Richard Eoin Nash

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My Lunch with Richard

I’d a lovely lunch late last month with George Gibson, Publisher at Bloomsbury USA, a man generous with galleys and reading copies. And I, missing the daily activity of scheming how to connect a given book with the right readers, can be a little over-generous, ie maybe a wee bit loquacious, excessively unstinting with suggestions about what reviewer might like it, what bookseller handsell it, what institution host an event, etc etc.

That day George was the unwitting beneficiary of me in full here’s-another-thing-you-could-do! effect. He’d brought along a galley of Wild Romance: A Victorian Story of a Marriage, A Trial, and a Self-Made Woman by Chloe Schama (no prizes for guessing Dad’s first name…), a love-gone-awry story, a courtroom drama (her husband denied they’d ever been married and she had to sue him to prove he was her husband) and adventuress’s tale, I thought it’d be great to send galleys to such denizens of genre romance like Sarah and Candy, Jane Litte, Kassia Kroszer, and so forth. And on I went, with solicited and unsolicited advice.

George, at the end of the lunch, graciously noted that his notes on our lunch could be rather useful, both for that book (I’d also suggested Erica Jong as a blurber) and for a few others we’d discussed. In turn, his advice to me was to start charging for such a lunch! I thereupon realized that yes, in terms of my time, and other people’s money, the best, most cost-effective consulting I could do would be ninety minutes over lunch with a publisher, or editor, or publicist, or agent to talk about a few books and offer some marketing tips. He suggested the sum of $250, which sounded reasonable to me.

So I hereby announce this as the primary mode of consultation I shall do from this point forth! Called My Lunch with Richard, after the movie of almost the same name, it’s a $250, 90 minute consult on topics of your choosing. You pay for lunch, but I swear I’m a cheap date. And it can be over coffee, if lunch ain’t your thing. Over breakfast would be nice, too! And over the phone or Skype if New York ain’t your place.

A way I can be useful and pay the rent as I get Cursor started-up, eh?

Richard Eoin Nash, Dec 12, 2009

Comments

Discuss this article.

How much for a 10 minute cocktail drink at TOC?

– Jane (12/14 03:56 PM)

Hi Richard— Thanks for blogging here and elsewhere. I agree with your predictions listed at Galley Cat.
What’s your take on why publishers don’t grasp the value of ending the “returns” (selling on consignment) business model. My calculations (see bookindustrybailout.ca) point to an immediate increase in operational efficiency of about 20% of total revenues—billions per year in the USA alone. By comparison, ebook sales are a problem/opportunity currently 1/100th of that scale (though increasing rapidly).
Rather than shuffling chairs on the Titannic, why don’t publishing execs arrange some flotation mechanism?
Your thoughts on this would be appreciated, sir!
thanks, cheers,
Bruce

– Bruce Batchelor (01/06 02:02 PM)

I used to run an MA in Publishing and had a recurrent fantasy about offering a module called “The Publishing Lunch”. It would have been fun.

– Kelvin Smith (01/09 02:40 PM)

Bruce, it would be very significant indeed, but impossible. To orchestrate it would put publishing completely in breach of anti-trust law and you’d immediately have a Prisoners’ Dilemma situation where the temptation to do a side deal with the retailer to take “just this one book” on consignment, would cause the agreement to collapse.

– Richard Eoin Nash (01/09 07:12 PM)

Richard, thanks for your comment (albeit a pessimistic one!).
1. I don’t see why book publishing MUST be “different” from all other sectors, where goods are sold on a “firm sale” basis.
2. The “orchestration” need only be ONE of the biggest publishing houses announcing it will unilaterally switch to “firm sale” terms, offering a slightly higher discount to retailers. The CEO of Barnes & Noble is on record as saying he would support a revised deal. Switching would save a company of the scale of Random House, about $100 million per year—no doubt a move that its owner, Bertelsmann AG, would appreciate. And other publishing company owners would quickly direct their CEOs to follow suit.
3. That example would allow cause everyone else in the industry to follow suit. So the trick is for people like you, who has a chance to bend the ear of the CEO of Random House and other large firms, to urge someone to make the first smart move.
4. Anti-trust laws prohibit companies from colluding to fix prices and terms where someone is disadvantaged. In the above “someone sets an example” scenario, there is no collusion, and there is no one disadvantaged. There is also no “agreement” between publishing companies to “collapse” if/when one firm wishes to have a special promotion or do otherwise.
5. What would be a limiting factor on those hypothetical “side deal” special promotions would be the requirement under US law for a manufacturer to provide the same terms to all retailers within one “class”.

So, Richard, back to you. Are you game to help the book publishing industry become 20% more efficient and reduce huge amounts of resource waste and pollution? I hope so—you do have the contacts and credibility.

thanks, cheers,
Bruce

– Bruce Batchelor (01/09 08:55 PM)

Bruce, it needn’t be different, you’re right. But hte inertia in the industry (in many industries) is enormous. The person who can be far more influential than me is Bob Miller, founding CEO of Hyperion, and now publisher at a HarperCollins imprint called HarperStudio. He’s trying to get nonreturnable terms, and is offering a FAR higher discount, 60%. And having a very hard time. And this dude has far more credibility with CEO’s than I do. I suspect part of the problem is that the deal is limited to frontlist and that’s where the retailers have to take the greatest risk. Retailers would be much more likely to take a non-returnable deal on backlist, but publishers don’t want to give up margin.

So theer have been experiments, higher up the food chain than me, and no dice so far.

The other thing that gets talked about is pay-on-scan. That the retailer doesn’t pay the supplier until a customer has bought the book. An even more extreme form of consignment. The fact that that’s even being discussed suggests that going non-returnable might not be on the cards for the corporate pubs. (An indie experiment: Chelsea Green in nonreturnable with a bunch of indie booksellers…)

Also, Kelvin, loved your comment on Publishing Perspectives. Would love to hear more!

And Jane, 10 minute cocktail sounds about free, if you’re buying!

– Richard Eoin Nash (01/11 01:37 PM)

Hi Richard -

Thanks for your thoughts about why it could be difficult to end consignment sales. Yes, I agree inertia is the number one problem. The very real prospect of bankruptcy might become the number one motivator for CEOs and merchants to try a reform in business practices that will save each of the biggest publishing companies in the range of $100 million annually, and put the bricks-and-mortar booksellers back into profitability.

To people outside the book industry, selling on returnable terms seems bizarre. If blue jeans (a fashion item) are sold on firm terms, why sell books on consignment?

The transition might be easier to effect than most people think. If ALL of HarperCollins makes the move (not only Bob’s HarperStudio), the balance could be tipped, and the other publishing house might see the logic. I sense that some major booksellers are game to switch to firm sales. Barnes & Noble boss Steve Riggio has been quoted as saying that eliminating returns would “revolutionize the book business and revitalize the book business ... We’d like to see this practice discontinued ... Any rational business person looking at this practice would think the industry has gone mad.”

If you come to Victoria, lunch is on me. We’ll eat at ‘Red Fish, Blue Fish’ on the waterfront. Yum!

thanks, cheers,
Bruce

– Bruce Batchelor (01/11 01:57 PM)

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I ran Soft Skull Press, now an imprint of Counterpoint, from 2001 to 2007 and ran the imprint on behalf of Counterpoint until early 2009. Here's why I left. I'm now consulting on how to reach readers (details here) and developing a start-up called Cursor, a portfolio of niche social publishing communities, one of which will be called Red Lemonade. read more »