According to Bookscan, Putnam has sold more than 125,000 copies of Karen Joy Fowler's sleeper hit The Jane Austen Book Club. It's a staggering amount, but it's also a sign of trouble, for one simple reason: the book is an anomaly. It's one of the house's few books where gross has far exceeded advance, and where the author's sales could actually increase in the coming years.
The company that has for years been an engine of profit for the Penguin USA machine is sputtering, sources say (and numbers indicate), as Putnam has a lot of money tied up in older authors whose sales are dropping. As president Carol Baron departs—leaving the world of full-time publishing at least temporarily—and editorial director Jennifer Hershey takes a job at Random House, Putnam is surrounded by more questions than perhaps at any time since Phyllis Grann became editor-in-chief in 1976.
A close look at sales figures shows that drops for Putnam's top authors are stunning. BookScan sales for the most recent novels by three of its franchise authors—Sue Grafton, Patricia Cornwell and Tom Clancy—are all off between 25% and 35% compared to the novels that immediately preceded them. (In Grafton's case, R Is for Ricochet has sold just over 240,000 copies, compared with the previous, Q Is for Quarry, which sold more than 350,000. Tom Clancy dropped 200K with his most recent novel.)
Part of that is related to a larger trend of declining sales for commercial fiction; sales for Michael Crichton's latest, State of Fear, have thus far fallen off about 25% as well, and Stephen King's most recent installment in the Dark Tower series has dropped similarly. But because Putnam relies so heavily on a certain type of repeat genre author, its situation is more dire. And experts say it's not like the franchise thriller author is dead; he's just elsewhere. Witness Dan Brown, whose upcoming The Solomon Key is expected to solidify his status for Doubleday and act as a repeat threat along the lines of Putnam's best. "It's really hard to pin this all on a decline in fiction or a decline in a certain kind of fiction," said one editor familiar with the company.
Exacerbating Putnam's problems is the fact that, despite the drop in sales, advances have stayed high. Cornwell was paid a reported several million dollars to stay after Grann left, and others weren't far behind. "It's like an aging ballplayer," said one observer. "Some of these authors are being paid for past performance, not future performance."
Rumors persist that Tom Clancy and his eight-figure deal won't be reupped, but, in some ways, cutting fading stars may beg the question. "The way around the problem is to be constantly developing new talent to eventually step in," said an executive familiar with the company. But "if you look at the lack of growth for Putnam's franchise authors, and the advances they paid, you'll see a scary picture."
The house is showing some promise in new areas, like socially minded nonfiction—Jeffrey Kluger's Splendid Solution and Morgan Spurlock's adaptation of Supersize Me, to name two.
And for its part, Putnam describes a number of commercial fiction authors who are taking up the slack of the fading franchises. Spokesperson Marilyn Ducksworth pointed to authors like Dan Silva and Randy Wayne White, though BookScan shows that the gains and the absolute numbers are far more modest. (Silva rose from about 54,000 to roughly 64,000 for his latest.) And smaller franchises like Nora Roberts (as J.D. Robb) and W.E.B. Griffin are holding relatively steady.
But Putnam has not proven as adroit in the surprise fiction bestseller à la the Curtis Sittenfelds or Jimmy Buffetts of other houses. Besides Fowler, the only bona fide surprise in any genre last year was Maureen Dowd's Bushworld, which also topped 100K in BookScan sales. (The previous year the house had the ultimate surprise: A. Scott Berg's Kate Remembered.)
Perhaps as a result of some of these problems, Pearson is expected to announce some back-office cuts at Putnam, as well as at other divisions, as part of its 2004 results announcement this week.
Questions about personnel also remain. Respected figures like Berkley president Leslie Gelbman are still there, as is the house's savvy commercial fiction editor Neil Nyren, who more than anyone else fits the Grann mold of smart marketing. But the house is choosing not to replace Baron, saying that Susan Petersen Kennedy, whose purview as Penguin USA president is quite wide, will oversee it. (Few insiders feel that is a long-term strategy, but asked if this would continue, Ducksworth would say only "She will be running Putnam." Ducksworth did say that the house would replace Hershey.) Petersen Kennedy herself declined to be interviewed.
So is this just a shaky moment in the post-Phyllis rebuilding years or something more endemic? Despite the alarms, many are staying optimistic. "It's still the case that nobody does what Putnam does as well as they do," said the editor familiar with the house. "There's ample evidence that the people who are there can turn out bestsellers. There's no reason they couldn't turn it around again."
