Simon & Schuster Case Study, Part 3: Cola Wars for the Book World?

To see how I'm drawing these conclusions, read part 1 and part 2.

Given Simon & Schuster's pattern of odd behavior lately, it's not hard to imagine that they're trying to exact some change upon the way the industry works, or at least the way they work. But what is it? I don't have any contacts at S&S, and even if I did, we'd probably be talking about trade secrets they wouldn't be allowed to disclose, if they even knew of them in the first place. So this is all conjecture, but here's what I think.

S&S is trying to build brand loyalty. I'm sure this is a familiar term, and I'm sure that when I bring up brand loyalty, a number of things come to mind: soft drinks, cigarettes, sometimes clothing or cosmetics, and some types of services (taxi companies, video rentals, etc.). But books? Probably not at the top of your list.

Though it may sound like an unlikely explanation, it is one that ties things together.

Besides being high-profile, many of S&S's recent moves have no perceivable benefit. Sponsoring a series of risky writing contests and then rushing the winning entries to press too quick to ensure quality or marketing? Putting money into a questionable fanfiction community? And what about that new contract clause that's sure to piss people off and make reputable agents and big name authors hesitant to deal with them, even if does somehow benefit S&S?

Let's take this one at a time. What marks S&S's visible sponsorship of the unusual endeavors explained in part 1 is that they don't seem to be about the work itself. Based on what's being put into them, it's unlikely that the winners of the First Chapters contest will do very well in print, and probably neither would any of the work produced by Project Publish or Fanlib. The only thing that would make these moves by S&S sane is if the point is not for the work to do well.

What these gigs are more about, I'm guessing, is the fact that S&S's name will be all over them. The things they're targeting--writing contests and websites that display creative writing--are venues that hit a sizable and growing segment of the population. More people consider themselves creative writers now than ever before; I've heard it said (probably correctly) that more people write poetry than read it, and I wouldn't be surprised if the same is true for fiction. If their objective in doing this is to make their name as constantly visible as possible to people who are interested in and talk about books, then I'd say they've hit something.

The question is, if they want to make their name as visible as possible to people who like books, why not just do it through their books?

Well, because people generally don't care. There's a reason you don't see much brand loyalty in the book world. Off the top of my head, I can only name a few publishers who command any sort of brand loyalty at all: Harlequin, Wizards of the Coast (formerly TSR), and arguably Triple Crown. But in those cases, it's not about the publishers themselves, but about the books they publish; people who buy a Harlequin book are looking for a specific type of book, as are people who buy a Forgotten Realms book or hip hop novel.

For a publisher like S&S, though, it doesn't quite work that way. S&S and its imprints publish pretty much everything. It's the same with all the other major publishers. They can build series loyalty, like Scholastic with Harry Potter or Houghton Mifflin with Peterson's Field Guides, but if the author of that series goes to another publisher, the readers probably won't give a flip (I know a lot of people who love Stephen King's Dark Tower series, and very few of them even know who its publisher is). Brand loyalty, the way other companies have it, is out of the question.

So if S&S wants brand loyalty, they'll need to look other places to find it. One of these places might involve courting the affection of aspiring writers (which is, like, everybody these days) through Big Break-granting contests, possibly combined with more noticible branding of the books they do publish--which might start with the First Chapters winners.

The new contract clause, I suspect, is a way of further enforcing the brand. By putting it in there and insuring that titles they acquire never go out of print, there's no danger of S&S brand books having their rights revert to the author, who could then get them back in print with a different publisher--which does happen. They can make sure that the stuff with their mark on it keeps that mark.

If this is the plan, then S&S would end up with total control over a "brand" of books, with loyalty to that brand bought through a lot of sneaky, undercover publicity (and I suspect we'll be seeing more odd moves by them in coming months).

That's a pretty powerful thing to command. But why would a publisher want to do this? It seems like a pretty roundabout way of driving sales; could there be another motive?

That's my favorite part. Look for part 4 soon.