“I was actually wondering if it was possible to start a business doing this for self published authors. But why aren’t the publishing houses doing a better job? I’d do it for a grand a book. They could hire five people like me for every book and we’d catch everything and it would cost next to nothing. It is that getting the author to make changes would be too much of a hassle? People don’t care?”
Money. Business. The bottom line.
Book publishing in the US is based in NYC, one of the most expensive cities in the world. Most people who work for publishers do not make good money. People become editors because they love to read, and then editors become agents because they want to make a living wage.
Nearly every book is seen as a product to sell. Celebrity tell-alls and political manifestos sell well and so publishers dump cash into those, knowing there’s a strong chance of a strong ROI. Young-adult and middle-grade fiction sell well now, and so those writers can make good money, particular with merchandise licenses and potential for movie and TV development options.
After that, not much is left. Marquee names of bestsellers are brands and so publishers count on these strong brands in bring in money that supports gambling on unknown writers and sometimes avant-garde writing.
Some nonfiction sells well, and it’s perhaps easiest to be able to understand how books to publishers are just products like lamps or shoes by looking at how most nonfiction sells. Publishers don’t care what the subject matter is, or even what qualifies the author to write or even at times what or how well the author writes; they care about platform. Platform is the person’s network that effectively guarantees sales. This saves the publisher its entire marketing budget. If you’re the CEO of an association with at least thousands of members, you are guaranteed an easy book deal based on your platform, because publishers know and expect the CEO-author will sell books to members and affiliates. That’s all it’s about.
If you’re a cult leader and you have a big cult following, there’s your guaranteed book deal.
Look at Milo Yiannopoulos: It was known that he put his name on articles written by his interns at Breitbart, and it was known that he was a racist, misogynist hate promoter. Simon & Schuster offered him $250,000 to write a book without a specific topic in mind and without having read his writing, simply because he had an apparent following who S&S knew would buy the books as trophies of their loyalty.
For fiction, the business is different. Some genres sell well and so agents are on the lookout for new-enough stories within those genres. Most agents and editors are big readers who love writing they love, and they do take chances on new voices (often scouting them from literary magazines), but those are little passion projects that keep agents and editors engaged with their work. They are the lowest priority of any major publishing house.
