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[nolly]

Dear Publishers:

What's with this hardcover debut for new authors trend? Hardcover pricing is a lot to risk on an unknown quantity. More than once, the pre-release publicity for a new author's first book has intrigued me, but when I find that the book is a hardcover, I pass. If you're lucky, by the time the softcover comes out, I remember and I'm still inteerested, but you've lost a year or so of potential buzz generation by then.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I think what you're seeing is the gradual decline of the paperback.

Why release in HC? Easy: HC's carry higher prices, provide better margins, and have a longer shelf life.

And you can publish less copies of an HC and still make money. I heard stories not long back about mass market PBs with press runs of 15,000, which I found hard to believe. I'd think a more likely minimum number would be 50,000 or double that.

PBs have a tough hurdle to jump. On airport newsstands, for example, the average shelf life of a PB is about two weeks. If it doesn't sell in that period, it's removed to make room for a new release and stripped and returned for credit. It's not much better in larger outlets or actual bookstores, and most PBs don't get reordered unless they fly off the shelves.

There are an assortment of costs people don't think about in discussions like this, that are there regardless of the form in which the book is issued. There is a cost to acquire the rights to publish the book, in the form of an advance. There is the time of the editor who acquires the book, and the editor who does the line edits (which may not be the same person). There is copy editing and proofreading to get the manuscript into publishable condition, the cost of cover art and cover design, the cost of interior design, typesetting and markup, and a share of the allocated overhead of the publishing house that cannot be directly attributed to a particular book. All of these costs are incurred before the book is actually published, and will be the same regardless of whether the book is released in HB, PB, or ebook edition.

One question is what percentage of the total cost manufacturing, warehousing, and distribution is. One editor I know claims 10%, but I think he's low by a factor of at least two. Regardless, in the context of the total cost to publish a book, producing a hardcover isn't that much more expensive than producing a paperback. And as mentioned, they command higher prices, have better margins, have a longer shelf life, and you don't have to print and sell as many to make money on the book.

In addition, more people have the money and can buy hardcovers. Baen Books credits the "Baen Free Library" with driving their transition from a struggling mass market PB house to a thriving hardcover publisher with a 70% sell through rate. The Free Library promotes authors. People download one or more ebooks by an author from the Free Library, decide they like they like the author, and buy the author's new one in hardcover when it comes out. They don't wait for the PB. they want to read the book badly enough that they'll pay for a hardcover instead of waiting a year for the PB.

Baen is an SF/Fantasy specialty publisher, but I think they're not the only one trying to trade up. Paperbacks are a brutally competitive segment of the market where it's very hard to make money. No surprise more publishers are going HC for new books. If it tanks, they haven't lost that much more, and if it sells, they make a lot more money than on a corresponding PB.
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Dennis