6 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ NOVEMBER 4, 2019
News
or literary agents to define the term, you’re unlikely to get a
specific answer. Few can say, for example, how many books
one needs to sell to be considered midlist. The only thing
sources agreed on is the fact that the term is negative.
“You want to be debut, literary, or bestselling; you don’t
want to be midlist,” one literary agent said. “The midlist is like
the middle class; it’s the group that gets squeezed. They don’t
get the support from their publishers. They don’t get their
due [as writers]. They don’t get the attention they deserve
from reviewers. Everybody wants to break out of the midlist.”
Editors concurred: “Midlist pushes buttons because no
one ever publishes a book intending it to be midlist,” said
one high-level editor at a Big Five house. “Publishers live
on the hope that the next book they publish is going to
break out.”
Another Big Five editor, who honed her chops at smaller
and midsize houses, offered a similar take: “Midlist is abso-
lutely not a term I ever use. I know it exists and is a thing,” she
said, before positing that publishing is essentially a business
built on hope. “You have to imagine that [this book] will make
its way, whether or not there’s anything realistic about that.”
For one literary agent at a major firm, the woes of the midlist
is very much front of mind. “This, in many ways, is the story of
our business,” he said, explaining that he feels the issue “speaks
to the challenge of breaking out authors and sustaining
careers.” Citing the fact that major authors of today publish
at an increased “velocity and frequency,” he feels that this
rarified group now gets an outsize amount of the limited
spoils: bigger advances, more of retailers’ limited space,
and more of publishers’ time and attention. “The more big
authors a house publishes, the more they take away from all
of the other authors,” he added.
The agent feels that moving a client to a different publisher
is too often his only way to build excitement about (and get
resources for) a new book by an author with middling sales.
He then added, “We’ve been looking into all manner of ways
to attack this problem.”
His worry? How these writers survive.
“There is no doubt that it has gotten harder to sustain a
career as a midlist author,” the agent said. “You used to be
able to have a vibrant career in magazines. That market has
largely gone away. The market for short fiction has gone away.
So there are external pressures, as well.”
For Steve Zacharius, president of Kensington Publishing,
the middle is truly dead. “Numbers have become so compressed
and so reduced that the term midlist isn’t really applicable
anymore,” he said. “Now you really have super-bestsellers and
bestsellers, and everything else.” —Rachel DeahlThe Weekly Scorecard
Print Units Up 1.1% at the
Close of October
Unit sales of print books rose 1.1% in the week ended Oct. 26, 2019,
over the comparable week in 2018, at outlets that report to NPD
BookScan. Adult nonfiction had a solid week, with print unit sales
up 5.8% over the week ended Oct. 27, 2018. A new book by Ree
Drummond, The Pioneer Woman Cooks: The New Frontier, sold
more than 92,000 copies in its first week, making it the #1 book
in the category. Another new cookbook, Binging with Babish by
Andrew Rea, landed in the fourth spot on the adult nonfiction list,
selling more than 21,000 copies, while Trump vs. China by Newt
Gingrich followed Binging, selling more than 20,000 copies in its
first week. The ongoing strong performance of Guts by Raina
Telgemeier helped to drive up units in the juvenile nonfiction
category by almost 10%; in the most recent week, Guts sold nearly
24,000 copies, its best performance in a month. Just Ask! by Sonia
Sotomayor also saw a pick up in sales over recent weeks, selling
more than 6,000 copies in the week ended October 26, putting it
in second place on the category list. Print unit sales plunged 32.5%
in the young adult fiction segment. Last year at this time, Kingdom
of Ash by Sarah J. Maas sold more than 42,000 copies in its first
week. In the most recent week, S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders was
#1, selling about 4,500 copies. The adult fiction category had a
2.1% unit decline in the week despite some good starts for several
titles. Michael Connelly’s The Night Fire debuted at #1 in the
category, with more than 56,000 copies sold. In the third spot was
The Deserter by Nelson and Alex DeMille, which sold 21,000 copies.SOURCE: NPD BOOKSCAN AND APPROXIMATELY 80% OF THE PRINT BOOK MARKET AND CONTINUES TO GROW.PUBLISHERS WEEKLY. NPD’S U.S. CONSUMER MARKET PANEL COVERSTOTAL SALES OF PRINT BOOKS (in thousands)
OCT. 27, OCT. 26, CHGE CHGE
2018 2019 WEEK YTD
Total 11,457 11,577 1.1%-1.1%OCT. 27, OCT. 26, CHGE CHGE
2018 2019 WEEK YTD
Adult Nonfiction 4,7 69 5,047 5.8% -0.1%
Adult Fiction 2,208 2,161-2.1% -3.2%
Juvenile Nonfiction 890 978 9.9% 3.4%
Juvenile Fiction 2,856 2,849-0.3% -1.0%
Young Adult Fiction 393 265 -32.5% -5.7%
Young Adult Nonfiction4 3 36-15.1% 4.8%UNIT SALES OF PRINT BOOKS BY CATEGORY (in thousands)UNIT SALES OF PRINT BOOKS BY FORMAT (in thousands)
OCT. 27, OCT. 26, CHGE CHGE
2018 2019 WEEK YTD
Hardcover 3,708 3,708 0% 3.6%
Trade Paperback 5,760 5,993 4.0 % -1.9%
Mass Market Paperback 826 695 -15.9%-15.7%
Board Books 713 747 4.7% 2.5%
Audio 37 2 4-33.8%-26.2%