crisis in publishing

A Manifesto For The Future Of The Book

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This post by Tom Abba originally appeared on Futurebook on 8/27/15.

How easy it is to keep replicating the same old same old. Want to stop replicating print in digital? “Lock your marketing department away for six months,” advises narrative theory specialist Tom Abba in today’s manifesto. Lamenting, as do many others, the “books under glass” disappointment of most ebook efforts to date, he writes: “Print is kicking and the novel is breathing. Writers are poor and you are squandering opportunities.” We should, he tells us, take better advantage of “this chance for change, for real disruption.” — Porter Anderson

This is not good enough.

Repeat after me.

This.
Is.
Not.
Good.
Enough.

What are we building? What is it we’re making?

The best we have are books under glass, enhancements with video and clicking and audio. Imprisoned and ridiculed and not what was promised. 

The book is not dead. Print is kicking and the novel is breathing. Writers are poor and you are squandering opportunities. This chance for change, for real disruption.
Repeat after me.

This.
Is.
Not.
Good.
Enough.

Digital is different and digital’s new.

It’s going to break you, or it’s going to ignore you (as it’s already done). If you don’t engage it, nothing will follow. It can remake your business, but only if you let it.

 

Read the full post on Futurebook.

 

The Crisis In Non-Fiction Publishing

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This editorial by Sam Leith originally appeared on The Guardian on 6/26/15.

When it comes to high-calibre non-fiction, risk-averse trade publishing houses are producing too many copycat ‘smart thinking’ books that promise more than they deliver. But praise should be given to the university presses

mid the ambient wails of doom about the publishing industry, I’d like to enter a note of encouragement. The mainstream may be getting dumber by the day, but we are living in what looks like a golden age of publishing for, of all people, the university presses.

At the moment, I don’t think there’s a trade publishing house producing high-calibre, serious non-fiction of the quality and variety of Yale University Press; and snapping at its heels are Harvard, Oxford, Princeton, Cambridge and Chicago. As the literary editor of a middlebrow news magazine I’m finding ever more of the reviews I commission are from such presses.

Where 15 or 20 years ago the big trade publishers were, oddly, swamping the market with sort-of-scholarly micro-histories of salt or longitude, they now seem, with exceptions of course, to be tiptoeing away from specific, knotty, deeply researched and nuanced books about things. The sorts of book on which they tend now to rely are investigations of “big ideas”. Their lodestars or exemplars are the Malcolm Gladwells and Daniel Kahnemans and Nicholas Carrs. I do not mean to denigrate those individual authors, rather to say that they produce a particular type of work.

 

Read the full editorial on The Guardian.

 

New Struggles in Self-Publishing

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This post by David Farland originally appeared on his site on 6/23/15.

I hesitate to mention problems with self-publishing. In some genres, such as romance or self-help books, the industry is doing great. But for those who are trying to sell fiction, it seems that the markets are contracting, and it appears that things will go from bad to worse.

If you’ve been self-publishing for the past few years, you probably remember the good old days. For example, a few years ago I put my novel The Golden Queen up as a free e-book for a week and forgot about it. I was going to mention on my social media what I had done, but seriously got busy with something else. Three days later, I got an email from someone who said, “Why don’t you take your free e-book down and let someone else have a shot at the #1 spot.” I’d given away 15,000 copies in three days, and had sold thousands of dollars in inventory on the other two books in the series.

Today, even getting readers to look at a free book is nearly impossible. People have seen so many promotions for bad books that they stay away in droves. In this past year alone, I’ve read that nearly three million e-books were created, and another three million are anticipated this year. With so much “white noise,” how is a good author to be heard?

 

Read the full post on David Farland’s site.

 

S&S Tries Geo-Targeting in New Marketing Outreach

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This post by Calvin Reid originally appeared on Publishers Weekly on 5/13/15.

In the latest effort to enhance book discovery, Simon & Schuster is partnering with mobile content delivery service Foli to offer customers complimentary access to a selection of full-text e-books in airports, museums and hotels around the country. Beginning May 15, David McCullough’s The Wright Brothers will be a feature selection at the National Air & Space Museum and 50 venues around the country. Another 18 titles will be available though a select group of hotels and airport lounges.

The new service relies on Foli’s location-based wireless technology, which allows the the delivery of a single title, or group of titles, to a specific geographic location. In order to access the e-books in the program, customers can download the Foli app to their iOS or Android device and read a full-text version of any of the books.

The availability of the e-books will last for three days while they are being accessed at the targeted venue.

 

Read the full post on Publishers Weekly.

 

May 2015 Author Earnings Report

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This post originally appeared on Author Earnings in 5/15.

Welcome to the May 2015 Author Earnings Report. This is our sixth quarterly look at Amazon’s ebook sales, with data taken on over 200,000 bestselling ebooks. With each report over the past year and a half, we have come to see great consistency in our results, but there is always something new that surprises us. Often, it’s something we weren’t expecting, like the massive shadow industry of ISBN-less ebooks being sold, or the effect Kindle Unlimited has on title visibility. This time, we went into our report curious about one thing in particular. But we were still not prepared for what we found.

If you’ve been shopping for ebooks on Amazon lately, you may have seen this new addition to many ebook product pages:

Nelson Book

This announcement can be found on ebooks from several of the largest publishers, and it appears to serve as both an apology from Amazon and also a shifting of the blame for high ebook prices. Amazon has stated in the past that they believe ebooks should not cost more than $9.99. Self-published authors are no doubt familiar with this price constraint, as their royalties are cut in half if they price higher than this amount. But after a contentious and drawn-out negotiation with Hachette Book Group last year, Amazon relinquished the ability to discount ebooks with several publishers. Prices with these publishers are now set firmly by them.

 

Read the full report on Author Earnings.

 

Publishing’s Digital Disruption Hasn’t Even Started

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This post by Gareth Cuddy originally appeared on Digital Book World on 4/23/15.

Expert publishing blog opinions are solely those of the blogger and not necessarily endorsed by DBW.

Imperceptible, invisible almost, but it was there at the London Book Fair this year—publishers quietly clapping each other on the back and breathing a collective sigh of relief: Phew, thank goodness that ebook thing is over. Now let’s get back to real publishing.

I’m being a little facetious, of course. But this year’s trade show did see a genuine departure from the maelstrom of anxiety and excitement over the rapidly developing digital market that has dominated the last few fairs.

Most publishers seem to believe the worst is now over, that the industry has survived an inconvenient tsunami warning that turned out to be nothing but an unseasonably high tide.

But is the industry blind to the coming tempest? I certainly believe so.

The music industry thought that disruption was over by 2011 when their sales began to recover somewhat. Despite digital units accounting for 64% of music sales, the consensus was that the market had stabilized and was back to business as usual. Then in 2011 a Swedish start-up called Spotify launched in the U.S. After only four years in the mainstream, it now has over 15 million subscribers  and 60 million active users. The Spotify business model has truly disrupted the music industry, with artists now looking at nontraditional ways of generating sales other than records as their staple income.

Any parallels for authors and books here?

 

Read the full post on Digital Book World.

 

How I Became An Indie Author: Helen Harper

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This article by Helen Harper originally appeared on the ALLi self-publishing advice blog on 3/4/15.

It Shouldn’t Happen to an English Teacher

Everyone makes mistakes. Career-wise, one of my biggest was to step into a temporary Deputy Head position at the international school where I was teaching English. Five years ago it was a small start-up, and I took the job knowing that I’d have to retain all my responsibilities as head of department, as well as teaching, and the new requirements of senior management. The upshot was that for eight months, I didn’t have a day off. I worked weekends, holidays, evenings … all I did was work. And by the time May rolled around, I was burnt out and had nothing left to give. I needed something else.

 

Bored? Then Write a Novel…

There was nothing I wanted to watch on television. I’d been working so hard that I had few friends. And I couldn’t find any books I wanted to read – so instead I wrote my own.

Every evening I’d come home, grab a bite and write. I didn’t tell a soul about it. I was lost in the fantasy world of Mack Smith, a young woman living with a pack of shapeshifters in rural Cornwall. It was a little bit like being a superhero. By day I taught English, and by night I transformed into a crime-fighting, ass-kicking heroine! Sort of, anyway.

 

Read the full article on the ALLi self-publishing advice blog.

 

Do Publishers Deserve to Exist?

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This post by Peter Ginna originally appeared on his Dr. Syntax blog on 10/24/15.

This week’s screed against book publishers comes from Matt Yglesias at Vox.com, who proclaims, “Amazon is doing the world a favor by crushing book publishers”–a headline that shouts clickbait but fairly reflects his piece. Yglesias, whose work I have often admired, notes that he’s the child of two authors and has published a book himself, so his hatred seems to be honestly earned. Writing of the “fundamental uselessness” of publishers, he says they are going to be “wiped off the face of the earth soon” by Amazon “and readers will be better for it.”

Book-business types rolled their eyes at Yglesias’ hostile tone and ignorance of some key facts, but I saw it cited as smart and “thoughtful” by a number of media people and others who I’d have hoped would know better. So at the risk of repeating points that have been made many times before (but seem still to be widely un-apprehended), maybe it’s worth briefly reminding ourselves just how publishers do add value in connecting writers and readers. So, pace Matt Yglesias, here are some of the services publishers perform.

Curation. The function of choosing what work is most worth presenting to readers is derided by some as a retrograde, “elitist” notion. Why should publishers appoint themselves as selectors of what people ought to read, when everybody can put their work online and let readers judge for themselves?

 

Read the full post on Dr. Syntax.

 

Magical Thinking and the End of Publishing

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This post by John Pettigrew originally appeared on Publishing Matters on 2/23/15.

‘Magical thinking’ is allowing our own ignorance of a topic to give us the impression that there’s something special, ‘magical’ about the people who do understand it. It’s a common failing but it’s having an unfortunate effect on the publishing industry’s approach to ‘digital technology’. And some critical shortsighted mistakes are being made as a result.

There are surely fewer more ridiculous terms used in publishing than ‘digital natives’ – apparently, people in their teens and twenties who have grown up with technology and so ‘get it’ in ways that older people don’t. The assumption that all people in their 40s, 50s or older somehow don’t ‘get’ technology (especially odd given that this is the generation that invented most of it!) is just wrong. After all, the fact that I grew up with cars and learned to drive one as soon as I could doesn’t mean that I could make one, or even begin to fix anything but the simplest issues when it breaks down!

Why, then, do we talk as though ‘young people’ somehow have a magical grasp of technology that older people don’t?

 

Magical thinking

We see magical thinking all over the place, but perhaps especially with subjects that are perceived as difficult – finance, science, technology. Because it looks difficult to us (who don’t understand it), we overestimate the difficulty of the subject.

This can have two opposite unfortunate effects. The first is when we undervalue or even devalue the subject area – because we don’t understand it, it must not be very important, and those people who do think about it are somehow lacking in finer feelings or social niceties or whatever. This approach is often associated with perceptions of Maths, Science and Engineering. We hear, “Oh, well, I don’t understand Maths” used almost as a badge of pride – in a way we’d never hear, “Oh, well, I don’t really understand literature.”

 

Read the full post on Publishing Matters.

 

January 2015 Author Earnings Report

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This post originally appeared on the Author Earnings site on 1/28/15.

Executive Summary
AuthorEarnings reports analyze detailed title-level data on 33% of all daily ebook sales in the U.S.

30% of the ebooks being purchased in the U.S. do not use ISBN numbers and are invisible to the industry’s official market surveys and reports; all the ISBN-based estimates of market share reported by Bowker, AAP, BISG, and Nielsen are wildly wrong.

33% of all paid ebook unit sales on Amazon.com are indie self-published ebooks.

20% of all consumer dollars spent on ebooks on Amazon.com are being spent on indie self-published ebooks.

40% of all dollars earned by authors from ebooks on Amazon.com are earned by indie self-published ebooks.

In mid-year 2014, indie-published authors as a cohort began taking home the lion’s share (40%) of all ebook author earnings generated on Amazon.com while authors published by all of the Big Five publishers combined slipped into second place at 35%.

 

Full Report
U.S. ebook sales have plateaued — or are even declining, relative to print — declare some widely-cited industry statistics. Publishing pundits opine that readers’ Kindles are all “full” now, and talk about the “glut” of ebooks. News articles imply that consumers are abandoning ebooks and are returning to print books, and then those articles speculate about whether ebooks were “just a fad.” Other pundits assert that indie authors will no longer be able to compete with the Big Five traditional publishers, now that those publishers have begun to price some of their ebooks lower.

Lots of speculation. Lots of flawed studies based on 2008 methodologies. Lots of inaccurate statistics. And very few facts.

As always, we turn to the data for real answers.

 

Read the full post, which includes numerous charts and graphs with accompanying analysis, on Author Earnings.

 

Indie & Trad Publishing & Flying Monkeys On The Yellow Brick Road!

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This post by Bob Mayer originally appeared on his Write On The River site on 2/12/15.

As you negotiate your journey through the wonderful world of publishing, be careful of those flying monkeys as you gaze in the crystal ball of your career path.

Don’t take anyone else’s monkey as your own! We all are on our unique yellow brick roads to Oz, whatever Oz might be for each of us.

Lately I’ve run into some new writers at conferences who eventually whisper to me they’ve signed a traditional deal, but they’re afraid to mention it to anyone because they get castigated. The attitude seems to be that if the book is good enough to get a book deal, then self-publishing makes more sense.

What a change in just a few years when people would break open a bottle of champagne upon getting a book deal. Now one almost dares not mention it for fear of being ridiculed for not taking the indie route. There are some indie authors saying they will never go back to traditional publishing; the key phrase is “go back”. It’s curious that a lot of us who have been successful as indies actually started in traditional publishing, giving us a distinct leg up; along with a thing called backlist.

 

Read the full post on Write On The River.

 

5 Self-publishing Truths Few Authors Talk About

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This post by Dylan Hearn originally appeared on his Suffolk Scribblings site on 1/5/15.

One of the hardest thing to watch on social media is an author, usually a debut author, getting excited about their upcoming book launch and knowing they are about to get hit around the head with a hard dose of reality.

They’ve done the right things, built up a twitter or Facebook following, blogged about the book, sent copies out for review, told all their friends about the upcoming launch, pulled together a promo video and graphic, maybe taken out some adverts. The first few days after launch are filled with excited tweets, mentions of early positive reviews and chart rankings. Then, after a few days, maybe a few weeks, the positive tweets stop and an air of desperation sets in as the reality of life as an indie author hits home.

Part of the problem is that the authors most vocal on social media are those that have already seen self-publishing success. They got in early, made names for themselves through talent, hard-work and persistence, and are happy to spread the gospel of the new self-publishing utopia. They are telling the truth, from their perspective, but for the vast majority of authors the picture is very different. This doesn’t mean it’s impossible to find success with your debut novel, just that it’s rare – and with changes in the market, becoming ever more so.

In order to provide some balance, below are 5 truths I, and many other self-published authors, have experienced. This hasn’t put me off from a writing career, and shouldn’t put you off either, but at least you will be going in with your eyes open.

 

1 You need talent to succeed but it’s no guarantee

 

Read the full post on Suffolk Scribblings.

 

How Kill Fees Ruin Writers, Hurt Magazines and Destroy Journalism

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This post by Scott Carney originally appeared on his site on 2/3/15.

Just about every journalism contract contains a clause called a “kill fee” that states that if the magazine decides not to run a particular story then it will pay out only a fraction of the agreed upon rate. The writer is then free to sell the story to another publication. The logic behind this policy is that the clause is insurance so that a writer won’t simply accept a contract and then write a half-baked and poorly reported story and then run off with the full payment. Unfortunately the kill fee serves a much more diabolical role in the modern magazine industry. Not only it is bad for writers, it also exposes magazines to potential libel suits and degrades the overall quality of journalism in America.

Last week I had a conversation with a former editor at the New York Times Magazine who told me that they kill between 1/4 and 1/3 all assignments they issued to their on-contract writers. The magazine killed a much higher percentage of stories that they assigned to freelancers who weren’t already on the masthead.

While a kill fee is supposed to be insurance against bad writing, the NYT magazine was using it in a different way. A story can be killed for literally any reason: not only because of poor quality, but because an editor no longer thinks an idea is fresh, or that a character doesn’t “pop” on the page, or the piece was covered in another magazine between the time it was assigned and then scheduled to be published. (Those are three reasons that I’ve had stories killed over the years). Instead publications now routinely use the kill fee system as a way to increase the overall pool of material they can choose from to publish. They intentionally over-assign and account for a certain percentage of killed pieces in advance. Stories that are on the bottom of their list. This policy has nothing to do with the quality of what a writer submits, rather a business model that intentionally transfers risks reporting onto the backs of their authors.

 

Read the full post on Scott Carney’s site.

 

The Self-Curating (Mostly Indie) Slush Pile

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This post by JH Mae originally appeared on IndieReader on 2/4/15.

These days, self-publishing doesn’t necessarily mean your novel will wither and die, unread, on the digital and real life bookshelves. Books with polished writing, a compelling voice, eye-catching covers, promising sales numbers and an author with a decent reader following may be destined for great things. Meaning a traditional book deal.

With so many indie titles released every day, the pool of authors has become something of a resource for literary agents eager to unearth new talent and sign the next breakaway bestseller – and a testing ground. “Traditional publishers let the indie market experiment, then they swoop in and try to grab what has worked,” said literary agent Evan Marshall with the Evan Marshall Agency. “When a (book) is of high quality, the attention and popularity naturally come with it.”

The main indicator is sales rankings, which creates a “slush pile that is self-curating,” added Laurie McLean, a partner at Fuse Literary Inc. Basically, if the numbers just aren’t there and the book isn’t making waves in the indie market, it likely won’t stand a chance in the traditional one, either, added Andrea Hurst, literary agent with Andrea Hurst & Associates.

 

Read the full post on IndieReader.

 

Translating John Sargent

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This post by J.A. Konrath originally appeared on his A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing blog on 12/19/14. Note that it contains strong language.

Often times it seems as if those who work in the legacy publishing world are so out of touch with authors that a translator is needed to explain the true meaning of what has been said.

Such is the case with John Sargent, CEO of Macmillan, in his recent public letter.

Sargent in crazy bold italics, the translation in common-sense normal font.

Dear Authors, Illustrators, and Agents,
There has been a lot of change in the e-book publishing world of late, so I thought it a good idea to update you on what is going on at Macmillan.

Translation: It will be easier to accept the bad news if I warn you first.

The largest single change happens today, December 18th. Today a portion of our agreement with the Department of Justice (called a consent decree) expires, and we will no longer be required to allow retailers to discount e-books.

Translation: Remember when we illegally colluded with other publishers to price-fix? We did that because we were worried that low-priced ebooks would harm our paper distribution oligopoly.

It doesn’t matter that we have a much higher profit margin on ebooks. It doesn’t matter that since forcing the agency model on Amazon, our authors made less money. What matters is that we foresaw a day where ebook sales surpassed paper sales, and we knew that would put us out of business because savvy authors wouldn’t need our value-added publishing services anymore.

Happily, Amazon won’t be able to discount our ebooks anymore, so we can charge high prices and protect the interests of our business and of the cartel at the expense of your financial situation.

Unless you’re one of the huge bestsellers we publish. Those huge bestsellers sell a shit-ton of paper books. Under this model, they’ll continue to get richer.

 

Read the full post on A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing.