What do publishing, music, and film have in common?

WE HAVE A LOT TO TALK ABOUT

I was listening to a podcast called Trapital which is largely about the music business. On this particular episode, the hosts were detailing the superstar model in music and how it functions differently today than it did decades ago. 

Their argument was that superstars like Taylor Swift, Drake and Beyonce won’t exist in the same way in the new music landscape. While these stars were ubiquitous, dominating radio and airplay and infiltrating popular culture conversations and conventions by their very presence - today’s pop stars are far more niche and concentrated to specific parts of their online existence. They rely more heavily on their core community of fans as opposed to the sheer number of casual fans that were aware of the pop stars in the past. 

In other words, it’s far more likely that a child, parent and grandparent be familiar with Taylor Swift than they are with Dua Lipa, even though Dua Lipa would be considered a superstar by today’s standards. 

This immediately made me think of publishing. Similar to record labels, publishing houses have relied on bestselling authors to carry their financial load. But there’s a real opportunity for publishers to change the game. An opportunity for them to look into the future and create a new model that mimics what’s naturally happening in all of entertainment as we speak.

When I say all of entertainment, I’m referring to music and film specifically. 

Let’s start with music.

I know most of you reading this remember the pinnacle era of pop music. From Britney Spears to Lady Gaga, the late nineties to 2010 was a decade or so where we obsessed over popstars like they were gods walking on earth.

Then streaming became the thing and everything changed. Fans had access to a wider selection of music and musicians. They didn’t only listen to the artists that were spoon-fed by labels. Streaming gave listeners a choice and that choice has democratized music.

Just look at how many more musicians are making money today. Just last year, 20,500 musicians made $50,000+ on Spotify alone. Another 11,600 made $100,000+. And those numbers don’t include how much they made on other streaming platforms. Since Spotify accounts for about 30% of the streaming industry, it’s fair to multiply these figures by three to get a general idea of what these artists are making in total.

Spotify paid out $9 billion in total last year and about half of that went to independent artists and songwriters. Tell me, how many independent artists did you listen to during the pop era? A couple for sure, but not hundreds, not thousands, not tens of thousands. Yet here we are in an era where tens of thousands of musicians are making a livable wage and most of them are indie.

Beyonce and Taylor are still doing just fine, but now others like Hanumankind are joining the party. And yes, streaming has its faults, but democratizing music is not one of them.

Can the same be said for publishing?

Kathleen Schmidt

does a great job breaking down “What Sells A Book,” but let me synthesize this down to one word: money.

If a publisher offers an author a higher advance, they will spend more money to promote that title to ensure their return on investment. That means more marketing dollars, more advertising dollars, more dollars for touring. This is the reality.

In this way, publishers almost predict which of their titles will become bestsellers. And as Schmidt articulates so well in her piece, the rest of the authors with smaller advances fall into the “if we can sell a lot of copies, great,” category.

But we are seeing that model get turned upside down, especially in film. The film industry thought its movie and cable model was safe. They were wrong. Just last week (August 2024) Warner took a $9 billion write down (reduction in value) while Paramount took a $6 billion hit. In fact, in a shocking turn of events, Paramount just shut down its TV studios. 

This is happening while YouTube earned the highest ever share of TV viewership for a streaming platform in history. Yes, more than Netflix and only second to Disney, who owns multiple platforms.

YouTube is winning because it’s not reliant on blockbusters. It doesn’t rely on big name actors or historically popular IP (think Marvel and DC) to get viewers to tune in. User-generated content is what spurs YouTube’s growth, paired with its increasing TV rights (NFL Sunday Ticket).

If I were in publishing - meaning if I was an exec at a publishing house - I would be studying these industries and plotting a strategy. Just because publishing has yet to be significantly impacted by the shifting patterns of consumption doesn’t mean it won’t happen. Even that last statement isn’t entirely accurate. I would argue that BookTok has altered the discovery of books which has led to a shift in which titles readers are choosing to consume. There would be no “It Ends With Us” if it wasn’t for BookTok, and that’s just the most popular, current example. Large bookstores like Indigo here in Canada display entire BookTok sections for readers to choose from. Plus there are dozens of other titles that owe their fame to this segment of social media. 

Putting that aside, whether the shift in consumption happens or not is not my main argument. I think publishing should look at this moment in time as an opportunity.

As it stands right now, less than 0.08% of books published in the U.S. makes the bestseller list. To give context, there’s a 1 in 300 million chance you win the lottery, and those are still better odds than writing a bestseller. Yet publishing’s strategy is still dependent on the success of its biggest selling books. 

No bestsellers, no industry. 

In the PRH/S&S antitrust trial, Simon and Schuster CEO Jonathan Karp admitted that acquisitions with higher advances got what Vulture reported as “extra care.” In the same trial, former PRH CEO Markus Dohle was quoted as saying “We invest every year in thousands of ideas and dreams, and only a few of them make it to the top.”

But does it really have to be this way?

Publishers are in control of advances. They determine how much money they dedicate to a single title. Like Spotify and YouTube, they have the opportunity to democratize the industry.

But not in the way that I’ve heard others suggest. The suggestions I have heard go something like this:

Instead of half a million dollar advances to individual authors, what about $100,000 advances to five authors? And instead of doubling down on a single title with marketing and advertising dollars, what about spreading the wealth to each of these authors to increase their chances of selling books at a higher rate.

While I understand why people suggest this strategy, I don’t think it goes far enough. It can work and publishers should consider this as a starting point, but this method doesn’t address all of the core issues with publishing, in particular — control.

Right now, publishers are not in the business of selling books. They help produce books, print books and distribute them, but they don’t sell books. They rely on third parties to do that, which is why Amazon has the book selling industry in a chokehold. Publishers don’t really even promote their own books. They rely on magazines, book clubs and the media to do that, which is facilitated by internal PR teams.

My suggestion is that publishers get into the business of actually selling books. They need to create their own platforms, brand those platforms and grow their communities and sell books directly to consumers from these platforms.

Yes, this could mean producing less titles each year, but it could also mean making more off of each title. Even still, I can imagine the revenue wouldn’t add up to current amounts, but I told you earlier that Paramount and Warner are taking billion dollar write-downs, and I didn’t include Disney’s struggles. The market is telling these companies that their current model isn’t as valuable anymore, so why shouldn’t publishing preempt this eventuality and make drastic changes now? 

Scholastic already executes a version of this. They’ve created their own ecosystem that aligns their books with their brand. I can literally bring up Scholastic in a room full of random people and the large majority will have memories of either ordering Scholastic titles through their middle schools or attending Scholastic book fairs. The brand carries public value in a way that other publishers don’t. 

Not even the Big Five can make this claim. I’ve yet to meet someone who searches for books published by MacMillan, or a reader who has fond recollections of reading Hachette Book Group titles. Those publishers don’t function in that way, but they should. 

And I think they should ramp it up to a whole other level. 

Right now, apps like Wattpad and now Fable are capturing the book culture in ways that I believe publishers should be. Why should anyone need to go to Fable to start a book club and find a community of readers when I as a publisher own the IP to hundreds of thousands of titles? Why license those titles out to apps like Spotify (ironically) when I could build a platform myself that is dedicated to my IP? 

Would it take a lot of work? Certainly. 

But would it be worth it? I think so. 

What’s preventing publishing from changing is that the industry is relatively healthy. Despite the digital shift, physical sales of books are exceeding pre-pandemic growth levels. Simon and Schuster just had its best year since 2018, and young people are reading at higher rates than any “expert” predicted.  

While this is all true, we know that once a lightning bolt strikes, it strikes quickly. It took a decade for the music industry to finally adapt to streaming, and the film industry is still reeling because of it. And even though as a published author, I’m happy that the publishing industry has been this resilient, I also don’t want to be naive. Or maybe I believe we need to be more prepared. 

But tell me what you think. What should be the next move for publishers? Do you think they should stay the course or make some drastic changes?