Crazy publishers

But it's a big risk to chuck loadsamoney at marketing a new or untried writer that may bomb. I think they sit back and hope that word of mouth will work on the newbies. From what some of the speakers at the Letters Academy said, don't underestimate word of mouth for rocketing some new writers into the charts.

Word of mouth is the best way to get sales. Look at most entertainment. Look at new musical stars like the White Stripes..their debut album got into top ten and most people haven't heard of them..word of mouth Take Ace Ventura for instance. No-One knew of Jim Carrey. A few people wanted to see a comedy and then realised how good it was etc..now he is a massive star. The same goes for most new writers. I am on the side of giving the public what they want in a novel and then once you have a credible fan base you write what actually you want to write about. Sell out to get your art across. Just my opinion

I read somewhere that a couple of the big publishers (Random House?) are having big problems because they haven't made back the advance money from some of their new writers. Maybe their real problem is that they've become detached from what people want to read (possibly because publishers now rely a lot more on agents rather than having their own submissions departments). Word of mouth -- yeah, I'm with you there. An Australian author called Matthew Reilly self published a book then got whatever free press he could (local newspapers and radio stations) and then word of mouth helped him sell enough books to help him get noticed by Pan Macmillan.

I think it was Antonia Hodgson from Little Brown who at the Academy cited Captain Correlli's Mandolin, Bridget Jones' Diary and White Teeth as all working from word of mouth rather than large marketing dosh.

James Redfield's "The Celestine Prophesy" was initially self-published and promoted through word of mouth. It's now sold ..... well, I don't know, lots I suppose.

What I can't get is books and films. Each cost roughly the same per ticket, so they get the same income per purchaser (where there's a difference, it is the books cost more.) But the cost of producing a book, as we've seen is reasonably low- you can produce a book in large volumes for fifty thousand pounds. Can you even shoot a minute of film for that ? Thirty seconds, ten seconds ? It costs you fifty grand to produce a book, yet if you make a film for eight million pounds, it is 'low-budget'. Even a little bit of maths brains shows you then that you make more profit out of selling a book than you do out of selling a cinema ticket. (Even if booksellers take twice the cut that the cinemas do) So why do people make films (expensive, labour intensive, involving huge amounts of people working together, need a lot of cash and time to get them off the ground) as opposed to books (need one person with a word processor to write it, maybe a few others to dress it up nice and market it, initial costs very low, when you have the final draft of the book you're good to go, whereas a film script is just a jumping-off point). The answer must be volumes, that more people go to the cinema than buy books. That's probably true. But in the sort of numbers that are needed to turn the huge initial costs into profit ? What were three big films this year, probably the biggest ? Bridget Jones, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings...

Hello I used to work in a cinema and fyi they take 2% of the the profit on cinema tickets. That is why the popcorn costs so much. If it was based on cinema tickets, they'd all be closing down. Lord of The Rings and Harry Potter are much bigger sellers than Bridget Jones. I think LOTR will sell more than the other two.