The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Inside The Book Buying Business

Episode Date: November 21, 2022

With the holiday season unfolding in front of us, these are the busiest days for the book-buying business.  The man who used to be the most powerful person in the publishing world, Brad Martin, joins us to talk about the ins and outs of his business.  Also a fabulous story about political opponents who show how things should happen.  

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. We're heading into the busiest book buying season of the year. A couple of things you might want to know about the book business today. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. Yes, we're going to talk about the book business for a little bit today. It's funny because I've talked to, on the bridge in the last few weeks, three different authors, Steve Paikin on his John Turner book, Tim Cook on his latest book about the First World War, and Ted Barris about a book of his on the Second World War.

I picked those because they're like favorites of mine, the book topics and the book authors. But the book business, as we head into this season, it's a heavy buying season for books, given the holidays and people getting gifts for their friends and their relatives, I thought, basically prompted by many of you, said, tell us more about books. Tell us more about the book business. So we're going to update where things are in the book business. And we've got a great guest to do that with.

But before we get there, you know, end bits, this day we start with a start bit. There are some end bits later in the program. We're going to start with a start bit. And the reason I'm going to do that is because it's been commonplace for us to talk about the polarization within politics, both in this country and south of the border especially. And one of the ways we've talked about that over the last couple of years is the lack of respect that politicians from opposing parties seem to have for each other. And I think especially so as we've witnessed at different times in the U.S.

They accuse each other of cheating. They accuse the system of being rigged. You name it, those kind of accusations get out there. And people don't accept results. And we've seen that again in the last couple of weeks. But this is a story that will change your mind a little bit at least will show you that there are good people out there who don't have those kind of feelings about their opponents so where are we going to find that how hard did we have to look for it kind of feelings about their opponents. So where are we going to find that?

How hard did we have to look for it? Well, we didn't have to look far, actually. The community is called Rogers City, Michigan. And if you live in Sault Ste. Marie or anywhere around Sault Ste. Marie and you travel into the states at the border there with Michigan, then you've probably heard of Rogers City. You may have even been there, because Rogers City is not far from Sault Ste. Marie. I don't know.

You look at a map, it looks like an hour's drive, maybe a little more, maybe a little less. Small town, small community, 2,800 people. Well, they just had their votes as well. And two women were running against each other. Tamine Adair and Brittany Vanderwall. and two women were running against each other, Tamine Adair and Brittany Vanderwall. Well, it was kind of an intense campaign,

a lot of back and forth, a lot of outlining of their views of what was needed at this time in their community. But at the end of the night, on voting day, Tamina Dare and Brittany VanderWaal were deadlocked. They each got 616 votes. And the decision was made that the way they would break this tie would be they drop two pieces of paper in a hat. One would remain blank, the other would say I was elected.

So they did that. They wrote one out, cut another one the same size, kept it blank, put them in the hat, shuffled them around, and they asked the two to pull something out of the hat. Well, when I came out, Tamina Deer was the winner. She got the card that said I was elected. Brittany VanderWaal was the loser. So what happened? Did the Brittany VanderWaal immediately say, no, this is rigged, it was fixed, and you cheated, and I want a recount, and all that other stuff?

No. She threw her arms around Tamina Dare, and Tamina Dare did likewise to her. They hugged, congratulated each other, wished each other luck, and Brittany looked at Tamina and said, I'll see you in two years. Good luck in the job. I'll be there two years from now to try and take it away from you. And that was it. And that's the way it should be.

Right? Isn't that the idea? Yeah. Well, it was in Rogers City, Michigan. And good for them. Good for Rogers City. Showing the rest of the country and the world the way it should be done and the fact that democracy is alive and well

and two opposing sides can still get along the way it should be done, and the fact that democracy is alive and well, and two opposing sides can still get along and respect each other's victory or loss. So the salute from the bridge to Rogers City, Michigan. All right. As I said, there'll be some end bits a little later, but we're going to start off with our discussion about the book business. So I wanted to do this, especially after receiving some encouragement from some of you to do

something about the book business as we enter the holiday season and a lot of people buy books as gifts. Just how healthy is the book business? What actually happens here? What's a bestseller? Do authors make a lot of money? Is every book in some degree successful? Well? We're going to find those answers to those questions. I started off by phoning my friend, my publisher, Kevin Hansen from Simon & Schuster,

who's been the publisher for my last couple of books and is the publisher for the new one I'm writing along with Mark Bulgich, which will come out next year. And I phoned Kevin and I said, I don't want to talk to you because that would be a conflict. But I wouldn't mind some advice from you as to who I could talk to. Who understands the book business in Canada? And he said, I got the guy. I know the guy you want to talk to.

That guy is named Brad Martin. He's the former CEO of Penguin Random House Canada. He was in the book business until he retired for most of his life. Graduate of, I think, McGill. And the University of Toronto. Yeah, McGill for political science. University of Toronto for his master's of political science. He used to live in Toronto.

He's recently moved out to Prince Edward County, as a lot of Torontonians have been doing in the last few years. Beautiful area, near the shores of Lake Ontario, near Belleville, Ontario. And he had a barn on his property, and he's changed the barn into a kind of library. So he's not far from his books. He loves his books, and he loves the book story. So we're going to talk to Brad.

But first of all, we're going to take a quick break. Then we'll be back with Brad Martin. And welcome back. Peter Mansbridge here with The Bridge. You're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. Wednesdays and Fridays, remember, The Bridge is also available in a video format on our YouTube channel. And you can find that and subscribe at no cost to that by going to the link that's on my bio page on either Twitter or Instagram. Okay, I set it up a moment ago. Brad Martin is going to talk to us about the book business.

And here we go. Brad, I can remember reading an article on you a couple of years ago that it said, as CEO of Penguin Random House Canada, you were kind of responsible for producing 6,000 books a year. That's correct. 6,000. Just say it seems like an awful lot. Now, we didn't in Canada publish all those books,

but we were responsible for the sales and marketing of all those books, and probably 300 or 400 of them we published ourselves as books on our Canadian lists. But it's a lot of books. That's a lot of books. Three or four hundred would actually be published in the Canadian market. Right, but some of those authors are UK or American authors who we bought separate rights for.

Explain to me again how the 6,000 number comes up. Well, we actually distribute for all the Penguin Random House companies in the English language. We also have a rather large number of distribution clients, probably 35. Okay. How would you characterize the book business in Canada? Because, you know, there have been different times over the last 20, 30, 40 years where people said, oh, you know, books are really going to have a problem in the marketplace, you know, whether it was television or radio or satellite, cable TV, et cetera, et cetera,

and then digital books and e-books, that for the traditional book, it was going to be difficult. Has it turned out that way or has it not? It has not turned out that way. The demise of books has been, yes, you're right, predicted since the 50s when TV first came out. But books have adapted. And we now have, if you go back to the 50s, there was very few hardcovers except those that came from book clubs and everything else was paperbacks. And now you've got the digital book, the hardcover book, the paperback book, and the audio book. And they live in all these different worlds. In fact, in the last five years, the fastest growing part of the book business has been the audio book market. And talk to me about that a little bit. I've always assumed that the electronic books or audio books or digital books, whatever fashion you want to go with in terms of which description you want to put them in, that that was always going to severely hurt the traditional book in your hand, sitting in your chair, reading a copy of whatever author you're enjoying.

How has it impacted? How has the move towards all these other abilities to listen to a book versus reading a book, how has that impacted the business? I think it's expanded the business. I think that there was a period of time when the novelty of the digital book came out that we saw a drop in print books but that has changed and people have become they have have warm thoughts about having a book in their hand i the more i hear right now people saying yeah i write i i don't like to read it

on my iphone or my ipad i sometimes do if i'm on a plane but i would like to read it on my iPhone or my iPad I sometimes do if I'm on a plane but I would prefer to read it in hard copy I also there are people out there I happen to be one of them who listen to a book or read a book on my iPad and I will still buy that hardcover copy because I want it on my shelf so I may be an exception to the rule and I may have a slight addiction problem to books, but no kidding. So no, the different opportunities that one has to read has not hurt the overall book business. It has helped. And if you think in terms of the demographics of certainly North American society and Western European society, the audiobook helps those older people who want to

pursue reading, but perhaps don't have the same level of eyesight that is necessary to read for any length of time. And the same thing with the digital books where you can adjust the typeface so that the print is bigger so you can read. So in a sense, it makes it easier for the reader to read. You know, in one of my more recent books, Off the Record, I'd had a number of people say to me oh you've got to you've got to do an audio book of of your new book because uh we're used to your voice we love your voice we grew up listening to you watching you all of that stuff and so i thought okay well that makes sense so i went to my publisher at simon and schuster and i said look um you know people want an audio book. And he looked at me like, you know, it's very expensive to do this. And it really doesn't deliver a lot of books.

People want the hardcover. And I said, no, come on. You know, I'm different. My voice, blah, blah, blah, a lot of stuff. And so he finally relented. He said, okay, we'll do it. We'll do it and we'll see what happens. He was right. I mean, it's, it's,

it's sold a lot. It's a lot of audio books, but, but not in any way compared with what it's sold in the hold in your hand. So I won't be pushing that on my next book. Let's put it that way. Anyway, the talk to me about the general health that that you can see from the outside now and you're looking at the business that has been a part of your life um since you were a young professional um talk to me about the health of the business right now how would you describe it i would say that the health is robust. The books have not lost their place in the pantheon of entertainment,

whether it be movies or television or streaming services. People do turn to books all the time. You have people that will never be readers, but those people that are readers will always be readers. And we monitor the health of the book business. It's kind of hard to put your finger on exactly what's going on sometimes because of the huge number of self-published books that come from Amazon now. But I know there's a lot of people reading those too. But the rule of thumb was certainly in the uh since the turn of the century

that business hasn't moved more than two percent one way or another and it's not 10 it hasn't made a significant move in either direction it's always been like it'll be up two percent down two percent it has it's a hit driven business so 50 so 50 Shades of Grey comes out, it's up, et cetera. And clearly, when Off the Record came up, Brad, the book sales, they went through the roof, right? They blew the doors open. And then, of course, you had the COVID period, right? And so what happened during the COVID period was amazon particularly but indigo as well they have an online service and i don't know what barnes happened to barnes and nobles in the united

states but the numbers for books went through the roof particularly back catalog backlist books because well people were sitting at home and they had seen everything they could watch on netflix that was any good and so they were going back and, I don't know, buying Lord of the Rings or whatever. So did that change the 2% figure, at least for those couple of heavy years during the pandemic? I don't have the fingers to hand. Kevin would. But I know that the sales for the publishers in the two years from, I guess, COVID started February of 2020. If you take 2020, 2021, book sales were huge. Kevin, that you mentioned, was of course, and he is my publisher at Simon & Schultz.

Oh, sorry. No, that's okay. So, you know, if the business is that robust, well, first of all, explain to me how this works on the self-publishing angle. You've written a book. You've either not had the opportunity to convince a publisher to go with it, so you self-publish. Or you choose to self-publish. Amazon has the entire menuublish or you choose to self-publish. Amazon has the entire menu of things that you need to self-publish, including, you know, you can pay for marketing, you can pay for jacket design, you pay for editorial work. So it's all there. I haven't gone to look at it, but there's many, many examples of people who have actually

gone there and made the jump to regular publishers. There's a woman called Colleen Hoover, who has had three books on the New York Times bestseller list for the last at least year. She was self-published until Atria saw her and put their marketing weight behind her. At I would... Patriot being a Simon & Schuster imprint. But I would assume that for every person who's become successful self-publishing, there are probably hundreds, if not thousands. Oh, thousands, tens of thousands.

Who have simply self-published a book. There's a lot of people that want to write books, Peter, but not a lot of people make a lot of money at it. Well, talk to me about that part of it. And I guess that's what I'm kind of getting at. What is considered in Canada a good sale of a book? You know, like how many copies would you have to sell for you to sit back and say, you know, I wrote a book, I published it, and it's done okay, it's done well?

Well, obviously it depends to some extent on what's paid for the book. But it is not unusual in Canada to sell between 25,000 and 50,000 copies of a book. And then the really big books, certainly, you know, whether you're talking about the astronaut book. Chris Hadfield. Hanson, I think. Chris Hadfield. Yeah, or Bobby Orr.

Those books were published in the same year. They both sold over 320,000 copies hardcover. So there are really big numbers. And then you've got – and if you sell 15,000 of a fiction and you're a relatively new fiction writer, that's also very good. It's in context of what the expectation of the publisher and the author is. And who's making the big bucks when you have those high numbers? You know, like the Bob Eeyore book or the Chris Hatfield book? Well, those guys, the authors are making very decent money,

and the publishers are making very decent money. But I wouldn't, I mean, if you look at it, the author, usually the escalators say that they're going to get 15% of the retail price once the sales hit, say, $15,000. So, you know, 15%, that's $4.50 for a $30 book. And that's straight into the author's pocket after he's earned back his advance or she's earned back her advance. So that's probably close to what the publisher's making

once they've taken care of all their overheads and so forth. So what do you see as kind of the line, 15,000, 15 to 20,000? When you pass that range, you're into making money? Well, you should be on the bestseller list when you get into that range. And yes, you should be making money. It depends on what you actually got for an advance, right? Because I can give an author a $100,000 advance and they only sell 15,000 books. They still get to keep the $100,000 even though they only earned like $45,000 or $55,000 on the 15,000 copy sale. But those are all very decent numbers for a market the size of Canada.

What's a bestseller in Canada? I've heard different numbers tossed around over the years. Is there an actual number that says you pass that and you've got a bestseller? Well, if you get to 25,000, you're definitely on the bestseller list. Depending on the year, if you're at 15,000, you're on the bestseller list. There aren't many bestseller lists left. But, yes, I would say right now with what's out there, you have to get to about 25,000 to make the bestseller list. Now, when I see bestseller lists, I see different lists depending on where I'm reading it.

It could be in a paper or a magazine or what have you. Where do these lists come from? Some of the lists are actually generated with empirical data from there is an agency that has actually, they track all the accounts in Canada and what they're selling. But there are some magazine lists that were basically phone calls, say, what's selling for you today? Those lists were never accurate. I'm not going to mention which magazines they were, but...

That must have really, that must have upset publishers. It certainly did, yes. Because they have an impact, those lists? They have some impact, but publishers would write bestseller incentives into their offers to authors. So that kind of screwed that up. Can you remember in your time as, you know, running Penguin Random House, some, you know, unknown authors, or at least unknown to you, comes in the door, they've got a manuscript, they've worked, you know, their butt off trying to put together their thoughts in a

in a book and they bring it to you and they drop on your desk and what's your initial instinct when that happens you know nothing about this person you've never heard of them um my initial instinct is okay we're to have to get somebody to read this. Yeah. It's not going to be you. Well, sometimes it is. It happens a lot, Peter. So, you know, it's part of the business.

So you put a smile on it and you try and be helpful. Wait, what do you say to them when it clearly is, in your view, it's not up to something that you would take further down the line? Right. Well, you try and say as nicely as possible that this isn't something that we would publish.

And good luck wherever you may take it next, I guess. That's correct. And you could say something like, well, contact an agent. Are there a lot of people like that? I mean, are there a lot of people trying to sell a story? There are a lot of people with a manuscript in their bottom drawer, and when they hear that you're in publishing

you know it's the sister or my manuscript or my father always wanted to publish the family history and he's got an outline and line written so yes there's a lot of people that want to write books and i guess in one one sense that's that's great know, good for them. And if they supply themselves. But it's not automatic that you've got a winner on your hands, especially in the way you've done it. I mean, it is an art, right? And you look at the Margaret Atwoods and, you know, the Peter Newmans and the, you know, Pierre Burtons and those who our history has shown have been extremely popular.

For them, it was a, you know, it was and is an art form. Absolutely. Not everybody's going to be marked out with tomorrow. Tell me about memoirs, about biographies. Because one of the most common questions I've been asked when I've been on a book tour or doing interviews about my last book, which was a memoir, was, did you write it and there's there's there's this feeling that if you're kind of a known figure of you know celebrity for the lack of a better term

that you don't actually write them yourselves now in my case i i did write mine but it does that happen a lot are there a lot of people in the ghostwriting business? And how do you handle that when that's the case? There are a fair number. There are times when you actually know going into it that you're going to use a ghostwriter because the person that you're publishing the book with isn't going to write the book, either isn't going to write a period or isn't going to write the book, either isn't going to write a period or isn't going to write it in a timely manner. Oftentimes it comes down to that, where they

want to write it and then they realize that they need more help. And that's what the editorial people are there for. So either we hire a ghostwriter or the editorial person becomes much more involved. But it's certainly not uncommon. And is there an obligation for the publisher to say, you know, to include that ghostwriter's name on the book somewhere, somehow? No, that's a negotiated point. If the ghostwriter was engaged at the same time the book was signed, that may change whether or not that name appears on the book, but I don't recall very often that ghostwriter's names appeared on the book.

How do you feel about that? I mean, is that just sort of, you know, is that okay? Or is that in some way deceptive? Or does it matter at all? I don't think it's deceptive. I mean, the ghostwriter is paid to be the ghostwriter, and so I don't know that we're deceiving anybody. And remember, we bought the book because of the person the book is about,

so I don't think that we're deceiving anybody there, or we're deceiving anybody. This has been fascinating, Brad. Let me ask you one last question. As somebody who's been in the business as long as you have been, what's your favorite story about the business? When you think back at the different things, the different authors you've worked with,

the different stories that you've been responsible for bringing forward to the public's attention. Do you have a favorite in there? Probably not. But the story that I remember being told when i was doing it back in the 19 i think it was 1981 was the mcclellan and sylvia fraser dressed as dressed in togas going down young street to promote a book i don't even remember what the book was because i wasn't it was the year before I went there but that I must have heard that story in the first 10 years I was in the business a hundred times and then of course

it went away because the people that were there were no longer in the business but I was to remember one and Jack of course was a huge showman in our business so Jack McClellan so right do you miss it well not during covid though no i bet although it's going to be interesting because we're into we're actually now into the sort of post-covid period uh where it wasn't just people who were reading books as a result of COVID. It was authors writing books as a result of COVID, of being, you know, in a remote location, in their homes, and they sat down and they were writing. So we're probably just on the, really on the verge of seeing some of that material come out.

It'll be interesting to see what it is and what it may say about our times. It will be. No question. All right, Brad. Listen, thanks for doing this, and good luck in your monitoring of the book events. I know you're out in, what, Prince Edward County

that you're living in? Yeah. You've turned one of the old barns on your property into a library, The book events, I know you're out in, it's what, Prince Edward County that you're living in? Yeah. You've turned one of the old barns on your property into a library, so you're surrounded by your books. You must be happy with that. That's right. Okay. Good to meet you, Peter.

Yeah. Take care, Brad. Thanks. Well, there you go. Brad Martin. He was called by some the most powerful man in the book business in Canada. And he certainly showed that through his years at Penguin Random House, and he still keeps an eye on things from his barn in Prince Edward County. Clearly, at the end there, we were having a little problem with the feed

on the Zoom call that we connected on, and there was a bit of internet banging back and forth there, so sorry about that. But I think you got the general gist of it, and a good sense of where things kind of are in the book business. I'll tell you one thing. If they tried to get me to promote my book by running up and down Yonge Street in a tow gun, I don't think that would have happened. But it was funny to hear Brad tell that story about Jack McClellan doing something just like that many years ago. And Jack was a character, and there are some good books out there about Jack McClellan,

so you might want to read those. Okay, we have time for a couple of end bits, and we'll get to them right now. This is the time of year when the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, and other dictionaries as well, but Merriam-Webster Dictionary is known for this, they add words to the dictionary. And you'd be shocked how many they actually add. This year they've added 370 new words, or what they have determined are words, words that need to go in a dictionary and be defined.

Some of this year's new words, shrinkflation. We are in the era of inflation. And as a result of inflation, some things are shrinking, right? So you see the size of certain packages, but like a carton of orange juice. The example they use in this story from CBS is a carton of orange juice no longer available in 64-fluid-ounce cartons, just 59 ounces. So in that way, they don't have to, you know, at a time of inflation,

the price goes up, but at a time of shrinkflation, the package goes down. So you know who's getting screwed on this deal. It ain't the orange juice company. Anyway, shrinkflation is in there as a new word. Subvariant. Thank you, COVID. Thank you, COVID.

We have a new word, subvariant. Thank you, COVID. Thank you, COVID. We have a new word, sub-variant. And this one, I see why am I. That's now a word. You know what that means. I see why am I. In case you missed it, it's the short form. But we've decided it, too, is a word. I'm not going to run through the whole list of these. But get the picture. 370 new words in the Merriam-Webster dictionary.

And as you probably are saying right now, but Peter, what about Scrabble? Are they accepting new words at Scrabble? Well, funny you raise that. Because ABC News has a piece on that. There are about 500 new words that are accepted by Scrabble. So in other words, you know, you can put them down on the board and they're okay. You can, you know, if you're challenged, you can now prove that it's okay to use these because Scrabble says so itself. So if you're a Scrabble player,

you know you can't have many more than eight letters in a Scrabble word. So what are some of the new ones in Scrabble that are out? I'm looking through this ABC report. Some of them are just, you know, like ludicrous. They've decided that you can turn verb into a verb. The word verb, the noun verb. You can turn into a verb by adding letters.

So, verbed is a word. Verbing is a word. Now, come on, really? The faux hawk, that's a haircut similar to a mohawk. Now, that's potentially the highest scoring new word. Embiggen, a verb meaning to increase in size. Embiggen is one of the unexpected new words. Here's a sample sentence using embiggen. I really need to embiggen that Scrabble dictionary

because, of course, that is something you'd say often, right, during the day. You talk about embiggens. Compound words are on the rise, rise too in the Scrabble dictionary. Dead name, page view, fintech, alloship, babymoon, and subtweet. Oh, I've enough already. This is where games get out of hand. Right?

At least I think so. Okay, here's the last one. And you're all going, yeah, yeah, Peter, thank you, last one. Each year, we've done this. This shows you how long we've been doing the bridge, because I think this is the third time this has come up. This comes out usually, the report on this comes out once a year. It's from a company called NordPass. They list the most common passwords that are used out there to try and get you to actually change your password, because there are some really common ones that take no time for a hacker to break into.

In fact, the 10 top passwords in Canada, nine of them take less than a second for a hacker to figure out. Less than a second. So here we go. The number one password in Canada, 123456. That's really original. The number two password in Canada is password. The number three, 54321, and it goes on. Of the top 10, the only one that takes more than a second to break through is the number five rated password in Canada. And it takes 10 seconds for a hacker to break it down. What is it, you say?

Guest. G-U-E-S-T. Guest. All right. So who says you don't learn something from the bridge? I've expanded your vocabulary and your dictionary use. I've expanded your ability in Scrabble. And I've shown you why that password of 123456 is probably time to change it.

Not only that, but of course, everything you wanted to know about the book business and more, because I'm sure I'll get letters at the Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com saying, why didn't you ask this question about the book business? And you'll be right. Why didn't I ask that question? That's it. That's question? That's it. That's all.

That's it for Monday. Tomorrow, Brian Stewart will be by, the latest on the Ukraine story. And what other little end bits we may have to share with you. Wednesday, Smoke Mirrors and the Truth with Bruce Anderson. Thursday, The Random Ranter joins us again, along with your turn, your letters. So your thoughts, send them to that email address. Friday, of course, is Good Talk with Chantelle Hebert and Bruce Anderson. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening.

We'll talk to you again in 24 hours.