I know it's the season of goodwill and all that but why is it that the authors and illustrators always get to play the Cratchits while the other partners in our business À publishers, booksellers, book clubs and now supermarkets À don the Scrooge outfit?
You can read inside the report on the Society of Authors' meeting –How books are sold,” but there is now more disturbing news. After the demise of the Net Book Agreement (NBA) we are now hearing the room that (Recommended Retail Price (RRP) is also about to go. That would mean that supermarkets and other retailers could sell any book at any price, contracts as we know them would make nonsense and all author payments would be percentages of publishers' receipts instead of royalties based on a percentage of the cover price.
The rot began with Ted Smart of The Book People À a direct selling organisation, not a Book Club À asking for and getting a discount of 82% from publishers. If we continue down this road, the only writers who will be able to afford to continue À apart from a few high profile names and new ones with no –baggage” and high advances - will be those with a day job, private income or well paid partner.
The six-figure advances, supported by high marketing budgets, feed into the celebrity notion of the writer, which Anne Fine had a go at in the New Statesman (6.10.03). –Families will queue for hours so that one of their offspring can get a favourite author's signatureÄÄIt all amounts to hours of wasted reading time for the whole family.”
Madonna, Fergie, anyone who has ever fronted a TV programme, can all become children's writers and large numbers of their books will be sold but it is a still a shock when a school tells you they want four half sessions in a morning so that all the children can –see you.” This reduces to a twenty-minute slot if you're lucky, what with all the filing out and in and you have barely time to find out they don't know who you are before slipping into a high-octane –performance” which for most of us has nothing to do with writing at all.
Amidst all the gloom, there is news that publishers are beginning to square up to supermarkets, who currently return up to 40% of some titles, and say they will not do deals with them at 66% discount. And a rumour that Book Clubs and direct sales operations will wait three months after books have gone into the shops before offering their cut price deals.
Deck the halls with boughs of holly! That's what we need: publishers with backbone and a recognition that writers and illustrators are the primary producers of what they sell.