Author Archives: Kirsten

Seth Godin outside the publishing box

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Lots of different ways to look at this story. Jeffrey Trachtenberg gets it right in the WSJ, IMO, by characterizing what Seth Godin has done as trying “a new business model.”

It’s not exactly the same as no longer using a publisher — Amazon is his publisher. Consider this, for instance:

[N]either the author nor the online bookseller would say whether Amazon has an equity stake in the imprint.

Hmmmm.

One thing is obvious. As the traditional publishing model breaks down, Amazon is stepping into the power vacuum as an “alternative publisher.”

How will that affect writers who want to leverage Amazon as a channel? Does this put Amazon in competition with writers who would care to dispense with the middleman altogether?

The future of print books

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Ed Driscoll’s blogging at Pajama’s Media about the latest news from Borders. Which isn’t good.

In the comments, no surprise, the conversation turns to the future of print books.

Here’s my prediction.

Print books are going to be around but as a product group they are going to split into several new categories.

There will be very expensive, “collector’s edition” type books that will be produced in limited print runs. These will include coffee table style books as well as limited run editions of books by best-selling authors or celebrities. They will be produced as hardcovers. By “very expensive” I’m talking well over $50 a copy. And they’ll be tricked out nicely to help justify the price. Think gorgeous, embossed covers, high quality paper, color plates, that sort of thing. Luxury market books.

Second will be a thriving market for used books. That’s going to be around for a long time. There are so many millions of print books in circulation; today a lot of them are nearly worthless (think boxes of books at garage sales, stacks at thrift stores, the books your local library throws away every year). Over time, these books will increase in value as print books become gradually more rare. But they’ll still be pretty affordable, for the most part, simply because there are so many of them, and as Boomers downsize & sell all their stuff they’ll continue to flood the market.

Third, there will be a new category of very cheap paperback. This category will emerge when publishers find they’re unable to keep the bottom from dropping out of ebook pricing, and they have to create a paperback category able to compete. Bear in mind that the pulp novels of the mid 20th century, adjusted for inflation, sold for the equivalent of a buck or two in 2011 dollars. So we know the publishing industry can do it–it’s just not going to until it has no choice. Many of these will be print editions of e-book releases. They’ll be sold primarily through channels like Walmart and Costco. The quality will be very low–expect the paper to be yellowed by the time you hit the denouement.

Finally, there will be one-off printed books that you will be able to buy at your local bookstore. Already available, but will become commonplace. Another option for peeps who don’t want to read on Kindles. Don’t expect high quality here, but moderate pricing and the ability to hold in your hand a copy of virtually any book every produced. Which is way cool. You’ll be able to order them from kiosks within the store or place orders from home. This will also chip away at one of Amazon’s advantages, which I blogged about an age ago — that it’s so much easier to search book titles via computer than hunt for them in a physical bookstore.

So what do you think? Does this make sense, or do you predict something different?

So I haven’t been blogging about the writing biz lately

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Because I’ve been mostly writing — for my job during the day, and on evenings & weekends my personal WIPs. But I have to say I am so grateful to folks like JA Konrath and Dean Wesley Smith, who have invested enormous amounts of time in educating the rest of us about the changes in the publishing industry and what writers need to do to adapt to them.

Here’s another one — Kristine Kathryn Rusch, (Smith’s wife). Another established writer who is incredibly generous with her time. She has a post out today directed to mid-listers who own rights to out-of-print books, but this line I think is one all of us should write on a post-it and stick it to our monitor frames:

If your agent decides to go into e-publishing and print-on-demand, fire that agent immediately.  I am not kidding about this.

Do click through to read the rest . . .

Kindling

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A little over a year ago, my dad bought a Kindle.

If you knew my dad, you’d know he was a gadget-loving sort of guy. He loves being the first around to own that new thing with the plugs and the screens and the User Interface.

Another thing about my dad — he loves to splurge on Christmas gifts for his family.

Meaning that when Christmas comes around, if he’s fallen in love with a new gadget, look out. You might be getting one, too.

And I didn’t want a Kindle.

I told him. Dad. Do NOT buy me a Kindle for Christmas.

It worked–that year.

But then I guess he must have forgotten–either accidentally or accidentally on purpose. Because this last Christmas, I opened an innocent-looking little box and there it was. Not the same version my dad has–mine is small, a footprint about the size of a mass market paperback. Which is good, I’m glad he didn’t spend too much money on it.

And I love it.

I love how little it is. I love that I can buy books completely on impulse. I love that I can buy books cheap. No more walking out of Barnes & Noble with 3 books, my checking account $100 lighter. I’ve downloaded something like 17 P.G. Wodehouse books to my Kindle for FREE–enough Wodehouse to keep me in a good humor for YEARS.

I’ve actually bought a few hardcover books since Christmas as well (I’m reading Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History in hardcover right now — a gift from another of the sweet guys in my life — which is an amazing book btw). I don’t want to own everything in electronic form. I guess, for me, there are books I want to own as books, and books I purely for the experience of reading them . . . it dovetails with something I’m doing in general in my life, which is trying to shed stuff — I’m selling things, giving things away, anything to reduce my possessions to the bare minimum, to lighten my footprint, to make myself more mobile, more flexible. I’m comfortable that certain experiences are supposed to be ephemeral. I’m okay with experiencing some books as experiences rather than things.

Speaking of ephemera, ebook readers themselves aren’t necessarily settled out in their final form, IMO. My best guess is that some day there will be universal devices that offer an ereading experience close enough to the Kindle’s that we won’t need dedicated devices.

But in the meantime, come 9:30 at night when it’s 6 below zero outside, that’s me under the covers with my feet resting on a hot water bottle and a Kindle in my lap . . .

Internet litter. Blech, just blech.

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I spend a few minutes every day looking for interesting golf-related articles to share via my golf association’s Facebook and Twitter feeds.

And wow. There is so much garbage out there. More than ever.

So thanks a lot, all you “get rich on the Internet” types who think you can throw up a website, regurgitate colorless, uninteresting, overly-generalized, zero-value articles and then “monetize” them via Google ads.

Because guess what. I’m sure it works to a point. I’m sure your artful use of keywords will pull in a bit of search engine traffic. I’m sure there are a handful of people who will click on your Twitter links — at least until they learn how little value your links deliver.

But if you think this can pass for a genuine, productive business model, you’re kidding yourself. Nobody is going to stick around long enough to click on your ads if your articles are junk. They’re going to do what I do: read about 5 or 6 words, then go straight to the little x in the left hand corner of the page and go bye-bye.

And while we’re at it, I unfollow Tweeps when the links they serve up keep falling into the garbage category.

Think I’m the only one who wises up after a bit?

Thank you, Thermos

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After my recent BPA-in-a-can upset I made a big pot of homemade soup for my daughter’s lunches.

Then it occurred to me: what if her Thermos food jar is BPA lined?

Phew! My FUNtainer Thermos food jar is BPA free.

Phew! My FUNtainer Thermos food jar is BPA free.

Good news: it’s not. I just got an email from a Thermos spokesperson I found on their website stating “Our FUNtainer line of food jars and beverage bottles has always been BPA-free, and continues to be as well.”

I’m so glad!

Now I just need to perfect my soup recipe. I’m trying to copy my daughter’s favorite choice from the now-on-my-boycott-list Hain line of Imagine soups: tomato-based broth, meatballs, navy beans, orzo.

My first attempt bears some similarities, she says, but that’s about as far as she was willing to go. Tough customer.

Back to the ol’ cutting board . . .

How stress makes you stupid

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And what to do about it.

From the article — quote from Nuno Sousa of the Life and Health Sciences Research Institute at the University of Minho in Portugal:

[W]e’re lousy at recognizing when our normal coping mechanisms aren’t working. Our response is usually to do it five times more, instead of thinking, maybe it’s time to try something new.

The hardest thing about life as a human being is that we get trapped inside our own minds.

As Sousa’s research shows, there’s a biological basis for this.

So if you’ve hit a high-stress patch in your life recently, you have to assume — assume — that your capabilities in the area of “executive decision-making” and “goal-directed behaviors” are impaired.

And then, for your own good, you have to do something about it.

It’s the only way out of the trap.

(The worst part being, of course, that people who are in the trap don’t know it . . . and that when you’re under stress is when you most need the very skills that you’ve lost.)

Overpromising

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“The man who promises everything is sure to fulfill nothing, and everyone who promises too much is in danger of using evil means in order to carry out his promises, and is already on the road to perdition.”

— Carl Jung

New other stuff :-)

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Okay, I went a bit overboard, wouldn’t you say? New background, changed the column background from white to pale green . . . yes, green’s my favorite color. But this is a bit over the top. I feel like I’m peering into a dish of lime Jello. (Is there an award for greenest blog btw?)

Trouble is, there are always little issues that come up. The theme is basically Kubrick, modified — if you’ve ever installed WordPress, you’ll know what I’m talking about . . . over the years, I’ve tweaked it in various ways. But right now, with these latest changes, I can’t get the .widecolumn to match up to the header exactly, and I can’t get the bottom margin of .widecolumn to match up with the bottom of the sidebar.

For the header, what I really need is help from a designer. Blurring out the photo helps make the title pop, which is a good thing, but it’s plain ugly typeface, which is not a good thing. Unfortunately my tools are limited, and so’s my time — we might have to live with it for awhile.

That said,  y’all come here for the scintillating prose, not how pretty it looks, right?

:-)