Top Five Publishers Make $4.8 Billion
The five largest US publishers (aka the “Big Five” — Random House, HarperCollins, Penguin Group, Simon & Schuster and Time Warner Trade Books) raked in $4.8 billion in revenue in 2004.
Random House, of course, was the country’s largest publisher last year, with U.S. sales of about $1.33 billion, roughly flat with 2003. HarperCollins and Penguin usually run neck and neck for the country’s second largest publisher. In 2004, HC, with a big assist from Zondervan and The Purpose-Driven Life, edged ahead of Penguin. HC had North American sales of approximately $965 million last year, with North America accounting for about 73% of HC’s worldwide sales. Penguin, which received a boost of $40 million from its Penguin Press, Gotham and Razorbill imprints in 2004, had estimated sales in the U.S. of $900 million last year.
To compare: 63,000 small publishers (’everyone else,’ I’m guessing) generated revenue of $14 billion.
[Source: Publishers Weekly, via KeepMedia]
Getting Published, part 2
It’s been a few weeks since I sent out my first queries to literary agents. So far, no bites — just a few rejections.
Luckily, I’m immune to rejections. (I’ve been a freelance writer for a few years, so I’m used to them.) Also, I’m thankful they’ve all been good non-form-letter rejections — each responded to specific things I’d said in my query, which is encouraging.
If I don’t have any luck with anyone from this group, I have another batch of queries ready to go out in May…
In the meanwhile, here are a few more sites offering advice on how to get an agent:
- Literary agents: a four-part series from Writing.org
- Words of Wisdom to Snatch a Literary Agent from FreelanceWriting.com
- Literary Agents - Answers and Advice from TaraKHarper.com
Getting Published Takes Time
When I say getting published takes time I don’t mean the process of creating the books or even writing the book. I am talking about just getting someone to accept the novel. After you have spent months and even years writing a book you can spend even more time shopping it around to different publishers.
That in itself takes a lot of time because it can be sometimes over a year before you are accepted or rejected and then it’s on to the next one. You have to remember it’s not like a demo tape you listen to and toss in the trash. These are words that has to be read, a story that has to be finished for them to get the big picture.
If they get hundreds and thousands of these then it will take time, a lot of time before yours is even read.
Getting Published, part 1
This morning, I sent out my first batch of agent queries.
They were all e-queries, thankfully, so there was no printing, paper-folding, or envelope-licking involved — just cutting, pasting, and sending. This was refreshing, as the process of finding potential agents and crafting a personalized query for each had been pretty arduous.
First, I’d checked sites like Publishers Marketplace and Agent Query to find agents interested in representing the types of books I wanted to write (nonfiction books on parenting). Parenting is a popular topic, so there were hundreds of agents to choose from.
Once I’d whittled my list down to about 40, I began writing my query, which consisted of a hook, a description of the book, a mini-bio, and a conclusion with contact info. It was formatted like a typical one-page business letter.
Researching agents and perfecting my query took weeks. My friends and family (all of whom I’d forced to read the query multiple times) were getting impatient, asking why I hadn’t sent the letters out yet.
Finally, today, I looked it over and could find nothing to change. So I sent out the first batch of 10 (figuring that a rate of 10 per month would suffice).
Now, all I can do is cross my fingers and wait. In the meanwhile, I have a manuscript to edit and a book proposal to write…