Too Many Books, Too Few Shelves

US book publishers produced almost 300,000 titles last year. 300,000! Michael S. Hyatt, President & CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, is taking his company in a new direction. Here's an extended excerpt:

It’s time to stop the madness. We don't need more titles. We need better titles. The only way this is going to happen is if publishers stop focusing on quantity and begin focusing on quality.

Last year, our company introduced some 700 new titles. I don't care how you cut it, that’s a lot of books. It is basically two books a day. Every day. All year long. Worse, 23% of our titles drove more than 90% of our revenue. Or to say it another way, 74% of our titles accounted for less than 10% of our revenue. Hello? (And, I’ll bet money that our experience isn’t unique. I’d wager that almost every other publisher’s experience is similar.)

But to really appreciate this, you have to understand that the work is pretty evenly distributed among all titles. Every title must be contracted, edited, typeset, proofread, packaged, cataloged, sold-in, merchandised, and promoted. Whether you sell a million or a few thousand, it still requires a similar amount of work.

So, based on this, we came to a fairly obvious conclusion. We can cut the title count and eliminate a significant portion of our workload, without reducing our revenue or our profit margin. All we have to do is eliminate our worst performing titles—or in the case of frontlist, the titles that are forecast to perform the worst. ...

Regardless, we feel we can do a much better job of focusing on the best authors and the best content. As a result of this exercise, we have determined to cut 50 percent of our new title output. We believe that by doing so we will put at risk less than 10% of our revenues (and even less of our margin). More importantly, by slowing down the conveyor belt, we believe we can improve the quality and more than make up for any potential decrease in revenue.

Borrowing a phrase from the Marines, “we are looking for a few good books.” We are still working through the title list and are not prepared to announce who stays and who goes. However, our ultimate goal is do a better job delivering excellent books—books worth finishing—to the marketplace.