Category Archives: future of publishing

September 26, 2012   Miriam   contracts, controversy, creativity, deadlines, future of publishing, Miriam, publishers, Publishing  
10

Penguin sues authors

When I started working in publishing (roughly 100 years ago) the business was still one of “gentlemen’s agreements,” of editors coddling temperamental authors, and agents selling books based on a persuasive conversation rather than book proposals (look up Swifty Lazar, if you don’t believe me).  Too, it was always a tenet of agenting that despite the terms in a publishing agreement, there were ways around everything, from an onerous option clause to the repayment of an advance for a cancelled book.

This all worked, of course, because publishers have traditionally been unwilling to persecute their authors (very bad p.r.).  Given the conventional wisdom that authors are fragile, creative souls with no real grasp of practical details—like deadlines or basic accounting—even with cutthroat agents involved, the optics of going after someone publicly for non-delivery and non-payment did not work in a publisher’s favor.  So, often, authors got away with not repaying advances based on flimsy loopholes and how skilled their agents were at scaring or shaming the publisher.

But, times have gotten tough in recent years.  Margins are tighter as a result of the e-book revolution and the Justice Department has decided to stick its nose into publishing practices that many argue it has no knowledge of or understanding about.  So, it’s not entirely surprising that Penguin has taken the rather shocking step of suing a number of high profile writers for non-payment.

On the one hand…well, yes.  If you sign a contract that specifies that you need to repay an advance under certain conditions and those conditions come to pass, any legitimate business would go after you to recoup their money.

On the other hand, this makes me sad, because it feels like yet another of publishing’s intangibles has been sacrificed to the bottom line.   To me it seems that this takes us many more steps away from the days when publishers went out of their way, financially and otherwise, to enable an author—even the most wayward of them (see The Lost Generation)—to thrive creatively and produce the kinds of literature we’re still reading today.  Did they lose some money? Sure, but I’m pretty certain Scribner (and Random House and S&S, etc.) is still collecting on its investment.

What do you all think of this action by Penguin?

 

 

September 25, 2012   abby   Abby, digital publishing, Discoverability, e-books, future of publishing, marketing/publicity, self-publishing  
4

Book Discovery

When I’m talking about eBooks with authors, something that always comes up is the idea of discoverability– how to get readers to actually find and purchase one of your titles. With so many titles out there, which is especially true on sites like Amazon, how do you get a reader to find your book?

So I was particularly interested in this survey posted by Digital Book World earlier in the week. What is fascinating about the findings is that people are using more and more ways to discover new works. According to Kelly Gallagher, who presented the results, readers use 44 different techniques to discover new titles. That’s a lot of ground to cover for an author.

The author of the DBW article puts it best when he says, “Imagine the complexity: a 27-year-old female romance reader from suburban Indianapolis who reads on a tablet computer but spends most of her time browsing the Web on her laptop versus a 43-year-old female romance reader living in Los Angeles who reads and buys exclusively on her e-reader. They’re both romance readers and female, but couldn’t be more different otherwise when it comes to how they discover and read books — and reaching them takes different marketing tactics.”

Something that also caught my eye: the #1 way people discover books, no matter what kind of reader they are? Either in person or through personal recommendations.

So where does an author begin? And do you find yourself discovering books in new ways?

 

August 30, 2012   Michael   digital publishing, e-books, fiction, future of publishing, trends  
7

Serial for dinner

One of the great things about the digital revolution is that it’s opening the market to different kinds of formats, some new, some old. One of the most successful and most interesting companies to take advantage of the opportunity is Byliner. They got off to a great start in 2011 with the publication of Jon Krakauer’s damning reporting on author Greg Mortenson’s Central Asia Institute and his book, Three Cups of Tea. Entitled Three Cups of Deceit, Krakauer’s more-than-article-length, less-than-book-length work proved that people were willing to pay for great investigative, long-form journalism, even if it wasn’t 80,000 words. They’ve continued with other similar successes, blazing a trail in this rather new format.

But they’re looking to revive old formats, as well, and I was thrilled to read that they’ve decided to delve into the publication of serial fiction. I was just discussing with an author of mine her desire to publish serialized fiction and lamenting the lack of outlets for it. (Or, rather, the lack of money-making outlets for it. As she said, the world of fan fiction is almost entirely serialized storytelling.) I predicted that serialized fiction would become a viable model, but not until a major name got the ball rolling and proved that there was a market. And Byliner made my prediction come true both quickly and rather spectacularly: they’re publishing two serialized stories, Positron by Margaret Atwood and 15 Gothic Street by Joe McGinniss. Atwood’s sounds very, well, Atwood, and McGinniss’s story was described as “Law & Order set in Lake Wobegon.” Both authors’ followings seemed primed for an experiment like this, and it’ll be interesting to see how they perform. I, for one, am a big fan of experiments in underused formats, and I’d love to see this become another venue for authors’ work. And, as someone whose reading time is limited, I’d love something that’s easily digestible and doesn’t require a huge investment of time in one sitting, while also providing a over-arching story.

What do you think?  Will we see a return to Victorian-era serialized novels? Or is this just another passing trend?

August 28, 2012   abby   Abby, digital publishing, e-books, future of publishing, Paperback books, Publishing  
7

Lessons from History

I don’t know if you heard, but eBooks are changing the way people read and the way books are published. The digital revolution is turning the publishing industry on its head and forcing everyone—from readers to publishers to authors—to change and evolve.

But what is interesting to note is that a little more than 80 years ago, publishers and readers were experiencing the same thing. Mental Floss has this pithy history of the paperback book and how it transformed the publishing industry during the late 30’s and 40’s.

Basically, in 1939, a company called Pocket Books began releasing paperback books for $0.25 while the best-selling hardcover books were going for around $2.75. The low cost of paperback books was enabled by their cheaper production costs. (Sound familiar?) Publishers and authors originally scoffed at such cheap products, but when nine million paperback books sold in six months, authors and publishers jumped at the opportunity. (Notice any parallels?)

Needless to say, paperback books have become a mainstay of the publishing industry. And looking at their very similar history to eBooks, I wonder if a lot of the naysaying about the digital revolution is wrong. Do you think eBooks are just the next evolution of reading? Or are we really headed for the end of the publishing industry as we know it?

August 14, 2012   abby   Abby, art, covers, e-books, future of publishing  
11

Judging an eBook by its Cover

 

With an increasingly digital marketplace for books, is cover art no longer a priority? According to Chip Kidd, Associate Art Director for Alfred A. Knopf, cover design is a dying art.

This recent piece from NPR explores the idea that as eBooks increase in popularity, the importance of a great cover is waning. (As a side note, Chip Kidd is responsible for some iconic book covers, including JURASSIC PARK and NAKED.) Kidd says that people often check out a specific eBook because of a great review or a recommendation—not because of the cover design. So in a rapidly digitizing world, a great cover is no longer a priority. (And there are some really, really bad ones out there.)

A bad cover leaves me with a bad impression about the book—if you can’t bother to put the effort into making sure your book looks good then why would I want to read it? And that is something I always emphasize to authors in our eBook program—a bad cover will never help your sales and even turn readers away. So I find Kidd’s words kind of surprising. Do you think eBook covers are still important? How do they influence your ultimate decision to buy (or not)?

 

July 31, 2012   abby   Abby, digital publishing, e-books, future of publishing, publishers, self-publishing  
1

Penguin’s Big Buy

You may have heard the news that Penguin Group has bought Author Solutions—one of the larger self-publishing platforms—for $116m. Not only is that a lot of money to invest in a company, it also speaks quite a bit about how traditional publishers have started to view self-publishing.

 

There’s no doubt that the current eBook market has seen a number of self-publishers find a great deal of success and notoriety. With this investment, it looks like Penguin is betting that self-published authors are a big part of publishing’s future. It is also a step in lending credibility to the self-publishing marketplace and its authors, who were once viewed as writers as who just couldn’t hack it as professional authors. Now, with the potential backing of a Big 6 publisher, that stigma may disappear.

 

It is still unclear how Author Solutions will be integrated into Penguin, though. Will Author Solutions replace Penguin’s Book Country platform? Or, more interestingly, will Penguin open up its own self-publishng arm (like Amazon’s KDP or Barnes and Nobles PubIt!)?

 

What do you think of Penguin’s big buy? Do you think we’re likely to see similar purchases in the future?

June 12, 2012   Jane   BEA, future of publishing, Jane, opinion  
2

The same is not the same

So this past week, BEA took place again in New York and, walking around the floor, I was more aware than ever of all the changes that have occurred and continue to take place in our business. This is far from those first meetings I attended so many years ago at the Shoreham Hotel in Washington.  It is also incredibly distant from the heady years where the show, held in Los Angeles, or Las Vegas or even New Orleans included multi-level booths, every bell and whistle imaginable and parties that were incredibly over-the-top.  Julie Bosman’s article in The New York Times described some other interesting changes

This year, the space itself was noticeably smaller than last year (and recent years past) with fewer exhibitors.  And despite the fact that we attended on “opening day”  the crowds and excitement seemed diminished.

The fact of the matter is that our business is going through some real upheavals. E-book sales continue to grow and this is pushing down the number of physical books sold.  The mass market distribution system has almost totally collapsed and so those categories previously published in mass market are either not being published or are being published exclusively online. The Department of Justice lawsuit has distracted everyone and if the settlement isn’t overturned or changed, the future of independent bookstores could be in jeopardy because they simply will not be able to compete against Amazon.  Self-publishing online is becoming far more “acceptable” and many writers are beginning to make a very good living doing this.  And then there are those of us who are helping in the self-publishing/e-book publishing process and establishing new branches of our business in order to keep up with the times.

Indeed, walking around the hall, I heard many who were genuinely worried about the future of our industry.  But then there are others of us who are excited about the innovation that is taking place.  Yes, many of these changes are challenging, but I am personally delighted to face them and see what we can do to help our clients understand and deal with them – and ultimately benefit from them. I think the only way to go forward at this point, is not to look back at any mistakes our industry has made and move forward to make sure the book, in whatever format, continues to thrive and that writers are encouraged to produce new and exciting material.

Most of all, we cannot forget that one of the reasons we are in this business is that our colleagues, by and large, are truly a great group, and that we all have the same goals in common.  Remembering this will make our work going forward more satisfying…if not easier. I, for one, am looking toward many more BEAs and an exciting new world of publishing.

June 05, 2012   John   BEA, future of publishing, galleys, John, opinion  
3

BEA comes to town

Today’s the first day of Book Expo America here in NYC, which, as you probably know, is the big trade show for the publishing industry. Along with publishers showing off their books, BEA is usually a time for a lot of state-of-the-industry talk, and indeed, there are a number of posts today about where we’re at and where we’re going.

From Publishing Trends, it seems like the hot topics this year are eBooks (natch) and self-publishing, with the various pros and cons debated as they’ve been ad nauseum for the past year.  From Publishing Perspectives,  we get the news that foreign publishers are going to sell eBooks here in the States, complicating further the territorial disputes that arose with the first wave of e-publishing. And then, we have this surprising piece of news from the American Booksellers Association: their membership of independent booksellers rose by 3.5%, or 55 stores, in the past year.

So on the one hand, we have eBooks and self-publishers taking over the world—and on the other, independent bookstores not just holding their own but increasing in number.

In other words–huh?

I’m heading over to the Javits Center tomorrow to check it out for myself, but if any readers have been over today, I’d love to hear impressions—especially if there are any galleys worth seeking out. Which, really, is the best feature of BEA anyway: in the end, it all does come back to the books.

May 31, 2012   Jessica   fiction, future of publishing, Twitter  
2

Serial Tweets

When I read that Pulitzer Prize winning author Jennifer Egan (A Visit from the Goon Squad) was serializing a short story via Twitter, I admit I was dubious. I could not imagine having a story delivered to me in 140 character chunks.  As she declared in an interview on NPR, Egan may love the “severity of the form” and the attendant challenges it poses, but I cannot help but feel that a story—even a short one—should be immersive, generous, enfolding.  I doubted that I could find the room to inhabit 140 words at a time.  Moreover, it smacked of theoretical undertaking, fresh-from-the-lab synthetic hybrid, like the once-hyped hypertext novel (with links leading off every which way, the text is indeterminate! Cool!) than a red-blooded, forward-moving narrative.

 

Nevertheless, I duly signed up for the Twitter feed, and was actually pleasantly surprised. While the koan-like style of the ruminations of a futuristic female spy took some getting used to, Egan found a felicitous relationship between function and form.  In fact, I liked it so well that when realized I could go directly to The New Yorker, a physical copy of which was sitting on my non-virtual couch, and read the whole thing, I abandoned Twitter entirely, proving that when it comes to reading, I have little patience or restraint. This may be less an issue with Twitterization than serialization.  Reading is one of the few areas in which the price of instant gratification—a bleary-eyed morning, a procrastinated phone call, couscous rather than rice with dinner—is relatively low.

 

Have you read or experimented with stories created especially for a digital medium? What is your experience?

May 23, 2012   Miriam   e-books, editing, future of publishing, Miriam, word count  
10

The long…and the long of it

For a literature major it’s somewhat shameful to have to confess that I find really long books  daunting.  From the Steve Jobs biography to the Game of Thrones series (both of which are on my “what I want to read next” list) page counts north of 400 pages give me pause.  So many words, so little time.

Inveterate bookworm that I’ve always been, I remember the days when nothing was as exciting as having a giant doorstop of a book at hand and a school vacation (or even a sick day) providing unfettered hours of reading.  Now, with manuscripts, proposals, blogs, articles, e-mails and all the other content fighting for attention, a really long book produces something akin to apprehension, maybe anxiety.  Which is why I found Marc Wortman’s piece in The Daily Beast so interesting.

Of course, I’ve always been aware of the economics of publishing long books—we have, on occasion, advised authors to trim unwieldy manuscripts with the warning that editors are sometimes scared of fat tomes and not just because they take so much time to edit but because they are more expensive to produce.  Wortman’s argument that e-book pricing is encouraging authors to write more and publishers to cut less is, therefore, intriguing and not altogether surprising.

Dickens and other serial writers of the 19th century got paid for content, so more was definitely more.  Now, according to Wortman, publishers want to charge more for e-books and feel they can justify doing so by offering longer books.    Interesting theory.   Not sure there’s sufficient evidence to support it, but I wouldn’t be shocked if there’s some truth to it.

How do you all feel about long books?  And, does it make a difference whether you’re reading them in print or on your e-reader?

« Older posts
Newer posts »