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It raises a provocative question for authors and agents (and publishing lawyers): is there anything in a conventional book contract that prevents your publisher from releasing your book originally as an e-book? Or, for that matter, exclusively as an e-book as opposed to print on paper? I would guess that the author of the St. Martin's Press book explicitly waived his right to have his book published first in a hardcover or paperback volume. But what about us garden variety authors? Could a publisher elect to go straight into e-book without our express permission?
After I wrote this I realized these questions only give rise to more questions.
Suppose that the St. Martin's book were not merely a one-time exception to the traditional practice of publishing books originally in print format. Suppose instead that it was the first step in a major shift among conventional book publishers - the Random Houses, Simon & Schusters, the HarperCollins, as well as the St. Martinses -- from launching books in hard copy to launching them in e-book format - indeed, to launching them only in e-book format.
This is not a fanciful question. Given the inefficient economies of print publication, and the efficiencies of digital publication, it is entirely possible that we could experience the same kind of shift that we are seeing in the newspaper and magazine business as the paper-reading generation gives way to a digitally-oriented one. (I am writing this on the day that the New York Times reported a 51% drop in earnings.)
If original e-book publication becomes not merely an occasional or optional event but a primary format - well, what does that say for the identities of the Random Houses, Simon & Schusters, HarperCollins, and St. Martinses? What does it say for the publishing industry? For editors? For authors? For -- omigod -- agents?
Original E-Book Publication - A Loophole in Your Publishing Contract?
Publishers Weekly recent carried the news item that St. Martin's Press was launching its first exclusive e-book title, The 100 Day Action Plan to Save the Planet by William Becker. Obviously it's a book about the environment and, as the news item pointed out, "releasing the title as an e-book would be the most environmentally-friendly approach." It sounds like a book everyone should read, and we applaud St. Martin's initiative for going straight to e-book.
It does however raise a provocative question for authors and agents (and publishing lawyers): is there anything in a conventional book contract that prevents your publisher from releasing your book originally as an e-book? Or, for that matter, exclusively as an e-book as opposed to print on paper? I would guess that the author of the St. Martin's Press book explicitly waived his right to have his book published first in a hardcover or paperback volume. But what about us garden variety authors? Could a publisher elect to go straight into e-book without our express permission?
Just asking!
I raised the question in a column years ago and raise it again now. It might be worthwhile for author and agent organizations to examine publisher boilerplate and, if I'm right, push to sew up this loophole.
When I entered the publishing business the paperback revolution was in full swing, and among the innovations introduced at the time was the insertion of ads in paperbacks. Although a number of products were tried out, the ones that stood out most vividly were cigarettes. There was debate on both Publishers' Row and Madison Avenue about propriety and economics, and I don't recall that I cared much either way; it was fine with me if people wanted to run ads in books, and fine with me if they didn't. The ads didn't inspire me to buy the product, but few ads do anyway. Nor did I find them a desecration of literature, mainly because the books they ran in were often desecrations of literature to begin with. Still, some authors did not like it, and others worried that the insertion of an ad for Marlboros in The Attack of the Hydrangea People today could lead to one for Desenex Foot Powder in War and Peace tomorrow.
I doubt if such ethical considerations would have prevailed if the economics of carrying advertising in books were sound, but they apparently were not. In addition, the susceptibility of book buyers to such ads was not terribly high. Publishers and advertisers might, given enough time, have overcome these problems had not, the story goes, some publisher run some cigarette ads in a book about the dangers of smoking (the story may be apocryphal, but it's too good to resist). The incident pointed up the dire possibilities, and so it came to pass that many authors and agents demanded specific language in their contracts stipulating that no ads would be run in their books, except ads for other books published by the publisher) without their express consent.
Ads in books are not very cost-effective ways of conveying a sales message. If the average distribution of a run-of-the-mill paperback original is 50,000 copies (it's often less), of which perhaps half will be returned, you're talking about 25,000 exposures of the ad, maybe a few more if the book is circulated beyond the original purchasers. That's not a great many exposures compared to the hundreds of thousands or millions an advertiser can get in national magazines, and its a pittance compared to the exposure of ads on the Internet and the effectiveness of ads on network television. But, you say, don't advertisers pay less to run ads in books than in magazines or on television to compensate for the difference in exposures? They certainly do; so much less, in fact, as to make it scarcely worthwhile for the publisher to sell the space.
There are other problems as well. Despite the commercialization of the publishing industry many publishers do have compunctions about the ethics of commingling ads with the texts of books, and although they may have few reservations about publishing books depicting human depravity in all its hideous glory, they draw the line at disposable razors and smokeless tobacco. You figure it out. Another problem is consumer resistance to ads in books. While most buyers of literature don't think twice about ads that appear in magazines, they find the same ads discomfiting in books. This may relate to the disposability of magazines; books are to keep, and book buyers may feel that their cherished possessions are contaminated by ads.
If we accept the truism that where there's a will there's a way, then we may be able to find creative ways around the problem. First, however, authors have to acknowledge that advertising in books does not necessarily spell the death of civilization as we have known it. Perhaps they would have an easier time doing so if they thought there was something in it for themselves.
What's in it for publishers, we all know: money. Advertising defrays costs and enhances profits, worthy goals for any business. But authors do not benefit from advertising revenue, nor do I think many of them feel entitled to do so. But surely, if they consider how much money is paid to contributing authors by such ad-rich publications as the New Yorker or Vanity Fair, it should be clear to them that there is a distinct relationship. Without meaning to sound overly cynical, it's easier to imagine authors accepting ads in their books for disposable razors and smokeless tobacco if they're paid advances twice the size of those they're now getting. Maybe the time has come, then, for authors to rethink their hostility to the notion.
It may well be that, for the reasons I've given, it's an unfeasible one. Nevertheless, it does raise a related issue having to do with the relationship between book publishing and other commercial enterprises. You might call it brand-name sponsorship of books, and though our industry is awakening to its potential, there's still a lot of fuzzy thinking in this area.
Our society is heavily dependent on brand names for the selection of consumer goods, and the consumer of books is no different from the consumer of soap powder. Publishers are confronted by a serious problem in this respect, however, because when it comes to selecting books, the "brand name" of the publisher means nothing to the consumer. Oh sure, the average book buyer is probably more familiar with the names of Random House, Doubleday, and Simon & Schuster than with firms like Beacon Press or Chelsea House, but he or she does not prefer Random House books over Beacon Press ones. The book buyer has no brand name loyalty, and little brand name recognition: I warrant 90 percent of all readers cannot tell you the name of the publisher of the book they are currently reading. Readers who loved a recent Putnam book could not care less about Putnam books in general, and if the author moved to Viking his readers would buy his Viking books as avidly as they bought his Putnam ones.
Readers, as I say, are as brand-name conscious as anybody else, but for them the brand names are favorite authors. But I'm constantly surprised at how little advantage publishers have taken of the availability of brand-name companies to sponsor books - sponsor them, that is, the way they sponsor television programs. The Procter and Gambles and General Foods of the world are loaded with money and spend stupendous sums on advertising and promotion. The sums necessary to back a book and put it on the bestseller list are pathetically low compared to what must be spent to achieve consumer acceptance of some new product or model: we're talking about perhaps a hundred thousand dollars or a little more, the cost of one or two magazine ads for soap products or automobiles or cigarettes. For another thing, these companies are in a position to buy books - lots of them, for use as premiums given away or sold at high discount to purchasers of their products.
Many writers who are not names may have wonderful ideas for books and superb expertise to bring to them. They will probably not get very far, however, because good ideas and extensive knowledge are unfortunately not enough to interest publishers in commissioning books. I cannot tell you how many worthy proposals are turned down annually by agents and publishers because the authors lack a "platform" or "credentials." When I see such proposals, I often suggest that the author try to link up with a brand-name company in that field and try to interest the firm in sponsoring his book. The same principle might wed brand-name sponsors to whole lines of books. Cosmetic or fragrance manufacturers could be persuaded to back lines of romance novels, for example.
There is gold mine potential in this area known as licensing, and, because it means more work for authors (and possibly lucrative deals for them if authors and their agents play their cards right), far more attention ought to be paid to bringing sponsoring companies onto the publishing scene. Some purists will attack this notion as another form of subsidy publishing, and that, unquestionably, is what it is. But an industry subsidized by Marlboro cigarettes, Kellogg's Corn Flakes, and Alpo dog food is still preferable to the present system subsidized by authors.
If the discontent of authors could be likened to a pie, the largest slice by far would represent resentment about the failure of publishers to advertise, publicize, and promote their books. Although I'm fairly articulate when it comes to explaining to my clients why publishers do or don't do certain things, I'm all too often at a loss for an answer when they ask me such questions as, "Why would my publisher spend $25,000 to acquire my book and $1.25 to advertise it?" Or, "How could they spend $100,000 to advertise that dreadful piece of pornography and not a dime on my book about nuclear disarmament?" Or, "Why is my book the best kept secret since the Manhattan Project?"
We live in a world in which it is universally acknowledged that the most effective way to move merchandise is to hype it to consumers. In the publishing industry, however, most of the product goes un- or under-advertised, and even books that publishing people consider to be heavily pushed are ridiculously underboosted by the standards of most other business enterprises. A few years ago, I handled a book by a leading business executive, and one day I proudly announced to him that his publisher had decided to allocate $75,000 for advertising and publicity for his book. "Great!" he exclaimed. "And how much are they going to spend on the second day?" In his field, $75,000 could be thrown casually into a single-page ad in a magazine.
Something is definitely out of whack here. In their own defense against author complaints, publishers respond that writers cherish unrealistic expectations, that even modest promotional campaigns are too expensive, that many books sell themselves without any publicity whatsoever, that many investments in this sector are unproductive or actually counterproductive, and that authors are not always aware of the efforts their publishers make to promote their books.
I don't think it's unreasonable for authors to hope that their publishers will try to stimulate consumer interest in their books. Nor is it unrealistic to suggest that publishers might benefit as much as authors from the publicizing of their products. But after countless discussions with publishers on this issue (not all conducted sotto voce, you may rightly guess), I have to admit that it is more complicated than we may think. Before you rush to judgment, listen to what your publisher has to say.
* Some types of books are going to sell whether we push them or not. A great many routine paperbacks sell and sell well with little or no help from their publishers. The reason is that paperback publishers have learned that there is a hard-core audience for romance, science fiction, western, horror, and other genres. These readers will buy just about any book in their favorite category whether it is good, bad, or indifferent. In certain male sectors like action-adventure or science fiction, for example, a paperback publisher can anticipate 15-25,000 guaranteed customers, and he would have to work very hard to sell fewer copies than that.
But, you ask, don't publishers want to sell more than this minimum? You'll be surprised to learn that the answer is: not necessarily. The cost of stimulating sales beyond the minimum support level may not be balanced by the profits. Some publishers are content to take a small profit on each title, rather than risk a loss going for the bigger profit.
Paperback publishers have also discovered that popular authors will naturally separate from the pack as a result of such factors as word of mouth, viral publicity, good reviews, feature stories in the press, and consumer demand in bookstores and other points of purchase - all with little or no money spent to create that demand. When those sales figures begin drifting upward, a wise publisher will consider ways to elevate that author even further. At that point advertising and publicity may come into play. Which leads to a second truism that publishers hold dear:
* Advertising can't make a book successful; it can only keep it successful. The fate of most books is sealed long before they are released to the public. The critical period is when the sales staff solicits orders from bookstore buyers and distributors. The enthusiasm or lack of it will determine the print run, and if the support is feeble, as likely as not little or nothing will be spent to advertise. Nor will ads necessarily send buyers flocking to the stores, even assuming the publisher feels that ads are a wise investment. If, however, a book meets with high popular demand, publishers may spend money on advertising and publicity to reinforce that demand. A new book by a popular author will probably get advertised, even if it's a lousy book. A new book by an unknown will probably not get advertised, even if it's great. Which leads to the very next rule of thumb, to wit:
* Very little midlist fiction benefits from heavy investment in advertising and promotion. Publishers are, understandably, reluctant to invest a lot of money to push serious, literary, experimental, and first novels. With hardcover sales projected in the low thousands, and with no guarantee of book club or paperback reprint revenue to underwrite the cost of publishing such midlist books, publishers prefer to let them make their own way on the strength of free advertising such as reviews and feature stories or word-of-mouth praise, or low-cost advertising such as catalogue announcements, publicity releases, or house ads that tout many of the publisher's books in one display package. As we've seen, though, there is some reason to believe that even if publishers spent heavily on ads for midlist fiction, it wouldn't compel consumers to buy, because the authors' names are not familiar to most of them. I believe it was Alfred A. Knopf who said, "We know book advertising is fifty percent effective; we just don't know which fifty percent."
As for promoting the authors themselves, it almost never works for midlist fiction, and for a very simple reason: it is extremely hard to express effectively the virtues of a work of fiction on a radio or television program, especially if the audience has never heard of the author. Which leads to the next item:
* Star authors are exempted from all of the above rules. If midlist fiction is so hard to promote on talk shows, how come bestselling authors show up on them all the time? One reason is that the subjects of their novels may be discussed as if they were nonfiction. While the plot of a novel is impossible to summarize entertainingly and the characters are too complex to capture in a pithy one-liner, there is usually something in the subject itself that serves as an excellent launching pad for stimulating discussion. "Tell us who your drug-crazed starlet heroine is in real life . . ."
Even more significantly, in the world of bestsellers, people are often more interested in the authors than in the books themselves. Bestselling authors are celebrities like movie and sports stars. Publishers who promote them stress the charms of the writer as much as they do the charms of the writer's work. If you'll listen carefully when a star author appears on radio or television, you'll notice how superficially the book itself is discussed. Attention focuses on such questions as: "Where did the idea for your novel come from? Did anything unusual happen to you when you were researching your novel? How much money did you get for your book? Is it true you're: getting married, getting divorced, having a baby, having another baby, buying a yacht, buying a castle, buying a nation?" These are precisely the same questions that might be asked of a film star hyping his or her latest movie.
Bestselling authors are also exceptions to the rule that print advertising can't make books successful. While ads seldom make consumers visit a bookstore to buy a midlist novel, they will attract them in droves to purchase a new novel by Stephen King, Janet Dailey or John Grisham. Why? Because these fans are predisposed to buy the books to begin with. It's a sad truth, but far more people are interested in how Oprah lost three pounds than how a righteous person rescued five thousand people from the Holocaust.
* Nonfiction authors are easier to promote than novelists. The subjects of many nonfiction books are, as we've seen, much more appropriate topics of conversation than the themes of novels. Nor must the author enjoy immense celebrity to quality for an invitation to a talk show. An interesting subject about which you feel passionately and speak articulately is often good enough to score a hit on radio or television. Terrific buns, washboard abs, big bazooms, and doe eyes are not necessary to furnish an entertaining fifteen or twenty minute chat about the current state of bioengineering or the destiny of wildlife on Alaska's North Slope.
Book editors are not famous for being early adopters of technological innovation. But at long last, a decade after the introduction of the Rocket Book and Print On Demand, mainstream publishing has joined the Digital Revolution. A generation of mouse-clicking youngsters has swept into editorial cubicles and even old-timers who only a few years ago couldn’t distinguish between ROM and RAM are now fully wired.
Manuscript Submissions via E-mail
One of the most significant reflections of editors’ comfort level with digital technology is their growing acceptance of email submissions of manuscripts. Until a couple of years ago the practice was discouraged and it still is, except for material solicited by literary agents and professional authors. But as editors recognize the competitive advantage of instant transmission of potentially hot projects, submission of emailed documents is becoming commonplace.
What do editors do with these documents? In many instances they print them. But the high cost and environmental wastefulness of printing manuscripts motivated editors to try reading books on desktop or laptop computer screens. Unfortunately, that didn’t prove very satisfactory. Though they became used to editing manuscripts on computer screens, they found that reading at length on desktop monitors or laptop screens was hard on the eyes.
Enter E-Book Readers
Happily, e-book technology matured just in time to solve these problems. Not long ago an editor told me she’d discovered that the Sony Reader was so perfectly suited to reviewing manuscript submissions that her boss purchased them for everyone on the division’s editorial staff. She simply uploads manuscript files and reads the book at home or on her commute to and from work. Recently I have heard many an editor rave about the virtues of the Sony (and to a lesser extent Amazon’s Kindle) as an editorial tool. They also speak of the “green” benefits of paperless transmission of texts. Authors and agents benefit too, thanks to savings on photocopy, printing, and mailing costs.
What’s Missing from this Book?
The blessings of submitting books by email are so obvious that it’s hard to imagine a downside. But indeed there are drawbacks and unintended side effects of this technological shift, and we need to acknowledge them. For instance, Word for Windows (the format of choice for most authors) displays typographical and grammatical errors in the form of glaring red and green underlines on text pages. This can be a serious distraction for editors hoping for a “page-flipping” experience (as your pitch promised). Conditioned as they are to spot and correct errors in manuscripts, they may find their eyes lurching from one red or green flag to another, requiring them to stop reading and ponder some solecism beckoning for attention on their screen. Too many lurches could make a critical difference in the decision to buy or reject a book. (Although current models of the Sony Reader and Kindle don’t yet employ spell- and grammar-check features, it’s a good bet they eventually will.)
Of far greater significance is the vast difference between reading text printed on paper and text displayed on a screen. The visionary Marshall McLuhan made us aware of the different temperatures of various media, and though he originally described television as a cool medium, if he were alive today I think he would agree that our society has become conditioned to think of screens as hot compared to print media. Thanks to television, the Internet, video games and computers, we have come to expect color, interactivity, instant gratification and a complete immersion of the senses from our screens.
Is That All There Is?
Reading text on a screen without sound, color, or movement, one develops the uneasy feeling that something is missing. We wonder, Is that all there is? I’m not a psychologist but it seems more than likely that we are bringing to text viewed on screens the same expectations we bring to television, movie and computer screens. Indeed, something is missing! How can we not be disappointed - even, God help us, bored - when these blocks of words fail to stimulate the same intense response as a YouTube video? We are trying to extract a linear experience out of a nonlinear medium.
The fundamental appeal of books is their ability to transport us to the author’s world. The best books immerse us so deeply in that world that we become almost immune to distraction. But screens are breeders of distraction from the sort of commitment to thinking, reflecting, and imagining that books demand. Books are vehicles for ideas; one can set a book down and ruminate and process. Computer monitors, television sets, and e-book screens discourage reflection. Thinkers simply live in a different time zone from watchers.
It is not unreasonable to speculate that a lifetime of exposure (if not addiction) to media - indeed, to multimedia - may have compromised editors’ ability to judge books on their own merits. Rather it is tempting for editors to judge them in a context of entertaining audiovisual displays. As successive generations accustomed to being diverted by watching, rather than by reading, enter the editorial workforce, impatience with printed text is demonstrably increasing, as we can see in the sharp decline of newspapers and magazines. Books require a commitment of time and attention that we either don’t have or aren’t willing to give. The temptation to skip or skimp is strong. One editor confessed to me, “I tend to scan manuscripts on screen rather than read them the way I do a printed text.”
We must therefore ask ourselves whether instead of reading books on screen, we are watching them.
The Click of Fingernails on Keyboard
Agents pitching projects over the phone routinely hear in the background the click of fingernails on a keyboard. That’s the sound of the editor googling the author and surfing his or her website, amazon.com rankings, and BookScan sales figures. Doesn’t it stand to reason that if the editor’s first exposure to a book is on a screen, he or she may unconsciously rely on extrinsic factors when making acquisition decisions? If so, it places on authors and their agents the burden of making submissions more entertaining, and that is exactly what many are doing. To make sure that the editor’s first impression is a favorable one, a growing number of authors are enhancing submissions with such colorful embellishments as author photos and audio and video clips, websites festooned with hotlinks to amazon.com pages, sales spreadsheets, screen captures, review quotes, celebrity endorsements and other flourishes designed to stimulate editors’ audiovisual responses.
It never hurts for authors to be attractive and promotable, and no one in publishing is so naïve as to deny that publishing decisions are influenced by an author’s sex appeal, charm, showmanship, and other extrinsic factors. To utilize the mighty resources of the Internet in order to play up those factors is by no means deplorable as long we keep things in proportion. Which means that, ultimately, it’s all about the book. But as the publishing industry’s drift into the rapids of show business accelerates, we should not be surprised to see computerized pyrotechnics become significant if not decisive factors in the acquisition of books.
Nor will we be surprised to discover authors writing not to be read but to be watched.
Yesterday I commented on a news item about a publisher, St. Martin's Press, that had released a book as an original e-book. I said,
