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| Why is
it so hard to get Published in Fantasy?
This article is written with respect to Fantasy publishing in a small
market like South Africa, but even worldwide it's very hard to get
published. Fantasy is a genre where most books are produced by a very few (big) publishing houses in the UK and USA. These are the houses that can afford to take the risk on large print runs because they have many other titles too. They produce a few fantasy titles (bad luck, authors) in big volume. Big volume is necessary for most kinds of book printing, but fantasy is the most critical, certainly within fiction. Let's see why. I'm a fantasy fan. I won't buy a fantasy title unless it is (a) thicker than a doorstop (b) reasonably priced. I don't buy hardcovers or large format (expensive) paperbacks - I look for that small fat little book which opens up to a world where I can get lost for days and days. The fatter the better. So to sell, the fantasy book needs to be long, most often double or triple the length of the common novel. That means it costs almost three times the amount to produce. And yet, the average selling price for these books is very close to that of your mainstream fiction titles. So you've got a product which has a low selling price and a high cost price. The only way to get your cost per book down is to drive the size of the print run up. Short runs or on-demand printing just don't work when you've got a 650+ page book. In a niche market (like non-fiction - Paragliding in South Africa) you could sell a book that thick for R350 ($50 or £24) because there is limited competition and the information has high value to a small number of people. In a mass market like fiction, even 'fantasy' fiction, there are so many wonderful books out there which your title will compete with, and they dictate the price - as set by the mass market paperback produced in masses. That's $15.99 or £7.99 thanks to Harper Collins, Penguin, et al. So you can get your book all made up via Print On Demand services like Lightning Source or Lulu, and still be out on the bench with a product that is 3 times the price of the competitors. I don't care how good your writing is, unless you can make me levitate in my chair I'm not going to buy your one sparkly title instead of THREE of the top fantasy authors' new releases. So I've just printed 5 000 copies of my debut novel (in the small South African market the mark of a 'Best Seller' is around 4 000 copies). Will they sell? Yes, I hope so, but that's not why I've printed so many. I've printed that volume because if I print less than that, then the books you buy through the bookstore, priced at current market values (minus bookshop markup, minus the markup of the distributor, delivery costs, development costs, printing costs) make me nothing. Truly. I could print 2000 copies of the book, market my heart out, sell all of them through the bookstores and not even get my money back. I have to go big, or go home. When faced with this kind of gamble, many publishing companies will decide to go for another kind of book. It may not be the quality of the writing they are rejecting, it's the risk in entering the market given the minimum efficient print run costs. I totally understand that. Only someone who believes in magic would try to produce a fantasy title in such a small market. But you see, I know there are other readers out there who are just like me, and love fantasy. Besides, what does everyone read when they are done with Harry Potter? |
 ABOUT THE AUTHORGreg Hamerton has been writing fantasy since 1999. His Lifesong cycle begins with THE RIDDLER'S GIFT.  |