I assume that I'm not the only writer here who has "Publish a %$&*#^ book!" somewhere on their list of resolutions for 2010. Of course, it was also on my 2009 list, and maybe my 2008 list, but I have recently come to learn what Mount Everest this seemingly modest resolution is to climb.
So it was was great interest that I read an editorial by Farrar, Straus and Giroux president Jonathan Galassi in the New York Times this weekend entitled "There's More To Publishing Than Meets The Screen."
Galassi was responding to the announcement that William Styron's estate had sold the electronic publishing rights to "Sophie's Choice" to Open Road Integrated Media, a new e-publishing outfit founded in late 2009 by Jane Friedman, former President/CEO of HarperCollins.
It really got him thinking, he says. "Are e-books a new frontier in publishing, a fresh version of the author's work? Or are they simply the latest editions of the books produced by publishers like Random House?"
This construct perfectly captures the industry myopia on e-publishing.
Gallasi's argument is, essentially, that there is no "I" in "book." Bill Styron's genius as an author wasn't enough. It needed an infrastructure of editors to recognize the genius, mold it and shape it into its best work. Then it needed an army of artists, typsetters and printers to shape it into a physical book. Then it needed a publicity and distribution network to bring the physical book to the audience.
As far as it goes, the argument has merit. Books are a team effort. Almost any work is improved by careful editing. The more attractively packaged and widely distributed, the more likely a book is to end up on someone's bedside table.
But there are some serious flaws, too. The traditional system makes the author -- the creator -- almost a bit player in the process, with the publishing house winning the lion's share of the profits to help support it's big, expensive infrastructure. Since each book is an investment, the primary concern has to be commercial viability. This shuts any number of talented unknowns out of the system, particularly in the non-fiction categories. Meanwhile, the price of physical books has increased to the point where a lot of readers have also been shut out of the system.
E-books change the equation. Yes, you still need an editorial staff and you still need publicists and you absolutely need a top-flight team of computer geeks. But gone are the cover artists and typesetters, the huge printing presses, the giant rolls of paper, the warehouses full of books, the fleet of trucks to bring the books to far-flung Borders and Barnes & Nobles. The price point for titles will have to be somewhat lower, but the investment is less, and the risks fewer.
Ideally, this allows more writers to enter the publishing stream and to keep a higher percentage of the profits. Ideally, it opens the world of literature and knowledge to more people.
It also allows innovation. Computer technology allows an interactivity that the page simply can't manage. One company to watch is Vook, which just launched in mid-2009 .
Vook seeks to take good quality books and high-quality video and merge them into a unified experience -- cookbooks that include short videos of techniques, for example, or a novel with brief filmed sections. Their catalog is small so far, but their prices are reasonable and their product is avaliable for both Web and mobile devices.
Right now, most e-publishing can be dismissed as the modern version of vanity publishing: the last resort of losers who couldn't make it onto the midlist of a big house. Galassi and his ilk have to be worried that e-publishing will soon be dominated by companies like Open Road Integrated Media and Tina Brown's newly-announced Beast Books -- outfits run not by wannabes, but by hard-charging, well-connected, well-capitalized media professionals who have a feel for the digital world and how they might wring profits from it.
Publishing has been here before. A literary agent recently told my local writer's association that she remembers when the mass-market paperback really took off. People were running around like it was the end of the world -- who would ever buy a hardcover again? Instead, the market grew. More people were able to buy in. Profits were made. And the world kept on spinning.
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Max Rivlin-Nadler
Janis Jaquith
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Comments
http://open.salon.com/blog/marioninnyc/2010/01/03/theres_more_to_publishing_than_in_jonathan_galassis_op-ed
Well worth the read!
As I wrote in Marion's post, this seems less an argument against the quality of e-books than an argument that publishers of serious literature deserve some kind of eternal copyright. With serious literature being such a niche market now, they may only now be able to recoup their investments over the very, very long term. So if you do fulfill your resolution, read your contract with eagles eyes.
Every book published swims in a sea of tens of thousands of books published every single year, plus all those previously published. How do you get people to know about your book, much less buy it? The answer most wannabe authors have is (at best), "uh won't my publisher take care of that?" But increasingly even big publishers don't do much or any publicity for many of their books. That's why they want only authors who have a "platform" -- a built-in audience, either from previous book sales or other venues (being a famous person writing a memoir, a well-known public speaker, etc).
And given how hard it is to get a book noticed, this isn't so strange. They could spend tens of thousands of dollars publicizing an unknown author and it wouldn't necessarily pay off in sales. It makes good business sense to go with what seem to be known quantities or surefire sales (Sarah Palin anyone?).
e-book publishing is becoming (if it hasn't already) like blog publishing. Be as prolific as you want, and no one will read it unless directed to.
It's one of the reasons I shy away from book stores - shelves filled with pretty covers of potentially interesting titles from people, many of whom I've never heard of - how does one take that all in, without some, well, editing?
I recently read an electronic version of Cory Doctorow's Little Brother (downloaded for free, actually). His argument was, his primary concern is getting more people into the tent, not that everyone inside the tent has paid.
As I said on Marion's post, most of the time in Hollywood, movies are only made on their perceived monetary value - how much cash they can make. And then only "sure thing" movies (vampires, romances, vampire romances, Scooby Doo 3). We have film reviewers, some of whom go out on a limb to see non-hollywood and even suggest you do as well. There are book reviewers as well. I let them be my guides, not gatekeepers.
@Juliet - Tis true: FSG is one of the last "classics" publishers, and that shouldn't be discounted. I'm sure one of Galassi's beefs with the Open Road/Styron deal is that Open Road is aggressively looking for just such classics to form the bulk of their catalog. They see a market. The question becomes: why doesn't FSG see a market for digital works? Are they looking a different market research, or are they just being truculent?
In November, I went to a talk with David Post, a law professor at Temple who has just published a book called "In Search of Jefferson's Moose," about copyright in the digital age. Oxford University Press is selling it at about $30 hardback. Dr Post BEGGED them to let him post one chapter, just one, on his personal website as a sales tool -- they refused. They didn't even want to give out a free chapter for fear of diluting sales. So they're willing to publish a book about copyright in the digital age, but apparently, they didn't read it. (Yes, I shelled out the $30 just the same, but hey, he autographed it.)
@Silkstone - yes, the market forces are depressing for those of us without a platform. (At a writer's conference this past fall, I had a editor from HarperCollins tell me my idea was great...if my name was Katie Couric. But nobody is going to plunk down $20 on a book from a no-name. Not even a no-name with a FABULOUS blog on Open Salon!)
And I think that's another of the benefits of an expanded publishing field. It gives the author a little more control.
I don't harbor illusions of being the next JK Rowling or Dan Brown. But I could find a nice small press that would put me in print and onscreen, give me a little marketing help, and sell a few thousand copies. I'd be satisfied with that, at least for a while. Others are satisfied with POD publishing their own stuff. I think it depends what the writer's ultimate goal is.
@Fudo -- Guides, not gatekeepers....I LOVE that!
It's one thing for a publisher who specializes in e-books to aggressively digitilize. But FSG, and high end publishers like Oxford U, depend a lot on the sales of foreign rights. Especially when Europeans read more literature than North Americans. Americans aren't the only people who read English. So old school publishers aren't always at liberty to throw anything they want on the web.
"But I could find a nice small press that would put me in print and onscreen, give me a little marketing help, and sell a few thousand copies. I'd be satisfied with that, at least for a while. "
Small presses really don't help much with marketing. They can't afford it. The shock is that large ones don't always either. I know someone who sold her book to one of the biggest publishers and then spent $20,000 on her own PR. Yes, you read that figure right. She got a big enough advance to do that, and her spending that helped sales but they still fell far short of what both she and her publisher expected from her book. What makes books catch fire and sell a lot is still largely a mysterious thing.
I've heard publishers say that a "few thousand copies" is actually considered a good sales result for most books (especially literary fiction or memoir). Many published books sink without selling even that much, so that's not as small a goal as it may sound. Most writers end up having worked for far less than minimum wage when you count the hours they spent on their books.
http://www.thebigmoney.com/features/kindle-chronicles/2009/09/29/ingenious-beast?obref=obinsite
"While some publishers are pretending that ebooks don’t exist, or trying to stifle ebooks’ by using such silly and self-destructive tactics as delayed release, other publishers get it.
...Harlequin reported that over 2.5 million romances were downloaded as of December 29. Last year Harlequin gave away 16 free titles in an effort to get romance into the hands of over 1 million women.
Guess what? Harlequin is still in business and the sky hasn’t fallen. Amazing!"