Hachette

A publisher's job is making people want one book among 200,000 new ones. Hachette sells about 220 million books a year for roughly $3.5 billion in revenue. CEO David Shelley describes the work as getting bookstores to stock a book, press and podcast coverage, advertising, improving the book itself, and shipping.

Its Indiana warehouse of about 400 people ships roughly 150 million books a year to 220 countries. Hachette runs both the US and UK businesses and offers a wide range of imprints and deal types.

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Production quality and special editions are part of why readers want a book. Hachette's manufacturing teams pick top printers, paper and type, and work to stop cover colors fading in sunlight. Romance and fantasy drive a trend for sprayed edges, or 'spredges', such as a Twilight edition showing Bella when the pages flip one way and Edward the other.

Shelley says the deckled edges of Lemony Snicket drew in a reader who then read the whole series. He calls self-publishing a great option but unlikely to match this level of production.

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Publishing returns come from a tiny share of hits nobody can pick in advance. Only 35 of 100 books turn a profit, and the top 4% of profitable books generate 60% of profitability. Where the Crawdads Sing came with a small advance and became one of the best-selling books of the last 20 years.

Shelley cites the Hollywood line 'no one knows anything'. "Even if you get rejections from all the houses, that doesn't mean that your work won't find an enormous audience."

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A cover must make a stranger pick the book up within seconds. Average dwell time at a table of books is two to three seconds, so the most beautiful cover may not be the one that pops. Shelley treats the cover as a Trojan horse that gets the book into hands even if it doesn't represent it literally.

James Patterson, whom Shelley calls the biggest marketing genius he has worked with, uses the test 'I see it, I want it'.

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Argue about covers in terms of sales, not taste, and say it plainly. Shelley wants near 'radical candor' and welcomed authors who said they hated a cover; arguments like 'I don't like green' miss the point. The question is "how can we sell the maximum number of copies?"

Rudeness can damage the relationship, but a polite, direct point rarely does; he finds British indirectness exhausting and likes New York directness. When an author's goal isn't maximum sales, one compromise is a beautiful hardcover for literary reviewers followed by a paperback built to sell. Agents can mediate, telling an author a disliked cover may sell more, or telling the publisher a cover is bad.

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The right editor is worth more than a bigger advance. A thriller author took about $10,000 less to work with an editor who said "I know exactly what I think you should do with this ending." The reworked ending became the most praised part and the book sold a million copies.

By contrast, a celebrity memoir took the biggest offer with no plan for the book, and it sank.

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Meet every bidding editor and publicist and look for chemistry. Authors work intensively with an editor, sometimes for decades, so Shelley urges meeting each one to see if they get what you're trying to do. "You want a soulmate."

He says he has spent more time with some authors than with good friends and has been to their weddings.

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Hachette signs self-published authors after their books prove themselves. Callie Hart's self-published novel Quicksilver did enormously well, and Hachette signed her as one of its biggest authors. Shelley says some of Hachette's biggest authors began self-published and that self-publishing is surprisingly cost-efficient.

Hachette's digital-first imprint Bookouture takes direct submissions, publishing ebook and audio first and adding print if a book does well. In 1997 a refusal left writers nowhere to go; digital publishing has since brought more startups than at any point in his career.

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Agents add value through matching and negotiation, not better judgment. Direct submissions to big houses are now rare because editors lack time, so agents are the usual gateway. Their hit rate is no better than publishers', and many authors succeed without one.

A good agent knows which editor and house suit a book, negotiates the deal and royalties, and often handles film and translation rights.

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Writers should pick lasting art or wide reach, then act consistently. Artist-first writers should ignore the market and let an agent pitch what is new, since Shelley has seen commercial thinking dilute such writers' art. Reach-first writers should study bestseller lists, covers and reviews, as Lee Child did when choosing an agent known for launching big commercial authors.

Ronald Firbank privately printed experimental 1920s novels that proved important but still have a small readership. Shelley sees wide reach as artistic too: Hessayon's plain gardening guides sold millions and still sell because he explained gardening better than anyone.

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