I received this email from Chuck:
I read on your blog some comments about Westerns going the
way of the buffalo. However, I’ve come across some data that
indicate otherwise. Nielsen BookScan, which covers about 70% of U.S.
book sales, says Western sales have increased by 9% in 2005 and 10% thus far in
2006. Books in Print says the number of Western titles produced
has increased from 543 in 1995 to 901 in 2005. Would you or your knowledgeable readers have any idea
why these numbers contradict the prevailing opinion that the market for Western
literature is dying?
Good question. So I asked three western writers I know. Here are their responses:
"My understanding is that all but two or three publishers have folded
their western lines. I assume this is because that westerns don’t sell
well enough to make them worth the trouble.
""This contradicts all I’ve heard. Does Books in
Print include vanity-press titles? I believe it does. I do know that a flood of
self-published and vanity westerns have been pouring out of XLibris, iUniverse,
etc. (Spur Award judges are telling me that they’re getting mostly vanity press
westerns now.) This also says nothing about sales per title. Are
more books slicing a thinner market? I do know that most western lines have died
off, or have radically cut back. Even Forge is cutting its western line to the
bone. I would need a lot more data than raw numbers of
titles before coming to any conclusions.""This is interesting, but I think those numbers are
deceptive. Kensington has been pumping out the William W. Johnstone
reprints by the truckload, and they’ve been selling very well. Throw in
the continued popularity of L’Amour, the Ralph Compton books actually written by
other authors, Leisure’s reprints of Brand, Flynn, Horton, and other pulp
authors, and I still think the market is pretty bad for living Western authors
who want to publish under their own names. I know two or three guys who
were publishing regularly under their names a few years ago who are now just
doing house-name books because those are the only contracts they can get.
And with only four house-name series left and sales on those dwindling,
prospects don’t look good for any of us."
I have nothing against small
presses. I’ve been published by small presses (McFarland, Five Star,
etc.) and so have my friends and members of my family.
I do have a something against vanity presses that pretend to be
something they aren’t to hoodwink aspiring writers out of their cash.
I also am very leery of so-called "small presses" created by an
author to publish his own work…at least until his work is far
outnumbered on the company’s list by books written by other authors.
Until then, it’s not a small press but a vanity operation…though
not in the sense that they are charging other authors to get into
print. It’s a vanity press in that it primarily exists to self-publish
one author.
For instance, Jim Michael Hansen self-publishes his LAWS mysteries
under the moniker Dark Sky Publishing. Those are the only books Dark Sky publishes. If tomorrow he publishes a book
by Jane Doe, I don’t think that makes Dark Sky a small press. In my
mind, he becomes a small press when the business clearly shifts from
being primarily geared towards selling his own work to editing, publishing, and distributing the work
of other writers (and paying them royalties).
On the other hand, Uglytown is an example of a local, small press that was started to serve the needs of
its author/founders and grew to become a legitimate and respected imprint
(which, sadly, is no longer in business).
Hard Case Crime began by publishing the work of its author/founders Charles Ardai and Max Phillips and
has grown to become a highly-acclaimed, respected, and exciting small press with
authors like Lawrence Block, Stephen King, and Ed McBain among their large list of titles.
New Babel Books was apparently established by author Frank Fradella to
publish his own books. Four of the six titles listed on the site
are his own. The company’s FAQ reads:
Meaning, it seems, that Frank couldn’t sell his projects to any traditional publishers so he published them himself. Now he’s publishing books by two others (what’s not clear to me from the site is whether his books are P.O.D or not… I suspect that they are). The company’s mission statement reads, in part:
Not surprisingly, his four books, which make up the bulk of his "list," managed to make it through his own rigorous process…and will probably continue to do so.
None of that means that New Babel Books won’t become a legitimate small press, but I wouldn’t call them one now.