John Grisham and the future of the printed word ...

Just over a year ago, I was involved in heated arguments about the price of the anthology, Forever Friends. The outcome was a shortened version of the book and a reduced price. A year on and this is what John Grisham has to say about the ongoing price war between Amazon, Walmart and Target etc.:

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/33603693/ns/today-today_books/

If you click on the link, you will see a video link to a television interview of John Grisham.

Glad I din't care about such things. Once again Wal-Mart is showing itself to be evil personified. I'd never spend a nickel at one of their ugly stores.

Dick,

Why do you hate Walmart?

For as long as I can remember, paper back books have sold for $5 - $10 and have made tremendous amounts of money for publishers, bookstores, and authors alike. John Grissom's book are good examples of that pricing. John has become wealthy not from the books he has on the market that sold for over $20, but from millions of them that sold in the $5 - $10 range.

If I recall the argument that Shelagh is talking about, she contended that the price of the book made no difference, and that customers would pay whatever the price was if they wanted the book. That may well be so, but many of us don't believe it.

True, upper middle class readers might pay $25 - $35 for a hardcover book that they truly wanted to read, but the hardcore paperback readers look for a much lower price, and it is these customers that compose the majority of the people who actually buy paperbacks. The thousands of romance and western paperbacks that still sell each year are good examples. They're not all that long, they're not very expensive, and they are sold by the millions.

Well known authors might very well sell their hardcover editions for $25- $35 and see upper scale readers purchase them. But those prices are the kiss of death to an author that nobody knows. Once you sell the copies to your target audience, the handful of people that you were pretty sure was going to buy the book because you wrote it, your sales are going to drop off. If a book by E. Don Harpe is on the shelf of a bookstore priced at $29.95, and a John Grissom book is next to is priced the same, most buyers will buy the one they are familiar with. I don't have a fanbase of a millon or so people anxiously waiting for my next book, and until I do I will never sell as well as Grissom. If however, I had a novel that had a great cover, a great blurb that hooked the potential buyer, and a price of $9.95, some of them might take a chance on my book rather than Grissoms.

There are always a lot of ways to look at things, and I can see Shelagh's point, still, I think the only way most of us here, and most unknown authors everywhere, will be able to compete on even the smallest of scales, is by having a great book, a great cover, and a great price,

BTW, I might not like the business practices of WalMart all that much, but I shop there because they have the best selection of the things I want, they have them at comptetive prices, and they have the best return policy in the world.

E.Don,

I agree!

Furthermore, one can shop Walmart online also.

A reader doesn't care if the publisher or the writer makes any money. They go for the best deal and that makes discounting thrive. The side effects, like putting bookstores out of business, is of no concern until they look for the store and it no longer exists.
Any company, whose size can control the market and monopolize a trade, threatens business in general. In the end, without competition, the consumer suffers.

"Paying full price for the books is essential to keep publishers, booksellers and writers in business, Grisham said.

“That enables me to make a royalty, the publisher to make a profit and the bookstore to make a profit,” he said. “If a new book is worth $9, we have seriously devalued that book.”'

I just thought it was interesting that an experienced author such as John Grisham made the same point I was trying to make this time last year. Contributors to the anthology wanted a share in the profits made from the book. At the same time, they did not want the publisher to make a profit from the book. Demanding a low price did not produce more sales but did ensure that no profit was made.

I received an email from one of the contributors two days ago to say that she had ordered six books as presents. Those books have not yet shown up on the Lulu account that has seen no significant sales during the last six months. Most of the books sold during that period were bought by me to send out as complimentary copies to try to boost sales. However, no new sales resulted from those free copies.

The low price of the anthology did not encourage some of the contributors to buy even a single copy of the book. In fact, those who did not buy expected a complimentary copy.

Whichever way you look at it, John Grisham thinks the same way as me. Joe would say that is quite an accomplishment!

Shelagh,

Who was to pay for the complimentary copy?

I would hate to see one of my books being sold at a loss just to attract people into a Wal-Mart. Everyone loses in these price wars, but the low man/woman on the totem poll, i.e., the writer, is the first to feel the pinch.

Malcolm

How does Walmart get the book?
They buy it.

Aren't writers paid on what the book sells for?

If Walmart gave them away, only Walmart should lose.
What am I missing here?

Walmart are doing what Malcolm suggested, selling a book as a loss leader to attract buyers into their stores. Books are not seen as any different to any other product line that they might chose as a loss leader.

My brother was forced out of business nine years ago when the supermarket he supplied with lettuce demanded a week's supply of lettuce at no cost so that they could give the lettuce away with every pack of tomatoes sold. If he refused, they would cancel the contact. He was expected to rise every morning at 5am, cut and pack one hundred dozen lettuce by midday, and send them to the supermarket at no cost.

Publishing is not the only tough business!

Writing is no business.
Do it for love, not money.

Unless you are a pro.

Dick and Lane wrote.

Dick can take the most trivial happening and make it riveting.

It is a gift and few people have it.

I recently signed books at B & N and had my own "test." I had Arirang: The Bamboo Connection, beautiful in red, a thick book of nearly 500 pages with pretty gold rings on the cover. I had The World Outside My Window anthology, a clever, attractive cover, an anthology of 19 authors. I had Romance of My Dreams anthology, another attractive cover. I had Ghost Orchid, a beautiful cover indeed, my latest novel. The price for Arirang: $26.95; The World, $16.00; Romance of My Dreams $15.95; Ghost Orchid, $14.95.

All had their own beautiful displays with postcards, book marks, and related specialty items and posters.

Guess which book sold out and which books sold none?

My guess would be that the newest book sold out and the first book sold none. The book signing was local, so I'm guessing that those who had already bought and read Arirang were keen to buy and read Ghost Orchid.

It was local - but all strangers. It was 10 a.m. on an 80 degree Saturday. Only the real readers were there. The book ages were not evident. I was next to a very flamboyant author who made my otherwise great display look like a third cousin..

... and the price of the book that sold out?

$14.95

I'm very skepical of anyone who says that it doesn't matter how expensive a book is. If a reader has an unlimited bank account, that may be true. If, however, the reader is a working guy who is watching his or her budget, the price has much to do with sales of the book. I simply don't know how anyone can misunderstand that concept.

Grissom, I think, is talking about big stores that sell books much cheaper than they should, and not about the overall price of books. I have seen many of his first print paperbacks that were very reasonable in price. I still believe that if my book sells for $21.95 and is next to his that sells for $9.95, I'm not going to sell many books, and he's going to keep getting richer. On the other hand, if my book sold for the same price as his, while he would still outsell me thousands to one, I might have the chance to at least sell a few.

Don,

You and John Grisham are not in competition. If you walk into a superstore, you will see an array of different fruits selling at different prices. Soft fruits have a short shelf-life and are expensive. Grapes are in abundance and are cheap. Shoppers are given a choice. Some shoppers will buy soft fruits every week, other shoppers will regard them as too expensive and only buy them once in a while as a treat. So it goes with everything else in the store -- including books. If you listened to the John Grisham interview, you would have heard him say that the price wars would not be a problem for him. He was concerned that new writers would be forced to lower their prices to attract buyers and make next to nothing from their books.

Shelagh wrote:

Don, You and John Grisham are not in competition. If you listened to the John Grisham interview, you would have heard him say that the price wars would not be a problem for him. He was concerned that new writers would be forced to lower their prices to attract buyers and make next to nothing from their books.

Shelagh, I'm well aware that I am not in competition directly with John Grissom, however, once we put a book out there, we are in fact in competition with every other author who has a book on the market. We are all trying to land the interest of the reader, in an attempt to get them to purchase our book. Book prices play a large part in our ability to do that.

You are fooling yourself if you think for one moment that Grissom what I or you make from our books. The prices might not affect him, in that he has already made his millions from his books and was a successful attorney before that, and I do know they affect us, but I can't believe Grissom is worried about it. The last thing most successful writers want or need is a new author coming along that might eat into their own fan base. If I wrote in the same genre as Grissom (which I don't) and if I became the world's next hot author, then I might take some of the sales away from his books, and while he might not say that, you can bet that he understands it.

I think Grissom, just as anyone else who can see what the world of publishing may be evolving into, is worried that the entire industry may not survive in its entirety, and he's not sure he will be comfortable with whatever the next step might be. Everyone, well, writers, should be worried about the digital takeover and the loss of readers that is sure to follow. Digital delivery means lower prices and lower prices means lower profits, and it will hit the author the hardest. Grissom included. I think he knows that, and is doing his own part to help slow down the process. I don't think there is any reversing what if going on, and whether or not the small guys like us survive is anyone's guess.