The Ultimate Bargain: How Your Novel Can Win as the Economy Loses

In a down economy, novels offer an unbeatable value proposition; authors win by doubling down on the "magic" of the medium—creating immersive, empathetic, and meaningful experiences that justify the reader's investment of time and imagination.

Every author holds a winning card: reading delivers an incredible bargain. More to today's point, the bargain improves as the economy worsens. High gas prices and low consumer sentiment should make authors more, not less, optimistic about their future. The idea is to double down on your writing efforts, particularly those features that matter to readers. We will save discussion of other economic advantages authors have for future posts.

To preview, your novel needs to build an easily imagined alternate world (science fiction or otherwise) in which the reader can escape their reality, empathize their way out of loneliness, learn some large or small lesson, or all of the above. From there you can take comfort in the fact that the demand for novels is solid if not steadily increasing. All your novel needs is to provide a better experience than its genre competitors to succeed.

A typical hardcover bestseller costs $25. Saying it takes ten or so hours to read yields about $2.50 per hour of experience. For comparison, movies are roughly $7.50. Then, at the higher end, dining out, live theater and sporting events cost around $50. Yet, on a cost per hour basis, streaming and video games, not to mention walking, decisively beat reading.

This comparison, however, doesn't capture novels' true value. Consider the bestseller's price with a nearly universally available public library card. Its cost goes to zero after some wait. Note: we, like almost all publishers and wise authors, are extremely pro-library. In short, readers are not sensitive to price within their range. Some rush to pay full fare for the hot new thing while others happily wait for a better deal. Thus, reading is a habit, much like smoking, albeit one that should be encouraged due to its individual and social benefits. This observation carries two lessons. First, short-term demand is largely fixed, meaning each novel competes for a share of a fixed pie. Then, second, making the reader's investment of time and imagination worthwhile is the path to selling more books.

Unlike the movies, video games and similar entertainments listed above, reading demands a substantial increase in time and effort. It's hard to describe this phenomenon, yet you've lived it. Consider the stimulus to start. Other entertainments appeal directly to the senses. We taste the delicately flavored risotto in a fine restaurant, for example. We see or feel the explosion in a movie or video game, too. And we pay for these feelings. Novels, in contrast, only offer words. Now for something really amazing: words sometimes produce the same sensations as the real thing, which our book Publishable Characters explains in detail. In brief, readers' imaginations turn the words into something real or better than real. This magic requires the right words, in the form of a coherent novel, as well as a major reader commitment. So, past money per entertainment hour, readers expect a payoff from the effort invested in bringing your words to life.

The words you write must build a story within each reader's mind. There's an unparalleled intimacy in this relationship that other media can't match. This intimacy comes in part from the vast choices readers face. Filmmakers produce about a hundred reasonably budgeted (more than five million dollars spent on production) English language movies a year. What counts as a big budget novel? Other than ad dollars, no one really knows. One could assign an opportunity cost to writing hours and add various editorial services; however, this accounting doesn't get at the question. As we'll discuss another time, it's still important. That said, money mostly shows on screen but words look like words whether from a crappy AI or diligent human creativity. A decent comparison would put the number of novels at over 150,000. A reader has to dig through this clutter, depending on genre, promotion and reputation, to find yours. They've made a non-monetary investment before opening the book.

Now comes reading. Try as you might to picture them, and you should, you have no idea where reading physically or mentally takes place. Did they have a bad day on the job? Is a baby screaming in the background? Perhaps they're nestled comfortably in bed or hanging out at the beach. Concerns like these should affect your efforts; we will discuss exactly how point by point to conclude. Interestingly, the scarce research done suggests that genre preferences or novel selection has little to do with reading circumstances. Further, the same reader may pick up a book to escape or to relax as the occasion demands. No matter what, the novel experience boils down to an individual imagining your words. This certainty underpins the discussion of value and allows us to loosely understand what readers want and please them. Let's focus on four aims, each of which may be something readers are specifically looking for and in combination will satisfy them all.

Because readers want to live a novel's story through its words, an author's first duty lies in avoiding confusion and boredom. Of course, confusion differs from tension. Try our retelling test before deciding you don't need any work along this dimension. Remember that you know (or should) your story backward and forward in its entirety and in detail by publication. Your audience knows little past genre on page one and learns more one page at a time in the sequence you provide. Many is the author who responds to confusion by asking the reader to trust that all will be revealed in time. Lose that attitude. Make sure the reader is onboard with the journey. They've already trusted you in general; going over that is too much to ask.

Here we mean escape broadly as opposed to a stress-free or happy time. Satisfying this desire calls for transporting the reader to a time and place that differs from their own. Often that displacement is enough. Genre covers more specific desires. Romance is obvious; they want to vicariously enjoy love and a happy ending. Horror readers demand a thrill and so on. Escape does require more intensity than the mundane life readers face day-to-day. For authors, this desire means thinking about story and relevance. Far from living life one moment at a time or being mindful (good practices that are easier said than done), routine fills much of your audience's lives. We wake up, eat and work, then sleep. Through time compression and other tricks, your characters' must live large to promote transport.

From Émile Durkheim on, researchers have noted the isolation modern life confers. Social media has compounded loneliness into an epidemic. AI interpersonal chats suggest a useful contrast. Some have turned to artificial companionship, imitating conversations in an ordinary life, for instance. Novels do the opposite, delivering real conversations in fake contexts. The former are delusional while the latter allow readers to experience genuine empathy. To the extent your characters come to life in the reader's mind, they behave like real beings. Further, your words, properly orchestrated, prompt understanding and empathy. We come to know publishable characters better than our best friends and often better than ourselves. All readers crave this interaction, the lonelier ones especially so.

At Bardsy, a novel's message falls under the heading theme. It's best to think of theme as the singular unique message your work sends the reader. For one, that formulation allows you to assess your writing's effectiveness by seeing whether the reader got the message. We don't want to be too literal, like eat your vegetables; rather, a novel's lesson is a little something the reader can take away that improves their life. Not to be too morbid, death, isolation, and the question of meaning face us all. Escape, the previous aim, offers a distraction; theme confronts these issues. Naturally, great novels do the impossible and distract while teaching.

Think of addressing these issues on your audience's behalf as you develop your story and put it into words. Only in that way will they find value in the experience and be satisfied with the investment they made, including however much your novel cost.