09 June 2009
Everyone's pips are squeaking
Publishers I've written for have sometimes regarded persuading W H Smith to stock them as make-or-break for the titles, such was the volume of sales from limited shelf space. Smith's was therefore able to extract truly pip-squeaking discounts meaning that there was little profit if any at all from sales there, which seemed to make a presence there rather pointless. An appearance on the shelves of Smith's amounting to little more than very expensive advertising, but in a form that guarantee the publisher got the absolute minimum yield pre sale. For those (precious few) authors on a royalty, the result was only a few pence per sale.
To gain this exclusive hold on Smith's shelves, Penguin (whose travel guide stable includes Rough Guides and DK titles), has had both to pay cash up front, and to give W H Smith a whopping 72 % discount on the cover price. I can't speak for Rough Guides, but DK doesn't pay a royalty, but rather a flat fee for total rights, so although I've been co-author/editor/consultant on a number of titles this new deal doesn't affect me. But even had there been a royalty it wouldn't have amounted to much. If the book as a £10 cover price, only £2.80 gets to the publisher, and at the very best about £0.28 of that will reach the author. Writing travel guides is more about establishing expertise and credibility than it is about getting fat.
The author of the Times piece rather takes the partners in this deal to task, but there's not much enthusiasm in the way he does it, and he doesn't really have much of interest to say. The travel book market is in a terrible state, and it's up to Smith's, in the best interests of its business, to decide how to get the maximum yield from its shelf space, and the publisher to decide how to increase its market share.
Last year guide book sales in the UK fell between seven and thirteen per cent (according to a piece in The Bookseller), and that was before the recession began to bite. According to this Times piece, in the first four months of this year DK's sales fell by 16.5%, and Rough Guides' by fully 30%. There are probably mass redundancies underway even as I type.
No doubt Penguin sales through W H Smith will rise a little, as those making last-minute purchases at airports and railway stations (where the company is well-represented) will be faced with little alternative. But everyone else will surely quickly learn about the paucity of choice, and will shop elsewhere. Total travel sales at W H Smith outlets sharing high streets with Waterstone's, Borders, Books Etc., and other big chains may well drop however.
But this is all further indication, for those not yet driven away from the thought of travel writing by various postings below, that now is not the best time to be entering the business. In the last few weeks I've seen one travel section I write for regularly simply vanish, and had another frequent magazine client contact me to say that rates were being reduced by ten per cent including on work already commissioned, filed, but not yet actually printed (which is completely disgusting).
In the end, the purpose of travel writing for newspapers and magazines is to keep the advertisements from seeming too numerous, and bumping into one another. When there's less advertising, there are fewer pages, and less demand for text. Leisure travel is one of the first things to go in a recession, and when fewer people are buying travel, travel companies have less money with which to place advertising.
Right now you'd be better to write on living on a budget than on travel. At least until such times as editors realise that a well-written piece about somewhere the reader can only dream of visiting is just as attractive as a nuts and bolts piece about somewhere swamped with overseas visitors.
Personally I'm in the middle of writing a piece on lawn mower racing, and a series of China book reviews.
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