Pop goes the book bubble

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In NY Daily News, Alexander Nazaryan — writing about Border’s troubles — makes an this observation:

What happened to real estate is now happening to books: An industry colluded to push an overpriced product on a public whose purse strings were tightening and whose tastes were changing. Demand dropped steadily, but supply kept soaring – only now is it coming down to earth. Nothing reminds me so much of those tracts of foreclosed houses in Florida as stack upon stack of hardcover books, desperate to be bought for $25.99.

[UPDATE: link no longer works… sigh.]

If you scan the covers of vintage pulp fiction books, one of the things you may notice are the prices.

The vast majority are 25 or 35 cents.

What would a 35 cent book cost in today’s dollars? According to this online inflation calculator: $3.09.

When’s the last time you saw a brand new $3.00 paperback in a bookstore?

Some might argue that the reason mass market paperbacks have doubled or tripled  in price is that there’s now an infrastructure that, in aggregate, raises the quality of our books. They’re better vetted, better edited.

But I suspect that if the quality of the writing is better, today, it’s thanks to the vast industry devoted to teaching craft. The writers are better.

What’s really happened is that the publishing industry isn’t set up to keep prices reigned in. That’s never been a priority for it.

And as a result, print books are overpriced.

And with a quarter of a million or so titles published every year in the United States alone, of course the whole thing was ripe for a collapse . . .

Can you think a good book?

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That’s a serious question.

I’m pondering it because of the explosion of writerly advice that crops up all over the intertubes these days.

Like this piece, which has a lot to offer, don’t get me wrong.

And goodness knows craft is important.

But I wonder sometimes.

For the first couple hundred years after the birth of “the novel,” writers didn’t worry about things like “structure.” Yet they managed to turn out very nice books.

How?

Okay, devil’s advocate. Maybe only *some* of them turned out very nice books. Maybe I don’t realize how many terrible novels were written by contemporaries of Fielding and Tolstoy and Dostoevski and James and Fitzgerald and Hemingway. Maybe there were hundreds or thousands of self-pubbed novels along the way that were such crap it was good riddance to them the second they were forgotten.

But that still doesn’t explain how someone working with pen and paper or typewriter could turn out an Anna Karenina or Great Gatsby without first having consumed a library’s worth of books on the craft of writing.

How could that happen?

Well. Maybe it has to do with oral story-telling.

Maybe great writers — in the classical sense — are (were?) actually great listeners. And I mean listening in the sense of paying attention to how how language — and more specifically story-telling — affects other people.

Can you tell, when you’re relating something that happened to you while you were at the grocery store last week, when your audience has begun to lose interest?

(Ooh, I hope so!)

It doesn’t have to be when you tell a story in the formal sense. We all constantly narrate our lives to other people. We’re constantly telling stories. When someone asks you how you’re doing, and you say, “I think I’m coming down with a cold,” you’re telling a story. A very dull story incidentally. Please spice it up next time. Give your story some structure!

I was about to walk out the door when my neighbor — you know, the one who can’t afford a car so she rides that ridiculous power scooter everywhere — asked me to look after her kid (again? are you kidding me???)  — five minutes she said, right, it was more like an hour, and the kid has this horrific cold, she soaked a box and a half of Kleenex easily before mom toodled back up on her scooter again, and of course three days later I wake up all stuffy, fever of a hundred and two, omg, please bring soup!

But that’s not all. If at any point during your tale about your self-centered neighbor and her snot-nosed urchin you notice your audience’s attention is starting to wane — you edit. Immediately. On the spot.

I was about to walk out the door when my neighbor — you know, the one who can’t afford a car so she rides that ridiculous power scooter everywhere — asked me to look after her kid (again? are you kidding me???) — well long story short, the kid had a cold, gave it to me, I’m miserable, please bring soup!

We’d get a lot closer to spinning good stories on paper if we paid attention to how our stories hold people’s attention when we spin stories orally.

So yeah. I think there was a time when writers honed the aspect of the craft we now label with words like “structure” by telling stories — or more specifically, by paying attention to the way people react as they listen to stories.

Tell you something else. When writers began to play with the novel as if it were a painting — moving words around as if they were objects, rather than written versions of oral language — and in that way devised what in its most extreme form we’d call experimental fiction, they began to separate the novel from the connection it once had with with oral story telling.

It amounted to a distortion, of course. So maybe one reason some people need to study “craft,” now, is because the “the novel” became so distorted that post mid 20th century writers are . . . not ignorant, exactly, but maybe the connection of the novel to oral story telling isn’t as obvious to writers today as it once was, and as it needs to be.

I’m not sure, however, that this is something that can be taught from the head. Which gets back, finally, to the title of this post. The ability to pick up on the non-verbal signals people give off, when they’re listening to a story, is not something you do with your intellect.

It’s something you do with your whole self — your body, your heart.

Imposing rules on a novel via your head might result in a novel that is well-thought-out.

But is that the same as “good”?

Golf in snowtime

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I’m taking a few golf lessons. Yes, in February, in Upstate New York, where a heat wave = temps in the 20s.

But in some respects winter is a good time to take lessons, especially if you’re in my situation. I have an old swing habit I have to break once and for all: my left wrist bows at the top of my swing. Bowing one’s left wrist, it turns out, does unmentionable things to one’s club face angle. It also makes it very hard to get the club face back to square at impact. I manage to square the face — sometimes — via a little loop at the top of my swing, kind of like Jim Furyk’s — except unlike Jim Furyk’s mine isn’t particularly repeatable.

So my game had plateaued. I’d managed to whittle my handicap down from the mid-30s a few years ago to around 20, but then I got stuck. I wasn’t hitting enough fairways, wasn’t keeping my ball in play enough with my fairway woods and long irons. Yeah, I know, the easiest way to shave strokes off your score is by working on your short game. Or so goes the “conventional wisdom” whatever that is. Although you may have caught the Golf Magazine article last fall that mentioned than in a typical round, someone who shoots in the 90s wastes six strokes on what a Columbia Business School Professor (Mark Broadie, unofficial title: 4-handicap numbers geek) calls “awful shots” — meaning anything that “advances the ball less than 80 yards,” “results in a penalty,” or “forces a recovery shot.”

Yeah, I see me losing six strokes a round that way, easy.

The worst part, by far, is that I was getting frustrated, and it was taking some of the fun out of playing–and golfing is one of my favorite things to do.

Not good.

So I took some money out of savings and am letting Rob Horak (he used to be the pro at Blue Heron Hills; he’s now at Golftec) pull my swing apart to re-build some better fundamentals. And since it’s February in Rochester, I can’t be tempted to take any of it out on the course. Which is a good thing, because on the course I’d surely backslide. Better off standing in my living room swinging, over and over and over again, at nothing . . .

Time will tell if this is the fix I needed to straighten out my long game.

But in the meantime, I realized something about myself, and my brain, and the way I learn.

I don’t have any idea if I’m alone in this, but I have trouble mapping visuals correctly back to physical actions.

As one example. I’d forgotten this, but I struggled as a kid with learning my right hand from my left. What finally saved me was learning to write. When it was time for the Pledge of Allegiance, I imagined picking up a pencil.  Then I would know which was my right hand.

To this day, I bet if you showed me a photograph of someone with one hand raised, and asked me which hand it was, I’d be unable to answer until I had mentally turned myself around (so I’d be facing the same direction as the person in the photo) and “matched” the raised hand with mine. Writing hand, right. Non-writing hand, left.

And guess where I’ve gotten virtually all of my information in the past five years about what makes a “good golf swing”?

Pictures. The pros on television, pictorials in the golf magazines.

It’s comical, the results, now that I see what I did. I’d constructed a mental model that was basically backwards–the way my body executed part of my swing (the top of it) was backwards. And it worked, part of the time–because I’m a good enough athlete that I could compensate, with my hands, for the shenanigans in my swing–but it had that little goofiness built in, the laying off of the club and the little loop to bring it back that I couldn’t even feel, because I thought I was doing what I saw in the pictures.

So yeah. I’m weird.

Now, fingers crossed, I can smooth out at least a little of my weirdness before the courses open back up this spring . . .

The coming nonfiction e-tsunami. Watch out for floating “Babe Ruth bars.”

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Website Magazine cites a research report from Yankee Group [UPDATE: link no longer good, sorry!] that estimates ebook sales will reach $2.7 billion in sales in 2013. That’s compared to $313 million two years ago, in 2009.

Quite the leap.

Average prices, meanwhile are expected to drop to $7.

The article suggests that the downward price trend is one reason for the explosion in sales. Makes sense — it’s basic economic principle, after all.

Given that Website Magazine‘s audience is web developers and small business owners, it’s no surprise that the article veers to the topic of self-publishing white papers, how-to’s, and re-packaged blog posts. It also suggests business owners jump on the trend by publishing ebooks themselves:

Expertise in any industry can be used to create an e-book in short order, then sell that material or use it as a promotional or cross-sell incentive.

True. But I hope business owners realize that self-publishing a badly written, poorly organized ebook will be a liability, not a smart business decision. And I think it’s a stretch to suggest that the average small business owner can expect to “add revenue along the way.”

Business owners who self-publish should expect nothing more than pocket change. They should focus instead on the value of the ebook as a promotional tool.

Yes, there will be exceptions, but only if the venture meets at least one or two of the following criteria:

  • It already has an audience — i.e. it’s an established business vs. a start-up nobody’s ever heard of;
  • The topic is both catchy and compelling;
  • The business does a great job at PR and marketing the ebook;
  • The ebook offers information of genuine value;
  • The ebook is well-written enough that readers can understand and apply whatever it’s trying to teach them.

What percentage of ebooks in the coming nonfiction tsunami will meet at least two of those conditions, do you think?

And what percentage will more resemble floating Babe Ruth bars?

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?

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 . . .