The publishing power of words

When British author Fay Weldon's new novel was published last month there was an outbreak of pursed lips in literary circles. Weldon is one of Britain's most prolific and popular authors, with at least 20 novels to her name and a couple of literary biographies. It wasn't that her new book The Bulgari Connection was bad, it is just that Weldon was perceived to have "sold out". Bulgari are a big, rather glitzy firm of Italian jewellers and Weldon was paid by them to include 12 mentions of the Bulgari brand name in her new novel. To her critics that was bad enough, but she thumbed her nose at the literary world entirely by not only mentioning Bulgari 30 times in the book but also by putting the brand name in the title.

None of this would have caused even a raised eyebrow among movie fans, who are familiar with the concept of product placement - remember the last James Bond movie with the BMW car in just about every shot or Tom Cruise's Ray-Ban's in Top Gun? However, such a clear and direct link between the literary world and the world of money is pretty rare.

Mind you, though it might not usually be this obvious, money is still very much there. HarperCollins, for example, is Weldon's publisher. It is owned by global media giant News International (Rupert Murdoch's company), with a range of interests that stretch from 20th Century Fox movies to the Sunday Times newspaper.

It's not only at corporate level that money looms large in publishing. These days, announcements of the arrival on the literary scene of a new author is frequently accompanied by mention of six-figure advances.

However, advances aren't the literary lottos that they might at first appear. A £100,000 advance payment on a book is not unusual for a writer, even a first-time writer to get if he or she is writing fiction for the mass market for an international publisher.

Typically, that advance will be spread over a three-book deal and will be handed over to the writer in stages - some when she hands in the first manuscript, a little more when it is published, etc. All that could be over a period of years. It's called an "advance" because it is an advanced pre-payment on the royalties that the book will earn for writer when it sells.

Irish book publishing works on a very different scale. According to Paula Campbell, publisher at Poolbeg Press, advances in Ireland range from £1,000 to £20,000.

"Publishers plan over the long term," she says. "At this stage, we have our schedule for 2003 nearly full."

Mainly, Campbell finds books in one of two ways - either from a literary agent or from unsolicited manuscripts which, in the trade, are called "the slushpile".

"We can get up to 10 unsolicited manuscripts a day," she says. Books are quickly weeded out and only a handful make it to the stage where they are read by Poolbeg's in-house group of editors.

"If we're thinking of publishing something, everyone in the office gets to read it and give their opinion. It's a good sounding board," says Campbell.

After publication, the publisher's sales representative (aka "rep") tries to sell the book into the shops. The larger British-based publishers have Irish reps whose job it is to ensure that bookshop buyers know about the books they're due to publish and all the marketing support they intend giving them.

"At this stage, most bookshops have ordered their books for Christmas," says Peter McIntyre, a director of Repforce, a company which represents 11 publishers. It's not, he admits, generally a hard sell, but as there are literally hundreds of titles coming out every month, it is a task to keep track of them all.

"We know what publicity and marketing the publisher is likely to put behind a book well in advance and we sell it to the book trade on that basis. Publishers also develop incentives to sell books, such as cancelling out any currency difference so, for example, a book might sell at £7.99 both in England and the Republic of Ireland.

Bookshops have perhaps the greatest influence on what we read. In the first instance they have to choose to stock a title and then they can control when and how you see it - by either giving it "window treatment" or by putting it on a low shelf at the back of the shop.

Book buying is like so much else in retail. If the book is in your face, chances are you're more disposed to buying it.

Sally Mimnagh is one of the most powerful people in the Irish book trade. As book purchasing manager for Easons, she buys for all Easons shops as well as for 250 other book outlets, ranging from newsagents to grocery shops which have a large book section.

"There is no definite way of knowing what people are going to like," she says. "The media does play a big part: if a writer or a book is given publicity, then sales do go up."

Book sales reps come to her twice a year to sell their titles and, like other buyers, she has already bought for the Christmas market.

"However there's always room for a book that comes out of nowhere in November," she says. That can often happen with an Irish-published book that just appears and becomes a bestseller. "There is a strong tradition of Irish publishing and Irish readers are interested in Irish books," she says.