Publetariat

The Smoking Cannonball

by

This post, from the 3G1B collective (Dennis Haritou, Jason Rice, Jonathan Evison and Jason Chambers), originally appeared on Three Guys One Book on 10/19/09.

3G1B has an ongoing conversation, the subject of which: "what the hell is going to happen to publishing in the future?" disturbs us all. This week we have invited Craig Nova to tell us what he thinks. Craig is the award winning author of 12 novels. His new novel, The Informer, will be released in January 2010.

CN: the first thing that comes to mind when I consider writers and the state of publishing is one of those science fiction movies from the fifties, you know, where some light is seen in the sky and then something like a smoking bowling ball lands someplace and then a couple of geeks get out of a pickup truck. They find a stick and poke the smoking bowling ball and say, "Welcome to California." Then a cobra shaped thing comes out and wastes the shit out of them with a death ray.

So, I think we are in the smoking bowling ball stage. Something has landed and we don’t know what it is. The best we can do is scratch our head and poke it with a stick.

By this I mean, we haven’t come to terms with the digital age, and the impact that this is going to have on publishing. And while it would be easy to say that we are only talking about Kindle, and books in digitized form, it is far, far more ominous than that. Ask an ex-independent book store owner about the impact of online shopping, which seemed pretty innocent in the beginning.

For instance, what about pricing and royalties? For some reason, a Kindle book is being priced at $9.99. Now, for writers there is a big difference between a ten percent royalty on a book of $25 and one at this price. Just as this might mean the end, altogether, of book stores. The economics seem to be driving it that way (after all, you can avoid cutting down a lot of trees, although I guess you still have to make plastic, but only once). So, that’s the simple part.

But it’s not that simple, if a writer’s chance of making a living, already precarious, is reduced even more. The downward pressure on a writer’s livelihood is a serious matter and I think writers are scared.

Where it gets complicated, and where writers and I would imagine publishers feel doubly uncomfortable is that if you don’t need books, that is physical items on a shelf, maybe you don’t need publishers. If the technology is there to make a book suitable for Kindle, and anyone can set up a website to sell it, and if there were some other web based method of letting people know about books (say this very website), where does the publisher fit?

Where, by the way, does an editor fit?

Is this the way it’s going to go?

And beyond that, will it be like the newspaper business, where more and more they are giving away content. Will writers have to do that, too, that is give away large pieces of a book to try to get people to read the last half. And if that is the case, what impact will that have on the way books are written?

Please understand: I am not saying I think this is the way things are going to go, but that this is the way one thinks when poking at that smoking bowling ball and seeing that sleek, metallic cobra head come out with that little hot spot there in front that begins to glow a little more intensely….

That’s one thing.

Another is seemingly more mundane, but in fact, more realistic. That is, what is happening to the American novel or novels altogether.

Read the rest of the post on Three Guys One Book.

Book Trends

by

Bob Spear’s Book Trends blog, in which he explores the past, present and future of publishing, bookselling and authorship.

Publish A Book With Your Literary Tweets

by

This post, from Polish author Nick Name, originally appeared on his Password Incorrect site on 10/15/09, and is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission.

Have you ever thought of making an e-book with your literary tweets? If you still have doubts, consider this: you can easily do it yourself, you can do it without any cost, and you can use the book as a promotional tool.

A free cover for your Twitter bookHere are some tips based on my personal experience. Just make sure you’ve got a large coffee ready – and make your book happen!

How to collect content?

Twitter search is currently showing results from 9 recent days. Nobody will find your fantastic tweet if it’s 10 days old. 10 days means  “gone”.

It might be difficult even for you to collect your own Twitter stream. And here is a rescue: Tweetbook. It’s a wonderful web service, where you can make a pdf or xml file with your tweets (up to 3200). Having all of them in one editable document will make it really easy to select the golden ones – those you want in your book.

Tip: if you want to have a constant access to your tweets, you can subscribe to your Twitter profile’s feed. From now on all the updates will be collected in your RSS reader.

Where to publish?

There are a few really wonderful sites where authors can self-publish in addition to Smashwords or Manybooks. Feedbooks is my favourite one. Here is why:

:. creating a book is extremely easy. Just copy and paste a piece of text into blog-like fields. A very useful feature is the ability to structure a book on different levels: parts, chapters, sections. If you do so, the table of contents is clickable afterwards, which makes it easy to navigate through the book. This is a unique feature, I didn’t find it anywhere else

:. Feedbooks fully supports mobile reading. Major formats are ePub and mobi, which make a book friendly for reading on cellphones and eReaders. Having in mind that Twitter is being consumed mostly from the mobile web, it’s good to be there

:. apart from public domain books, there is a quickly growing section of original self-published books. Recently a new book list has started, 140 characters, with Twitter-based fiction. Just make sure you include “Twitter” as a tag for your book, and you’ll surely find yourself on the list.

What about a cover?

For many authors the book cover seems to be a killing problem. They can’t design it themselves, they don’t know any designer who would do it for free, and they’re afraid to ask. Well, there are at least three ways to deal with that:

:. every site for self-publishers shows a default cover. At Feedbooks there is additionally a title and author’s name shown on a cover, which is a really nice feature

:. you can choose from a collection of free covers I’ve prepared for self-published Twitter authors like myself

:. as soon as you have a selection of tweets made, you can use the brilliant Wordle word cloud generator to make a cover design for you. Read here how to do that.

How to benefit from a book?

As soon as your book is published, you can use it for promotional activities:

:. in addition to your current literary tweets, you can send a link to your book from time to time

:. show a book on your blog; you’re a published author, let everybody know it

:. share your book on other platforms, let it appear in as many places as possible. It’s a finished and lasting work, link to it from your profile on Posterous, Bebo, LiveJournal, even if you don’t use them frequently

:. if you want to try reaching a book agent or a publisher, having a published book is an asset. Sending an e-mail with a book attached (f.e. in pdf format) makes it more probable to draw attention

[Publetariat Editor’s Note: there’s a variance of opinion on this, but in the U.S. at least, most agents don’t want to receive unsolicited attachments of full manuscripts. However, you can always use your Twitter book to help build your readership and expand your author platform by sharing the book—or just excerpts from it—on your author website or blog]

:. your book is at the same time an easily accessible archive of your best tweets. Send them again, from time to time, there might be people who haven’t yet discovered how good you are. 

Note: if you’ve found this post useful, I would be grateful if you could just download my Twitter-fiction book, share it with your friends and leave a comment.

 

The Old, Mean, Re-formatting Blues

by

After working on a computer everyday for more than 25 years, I usually feel pretty confident tackling software issues.  I’m a real, nuts and bolts kind of guy anyway, so fixing whatever comes up is really second nature for me.

Well, today I have to be honest – I’ve been laid pretty low by the need to reformat my first book manuscript for wide, e-book use.  Most of the problems I’m experiencing are my own creation. I only have myself to blame, so along with the mea culpas, I’ll share what has led me to the re-formatting blues, so you won’t need to go there yourself.

Sales of E-books, in a range of formats, have increased steadily at a rate eclipsing paper books consistently this year.  The growth figure I recently read in an interview with Smashwords founder, Mark Coker, is 58%.  58% is a number too large to ignore.  Now personally, I’ll probably never read more than a couple of pages online – I’m old school when it comes to pleasure reading.  But, as every writer should know, potential markets can’t be ignored if you intend to sell your books.  So, it’s time for the old guy to embrace some new ideas.

If you’re happily writing away and converting your documents to e-book-useable formats without a care, then you may only find this week’s column mildly entertaining.  If you’re like lots of other writers, pretty set in your work habits and the software you use, then read on…but don’t do as I’ve done. It’s not pretty.

Word Processors are Not Equal

I’ve been working with my trusty, old word processing program for more than 15 years now.  I really like it.  There aren’t any real bells or whistles to annoy or distract me, and for chapter-based writing, the organization has always been very workable.  I’m speaking of Word Perfect.  Now, I’m not a luddite – I keep it updated and use most of it’s rich feature set.  I produced my first book’s print design using it, short stories, articles for press and online media, pitch letters, advertising copy, business correspondence, and the results look good, and read well.  No problems at all.

I just didn’t see them coming.  MS Word is the preferred word processor in use today.  Believe it. For those who grew up in the Microsoft era, there has never really been any other choice.  I’ve always used MS products grudgingly.  I don’t like the cute icons, spinning symbols, or (what I consider) really arcane menu layouts and placements.  I like my basic WP, but all that has had to change.

When in Tome… 

E-book formats like MS Word files for conversion. Many of the E-book formats can be proprietary, and they usually include a wealth of flexibility in how their content may be read on screen.  This is a very important concept, which requires your manuscript to be quite a bit less “linear” than your print manuscript.  Herein lies the problem.  MS Word is set up to format documents — font, paragraph and chapter — using specific elements that are easily understood and translated by most E-Book software currently written.  To put it simply, Word Perfect just can’t get there from here. 

WP, like all word processors, has a wealth of included export algorithms designed for sharing documents among a group of different platforms and software.  It, unfortunately – at least with the current iteration — formats its documents in certain proprietary ways which, when exported to MS Word formats, or Rich-Text formats usually result in unexpected garbage characters, dropped characters, translation glitches and other hair-tearing excercises.

What You See is Not What You Want…

For example, after five separate attempts to upload my exported MS Word files to Smashwords with no success, I sent up a flare for some help.  Mark Coker, personally it turns out, took a look at what I had sent, then summed it up by saying – you’re trying to convert from WP – it really can’t be done.  Select, Cut and Paste the entire document into Notepad (386 pages in trade paperback format, 96KPlus words), supposedly stripping all formatting controls from the document, then import it into MS Word.  Good Luck.

I needed more than that.  I needed a transfusion. After downloading the simplest version of MS Word, with a 60 day trial period, I followed his direction. The document that resulted had gone from a tiny few typos and grammatical/punctuation errors, into a disaster of page-by-page close editing which will require many, many days of hard work.  Here are some of the highlights:

1.  Menus:
It took me two solid days to figure out that the normal menu commands such as Open, Select, Edit, Save, Save As, etc., were hidden under a cute, cartouche icon at the top left.  Like an idiot, I kept running my mouse over the top of the document/tool bar watching as a huge variety of item opened up, usually not what I was trying to find.  Go ahead, click the cute little icon – it won’t bite.  Watch out that you inadvertently leave the “home” page.  Beyond there be dragons.

2.  Redundancies
Unlike my trusty old WP, MS Word is full of command and applet redundancies – you’ll probably find what you want in several places, often at once!  It can get a little confusing.  I might actually have to find a “Dummies” book to learn how to use the program efficiently.  How embarassing! I hope I don’t see anyone I know at the book store.

3. Find & Replace
Probably my favorite function in word processors, after the ability to select and delete entire sections – dispatching all the awful blither into the ether with a single click.  When I saw the awful results of the file conversion from WP into MSW, I first had to stop my hands from shaking.  After a few deep breaths, I thought: No Biggie. I’ll use Find & Replace and deal with it all in a few short steps.  Wrong again.  MSW’s F&R, is not tense sensitive.  At least not in my copy, or with my limited grasp of it’s huge feature set. 

The conversion, among other things, turned all the leading quotation marks in the entire book, in every single instance of dialog, into capital “A”s.  OK, starting with the most numerous instance, I chose to replace the opening of each dialog sentence which began “I….  So I entered “AI” into the Find text box, and “I into the replace box. Click.

Ohmygod! Now every word in the entire manuscript with the letters “AI” OR “ai” in them have been changed to “I.  Like the word ag”In, for example, or the word r”In, or the word refr”In…you get the idea.  F&R had now become my bane, not my buddy.

The rest of the file contained several other cute instances of reformatting-introduced spelling and grammatical errors which has required very careful editing.  Another fun example: all M-dashes have suddenly become capital "B".  There are several more. It’s been more like a complete, page-by-page re-write.  I’m now finished with 20 chapters – only 10 more to go.  It’ll be a hard lesson, but when I’m finished, I’ll have something I should have had from step one any way: an unformatted version of my manuscript. 

Keep it Simple. Keep a copy.

It would have been a simple thing to rename the original, edited, re-written, ready for prime-time file to an easy-to-remember name that implied no formatting.  Instead, I went about my merry way, formatting my manuscript into publication format, including such absolute no-nos (for E-Books) such as drop caps, large bold chapter headings in different fonts, page numbering, footnotes with call-outs and more than three carriage returns to set off chapter headings, which an e-book file will interpret as a blank page! All of these must die for your E-book to live.

Always save an unformatted, current version of your book.  Be sure it also is set up to letter sized page, uses 12 point type and has a 1 ½" margin left and 1" margins all around.  This is what an agent will want to receive along with your pitch, should your desire to be an Indie Author become too much work. Just kidding.

I may not like Courier, but E-Books love Courier.

If you’re going to sell E-Book versions of your work, you’d better get on the band wagon. Like me, learn to love MS Word, Courier, and MS’ other designed for online text fonts. Resist the gnawing temptation to design a good-looking page in favor of a utilitarian ethic.  Learn to enjoy tickling the cute little icons and chasing down the menus.  It’s a new age of publishing and if you don’t learn the new strokes, you’ll sink!  But remember, once you’re in the water’s fine, or at least…wet.

Oh, I should probably add; I wrote the first draft of this article in Word Perfect. I guess some old habits are just too comfortable to change.

 

 

Why Kindle’s DRM Free-for-All Is Bad for Consumers and for Amazon

by

This post, from Kirk Biglione, originally appeared on Medialoper on 6/23/09.

The Kindle is popular for a reason.

Amazon has created the most painless ebook experience any consumer could possibly ask for. No other system makes the discovery, purchase, and transfer of ebooks so frictionless. As a result, Kindle has become the standard everyone else in the ebook business will have to match just to compete. So far no one comes close.

But Kindle has a dark side that is starting to emerge with startling regularity.

This past weekend Dan Cohen was surprised to find that he could not re-download some of his Kindle books. After several lengthy exchanges with Amazon customer support Cohen was informed that some (but not all) Kindle books have download limits. Or maybe it’s a limit on the number of devices they can be transferred to. Or it might be both…

To be honest, Amazon’s customer service department isn’t entirely sure of what limits are imposed on DRM protected Kindle books.

This isn’t the first complaint we’ve heard about Amazon’s Kindle policies. Not long ago a Kindle owner found that he’d lost access to his books after Amazon terminated his account. And a dispute with the Authors Guild has led Amazon to allow publishers to disable text to speech capabilities AFTER consumers have purchased books.

Imagine buying a product with one set of capabilities then having that product downgraded after purchase. That scenario would never be tolerated with a physical product and it shouldn’t be considered acceptable simply because the product in question is digital.

In the past I’ve argued that Amazon has an obligation to fully disclose the DRM limitations of every Kindle title so that consumers can make an informed decision before they make a purchase. What the latest incident has revealed is that, in many cases, even Amazon doesn’t know what those limits are. Surprisingly, this seems to be by design.

Jeff Bezos says the Kindle is “DRM agnostic” and that it’s up to publishers to determine whether their books will be locked-down by DRM. While that may sound like an enlightened approach that gives publishers complete control over DRM, it’s a position that creates serious problems for both Amazon and Kindle owners.

By allowing each publisher to set its own DRM policy, Amazon has no idea what restrictions are in place for any given book, and no way of enforcing anything resembling a standardized DRM policy for the Kindle marketplace. The otherwise stellar Kindle user experience suffers as a result of these inconsistencies.

Read the rest of the post, and also the discussion that follows in the comments section, on Medialoper. From the same site and author, also see Digging Deeper Into Amazon’s Orwellian Moment, for analysis of the incident in July of this year when Kindle owners found their purchased digital editions of George Orwell’s 1984 had been remotely removed from their devices.

What Is The Problem With International Ebooks?

by

This is a cross-posting from The Creative Penn.

This is a bit of a rant from the non-US perspective of ebooks and ebook readers and how crazy it seems to be right now.

On Amazon.com

It is a fantastic development to finally have the International Kindle available. I bought one as soon as it was announced and eagerly await it. I have not even seen a real one yet, and the iPhone is just too small for full on book reading. Books are ridiculously expensive in Australia so I buy mostly from the US Amazon Store anyway (crazy world!). The ebooks are still expensive on the Kindle but a lot cheaper than the print stores.

One example is Socialnomics: How social media transforms the way we live and do business by Erik Qualman which I have been wanting to read. It is priced AU$42.50 (US$38) at a business bookstore for the print version. The Kindle version will be US$11.99 (AU$13) so I will be waiting to buy it there.

The Kindle Store is now segregated by the country associated with your account, which I understand has something to do with overseas rights. However, the Kindle publishing platform is still only available for those publishers/authors with US address, bank account and tax number. This basically excludes most publishers and authors in other countries. I currently publish on the Kindle through a friend, and the money goes into his bank account – not the best arrangement but all I can manage to be published on the platform.

This is a big criticism of the International Kindle, and one I hope is soon solved. Opening up to non-US publishers will explode the Kindle content and offer the chance for more sales for publishers, more opportunity to sell for authors and more money for Amazon. I would be fine with being paid by Paypal or even by Amazon store credit if the problem is the bank account.

I have emailed Amazon Kindle about this, and am awaiting a response. I’ll let you know!

On Scribd.com

Scribd is driving me totally nuts because they only allow US residents to actually sell AND BUY on the site, although anyone can load free content there (which I do here).

Firstly, I love Scribd. It’s a great platform but why can’t I sell my ebooks there? I own all the rights to my 3 books, there is no foreign rights problem. I have a Scribd account, I have a Paypal account. It has been in Beta for months now. What’s the problem Scribd? I’m still waiting for a response to my questions.

This is even stranger. I can’t even BUY ebooks on Scribd, despite the format being a downloadable file. This is not a foreign rights issue as I can’t buy self-published books either. I wanted to get “The God Patent” by Ransom Stephens (only $3.95) but get a message saying the store is still in Beta and therefore I can’t buy as a non-US resident. Crazy times.

On Smashwords.com

Go Smashwords! It seems to be the only site to allow truly international ebooks from any author globally. You can publish your books in multiple formats and be paid by Paypal. There is even a multi-language option coming I believe. Smashwords books are also sold on the iPhone through Stanza, as well as through Barnes & Noble ebook store and now Sony has also partnered with Smashwords.

I have written a post on how to publish your book on Smashwords here. It is pretty simple and they have many tools to help you publish, so if you want to get started with ebook publishing, definitely start there!

Can you publish on all of these platforms?

I had this question from a reader, and the answer is “Yes, if you have the digital rights to your books”. If you are a self-published author, or if you haven’t sold the digital rights, you can publish your book wherever you like. I currently sell my ebooks from this website as PDF, on Smashwords in multiple formats, and on the Kindle. I will get on Scribd as soon as I am able. You can do the same! This gets your ebook to as wide an audience as possible. Brilliant!

Antellus to Launch a Line of Audiobooks

by

Antellus – Science Fantasy Adventure and Nonfiction Books
http://www.antellus.com

Antellus to Launch a Line of Audiobooks

Antellus, an independent publisher and seller of science fantasy adventure and nonfiction books, announces the launch of a line of audiobooks read by the author.

In an effort to reach more readers of its line of fiction and nonfiction books, Antellus announces its intention to produce a line of audiobooks in CD-R and mp3 formats for ordering direct from its online store under the label "Antellus Media". The books will be read by the author, with sound effects added where possible.

"We felt it was time to try and make our books available to those who are sight impaired or who are too busy to sit down and read," author/CEO Theresa M. Moore said. "This marks a bold move which we think will be beneficial to all who like a good story. The opportunity to offer our books in a variety of formats for the reader’s choice is the best way to make our products known in the face of stiff competition like Amazon and Google."

The first audiobook is in progress and may be released by December of 2009, with subsequent releases to be announced as they are finished.

Antellus also offers the books in print, Kindle format, Adobe PDF, RTF, and other formats for iPhone through other providers like Smashwords and Scribd.

Antellus is a privately owned independent publisher of science fantasy adventure and nonfiction books on a variety of related topics like history, mythology and science. Requests for information may be made by email to: info (at) antellus.com. The publisher is located in Sherman Oaks, California.

The Importance Of Good Reviews

by

A good review helps buyers make up their minds about buying a book. I’m convinced of that fact. Years ago before I even thought about publishing my books, I let my friends read my manuscripts. Some of them were kind enough to put a review note in the notebook when they gave it back simply because they liked what I had written. But wisely, I kept all those reviews. After I published, I gave books to people and asked them to give me their reviews.

I found a man online that reviews Civil War books. I emailed him about reading my book "Ella Mayfield’s Pawpaw Militia". He didn’t reply. Perhaps, that was because, my book is fiction based on fact. The reviewer only reads nonfiction books. One woman said she reviewed mysteries. I emailed her to ask if she would read "Neighbor Watchers". She said she was very busy at the moment, but if I wanted to send the book she would get to it when she had time. No promises when. That was a year ago. She must be really, really busy. I’ve never heard from her.

My books are sold on Amazon. The buyers don’t bother to review my books after they read them. Now I could take that as a negative thing and be glad they don’t want to give my book a bad review, or I can think they just don’t want to bother. I go with the latter. Amazon won’t let me put the reviews people have given me in the review post, because I am the author and seller of the books. What I did was start a discussion in the community connected to each of my books. I put every review I received in my discussion so that prospective buyers can find them if they scroll down to the bottom of the page. Along with that, I look for every discussion that I might be able to fit one of my books into and describe the book. Amazon mails me new posts in each of those discussion groups. I can tell my entry helps because I sell a book or two right after I have posted.

The same with ebay. I sell two books on ebay – "Christmas Traditions" and "A Promise Is A Promise". Each time I sell a book, I notify the buyers that their signed book is on its way. Along with that I ask that the buyers let me know what they think of the book if they have time. Many have gotten back to me and requested that I continue to write my Amish stories. Therefore since "Christmas Traditions" has been selling on ebay for almost a year, I had plenty of reviews to keep adding to the listing.

　

"A Promise Is A Promise" is my newest book. I needed reviews. So when I was looking for a websites to advertise on I found a website started by HarperCollins Publishing (Authonomy) for writers to submit their work. Writers trade reads and decided which five should be on the editor’s desk each month on the front page of the website for the publisher’s editors to look at. I put both my Amish books on the site and have been overwhelmed with offers to trade reads. Also, many good suggestions have come my way about how to get up the ladder to the editor’s desk. For awhile, I have made my way through the reading trades, but that takes time. Not many of the manuscripts are to my liking but are popular it seems with others on the site. Perhaps, I would need to be English to appreaciate the stories. Most of the authors are from Great Britain.

All I read is a chapter or two to get the substance of writing and how the story flows then leave a review for the author. In return, I’ve hit the jackpot. I’ve gotten many very detailed, good reviews about my books that I can use. Because these are authors and not just readers, they are great with writing critiques. Much better than I am. Thankful though I am for the reviews I had accumulated, the ones I’ve gotten from readers and friends are, "I love your book. Couldn’t put it down until the end." Those reviews help to bolster my confidence and spur me to continue to write to my latest ones are much more detailed.

Here’s one from authonomy for "Christmas Traditions" (An Amish Love Story) ISBN 0982459513

This is an informative and intelligent piece from a human interest point of view. Your writing is atmospheric and your narrative comes across as natural, believable and very vivid. Margaret is already so likable, but I’m not so sure of Levi. I think any story which helps its characters to emerge out of their self-indulgent ways to greater understanding and a fuller compassionate existence is worth a read.

A Promise Is A Promise" (Nurse Hal Among The Amish) ISBN 0982459505

You’ve done it again! This is a very well written, intricate and richly detailed tapestry of Amish life. Maybe its just my personal preference but I do love stories like this about a way of life based on faith, convictions and honesty. It’s a beautiful story that had my rapt attention all the way through. A compelling read that I found hard to put down once I started.

Some authors have put me on their bookshelf which is a step up to the editor’s desk. Do I expect to get to the editor’s desk? No. That wasn’t my goal when I signed in, but I didn’t tell the other authors that. My goal was to get reviews that would interest my buyers in buying my books.

I’ve had one negative review from authonomy but I took that with a grain of salt. The criticism had to do with some conversational words I used that makes "A Promise Is A Promise" believable as a regional story in southern Iowa. The English critic listed a few of those in a negative light. I thanked the man for his help, because he wasn’t looking at my story from an American viewpoint. If I wanted to I could have taken his story apart in the same way since Brits have a particular way of phrasing that goes with living in England. Also that writer may have been so close to the editor’s desk, he didn’t want to give me a good review. I might creep up the ladder and get to the editor’s desk before him.

I know the reviews help on ebay. Each time I add another one, I sell a book right away.

When I revised "Christmas Traditions" and sent it to a different printer I put one of the best of the reviews in the front of the book. I am very proud of all my good reviews. I always reply with a thank you note and encourage readers to keep them coming.

　

　

　

　

　

　

Major Publisher Opens Subsidy Imprint

by

This post, from literary agent Rachelle Gardner, originally appeared on her Rants & Ramblings On Life as a Literary Agent blog on 10/14/09 and it is reprinted here in its entirety with the permission granted on her blog. In it, she discusses publishing house Thomas Nelson’s decision to open a subsidy publishing arm under one of its pre-existing imprint names, WestBow Press.

As you all know, yesterday Thomas Nelson announced they are launching a new imprint, WestBow Press, which will operate as a subsidy publisher. Lots of people are talking about it and I thought I’d weigh in with a few thoughts.

*Please note, this is preliminary since I’ve only had a few hours to think about it. I’m sure I will have more to say, or my thinking may evolve, so I’ll keep you updated.*

There will probably be some criticisms of Nelson’s move, but looking at the big picture of publishing, I think WestBow Press is a step in the right direction (and by the way, Nelson isn’t the first or only publisher to add a subsidy division). The reality is that technology is making it easier and easier for writers to bypass the traditional pubs and get their own work published. More importantly, technology is increasingly allowing readers to bypass traditional pubs, too. With our Kindles (and other current and future e-readers), we can read anything from just about anyone. This means authors and readers can now connect with each other without the help of a middleman, a big publisher. This is a cataclysmic change in how authors find readers, and how readers find and read books.

Yes, we are at the beginning of this shift, but make no mistake, the trend is going to continue. Publishers need to embrace this shift and try to be a part of it; trying to fight it or stop it will ensure their slow deaths.

This is NOT to say that in the future, we won’t have the traditional publishers. But it’s naive to think the traditional pubs are going to stay as important as they are; they’ll certainly no longer monopolize publishing. In the future, they will be part of the landscape, but not the entire picture. If the traditional publishers want to stay relevant, they need to be taking steps to be a part of that future publishing landscape rather than digging their heels in. Serious competition will eventually come from self-publishing. Only those who embrace that fact are going to stay in the game.

We have only to look at what happened to the music industry to see that this is exactly the kind of step publishers should be taking. The big mistake the music business made was turning a blind eye on the fact that new technology was making it easier for artists to record and distribute their own music. They refused to try and be part of the new landscape and instead tried to fight against it. It was devastating for the industry, which has never recovered. They could have joined in and been part of the innovation and revolution; they could have had a piece of the pie. Instead they lost their shirts.

Having a self-publishing imprint might not be the best response to the changing publishing environment, just like the Kindle might not be the best e-reader. But in order for change to happen, companies have to take small steps out of the box. Like Seth Godin says, whatever is new isn’t immediately going to be better than the old. But give it time to keep evolving, and eventually it will be. The only way to get to something better is to step out and embrace the new. I think Nelson is trying to do this.

The Kindle and all the other e-readers are analogous to MP3s and iPods. With my iPod I can download a song and I don’t have a clue, nor do I care, if the song came from a big music company or not. I can get plenty of garage bands who independently put out their own records… and I love it. On Kindle, it’s the same thing but with books. Whole subcultures will start to grow made of fans of certain self-publishing authors, just like there are tribes of fans of artists and bands that have never been put out by a major label. In the long run, it serves not just the author but the consumer. And that’s why it’s a smart move to enter the self-pub business. If you want to make money, you’ve got to keep your eye on what the consumer wants.

What about distribution?

As a subsidy publisher, not technically a self publisher, WestBow will have "sales reps working to sell to Christian book buyers," according to their website. This means that unlike some forms of self-publishing, there’s some kind of distribution plan in place. Ostensibly the WestBow books could appear on shelves at Family Christian or Barnes & Noble. Pardon me if I let my skepticism show here, but c’mon. The bookstore buyers already say no to so many books publishers pitch. Aren’t they going to look at the subsidy books and say something like, "Are you kidding me?" I think the chances of those books actually having a very effective distribution channel are fairly slim. But of course I could be wrong, it’s happened before.

A note about the name "WestBow Press."

I have concerns about the name they chose for the imprint. As many of you know, back when Thomas Nelson had many imprints, WestBow was one of them. It was the fiction line, and it was very well known by the name WestBow. Many current authors still have books in print under the WestBow name, published as recently as mid-2008. To call a new self-publishing imprint by the same name as a former, well-known and highly respected fiction imprint (with extremely high quality standards) seems unfair to the authors who previously wrote for WestBow.

If you search Amazon for WestBow, you’ll find books by authors like Ted Dekker, Karen Kingsbury, and Colleen Coble. I wonder how these folks will feel about their books being on a shelf next to a self-pubbed title, both books with "WestBow" on the spine. It seems like it might fool unsuspecting consumers into thinking a WestBow book (of the the current self-published variety) is somehow of the same quality as a WestBow book of the past. This really surprises me, because I know the folks at Nelson to be of high integrity and character. I hope Mike Hyatt blogs about this. Even more, I hope Nelson changes the name of the subsidy division.

So how does this affect YOU?

I have a couple of notes for those of you who are right about now thinking self-pubbing with WestBow looks pretty good. In Mike Hyatt’s blog post, he gives a good list of situations in which self-publishing might be right for you. The list wasn’t meant to be exhaustive, of course, so there are a couple things that could be added. Such as:

→ Self publishing is right for you if you have several thousand dollars to invest in publishing your book, with no guarantee of a return. The packages at WestBow run from about a grand to more than six grand; realistically, even if you chose the less expensive package, you’re likely going to need at least $5,000 to $10,000 when you add in the cost of marketing.

→ The other thing that needs to be said is this: If you want people to read your book, then self or subsidy publishing only makes sense if you have a real, solid, honest-to-goodness way to market and sell your book. A large business or organization through which you can move copies; frequent speaking engagements; a high-traffic blog or website; a large church that you pastor. (What’s that? Sounds like a platform??? Say it isn’t so!) Think hard about this.

When is it not a good idea to consider self or subsidy publishing?

In the first place, let it be said that self-pubbing is usually only a viable business plan for non-fiction authors, not novelists. That’s just a general caveat. And by "business plan" I mean, of course, a plan with some potential to recoup the original investment and eventually make a profit.

My biggest caution would be to you authors, particularly fiction authors, who have been trying to get published for less than two or three years, and you’re getting impatient to get your books in print. Especially if you’ve been told your writing is good and getting better. For you, the process of traditional publishing may actually be working for you; i.e. encouraging you to continue improving your books until they become something really good that many people will read.

To self-pub out of impatience may be subverting this process and short-changing yourself of the experience of continuing to grow yourself as a writer. Besides, last I checked, impatience doesn’t bring with it a marketing plan. You may be impatient to publish, but if you do, you may end up with the same old problem: nobody’s reading your books. First, because they’re not good enough, or at least not as good as the competition. Second, because you have no way to sell them.

Okay, that’s all I’ve got for now. Questions? Comments? Bored out of your mind?
 

Please read the excellent discussion going on in the comments section following this post on Rachelle Gardner’s Rants & Ramblings On Life as a Literary Agent blog, which includes remarks from Thomas Nelson CEO Michael Hyatt. Also see this analysis from a very knowledgeable self-published author, Timothy Fish, and this response from literary agent Sandra Bishop.

Book Trends: Hello, World!

by

Today, Publetariat introduces a new, recurring feature: Bob Spear’s Book Trends, which originated on his Book Trends blog.

Why a blog on book industry trends? Who cares? If you are a writer, a reader, a publisher, or a book seller, you better care.

The technology, marketing, and public taste changes are having an enormous impact on what we read and publish, and how we do so. I have been a part of this industry as a bookseller (1979), writer (1974), self publisher (1989), reviewer (2002), and book packager (2002). Along the way I have watched the changes and considered their impact. As a retired professional military intelligence analyst (25 years) and futurist, I have decided to apply the analytical experiences to what I know and how I know it.

I am very open to questions and comments. It is my hope this blog can serve as a forum for book industry discussions. I receive a number of daily email newsletters from the industry. We are seeing customer activities and tastes change in the Book Barn, an independent bookstore [I run] where we sell both new and used books. I will pull all these trend sources together as a basis for not only what is happening but what it means for the future. You readers will certainly have your own observations to contribute and the nature of your questions will also provide meaningful data from which we all can benefit. I look forward to your participation.

In the near future, I intend to address and explain a number of topical themes. Some of them are topics du jour and some are important in the scheme of things but hover below the horizon. My purpose in addressing these is to benefit readers, writers, indie booksellers (non-chain stores instead of Barnes and Noble, Borders, and Amazon), and indie publishers (small to medium presses which are not owned and operated by huge conglomerates) to include self-publishers. The book playing field is certainly not level, but it helps to know where the pot holes are and what they mean. Some of my blogs will delve into history because mankind tends to repeat mistakes without learning what has gone on before. Here is a partial list of proposed themes. I welcome others of interest to you:

  • Death of the mid list and what resulted, good and bad
     
  • How agents came to be an overarching force
     
  • Self-publishing vs. vanity publishing vs. traditional publishing
     
  • Readership trends (this actually encompasses many sub topics)
     
  • The ever expanding technology
     
  • 275,000+ books published last year. How do you get noticed among all those?
     
  • Using the web
     
  • Author PR and marketing
     
  • Why booksellers must become destination marketing oriented
     
  • The dumbing down of America (and maybe the rest of the world?)
     
  • The censorship argument (grist for Scopes Trials?)
     
  • And whatever else you suggest
     

I look forward to lively discussions and learning experiences for all of us.

 

Piracy and The Indie Author

by

This post, from Rhiannon Frater, originally appeared on her Zombies, Vampires and Texans!! Oh My!! blog on 10/13/09 and is reprinted here in its entirety with her permission.

It’s tough being an Indie Author at times.

You write for months and months on your novel until at last you are done. But you’re not really done because you have to:

1. Rewrite, revise and edit

2. Have your test readers dive in and point our where you screwed it up

3. Seek out qualified people to edit your work

4. Hire an artist to create a beautiful cover that will leap out at readers

5. Format the book yourself and work endless hours fixing any errors

6. Deal with the POD company you select whenever there is a gaff and deal with the headache of frustration while doing so

7. Promote the hell out of your upcoming book

8. Publish your book, sit back, and watch the sales trickle in

And I do mean trickle.

It can take awhile for an Indie book to find its audience sometimes. Even though As The World Dies had a big fan base, the first month As The World Dies: The First Days was out it sold 25 copies. It would take two more months for it to get its legs and take off.

I know I’ve been very blessed. As the first book plows toward 3,000 books sold and the two followups continue to rack up sales, I know that this is not the norm for an Indie book. If anything, it is highly unusual. Of course, all expenses to publish and the promote the book have been paid out of my own pocket.

So then how does it feel when I see my books on the bit torrents or other similar sites?

I hope the downloaders like the book and buy the paperback version.

My husband uploaded the books for me for one simple reason: someone was going to do it. It might as well be us. We might as well make sure it’s a good copy, with a good cover, and contact information for those who enjoy the book.

Piracy is going to happen. We can’t stop it. So we decided to use it as a promotional tool to build up my reader base.

Has it worked?

Sales continue to grow for the books we released on the torrents. Recently, I began posting Pretty When She Dies: A Vampire Novel for free on its own blog. Sales have picked up slightly. I was ticked off when someone posted it for free on Scribd, but mostly because I felt it stole my thunder in posting the novel for free on blogspot.com.

I did find a yahoo question a week or so ago asking for a download link for As The World Dies. The person who responded said they had bought it off Smashwords and uploaded it. They actually seemed quite pleased with this, as though they were somehow giving it to "the man." Though, in this case, it would be "the woman." The question has since been deleted. (I had nothing to do with that, btw.)

One of my friends, a fellow author, was upset by all of this. He felt I was being robbed, since I an an Indie, and I do want to be a full time author one day. He was afraid that by having my work out there for free, I am losing money. I told him not to worry That it is okay.

And it really is.

The reality is this: people buy books all the time and loan them to friends. Libraries have been doing that for years. If someone buys an electronic copy and passes it on, I can’t argue that its not the same thing. All I can hope is that the person downloading the free copy will like the book enough to snag a paperback for their shelf the same way people have bought a book after reading their friend’s copy.

Do I lose sales because of the downloads? I think I probably don’t. People downloading any type of media are usually A) broke or B) they have never heard of the book/film/show/band/game and want to see if it sucks C) they were not going to buy what they believe should be free anyway.

Frankly, I believe having a strong, loyal readership will benefit me in the long run and if it takes free copies on the bit torrents to build that readership, then that’s okay by me. As The World Dies grew its fan base while it was free online.

But…I do hope that one day they buy a book. 🙂

 

Excerpt from Open A Window – Alzheimer's Caregiver Handbook

by

 

 

This is my description of what happens to a person’s brain when they have Alzheimer’s disease.

 

 

When we are born, our brain is full of well lit, airy, vacant rooms with an open window in each one. Knowledge and experiences flow through the open windows to fill the rooms as we grow, and flow back out as we mentally call on them to create the type of human being we become. Imagine if by the time you are in your sixties, you was to find yourself searching for a thought in the memory room. You find that the room had become dark, the drapes are drawn. You strain to see the familiar object you are searching for in your mind, trying to remember what it looked like the last time you saw it, but you can’t find that object in the dark.

That’s what happens to a person who is afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease. One such person was a large framed, boisterous farmer who spoke with a loud voiced, salty vocabulary. First, the memory room in his brain became dark, then other rooms darkened as they were covered with a black shroud called plaque that continued slowly to spread from room to room.

As it entered the open windows, the plaque closed them, and the drapes drew shut to put out the light. As this happened to the farmer, he became a shell of the man his family and friends once knew and was admitted to a care center. In time, he forgot how to feed himself, had trouble swallowing, couldn’t do his activities of daily living skills, and could barely stand long enough to transfer from the bed to the wheelchair. The only vocabulary he had left was loud, frustrated profanity unless he chose to parrot short sentences he heard from the aides such as "It’s time to eat.", or "It’s bedtime.".

There came a time when the farmer quit repeating what he heard. His face became expressionless, and his eyes stared vacantly. I was sure that most of the windows in his brain had shut, became locked, and would never reopen again. I was wrong!

Since the farmer was in his room most of the day, I had taken to sitting him in the living room with the other residents after the evening meal. I hoped people talking, and Vanna White flashing across the television screen would stimulate his mind. As time went by, I gave up hope that what I was doing would trigger anything in the farmer that I would see outwardly, but I consoled myself with the idea that I didn’t know what was happening inside those dark rooms in his brain. You know how the window frames in an old house doesn’t fit quite tight, and a small amount of air seeps between the sills and the frames? I thought maybe that might be how the windows in the farmer’s mind were working so I felt I shouldn’t give up trying to stimulate him even if I couldn’t see I was helping him.

One evening at bedtime, I pushed the farmer’s wheelchair across the living room. As we neared a visitor, sitting by his wife, the visitor reached out his hand and patted the farmer’s knee.

"Hello," the visitor greeted.

"Hello," the farmer returned in his booming voice, and he called the man by name. The blank expression on the farmer’s face changed to one of joy at seeing an old friend.

"He knows you!" I exclaimed in surprise as I realized the farmer recognized the visitor, and he actually spoke without repeating another person’s sentence. The farmer’s eyes remained focused on the visitor.

"He should," the visitor replied. "We’ve been friends for years, and we were both on the board of a business in town for a long time, weren’t we?"

"Yes," the farmer answered with gusto.

I could see a calm look of contentment on his face as the memory room’s window crept open to let out the memories I had been so sure were trapped forever in darkness.

"We went to a lot of those board meetings together," the visitor continued. He patted the farmer’s knee again as he said, "This is the man who made a lot of the important decision at the meetings, didn’t you?"

Tears welled up in the farmer’s eyes as he struggled to grasp memories long forgotten. I hated to see him so sad, and I didn’t want this to be an uncomfortable situation for him or the visitor so I tried to add a little humor to the conversation.

"Oh, sure! Were those important decisions what time to go get the beer after the meetings were over?"

Both men laughed at my teasing as the farmer slowly boomed out, "Yes!"

Then I explained to the visitor that it was the farmer’s bedtime so he had to leave. By the time I had wheeled the farmer the short distance down the hall into his room and closed the door, hiss face was expressionless again. His eyes stared vacantly, focused on the drapes behind his bed which were closed across the window just like the pair that darkened the window that had shut again in his mind.

For all my trying, I hadn’t been the one to open a window for the farmer, but that’s all right because I was there to see it happen, and that was enough incentive to make me keep trying.

　

Published in Open A Window – Alzheimer’s Caregiver Handbook by Fay Risner CNA    ISBN 1438244991

And in Jolene Brackey’s book Creating Moments Of Joy –third edition 

ISBN 1557533660

 

 

 

 

Excerpt from Open A Window – Alzheimer’s Caregiver Handbook

 

Windows In The Brain

 

The DIY Author

by

This post, from Pat Holt, originally appeared on her Holt Uncensored site on 10/6/09, and is reprinted here in its entirety with her permission. The embedded video clip of Seth Harwood is provided with his permission.

What To Do When the Mainstream Yawns: Part 1

Seth Harwood is the kind of Internet techno-whiz that fuddy-duddy types like me are scared of.

He’s so knowledgeable about podcasting, video-posting, eBook-pricing,  iPhone-apping and what is now called (nostalgically by everyone but me) “the Amazon Rush” that I wanted to run the other way.

Then I read his fiction and became a Seth Harwood fan. Then I watched his video and became a Seth Harwood student.

You can see why Seth is in the vanguard of a new writers’ movement by taking a look at the instructive interim video he made some months ago (see it below on my very own blog! and thank you, Seth, for permission).

Here we learn that no matter how many rejections slips you’ve received or how unknown you are as a new writer, you can create that elusive “platform” that mainstream publishers (so cowardly!) insist authors must bring to the table. And you can build an audience that grows into the tens of thousands.

The first step, says Seth, is to make a podcast of your manuscript (before it’s ever published) and give it away. “Think of a podcast as a free, serialized audiobook,” he says.

With a minimum of equipment, a little music and a lotta passion (plus some blankets absorbing echo-chamber sounds in your closet), you can produce a quality narration that equals anything on Audible.com, and again, you do this long before your manuscript comes out in any kind of print version.

Seth did this one chapter at a time with his detective novel, “Jack Wakes Up,” which he followed by two other “Jack” books in the series. He placed each chapter as a freebie podcast on iTunes, thus tapping into an engaged audience that loves to hear edgy stuff and Tweet about it like mad.

What I appreciate most about Seth’s video is his ability to make sophisticated, low-cost technology look easy and his love for the open source movement, that learn-it/do-it/share-it approach to advancing new ideas that benefits everybody on the Internet.

Especially Seth. When you see the numbers that built up during Seth’s do-it-yourself career you’ll  see why individual writers today have a lot more power acting as their own independent contractors than as supplicants to a dismissive and sluggish (and arrogant) system. The question we’ll consider in Part II is, how can authors make these numbers work for every title?

Seth’s Story

Seth HarwoodSeth started out like many unknown writers. He piled up so many rejection slips and unanswered submissions that finally he said to heck with it and decided to go directly to his audience.

A fan of audiobooks, Seth believed what Steve Jobs (reportedly) said –  that nobody reads anymore, but a lot of people listen — to books on CDs and iPods in autos, in waiting rooms, on the jogging trail, in bed.  Seth figured people would love a good Raymond Chandleresque yarn with a fresh twist, narrated by his very own self and so full of sly humor and eccentric characters that listeners wouldn’t care if they got stuck on the freeway or waiting for the dentist.

So Seth set up his podcast equipment and began narrating a chapter every week, which he offered for free on his own website (http://sethharwood.com) and also listed as a free serialization on iTunes.

He used the introduction and the sign-off of each segment to plug his other fiction (beautifully written short stories, very sweet and tender, but more later on this, too), his discussions on Facebook and Twitter and his offer of free PDFs of each chapter (and later of the entire manuscript).

You may think that’s a lot of giveaways (Random House sure did later), but Seth saw it as great publicity, and boy, was he right. The podcast was downloaded to about 30,000 people and the PDF of the entire book over 80,000 times.

Along the way, Seth was trying to alert literary agents to this kind of high-voltage interest in “Jack Wakes Up,” but basically the mainstream didn’t understand what he was saying. So what if 30,000 wastrels download your novel for free, Seth was told. That’s what everybody says. When somebody actually buys the book, let us know.

The Amazon Rush

 

Enter Breakneck Books (now part of Variance), a small New Hampshire publisher of action and science fiction novels that published a small POD (print-on-demand) print run of “Jack Wakes Up.” Little did Breakneck know what Seth had up his sleeve.

Since the protagonist of the novel is named Jack Palms, Seth asked his supporters not to buy Breakneck’s edition until Palm Sunday, when he was certain the title would be listed on Amazon. And on that day, he wanted everybody to buy the book only from Amazon, hoping that the impact of a concentrated rush of sales would send the book’s ranking through the roof. Indeed it did: the book started out among the lowest of rankings (in the hundreds of thousands) and, as Seth’s followers feverishly bought the book from Amazon, the ranking soared past that of best-sellers and famous authors, finally tapping out at an astonishing 45 overall in the Books category and number one in Crime and Mystery.

Seth used this historic rise-out-nowhere to interest a literary agent, who submitted the book to mainstream houses (with a this-guy-is-hot proposal), and the next year, “Jack Wakes Up” was published as an original paperback with a sensational cover from Three Rivers Press, an imprint of Random HouseJack Wakes Up

So. Great story, right? Seth’s with a mainstream publisher now and all is well, yes?

Oh, dear. See you next time for Part II.

P.S. By now enough authors and small publishers have attempted the Amazon Rush that it’s old hat to the mainstream book industry, so if you’re an unknown author, the word is, don’t bother. In a way, I’m sorry to hear it.  If ever there were a means of demonstrating  audience interest (and the dreaded notion of “platform loyalty,” ick), that was it. Of course authors are creative enough to find new ways to move books into the mainstream, so I shouldn’t worry. But again, I’m the old fuddy duddy. I hate to see authors turning themselves into self-styled barkers! Here they are, the center of the book industry, having to hoodwink publishers just to get attention! Well, pardon. More in Part II.

Bookmark Holt Uncensored and check back at that site in the coming weeks for part two of this profile. For more information about author Seth Harwood, visit www.sethharwood.com.

16 Ways to Increase Creativity and Generate Clever Ideas

by

This post, from Seth M. Baker, originally appeared on his Happenchance blog on 9/15/09.

Do you ever feel like someone replaced your brain with a cinder block?

Has your river of brainy brilliance turned to a sluice of stumped stupidity?

No matter what kind of work you do, sometimes you run into a wall; the ideas dry up and you feel anything but creative. It happens to everyone. Don’t worry. You’re not alone. You need a break. You need a strategy. You need a saga.

Here’s your saga, delivered in 16 steaming hot points. Use them, abuse them, but do tell me how they work for you.

1. Consistent Effort If you make a consistent effort to create new things, you’re bound to have results. If you just wait around for inspiration to strike, you could be waiting for a long time. Inspiration tends to strike those who are already in the middle of the creative process. A reward, if you will, for your diligent work.

2. Record Everything Keep a notebook, sketchbook, or recording device handy at all times. Ideas are slippery as eels, and if you wait too long, the damn things will swim away. If you have a smashing idea just before you fall asleep, you probably won’t remember it in the morning, and if you’re driving or rolling on the subway, something else will distract your attention.

3. Elaborate on Something If you’ve already made something cool, go back and see if you can’t expand on it. Especially if some time has passed and an idea has had time to incubate, you’ll have new things to add, angles to elaborate on.

4. Switch Gears If you’re doing brain work, do body work, and vice versa. If you’re writing a report, do a puzzle, if you’re building a sculpture of a giant chrome sponge, sing a song.

5. Think Laterally Look for associated ideas, especially while you’re already working on something. As I’m writing this, I’ve had ideas for four six more posts. While I won’t use them all, it’s nice to have them to draw from.

6. Mind Maps Mind maps are effective because they make the most of lateral, horizontal thinking. They give you a chance to put a lot of information down about a topic without worrying about actually organizing the information. This is just my opinion, but mind maps may be a close representation of how thoughts are structured. Here’s the wiki entry.

7. Don’t be Afraid of Bad Ideas When you have a lot of bad ideas, you’re bound to have good ones. Plus, with lots of bad ideas you’ll have less trouble telling the good from the bad.

Read the rest of the post, which features tips #8-16, on Happenchance. Also read the follow-up post, 14 More Ways to Increase Creativity and Generate Clever Ideas, also written by Seth M. Baker, on the same site.

Are Publishers Too White To Survive – Who Cares?

by

A recent meeting with two Caucasian well-respected literary agent friends of mine cemented that concern when one announced, “We’re all the same, [people the publishing industry]. We’re all white, we’re all over-educated, Ivy-leaguers, many of whom are trust fund babies.”

Jeff Rivera, Declining Book Sales?

WTF? Seriously?

This is apparently going to be remembered as Rant Week since I’ve been forced to emphasize the loud in loudpoet way more than usual, so bear with me a minute and don’t jump to any conclusions.

One of the few things I hate more than pundits are stereotypes, especially when they’re being used to make a point I might otherwise be inclined to agree with, but Rivera’s well-intentioned point in his GalleyCat op-ed so overshoots the mark that it’s kind of embarrassing, especially in light of his usual editorial role there as, well, the token guy of color.

Or so it felt for his first few months when the majority of his posts included the qualifier… “of Color“.

In the op-ed, Rivera argues that the decline in book sales is partly because the “publishing industry has lost touch with… who the consumer actually is.” No argument there, but then he takes the rather bizarre angle of citing a US Census Bureau projection that “by 2042 the minority (aka person of color) will actually become the majority” and concludes that “there are not enough people of color working in the book publishing industry.”

Despite the industry having a lot more immediately pressing concerns than the racial make-up of the country 33 years from now (?!?!), I’m still kind of with him overall — I’ve been in way too many meetings in my career where I was the only naturally tan face in the room — but then he totally jumps the shark with the “Trust Fund Muffy from Harvard” nonsense that’s the diversity-in-media equivalent of Godwin’s Law.

Does publishing have a diversity problem? Hell yes; of course it does! But just like comparing someone to Hitler tends to stop a debate in its tracks and makes the person making the comparison look foolish, dropping the trust fund stereotype into this particular debate — even if it’s your Caucasian friend saying it — has a similar effect.

Justine Larbalestier garnered a lot of attention earlier this summer when she intelligently and rationally spoke out about the whitewashing of the cover of her latest novel, Liar, by its U.S. publisher, Bloomsbury, jumpstarting an invaluable conversation that ultimately led to the cover being changed after the backlash become too loud to ignore. A white woman from Sydney, Australia, Larbalestier once answered the question asking why her protagonists weren’t white by noting: “Because no white teen has ever complained about their lack of representation in those books.”

That’s an issue I’ve wrestled in the past, particularly in relation to comic books, noting that I wanted “heroes that I can share with my kids as they grow up so they don’t have to look to a Boba Fett, his face always hidden behind a mask, his true identity unclear.” (Funny that, years later, he’d actually turn out to look a little bit like me after all. Closer than Luke Skywalker, at least!)

On the question of whether or not “black books” sell, Larbalestier smartly notes:

The notion that “black books” don’t sell is pervasive at every level of publishing. Yet I have found few examples of books with a person of colour on the cover that have had the full weight of a publishing house behind them…

There is, in fact, a large audience for “black books” but they weren’t discovered until African American authors started self-publishing and selling their books on the subway and on the street and directly into schools. And, yet, the publishing industry still doesn’t seem to get it. Perhaps the whole “black books don’t sell” thing is a self-fulfilling prophecy?

In the end, it all comes back to marketing and an exaggerated sense of entitlement.

MOST books don’t sell, and it’s typically only the sure bets that get a publisher’s marketing muscle, ineffective and out of shape as it may be in many cases. Unless they’re already a well-established name, every author is going to have to bust their ass to market their own work, whether it’s published by a traditional publisher or self-published. I used to run into many of those authors Larbalestier mentions, on the subway and on the street, hand-selling their books to anyone who’d show interest, and the poetry slam and indie comics scenes are powered by the exact same kind of ambition and drive.

While the major publishing houses could certainly do more to encourage diversity in their staffs, both on the editorial and business sides, most of them aren’t exactly standing on the firmest ground these days, so why worry about them anyway?

I’m inclined to go back to my comic book days and quote Cheryl Lynn of Digital Femme, whom, frustrated by the sad state of the comics union, nailed the solution back in 2007:

“I can see that I am going to have to make the fucking comics.

…right now I’m doing the second easiest thing. And that is to not-so-politely bitch. Because I suppose I’m still hoping that someone else will make the fucking comics. Because there are a ton of people out there with infinitely more talent and monetary resources than I possess. People who already have an established reputation and a publishing house that adores them. And I don’t. But they don’t give a damn. And I do.”

At the end of the day, we have two choices: complain and hope somebody fixes things for us, or STFU and get to work being the change we want to see in the world.

Rivera, for the most part, seems to be a good guy trying to do his part to change things for the better via his well-intentioned “People of Color” contributions to GalleyCat, and his own project, GumboWriters, but that op-ed is the rare case of words speaking louder than actions and potentially doing more harm than good.

This is a cross-posting of a post that originally appeared on Loudpoet on 10/9/09.