Friday, January 14, 2005
"The Majority List": Agents Join the (Midlist) Fray
1:22 AM
THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD: Three Upstanding Agents Speak Out About the Meaning of 'Midlist,' Past & Present
MARY ANN NAPLES
The Creative Culture (literary agency)
I don’t use the term “midlist.” To me, it is one of those terms that are used by people not working in publishing (or at least not working as an editor or an agent) that sets up ridiculous divisions that enable the media to make unfair generalizations about what we do.
It seems to be true that many, many books published these days have first printings below 15,000 copies. This is our reality. But behind each of those books there is an editor, an agent, and, of course, an author, who believe that the book can sell many more copies. We go into this believing that our books can strike a chord with readers and the culture, and that if the right things happen for said book, then it can take off. I don’t think that editors and agents are so jaded that when we sign books up, we believe we are signing up “midlist” books—books that will never grow in sales past a certain point. So I guess I am saying that midlist seems, to me, to be a retroactive term, one that can be applied once all the dust has settled and the book in question has either taken off and sold lots of copies or has languished and everyone is looking for someone to blame.
* * *
LITERARY AGENT (ANONYMOUS #1)
My feeling is that the term is a holdover from a previous era in publishing, one in which midlist truly was the backbone of the industry. There was no pejorative connotation. In fact, I think the term "midlist" acquired its negative associations precisely because the word became hopelessly irrelevant and useless in describing a bookwith a certain level of sales, neither corporate-bottom-line-altering nor hopelessly four-digit.
The reason is that, today, the effort it takes to publish a "midlist" book is the effort it takes to publish a "top of the list" book. What I mean is that nobody can possibly hope to sell 15,000 copies of a hardcover novel -- by a debut author or one who's less than a brand name -- without spending the kind of marketing and promotional dollars one would associate with a lead title. In the last few years, I've had several novels get the real "big book" treatment from their publishers -- expensive marketing and advertising campaigns (let's say at a minimum cost of $75,000 and probably more like $100K+), printings from 30-50,000 copies, etc. -- all of which ultimately sold between 12-15,000 copies. And even though nobody was pretending, in each of these cases, that the sales numbers demonstrated any great success in the marketplace, in terms of establishing an author and making waves, the net results are that all of the authors are probably ones you've now heard of, unless you don't do much reading of contemporary fiction. Interestingly, all of them, without exception, have gone on to bigger and better deals for their future works (for the most part with the same publishers that made the efforts in the first place). Because what all those dollars bought were industry and bookseller attention, resulting in things like PW First Fiction picks, Book Sense picks, healthy piles of reviews, strong foreign market rights sales, etc. In other words, the money bought buzz, buzz which traveled from the industry to the general public (or at least the somewhat committed reader portion of that public), buzz that made the authors desirable and valuable commodities within the strange universe that istrade publishing -- but the buzz didn't really buy sales, or at least the kind that would have substantiated the money spent.
All of which underlines my point: to get solid "midlist" numbers, you have to publish in, if not the biggest way possible, certainly the next closest thing. Which means that the word, as used to describe books that sell 15,000 hardcovers or so, is past its expiration date. I'm not sure what word we can use to describe these books, but it does tell me that the old idea of midlist as books you love and publish and hope to get attention for, but that aren't going to get marketing dollars, is as moribund as the term itself.
* * *
LITERARY AGENT (ANONYMOUS #2)
Descriptions of the term have always struck me as disingenuous. The first definition I remember hearing applied to authors who sold in the 25,000 copy or less range. Some other usages seemed to suggest that it applied to authors who sold in the five figures. Huh? A net 60,000 hc sale is big stuff, seems to me. I think the term "midlist" was most often tossed around by people who believed the first print announcements they saw in PW. An announced 25,000 print means an actual of about 7,500, right?
Your 15,000 figure makes sense, though I might want to say about 90 percent of authors would meet that definition. I think all it means today is an author who is not hitting a national bestseller list. So yes, the term is out of date. It belongs to an era when our P&Ls posited routine 25,000 copy hardcover sales followed by a 3x trade paper reprint. Rather than a public relations campaign, I think it needs burial in a pine box, no obit. Why? First, because when people say "midlist" what they really want to say is "bottom of the barrel." Second, because absolute numbers mean nothing in this business. A clean net sale of 25,000 hardcovers could be a considerable triumph for a first timer with low expectations, or a disaster for the next book by David McCullough. The number should not carry a label with it. I think people should be clear that we are talking "majority list" here, not midlist, and that the threshold number separating those with routine publishing experiences from with breakout possibilities has to be around 20,000 copies first year hc net. Above that, things can start to happen. Below that, and you're getting the routine print-stock-ship-and-move-on treatment from your publisher. Of course, everything is relative to expectations.
MARY ANN NAPLES
The Creative Culture (literary agency)
I don’t use the term “midlist.” To me, it is one of those terms that are used by people not working in publishing (or at least not working as an editor or an agent) that sets up ridiculous divisions that enable the media to make unfair generalizations about what we do.
It seems to be true that many, many books published these days have first printings below 15,000 copies. This is our reality. But behind each of those books there is an editor, an agent, and, of course, an author, who believe that the book can sell many more copies. We go into this believing that our books can strike a chord with readers and the culture, and that if the right things happen for said book, then it can take off. I don’t think that editors and agents are so jaded that when we sign books up, we believe we are signing up “midlist” books—books that will never grow in sales past a certain point. So I guess I am saying that midlist seems, to me, to be a retroactive term, one that can be applied once all the dust has settled and the book in question has either taken off and sold lots of copies or has languished and everyone is looking for someone to blame.
* * *
LITERARY AGENT (ANONYMOUS #1)
My feeling is that the term is a holdover from a previous era in publishing, one in which midlist truly was the backbone of the industry. There was no pejorative connotation. In fact, I think the term "midlist" acquired its negative associations precisely because the word became hopelessly irrelevant and useless in describing a bookwith a certain level of sales, neither corporate-bottom-line-altering nor hopelessly four-digit.
The reason is that, today, the effort it takes to publish a "midlist" book is the effort it takes to publish a "top of the list" book. What I mean is that nobody can possibly hope to sell 15,000 copies of a hardcover novel -- by a debut author or one who's less than a brand name -- without spending the kind of marketing and promotional dollars one would associate with a lead title. In the last few years, I've had several novels get the real "big book" treatment from their publishers -- expensive marketing and advertising campaigns (let's say at a minimum cost of $75,000 and probably more like $100K+), printings from 30-50,000 copies, etc. -- all of which ultimately sold between 12-15,000 copies. And even though nobody was pretending, in each of these cases, that the sales numbers demonstrated any great success in the marketplace, in terms of establishing an author and making waves, the net results are that all of the authors are probably ones you've now heard of, unless you don't do much reading of contemporary fiction. Interestingly, all of them, without exception, have gone on to bigger and better deals for their future works (for the most part with the same publishers that made the efforts in the first place). Because what all those dollars bought were industry and bookseller attention, resulting in things like PW First Fiction picks, Book Sense picks, healthy piles of reviews, strong foreign market rights sales, etc. In other words, the money bought buzz, buzz which traveled from the industry to the general public (or at least the somewhat committed reader portion of that public), buzz that made the authors desirable and valuable commodities within the strange universe that istrade publishing -- but the buzz didn't really buy sales, or at least the kind that would have substantiated the money spent.
All of which underlines my point: to get solid "midlist" numbers, you have to publish in, if not the biggest way possible, certainly the next closest thing. Which means that the word, as used to describe books that sell 15,000 hardcovers or so, is past its expiration date. I'm not sure what word we can use to describe these books, but it does tell me that the old idea of midlist as books you love and publish and hope to get attention for, but that aren't going to get marketing dollars, is as moribund as the term itself.
* * *
LITERARY AGENT (ANONYMOUS #2)
Descriptions of the term have always struck me as disingenuous. The first definition I remember hearing applied to authors who sold in the 25,000 copy or less range. Some other usages seemed to suggest that it applied to authors who sold in the five figures. Huh? A net 60,000 hc sale is big stuff, seems to me. I think the term "midlist" was most often tossed around by people who believed the first print announcements they saw in PW. An announced 25,000 print means an actual of about 7,500, right?
Your 15,000 figure makes sense, though I might want to say about 90 percent of authors would meet that definition. I think all it means today is an author who is not hitting a national bestseller list. So yes, the term is out of date. It belongs to an era when our P&Ls posited routine 25,000 copy hardcover sales followed by a 3x trade paper reprint. Rather than a public relations campaign, I think it needs burial in a pine box, no obit. Why? First, because when people say "midlist" what they really want to say is "bottom of the barrel." Second, because absolute numbers mean nothing in this business. A clean net sale of 25,000 hardcovers could be a considerable triumph for a first timer with low expectations, or a disaster for the next book by David McCullough. The number should not carry a label with it. I think people should be clear that we are talking "majority list" here, not midlist, and that the threshold number separating those with routine publishing experiences from with breakout possibilities has to be around 20,000 copies first year hc net. Above that, things can start to happen. Below that, and you're getting the routine print-stock-ship-and-move-on treatment from your publisher. Of course, everything is relative to expectations.
22 comments:
This is all extremely interesting. And since I see that my good friend & most favorite editor Richard Nash has posted a comment below, I will confess the truth: that the first time I ever heard the term "midlist" was out of Richard's mouth. He used the term "midlisted" about an author, and it was a way of persuading me (as if I needed to be persuaded, nobody else wanted my novel anyway!) that I was better off for my first novel with a small independent publisher--well, Soft Skull, let's name names--than at a bigger and more prestigious house where they would give me a $10,000 advance and then never lift a finger to help me. And Richard was right. Soft Skull kicked ass. They set up readings, they sent out an excellent press pack, etc. etc. and basically just did right by me, including getting a UK print edition. And I hope they might have made a few dollars off the whole thing in the end too. Surely a lot of the problem has to do with inflated advances for novelists who should really be happy with 10,000-copy sales, but can't possibly earn back these crazy amounts of money with them? I call for correction in the marketplace (but let it wait till after somebody gives me an absurd amount of money for MY next novel...)
Jenny is right, there is another side to this. Vast numbers of the writers I know would probably class as "midlist" by the 15,000 copies limit (particularly if they are not being published in the US). Many of them struggle along. But I am seeing a huge explosion in numbers of small press publishing houses that produce maybe 2,000 to 5,000 copies of a book. Often these are hardcovers done using traditional printing methods - no PoD in sight. Interestingly the quality of the small press publications is often much higher than that of the books produced by big publishers, who reject good novels as being "too literary" or "too unconventional" for a mass market.
Midlist isn't a retroactive term. Publishing - as agent #2 said – is knowing how many copies you will sell and printing that many. Most books will sell less than 15,000 copies – that’s midlist. It’s not something you apply retroactively – when you overprint a book and sell less than 10,000 copies it’s not like you say: “Oh, well, I guess it was a midlist title.” You say, “oh man we fucked that up didn’t we.” Agents would help everyone if they’d be a bit more honest with their clients about the business. Not every book is a bestseller waiting to happen.
Anon at 4:24: and what do you call it when you expect to sell 15,000 copies and sell 150,000 instead? Is 'best seller' also not a retroactive term?
To Chaibat...
I understand your math and I understand your point. You're basically saying that a $100,000 advance, if considered an annual income, ain't much. And I agree. But it isn't an annual income. It's an advance on future royalties.
Writers (in general) do a lot of complaining about getting small advances, but they tend to shut up when they don't earn their advance back. Hmmmm...
I see nothing wrong with extravagant advances that earn out. It's the ones that don't that worry me – no matter how large or small.
Yes, Chaibat, I completely agree with your numbers, and I'm under no illusion that a $100,000 advance for a book that may well take over a year to write is a lavish amount of money to live on for that year. And I wish you lots of huge advances in the future! But I still don't see why novelists should be guaranteed that money by publishers also trying to turn a profit, not unless enough copies of the book can be sold to make the money back. I imagine most people who'd describe themselves as novelists in the US today still make much or even most of their income from other sources: day jobs of whatever kind (including teaching), journalism, copy-editing or technical writing or ghostwriting or tutoring high school kids or whatever people are willing to pay for. (And the expense of the health insurance thing, and of other stuff like the need to plan for retirement in a country with a poor safety net for the elderly, is what makes this particularly stressful.) But this is a problem that would be better solved by the government subsidizing reasonable health insurance for everybody than by publishers continuing to pay $100,000 advances for books that will likely sell ten or twelve thousand copies.
To Chaibat:
If a guaranteed salary is what you want, perhaps you should consider either getting a job with the publisher and write as a hobby, or have a professional writing career that entails work-for-hire arrangements. There are lots of options out there for people interested in writing and earning a risk-free income (well, there is the risk of being laid-off, I guess).
What we believe will manifest into reality.
If a publisher believes a book will be midlist, then so shall it be.
I say DREAM BIG, and reach for the Stars!
To do your marketing for your business you can climb marketing site with the ebook at climb marketing site Go and check it out.
Good Posts, Keep on Blogging.
Be sure to visit
Advanced Business Marketing
Expensive Marketing Secrets Free.
Just was out looking for real estate and your blog came up.
I haven't found anything about real estate so I'll add my own link.
buy a house
Hi. Cool blog. Have any others? I'm just out blogging today. I noticed yours, good job. Enjoy!
regards,
blue cross health insurance plan
I like your blog here. Any others? I have a couple too. Keep up the good blogging.
regards,
business florida health plan small
winston churchill, eh?
（法新社a倫敦二B十WE四日電） 「情色二零零七」情趣產品大產自二十三日起在成人網站倫情色敦A片下載的肯辛頓奧林匹亞展覽館舉行，倫色情敦人擺脫對性的保守態度踴躍參觀，許多穿皮衣與塑膠緊身衣色情影片的好色之成人電影徒擠進這項世界規模最大的成人生活展，估計三天情色電影展期可吸引八萬多好奇民眾參觀。
情色電影
活動計畫負責人米里根承諾成人影片：「要搞浪漫、誘惑人、玩虐成人電影待，你渴望的a片我們都有。」
他說：情色「時髦的設計與華麗女裝，從吊飾到束腹到真人大小的雕塑，是我們由今年展出的數千件產品精選出的一AV女優部分，參展產品還包括時尚服飾、貼av女優身女用內在美、鞋子、珠寶、玩具、影片、藝術、圖書及遊戲，更不要說性愛輔具及馬術a片下載裝備A片。」
參色情觀民眾遊覽兩百五十多個攤位，有性感服裝、玩具及情色食品，迎合av各種a片品味。
大舞台上表演的是美國野蠻搖滾歌手瑪莉蓮曼森的前妻─全世界頭牌脫衣舞孃黛塔范提思，這是她今年在英國唯一一場表演。
以一九四零年代風格演出的黛塔范提思表演性感成人網站的天堂鳥、旋轉木馬及羽扇成人影片等舞蹈。
參展攤位有AV的推廣情趣用品，有的公開展示人體藝術和人體雕塑，也有情色藝術家工會成員提供建議。
- طيور الجنه
- كلمات بحث
- العاب
- مدونه
- يوتيوب
- صور كرتون
- صور مصارعين
- المترجم الفوري
- تحميل القران الكريم كاملا
- شات كتابي
- توم وجيري
- quran mp3
- القران mp3
- العاب تصويب ونيشان
- العاب بازل ومتاهات
- العاب ماريو والعاب سونيك
- العاب كارتون
- العاب فنانات
- العاب دراجات
- العاب سيارات
- العاب بلياردو
- العاب هانا مونتانا
- العاب اولاد
- العاب
- العاب باربى
- العاب طبخ
- العاب مكياج
- العاب تلبيس
- العاب بنات
- دليل مواقع
- قروب
- يوتيوب فيديو
- برامج عربيه
- قصص
- بلياردو
- البلياردو
クレジットカード 現金化
キャッシング
ダンボール
アダルトDVD
水 通販
お見合い
有料老人ホーム
会社設立
障害者
ショッピング枠 現金化
カラーコンタクト
コンタクトレンズ
フランチャイズ
育毛剤
育毛剤
グループウェア
幼児教室
電話占い
探偵
薬剤師 求人
国内格安航空券
おまとめローン
留学
インプラント
CloneDVD
電報
矯正歯科
初音ミク
看板 製作
ウォーター サーバー
網頁設計
別れさせ屋
格安航空券
小吃餐車加盟連鎖「一條龍的創業模式」複製成功開店經驗
更新日期:2009/08/25 17:19
(中央社訊息服務20090825 16:19:17)大環境不景氣，工作難找，有不少人就想乾脆自己創業當老闆。為強化國內創業能量，五路財神開店總部於8月20日-9月20日舉辦「2009夢幻小餐車創業成果展」歡迎蒞臨參觀。針對國內一窩蜂創業加盟潮，餐車達人陳滌五總監提醒創業者，加盟不失為一條創業捷徑，但若選擇加盟，品牌知名度、產品獨特性及是否擁有差異化優勢就顯得格外重要。
近年來以成本低的小吃餐車最受創業者青睞。沒經驗的失業族 大部份都選擇餐車擺攤，最多人都想在創業市場闖出一片天。在台中成立的五路財神開店總部，小吃餐車用品牌方式來營運，總經理陳滌五用自己的經驗來現身說法。以國人創業首選的小吃餐車來說，如何在同質性高的市場中殺出重圍？雖然是路邊攤小餐車，營運上的重要撇步是關鍵；在企業經營戰略中，唯有領先核心競爭，保持差異化優勢才是生存之道。
陳總分享成功關鍵，「五路財神餐車與其他路邊攤最大的差異化，在於餐車外觀亮眼與眾不同的加分效果，及秉持結合好的小吃產品用品牌方式來經營的理念」。總部成立初期因觀察到傳統路邊攤想要爭得一席之地，大多考量商品創新的迷思，卻忽略創業者經營能否持久性的問題。所以五路財神餐車將傳統小吃商品，用創新工法為策略，顛覆傳統路邊攤的概念，長期下來在台灣建立起最多元品牌的餐車王國。
很多創業者最憂心沒經驗，業界首創從餐車打造、生財器具、原物料配方、技術教學、促銷廣告、開幕指導，「一條龍的創業輔導」模式，使得五路財神餐車品牌特色更為彰顯。陳總說，不景氣下小吃餐車經營是加倍艱辛，建議創業者不但要瞭解小吃經營的核心價值，凸顯產品獨特性及差異化之外還要定期和你商圈的客人互動，「好餐車、好商品、好客人」，三個好，如此才有可能成為「不敗的小吃攤」。
|加盟創業|滷味加盟|加盟|餐車|安親班|廚具||開店|新民管樂|哈比|Eric|校友隊|高中畢旅|全國音樂比賽|特優|痞子英雄|薩克斯風|東大附中|星條旗|離開地球表面|牛仔很忙|陽光宅男|新民|墓仔埔也敢去|特優|樂隊|
visit the link to play online and interesting games.....
jimmy black shoes
jimmy choo sandals
jimmy choo high
jimmy choo pumps
jimmy choo wedding shoes
buty jimmy choo
jimmy choo skor
jimmy choo booties
shopping jimmy choo
my jimmy choos
jimmy choos heels
DISCOUNT JIMMY CHOO
jimmy choo handbags
JIMMY CHOO
JIMMY CHOO shoes
Thanks a lot for sharing this amazing knowledge with us. This site is fantastic. I always find great knowledge from it.
banks logo
Post a Comment