How Coronavirus impacts authors

Several years ago, I ghostwrote a book on what might have been the Ebola outbreak of the early 1990s. That experience taught me quite a bit about our nation’s and the world’s lack of preparedness for an epidemic, a pandemic such as the Coronavirus outbreak. You’ve been seeing all sorts of reports, tweets, status updates. Everything from the Coronavirus is nothing worse than the flu to we’re all gonna die. As far as I know, I’m the first publishing industry professional to come out and talk about how you as an aspiring author who’s thinking about publishing a book, how Coronavirus is going to affect your ambitions and what you can do to prepare to make sure that you can experience commercial success even during what might be a pandemic.

In order to find out how the Coronavirus could affect writing and publishing a book, we’re going to look at a few examples from history. It’s true that history cannot repeat and does not repeat because variables change. Circumstances are different. But what does not change is human nature. In times of economic stress and even during epidemics, there are specific consumer behaviors that we’ve noticed in the past that I believe we can look at to predict what’s going to happen in the future. I’m not saying you completely throw out the book idea you have and alter your publication plans. What I am saying is that in the event that the Coronavirus does in fact become a pandemic, that as the CDC says, severely disrupts our day-to-day lives, you will be prepared in the same way that you should be stockpiling nonperishable food. You should be preparing your book for the worst-case scenario of the Coronavirus.

What might surprise you is that the worst-case scenario for authors isn’t actually that bad. If we go back and look at various recessions and even depressions in our history, here is exactly what we find. During the 2003 SARS outbreak, what’s interesting is that partisan political books reigned on the bestseller lists. When we go over to fiction, we see something very interesting. We see adventure, mystery, murder, and mayhem atop the fiction bestseller charts. Politics is the new entertainment, so it shouldn’t surprise us that people want to be entertained. They want to escape from the fears, the worries, and the concerns of potentially deadly outbreak. During the 2014 Ebola outbreak, look at what sold particularly well. Interestingly enough, self-help books. What better time to help yourself than when the world’s falling apart? The reason why economists are predicting a recession because of the Coronavirus is not because of the number of deaths potentially or even cases of Coronavirus.

It’s the supply chain. As journalists like Mike Cernovich have noted, look at the change in shipments on all sorts of popular technology products. The supply chain internationally is falling apart. Fortunately, that does not affect ebooks or audiobooks, sales of which continue to rise. Audiobooks now account for 20% of all book sales and are more than 50% of best sellers. One of the recommendations of public health experts in the coming weeks and months is to avoid as much person to person contact as possible to reduce risk of transmission of the Coronavirus. That probably means the bookstores that are on their last leg are going to fall off that leg. Digital book sales, both of ebooks and audiobooks, and of print on demand books I believe will continue to hold strong and in certain categories skyrocket. During the last three recessions, journalists have noted that books are a recession-proof industry. Eating out, traveling, and other leisure activities have plummeted during recessions. And obviously in a situation where there’s concerns around travel, the disease being spread from country to country, travel has already fallen off a cliff, so I would not recommend that you write a travel book at this time. The fact is, entertainment spending, specifically, buying books, does not decrease during an economic contraction. For people worried about finances, job security, the health of their families, they want to escape, and fiction and nonfiction allows them to do that quickly and cheaply.

From 2008 through 2010 during the Great Recession, two of the book categories that sold particularly well were romance and of course politics. Romance offers a happy ending or romantic escape into a new world where everything works out and there is exciting tension. Expect romance to sell very, very well during the Corona outbreak. Well, what if you’re not writing a romance novel? Interestingly enough, you can work romance into your nonfiction book. If you’re writing self-help, if you’re writing a memoir, if you’re writing on any topic that is about your own personal life, is there a love story that you can work in to the story in order to give readers that happy ending that they desperately seek in times of trouble? Funny enough, in the early 1930s, romance sold well as did men’s fiction that featured action and adventure and international intrigue just as it sold well during the 2003 SARS outbreak. Speaking broadly now, everyone wants to weather the storm that very well could be a Coronavirus-caused recession.

We want life to stay normal as much as possible. That means that if you as an author are able to address many of the concerns that people have about person-to-person contact, travel, and health concerns with the content of your book, you will be positioned for commercial success. For example, one of the top recommendations of the CDC is to transition from working in an office to telecommuting. Let’s say you’re writing a sales book. If you’re used to prospecting in person, meeting with clients at their offices, even traveling internationally, perhaps you could work in a chapter or even a section on the book about doing all of those things in a tele meeting environment. For example, how do you meet with prospects when you’re not face to face literally, but you’re meeting with them via Zoom, Skype, or some other form of video chat?

What are the important nonverbal nuances that you can pick up when you are seen on camera? The point of this video is not to overreact but rather to prepare in the event that the Coronavirus turns out to be nothing at all. But at the same time, if it turns out to be as bad as the CDC is hinting. I’ll leave you with this point. What happens with regard to the Coronavirus, human nature is not going to change. People want to escape the humdrum of reality as well as the crises that come up every now and again. If you as an author are able to provide that escape for several hundred pages, you will be commercially successful with an escape into a future where your self-help ideas are implemented in their lives and getting them results, or you’re able to spin an enticing adventure with plenty of romance and intrigue along the way.