Engineering the Risk Out of Book Publishing

Is HarperStudio the future of book publishing?

That's what HarperCollins is calling its new unit dedicated to changing the high-stakes economics of the book business. This morning, I went to a breakfast hosted by Bob Miller, publisher of the imprint, and learned a little about his plans and thinking.

The idea behind HarperStudio, said Miller, is to do away with the "mega-risks" built into the system as it now exists: large advances, high marketing costs and, for books that sell poorly, the added expense of pulping unsold copies. In exchange, they're offering authors a 50/50 split of profits.

Miller noted that when he first got into the business, a hit title sold perhaps 100,000 copies; nowadays, a blockbuster sells several million, causing publishers to gamble more and more in hopes of a jackpot. HarperStudio, he said, isn't so much looking to manufacture hits as to find a consistently profitable middleground -- something publishers have largely forgotten about in their pursuit of the next Tuesdays with Morrie or The Memory Keeper's Daughter.

HarperStudio plans to publish 25 books a year at first, and has 17 titles signed up so far, the first of which will be announced in the next couple weeks. Sixteen of those titles are non-fiction, and the remaining one is what he termed a "fable." That's more by happenstance than by design, said Miller: Successfully launching a novel by an unknown author takes a bigger marketing push. (HarperStudio will try to save money by focusing its marketing efforts on web outreach, although Miller said its titles will get more sustained support than is now usual). That said, he said, they are hoping to do more fiction down the road.