PubForward

Why Jack Reacher is Dead to Me

2011-01-20T04:26:00.000-08:00

I was late to the Lee Child game; I didn't discover Child and his flinty protagonist, Jack Reacher, until about eighteen months ago. But I made up for lost time. I've read everything in the series I've been able to get my hands on. I've borrowed from relatives' bookshelves, I've bought new, I've bought used, I've bought online, I've bought at Target. I think I've read everything in the series, though it gets confusing because not one of the titles is memorable and they all sort of run together. But I know I've read the early stuff before Reacher really gets defined (he doesn't have the clock in his head, yet, for example) and I've read all the most recent ones and I'm pretty sure I've read everything in between.

All that is just to let you know: I've been there. I have some credibility. I've suffered from Reacher fever. I've known the addict's pain.

I've. Read. Reacher.

But no more. I'll never read another one.

A flaw in the books--really, a flaw in Reacher--occurred to me recently, and has been gnawing at me, and it's the kind of flaw that works like the final brick in Jenga, where if you remove it the entire tower tumbles down and you have to start over but more often that not someone just sweeps all the bricks off the table and you have find something else to do.

Here's what I finally saw: Reacher doesn't READ. Never. He's about get on a five-hour plane ride, what does he do? Does he go to the airport bookstore like everyone else and get a new novel and some magazines? No. Nothing. He takes nothing onto the plane. Meaning, he's one of those people, the ones who just sit there the whole ride, staring out into space. Wasting their lives. Oh, sure, he's supposedly working through everything he knows about the mystery he's working on, tumbling the facts over and over in his mind, spending the entire trip consciously solving the problem. I don't buy it.

Or think about all those scenes--there's got to be at least one in every single title--where the bad guys are approaching and Reacher is just waiting for them. Waiting by himself, waiting with others, waiting with his love interest, but always waiting with some kind of arsenal at his disposal. But what DOESN'T he have while he waits? A book. A magazine. Nothing. The guy DOESN'T READ.

It's weird, too, because Reacher is clearly well-read. He's always trading with lady interests quotations from dead white French writers, or pontificating on the Latin derivation of someone's name (generally a weapon manufacturer)(and obviously the guy has read a gun manual or two over the years), or spouting a pithy observation from a classic just before a climax scene. He must have read at some point. He must have picked up a book years ago. He must have read vigorously and widely. So is he supposed to be that injured emotionally, that scarred from his military experience, that he can't pick up a novel now? He can't read military history? He can't read the Economist, for crying out loud, like everyone else does on a trip?

Every one of these books (well, until recently) ends with Reacher walking away--generally, walking to the bus station and hopping on the next bus out of town, no matter where it's headed. What doesn't he do before getting on the bus? He doesn't buy a book, that's what. So this is AFTER he's solved the crime and avenged whoever needed avenging and put the world back to rights, so he doesn't have all THAT to think over, and he's about to start an hours-long bus ride--a BUS RIDE--and he has nothing to read? What kind of guy IS this?

I'll tell you what kind. He's a guy I don't want to spend any time with. Either it's not true that he doesn't read, in which case Lee Child has created an irritatingly flawed concept, or it is true that he doesn't read, in which case he's just not someone I care to know. Certainly not someone I'm going to spend hours with in the future.

Jack Reacher, grab a book. Open it. Enjoy.

Because until you do, you're dead to me.

My Maira Kalman moment

2011-01-13T13:59:00.000-08:00

The other night my son and daughter and I were reading the new book from Maira Kalman and Lemony Snicket, 13 Words. (Much like the rest of her work, this book is wondrous and loopy and nearly uncategorizeable, made even stranger by Daniel Handler's typically arch prose. I loved it. My kids liked it. It's my theory that Kalman isn't really creating art for kids, that her books are the leading edge of a new genre that I think of as children's books for grownups. Anyway: End of review.) We made it through to the end, and then my kids (twins who just turned 7 years old) do what they always do when they like a new book: they asked me to start at the beginning and read it again.

So I did. When I finished it the second time, my daughter did a really cool thing. She opened her sketchpad and a pencil (these are usually within reach--she draws nearly every evening), grabbed Kalman's book out of my hands, flipped back to a particularly interesting drawing of a goat wearing a pin-striped suit, and started sketching her own pin-striped goat. While she sketched, we all talked about the paintings in the book, and what made them interesting, and what happened in the story--all the things you talk about with kids after you've read a good book--and she worked out her own little goat and it was this nice little peaceful family moment.

Then she flipped back a few more pages, to a simple painting of a large present, a cube wrapped in paper with a bow on top. She started to draw the present on her sketchpad, and of course did what every child does: she drew a square, then tried to draw the top of the box, which she knew to be another square...but of course the top square didn't fit the bottom square (it never does)...frustrated, she crossed out her sketch and flipped to the next page in her sketchpad and started again. Again, a square...and the top of the box again a square...argh. She crossed this one out too, and started to cry. "I can NEVER draw boxes, this ALWAYS happens," she yelled.

And so I got to have that great moment with her, the moment every artist has when they learn the first trick of perspective--when you learn that the way you know a box IS, is not necessarily the way it looks on the page--and I taught her the first, rudimentary trick of drawing boxes. Diamond shape, not a square...then three lines straight down...connect the lines...voila. Then she did it, reluctantly. The she did it again. And again. And now, she can draw a box, a present, a house, you name it. A fantastic moment in parenting, a great moment in fatherhood if not artisty, brought to me by the fabulous, fabulous Maira Kalman.

So my son was watching all this, my highly literal engineer-or-architect-in-training son, and he grabbed the book from his sister and turned back to the pin-striped goat. He stared at that goat. He stared at those pinstripes on that pinstriped goat suit. And then he burst out with this: "I can't believe they published this book with all those mistakes!" (Yes, he used the word "published," no, don't ask me how he does it.) His sister and I peered over his shoulder at the goat. The goat is perfect--Maira made no mistakes on this marvelous goat--we have no idea what he is talking about. "What mistakes?" his sister says.

And so he started pointing at all the little pinstripes. Look, he said, look how they are all wrong. And I looked closer, and I saw what he was talking about--there are places where Maira hasn't completely connected up the lines. Ah! It's a drawing, I explained, the idea is to draw lines that suggest forms to the eye, not to literally replicate every single line. A photograph does THAT, I said, a drawing isn't supposed to be exact. Do you see? Do you understand? It's not wrong. There are no mistakes. Maira is perfection.

He stared at the goat a little longer. "Well, to MY eye," he says, "there's a bunch of mistakes. And I can't believe they published the book that way."

So Maira, if you're out there, thanks. Oh, and you might want to keep practicing.

What Will the Neighbors Think?

2011-01-10T11:17:00.000-08:00

This morning I was putting the finishing touches on the cover of a poetry book my small press will publish in early March. I'm pleased with the collection, and was mostly pleased with the overall direction and execution of the cover. Not completely, but mostly; my design skills are still, shall we say, developing, and my Photoshop and InDesign chops are works in progress, so it's not always a straight line from conception to completion. But: practicing the craft makes me happy. (Often frustrated too. Life is struggle.)

Anyway, this morning I spent far too long trying to decide what color to make the shaded box around the back-cover blurbs. And at one point, I must have sat for five minutes, hands motionless over the keyboard, as I worked through an imaginary, long, vivid, and loud conversation with one of my highly opinionated neighbors about my cover color decisions ("Good heavens, why would anyone want that gob of mud on their book?" was how the discussion began, and went downhill from there as I defended myself with increasing indignance) before I emerged from the trance.

That's when it hit me: somewhere in my brain I was literally worrying about this neighbor and what she would think. About my art. About my craft. About something that I was creating and had not a thing to do with this neighbor or any other neighbor or friend or any area of any neighbors' expertise. Talk about a self-imposed neurotic barrier!

I'd guess that the imaginary neighbor's voice is just a stand-in for the great subconscious terror most of us have in letting go of our art. What will they think, will anyone like this, will anyone understand this, am I going to be the only one that thinks this is pretty--these are all fairly common fears most of us face. I just thought it was funny that in this case, the subconscious fear manifested as a long and detailed conversation.

So, the old cliche takes on new meaning, and is my new resolution: stop worrying about what the neighbors will think.

Why I'm deleting my Facebook account this weekend

2011-01-05T15:16:00.000-08:00

This weekend I'm going to try to delete my Facebook account. I think I've figured out the only satisfaction Facebook provides me--and to keep that satisfaction going, I'll have to leave Facebook for a while.

Huh?

First, what this is NOT about. I'll leave it to others to argue about the privacy invasions Facebook seems to inflict every few months. I should care more about this; I want to care more about this; but in the end I just don't. I can't get all Tea Partied up about it. I just can't. I respect those who DO care passionately about our online privacy. I just don't really connect it to using Facebook, which is a voluntary activity.

And I'm not trying to be contrarian. There's a thread of anti-social crankitude about right now--people not on Facebook are very, well, loud about it. Very PROUD not to be on Facebook. Very "I'm standing up to the man" about not being on Facebook. Again, I just can't get that worked up about it. To me, it seems pretty obvious that Facebook will play a part in most peoples' lives, at least for the next couple of years, until the next better thing comes along. (And it will. And people will look back on the Facebook fad in a few years and wonder what the heck they were doing wasting so much time on it. But good luck trying to convince most people of that right now.) In other words, I'm not taking a stand against anything.

Because here's what I figured out: the only thing I have ever enjoyed about Facebook is the reconnection with old (very old, for the most part, who are we kidding?) friends. And I mean, that initial reconnection that comes from a friend request. I like seeing the name I recognize, and the face, and knowing that this person who was once part of my life is still alive, and if not exactly happy then at least high-functioning enough to be able to create a Facebook account and search for my name. After that initial little glow...nothing. I admit it. I don't read all the little posts and comments and things. I spend so little time paying attention to any of it that I actually still have a hard time navigating around my Facebook page and I'm not certain there aren't parts of it or messages that I'm simply not aware of. But: I don't much care. Sorry. It's true. Doesn't mean I love all my old friends any less. Still do. Really: I do. Just...well...not enough to spend time every day (or ever) reading what you are doing. Does that make me a total jerk? Maybe so. But wait! Wait! Wait to judge me, until you hear my plan. (Then call me a total jerk.)

So if the one thing that I love about Facebook is reconnecting with old friends, it occurred to me that there was one GREAT way to keep doing that. Here's what I'm going to do: I'm going to completely delete my account. Then a year from now, or two years, or six months, or whenever I feel the urge, I'm going to RETURN to Facebook--and reconnect with all my old friends. It will be great. I'll get to feel that momentary glow all over again. We'll be friends again. All will be well with the universe.

And a month later, I can delete the account again, content for another year that all my old friends are still alive and posting. And so on, and so on, and so on, for as long as Facebook is Facebook.

I know, I know: brilliant. Thank you. I look forward to reconnecting with all my Facebook friends one day down the road.

NOTE JANUARY 19, 2011: I tried to delete the account; I think I've done it correctly. It's not that Facebook makes it particularly hard to delete. They just make it incredibly easy to slip up and reinstate the account. They say it takes about two weeks to "process" the deletion request. And if you accidentally log in, or utilize any of the partnered sites using your Facebook user name and info, you automatically override the deletion request and they pretend you never tried to delete the account in the first place, and you have to start all over again. It looks like my account still exists, though I can't check it any more.

Jason Epstein's "The Rattle of Pebbles," ten years on

2010-10-28T09:49:00.000-07:00

Some extremely smart publishing types reminded me recently of Jason Epstein's seminal New York Review of Books essay, "The Rattle of Pebbles." I vaguely recall reading it a decade ago (it first appeared in the April 27, 2000, issue of TNYRB) but only vaguely; I didn't yet work in publishing back then, so I suspect that it only made a sort of "oh, maybe publishing would be an interesting job" kind of impression. I've seen references to the essay over the years, but this was the first time I'd gone back and re-read the entire thing. I'm glad I did. It's a remarkable piece, perhaps even more so today for how prescient, how dead-on accurate it is in predicting developments in the publishing world due to advances in technology and to the corporate ownership of the large trade houses.

(If you haven't read Epstein's essay, or haven't read it for a while, it's worth the time. Here's the link.)

Epstein covered a lot of ground, assessing the then-current state of affairs in trade publishing and then predicting how trends would play out. He was writing at a time dominated by consolidation of many small, traditional publishing houses into larger corporate conglomerates, and he (like a lot of people then and now) was skeptical about the likelihood of publishing ever delivering the steady growth of profits and expansion of revenues that corporate parents demand. His essay begins:

"Trade book publishing is by nature a cottage industry, decentralized, improvisational, personal; best performed by small groups of likeminded people, devoted to their craft, jealous of their autonomy, sensitive to the needs of writers and to the diverse interests of readers. If money were their primary goal these people would probably have chosen other careers."

What a lovely characterization: publishing is simply different from other industries that make things, and once you eliminate the intangibles of small scale and personal taste and replace them with Wall Street-driven metrics you begin to lose the essence of it. Publishing is different, he's saying, and publishing people are different, and vive la difference.

Epstein describes how the focus on short-term profits transformed New York's houses, while changes in distribution and retailing changed New York's editors. They became fixated on best-sellers, on big books, looking for the one title that would carry the list rather than looking for manuscripts of high quality; the short shelf-life of new titles mandated by the newly dominant book superstores meant that a book had mere weeks to catch fire, and might simply be off the market within months of publication. Celebrity books, political screeds, fad diet plans--these were the spawn of the megastore sales cycle. (Of course, this trend reached its apotheosis about five years later. Speaking of Judith Regan, don't you miss her? A little? I do. She made me laugh.)

Back in the day, houses acquired for the long term:

"Traditionally Random House and other publishers cultivated their backlists as their major asset, choosing titles for their permanent value as much as for their immediate appeal, so that even firms grown somnolent with age and neglect tottered along for years on their backlist earnings long after their effective lives were over. But even the strongest publishers depended on their backlists and regarded best sellers as lucky accidents."

But less and less so. . .and with electronic rights to those backlist titles in question for most houses, the reliance on backlist revenues will grow ever more fragile.

Epstein saw ten years ago what many in publishing have realized over the past year or so: best-selling authors, the top ten or fifteen authors, the Pattersons and Evanoviches and the like, really do not need publishers--or, more accurately, that publishers need these authors and their bestselling titles far more than the authors need their publishers:

"Such name brand best-selling authors as Tom Clancy, Michael Crichton, Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and John Grisham, whose faithful readers are addicted to their formulaic melodramas, no more need publishers to edit and publicize their books than Nabisco needs Julia Child to improve and publicize Oreos. Name brand authors need publishers only to print and advertise their books and distribute them to the chains and other mass outlets, routine tasks that all publishers manage equally well. Should publishers cease to exist--a likely possibility sooner or later if not a certainty--these functions could be performed equally well by independent contractors, publicity agencies, and distribution services. . .[N]ame brand writers with the help of their agents or business managers may become their own publishers, keeping the entire proceeds from the sale of their books, net of production, advertising, and distribution costs."

But Epstein goes on to explain why the Grishams and the Pattersons remain in traditional arrangements with large houses: perhaps they really are getting the best possible financial arrangement, plus it's not in their agents' interest to break away from the assurance of large advances:

"To retain these powerful authors publishers already forego much of their normal profit, or incur severe losses, by paying royalty guarantees far greater than can be recouped from sales. As a result publisher's profits from books by these best-selling authors, if there are any after the unearned portion of the guarantee has been deducted from revenues, often amount to little more than a modest fee for services. Given the negligible value that publishers add to these assured best sellers in today's brand-driven marketplace, these fees are a fair reward. In effect brand name authors are already their own publishers, for whom their nominal publishers are a vestigial, nonessential convenience, beneficiaries of inertia on the part of agents who are reluctant to forego the security of a publisher's guarantee and unlikely to risk the next step by separating their fortunate handful of stars entirely from their nominal publishers. When the conglomerates tire of overpaying these star performers, their agents may choose either to produce their clients' books themselves or risk losing them to business managers who will do the job for them. . .[T]he business managers of of name brand writers need only contract with production and distribution services or make use of new electronic technologies to publish their clients' books."

And thus Epstein anticipates the small but increasing number of agencies that are already beginning to blur the line between agency and publisher.

Epstein then tries to imagine how and where books will be sold in the future, and again sees the demise of the megastore in the face of online retailing--but puts a happier face on this than today's prognosticators. Far from spelling the doom of the large trade publishers, for Epstein the end of the megastore signifies something else. To compete with online sales, bookstores will need to return to what they once were--destinations, places of intelligent discourse and a sense of community, no longer just a repositories of highly discounted bestsellers but places to browse well-curated shelves and serendipitously find new treasures.

"[T]o compete with the World Wide Web bookstores of the future will be different from the mass-oriented superstores that now dominate the retail marketplace. Tomorrow's stores will have o be what the Web cannot be: tangible, intimate, and local: communal shrines, perhaps with coffee bas offering pleasure and wisdom in the company of others who share one's interests amid well-chosen inventories where the book one wants can always be found and surprises and temptations spring from every shelf."

I suspect if he were writing today he would look favorably on the trend toward offering a wine bar or coffee bar within the store, and any other measures that enhance the feeling of intimacy and community.

I'll end with Epstein's own end to his essay. His valedictory describes how storytelling itself will change; again, it's marvelous and fantastic how prescient he was fully a decade ago, as the words below are still being written in blog posts today by writers and readers thinking through the consequences of new technology, formats, devices, means of distribution and creation, and the like:

"On the World Wide Web future storytellers and their readers can mingle at leisure and talk at length. Writers of cookbooks, garden books, regional guides, and other reference books and directories can, if they like, compose their tests interactively with their future readers. . .With books no longer imprisoned for life within fixed bindings, the opportunities are endless for the creation of new, useful and profitable products by Internet publishers. . .On the infinitely expandable shelves of the World Wide Web, there will be room for an infinite variety of books. The invention of movable type created opportunities for writers that could barely be imagined in Gutenberg's day. The opportunities that await writers in the near future are immeasurably greater. The obstacles imposed between readers and writers by traditional publishing technologies--a system of improvisations accumulated over generations from the vagaries and impasses of obsolete forms of production and distribution--will wither away. . .[O]n the World Wide Web publishers' tasks can be reduced to an essential handful: editorial support, publicity, design, production, and financing. For these functions size offers no advantage and at a certain magnitude becomes a nuisance. My guess is that future publishing units will be small, though they may be related to a central financial source. To the extent that writers deliver the contents of their minds directly to those of their readers over the Web as Stephen King has done, such traditional publishing wok as marketing, sales, shipping, and warehousing together with their bureaucracies and inefficiencies can be minimized and assigned to specialist firms. Book publishing may therefore become once more a cottage industry of diverse, creative, autonomous units, or so there is now reason to believe."

Lauren Child profile

2010-10-24T04:32:00.000-07:00

Nifty profile of Lauren Child in the Guardian a couple of weeks ago. The article focuses mainly on the Charlie and Lola stories, because a new one comes out soon (Charlie "loses it a bit" with Lola for once, Child promises), but her non-Charlie and Lola stories are the ones that have been in heavy rotation in my house the past few weeks ("Princess and the Pea" and "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Book?").

She seems every bit as charming as her books. Go check it out.

What I learned from Matisse

2010-10-19T12:09:00.000-07:00

This summer's fantastic Matisse show (I saw it when it premiered here in Chicago at the Art Institute; it later moved on to MoMA in NYC) was a revelation for any aspiring artist, whether the medium is paint or prose or anything else. Here, in no particular order, is what I learned from Matisse:

1. It's never too late to begin, and it's never too late to search for (and find) your own voice.

2. The best way to learn is by observing the masters, even copying them, until you can find your own voice.

3. The most brilliant and talented artists who ever lived are their own harshest critics.

4. Even the most brilliant and talented artists make a lot of mistakes. What separates them from the rest is a willingness to recognize a mistake and rework the idea, over and over again, until fully (or at least acceptably) satisfied with the final product.

5. It's okay to have multiple projects in multiple genres in process simultaneously.

6. It's okay to work in a genre intensively for a year or years, then switch genres, and to repeat this indefinitely for an entire lifetime.

7. The most brilliant and talented artists are intensely aware of what their peers were producing, so that they can respond to, incorporate, build upon, reject, or even mock the common trends of the day.

The New York Times and engagement

2010-05-06T10:56:00.000-07:00

What I want from the New York Times:

fearless, wide-ranging reporting
clear, lucid writing
reasoned, skeptical analysis
perspective
objectivity
journalistic ethics
the ability to throw twenty bodies at a breaking story in order to cover it from every angle
the ability to allow a team of reporters not to publish a word for weeks in order to go deep on a single story

What I don't want from the New York Times:

"a tighter emotional bond"
"users who write reviews for us"
"users who actively help one another by answering their questions"
an "essential emotional bond that will lead to real engagement in an interactive setting"
"deepening...integrations with Facebook and Twitter"
"having outside contributors curate and create for Times Topics"
"badging...including user photos and other identity-based design cues"
"new fun, whimsical interfaces"

And yet, all the phrases in quotes above are taken directly from a recent speech by Martin Nisenholtz, the senior vice president for digital operations of the New York Times, to the Wharton School's Future of Publishing conference. He's describing all the initiatives either planned or under consideration for the Times online.

The new conventional wisdom is that the future of publishing lies with engagement with readers; that future viability requires forming an emotional connection borne of authentic interactions with readers; that publishers must publish in, of, and for a community.

I don't disagree--in almost every case. But I can think of one big exception: in the future, truly superlative content and curation will trump the soon-to-be-common mashup of crowd- and community-based content. And I think people will be willing to pay significantly more for it. There will be so few truly trustworthy sources that those which remain will be able to command a premium.

Oxford University Press has realized this, at least in a small way: they'll offer their curated bibliographies for sale to libraries and researchers. In a world where a Google search pulls in literally millions of resources, a bibliography assembled by the finest bibliographers in the world is quite valuable--valuable because it's reliable, because it's something to be trusted, because it implies that all those millions of cites have been analyzed already and the unhelpful leads scrubbed away by people qualified to make those kinds of decisions.

The Times is similarly situated as a deliverer of today's news. There's no other newspaper that comes close to delivering consistently the high-quality reporting and analysis of such a wide variety of subjects as the Times (the Wall Street Journal comes very close, but with a less expansive topical reach). That's all I want from the Times--I want it to continue to be an authoritative source, a beacon of objectivity in a sea of foamy social media commentary, something I can turn to for the closest thing to the truth a newspaper can offer without having to mentally filter whether the writer is a Times reporter or just someone who is "really engaged" in an "interactive setting." I want it to do the filtering for me. That's the value to me now, and the value to every other subscriber. The Times is putting at risk the most unique and valuable part of its value proposition.

We turn to the Times for a clear, deep explanation of what actually happened. And then we turn to blogs or Twitter or other sites for a secondary take on the news. The Times wants to combine these two activities. I say, by adding in the second, you cheapen the value of the first.

Jason Epstein's latest insight

2010-05-04T13:05:00.000-07:00

There's an interesting interview with Jason Epstein and Dane Neller of On Demand Books, conducted by Stephen J. Kobrin and transcribed and posted on the Wharton School Web site.

In it, Epstein briefly reviews two of his notable achievements from previous decades--initiating the shift to trade paperbacks in the early '50s, and his Reader's Catalog in the '80s, which arguably formed the conceptual basis for Amazon--and casually mentions his forty years of leadership at Random House. In other words, it's fair to say he has a bit of perspective on the publishing industry.

On Demand is the company behind the Espresso Book Machine; Epstein is the chairman of the company. The Espresso, of course, is the wondrous invention that can create a single paperback book in just a few minutes. I got to see it in action at last year's BookExpo America, and it really is something--you push a few buttons to choose a cover file and an interior file, hit "print," and the machine prints, binds, trims, and glues on a four-color cover, like something out of science fiction. It was quite a hit (almost as entertaining as the machine itself: watching publishing executives in suits down on their knees watching through the window to see the trimming and gluing) and has had a good year of adoptions by bookstores and libraries (I've previously posted that any independent bookstore with the space really ought to take a hard look at renting one of these--and early reports are that Espresso machines help to create a whole new community for the savvy bookstore). Until you've seen one, it doesn't seem like it could be real; once you've seen one, it's not hard to imagine any number of fun and creative (and profitable) ways to use it.

One doubt that has lingered about the Espresso goes to its essence: it creates print books. Isn't the trend toward e-books? Isn't that what the whole industry talks about endlessly, and everyone is preparing for, the advent of the e-book era? In that context, could the Espresso be an invention that has missed its proper era by about twenty years, or more--something that would have been a big hit at the B. Dalton at the mall in 1986 but scoffed at by Kindle users in 2010?

Epstein doesn't think so, and his spin is interesting: when you buy an e-book from Amazon or the other major retailers you don't own the e-book, you own a license for the digital file, subject to whatever restrictions the retailer and publisher put on the license (including, as we've seen with Amazon, the right to "unsell" the book, revoke the license, and remove access to the file). But, as Epstein puts it, "when you buy a physical book in the bookstore, you own it; you can do what you want with it." You get to carry a tangible object; you get to give it to others; you get to display it; you get to resell it; you can even read it. It lasts forever, and it can't be taken away from you. The Espresso machine is the most convenient way to convert all those digital files, all those long out of print and backlist books, into something tangible.

The interview is worth reading for other reasons, but I thought this was a cool insight. It's also a nice way of coming at the DRM debate--a slightly different direction than you usually encounter. Maybe one day, when the majority of book sales come from e-books, we'll put an even higher value on the tangible, fully ownable object, and we'll search online for the title we want then trek down to the bookstore to have a cup of coffee while we wait for the Espresso to crank out a print copy of that title.

Master at the top of his game

2010-04-29T10:35:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you come across a line in a novel so perfect, so beautifully crafted, that you think, "I'll bet that line made the author really happy."

Experienced a similar moment this past weekend listening to Ira Glass on This American Life. He did a crackerjack investigative piece on the new book by Steve Poizner, Mount Pleasant; Poizner, who is running for governor of California, portrays the Mount Pleasant high school as out of control, infested with gangbangers, and just generally scary, a portrayal to which the Mount Pleasant community has vociferously objected. Glass went to the school, tooled around the neighborhood, and interviewed a number of students, teachers, and parents, and concluded that Poizner's characterization was a fiction. In doing so, Glass stumbled across a singularly symbolic few seconds of audio, and was genius enough to know what to do with it. I don't want to spoil it for you, other than to say that you'll know what I'm talking about when you reach the "Music Man" moment...give a listen, this is a great piece.

E-book data, knowing your customers, and the alternative to Apple and Amazon (?)

2010-04-23T07:59:00.000-07:00

The keynote speaker at January's Digital Book World conference, Razorfish's global social media lead Shiv Singh, gave an exciting list of what will be knowable about readers in the future. We'll be able to tell what a reader of an e-book is reading at any given instant; how many pages she's read; where she dropped off; where, geographically, she's reading; what factors influenced her purchase in the first place; and on and on. It's the kind of data any acquisitions editor would kill for. Imagine being able to work with an author to "fix that spot between chapters 4 and 5 where you are losing your readers," as Singh put it; or knowing that most people read a certain kind of book at the office, or at home, or while commuting, in order to be able to make better decisions about content and packaging; or knowing that nearly all purchasers of a certain title or certain author's books learn about it in one specific way, or from just two sources, etc. It's a potential gold mine.

Only one problem. E-book retailers are going to know this information. And it's looking like publishers, long in the dark about consumer behavior, are going to stay in the dark.

The Ken Auletta piece in the New Yorker this week discussing the negotiations with Apple, and the Big 6 publishers' contentious relationship with Amazon, alludes to it: Auletta quotes an anonymous publishing executive and writes that "the Apple people 'had a much more agreeable feel than Amazon did. They said they would share some consumer data about buying e-books. We have no such data from Amazon.'"

But pair that up with this insightful piece about Apple's approach to mobile advertising from Frederic Filloux, and it seems pretty unlikely that Apple is going to share much of anything at all. And Apple's terms with the publishers are for an interim period anyway; it's unimaginable, to me anyway, that when these contracts are renegotiated in the near future, Apple will loosen its tight hold on consumer data (or cut better deals financially for the publishers, but that's a whole other story).

Quick tangent--I'll tie it together a few grafs down:

I've been slightly depressed after checking out this year's Book Expo schedule and plans. Take a look at the floor plan of the Javitz Center, and it's clear that there are going to be two very separate and parallel shows going on this year: the one on the main floor, and the one on the far end of the hall, where every major publisher will have a private meeting room. There has long been a separation of activities thing going on at BEA, but at least in past years meetings and business was conducted on the show floor, and there was a sense of the whole industry being forced to rub shoulders, if only for three days. Now: not so much. I'm guessing the editorial and marketing assistants will be manning the booths and stacking galleys, and anyone with any business to transact will rarely if ever set foot on the floor or interact with booksellers or librarians.

Maybe depressed isn't quite the right word. "Cognizant of absurdity" captures it better (I'm sure the Germans have a good word for this). What I'm seeing on the Javitz Center floor plan is an effort by publishers to remove themselves once and for all from the people they perceive to be their customers--librarians and booksellers. And the people who actually buy and use the products...you know, actual readers? Of course, they continue to be completely shut out. Not invited to the party.

Readers--book buyers--are so far removed from the consciousness of the major publishers that it's not at all a surprise that insisting on extensive consumer data from Amazon or Apple just wasn't a priority in the "agency" relationship battle. What a loss.

But also a potential gain for small and independent publishers. All this data will exist. The publisher that can find ways to obtain it (through direct to consumer sales, or by using an e-book distribution channel that will supply the data) and use it wisely will have an incredible advantage.

As I was writing this post yesterday, others were spreading the word about Facebook's new "like" strategy: you will soon see little "like" buttons all across the Web, and every time you click one, data about you and your preferences will flow back to Facebook to be aggregated with everything else Facebook already knows about you. I'll leave it to others to debate whether Facebook is turning the Web inside out, co-opting the Web, or invading everyone's privacy. The interesting possibility here is that Facebook is apparently willing to let user data flow back to the web sites supplying it--at least that appears to be the case with Pandora and Yelp, two of the initial pilot sites that have already implemented the "like" buttons.

What would a publisher need to have in place to take advantage of this, assuming it eventually will be a two-way data sharing street with Facebook? At a minimum, a community--one that's engaged enough to be willing to click the "like" button often enough to supply meaningful data. Content for that community to consume, either publisher-created or community-created or both. And preferably, a direct-to-consumer sales mechanism.

And if Facebook is willing to offer some unbelievably useful data to publishers, will Amazon and Apple rethink their approach? (Similarly, what will happen when Google finally rolls out Editions, and offers a suite of analytics for publishers as part of the deal?) This will be interesting to watch play out.

Battelle versus Jobs

2010-04-22T14:50:00.000-07:00

I love this open letter to Steve Jobs from John Battelle of Wired Magazine...for the insightful comments, that mostly call out Battelle and Tim O'Reilly, get testier and testier with them, and question their motivation for calling out Apple and Jobs.

And thanks to Fake Steve Jobs for providing the perfect reply.

A blind squirrel finds an acorn

2010-03-26T18:16:00.000-07:00

My wife will not believe this, but every once in a while I do get something almost right.

I just want it noted for the record that on February 6th I broke down the Macmillan-Amazon contretemps and ended with this passage:

...[W]ouldn't the savvy publisher take full advantage in the short term of Amazon's willingness to take a loss and pay the publisher more, and delay being included in the change to agency model as long as possible? To my mind, the other winner in last week's little fight is the last publisher standing, still taking advantage of the "old" model while free riding on the efforts of the other houses.

As Shatzkin and others have now noted, Random House is that last Big 6 house, standing pat and looking good.

Markus Dohle, I didn't know you were reading my little blog. Happy I could help you out on this one! :)

Kindle users are angry. Why?

2010-03-16T15:33:00.000-07:00

Several careers ago I was a labor lawyer. I represented management, and negotiated contracts with unions. The early stages of labor negotiations always began the same way: management's negotiating team of fifteen or twenty people would line one side of a very long table; labor's team of fifteen or twenty would line the opposite side; management would make a contract proposal; and the union would yell. And yell. And yell some more.

I learned very early on that all the yelling was important--that it was part of a process, that it let off steam, that it allowed the union leaders to go back to the rank and file and claim they had really let management have it. And that once the yelling petered out, we could get down to actually talking about the contract.

But I also learned something about yelling itself: when people are angry, you have to listen closely to what they are shouting about, and then listen some more. Often when people are yelling the loudest, the thing that's making them mad is different than the thing they happen to be shouting about; the words they are using don't necessarily describe the problem they are actually having.

I was reminded of my old labor negotiating days yesterday when I happened upon the Amazon page for Michael Lewis's new book, The Big Short. There's a whole lot of yelling and one-star rating going on in the customer reviews, from a whole bunch of really angry reviewers. If you listen closely, there's something new to be learned about what's actually causing the uproar.

At first blush, this appears to be simply another round of flaming, one-star reviews of a new hardcover release based on the lack of a simultaneous e-book release. This has been happening for some weeks now; the highest profile title I recall suffering a similar campaign was Game Change, which was savaged (as of today 216 out of 544 Amazon reviews are one-star--nearly all of them because of the lack of Kindle edition) from the day of its release in early January.

Many of the reviewers of the new Lewis book use language that would make you think they are furious with the publisher for delaying the e-book. Dr. Jose Lopez of Florida writes, "we should all as consumers start a movement to boycot publishers who try to bully us into buyng hard cover or any books." (I'm excerpting, but not editing, real comments.) R. Martin writes, "I would love to read this book, but the publisher won't let me get it in the format I want." And B. Dobson of Atlanta writes, "I think from now on, if any book is not available on the release day in Kindle format I will Boycott and refuse to purchase the book at all...even if the Kindle version is released on a future date. The Big Short is going to be the first one I Boycott." There's even this argument, from Ed Murton: "Does the publisher seriously think that all of us with Kindles are going to run out and buy the hardcover? Even 10% of us? I suggest 0%, but maybe that's just me."

It's all the publisher's fault, they are saying; if only publishers would give us what we want, when we want it!

But...keep listening.

The comments take a weird, unexpected turn. Commenters start talking about price points:

"I'd like to save some trees and read this on my Kindle. I'm willing to pay as much or more as for the hard cover," writes Robert Berridge of Arlington, MA. And B. Dobson goes on to make this savvy point: "I would suggest to the publisher and Amazon that a better strategy would be to simply put the Kindle edition at the same price as the hardback for the first month or two (or whatever seasoning period they want), then lower the Kindle price later. But make both editions available on the book release date."

And then they get to the heart of it:

"Why did Amazon, who sold me the Kindle, agree to sell the hard copy without a Kindle option? Shouldn't they show appreciation for the customers who invested in Kindle by insisting that publishers they distribute make a Kindle format available as a condition of providing distribution services?" writes A. Lichtenberger of Attleboro, MA.

In other words, it's Amazon that's to blame, not the publisher. It's Amazon who charged me $500 for this e-reader, locked me in to downloading only the Kindle format and only from Amazon, and now I can't get this book I want?

"Agree they are alienating best customers. They have to figure out how to do the Kindle release simultaneously and cut the hardcover publisher in," G. Claar of New York chimes in.

Which then becomes out-and-out open rage at Amazon:

"With 2 Kindles in the family, it is most annoying not to be able to get a Kindle version of a book. I've tried several times to get a current book and am surprised to not be able to get it. It's annoying. We're avid readers and frequent travelers so truly love the convenience of the Kindle. However, Amazon wants to force us to drag two heavy books on our trips. Why not think of your customers for a change rather than your bottom line as so many companies do today!" rants Ida Mousouris of Monument, CO.

And William E Burnett of Powell, WY, sees a bigger picture: "The past twelve books I have checked on are not available! Is it just me or am I seeing a Kindle trend here?"

What's the takeaway from these comments?

1. Readers do want electronic editions of new releases. There's no doubt about it. Publishers have got to find a pricing model that works for simultaneous release.

But more interestingly, if you keep listening:

2. Kindle owners are feeling a little feisty. A little put upon. A little irritated at publishers, perhaps a lot irritated at Amazon itself. Amazon is being blamed for the lack of availability every bit as much as publishers, and is identified as the party that could change the system.

And that's something I hadn't heard before.

Helping people find solutions

2010-03-09T12:38:00.000-08:00

Brian O'Leary recently wrote a post meant for association publishers, but broadly applicable to any non-fiction publisher.

He tells the story of how his car wouldn't start one cold morning this winter, and otherwise behaved weirdly when he tried to start the engine; how he went inside and Googled the symptoms, and on the first page of search results found a post on a car owner forum describing the same symptoms and diagnosing the problem; and (in typically wry O'Leary fashion) how associations should learn from his car troubles. The lesson, he writes, is in what he didn't do: he didn't go to the manufacturer's site and look up the problem to try to find an answer. Instead he relied on advice from another car owner. And this is the great strength of associations, O'Leary writes, allowing members to reach one another to solve problems.

The same applies to most publishers of non-fiction, and is yet another argument for why publishers must focus on vertical substantive area in the future. It's a truism that a person seeks out content in order to solve a problem. In the past the typical solution-seeker might have stopped in at the local bookstore to see what potential solutions were on the sales racks. But today, and certainly in the future, that person is going to first search online.

Co-ops and end-cap promotions and great cover design and all the other traditional ways to get noticed in a bookstore don't really mean much to the Google algorithm. Rather, Google gauges relevance, which increasingly can be thought of as engagement--engagement within a community, engagement within a conversation, engagement in a specific issue.

Engage a community, and people in search of a solution will find your products, because the community will point the way.

Learning from Ellora's Cave (Digital Book World continued)

2010-02-15T10:01:00.000-08:00

I've been meaning to write about my single favorite twenty-minute timespan at Digital Book World a couple of weeks ago.

Mike Shatzkin brought in one of the editors of a small erotic romance publisher, Ellora's Cave, for a one-on-one conversation in the morning plenary session on the second day of the conference. There was a bit of nervous laughter at first from the audience, partly because of the genre and partly because Shatzkin did a great job framing the issue (and the interview): how a handful of women far outside the NYC publishing mainstream have managed to do everything completely backwards from the large NYC houses yet have, in the process, gotten everything exactly right for their niche. The laughter was gradually replaced by an awed silence, as Raelene Gorlinsky, a charming and smart and unassuming woman, described with perfect clarity how Ellora's Cave has evolved.

Gorlinsky told the tale of EC's founding a decade ago by a writer--someone who wrote erotic romance stories, was told repeatedly that there was no market for such a subgenre, but who was convinced that there was a market if only she could reach it. Out of necessity (lack of capital) and out of a keen understanding of how her readers would want to obtain her stories, mixed with a bit of luck (she had a computer science background), she set up a web site and sold her stories as e-books only, direct to consumers, with no print versions and no distribution.

Year one sales were $43,000. Business has grown steadily over the past decade: annual sales this year are expected to be over $5M.

EC publishes erotic romance--basically, romance with a much higher proportion of bedroom scenes. Perhaps not surprisingly, the e-book format fits nicely with this genre--purchasers might hesitate to buy printed erotic romance books in a bookstore, but there's not much danger of embarrassment in downloading from a web site.

In other words, EC understands the needs of its customers and publishes in the format best-suited to those needs.

EC now publishes about ten new titles a week, all as e-books, and maintains an extensive backlist (why take an e-book out of print?) of over 2800 titles--and now has started offering its bestsellers as print books too. BUT they do it with a big twist on the norm: because they don't want print sales to interfere with their main e-book sales, print editions are released 3-6 months after the initial e-book. EC also now allows various retailers to carry their products, but with a built-in delay of at least a couple of weeks, so EC is sure to capture the initial direct-to-consumer sales for the most rabid customers on every new title.

And direct-to-consumer purchasers are well-rewarded for buying directly from EC: they receive roughly 50 percent off the retail price. The average price for an EC title on their site is between $5 and $6; on Amazon, the Kindle versions sell for $11 to $12.

In other words, EC has, through disciplined pricing and format decisions, retained its direct to consumer model, and thus retained control and profits.

Royalties are dramatically different than typical publishing contracts, too. Authors receive 37.5 percent of the cover price of e-books--yes, that's right, 37.5 percent. They receive a more traditional 7.5 percent on the p-book version. And royalties are calculated and paid monthly!

EC experimented with using Lightning Source and other POD providers for a while, but realized the margins just weren't going to work with POD at their low price point. So EC did something else completely counterintuitive: bought their own printing press. They now print their own books, printing to order when they receive orders; they do runs as small as 15 books, and have their own warehouse and fulfillment center. (For Amazon orders of print books, EC simply has loaded all their titles into Amazon's CreateSpace, and Amazon PODs their titles as ordered.) Having their own press means they can profit from custom publishing: they can do custom covers and special promotions with very small print runs, at a nice profit.

In other words, EC has tapped a whole new revenue stream by listening to their customers and offering their customers varying formats at varying price points.

EC's staff is roughly 40 people, of which fully 20 are editorial. Just think: a publisher that has its own printing and fulfillment, its own e-commerce web site, and is financially sophisticated enough to pay royalties monthly--yet half its human capital is devoted to editorial. Editors generally work offsite.

In other words: content creation is considered the single most important thing, and is appropriately funded.

It was a fascinating twenty minute conversation--I've literally thought more about the questions EC's model raises than just about anything else at this wonderful conference. Translating their model into a more traditional publishing model is now the challenge.

Amazon wins, Macmillan loses, and more

2010-02-06T18:41:00.000-08:00

The outlines of the conventional wisdom on last week's Amazon-Macmillan contretemps are already taking shape: most commentary I've seen falls somewhere along the lines of "Amazon had to be stopped; Macmillan took a huge risk and drew a line in the sand; Amazon blinked; Macmillan stuck to its guns and won."

I love a good David-defeats-Goliath story as much as anyone. This isn't one. And the winners and losers don't fall neatly along those lines. Here's my take on how everyone affected by this little dust-up comes out:

John Sargent. It's been a tough stretch for the Macmillan chief. Several months ago, he announced that Macmillan would lower the royalty rate on e-books, and was roundly booed by agents, authors, and the blogosphere. He has been quoted frequently enough about piracy to sound mildly obsessed; he sent Brian Napack to Digital Book World to deliver a disastrous, Ahab-like screed against pirates, calling for an industry-wide jihad, and was met with silence, about the only thing worse than boos. And then a little over a week ago he found himself in Seattle, making what he had to have assumed was merely the first overture in a renegotiation of Macmillan's e-book terms, expecting Amazon to reject his overture, sure, but to engage in a conversation...and not to hit the nuclear launch button as its first response. Yet faced with some really frightening news--its most important account gone missing, very publicly, without warning!--Sargent was absolutely masterful at working the press release war over the next week. His open letters in Publishers Lunch hit exactly the right notes with agents, authors, and other publishers, while seeming conciliatory toward (yet not humbled by) Amazon. And now that it appears Amazon will indeed concede a new agency relationship on Macmillan's e-books, Sargent is being hailed as the savior of the industry. Quite a coup.

Macmillan. So Sargent won last week. Did his company? Not that I can see. What Macmillan reportedly won was a new 70-30 agency relationship on e-books, replacing (for e-books) the traditional split for print books that's been in place for decades. (Remember: Amazon's $9.99 price point on new releases frequently means that Amazon takes a loss on each unit sold--publishers are being paid off the hardcover retail price, not the $9.99 price Amazon established.) When I first heard what Macmillan wanted I thought it sounded like an obviously better deal, but I've run a few scenarios on spreadsheets, and more often than not Macmillan actually nets less per unit in the end under the agency model than the company nets now. That's right: Macmillan has fought this fight in order to make less on each sale! This doesn't hold true at every price point; it doesn't hold true for every kind of book; and I don't know the structure of any actual Macmillan contract, just their public, "standard" deal. But it appears to be true often enough and at a wide enough range of price points that it's hard not to say that, in the short term at least, Macmillan has made a pretty major error, and is costing itself (and likely many of its authors) a significant amount of money.

Ah, you are saying, but under an agency model Macmillan controls pricing, and can tell Amazon that the price of an e-book must be higher than $9.99. Well, two problems with that. First, I'm extremely skeptical that Amazon will accept any limitation on its ability to discount. Second, Macmillan can try to control e-book pricing all it wants, but in the end the market is going to settle on an e-book pricing range that may or may not resemble the scheme Macmillan has in mind--consumers collectively will decide what they are going to pay, not Macmillan's marketing department. This entire strategy may look like a romantic "we must save our industry" notion in New York. To me, it just looks like a lot of money left on the table in the short term.

Macmillan's authors. This is an easy one: Macmillan's authors got hosed.

First, the buy buttons were gone for a week.

How'd you like to be Andrew Young? What a weird couple of years it's been for this guy: he was one of John Edwards's most trusted campaign aides, so trusted that Edwards chose him to keep the wraps on the ongoing affair Edwards was having during the campaign--holding the secret cell phone Edwards used to talk with her, coordinating their trysts, even at one point having the other woman move in with his own wife and kids for a spell. Young does what every American today would apparently do: he writes a tell-all account. Spends a year writing, editing, working with the marketers and publicists, planning the big launch, the talk show circuit, the cable political show appearances--gotta get that launch right, only happens once, can't screw it up...so The Politician comes out...Young does everything perfectly, the book shoots to the top ten on the bestseller lists...and then, WHAM! gone from Amazon, just like that. Can you just imagine Young's call to his agent last Saturday morning? "Well, yeah, I know, apparently the CEO of the publishing house had a little argument with Amazon last night." D'oh!

Or Hillary Mantel. Wolf Hall, substantial book, wins the Man Booker, great stuff. OOPS!: can't buy it on Amazon, sorry, don't know when it will be back up, well, maybe you could try The Other Boleyn Girl instead while we're waiting for it to go back up...

Second, authors are probably going to make less under the agency model.

The reaction from Macmillan authors (and authors in general) across the blogosphere has largely been hilarious (John Scalzi's great blog especially) but weirdly forgiving of Macmillan and overwhelmingly critical of Amazon. Not surprising: authors aren't usually great with a spreadsheet, but ARE really good with finding the storyline, and as I wrote above this story seems so much like a David-slew-Goliath thing that most authors aren't getting to the facts. Which are: a lot of authors lost a lot of money in this dust-up, and (if my financial assumptions are right) many will continue to lose money in the near future from the switch to the agency model. It's extremely complicated, with many factors and variables, so some authors are going to come out better--but just as many, especially authors of extremely timely or topical books that won't have much of a shelf life, will lose out.

Oh, authors, did you really think Macmillan was doing this for you? That's so...adorable.

Amazon. Let's review Amazon's path to world domination...er, domination of the e-book market. First: become the largest online book retailer. Second: create new ebook hardware, and understand what Kindle's predecessors lacked--the ability to immediately purchase any e-book from anywhere at anytime--and build that feature in to the hardware. Third: essentially CREATE a new market for e-books, by establishing a wildly attractive price point ($9.99) so far below the hardcover retail price that consumers see that they will pay for their new hardware just from the money saved on the first couple dozen book purchases. Sure, that price point is actually a loss leader--Amazon will lose money on many of those sales, and pay publishers and distributors as if those sales were of print books, not e-books--but it drives the sale of hundreds of thousands of units of expensive hardware in a very short amount of time, and locks all the users of that expensive hardware into buying from Amazon in perpetuity.

So: that brings up to perhaps six months ago. At which point a few things began to happen to threaten Amazon's e-book hegemony: a slew of new e-readers; multiple initiatives from Google; e-book outlets like Scrib'd and Smashwords; then the topper, Apple's iPad announcement. People talked openly about what would be the Kindle killer; if not the iPad, people seemed more to accept that Kindle was going to be a transition to something more. Amazon gave its first indication of knowing the jig was up when it rushed Kindle into the UK--it smacked of a company trying to squeeze the final drops out of a scheme it saw as having limited viability.

Yet Amazon had this problem. It had fought hard for the $9.99 price point for e-books. But all these other outlets--Apple's anticipated bookstore, BN.com, the smaller online retailers--were going to follow a different model: they were all going to an agency model, they were going to let the publishers set the e-book price, and there was the potential that they were going to have titles on those terms before Amazon would be allowed to have them. Along comes John Sargent, and voila!, the problem is solved: Amazon can move to an agency model one publisher at a time, maintain most titles at the same pricing level, slowly change the mix of pricing but not completely disrupt the experience until one day two years from now all of a sudden there are many books at $9.99 but just as many at a bunch of different price points--yet Amazon is not to blame for this switch by loyal Kindle users, it's the publishers that made Amazon increase the prices. Amazon gets to stop losing money on most e-book purchases, and actually MAKE money on every sale. And, oh yes, those Kindle users now have no reason to abandon Amazon--the publishers have ensured that everyone uses the same agency model and essentially prices everything exactly the same--so all the loyalty Amazon has purchased via loss leaders the past two years has not slipped away.

Amazon's handling of the PR aspects of this past week's fight seemed atrocious. But it's of a piece with their approach to e-books and their approach to individual publishers. They've already moved on--they realized six months ago that the Kindle was going to be just one of many e-readers, that their pricing probably couldn't hold, and that the agency model was probably going to prevail. This wasn't a fight to Amazon. It was a minor irritation, if that, one that didn't even merit a comment from a C-level executive. It took minutes to dump the Macmillan titles' buy buttons...and yet it took a week to restore them. That's no accident. That's a naked show of power. If you're the head of another Big Six house, do you really want to be the next to fly up to Seattle, just, you know, for a little harmless conversation? No chance. What this means is that the transition to an agency model will be relatively slow, and it will move on Amazon's timetable.

Agents. I don't pretend to understand what agents really have been pushing the Big Six houses to do on e-books, but my guess is this: agents want certainty. Agents live on advances, and advances hinge on accurate assessment of risk, and accurate assessment of risk requires knowing each of the numbers to plug into a P&L. And the unknown number has been the e-book price. If I'm an editor but I don't know the price an e-book will sell for (that is, if I don't know what crazy Amazon is going to do with the price), I can't know the net, to the publisher or to the author--so how can I calculate an advance and make an offer? I have to be conservative. There's nothing agents hate more than conservative offers. So moving to the agency model, even if it seems that authors will take a hit in the short run rather than continue to benefit from Amazon's profligate ways, means that advances will be healthier. Which means that agents will be wealthier.

The other Big Six houses, and any other publisher not yet going to the agency model. Hachette announced late last week that they too would probably pursue the agency model with Amazon. Eventually the agency model is going to be the industry standard for e-books. It may take a year to get there, maybe two, maybe less--as I said, on Amazon's schedule. Macmillan was willing to take the hit to go first; perhaps Hachette will go second; but sooner or later this will be Amazon's deal with everyone.

So: "fighting for the future of publishing" is no longer a reason to fight Amazon's willingness to sell books for less money than they pay the publisher. And the pricing of e-books is settled--or at least it's settled enough, it has a known floor, a known lowest driver of net that can be plugged into a P&L.

If that's true, then wouldn't the savvy publisher take full advantage in the short term of Amazon's willingness to take a loss and pay the publisher more, and delay being included in the change to agency model as long as possible? To my mind, the other winner in last week's little fight is the last publisher standing, still taking advantage of the "old" model while free riding on the efforts of the other houses.

There you have it--not surprisingly me and the ol' conventional wisdom don't exactly see eye to eye...let me know where I've gone astray in my analysis...:)

Harlequin, the MWA, the RWA, and how associations stay relevant

2009-12-14T04:43:00.000-08:00

I've been watching with some interest over the past two weeks the kerfuffle over Harlequin's new vanity imprint (for those not playing at home the short version is, Harlequin announced a new subsidy press imprint, Harlequin Horizons, to which they would refer rejected submissions; current Harlequin authors, furious that they would be lumped in with the roiling masses of self-published subsidy press authors, protested so loudly that Harlequin quickly changed the name of the imprint to DellArte Press, dropping any mention of Harlequin in the title; and then the Romance Writers of America and the Mystery Writers of America announced, also loudly, that they would be dropping Harlequin from their lists of approved publishers because their rules bar any publisher that offers vanity publishing services, the upshot of which was that (1) Harlequin titles will be ineligible for their awards and (2) Harlequin authorship is not sufficient to make an author eligible for membership in either organization (a potential author must have a book in print from an approved publisher to be eligible for membership, or at least a contract in place from such a publisher to be an associate member; neither organization accepts self-published authors as full, voting members).

I admire Harlequin as a publisher that understands both its market and its list of authors, and listens well to both. The company has clearly been surprised at this turn of events; in renaming the imprint, Harlequin clearly felt it needed to respond to its authors' concerns; but what's not clear is whether Harlequin will change course yet again in light of the RWA/MWA position.

What has interested me, though, is the reaction of the RWA and MWA and the strong, even overdramatic, importance they are putting on their membership requirements. My day job happens to be with a large membership organization--one that is fighting to remain relevant to its members, and is struggling to define its membership proposition.

My first thought when the MWA and RWA announced they were enforcing a zero-tolerance policy and cutting Harlequin off was, "How do you grow your membership by doing THAT?" Shouldn't organizations like these be trying to create more paths to membership, rather than fewer? If you start eliminating writers who write for a major (in the case of the RWA, THE major) publisher in the genre, aren't you putting your entire organization at risk?

But I've come to understand what the MWA and RWA are up to, and it's compelling. What they are each saying is, "We stand for something. Membership in our organization MEANS something." In both cases, membership means that the Publishing World has evaluated an author's writing and judged it good enough to be in print--and if you haven't received this badge of approval called an author contract, then don't bother knocking. Apparently, this proposition is so deeply felt that they are willing to follow it to its logical conclusion: if they have to reduce numbers in order to preserve the meaningfulness of the organization, then so be it. This is a gutsy, high-stakes act; in the case of the RWA, if Harlequin doesn't blink again and they end up folding from lack of members and revenue one day down the road, then apparently that's the preferred option over watering down the requirements for membership--the meaningfulness of their standards for admission are just that important.

Many non-mandatory membership organizations are going through the same analysis right now: what do we stand for? what is the membership proposition? what does it really mean to belong to our organization? Dramatically increasing membership numbers is difficult at best; the game for many is maintaining membership levels and enhancing member services to continue to stem losses.

But we now live in an increasingly vertical world. People still want to belong to a group or organization of like-minded people--it's just that "like-minded" is defined ever more narrowly. Large and broadly-representative associations may simply not be focused enough on the niches where people want to connect.

We also increasingly live in a world where authenticity is valued more and more highly. The wave of noise, information, and competing truths that washes over each of us each day makes many people long (often subconsciously) for simplicity, for fundamental truths, for purity of function and philosophy.

RWA and MWA have settled on that one simple, fundamental, core requirement and are being true to their foundational mission. My guess is that their membership levels will decrease in the short term (fewer authors eligible, so fewer new authors joining), but stabilize and possibly grow in the long term (membership will become more like initiation into a select band at the top of the craft) and that they will survive and thrive.

An astonishing Apple possibility: a whole new medium?

2009-11-03T14:38:00.000-08:00

So many amazing developments this week--among other things, Sourcebooks launches their poetry vertical (Shatzkin typically sums this up the best) and Google puts Garmin and TomTom out of business and sends shudders through the cell phone industry by announcing it will offer free GPS in Android phones--but the thing I keep obsessing about (and smiling about, and talking to myself about) is the possibility, the potential, the maybe just maybe this might actually happen kind of thing that Mike Cane at ebooktest has blogged about.

If you haven't read it yet, take a few minutes now before you do anything else and read this post. For anyone engaged in any form of content creation, for anyone who has tried to think about what books are going to be like in the future, this is really incredible, potentially game-changing stuff.

If this is true--and obviously we have to take any news or analysis of the Apple Tablet and Steve Jobs's next move with a HUGE grain of salt--but but BUT if this is true it's nothing short of a new medium. Books can be text plus video plus audio plus graphic design plus interactive web plus plus plus--basically anything you can imagine, all woven together in one app. A new creative experience, a new entertainment experience, new possibilities in story-telling, in how-to instruction...the list is endless.

Libraries, e-books, licensing and creative pricing models

2009-10-15T08:43:00.000-07:00

What an opportunity for publishers! That's the takeaway from the Times article this morning about libraries allowing patrons to download e-books. The Times claims a rising trend in downloads, and cites to small waiting lists for new releases like Dan Brown's new book.

Librarians are quoted as saying they are open to a new purchasing model; one suggests a flat fee to purchase the digital file, then a small usage fee every time the book is downloaded by a patron.

Of course, the possibilities are endless. What about variable pricing (such as a special library price in the hundreds of dollars per license or copy, rather than the same retail e-book price) with a license that specifies patron viewing time (limit to a certain number of weeks, or a certain number of downloads) and DRM/pirating protections? Or how about encouraging libraries to buy multiple e-book licenses bundled with the printed books?

You'd never know this is a potential gold mine from the article's John Sargent quotes. The Macmillan chief said:

“I don’t have to get in my car, go to the library, look at the book, check it out...Instead, I’m sitting in the comfort of my living room and can say, ‘Oh, that looks interesting’ and download it....pretty soon you’re not paying for anything.”

The result: Macmillan doesn't allow its e-titles to be carried by libraries. But wait: they aren't alone. The article goes on to mention that Simon and Schuster also does not allow libraries to carry its e-books.

Good. Grief.

Um, y'all running large publishing companies? The failing companies in search of a business model that works? The ones who are really worried about how large publishing companies will make a buck in the all e-book world that's almost upon us? Ya might want to think about how to make e-books work FOR ONE OF YOUR LARGEST SEGMENTS.

Actually, it's potentially even crazier than that. You have a market segment--library patrons--who don't want to pay for content. With print books, a publisher makes a one-time sale to a library, but the book is read by potentially hundreds of readers, none of whom send any revenue the publisher's way. Now all of a sudden there's the possibility of generating revenue in perpetuity from every repeated use of the book if that books is a downloaded e-book, by charging the library a microfee. Instead of monetizing a single time, you monetize repeatedly. Tell me this isn't worth an experiment!

Google book settlement: possible outcomes

2009-10-13T12:35:00.001-07:00

Paul Biba recently explained why he's against the Google Book settlement, even though he's for it.

I'm no mocking him; it's a common affliction these days, as we sort through the filings in the matter and the various legal arguments being made. In really simple terms, those objecting say that a class action lawsuit is no way to institute a book rights registry and revive orphan works--no matter how much of a public good that initiative might be. They are right on the law, as Biba asserts.

Something I haven't seen is a solid analysis of what would happen should this settlement fall apart but the parties keep litigating. Two possible outcomes: either Google prevails on its fair use theory, or the Author's Guild prevails on its copyright infringement cause of action.

If Google prevails, it keeps on digitizing books by the hundreds of thousands, it does build a modern-day Library of Alexandria, but with a catch: it will be able to offer cover images and snippets from out of print but still in copyright books, but not the full text, so literally millions of books will be findable but not readable in Book Search.

If Google didn't prevail...I shudder to think. If Google lost it would be because the courts didn't buy Google's definition of fair use--which happens to be how every news aggregator and every Web site that offers snippets of other sites' content define fair use. It's pretty inconceivable--but without a settlement it's still in the realm of possibility.

Brin's op-ed on the Google settlement

2009-10-09T08:46:00.000-07:00

Excellent op-ed in the Times from Sergey Brin today; he lays out the public policy arguments for the Google settlement, and doesn't even attempt to address the legal objections (perhaps because they aren't really addressable!) or specific filings with the court.

He's playing the right cards: this is clearly Google's best argument, and from everything I've read, the Google Books project was truly conceived as the utopian, utilitarian project that Brin continues to describe today. In the face of all the speculation about what Google will actually DO with all those digital files--corner the e-book market, offer POD on millions of titles, develop hardward, put your local library and bookstore out of business, end civilization as we know it--good for Brin to lay out in clear, simple terms the benefits to society of this deal.

Enough to sway a federal court judge to bend the class action rules enough to accept the deal? We'll know soon enough.

The Bookstore of the Future

2009-10-03T03:41:00.000-07:00

Herewith, my Principles for the Successful Bookstore of the Future:

1. In the future, the successful independent bookstore will carry a curated collection of titles.

The titles on sale at any indendent bookstore necessarily differ from those of a chain merely because of individual buying quirks. But for the bookstore of the future to thrive, or even just survive, buying will become more like curating: it will be an expression of the personal sensibilities of a sophisticated and broadly knowledgable buying staff, and the sensibilities of the surrounding community, with far less attention paid to the mainstream.

More and more people will be looking for the bookstore to filter out the chaff and offer only the finest, the most interesting, the highest quality. In gay neighborhoods, the bookstore will offer a huge and compelling selection of gay titles; in Jewish neighborhoods, extensive Judaica; in African-American neighborhoods, the best of black writing and publishing; etc. Bestsellers increasingly will be bought from Amazon or at Costco at steeply discounted prices; the independent bookstore will focus on niche titles simply unavailable at Big Box stores.

The curated collection will be an essential part of the experience of visiting the bookstore. Customers will come to recognize the kinds of books that a particular bookstore has to offer; curatorial decisions will define the store. In this way, the bookstore will in part resemble a high-end clothing or department store; browsing will be as much about being made to feel a certain way, of experiencing a certain aesthetic, as it is about hunting down a particular title.

As publishers shift in future years to imprints that are deeply vertical (the Mike Shatzkin theory), some of the bookstore owner/curator's work will be done by the publishers: imprints will mean something, imprints will be groups of books that truly belong together and complement each other, and imprints may even become lists that can be bought and even at times shelved together.

The curatorial problem will be assembling these vertical collections in a unique and compelling way, based on individual vision and reflective of the immediately surrounding community. Bookstores will become more and more unique, and fewer and fewer titles will be found in every store.

2. In the future, the successful independent bookstore will have significant revenue streams other than book sales.

Selling books will simply not, in itself, be enough to pay the rent any more (and for many, it hasn't been enough for some time now). Rather, a bookstore will need to draw significant income from a secondary revenue source. Food and beverage is the most obvious; wine sales alone can be enough to carry an independent. Installing an Espresso Book Machine and selling branded public domain titles, plus offering POD services to the community (as well as editing, layout, cover design, etc. services to the self-publishing market) is proving successful in bookstores already. Creative integration of a complementary line of products--travel, stationery, do it yourself printing/letterpress, crafts, pets, something unique to the locale--could be the answer. For some, of necessity, this has meant carrying used books. But whatever it is, there has to be some significant revenue involved.

On the edges, publishers are unilaterally eliminating returns. We see this already with dozens of many small publishers, and the larger publishers continue to toy with the idea. Most likely we will see increased reliance on nonreturnable POD as well as a stepped discount structure that incents nonreturnable orders and penalizes returnable orders--just stages in the evolution to a fully nonreturnable industry. As more and more publishers eliminate returns, per unit sales revenue in a given store will decline--there will simply be a greater emphasis on moving the last units, plus higher volume sold at last-ditch price as remainders, thus weighing down the average from the fewer and fewer units sold at full list price. (The greater buying challenge in a returnless world is solved in part by Principle 1 above.) Meaning, both the top line and the percentage of revenue derived from book sales alone is going to decline in a store over time, and the alternate revenue stream(s) will need to take up the slack.

The additional revenue stream(s) and the curatorial mission are intertwined; as the character of the store is defined, so the sources of revenue, and vice versa.

3. In the future, the independent bookstore will be a destination.

The local bookstore must become the kind of place where people sitting at home look at each other and say, "I'm bored, let's go see what's going on at the bookstore," knowing that something WILL be going on. There must be programming every evening. Generally this will be an author reading and signing, but the bookstore can also host and organize events like book club meetings, community issue discussions, debates, anything that will attract and engage a group of neighbors. The bookstore will be not just a place to buy books, but the center of intellectual life in the community.

Already there is a shift underway in the way that authors and publishers partner on a given title. Publishers prefer authors with the means and desire to appear frequently to promote the book; publishers prefer authors with existing platforms eager to receive a new title; and publishers are beginning to reward authors with more generous royalty arrangements. Which is to say, programming will be less about finding events in the future and will be more about carefully choosing from among many options.

Everything a bookstore needs to succeed in the future falls into these three umbrella principles.

The best example I've personally witnessed of these three principles in action is Books and Books in Coral Gables, Florida. Own a bookstore now, and struggling to keep the doors open? Thinking about opening your own store? Buy a ticket to Miami today and hang out a bit in person at Books and Books.

First, the curated collection. The stock feels more like a collection in a gallery. For example, the children's titles are segregated in a small room along one front wall of the store, and you will not find licensed products in this rarified space. Recognizing that many children's book sales are gifts, and refusing to turn over the children's inventory every few months like the chains, Books and Books brings in new titles only if they are as gorgeously iillustrated and well-made as the existing titles. (For an illustrated children's book lover, shopping here is outright dangerous to the bank account.) There is an entire room of art and architecture books; Taschen and other fine art book publishers have dedicated tables with titles face up, there are very high ceilings and stock displayed all along very tall walls, face out, and like the children's room, it's an extraordinary browsing experience. Even the fiction section feels like one is in the hands of a sophisticated, generous soul who knows and cares a great deal about contemporary fiction and has put out only the best of the best for me to consider.

Second, the non-book-sale revenue stream. The bookstore is wrapped like a large "U" around an open-air wine bar and restaurant, serving full meals and drinks and offering live music (trios, jazz combos, etc.) that complement the book browsing experience and the wine-drinking and dining experiences. Clearly the store takes advantage of geography on this one--an open-air restaurant won't work in most places--but the integration with the rest of the bookstore experience is what's really interesting. People do take some books out to the courtyard to browse, but not many; more common is that people will come in, have a glass of wine and listen to music and talk, then get up and browse the store or head over to the author event (see below). There's none of that dreadful feeling in the large Borders or Barnes and Noble cafes of being in a library, with stacks of books on every table and people planted there for hours drinking coffee and reading entire books for free. Rather, the ambience is cool; it suggests a pause away from the books, or even a place to hang out without even entering the stacks.

Thirdly, the store is programmed to the nines. One side of the "U" around the courtyard is a relatively large (for a bookstore) and permanent event space, with a small slightly elevated stage, microphones and AV equipment, and many rows of folding chairs. Nearly every evening, and some afternoons as well, there is an event. Usually these are author readings and signings, but often local literary events or book launch parties or anything else that will bring traffic into the store. There is so much programming that there is no way to repurpose floor space the way many bookstores do, by moving racks of books out to the edges to make room for chairs for single events; the space is permanent and dedicated to events. Books and Books appears to be the essential stop for any author on a large new release publicity tour, but they do events for all kinds of books and all kinds of authors--anything they think will draw an audience. Books and Books takes care of local authors so well that local authors come back and hang out, sign stock constantly, and almost make it a second home; granted, Miami is blessed with many notable writers, but still--taking care of local writers and creating this atmosphere would work anywhere.

There you have it. Evolve along these line, indies, or perish.

Espresso Book Machine and Google digital files

2009-09-23T06:39:00.000-07:00

Lost in the Dan Brown Sales Trackfest last week was a much more important longterm development. On Demand Books, the Espresso Book Machine makers, did exactly what they had to do to make the Espresso viable: they partnered with Google to gain access to the digital files of all of Google's scanned public domain titles.

This makes it even more possible that the Espresso is going to leap from sci-fi niche product to something potentially transformative (how's that for mushy speculation?) and means that bookstores and libraries have got to pay attention and soon.

If I ran an independent bookstore today I would literally drop everything and fly to Boston to see the Espresso in action, learn how it can create a new revenue stream, see how it can begin to create a whole new reader/author/purchaser community for the store, and think hard about how to put the Espresso to use. I would, at minimum, do the following:

get an Espresso ASAP
stop stocking the public domain titles from Signet and Dover and the other "classics" houses, develop a custom cover template with my bookstore branding, and sell those same titles as the publisher--doubling or tripling my profits per sale
promote the Espresso as a self-publishing dream, and offer self-publishing services like editing and layout and cover design as an adjunct to using the Espresso printing short runs of self-published books
hire one go-getter to oversee this new revenue stream and build it

If I ran a medium to large public library system, I would look closely at the Espresso in conjunction with the likely outcome of the Google Books settlement (well, likely until this week--now who knows where it's going).

Justice body-slams the Google settlement

2009-09-22T14:09:00.000-07:00

When a lawyer knows he has an extremely strong case--when he knows that both the law and the facts are with him, and that the court will surely decide in his favor--frequently that lawyer will become exceedingly patient, courteous to the nines, and deferential in language and tone; whether it's to avoid piling on or out of a subconscious karmatical desire not to jinx things through bad behavior, a lawyer who knows he's right and knows that the judge knows he's right is a walking talking polititude.

The US DOJ statement of interest in the Google Book settlement case is couched in just such gentlemanly language--and it serves to cover up the beastly legal body blows Justice is actually delivering. Read it here.

This had to be part of the mix as Justice held talks independently with the parties; surely lawyers for both sides heard this in private from the DOJ and have shifted course accordingly. Little wonder the parties are going back to the drawing board; there was no way they were going to overcome DOJ's stance.

Amazon pricing, Hachette's Nourry, and battles already fought

2009-09-11T13:11:00.001-07:00

Most unintentionally revealing quotes of the last week have to be those of Hachette chief executive Arnaud Nourry, quoted extensively in the Financial Times on e-books, their pricing, and how Amazon's $9.99 pricing is impacting publishers--and then those of the series of other publishers quoted in the days afterward (the Bookseller.com followup is here) denying Nourry's concern was widespread. Nourry, acknowledging that Amazon is selling many new releases at a loss at the $9.99 price point, looked beyond today's profits and said he could see where Amazon is heading:

"That cannot last . . . Amazon is not in the business of losing money. So, one day, they are going to come to the publishers and say: by the way, we are cutting the price we pay. If that happens, after
paying the authors, there will be nothing left for the publishers."

The flurry of other publishers, including Bloomsbury's Richard Charkin and others from Canongate and OUP, seemed to disagree with the dire outcome Nourry predicted, but not the substance of what he suggested; rather than worry about it, they seemed to suggest that the market would work things out. (Rather amazing, in light of the past year's financial and economic events, that bright people publicly volunteer that the market solves all problems, but still).

I read Nourry's quotes as a call to other publishers to fight Amazon's pricing scheme. But but BUT a whole host of other publishers--small, independent, professional, non-ginormous publishers all--are already doing just that. Spend five minutes in the Kindle store and you'll find lots of examples of publishers holding on to their pricing, with titles selling for far more than the $9.99 Amazon would prefer, including many professional titles in the hundreds of dollars per copy.

So: Amazon has already lost this battle. Amazon may be willing to sell e-bestsellers at a loss for the short term. But the whole host of non-Kindle e-reading devices coming onto the market in the next six months combined with multiple existing and evolving huge repositories of digital content means that within the next year Amazon will face facts, see that it will not be able to corner the market a la iTunes, and begin to play nice with variable pricing.

Now here's a completely different take, from a completely different perspective...

On September 10th, just as Quartet Press announced it was going out of business before it even really opened its doors, Quartet's own Kassia Krozser posted about Nourry's quote on her great Booksquare blog. Down in the middle of the comments was this little gem of a letter to the editor, from self-publishing guru Morris Rosenthal (special bonus note about Rosenthal at the end of today's post), to whom I and many other micropublishers are grateful for sharing basic publishing ideas. The Financial Times might not run your letter, Morris, but I will:

Kassia,
I’m pasting in the letter I sent the Financial Times when they
ran the Nourry story, they didn’t print it:-)

Sirs,
In your front page article Monday “Hachette Chief Laments…” you qoute Arnaud Nourry as stating Amazon charges $9.95 for of all of its Kindle eBooks in the US, and “the rest will have to be sold between zero and $9.95.” If Mr. Nourry had spent five minutes on the Amazon site, he would know that $9.95 is only the price for bestsellers from participating publishers. Prices for Kindle ebooks range from zero to over $100, with most nonfiction and professional books barely discounted from the paper book price. Around 5% of the popular Kindle titles are out-of-print classics supplied by Amazon itself, but many of the top “selling” free and penny eBooks are actually promotional give-aways from innovative presses and self publishers.

The small clique of large fiction houses that remain after the consolidation of the last three decades, a consolidation in which Mr. Nourry played an active role, are simply flustered that the cartel they were trying to build themselves has been pulled out from under them by the more agile Internet players: Amazon, Google Books and Apple iTunes. These same large publishers also played a major role in the retailer consolidation of the 1990’s, in which Barnes & Noble and Borders grew rapidly at the expense of the independent bookshops, thanks to co-op payments from the large fiction houses. Now that Amazon has surpassed Borders and Barnes & Noble, the publishers are belatedly learning that cartels aren’t so fun when you aren’t the one in charge.

The next time Mr. Nourry wants sympathy for the predicament the large fiction houses have created for themselves, he should turn to the investment bankers who funded his acquisitions and the consultants who agreed that it was a topping idea. Those of us who earn our livings as authors and small publishers can only say, “We told you so,” and “Serves you right!” In the meantime, I suggest he keeps a copy of Chris Anderson’s “Free: The Future of a Radical Price ” by his bedside, and pleasant dreams to him.
Signed--
Morris Rosenthal

BONUS NOTE: At this year's Book Expo the Espresso Book Machine was in full display, in the Lightning Source space on the main floor--fully operational and cranking out a book about every four minutes--all guts exposed so one could see all the printing, gluing, trimming and binding that goes into making a book on this unbelievable digital press. I stood along with several executives from a large publishing house based in a very large Eastern US city that shall remain nameless, watching all this happen. Well, some of us stood; others got down on their knees to get a closer look at the trimmer--it was that kind of machine, people were acting like little kids around it. But here's the kicker: the book that came down the chute, and was given away as a free sample of what the Espresso Book Machine is capable of doing, given away to these traditional publishing house executives? Morris Rosenthal's seminal Print-on-Demand Book Publishing: A New Approach to Printing and Marketing Books for Publishers and Self-Publishing Authors. You go, Morris.

What we can learn from Stephen Fry about social media

2009-09-11T10:36:00.000-07:00

So have you heard the story yet about how Stephen Fry's tweet about a book increased the book's sales six hundred gazillion percent in one day? (Here's the Guardian story and here's Fry's original tweet in case you missed it yesterday.)

As it happens, I follow Stephen Fry on Twitter, and I saw that post. While I didn't click on the link, it did jump out at me as slightly odd, and now I realize why.

Fry (as you might expect) is a really lovely, genuine guy. He has been posting a lot lately about finishing up his OWN book--self-deprecating tweets about lack of sleep and being so ready to be done with it, etc--and, occasionally, about what he did last night with friends, the sort of posts that are innocuous but, in the hands of someone like Fry, also appealing. So for him, such a vivid, naked endorsement was totally out of character. And so much more meaningful for being rare. I wonder how many of those who found the book through Fry's tweet thought to themselves, wow, if HE is raving like that, I really have to check this out.

In other words, though we hear constantly about how to use social media for promotion, the risks of overdoing it are (1) people start to tune out all your communications and (2) people discount your recommendation even when they do pay attention. And the benefit to remaining genuine is that people keep listening to you, and when you DO have something remarkable to recommend they really respond.

In both cases, when you are talking to your community of hundreds of followers or "friends" everything you do is magnified. The book publishing world will repeat this tale ad infinitum for years to come. But the true meaning is not that Twitter sells books. It's that the same rules apply to social media as in the rest of our lives, only more so.

Threadless, Harlequin, and YouTube

2009-09-03T13:31:00.000-07:00

Mark Cuban writes today about how the networks might use YouTube.com's new licensing and advertising strategy to audition pilots. Here's the payoff graf:

"I think the real approach is for the broadcast networks to “Game” YouTube. There is nothing that says that they cant use Youtube to audition their pilots. By putting pilots on YouTube and Hulu as well, its a chance to see what the level of interest is for the pilots. This “crowdsourcing” approach, when combined with some traditional research and analysis could allow broadcast networks to be smarter in chosing which pilots to put on TV."

What Cuban is describing is the Threadless model, applied to primetime broadcast television: let the users decide which products should rise to the top; trust the community to choose what they want to see/wear/buy; let your customers filter quality.

The Threadless model is one that publishers can utilize, too. Probably the best example, and the publisher doing this on the largest scale, is Harlequin. eHarlequin offers hundreds of shorts for sale (many of them appear to be stories they didn't want to take a chance on publishing in printed book form) tracks which are most popular; the "winners" then get picked up as print products in addition to increased promotion as electronic downloads. The site does Threadless one better, actually: where Threadless lets its community vote on which t-shirts to produce, and then sells the winning dozen entries each week, Harlequin monetizes the "entries" and sells everything at every opportunity.

Which goes back to Cuban's theory about how the networks can use YouTube--monetize every pilot you have via advertising revenue from a YouTube bakeoff, then cash in again with the most popular pilot when it's in the fall lineup.

Authors, royalties, promotion and MJ Rose

2009-09-02T04:54:00.000-07:00

Lots of interesting publishing news over the past week, but the one story that's made me laugh out loud was M.J. Rose's semi-coherent demand in Publishing Perspectives for increased pay and partnership with her publisher, in the form of a call for all of publishing to reconsider the publisher-author relationship, and including a story about meeting with the marketing department of her first publisher and offering to turn back her advance to be used for an ad buy--an offer that was not merely declined, but declined by an obviously horrified marketing team.

MJ Rose is a prolific author and is obviously a great promoter of her books and she's done a lot of great things over the years to help her fellow authors and blah blah blah blah. But what made me all chuckly, in the end, was the sheer datedness of her concerns...it could have been written in 2003. Over the past five years literally thousands of authors have learned that they can bypass the large publishing house filter and either self-publish or find a small independent press that will gladly get the book into print--and that no matter HOW the book is published, once it's in print it's largely the efforts of the author and sheer good luck that dictate unit sales.

Rose ultimately concludes that no matter how much her publishing house is behind her book, promotion is in large part up to her. Yes, that's exactly the conclusion many authors HAVE drawn, and have acted upon. Anyone with Rose's high name recognition ought to be able to eiher negotiate an extremely high royalty, or a partnership along the loines of James Patterson's arrangment with Little, Brown or the HarperNext model that Bob Collins is experimenting with (he had an interesting response to Rose, too). Or, with her advertising expertise, shes well siuated to independently publish her next novel and focus on promotion herself--wouldn't she do a better job than a marketing department that so recently didn't even understand the principle of partnering with her?

Or is she? Many people believe that publicity on a national scale is actually the one thing the large publishing houses still can do well--still can do in a way that independents and even the most well-financed author cannot...So, in the end, Rose's screed comes down to one thing and one thing only: pay me more money. Not exactly revolutionary.

Can webhooks save newspapers?

2009-08-25T14:59:00.000-07:00

Fascinating post today from Mark Cuban about webhooks and their applicability to the publishing world, especially as a way to possibly monetize online content.

Here's how Cuban describes it:

"Pubsubhubbub (PSHB) is a realtime, multicasting webhooks enabled
publish and subscribe system. Historically on the net, most information is received after it is pulled. For example, we set up receive intervals for our email. Our browsers update our RSS feeds at pre determined intervals. We repeat the same searches over and over, just looking to see if there is anything new. Even when we get alerts for new email or information, the alerts are generated by actively polling the source. PSHB changes that. The PSHB hubs are cloud based distribution
centers. Publishers choose to distribute their data through any number of publicly available hubs. Subscribers choose to receive their “subscriptions” or data through the Hub. The beauty of the hub and why this makes sense is because the HUB multicasts the data to each publishers’ subscribers, is easily scalable and it distributes to subscribers in realtime. Every time a publisher has something new it can post the data to the PSHB, which knows who that publishers’ subscribers are and immediately multicasts the new data to all the subscribers. In real time."

So in other words, sounds like a cool way for a content generating organization
to get its content to its audience. But not necessarily earth-shattering, right?
Well, Cuban goes on to paint this picture of how the Times could use
webhooks-enabled publishing to counter Google News:

"This could be an open door for the content business. For instance,
currently aggregators have to get their news the old fashioned way, through
RSS feeds and news alerts that they retrieve throughout the day. That is not
realtime news. Using The Associated Press as an example, AP could post their stories to a HUB. In realtime, the HUB can update member websites so that they will always have information first, before any aggregator. It may not take long for aggregators to recognize the new data on the member sites, but they won’t have it first.

"The New York Times could do the same thing. Subscribers could get everything first, in realtime. Then after some delay which might be 1 minute, it might be 30 minutes depending on what the paper thinks is the value related to timeliness, it could post on the website and on twitter and facebook as updates. Would NY Times online readers pay $1 a month to be guaranteed that they get their news first, before anyone else ? I don't know."

Maybe not JUST for getting their news a few moments before the news aggregators, but as part of a bundle of similar premium services? Youbetcha.

Google settlement: even industry insiders don't understand the deal

2009-08-24T11:38:00.000-07:00

PW's poll of authors, publishers, librarians, and other publishing industry folks is interesting in two ways.

First, the tepid general acceptance of the settlement, even after the push of the past couple of months by settlement architects to sway opinion their way, can be seen as some combination of (a) misinterpretation of key provisions or misunderstanding of the impact on rights-holders, (b) fear of Google's intentions and ability to execute a fairly administered book rights registry, and (c) pervasive fear that publishing is doomed anyway no matter what happens. But overall the survey indicated acceptance, and (as with members of the Authors Guild) that the more information the person had about the settlement, the more likely they were to support it.

Second, and more worrisome, is the large percentage of publishing folks who admit they simply don't have a good grasp of what the settlement is all about. Many of these are people whose jobs and lives will be dramatically impacted by the settlement! But I don't think this is a case of normal American ignorance of current events. The sense I got from reading the survey results was that those surveyed actually do appreciate the importance of the settlement, they just don't completely understand it. Which leads me to the conclusion that the actual parties to the settlement--especially Google--need to do a far better job of explaining, in very basic and straightforward terms, what the consequences will be. They need a classic one-page summary sheet of bullet points, something easily digestible by anyone with any interest in publishing, to take the fear and sense of "I kind of understand it but I think I'm missing some of it too" out of this for folks.

In the end, obviously, the parties only need to satisfy one person--the man up on the bench. But should he confirm the settlement, implementation is going to require a much better education effort than the parties have been able to execute thus far.

Google settlement news

2009-08-19T09:24:00.000-07:00

Today's latest on the Google settlement: a response filed by Washington, D.C. lawyer and author Scott Gant. I happen to know Scott professionally. He's a terrific lawyer, a wonderful writer, and a nice and terrifically bright guy.

He's quoted by the Times as saying:

“This is a predominantly commercial transaction and one
that should be undertaken through the normal commercial process, which
is negotiation and informed consent.”

No doubt.

But what are the consequences--for publishing, for authors, for e-books, for retailers--should the settlement not go through in substantially its current form? All I see are the downsides-legalities be damned...

Addendum August 21, 2009:
Okay, I've actually read Scott's objection. It's pretty compelling stuff. I admire Scott for filing it.

And he's in good company. Today's news: Microsoft, Amazon, and Yahoo are joining with the Internet Archive and a coalition of library and author associations in opposing the settlement, though probably not by filing a jointly drafted objection. The October 7th hearing is shaping up to be great theater.

How Newspapers Survive

2009-08-18T14:55:00.000-07:00

Great stuff at Monday Note--LAST Monday, August 10th.

Filloux sketches back of the envelope numbers to support the idea of a legitimate, full-scale news operation surviving via iPhone subscription fees.

His figures seem conservative to me--the operation could conceivably be smaller, the revenue higher--and his conclusion looks spot on.

The Bookstore of the Future: Lessons from big box stores

2009-08-18T06:41:00.000-07:00

How could a bookstore be like a mini-Costco? What are the keys to success for big box stores--and how could a bookstore potentially replicate those keys selling predominantly books?

Stripped down, the "buyer's club" stores like Costco, Sam's Club, and BJ's do two things really really well.

First, they sell a severely limited range of merchandise--they carry only those products that can be sold at an appropriate margin and volume to make a desired profit. They do this consistently, with great discipline. Can't get the margin they want on a product? They simply don't carry it. This forces suppliers to (1) reduce costs of production, in order to meet ever-lower pricing demands, which can lead to the benefit of innovation; (2) produce on a large scale, supplying multiple pallets and replenishing stock on a mega-scale.

Second, Costco and the others sell a small number of unique items for an extremely limited amount of time--as little as a single day or weekend--in order to entice customers in two ways: to provide variety in the shopping experience and to encourage impulse purchasing (the shopper comes to understand that the store won't carry the item next time they visit, and they may never see it again anywhere).

What would a bookstore look like, if it did those two things?

You'd have a bookstore that sold a limited range of merchandise, that could be sold at appropriate margin and volume, plus a small number of unique items for an extremely limited amount of time. In other words, you'd have bestsellers...a very limited selection...you'd be selling the books that make up the vast majority of sales at most large bookstores today, and not the long tail titles. You'd offer very steep discounts--your retail price would be within a few percentage points of your wholesale cost--in order to stimulate volume. Perhaps in return for non-returnable sales, you'd negotiate even lower discounts from wholesalers and publishers.

Then you would add in a mix of unique, very short-term/limited time items that seem, to some customers, too good to pass up as a sputr of the moment purchase. Maybe one weekend you'd partner with a map publisher dealer and offer five unique large format framed replica maps. The next week you'd offer the entire line of Pimsleur language-training materials. Or three gorgeous Taschen coffee table books, or something tied in to a local author or local band appearance or local movie premier.

It would probably be small, small enough that it could probably be run by one or two or three very smart, very disciplined, and very creative people. Forget the anchor Barnes and Noble model--think more of a small storefront, with a single aisle running front to back, with a few hundred titles at most (and probably far fewer). People would depend on you for the best price on the most popular books (something they could get anywhere, but at the best price), plus the chance to see and buy something cool and interesting they can't get anywhere else and are willing to buy at a premium.

DailyLit.com

2009-08-07T16:18:00.000-07:00

Big congrats to DailyLit for getting the recognition they deserve--see the Times piece (and I mean Times of London, not that OTHER Times).

I've been using this site for a while, and love it. They brighten my day every day.

I still have no idea how they are going to monetize this site. I'd love to meet the folks behind it to get their take on what they are up to and where their site is headed. It's such an elegant, intuitive, well-conceived web site...I'd like for them to be able to make a living from it too, but maybef they don't think so...or at least it's not obvious how they are/will in the future.

BJs, Costco, Sam's Club, Wal-mart

2009-08-07T16:13:00.000-07:00

I'm in Richmond Virginia for the next week and just visited my first BJ's Warehouse club today. Aesthetically, it's very similar to Costco; nicer and less crammed together than Wal-mart; less worn down than the typical Sam's. But it got me to thinking about the similarities and differences between the big box stores above and the large chain bookstores. . .I'll post as I sort out my thoughts.

Looking backward

2009-08-05T13:54:00.000-07:00

Two former publishing titans publicly sift through their mistakes here.

Bigger is not necessarily better? Imagine that.

So die already

2009-08-03T14:24:00.000-07:00

My wife emailed me the Times review of a new book, The Slippery Year by Melanie Gideon, with the message line "this could be good." Ever the good husband, I went hunting for it at Borders this past Saturday. And in the space of half an hour was reminded many times over how terrible a bookstore Borders is and just how much it deserves to die.

One might think that a new release receiving a rave review in the nation's paper of record would be something a bookstore would want to, I don't know, try to sell? Feature, even? Think again. The book was not on the new releases wall. Not on the new nonfiction table near the door. Not on the "hot new biographies" section wall next to that (which did advertise "our new biography section," a new and good concept. . .but more on that later). The Borders product finder machine sent me to "Social Studies/Women's Issues." Nope--not on those shelves either.

Okay, I thought, it was a good review, maybe they've sold out of their copies--that can happen. And I was at the huge superstore on Michigan Avenue, one of the chain's highest-grossing stores, so selling out of a few copies of a new release wouldn't be unheard of. All okay so far. But then I stumbled upon their new "Biography" section. The "A's" started on one side of one shelf, ran through the "C's"...and then fifteen feet away, across two tables and another rack, the "D's"...the next jump is to a third rack that runs perpendicular to the first two racks, and is in between them...I haven't been so confused by a shelving system at a bookstore since the last time I was at City Lights in San Francisco (and there, you have to assume there is an organization strategy but that you just aren't cool enough to figure out what it is). Bewildered, suddenly the scales fell from my eyes...I took in the entire first floor...and thought (I may have said this out loud, but it was very noisy, so I don't think anyone heard me), "What a craphole." Want coffee beans (or mugs, or coasters, or anything coffee related)? Want a lanyard? Want a gift card in about twenty different possible colors and styles? Want junk? Want a plastic reading lamp that will break the first time you use it? Borders is your place. What's the percentage of floor space devoted to books, and what percentage to crap? Looking around, it seemed like about a one-to-one relationship.

Okay, I'm kicking a carcass here, I know. Not a carcass quite yet, I suppose, if the best in question has to be actually completely dead to be called a carcass, but certainly a soon-to-be carcass. But why doesn't Borders just die and put itself out of its misery? This is a chain of stores that has stopped being interested in selling books. In creating a satisfying book-buying experience. All Borders seems to want to do is give me gas.

Next generation Sony e-Reader

2009-07-31T08:13:00.000-07:00

Looks like Sony will release the next generation of the e-reader soon...but STILL without WiFi capability. Or at least that is how today's rumor has it.

Note to Sony: if you are serious about competing with Kindle, not to mention iPhone, the e-Reader has to be able to get me a new book any time any place!

BN muffs its chance

2009-07-30T12:27:00.000-07:00

There was a lot to like in BN's announcement that it will add a huge e-book store to BN.com: over a million titles (compared to the 300,000 or so on Kindle) available in a variety of formats (rather than one proprietary one), a partnership with Google to offer public domain titles, and a strategy to add more titles quickly. All good, and all a potentially huge blow to Amazon.

But buried in the Times article was this little nugget:

William J. Lynch, president of Barnes & Noble.com, said the company would continue to sell e-book versions of best sellers and new releases — defined as a new e-book for the first six months of its availability — for $9.99. That charge has become the de facto e-book price since Amazon.com set it for Kindle sales.

BN, what are you thinking? Kindle pricing is the number one complaint from publishers. You had the chance to introduce variable, nonuniform pricing at the outset, and to win over publishers skeptical of the Kindle pricing model. You could have had exclusive access to titles from publishing houses reluctant to put an e-book version of a new release into the Kindle store (I'm thinking of new hardcovers priced at $20 and up in print, for example) but not so reluctant when able to preserve price integrity across print and electronic formats.

A single price simple does not work. It's not going to work for Amazon. iTunes doesn't use it anymore. It's not going to work for BN.com. The sooner online retailers competing with Amazon make the switch, the lesser the pain (in terms of decible level from complaining customers) when they finally do.