Category Archives: Publishing

New Kindle feature a soft sell tool for writers?

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Article on the MSNBC Technoblog by Wilson Rothman [UPDATE: link no longer good, sorry] leads with the news that the next Kindle OS is going to support “real” page numbers.

That’s a good thing — but what really caught my interest is another upcoming new feature, “Before You Go . . . ” which Rothman says will let readers more easily rate books — and buy new ones:

Just as you’re finishing a book, you’ll now get a “seamless” invitation to rate the book, share it on Twitter or Facebook, and of course, buy more books like it, or by the same author.

It will be interesting to see how this is handled.

On the one hand, this might help writers build audiences. After all, what better time to sell another book than when your scintillating prose is fresh in a reader’s mind?

But I also wonder whether I might personally find it a bit annoying to have my e-reader suggest I take an action of some kind.

Will there be a forced interim step between the last page of a book and the home screen?

Will it seem intrusive?

UPDATE 10/1/2011: New post on how to rate a Kindle book.

Too old to write?

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In a blog post that also appeared in The Guardian, Amanda Craig voices her suspicion that publishers favor younger women writers. [UPDATE: link no longer works.] “Up until the 1980s,” she writes, “it was expected that novelists would be people of some age and experience.”

Today, however,

publishers would far rather I were some stripling of twenty-five. Novelists now regularly get their teeth done (I am not going to mention Martin Amis, because his really were a medical necessity.) We all, if female, discuss plastic surgery with increasing urgency and interest, and every so often one or two disappear and return looking strangely fresher.

Holy denouement Batman!

Being a writer now requires a gal to become superficial and obsessed with her looks????

Deep breath.

Okay.

I could take some cheap shots at “the publishing industry” here, but I won’t, because A. you don’t need me to, you can compose a few zingers just as well yourself and B. I rather like the publishing industry and feel a bit sorry for it, and want to leave it alone.

And publishing, as a business, is more like gambling than anything else.

I can understand the inclination to place a bet on someone who is at the dawn of her professional life, rather than someone who spends weekends shopping for cemetery plots.

But where does that leave “the novel” — you know? The novel as an art form. That “the novel.”

Let me tell you a secret. I tried to write novels when I was in my 20s.

I couldn’t. And I know why, now. I had  nothing to say.

When it came down to putting something to paper, the only time I felt I was being honest was when I wrote poetry, because the only thing I “had” was emotion; the only thing I could do as a writer that had any integrity as I understood it was to wallop a handful of emotion up against some lamp post or car door or fella and put some words around what it felt like.

It’s a limitation common to every young writer. It has to be. It takes time to build a rich enough frame of reference to do anything else. It takes years and years.

How does a young writer get around that?

Why, by studying the “craft” of writing. You know! Because by using the “craft” of writing, you can fashion something out of nothing. You add a little verby glue to your nouny sawdust and mold it and sculpt it into the dearest characters, the most fetching characters, the most charming plots. Anyone can do it! Anyone can.

Only tell me this. What does such a novel accomplish?

I’m being serious here.

I’ve been thinking about it a lot, because I often abandon novels half-read. Very often, appallingly often. And these are “well-written” novels in the sense we’ve come to understand “well written” today. But there is something missing from them — they leave me with the feeling that they are wasting my time. So my question is: for what am I trading the three, four hours that it takes me to read a novel? What I am getting in return? Entertainment? Diversion?

Diversion?

If that’s all, then “craft” is all the novelist needs. Bless you then, dear writer, go off and craft to your heart’s delight. Goodness knows there’s a huge market of people who crave diversion.

But what if I want more? What if I want my life to be changed? What if I want to be the guy who read David Gemmel’s The Legend, and then when he saw another guy being beaten up, he heard the words “What would Boromir do?” and intervened, and saved a man’s life?

What if I want the novel I read to somehow become a transformative experience for me?

Can such a novel be written by a 20 something equipped with nothing more than craft and a handful of emotion to wallop up against things?

Macmillan raising royalties on ebooks . . .

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. . . to 25 percent of net. (UPDATE: Link — a letter on the Macmillan website from CEO John Sargent — no longer any good.)

By which we can surmise that there’s some nervousness out there. Maybe writers are getting restless about the size of their cut?

Of course, this is still far less than the royalty you get for a Kindle ebook, which is 70 percent of gross.

Which makes me wonder a bit about this statement from the Sargent letter:

[T]he publishing industry standard for electronic book royalty rates has clearly settled 25% of net receipts

“Clearly”?

He also takes a swipe at Amazon that doubles as a way to ‘splain why Macmillan won’t match the Kindle numbers:

Amazon had been providing the e-book versions of new release hardcovers at $9.99, considerably under Amazon’s cost, making it very difficult for anyone else to prosper or even enter the market.

Okay, then.

We live in interesting times . . .

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?

Look what they done

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To the Wall Street Journal.

wall street journal

I suppose the new format makes it easier to schlep around, but I feel a sense of loss. The old WSJ had a kind of a grandeur about it. It’s like I went to sleep one night with a ’55 Cadillac Coupe DeVille in my garage, woke up the next morning and somebody had swapped it out for a little Hyundai or something. An era’s over, without my permission.

(Yeah, I know, newspapers are dinosaurs, etc. etc. I’m the first one to say so. But I didn’t really view the WSJ as a newspaper, more like a daily magazine. And sometimes I like to read hardcopy, maybe because I work at a computer screen all day long.)

Resurrection publishing

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I.e., republishing out-of-print books. Article in The Guardian, via Booksquare:

For some companies, resurrection is a sideline alongside new titles; for others, it’s their whole raison d’etre. It’s a labour of love, not money, for most. Few of these books get reviewed, and partly for that reason they won’t catch your eye, or even be there at all, when you’re in Waterstone’s. Mostly there’s little hope of achieving the level of sales – perhaps 2,000 copies – where you start to tot up your profits. Often you’re doing well if you’ve sold 300.

A little madness in the name of love. What’s not to like?

One little nit — c’mon, Guardian, hotlink the publishers you mention! Okay, actually it’s more of a medium-sized nit. Here, I’ll do my part:

Pomona.

Great Northern Publishing.

Parthian.

Sutton Publishing. [UPDATE, seems to be disappeared.]

Nonsuch Classics. [UPDATE, also disappeared.]

Traviata Books. [UPDATE, also disappeared.]

Related: See also my post Wagging the Backlist.

Time to merge online with bricks & mortar

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A Dutch bricks & mortar bookseller has implemented Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology in two of its stores to help it manage inventory — and to help customers shop for books.

I find both applications interesting, but it’s the latter that truly rocks, and here’s why: once you’ve used Amazon’s search capabilities, hunting for a book in a traditional shop seems awfully cumbersome.

So to my way of thinking, any retailer that’s maintaining bricks & mortar outlets should be looking at ways to implement the customer-friendly aspects of online shopping in its physical locations. Being able to search for a product on an in-store kiosk is a prime example. Combine that with the capability to pinpoint exactly where that product is in the store and you’ve mimicked one of the major conveniences of an online store.

I mean, how many times have you stood in line at a customer service desk in a bookstore, you finally get a clerk to help you, the clerk looks up a title on a computer, leads you to the shelf, and then you stand there while the clerk spends another five minutes hunting for the book?

That’s pretty much the brick & mortar book-shopping experience.

Whereas with Amazon, you run a search on a title, click on “add to shopping cart” and you’re done. Don’t even have to enter your credit card info if you’ve set up an account.

The disadvantages of online shopping are that you can’t actually touch an item before you buy, and you usually have to pay shipping. Brick & mortars win hands down on those two counts. Bricks & mortars also have human beings to give you face time should the technology fail you, which is a huge plus when you need it.

So why not build on those strengths, but at the same time become more like an online store?

Another example: why shouldn’t I be able to shop at Gap.com from within a conventional Gap store?

No reason, except that Gap execs haven’t considered the possibility — or grasped what it would mean to its customers . . .

(RFID story found via Publisher’s Lunch.)