It’s strange sitting in a meeting where you’ve written a book on the topic under discussion and nobody knows about it. This is one of the problems of publishing with an academic press. Books get lost and buried. Maybe the other way around. A problem we academic editors frequently run into is that authors tend to think a book is a book. Publishers recognize several different kinds of books, well represented among them those that are destined for the “library market.” You can tell them by the way they’re priced. Now I must confess that I’m behind the times in this regard. I still tend to think twenty dollars is a lot to pay for a book. I say this even though my job, day after day, includes pouring over book budgets to see how an academic book can be made not to lose money.
It costs a lot of money—most of it overhead—to produce a book. In order not to run a publisher bankrupt, it needs to sell enough copies to cover its costs. Library market books are priced that way because they are expected to sell only to libraries. Certainly, if they were priced lower some academics would buy them, but the truth is not many academics do. I realize I was an outlier when I was in the academy. Without a research budget I would spend my own money on a book priced a hundred dollars if I really needed it for my research. I was aware, even at that time, that others seldom did this. As an academic colleague once told me, “I like to buy shoes.” And let’s face it, there are just too many books out there to buy. “Publish or perish” has more than one meaning.
So I’m sitting in a meeting where the topic of discussion is something on which I’ve written a book. My opinion is not asked—my book is priced for the library market and I know it—so I don’t really expect it to be. The question is whether general readers will find the subject compelling. Speaking strictly for me I’m pretty sure they will. I signed my contract for Nightmares with the Bible before I knew the series would be priced for the library market. That designation also indicates minimal marketing. What publisher is going to try to push a book that costs that much when they know individuals can’t afford it? So I sit in the meeting and keep my mouth shut.
