How to Sell Literature

Susan Hill doesn't believe in public funding for literature, full stop. If no-one wants to buy the books a small publisher produces (and she gives some figures to support the notion that they often don't), then they shouldn't be funded, she says, not in a world where old and ill people are failing to get help because of lack of public funds.

But the question is, Why are the sales figures for some books published by small publishers so small? Is it, as Susan seems to be implying, that the books are basically unsaleable? And since the publishers at the heart of this discussion (about the recent Arts Council cuts) are 'literary' and 'highbrow', what's being said here? That 'highbrow literary' fiction is unsaleable? Well, as readers of this blog will know, I maintain that with the right marketing strategy you can sell anything. Is it rather, then, that the publishers of these non-selling books are failing in their marketing strategy, either through their own fault or through commercial forces entirely outside their control - the refusal of bookshops to stock their books, for instance? (And if it's this last, then wouldn't it be a case for more funding, not less?)

Or is it that, as Mark Ravenhill takes as his premise in his Guardian column this week, good art, which is 'complex, troubling, difficult', is unsaleable in a society with 'the more direct pleasures of video gaming and reality TV' on tap?

Ravenhill's solution, which as an ex-schoolteacher I find utterly seductive (and amusingly utopian), is to put the money into education. Educate people to want the good art, he says, and then it will sell.

A Poisoned Chalice

In today's Guardian Bookseller column Joel Rickett muses about the loss of Arts Council funding to translation specialists Arcadia and Dedalus:

...their plight underlines the dangers of factoring public subsidy into your business model; sooner or later, political priorities change and you'll be left stranded.

Well, it's true, public funding has always been a bit of a poisoned chalice in that way (and sometimes offered with a cavalier hand): we always had the most generous Arts Council grant for the short story mag metropolitan, but I'll never forget how depressed, and threatened, I felt the day the Literature Panel wrote to discourage us from publishing so many of 'that length' of story - and utterly puzzled (as the Bush Theatre has been on this occasion), since the stories we published varied in length from 1,000 to 12,000!

But there has to be a place for public funding in a climate of rampant commercialisation, and I feel as dismayed and confounded as anyone about the loss to Arcadia and Dedalus and theatres such as The Bush. However, as Rickett goes on:

A cannier approach is to win a one-off lump sum that will enable you to become self-sustaining. The feisty poetry specialist Salt Publishing, which convinced the Arts Council to invest £185,000 in its website and direct sales operation, is now on the road to profitability.

Well, I cheer this sentiment (not least because I've been sprinkled with Salt myself): as I've always said, you can sell anything if you find the right marketing strategy. This week Salt has been shortlisted for the Nielsen Innovation of the Year Award (a category of the UK's annual Independent Publishing Awards, 2008) for bucking the trend by increasing its sales via 'online marketing, partnerships and brand development'.

Bigger Fish to Fry

George Szirtes points out that it's not the Olympics which is draining subsidies from small arts organizations, but the Arts Council's new preference for larger organizations.

Thanks to Ms Baroque for the link.