If you're looking for an old favorite or a lost “gem,” many long out-of-print titles by popular authors are finally available again. Every week, we feature a handful of titles from the hundreds on our site. Be sure to check out the latest featured titles!
Generosity-Driven Publishing Puts Freeists to Shame
The blogosphere is saturated with conjecture on the effect of books and e-books given away free. But nothing comes close to the business model of Concord Free Press. In truth it's not a business model at all. If anything it's an anti-business model. Or perhaps the Los Angeles Times characterized it best: "An unusual Robin Hood-style publishing model.”
What makes Concord Free Press distinctive? It seems the publisher is giving away all 2,000 copies of Wesley Brown's novel Push Comes to Shove on the condition that recipients "make a voluntary donation to a charity or someone in need...then pass their book along so others can give."
The company's website states its case:
It’s simple. We’re not proposing a new business model for publishing. We’re a non-profit organization interested in:
expanding the definition of publishing
exploring the connection between people and books, and
inspiring new levels of engagement among readers.
Like any non-profit, we keep our expenses incredibly low (e.g., our office rent is not exactly Manhattan-esque). Writers, designers, printers, and others generously donate their work and services for free. Our press runs are fairly short—2,000 copies or so—making our books limited editions. And to pay for it all, we ask people who like what we’re doing to support us via grants, checks, and the occasional wad of cash.
In short, we are freed from the burden of profitability. That said, though our books don’t generate traditional profits, they create real value:
Writers get a chance to get their work to readers via an interesting new channel, one that can help them sell commercial US rights, foreign rights, film rights, etc.
Readers get a great book for free and a chance to be part of an experiment in publishing and community
Charities and people in need receive real support from generous readers—who turn their good intentions into cash donations
Though it's said the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, Concord's road has led to an inspiring record of humankindness. Its first venture, Give + Take, produced over $40,000 in donations. "Factoring in our start-up costs, that’s an ROI [Return On Investment] of more than 800% – even though others, more in need than us, received that money. The second book, Push Comes to Shove, has generated even more. A sampling of donors, donees and donations is below.
Concord, Massachusetts, the publisher's home base, should ring a bell: it's the home of Henry David Thoreau. And if anyone would appreciate Concord Free Press's concept and purpose it's the sage of Walden Pond. Richard Curtis ************************************************************************* From Concord Free Press's website:
Our readers have already made $44,000+ in donations around the world—tell us where you gave
Push Comes to Shove
Marilyn K. of Minneapolis, MN gave $25 to the Community FoodBank of New Jersey
Kellie J. of New York City gave $175 to WBGO
Deborah P. of West Tisbury, MA gave $400 to a South African elementary school
Esther L. of Brooklyn, NY gave $50 to the Brooklyn Museum
Toby G. of Exeter, NH gave $50 to the NH SPCA
Garry T. of Central Square, NY gave $50 to the North Shore Food Bank
Cheryl T. of New York City gave $50 to the Teachers & Writers Collaborative in memory of Bill Kough
Fern S. of Chatham, NY gave $25 to Think OutWord
Debra J. of Harlem, NYC gave $50 to the Teachers & Writers Collaborative
L. Nevai of Averill Park, NY gave $25 to the Amanda Moon Children's Theater Scholarship Fund
Book Expo Begins Today, But When Does It End? Mike Shatzkin Says Sands Running Out
When you admire a guru, you have to take the bad prophecies with the good. Mike Shatzkin, who is giving a significant presentation at the commencement of Book Expo America, is certainly our favorite guru. But damn!, his gloomy prognostication about the future of the convention is hard to live with, even though deep down we suspect it's true.
There are two classes of people in publishing: those who remember the American Booksellers Association (ABA) convention - BEA's predecessor - and those who don't. The latter roughly parallel those who don't remember typewriters, black and white televisions, or automobiles with clutches. If these artifacts of 20th century civilization draw a blank stare, it will be equally hard to imagine what publishing must have been like when booksellers were important.
Before getting to his doomsday prognostication, Shatzkin takes us down memory lane to recall what BEA used to be. This is not merely idle reminiscence but, rather, Shatzkin setting us up to understand what the the convention has become and why it may no longer be a viable destination for a publishing industry that is exploding like a fragmentation grenade.
When I was a pup, the ABA was definitely an order-writing show. The number of independent bookstores who bought a big chunk of any trade list properly presented to them was in the thousands. (Now: what would you say? the dozens? wouldn’t hundreds be an exaggeration?) Only a few of the biggest publishers had sales forces large enough and disciplined enough to really cover them all, so most exhibitors encountered retailers who would do immediate business. Everybody had some sort of show “special” to encourage ordering. I think for many years it was “blue badges” that signified booksellers: you kept an eagle-eye out for them as the traffic streamed by and you knew exactly what and how you were going to pitch them.
Each night at the main convention hotels, several publishers — and all the mass-market publishers — ran “hospitality suites” offering liquid refreshment and munchies very deep into the evening. You’d make the rounds of those after you had gone to whatever events, dinners, and parties had taken place in other locations. I always found the time in the hospitality suites to be a highlight of the convention.
The halcyon days of the 1970s and 80s gave way to a more corporate environment when Reed Exhibitions, which bills itself as the world's leading organizer of trade and consumer events, acquired a controlling share of the show, changing its name to Book Expo America. "Reed Exhibitions excels in creating high profile, highly targeted business and consumer exhibitions and events to establish and maintain business relations, and generate new business," says the organization's website.
Interestingly, Reed's takeover paralleled the rash of trade book publisher mergers and acquisitions that, like a collapsing star, imploded the industry from hundreds of vibrant companies to fewer than a dozen behemoths in the space of a decade. 1996, the very year Reed acquired controlling interest in ABA, was the same one in which the mass market paperback business underwent a convulsive contraction that transformed the format into the Fifteen Top Blockbuster airport model that characterizes mass paper today. (I've written about this at length in a two part article, "The Rise and Fall of the Mass Market Paperback": Part 1, Part 2.)
Thus, while Big Publishing seemed to be soaring in the late 90s it was actually peaking, and the shift made itself manifest in the book fair. "The long expansion of the US book trade, which had continued pretty much unabated from World War II until the mid-1990s, stopped and started to reverse in the Internet age," writes Shatzkin. "Even worse for the industry trade show, consolidation of both big publishers and retailers accelerated. That meant fewer publisher customers to buy the booth space, and fewer retailers walking the aisles to make the booth space valuable."
And now, a little over a decade later, the collapsing star of Big Publishing generates more heat ($24 billion annually) than light, and that's reflected in the dimming of the celebration called Book Expo America. "The BEA of today isn’t the ABA of old," laments Shatzkin. "The booksellers are just about gone. The late-night hospitality suites don’t exist anymore. And hardly any publisher goes to the show expecting to write orders. It is time to organize a betting pool where the question is: how many more BEAs before, like its Canadian counterpart [Book Expo Canada shuttered permanently early this year] it simply ceases? Three? Four? Hard to see more than that."
But wait - there's a PS. BEA's show director Lance Fensterman reports that the convention's attendance is down 14% over the last one held in New York City, 2007, and exhibitor personnel registrations are down 10% to 15%. Overall exhibition square footage is down 21%. It looks like the Guru of Gloom is right again, dammit.
The Big Turnoff: Furor Over Kindle Audio Puts Random Between Rock and Hard Place
You shall not curse the deaf nor place a stumbling block before the blind. Leviticus 19:14
I realize it's unfashionable to feel sorry for Random House, but I think they're getting the rotten end of the stick for a problem not of their making.
You'll recall that Amazon's initiative to convert the texts of Kindle e-books to speech generated a furious response from authors and publishers because of potential infringement on their reserved commercial audio rights. Under threat of legal action, Amazon backed off, leaving the decision to speech-activate Kindle texts up to content owners. Many publishers opted out. Random House was one of them.
Now, The Reading Rights Coalition, representing more than 15 million visually challenged Americans, has censured Random House for denying audio service to its constituents. "When Random House turned off the text-to-speech function on all of its e-books for the Kindle 2," declared Dr. Marc Maurer, President of the National Federation of the Blind, "it turned off access to this service for more than 15 million print-disabled Americans. The blind and other print-disabled readers have the right to purchase e-books using this service with text-to-speech enabled. Blocking text-to-speech prohibits access for print-disabled readers and is both reprehensible and discriminatory." Maurer was joined by executives of Lighthouse International, American Association of People with Disabilities, National Spinal Cord Injury Association, American Council of the Blind and other organizations in denunciations of Random. A petition is being circulated.
It would be unspeakably callous to disregard the needs of the blind and reading-disabled. And that's the point: book publishers have always been in the vanguard of industries sensitive to the needs of the visually challenged. Language guaranteeing to them free access to published books is a standard feature of every book contract I have ever seen. A recent Random House contract says, "Random House shall have the right to grant transcription or publication rights in any Work in Braille or other non-book formats specifically for the visually impaired without charge." The subsidiary rights grant in a HarperCollins contract on my desk grants Harper "Braille, large-type and other editions for the handicapped (the Publisher may grant such rights to recognized non-profit organizations for the handicapped without charge and without payment to the Author)." I'm ready to bet that every one of the thousands of contracts in our agency's files has similar language.
I don't think the leadership of the Reading Rights Coalition is doing its members a favor by attacking publishers, who have been victimized by Amazon/Kindle's audio initiative just as severely as the visually impaired. There is a line between a function intended for the disabled and one designed for fully sighted and literate. Amazon's aggressive step across that line put publishers on the horns of a cruel dilemma: by withholding audio rights from Kindle they deny service to a genuinely needy population; but by enabling Kindle's audio feature they deprive legitimate copyright holders of the opportunity to exploit a commercial right. They also incur liability: a publisher can be sued by authors whose commercial audio rights had been given away to Amazon. And because that threat of liability is ever-present to Random House and its brother and sister publishers, it's not likely that petitions or humanitarian appeals (including to President Obama) will gain any traction.
What's the answer? We must come up with a voice-enabling technology expressly targeted to the handicapped, and segregate it from commercial audio. That's not a job for publishers. It's a job for technologists, and we wish them godspeed in solving the problem.
Amazon should be in the forefront of those supporting such an initiative, because there are 15 million visually impaired individuals ready to buy a device that serves them what they need and are entitled to. If Amazon doesn't or can't do the job - well, there are a lot of e-book devices coming on stream, and the one that solves this audio dilemma will have a huge advantage and a ready-made market.
I read today that you are seeking a publication deal for your memoirs. E-Reads, a ten-year-old publishing company of which I am president and CEO, invites you to consider bringing your book out under our imprint. We offer a number of advantages over conventional publishers, particularly instant release of your book in both e-book and print on demand format.
We are prepared to offer a substantial advance and an unprecedented royalty percentage for the privilege of publishing your story. If you require the services of a professional co-author we have access to many superb professional writers with ghost-writing or co-writing credentials.
Naturally, before we sign a binding commitment it would be mutually beneficial for us to spell out the content and "voice" of your book. A paramount consideration is the degree to which you can be candid about your personal life and political career. Though I realize you're a newcomer to the publishing process, I'm sure that as a businessman you will appreciate that the more frank you can be, the higher the commercial value of your book. A memoir perceived as self-serving (such as public statements you have made since leaving office, if I may be so frank) will simply not enable us to recoup our investment. I'm afraid we can't count on foreign rights revenue as responses to feelers made by our agents abroad have not been encouraging. It seems that the willingness of the Coalition of the Willing does not extend to acquiring rights to your story.
If however you are prepared to produce a forthright account of your term in office, we are prepared to demonstrate our earnestness with a compensation package far beyond the $2 million you are reported to be seeking.
As for the contents, I've made some notes about topics that we would like to see covered in your book. Here's a partial bulleted list:
How you assisted President Bush deceive Congress and the American people into buying into a connection between Al Qaeda and the Iraq government under Saddam Hussein
How you misrepresented available intelligence
How you outed covert intelligence officer Valerie Plame and got your Chief of Staff Scooter Libby to take the fall
How you steered no-bid government contracts to Halliburton, a company in which you have a multimillion dollar interest that has appreciated by thousands of percent since the war began
How you undermined the Constitution
How you suspended the right of Habeas Corpus
How you subverted the rule of law
How you instituted secret wiretapping and email monitoring of American citizens
How you scammed America's allies with Saddam's "weapons of mass destruction"
How you created a secret cabal of oil and other energy lobbyists
How you sent thousands of young men and women to death and maiming in the prosecution of a "phony" war whose real goal was to exploit Middle East oil
How you leveraged your office to create a policy of torture and brutality
As I stated at the outset, if this book is to succeed commercially it must be completely candid. If you are uncertain about the meaning of that term, let me recommend a book that might serve as your model. I'm thinking of The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir by former dancer Toni Bentley whose candor about her sex life was painfully frank. In particular she rhapsodized about anal intercourse. We don't feel that discussions about your sex life are necessary to make this book a success (though, needless to say, if there were any revelations of that nature that you were willing to share with your readers "it wouldn't hoit!" as they say). Nevertheless, you might find anal intercourse to be an effective metaphor for your conduct as Vice-President. I don't want to put words in your mouth but if you were willing to talk about giving it to the American people "in the ass" we would probably raise our first printing another 100,000 copies in the blink of an eye.
In the hope that we've persuaded you to cast your lot with us, we'd like to discuss titles, and I think we've got one you're going to love. Ready?
GO FUCK YOURSELF My Life in High Crimes and Misdemeanors by Dick Cheney
We've already picked out some great cover photos for you to review and we've even taken the liberty of producing a sensational Web promo built around your priceless "Go Fuck Yourself" pronunciamento. We're dummying up a book jacket with some great graphics spun off that theme and I guarantee it's a knockout.
Please get back to me with your response to our proposal, and, if you agree to our approach and are confident you can deliver a truthful account, have your authorized representative contact me to hammer out details. I look forward to hearing from you and, I hope, working with you.
My Life in Titles, or The Title Game, or Adventures of a Title Maven, or Titles: The Writer’s Indispensable Tool, or What’s in a Title?, or...
Among the immortal literary classics to be found on the bookshelves of every civilized person are such books as Trimalchio in West Egg, My Valley, Pumphre, and Tom-All-Alone’s the Ruined House.
Do you mean to say you’ve never heard of them?
Actually, those were the titles before the author or publisher thought better of them. You undoubtedly know them as The Great Gatsby, East of Eden, Babbitt, and Bleak House. It’s hard to know whether they would have endured despite their dreadful original titles, but it does make us wonder. In fact, book editor and author Andre Bernard wondered so much about titles that he produced a whole book about them, Now All We Need Is a Title: Famous Book Titles and How They Got That Way.
The first problem most authors face when commencing a book or story is what to call it. Many writers cannot start writing until the question of title is settled, for among its many functions, the title helps an author focus on the point of his tale, its theme, mood, tone of voice, and the nature of the audience that will be reading it. Each version of the title of this article represents a different solution to the challenge of how to approach this subject. Do I play it straight or cute? Grimly academic, pedantically classical, or cleverly metaphorical? Luckily, for purposes of illustration, I was able to use all of them. I doubt if we shall see such an opportunity again in our lifetime.
I am a connoisseur of very few things, but I do consider myself one on the subject of book titles. It is certainly not a form of expertise I deliberately set out to develop. But even if you have a tin ear, over decades of immersion you do become something of a maven in this sub-sub-sub-species of literary endeavor.
There are worse things one could be. The first impression you form of a book is the one evoked by its title, and its impact on you is no less significant than the one you form upon first setting your eye on a stranger. Your bond with a book commences with its title: your mind and heart are subliminally conditioned by a title to anticipate the book’s message and respond to its contents.
The title of a book is its most important sales feature; you are often intrigued or put off by its title long before you see its cover, study its jacket blurbs, or browse through its contents to decide whether or not you want to purchase it. It is therefore not hyperbolic to suggest that many consumers make their decision to buy a book or pass it up on the strength or weakness of its title. Perhaps you can't tell a book by its cover, but by its title? I think you can.
Little wonder, then, that authors, editors, and agents spend an inordinate time seeking les mots justes for the titles of their books. I keep a file of terrific titles for which no books have yet been written, and when a client complains about being stumped for one, I haul out my list and see if I can make a match. When I was a freelance writer, I collaborated with Elizabeth Hogan on a Doubleday book describing the dangers of nuclear power plants that were then beginning to proliferate in the United States. We took our title from Robert Frost’s poem "Fire and Ice": Those Who Favor Fire. We thought it was a brilliant choice.
Doubleday’s sales reps didn’t. Every publishing company sales department has a Vice President in Charge of Rejecting Great Titles and Substituting Mediocre Ones, and that’s how our book ended up being called Perils of the Peaceful Atom.
The original title went into my Terrific Titles file, however, and when, years later, my client Marta Randall turned in an apocalyptic novel for which she lacked an appropriate title, I resuscitated Those Who Favor Fire and suggested it to her, and this time it passed muster.
Actually, it’s not fair to make fun of the sales reps, for it is they after all who have to go out and sell the book to the accounts. If a sales rep is not confident that your title makes an immediate and forceful impact on the buyers – which translates into lost commissions for him – he is going to lobby his publisher to get it changed.
And what for authors is an inspired title may be seen in a very different light by the sales grunts slugging it out on the front line. Among the most common complaints publishers hear from sales reps are vagueness (“What the hell does Attitudes mean”?), insipidness (“Alien Attackers sounds like a million other science fiction novels”), and inappropriateness (“Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance sounds like it should go in the how-to section of a bookstore”). Sales reps are therefore the conservative party in any publisher’s legislature, and they usually control a majority vote. But if I love a title enough I will fight like a devil for it, even with my own authors. In 1984 my clients psychiatrist Stanley Turecki, M.D. and co-author Leslie Tonner delivered to Bantam Books a contracted book advising parents how to understand and manage particularly difficult children. The authors and I had spent a long Saturday poring over Bibles, Bartlett’s, and other reference books, and had at last distilled a splendid title drop by drop: Parents Under Siege.
It did not pass muster with Bantam’s Vice President in Charge of Rejecting Great Titles, and we ended up with – well, what else? – The Difficult Child. Talk about difficult children, I was so bitterly disappointed I almost threw a tantrum. But the sales department felt that there are times when a title should simply state, without poetic flourish, what a book is about, and this was one of them. We ultimately acceded to this line of reasoning, and several dozen printings later I must grudgingly admit that Sales had a good point. (In the 1996 edition of my book How to Be Your Own Literary Agent, in which this essay was published, I wrote, “If you’ve written a book for which the title Parents Under Siege is appropriate, take it, it’s yours.” I don’t know if authors James Garbarino and Claire Bedard read this invitation, but in 2001 they brought out a book with that every title.)
Brilliant titles are not always desirable, however, and may actually hurt sales if they point the potential book buyer in the wrong direction. This is particularly true in genre fiction. Every category of books has what might be described as its own characteristic title “profile,” a word or phrase that blatantly declares the book’s genre. An obvious example is detective fiction, where you have The Case of the . . . or something with the words “murder” or “death” in it. Although these catch phrases have become clichés, they help everybody down the line, from editors to bookstore buyers to consumers, to immediately classify the book and make the selection process easier. The title, in other words, is a key element of the package, and guarantees the slot in which the book is to be displayed. A title that deviates too far from its appropriate genre can be a liability, no matter how clever or mellifluous it may be. If you don’t think you’ve been mentally conditioned to respond to titles, take any mainstream title and marry it to a genre formula one and you’ll see what I mean. Pretend you’re a bookstore clerk and determine in which department you would display the following:
The Valley of the Dolls Sanction The Dragons of Valley of the Dolls Dollsworld Showdown at Valley of the Dolls Mistress of Dollsvale Love’s Virginal Valley of the Dolls The Dollsdale Horror A Woman of Uncertain Valley of the Dolls Murder on the Rue Valley of the Dolls
It works for nonfiction, too:
The Valley of the Dolls Syndrome Tighten Up Your Valley of the Dolls The Thirty-Day Valley of the Dolls Slimdown
Even in mainstream literature, titles can give confusing and misleading impressions, and the results can be funny. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance really did get placed on how-to shelves, and the New York Times once ran an apology for referring to Evan Connell’s biography of Custer, Son of the Morning Star, as a novel. If you didn’t know better, you might very well place on the wrong shelves such ambiguously titled books as, Exit the Rainmaker, White Mischief, and The Dancing Wu Li Masters. It’s no laughing matter when these mix-ups cause lost sales, however.
Like everything else in modern culture, titles tend to go in and out of fashion. The revolutionary ’60s temporarily loosened strictures against long titles and book authors took their cue from the stage. Plays like Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Momma’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feelin’ So Sad, and The Effects of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the- Moon Marigolds had lengthy runs despite jawbreaking titles, and authors and publishers tried the same on books. Which is how we ended up with titles like, Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me. The problem with titles longer than five words, however, is that they crowd the cover and must be reduced to an unacceptably small typeface. The counterrevolution restored short titles, and many best-selling authors went on to employ one-word titles to good effect. There's nothing like Jaws or Roots to instill confidence in succinct titles!
Juvenile and young adult titles have become particularly inventive in the last few years, and it seems that the wackier they are, the more the kids love them. No more Treasure Island and Little Women for today’s boys and girls. They want Jelly Belly, There’s a Boy in the Girl’s Bathroom, Jacob Two Two Meets the Hooded Fang, Hershell Cobwell and the Miraculous Tattoo, How to Eat Fried Worms, Wonder Kid Meets the Lunch Snatcher, Can You Sue Your Parents for Malpractice?, The Alfred G. Graebner Memorial High School Handbook of Rules and Regulations, and the like.
Every publisher’s dream is to have a book that sells by the truckload on the strength of its title alone. Of course, it’s impossible to know with any accuracy what attracts buyers to a book. After reading The One Minute Manager or Swim with the Sharks, you may wonder whether the contents lived up to the brilliance of the titles. But you probably plunked money down at a bookstore to find out.
Most lucrative of all is the title that starts a copycat fad, such as 101 Uses for a Dead Cat, Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche, and Thin Thighs in Thirty Days. For years after publication of those books, publishers brought out variants on the titles to take advantage of the public’s infatuation. Imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, the ripoff titles merely fueled the success of the original ones. Patricia Matthews’s romance Love’s Avenging Heart launched a veritable flood of Love’s Something Somethings that did not subside for years.
Nonfiction writers are luckier than novelists because they often get a second chance in the form of a subtitle. If your title is a bit poetic or obscure, don’t worry, your subtitle will correct any ambiguities. What does Final Cut mean? It could signify anything until you couple it with author Steven Bach’s subtitle: Dreams and Disaster in the Making of “Heaven’s Gate.” Similarly, Merle Miller’s Plain Speaking doesn’t give one a clear idea of his book’s contents until you couple it with its subtitle, An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman. Note that after you read the subtitle, your attention returns to the basic title, and you are now able to understand and appreciate it much better.
For authors struggling to come up with a good title, I advise you to make a long list of words and phrases that have any bearing, however remote, on your story. Some of these may come from the text itself: a description of your hero or heroine, a reference to the plot, theme, or action. Mix and match words until you arrive at the precise formula. If your title doesn’t jump out at you, go through your thesaurus for related words that might be more felicitous than the ones on your list. Or use the index of your Bartlett’s to locate passages in classical literature that succinctly, cogently, and lyrically evoke the appropriate image of your book.
Titling is an essential element of the writer’s craft and requires as much thought as plotting and characterization. Some authors do have a special genius for it, however. I have, for instance, always admired Gregory Benford’s ability to select monumental titles that capture the stupendous profundity of his stories of time and space: In the Ocean of Night, Beyond the Sea of Suns, Timescape, Against Infinity. You read his titles and you know this writer is grappling with nothing less than imponderables, immutables, and ultimates. If you are a romance fan you may find Janelle Taylor’s titles fatally irresistible: First Love Wild Love, Whispered Kisses, Sweet Savage Heart, Passions Wild and Free. The titles of Father Andrew Greeley’s books guarantee that you will be witnessing the torments of sinners: Thy Brother’s Wife, Patience of a Saint, The Cardinal Sins. And John Saul’s titles portend suspenseful tales of creepy kids: Suffer the Children, The Unloved, The Unwanted, When the Wind Blows. Some authors get a lot of mileage out of a title. Lawrence Sanders went through all the deadly sins for his titles, James Patterson through nursery rhymes, and Harry Kemelman’s mystery titles lured readers from one day of the week to another, starting with Friday, the Rabbi Slept Late.
Our love of great books is often enhanced by the great titles that go with them. How Green Was My Valley, From Here to Eternity, East of Eden, Crime and Punishment, One Hundred Years of Solitude, King Solomon’s Mines, Forever Amber, The Magic Mountain, Lord of the Flies – how often are unforgettable titles married to unforgettable books!
If, try as you may, you simply can’t come up with an apt title for your book, don’t despair, you’re in good company. Margaret Mitchell had a hard time coming up with anything more engaging than Tomorrow Is Another Day for her novel of the Civil War. Luckily, a better one did occur to her before the book went into production.
Copyright Asteroid Hurtling Toward Earth, Impact Due 2013
Evan Schnittman observed it as a smear of light on the fringe of our galaxy, but it took media guru Mike Shatzkin to fully articulate its significance. And significant it is, a possible game-changer in the internecine struggle among authors, publishers, and Google. It has to do with a little-known provision of the US Copyright Act of 1978.
Schnittman, a Vice President of Business Development and Rights for Oxford University Press, mentioned it almost as an afterthought at the end of "There Will Be Disintermediation", the final installment of a brilliant three part analysis in his Black Plastic Glasses website. "Mark your calendars, folks," he declares, "the disintermediation begins on January 1, 2013. What happens on January 1, 2013? See for yourself in the US Copyright Act of 1978, section 203. {…Termination of the grant may be effected at any time during a period of five years beginning at the end of thirty-five years from the date of execution of the grant…}" [bold print is Schnittman's.]
"What if this change," asks Schnittman, "was so significant that it could possibly even spawn an industry wide reset of the way we do things?" He leaves us panting for an answer, and Shatzkin provides it:
"It turns out there is a clause in the 1978 copyright law that allows any author to reclaim any copyright despite any contract with a publisher, simply by serving notice. The copyright can be reclaimed no less than 35 years and no more than 40 years from the book’s original publication. So books published in 1978 can be reclaimed by their authors from 2013-2018.".
"One wonders" Shatzkin ruminates, "how many agents are aware of this law and are preparing for it."
Actually many agents have been aware of it for years, and a number have invoked it. It's commonly referred to as the "Widows and Orphans Provision," because it entitles immediate family members to recover from publishers or certain derivative licensees (like movie companies) the copyrights to works published by a deceased author. (Don't worry, men, widowers are included!) What some agents may not be aware of is that an author doesn't have to be dead for the reclamation to take place; he or she simply has to live long enough to take advantage of the provision. For books licensed to publishers after January 1, 1978, the law is effective "thirty-five years from the date of publication of the work under the grant or at the end of forty years from the date of execution of the grant, whichever term ends earlier."
What surprises Shatzkin is that Article 203 has not come up in discussions about the Google Settlement, and we owe him and Schnittman a debt of gratitude for placing it on the table.
Until recently we'd have said that (except for a small number of evergreen backlist books) most titles coming up for reclamation under the Act are worth little or nothing. But with Google's push to monetize old books, even moribund ones may have value either to their authors, their publishers, or Google. As Shatzkin puts it, for some old books "it looks like a new payday has been set up."
For the full text of Article 203 of the 1978 Copyright Act, click here.
A kaiju is marching from Japan to the West, and the Kindle, Sony and other black and white e-book readers are in danger of being trampled. Call the monster Colorzilla.
For instance...
We recently wondered whether Rupert Murdoch was "ready to get e-ink on his fingers." It increasingly looks like he is, and what's more it will be colored ink. Gizmodo's John Herman reports that "Rupert Murdoch, News Corp potentate and noted evil person, yesterday announced his company is 'investing in a new device that has a bigger screen [than the Kindle], [and] four colors,' adding, "THE KINDLE MUST PERISH."
We agree with Herman's observation that "We'll have to wait and see on this one, but probably not for too long - this is a guy who, for better or for worse, means what he says - and the Kindle is begging for some decent competition." (The Informer's headline was, Rupert Murdoch Investing In a Mysterious Color eBook Reader [It Runs On Human Blood]).
Why, you may ask, do we need color to read black type on a white page? Because, as we pointed out a while back (Watching Books), text displayed on a screen - even a bullet-paced thriller - can be boring to a generation of readers raised on color-saturated television and computer screens. Served up with color ads or videos, even dry textbooks will hold our attention. And don't forget the new hybrids slouching toward your screen called vlogs and vooks - dramatized blogs and stories utilizing the full arsenal of modern media.
In the last year or two the push for a color e-reader screen has intensified. The first across the finish line was the Fujitsu Flepia which, despite its intimidating price ($1000) showed us the potential for books nestled in color.
At half the price is the Panasonic WordsGear. As reviewed on Technabob:
The WordsGear offers an amazingly sharp 5.6-inch TFT display with a 1024×600 pixel resolution (that’s about 211 pixels per inch.) This means reading small type should be no problem, and easy on the eyes. Thanks to a special touch sensitive grip, it’s designed to be controlled with a single hand, so you can even use it while standing up on the train or bus.
Since the display isn’t one of those electrostatic ones, it can also handle moving images, and cam play MPEG4 video clips. There’s also AAC and WMA audio playback, and you can listen to your tunes while reading. Content is stored on SD cards, providing plenty of expandability. The rechargeable battery should give you about 6 hours of reading on a single charge.
There’s a huge catalog of e-books for the device (all in Japanese, though) available from Saidoku. From what I can tell, you can load up your own PDF documents so you won’t be limited to Japanese content.
It's worth clicking on the Panasonic WordsGear to see the video. Didn't understand a syllable but it's great fun. And that's the point - color is fun! Even, paradoxically, black-on-white text.
I wonder if the Japanese devices have been compromised by lousy names. It's hard to take an e-book named Flepia seriously. First of all, no one knows if it's Fleh-pia or Flee-pia (it's Fleh, I'm reliably told). Second of all, "Flepia" sounds like one of those junk fishes hauled up with a tuna catch. And WordsGear? Can you see yourself boasting about reading a book on your WordsGear?
No wonder Kindle is enjoying so much success. Whether or not it's a great e-book reader, it sounds like one.
A Mainstream Publisher's Catalog Goes E (And Drops the UE,Too)
The other day we received our first e-catalog from a publisher and we not only lived to tell the tale, we actually liked it. Though the digital revolution in the book industry has happily reached a tipping point, a lot of grouchy twentieth century old timers have stubbornly drawn the line at emailed catalogs. Here's what I recently muttered on the subject:
Another capital-intensive practice on the chopping block for a number of publishers is paper catalogues, and though we're all trying to enter the digital age unflinchingly, the disappearance of catalogues will be more wrenching than many other uprootings. Catalogues have long been the most familiar tool for introducing the bookstore trade to publishers' front- and backlists. They are not merely informational and often beautiful but they are a publisher's face to the world, its very identity. Even the spelling of "catalogue", despite Microsoft spellcheck's insistence on dropping the "ue", bespeaks a stubborn and beloved tradition.
Holding out for paper catalogs is kind of like die-hard Southerners flying the Confederate flag in their front yards. It's a losing battle. Catalogs are going E whether we like it or not, and the Visigoths who spell it "catalog" have won the day.
The one we received from Perigee, a division of Penguin's Putnam group, is handsome, colorful, informative, and easily navigable. The only problem is technical. The size of the PDF file sent to me was more than 6 MB. That can strain some older computers, get snagged by filters or push the dial on some inboxes close to the Full mark. The alternative is for booksellers and other interested parties to visit the publisher's website and proceed to the catalog links. We did so and invite you to do so too. Click here, then click on the "catalogs" tab and scroll down to the various Penguin divisions. You can then view a catalog online or download it as a zip file. Some files are larger than others and because the Perigee catalog is bundled with those of other divisions it weighs in at a hefty 114 MB; the zip is almost as big at 106 megs. Publishers will have to find ways to keep file sizes down. If an e-catalog requires too much time to load it will defeat its raison d'etre. For a busy bookseller, two or three minutes of watching a progress bar on a computer is as much time as it used to take to browse an entire paper catalog.
In time these issues will be resolved and as the industry grows accustomed to the new format, the advantages of e-catalogs will make themselves abundantly manifest; we'll see video, audio, hotlinks galore and countless other bells and whistles. E-catalogs are cost effective and so much friendlier to the environment than their paper forebears. Indeed, Perigee's catalog was inspired by one of the publisher's own books, Green, Greener, Greenest by Lori Bongiorno.
Note that I spelled catalog in the contemporary style. But I secretly thought catalogue. Old habits die hard.
Print Books Dead? "Not Even Wounded," Says Lightning President
Here's a trick question. Do you think that books printed on demand are tangible merchandise? That they are no different from traditionally printed books?
It's natural to think they are, but you might find it helpful instead to think of them as a form of digital book even though they are delivered by UPS instead of by your Internet service provider.
Because the trade publishing industry is in the doldrums we tend to think the book printing industry is suffering too. Nothing could be further from the truth. As I've contended again and again, there's nothing wrong with the book business that can't be cured by distributing books a different way. And that's why I believe print on demand is the salvation of the industry.
This is admittedly a pretty extravagant declaration, but it's supported by some statistics reported in an interview, conducted by Liz Thompson for Bookbrunch, with David Taylor, President of Lightning Source Inc., arguably the largest POD press in the world. (As a matter of disclosure, LSI is E-Reads' printer.) Taylor stated that LSI has printed 70 million books in the decade since POD was introduced, and its facilities in Tennessee and Pennsylvania hold about a million digital files. The business has "grown 20% to 30% in the last six months," he said. LSI prints, binds and ships 10,000 copies a day on machines that run around the clock. In Britain, the firm is building a facility the size of an English football pitch.
Just as the current recession has laid bare the weakness of a traditional book distribution model based on the returnability of merchandise - with return rates soaring deep into the double-digits - it has also revealed the strength of an on-demand system with a negligible return rate.
"The recession," Taylor told his interviewer, "is focusing publishers' minds on cash, on the amount of inventory they have sitting in warehouses, on the cost of transporting stock. Most global publishers in the academic and STM [scientific, technical and medical] markets are saying they want to get out of inventory, and some pretty radical discussions are now taking place which will allow publishers to do just that. Believe me, it's an exciting time to be part of the business."
Among the radical solutions to the inventory problem is the creation of digital warehouses. These are in essence a network of servers containing vast archives of POD files linked to Espresso printers, miniaturized machines that can print and bind paperback books in under 10 minutes. Someone called them ATMs for books, but while the logical place for them is bookstores there's no reason why Espressos could not be set up in facilities not necessarily book related (we half-jokingly suggested a bagel shop).
Certainly one place such networks could be set up is Third World countries, says Thompson, "which have none of the infrastructure of western publishing in place (warehouses, distribution companies) and where building it would not, at this point, make much sense."
In short, says Liz Thompson, David Taylor "believes that far from the being dead, 'or even slightly wounded', digital technology is powering a genuine revolution in so-called traditional publishing."
To witness the revolution, watch this video of an Espresso producing a book in front of your eyes. Order your book, buy yourself a cup of (liquid) espresso and by the time you've consumed it, your book will be ready.
Perhaps it will become apparent why, in 2005, Amazon.com acquired a modest little print on demand operation called BookSurge, and why, three years later, Amazon launched an aggressive campaign to promote its POD services to publishers. Though Amazon's is the quintessentially modern book retailing operation in the history of the world, a number of underlying brick and mortar functions - notably, some 12 million square feet of warehouses - compromise its efficiency and profitability. In The Nine Gazillion Pound Gorilla Bares Its Fangs, a blog posted at the time, I wrote:
If Amazon is capable of printing books on demand, they will no longer have to carry any physical books in their warehouses at all! They simply have to load the files of Random House, HarperCollins, Hachette, Penguin, and every other publisher onto their server and print all of their books - frontlist as well as backlist - on demand. It would not only be a huge savings for Amazon in terms of warehouse space - it would be a huge savings for the publishers, too: they all would eliminate printing, warehouse, and freight costs at a stroke.
That all middlemen are impediments in a digital world is bedrock truth. As stupendous as Amazon is, it is nevertheless a middleman between book publishers and book buyers. The key to disintermediating that function is print on demand. Amazon's 2008 foray in this arena was only the first skirmish. You can expect the company to continue seeking a large share of the POD business currently enjoyed by Lightning Source.
For the first edition of my book How To Be Your Own Literary Agent I produced a down-and-dirty precis of book contract terms, "Is It a Good Deal?" This synopsis was intended for use as a handy reference when immediate action is called for, such as a surprise phone call with an offer from a publisher to whom you submitted your manuscript so long ago you'd forgotten about it. I urged authors to practice reading the guidelines with one hand cupped over the telephone receiver while their family jumps up and down shrieking, "They’re buying the book! They’re buying the book!"
Since then I've received many calls and emails from authors thanking me for this synopsis, but here's the odd thing. Since 1983, when the first edition was published, I've scarcely changed a thing! Sure, I added electronic rights to one of the updates. I also raised the bar a notch for trade and mass market paperback royalties, reflecting a shift (I'm happy to report) from a buyer's market to a seller's.
But advances? Each time my publisher requested an update (the most recent was 2003) I was asked if advances had risen since 1983. The answer was no. And here, 26 years later, that's still my answer and I'm sticking to it.
Read the summary below and then let's talk.
Richard Curtis ********************* Hardcover
A Poor Hardcover Deal
Publisher gets world rights in all languages.
Publisher controls movie, television, electronic and multimedia rights.
Advance under $5000.
Royalties under 10 percent on first 5000 copies sold, 12 1/2 percent on next 5000, 15 percent thereafter.*
Publisher gets more than 25 percent of British and translation licensing revenue.
Publisher gets more than 10 percent of first-serial, movie, television, and multimedia revenue.
Publisher gets more than 50 percent of reprint, electronic, book-club, and other primary subsidiary-rights revenue.
* All royalties in these examples are based on the list price of the book. If your publisher’s royalty structure is based on net receipts instead of list prices, double the royalty percentages given here. In other words, a 10% royalty based on the list price should be a 20% royalty based on the net.
A Fair hardcover Deal
Publisher gets English-language rights in United States, its territories and possessions, Philippine Islands, and Canada.
Publisher does not control movie, television, electronic and multimedia rights. Publisher may control first-serial, British, and foreign-translation rights if author has no agent. Otherwise, these are reserved by author.
Advance between $5000 and $10,000.
Royalties at least 10 percent on first 5000 copies sold, 12 1/2 percent on next 5000, 15 percent thereafter.
If publisher does control first-serial rights, it gets no more than 10 percent of revenue.
If publisher does control British and foreign-translation rights, it gets no more than 25 percent of revenue.
Publisher does not participate in movie, television, electronic or multimedia revenue.
Publisher gets no more than 50 percent of reprint, book-club, and other subsidiary-rights revenue.
A Good Hardcover Deal
Publisher gets English-language rights in United States, its territories and possessions, Philippine Islands, and Canada.
Publisher does not control movie, television, electronic and multimedia rights. Publisher may control first-serial, British, and foreign-translation rights if author has no agent. Otherwise these are reserved by author.
Advance over $10,000.
Royalties better than 10 percent on first 5000 copies sold, 12 1/2 percent on next 5000, 15 percent thereafter.
If publisher does control first-serial rights, it gets no more than 10 percent of revenue, and passes author’s share to author upon publisher’s receipt.
If publisher does control British and foreign-translation rights, it gets no more than 25 percent of revenue, and passes author’s share to author upon publisher’s receipt.
Publisher does not participate in movie, television, electronic or multimedia revenue.
Publisher gets less than 50 percent of reprint, book-club, and other primary subsidiary-rights revenue, and passes author’s share to author upon publisher’s receipt after publisher has recouped advance.
************************** Trade Paperback
A Poor Trade Paperback Deal
Same as poor hardcover deal, except royalties are less than a straight 7 1/2 percent .
A Fair Trade Paperback Deal
Same as fair hardcover deal, except royalties are at least a straight 7 1/2 percent/
A Good Trade Paperback Deal
Same as good hardcover deal, except royalties are better than a straight 7 1/2 percent.
Same as poor hardcover deal, except royalties are less than 8 percent on first 150,000 copies sold, 10 percent thereafter.
A Fair Mass-Market Paperback Deal
Same as fair hardcover deal, except royalties are at least 8 percent on first 150,000 copies sold, 10 percent thereafter.
A Good Mass-Market Paperback Deal Same as good hardcover deal, except royalties are better than 8 percent on first 150,000 copies sold, 10 percent thereafter.
****************************** In the last few years, as the publishing marketplace contracted, many agents have complained that the lot of authors is getting harder and harder. In particular, they say, publishers are reducing advances for all but superstars, who are getting higher advances than ever before. What's fascinating is the way some of them define "average". Here's an example from an October 2008 blog on Publexicon.com:
Super-agent Richard Abate with the Endeavor Talent Agency believes that publishers are trending toward acquiring books by celebrities, books that will command six-figure advances as opposed to the midlist advance of approximately $50,000, give or take. Athletes, movie stars, and just about anyone who is mega-famous will get the ear of agents, such as Tina Fey, who is reputed to have signed a book deal for $6,000,000. [Italics mine]
I suspect that if I were to poll authors who consider themselves "midlist", most of them would feel they'd died and gone to heaven to get $50,000 advance for their books. The fact is that in most fiction genres such as romance, science fiction and mysteries the starting pay is still in the four-figure range (not counting decimal points, thank heaven), and it stays there for quite a number of books until (and unless) the author's royalties justify increases to five-figures and beyond. Mainstream fiction and nonfiction is a little harder to categorize but here too I'd be surprised to learn that the average debut novel garners anything close to super-agent Abate's figure, which in any event refers to celebrity books. And we all know that celebrities are not made of the same stuff as common mortals such as professional writers.
And so, reluctantly and sadly, I have to stand by the figure stated in my 1983 book, a figure made even sadder because inflation has reduced it by more than 50% according to one calculation.
Wall Street Journal Plan to Nickel and Dime Subscribers Could Force Bloggers To Become Pirates
The Wall Street Journal, that bastion of capitalist journalism, has concluded that the Information Wants To Be Free movement is tantamount to the end of civilization, and the paper will begin charging micropayments for articles and subscriptions, according to Financial Times's Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson and Kenneth Li. Robert Thomson, WSJ's managing editor, says the "sophisticated" scheme will be launched in the fall.
"The move will position the Journal as the first big newspaper title to adopt a model many are studying cautiously as they seek to reduce dependence on plunging advertising revenues," say the Financial Times reporters. You can read about it in WSJ plans micro-fees for online articles.
What makes the Journal's proposal sophisticated? For the answer we turn to a recently created venture called Journalism Online, whose tenets are being studied by a number of newspapers in the hope of finding a solution to the drying up of ad revenue watering holes and the defection of subscribers to online news sources. Here are the essential talking points from Journalism Online's press release:
First, Journalism Online will develop a password-protected website with one easy-to-use account through which consumers will be able to purchase annual or monthly subscriptions, day passes, and single articles from multiple publishers.
Second, Journalism Online will aggressively market all-inclusive annual or monthly subscriptions for those consumers who want to pay one fee to access all of the JOI-member publishers’ content. Revenues will be shared among publishers.
Third, a key initiative of Journalism Online will be to negotiate wholesale licensing and royalty fees with intermediaries such as search engines and other websites that currently base much of their business models on referrals of readers to the original content on newspaper, magazine and online news websites.
Fourth, Journalism Online will provide reports to member publishers on which strategies and tactics are achieving the best results in building circulation revenue while maintaining the traffic necessary to support advertising revenue.
Bloggers - pay particular attention to point #3, because it puts you on notice that you may not be able to quote, or even access, content without paying a toll. As a fair user of such content I have some serious concerns about this restriction. And, as a crusty cynic, I am quite skeptical that a news publication's content can be so airtightly controlled. The effort to restrict it might have the ironic upshot of forcing bloggers to become pirates. Even those of us who agree that information wants to be paid for may, out of self-defense, become Informationwantstobefreeites.
Click here to read the venture's press release detailing its business model and operational format.
The Journal's micropay innovation may be only the first step to a shift to an all-digital news delivery format instituted by Rupert Murdoch, owner of News Corp of which WSJ is a component. We recently conjectured about Murdoch's keen interest in ordering an e-reader to carry News Corp's papers and magazines, or developing one of his own.
Leaver Leaves Frankfurt, And Having Left, Moves On
They say that your name is your destiny. So, if you're going to be named Leaver, you owe it to the gods to leave something, and Marcus Leaver, President of Sterling Publishing, is leaving something: the Frankfurt Book Fair.
Der Frankfurter Buchmesse is the international publishing community's biggest annual trade show and a major station on the industry's Via Voluptuosa. Thus, for a significant publisher to pull out - Sterling is a wholly owned subsidiary of Barnes & Noble - is momentous. "I'm not going to Frankfurt," Leaver declared flatly. He'll send a "very reduced team" - call it a skeleton crew? - to the Octoberfest, but as far as he's concerned, "The trade show is over."
Leaver's ukase, uttered at the recent and appropriately named Making Information Pay conference, heralded a reallocation of the company's capital. As reported byBelievers Pressand by Jim Milliott of Publishers Weekly, Sterling has "taken about $1 million out of our trade show, exhibition and sales conference budget" and "increased our title-by-title marketing spend 33% in a year."
Sterling wasn't the only publisher to announce withdrawal from trade shows. Dominique Raccah, the innovative CEO of Chicago-based Sourcebooks, announced at the same conference that she was cutting her trade show budget by a quarter of a million dollars, pushing her company in the direction of "a complete xml workflow."
Another precinct heard from was Simon & Schuster. The firm's CEO, Caroline Reidy, discussing S&S's latest earnings performance, stated that "we have definitely looked at our participation in trade shows" and are "cutting back dramatically our booth and participation at Frankfurt." She also hinted that the London Book Fair might be a target of cost-cutting: "participation there is being scrutinized as well," she said.
Another capital-intensive practice on the chopping block for a number of publishers is paper catalogues, and though we're all trying to enter the digital age unflinchingly, the disappearance of catalogues will be more wrenching than many other uprootings. Catalogues have long been the most familiar tool for introducing the bookstore trade to publishers' front- and backlists. They are not merely informational and often beautiful but they are a publisher's face to the world, its very identity. Even the spelling of "catalogue", despite Microsoft spellcheck's insistence on dropping the "ue", bespeaks a stubborn and beloved tradition. Be that as it may, Sterling's Leaver has lost his emotional attachment for paper catalogues, saying " "it just wasn't efficient so we've stopped doing that and it feels good." Like a number of other publishers, notably Hachette, Sterling will ditch paper catalogues for digital ones.
The digital book catalogue is a relatively untested medium and the vote to embrace it is by no means unanimous among trade publishers. A recent initiative on the subject spearheaded by Hachette's David Young was met with many polite nods but few are falling all over themselves to switch out of paper, however costly catalogues may be to produce and mail.
As long as Leaver is leaving things, he's casting an eye on author tours. Virtual tours and "webinars" are now the way to send authors out without having to leave the comforts of home (or spend a lot of money on travel bookings). "We're reaching a large market this way," he said. Raccah echoed his sentiment. "Raccah is also hugely energized by emerging digital landscape," reports Publishers Lunch.
"'In the big picture, we're creating new approaches to content,' she said. They are creating 23 iPhone apps, three of which have already been released and should be in the black before the end of the year. She spoke about 'unbundling our services' and becoming 'custom' everything' noting that 'the customer will tell you how they want to buy something.' She underscored that there is a 'tremendous opportunity for partnerships everywhere--the world just got a whole lot bigger.'"
In the cascading collapse of cherished traditions created by digital disintermediation, tangible goods like books and catalogues aren't the only victims; time and space are being reconfigured as well. For those who have not yet shifted their heads and hearts to the virtual dimension, this is a time of intense discomfort and even fear. The oft-cited analogy to the social disruption caused by the introduction of automobiles to a horse-and-buggy world is apt, but it's no comfort to know that after a painful period of adjustment the world finally got used to it. Richard Curtis
The New Kindle DX: Amazon's First Large Screen Reader
As we've been expecting, today Jeff Bezos announced the new Kindle DX, a $489 large screen (9.7") e-book reader modeled after the Kindle 2. The DX is the first big step in Amazon's effort to create a platform for newspapers, textbooks, and other large scale documents. While developers such as Plastic Logic and Hearst are still preparing their large format devices, Amazon has beat them all out of the gate with a device available this summer in the U.S. (exact first shipping date is yet unknown.)
Besides the larger screen, the Kindle DX offers some special improvements: 3.3GB of storage, wide screen reading (rotate the device sideways), native PDF support (it's unknown if Amazon will support DRM for this format), and resizing/reflowing based on how many words per line you want. Other features remain similar to the Kindle 2, such as 3G Whispernet wireless service, USB charging, and the 16 shades of grey.
Importantly, Amazon has been working to ensure new content is available from newspaper and text book publishers. New arrangements with the New York Times, Boston Globe, and the San Francisco Chronicle will offer special rate subscriptions that will subsidize the cost of the DX. And Princeton, Arizona State University, Case Western, Reed College, and the University of Virginia will all be piloting programs serving text books to students with the Kindle DX. Hopefully, when more information about this initiative comes out, we'll see what Amazon's foray into the $9.8 billion text book market has in store for students at other universities.
The Kindle DX is available for pre-order now, although its price is $120 more than the Kindle 2, which continues to sell well. Many people who've already purchased the Kindle 2 may be feeling annoyed that the new model boasts the extra screen real estate and PDF support, but perhaps the higher cost pushes the Kindle DX farther out of reach for most casual customers. The premium will be worth it for those people who work extensively with large PDF documents, and when Amazon's text book pricing is revealed it may actually represent a big savings for students. Those who use the device over a number of years will probably get the most savings. However, at the rate that the technology is developing, the Kindle DX might not have the long legs you'd expect to justify its cost, especially when students might want to wait until a color device and more text books are easily found at retail to begin their investment strategy in an e-book device. University book stores will have to find a way to compete, and digital text books also means no used texts or selling-back for students. But we have to start somewhere. It might just be that the DX is an appetizer for things to come.
Mike Shatzkin Hurls a Paving Stone at Etailer Discounts
Hard on the heels of author Orson Scott Card's fulmination against Amazon.com's "obscene" share of revenues generated by the Kindle comes a proposal by Mike Shatzkin to blast etailer discounts, currently averaging 50%, back into the Dark Ages. How far back? "I suspect that number is about 20%," he says in a recent Shatzkin Files blog.
I've described Shatzkin as a guru, but some reading his radical position may call him Jacobin. After you read it, however, you'll wonder why it took so long for someone to question why e-book retailers charge the same discount that retailers of traditional books do, when the two modes have scarcely a thing in common. "This is daft," he declares. "There is no comparison between the retailers’ costs and risks associated with physical books and those associated with ebooks. There is no economic justification to providing the same level of discounts."
"Now," says Shatzkin, "is the time to change this."
How does he propose to do this? Here's where things move from Jacobin to Red Brigade. "The publishers need to jointly fund and substantially own a virtual retailer whose mission would be to deliver all conceivable ebook formats...To stay on the right side of the law, publishers would sell to the new entity on the same terms they sold to everybody else. But the objective here is to limit the ability of retailers to force higher discounts through boycotting publishers or titles with impunity."
Is Shatzkin suggesting publishers fight boycott with boycott?
The terms "boycott" and "right side of the law" don't mingle very comfortably, but it's clear that Shatzkin is pretty convinced that no tactic short of ganging up on etailers will work. Unfortunately, experience does not encourage optimism about publishers' courage to join together to restore the balance of trade. Had they found the collective cojones to force bookstore chains to roll back the returnability of print books, the industry would not find itself in its current position, namely, over a barrel with its legs spread.
While he's tossing sabots into our complacency, Shatzkin dismisses publishers' initiative to sell their books directly to consumers rather than through retailers.
"The current effort by several general trade publishers to drive traffic to their own house-branded web sites is misguided and doomed. But Amazon (and Shelfari, GoodReads, LibraryThing, and our new entrant, Filedby.com) have demonstrated that sites with information across the trade book spectrum have real consumer appeal. With the support of the big publishers from the earliest possible moment to make the high-profile general trade books visible, at least a large portion of the discovery traffic could be liberated from being captive to Amazon, Google, or anybody else."
I'm not sure I agree. In a posting on the subject we wrote, "If the only source of profit (to say nothing of independence and dignity) left to publishers is consumer retailing, they will step up their activities in this area until in time they are in a position to challenge the Barnes & Nobles and Amazons. Though the only weapon they have is their content, that may be more than enough to vanquish these Goliaths."
If enough publishers pick up on Shatzkin's proposition to realign e-book retailer discounts, it may be the beginning of the end of the digital equivalent of the Ancien Régime. It's certainly time to air the issue, and Shatzkin has earned our gratitude for speaking up.
William C. Dietz's Words for Hire #1 - Game Tie-Ins
William C. Dietz is the best-selling author of more than thirty novels, some of which have been reissued by E-Reads. Recently he was invited by the SFWA (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America) Bulletin to write a bi-monthly column called "Words for Hire," exploring the world of media tie-ins and novelizations. The articles demystify a fascinating genre and we're delighted to reprint them as a regular feature in these pages. RC ****************************** William C. Dietz introduces his first column:
Over the course of these columns I plan to drill down on the business end of work-for-hire by examining the way gaming companies view tie-in novels, the way TV/Film companies approach them, and the important role publishers and agents play in the process. That includes why companies commission tie-ins, what they look for in writers, and how the selection process works.
The blogosphere is saturated with conjecture on the effect of books and e-books given away free. But nothing comes close to the business model of Concord Free Press. In truth it's not a business model at all. If anything it's an anti-business model. Or perhaps the Los Angeles Times characterized it best: "An unusual Robin Hood-style publishing model.”
