This week, Renard Press, publisher of my most recent novel, included a note on royalties in the regular newsletter it sends to its authors. Discussing the focus on bestseller sales figures in the anglophone book world, publisher Will Dady wrote this:

Because publishers don’t publish hard data about sales (and I do think this is a good thing, because I don’t think art should be reduced to sums, products and units), the majority of information about book sales comes from Nielsen Book Scan, the industry reporting company, which details sales made through reporting avenues. As such, it’s tempting to look at Nielsen’s data – e.g., looking at the Bookseller from last week, Richard Osman’s latest sold 5,272 copies in the week, Grisham’s latest sold 1,157, etc – and compare unfavourably to these numbers. But this is not the sort of publishing we’re doing here. This is big-budget, mass-market fiction, in general chasing trends, aiming for big sales on day one and then more often than not going out of print within two years.

I don’t think this Pile ’em High publishing does anyone any favours when we’re talking about literary fiction. In my (oh so humble) opinion it’s devoid of personality, wasteful of resources and disrespectful of those who carefully crafted the work, as it means giving away huge discounts, often paying for inclusion and placement, overprinting copies and then remaindering or destroying them, and in the end netting the author and publisher a comparative pittance.

Interestingly, the other side of Big Publishing’s sales isn’t discussed very often – those who fall by the wayside. If you’re not Grisham, David Walliams or the small handful of beautiful young things tipped to be the Next Big Thing, what happens? According to data from the S&S/Penguin trial in the States, half of all the Big Five’s titles sell a grand total of 12 copies or less. Yes, astounding. (And one wonders what discount those were sold at, too…)

So what makes good sales for indies – or rather, for anything apart from Richard Osman and Co? Well, again, it’s difficult to know. There’s a great piece on Jericho Writers’ website here from Sam Jordison, of Galley Beggar fame – and as he says, while the 3,000 copies number often does the rounds for mass-market fiction, it’s thought to be more like 250 copies for literary fiction – and far less for poetry (as pithily put in the Bookseller, ‘Even in this record year [2022], Julia Donaldson will outsell the entire UK poetry market’, and the Poet Laureate’s whole backlist sold in a year half of what Osman’s latest novel did in a week), and theatre titles tend to be linked to productions. So I’m pleased to look at our royalty reports and see our writers easily outselling at least half of Penguin’s list, and finding – and, crucially, speaking to – readers in the face of a fragmented market and great adversity. 

I feel I need to end this note with a contentious, ‘And what does it matter?’ While sales figures are of course important, and give an idea of how many people have pored over your work over time, looking beyond numbers is vital, and I firmly believe your work enriches the literary canon of our age. I couldn’t be prouder of the list we’ve built and the community you’re part of. We’ve all put our all into these books, and Renard commits to keeping you in print for all the readers that are yet to come. 

Dady’s words struck a chord with me. They helped crystallise some issues that have been on my mind for a while. I’m fortunate that all three of my books continue to be available in most of the territories in which they have been published, but I have seen how the relentless focus on what’s coming next leads to many titles being ignored, falling off the shelves and out of print without a trace.

In some cases, the speed with which this happens verges on the unethical. Many new authors never stand a chance of reaching readers, leading some to feel that they have been let down by those they trusted with their work. There is also the problem of the waste of resources pumped into producing books that can never reasonably be expected to sell in significant numbers – something becoming ever harder to defend.

All this is rarely the fault of individuals. Many of those I have met at big publishers are brilliant and passionate, and care deeply about getting great work to readers. But the system has become so beholden to the bottom line and so weighted towards those all-important early sales figures that it’s almost impossible for new or different work to make a lasting impact.

This is one of the reasons that many of the titles I feature on this blog are not new: I want to do what I can in my small way to help prolong the shelf-life of great books. And it’s one of the reasons why I enjoy the podcast Backlisted, which celebrates old books, albeit largely anglophone ones. (Well worth a listen if you’re a podcast fan.)

However, I think I could do more.

As an individual reader, it’s easy to feel you can’t do much to make a difference. But I have seen from the exchanges I’ve had through this project and from the success of initiatives such as Women in Translation how personal choices can influence others and drive change.

With this in mind, I am making 2024 my year of reading nothing new. Excluding those titles I have to read for work and research (and those handful of books I have already promised to look at), I plan not to read or feature any titles published after 2020 on this blog this year.

To this end, I’d love your recommendations of older books in translation or from elsewhere that deserve a second look. Maybe you’re a translator who feels one of your favourite projects never got enough attention. Perhaps you’re a publisher who wishes more people could find that title you fell in love with a decade ago. It could be that you’re a reader who still thinks about a particular novel several years after you finished it. Whatever the story, I’d love you to tell me about it.

And if you fancy joining me on this adventure or have made similar book choices in the past, it would be lovely to hear from you too. Happy reading!

Picture: ‘Recycled books at Big River Books’ by Beau Claar, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons