General Secretary of the Society of Authors, 
concurred. ‘Marketing budgets have shrunk and investment is narrowed 

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