I have been very much focused on Moving Forward. Which means thinking about how publishing can position itself for the next year, the next five years, the next ten years, heck, the next century. One thing I know for sure is that nobody knows for sure how things will look at any one of those points in time. The best publishers can do is to figure out what they do (not as easy as you’d imagine!), and, more importantly, how they can best position themselves to take advantage of the inevitable shifts in the business.

So, today, a small discussion about a small aspect of this change. I say small because I am addressing an isolated incident. I think it’s worthy of attention because it covers so many of the big issues facing publishing right now.

Neal Stephenson, a favorite author of mine (gotta love a guy who can make every single page of a 900-page book compelling), recently released Reamde in hardcover and ebook. This was an anticipated book from a highly-regarded author. Which means, you know, there was a devoted audience ready to buy the book — in the appropriate format — on day one. Also, the audience has a geeky element, which may play into this story.

The husband reads a bit slower than I do, so I gave him a head start on the book. One night, he said to me (and I paraphrase), “Have you noticed anything weird about the Kindle edition?” I had not because I hadn’t started the book (I did not want to mention the head start thing to protect his ego and all that).

So I started the book. And I noticed. Oh, I noticed. Conversion errors galore! Okay, maybe five conversion errors in my first half-hour of reading. Anything that jerks me out of the flow of a story — and, boy, do conversion errors do that! — is a Bad Thing.

We weren’t alone. Lots of people noticed the problems. Amazon pulled the book from the Kindle store. HarperCollins staff did amazing work to fix the errors. The turnaround in getting a new version was a few days. Amazon politely communicated that the new version was available rather than switching it out willy nilly (I am not sure that means what I think it means, but there you have it.).

However, the reason given by Amazon for the new edition was “missing content”. Which bothered more than a few readers. What, they asked, was missing? It made readers wonder if they had to reread the book. Yeah, those who’d finished the book, errors and all, were not happy campers.

A reader had to create a Diff File — a file that details the differences between the original file and the new file. In the end, there wasn’t much missing content, and nothing major was omitted (trust me when I say omission of major content happens more often than it should).

Lesson: The publisher should have been all over this. As soon as possible. If only because it is great customer service to let readers know if that 900-page book they just read was missing major elements.

But wait, there’s more!

There is much talk in the industry about making direct connection with readers. Opening the lines of communication is, from what I understand, a major goal. Granted, HarperCollins had to communicate with readers via Amazon (since they don’t, sigh, have that direct relationship with readers; see: where I’ve talked about this before). But every opportunity to make a connection is important.

Good will is important. Critical. Essential.

HarperCollins did amazing work in fixing the problem. As someone who paid $16.99 for the book, I am happy they did this. However (you knew there was a however, right?), what happened next just killed my feelings of goodwill.

Within days of notifying me there was a fixed edition of Reamde available, HarperCollins lowered the price of the ebook to $14.99. Yeah, the book I bought, couldn’t read due to annoying problems, had to redownload, wondered if the missing content impacted what I’d read…was now cheaper for everyone who hadn’t already gone through that rigamarole.

I waited for a notice telling me I’d been credited two dollars — not, I admit, a lot of money, but it’s the principle, not the amount. I waited in vain. I feel this is a serious missed opportunity. Why do this to your best readers? The people who worked hardest to buy and read a book you produced?

So, yeah, it’s a really good book. Really good. But today, as I learn that Stephenson and Greg Bear are publishing The Mongoliad: Book One with 47North, Amazon’s new sci fi/fantasy/horror imprint, I have questions.

Lesson Two? Respect your readers. Please.

* – It turns out I have less tolerance for headlines that read “Will The Kindle Fire be An Eternal Flame?” than I thought. If you have to ask a silly question in your headline, you are doing it wrong. So says the ghost of Mary Beth Lucas, journalism teacher, Cabrillo Senior High School.

The container limits our imagination.

TOC 2011, like the previous iterations of the conference (oh, can we return to San Jose, where the weather is delightfully mild?), was jam-packed with people, enthusiasm, and ideas**. You gotta love an event where the hallway and lunch table conversations are as stimulating, creative, and informative as the planned sessions and workshops.

As with many conferences — intentional or not — themes emerged. The largest, and I’d posit most important, was best articulated by Brian O’Leary in his Context First keynote (link includes text and link to video, which cannot be missed). Brian (full disclosure and all that) posits that publishing is “…unduly governed by the physical containers we have used for centuries to transmit information.”

Or, the container limits our imagination.

This two-dimensional limitation is what led keynoter Theodore Gray to take advantage of the multi-media functionality of the iPad to produce his bestselling The Elements: A Visual Exploration. Gray had already displayed the elements in true periodic table (and by table, I mean a wooden thing with legs), and had already published a print book featuring his collection of objects demonstrating the various elements.

Had he limited his vision to a container — a table with cubbies for items, or a book — his life would be okay. But Gray’s vision exceeded the container. And, let me tell you, if this app had been around when I was a kid, my relationship with chemistry would be very different. Already, I am looking forward to Gray’s book on the solar system, not to mention his version of T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”, featuring a dramatic reading by Fiona Shaw (among others).

Ignoring containers and considering context was an underlying theme of the presentation given by Hugh McGuire, John Maxwell, and Kirk Biglione (double triple full disclosure). Each speaker introduced approaches that allow publishers to determine containers as context requires. It’s all about managing content in a way that allows it to be exploited (not a bad word) in the proper way.

As Kirk noted, current publisher processes resemble the duckbill platypus (duckbeaver, if you’re Canadian) — something that looks unwieldy but works. It makes sense: to accommodate digital media, publishers have grafted new tasks onto their current workflow. These workarounds allow staff to keep on keeping on while taking advantage of new markets. We’ll talk more about workflow in a moment.

At the end of the presentation, Hugh introduced PressBooks, an open source digital workflow/publishing tool (still in alpha or beta or one of those Greek situations). PressBooks allows a publisher to take a manuscript from author’s submission to file ready for output to EPUB, print-ready PDF, or InDesign. Your choice.

Awe. Some. Sauce.

This panel cemented the idea of the Sunday Afternoon Project — projects that move from “Hey, what if?” to “That’s done” (or done-esque) in the space of a few weekend hours. Imagine what you could accomplish if ideas could be executed without meetings and meetings about meetings and status reports and, oh yes, budgets. Imagine what you could accomplish if a passionate person or three sat down and hacked out a prototype? Or a working application?

Another theme bubbling under the surface was the importance of a true digital workflow (I told you I’d get back to this). It’s happening in various ways, and I was both thrilled and “c’mon guys” about Simon & Schuster’s digital workflow. The thrilled part was excited to hear that S&S had developed a workflow around their cover art process. Very impressive. The c’mon guys me wanted to hear that they’d implemented an end-to-end digital workflow.

Oh, I get that it’s hard. I get that it’s pricey. I get that day-to-day work needs to be accomplished. Let’s be honest: making the switch will not be easier next year. Or the year after. Or, frankly, five years from now. This is not something that is tied to the rise of ebook sales; it’s truly about making processes more cost-efficient.

To tie this back to containers (and platypuses), current workflow assumes a print book. As Dominique Raccah of Sourcebooks noted this week, her house’s ebook dollars equal 35% of total dollars sold. For O’Reilly Media, they’re 79% of dollar sales via their website (Note: corrected sentence to say “via their website”, this number does not include all sales channels. While I do not have intimate knowledge of her workflow — and assume it is similar to most publishers — I presume this means she is spending quite a bit to get what should be higher margin content into that higher margin format.

(Dominique — I am not singling you out, I swear! I know you’ll slap me upside the head if I’m getting this wrong.)

Or, assuming Sourcebooks has the traditional workflow that leads to an InDesign output (I don’t know for sure, but we can substitute just about any publisher here, and I love Sourcebooks because they are so clearly focused on the future of their company. Dominique has posted her slides from her Building the Future from Within: A Practical Approach to the Day-by-Day Process of Reinventing Your Book Publishing Company presentation, and she hits on so many of the points I find critical for today’s publisher thinking.), a lot of time and energy is spent on creating the EPUB and other files. At what point do publishers realize how much of that higher margin is being lost to inefficient processes? At what point do publishers realize change is an essential budget buster?

Mike Shatzkin picked up on this as well (as I’d expect). I’ve been, ahem, beating the drum about reevaluating financial models for years now. I realize I’ve bored a lot of you. After all, why change everything for a line of business that constitutes a single-digit percentage of your market?

But what happens when that line of business accelerates to 35% of all dollars? When it’s 25%, 45% of total unit sales? When you are spending more to create the print product first, then the (hopefully-if-you’re-doing-it-right higher margin) digital product? At what point do you change your workflow?

I’d say two, maybe three, years ago.

I am not joking. For some publishers, maintaining the print-output workflow, with a digital-maybe approach, makes sense. Those publishers are the exception. Again, it’s not going to get cheaper to convert your workflow. It’s not going to get easier. And it’s not going to be cost effective to outsource this process.

Trust me. Cheap conversion leads to cheap ebooks, and if you are serious about quality, you need to take control of your product. Yeah, Houghton Mifflin, sending you a stink-eye. And an email that details why I am pissed off about the quality of one of your books. There is no excuse.

Which leads to my final theme: metadata. Metadata is the sexy of publishing conferences. This would embarrass metadata, metadata being the type who prefers to remain in the background. It also reveals too much about publishing conferences. Metadata is useful, efficient, precise. Metadata doesn’t grace the cover of Vogue. It’s the girl next door. The really smart girl next door. The really smart, really successful girl next door.

Metadata is data that describes data. That’s meta, I know. It is the information that feeds search. Enables discovery. The better your metadata, the better your chances of discovery. Consider your book’s metadata: title, ISBN, author, editor, year of publication, format, index, table of contents, keywords, tags, reviews, so much more. The more you can describe your (collective your) book, the greater the chances of discovery.

Because, as we all know, there is no BISAC for “Steampunk”.

And, oh my, ask anyone who uses your metadata, and they’ll say it’s bad. Ask me, and I’ll be a bit more eloquent. My solution? Hire a librarian for your digital (and print — metadata matters there) team. Use this librarian’s knowledge. Speaking of which, these awesome experts were out in force at TOC.

Which leads me to my final theme (and, Kat Meyer, goddess of TOC programming, you know what I mean when I say this): the conversations between conference attendees may be more important than the sessions. I know John Maxwell and Kirk Biglione started down the path to their presentation after discovering their common interests when they did back-to-back presentations at the PubWest Conference. All it takes is the right conversation with the right person.

Those conversations happen because we come together in person. Email is awesome. Twitter, many of us cannot imagine how we lived without it. Facebook is our necessary evil. But face-to-face? Essential for that weird serendipity. Oh yes, it happens online, but we are human, and that conversation in the hallway is part of our creative DNA. Go with it.

I am now imagining a conference that consists entirely of hallway conversations. I am also trying to differentiate this conference from a cocktail party. I’ll get back to y’all.

A final note. I am thrilled that TOC included a session and a keynote focused on accessibility. Jim Fruchterman of Benetech spoke on making the book truly accessible (swallowing my guilt for missing this, but I saw Jim speak at Books in Browsers, and cheered loudly). Dave Gunn of the Royal National Institute of Blind People lead a session on Can You Afford Not to Consider Accessible Publishing Practices?.

If you answer anything other than “No” to that question, then you do not understand the importance of accessibility to your business. You do not understand the importance to readers. You do not begin to understand how critical accessibility is to your future success. At the risk of being crass (hey, we’re all friends here!), the benefits of accessible content extend far beyond the obvious.

No, I’m not going to test you by asking who the most influential blind user of the Internet is. The brilliant among you already know the answer to this question, and have implemented practices that ensure this user is very happy. The, oh, I must say it, clueless among you are losing customers and readers.

I cannot overstate the importance of accessibility in ebooks. Have I ever lead you astray? Learn about this. You will thank yourself.

It’s that simple.

* – Conference world is not real. All conferences create a magic bubble that bursts painfully, especially if airports are involved.

** – Prior to TOC’s official start, a bunch of us got together at Book2Camp, which, disconcertingly, is pronounced Booksquared Camp. All day long, I thought people were yelling at me. Thank you Ami Greko, Chris Kubica, and Kat Meyer (two mentions in one post) for bringing together some seriously awesome minds.

And with the reading comes the book discussion.

Social reading is normal reading. It’s how we already read in an offline world, and, yes, how we read in an online world. First, some historical context, all stuff that is well known. In the beginning, humans told stories around campfires*. The storytelling happened in group situations, with some stories passed from campfire to campfire, and eventually the woolly mammoth the hunter felled was a large as the Titanic. Some stories became institutionalized — myths, biblical stories, parables. Others, well, they never really gained market share.

Hmm, publishing, the early days.

Time passed. We developed alphabets, we coalesced around local language standards, we wrote stuff down, but the process was laborious (think rocks) or fragile (think parchment) or valuable (think illuminated manuscripts). These printed stories (using both words broadly), fiction and non-fiction, were not possessed in great numbers by common folk. Reading, or sharing of stories, was done in groups, except for those ancient-times-us who wrote stories in their heads (go ancient-times-us!).

Even after the invention of the Gutenberg press, the possession of books was outside the reach of most people. We moved from campfires to candlelight, while the act of reading remained a social activity. The tradition of people reading to each other remains alive and well. I cannot think of the stories of the knights of the Round Table without remembering my mother reading them aloud to four impressionable minds. Likewise, when I remember “reading” The Island of the Blue Dolphins for the first time, I remember my third grade teacher’s voice as she read it to us.

And with the reading, of course, comes the book discussion.

It wasn’t until mass market books became available that reading, as we know it, was identified as a (almost-solely) solitary activity (overall literacy rates had to catch up as well, but that’s another issue). By reading as we know it, I mean selfish reading: alone in the bathtub, alone under the covers, alone on the couch, alone in a restaurant, alone in a park, alone in the bathroom while the family argues about football. Solitary reading is my preferred style, but I also make my book club’s monthly meetings for literary discussion**.

(At this point, I really want to thank my dearest friends who, in all innocence, asked me “What? Social huh?”, thus leading to me writing them a very long email that ended up being the first draft of this crazy post.)

Transforming the Text: An Essential Part of the Reading Experience

Throughout all this, and focusing particularly on booky-books because they consist of ink and paper (which, for centuries, was a really important part of this whole phenomenon, or maybe behavior is a better word), marginalia or annotations or comments or whatever you want to call them flourished. People love making notes about what they’re reading, and, let’s be honest, they love writing in books, even though generations of librarians have discouraged this behavior.

For example, my notes, if I am reviewing a book, sometimes consistent of comments like, “You have got to be kidding me!” or “Seriously? She’s practically commuting to London from the north of England. In the winter. By carriage.” Since I mostly read digital these days, my Kindle notes are similar, though sometimes it takes some re-reading to understand what I meant when I typed “!!!”. Excitement or disbelief…that is always the question.

This kind annotation becomes part of the book, and is generally private unless the book is sold or shared. I once bought a used book with mini-reviews written in the covers. It was clear this was a book passed among friends, all of whom shared their thoughts. Amazingly sweet.

But we do not only engage in marginalia. We write reviews about the book. We write extended analyses about the book. Speeches are given about the words written by an author. Movies are made. Plays presented in the park. As people interact with the text, many transform the text.

For many of us, transforming the book is as important as reading the book.

As we have developed online tools, we’ve moved our natural tendency to comment and extend text online. Someone will correct me, I’m sure, but this has been happening with increasing regularity since 1992. We annotate, review, discuss, write letters, emails, blog posts, tweets, and more. What makes this interesting to me is, with an exception of actual notations in physical books (or, ahem, some digital editions), very little of this activity is actually attached to the book.

Social Reading, Social Publishing

Think about that for a moment. In the analog world, it made perfect sense that publishers, authors, readers, and aggregators were unable to collect the discussion around a particular work. It is somewhat mind-boggling that we are in 2010 and the nitty gritty serious discussions around social reading are just beginning to happen — and there are many nitty gritty discussions to be had. You’d think this was the kind of control publishers would have grabbed early and often (it would be a wrong-headed attempt, as we’ll discuss in a few paragraphs).

So the discussion around social reading is really a discussion about how to bring an ages-old activity into the digital age, and how to do it a way that makes sense. Though, as Aaron Miller of Bookglutton — a company that is leading the way when it comes to social reading — noted, the starting point for the discussion may more properly be the idea of “social publishing“. I like his definition:

Social publishing is the natural evolution of publishing as a business. It encompasses the Web and all new digital distribution platforms, including the way people read and discover on them. It includes social reading, which is really just reading, an act that has always been social. Social publishing requires a deep interest and study of what happens to a text after it is disseminated — how readers interact with it, how they share it, how they copy it, how they talk about it — and it requires action arising from that deep study.

There’s a good chance that what I’m talking about here, the idea of social reading, is really the idea of social publishing. The layer that happens after or while people are reading books. It is the user generated content tha surrounds the published work (what we call a book, but what is a book, and are getting to the point where book means many things, much as record or album does?). Are we already shifting our vocabulary? Perhaps, and maybe that’s the right thing to do.

Walled Gardens Won’t Work (Unless You Cede Control to Amazon)

However, I’m going to stick with social reading as my descriptor, for the moment. Mostly because I don’t want to go back and rewrite this mess of a post. I suspect my vocabulary will change soon. Very smart folks are talking about how to capture all the discussions around the book. Problematically — for me — are the walled gardens like Blio and Copia and Kindle. These discussions take place in silos, and if you, the reader, are not part of that silo, you are not part of the conversation.

This is the problem with Facebook as well. It seems like everyone has a Facebook account, but this is simply not true. And while some people seem to live on Facebook, many consider it a necessary evil, interacting on the site with reluctance. The Facebook hate is, I’d say, almost perfectly balanced with the Facebook love. While Facebook has extended the social graph beyond its core site, Facebook is a walled community, albeit a large one. For book people, limiting interaction in any way seems like a dangerous proposition.

In fact, as I think about this more and more, I have great concern for business models built on the expectation that people will come, when the Internet is predicated on the notion that people will aggregate where they feel most comfortable. Look at some of the biggest (U.S.) social networks: Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Think about how some people are perfectly happy on Twitter but allergic to Facebook. How others prefer the slightly more formal nature of LinkedIn to Twitter.

One thing I keep hearing from people who are excited about social reading is they already have enough places to go when it comes to managing their online lives. It turns out people don’t need more destinations; they need destinations that work with how they use the internets. All of them.

Perhaps once upon a time, you could build it and they would come. Look at MySpace and Facebook (I’d include Twitter here, but the beauty of Twitter is that you can be part of the conversation from a thousand starting points). There has to be a compelling reason for people to come, and, much as it pains me to say it, talking about books simply isn’t enough. I know, I know. And maybe there is a magic elixir to change all this.

If I get books from Amazon and Barnes & Noble and All Romance eBooks and Kobo and Books on Board and, heck, my library, I certainly want the ability to engage in annotation and commentary, but I don’t necessarily want to maintain my comments and thoughts in individual silos. That would get old in about thirty seconds. I want, oh I want, my library and annotations and thoughts in a single place where I can access them easily.

(I am wondering how we, as an industry, can approach the major retailers to convince them being part of the whole community is to their benefit. Anyone want to do a study documenting how people loathe silos that don’t help them accomplish their goals?)

This means allowing readers to engage in these activities where they live (Facebook, Twitter, blogs, reading applications [in particular]), while feeding the conversation into a more centralized location. This means allowing the social part of reading to reside with the work, which means consolidating editions/versions into a single item.

What we are talking about is the social layer on top of the text, and thinking of the best ways to connect books from any retailer/library/resource to the social layer (and, again, I am stealing somewhat from Aaron Miller; welcome to the thieves den, Aaron!). There will be interesting challenges arising as smart people try to figure out ways to corral the entire book-related diaspora into a single place. Imagine if tweets and Facebook comments and blog mentions were nestled alongside commentary attached to the text (okay, that’s pretty huge, so let’s just add this to the great social reading wishlist).

(I should note that I am engaging in some magical thinking along with my practical thinking. Gah, the mind just boggles at the idea of figuring out how to pull tweets into the social layer of a particular book. Some sort of magic and short hashtag that is unique to the book? How does one discover what that particular work’s hashtag is? Oh, metadata. Surely this problem could be solved by metadata. It seems to be the solution to all our problems.)

A few weeks ago, the New York Times discovered a social reading platform called Social Books, which allows commentary to happen via Facebook and Twitter, something that is critical to the success of any social reading platform. However, as I consider the situation, I am more likely to push content from Facebook and Twitter than I am to push content to those destinations. Think about how irritated people get from Foursquare updates! This platform, which has some investment from John Ingram, seems a bit device focused. I’ll be curious to see if there is a well-integrated web component. To me, that’s absolutely essential.

(Aside: I don’t know what it is about the NYT, but the approach of this article was “hey, this has never been done before!”, when, in fact, Bookglutton and GoodReads are engaged in social reading/publishing already, while Blio had just launched, and Copia, launching after the article, was certainly a high-profile start-up.)

User-Generated Content vs. The World

This user-generated content or UGC (marginalia, annotations, reviews, etc) would reside with a service — I believe this has to be the case, because publisher websites are not the right place for this — and the information would be extracted by other services (publishers, marketers) because that’s how life works. The readers have to feel like they have an ownership interest in their contributions, which is why I believe publishers cannot control this data (not to mention the disaster surrounding territorial rights that makes the ownership and associated conversations surrounding a specific work messy).

Seriously, my advice to publishers is this: step back, let the readers do their thing, and figure out how to work with the service provider(s) to get the best possible benefit from social reading. Oh, wait there is one area where publishers can be proactive…

In a recent post on this topic, Joe Wikert said this, and I think it’s important:

What’s missing in the recommendation area though is a fast and easy way to share excerpts. If I come across a terrific sentence or paragraph I want to share from Drew Brees’ ebook, Coming Back Stronger (a terrific read so far, btw), what are my options? The Kindle reader on my iPad doesn’t offer a way for me to even tweet/email from within the app let alone share an excerpt.

Yes, publishers could make the social part of reading and publishing easier by making it easier to share little bits and bites (bytes?) of books. I can imagine the teeth gnashing as the implications of what this means sets in. Get over it. Some people will, likely, try to share too much. But my guess is you’ll see a lot more people sharing a small percentage of the book…most often, even, sharing the same passages.

Get over the fear. Embrace the fact that people love what you publish so much, they want to share it with others. Embrace the fact that people love what you publish so much, they want to talk about it with others. Figure out ways to be part of this conversation, without, you know, stepping on the conversation. Like I said, step back, but be creative.

Some will argue that people don’t want this, but I would argue that a) people have been doing this for centuries and b) the online conversations about specific books, many specific books, are already happening. The next step is to make it happen in a more cohesive manner.

If hand-selling is truly the secret sauce of bookselling, then letting real readers supplement booksellers is critical. The key to achieving critical mass is moving the conversation online, allowing the online big mouths to do their thing (big mouth being a relative term), and letting readers do what is already happening in a disconnected manner. Which is to say, let readers connect with like-minded individuals who will then expand the book’s social graph.

Another key aspect of social reading in the digital context is making accommodation for synchronous and asynchronous discussion. Bob Stein discussed this in his Taxonomy of Social Reading, and I think he’d agree it’s just a beginning. The former would be useful for book clubs, classrooms, and other structured reading environments. The latter…

Asynchronous marginalia reflects the reality of how books are distributed and read around the world. Encounters with books can come days, weeks, months, years — centuries! — after initial release. As a person discovers the notes and comments of readers who have gone before, what sort of thoughts are inspired? This leads to the idea that there needs to be some sort of feedback loop integrated into the social reading level. One that allows readers to opt in and out of the conversation with relative ease.

How to do that as unobtrusively as possible becomes an issue. If we’re talking about a book that reaches Harry Potter level hysteria, real-time updates would be, um, irritating beyond belief. Most books, however, would inspire fewer comments. Some could inspire extended conversations; some, not so much. Do readers subscribe to the commentary on a book level, on a paragraph level, do you get updates in real-time (annoying, I’d imagine) or in daily digest format?

I don’t know, and I think this is where we will see a lot of trial and error before mores develop. That’s the cool part about iterative technology. We don’t have to get it right on day one.

Then there’s the challenge of connecting various versions of the work so the entire spectrum — hardcover, paperbacks, audio, enhanced, international — becomes one “book” in the mind of the social layer. As noted, this is reason one for publishers to facilitate rather than control. Now I have me thinking about supporting local language discussions…and then I wonder about including translation services. Must. Stop. Imagining.

A Quick Word About Business Models

The business model around the centralized location is the most problematic, hence my suggestion that the UGC be licensable to publishers and marketers, suitably anonymized of course (though one could some value in the non-anonymized content, think blurbs). This content could form the basis for book clubs. Or education material. Perhaps charging publishers for including their books in the “catalog” (what do we call this in our post-paper world?). Hosting and maintaining this middle layer will be expensive, various financial models may be required.

It’s in the best interest of the publishing industry to support projects like this, if only because it’s not in the best interest of individual publishers to manage this kind of content and interaction. Imagine the social reading disaster of two publishers owning different rights to the same book. Isolated or segregated discussions are grand, but they only reach a specific audience. They feed the all-important Long Tail sales (and if you are discounting the Long Tail, you are likely relying on incomplete information, and I suggest you read the book or blog).

Imagine if those isolated discussions could feed into the greater discussion. What if we managed a true social layer that integrated all discussion, from everywhere, around a book? Oh, there goes that magical thinking again.

Whatever the business model is, its middle name should be “flexible” (yes, yes, you wouldn’t do that to your kid, why would you do it to your business model? Oh right…because nobody’s figured this stuff out yet.). Much experimentation will happen because it’s technology that is trying to replicate and innovate human behavior, and nobody really knows how people will respond and what features they’ll ultimately want. I’d say start small with a plan to iterate, adding and removing features…but have a master plan. A good one.

Challenges, Especially Privacy

As we begin discussions about creating fantastic social reading environments, challenges become obvious. How do we intersect on- and off-line discussions? What about privacy? Consider the recent North Carolina court decision that said Amazon does not have to turn over customer purchase history due to First Amendment rights. We love to talk about books, but how much of that information do we want made public?

Will the systems allow readers to make their commentary private or only visible to certain people? Can I be anonymous when the need (or mood) suits me? Privacy is, as Jason Schultz from UC Berkeley put it during his “Books in Browsers” presentation, contextual. Obviously, I want to decide the right context.

How will these companies protect my identity and my content? How are publishing companies doing this today? I’m not sure there’s been any extended, serious discussion about privacy issues in the age of digital books. The law certainly hasn’t been updated to cover reading or commenting in the digital realm.

As we’ve learned from Facebook, sometimes technology companies forget about the privacy concerns of end users. Worse, they assume their own belief systems are indicative of popular thinking. Mark Zuckerberg suggested (can’t find link) there was something wrong with people who use pseudonyms or fake names online. He lives in a special bubble. Our reasons for protecting our privacy are varies and important, if only to us. For more thinking on this, check out the ACLU’s report on this, “Digital Books: A New Chapter for Reader Privacy”.

I think about how zealously librarians protect my First Amendment rights. I want to see social reading companies approach my privacy with that same level of seriousness. This circles back to the business model discussion — I have to expect there will be some sort information sharing happening, information being the currency of the 21st century — so how can I gain comfort that my data is being protected as it’s shared?

There is a permanence in digital marginalia that doesn’t exist in the print world. There will be implications. We should talk about this. A lot.

How much public is public? What about potential copyright issues? UGC is copyrighted content, just as the books being discussed are. How can you balance the needs of the copyright owner and reader? How does Fair Use play into all this? And so on.

Seriously, if you’re not getting excited chills thinking about all this stuff, I am going to consign you to a solid year of reading Booksquare 1.0 (the clueless stuff).

The best of these projects will come from companies that focus more on user wants and needs than they do on publisher wants and needs. Creating a consumer-facing product that wholly satisfies the executives at a company is never a good idea. It’s important to talk to publishers, but even more important for publishers to listen to what these innovators have learned from their customers.

I’m sure there are more thoughts to come. In fact, I know there are.

* – or bonfires or roasting pits or whatever
** – Or, ahem, wine. One or the other.

Much of it aligned with what I think about when I look five years down the road; some it — and this is always the best part of a conference — made me sit back and say “Whoa! I really need to consider that perspective”. I’ll be working out thoughts on both here. Of course, of course.

Let’s get the most stunning thing about Books in Browsers 2010 out of the way first: the dearth of big name publishers. Seriously. Where in the hell were they? Then came the realization that Amazon was in the room, at least for the first day. Finally, and this is actually first, but it flows better this way, Brian O’Leary’s “A Unified Field Theory of Publishing” (words only via the link). It wasn’t enough that he blew open the idea of containers, oh no, he had to accompany this presentation with the type of slideshow that makes the rest of us look like rank amateurs. I may never open Keynote again.

(Aside, I don’t include Bob’s Stein’s Proposing a Taxonomy of Social Reading in the above list because, well, I’m still mulling pieces big and small. Follow the link and read his ideas. Follow the link and participate in the discussion.)

(Second aside, this is the first conference I’ve attended that had German philosophers as running theme on a particular day. You cannot buy this kind of serendipity.)

So, you ask as you sip your coffee, what does that mean, books in browsers? Depends upon who you ask and when. For years, I’ve been ranting about the fact that publishers have ignored the web as a serious publishing platform. One speaker said, based on his conversations with most of the big houses, they see the web as a marketing tool, not a publishing tool. Talked about missing opportunities. I will humbly remind every publishing professional in this universe that the web is our one constant — if you want to reach readers on an international level, you must reach readers in the medium they use.

(Third aside, and this may be a record for asides before I even get to the topic, smart use of the web for publishing content may very well be an effective tool in combatting piracy in developing digital reader territories.)

So that’s my definition, but as the conference progressed, many other viewpoints emerged. Some speakers focused on the publishing platform idea, but coming from the perspective that the content management (CMS) tools we have for web publishing are also ideally suited for publishing bookish content. Plus they’re easy to use. Pay attention to this idea because smart people are making it happen, and it’s going to make things so much easier for publishers of a certain size.

(Fourth aside — and she breaks a record! — if there is one thing I know for certain, it is that there are no off-the-shelf tools for creating a true digital workflow for publishers. Many houses will build their own, and that’s fine, but really smart houses will look at existing tools like content management systems as the starting point for building easy-to-use, standards-based workflow tools.)

Others focused on the critical importance of user experience. Designing for how people really use text, devices, information. I know this will come as a shock to many of you, but real people rarely behave in the manner designers expect. As I look back at the launch of Blio, it is clear to me that the wrong kind of user testing was done. I base this on the fact that no real world tester would ever find downloading .NET components to be an acceptable part of the reading experience (and launching without Mac support? What were they thinking?).

Not to mention the pricing mess that was the actual bookstore.

As I consider the impending launch of Copia, a competitor of Blio (more on this entire world of social reading in a post TK), I realize nobody I know has actually interacted with either the system in a serious way. We’ve all seen the demos, but as Blio’s launch demonstrated there’s a world of difference between a demo and reality. Real people interact with systems in ways system architects never anticipate, despite every use case possible.

My point is not to pick on a project that hasn’t launched. I know people at Copia, and I like them very much. My point is that the number one thing publishers need to consider as they move deeper into digital publishing is user experience. User experience encompasses all areas of consumer interaction with a company and its products or services. Everything from basic quality to the interface must be oriented toward meeting the needs of the consumer, including needs the consumer hasn’t realized are required. User experience incorporates all point of user interaction.

As we talk about rights issues (omigod, if you’re a rights geek, we having year-round Christmas), about platforms, about interfaces, about retail, about windows, about pricing, about the soon-to-be hottest topic in publishing, social reading*…we cannot separate user experience from the discussion. It is the most essential part of everything.

Think, for a moment, about how Amazon is winning the customer service war. Customer service is part of user experience. I do not — cannot! — comprehend how or why Barnes & Noble hasn’t figured out the importance of responding to consumers, but they are not winning customers and influencing readers. Worse, they’ve lost control of the conversation. Kobo, on the other hand, runs circles around B&N when it comes to responsiveness. They get the importance of “tell me what’s going on, let me see how I can help.”

It will be interesting to see how Barnes and Noble handles customer service issues as people buy and interact with the new color screen Nook. I’m guessing the new device will bring new customers into the marketplace, and that’s where B&N needs to step up. I hope they do; it looks like a great device.

User. Experience.

It is my firm belief that the ultimate goal of publishing is to have people pay money for content (I could be wrong, but I don’t think so). I’ve chosen big chain bookstores over local independents because I knew I’d find the books I wanted at the former. I’ve chosen local indie bookstores because I know the staff can offer the assistance I need. I shop at Amazon because they (seem to) care about my experience. I shop at my secret hummus supplier for the same reason.

I realized a while back that people are incredibly loyal to their tire stores. I love my tire store in the same way I love my mechanic (and I love my mechanic). In the same way I love Vromans. In the same way I love my local Mexican restaurant and wine store.

They make sure I get what I want, how I want it, even if I have to pay extra for my stupid bigger-than-normal tires. Heck, I will pay extra for great service just about any time. You cannot imagine how easily seduced I am by the perception that I matter to you (oh, should not admit that). I will give you my brand loyalty if you meet my admittedly low standards of customer service (hint: I once tipped a cabbie in Tokyo…after he kicked us out of the cab because he couldn’t find our destination).

So, now. Do you homework. Read Brian O’Leary. Think about that. Read Bob Stein. Think about that. Comment on both. Bring the conversation here (it ties in to the whole thing). Ask me if it’s true I saw Peter Brantley without his hat…

* — I hope I am not being naive in believing the idea of enhanced ebooks has morphed into a less frenetic discussion…mostly because much of the enhanced ebook discussion so far has pointed to the fact that there is very little serious consideration of what people actually want from enhanced books, much less how user experience enters into the conversation.

Now the analogy falls apart, mostly because while, sure, I can talk about pajamas with great authority, I’d rather talk about new jobs and new skills for 21st century (and beyond!) publishing companies. It’s a mix of stuff I’ve discussed before (as have others), stuff I’ve been mulling over, and stuff I’m test driving.

Note: there are publishers out there already implementing and hiring and rethinking. Love them. Love them. Love them.

Second note: these are not single person positions. They are skills. They are woven into the job.

Project Development
Hands down, the coolest changes will happen in the editorial department. Editors will continue to acquire, develop, copyedit, and go to bat for great projects. No question there. You’re not going to get out of acquisitions meetings that easily.

However, acquisitions editors will change how they think about — and there’s no way around this word — projects. There will be booky-books. There will be multimedia extravaganzas. The type of project will drive the final product. Just as authors and agents are starting to think big picture when it comes to works they are shopping, so, more and more, will editors. Is it text, is it a web-based community, is it an application, is it a living, interactive experience? One or more of those?

The key difference between an enhanced/transmedia/fill-in-your-buzzword books and books with some additional marketing material is how it is approached in-house from day one. Enhancements must be planned, and they must be logical. This requires vision at the acquisition phase. The editor of the future will consider what serves the work rather than what serves a format, and that editor will be required to consider enhancements for every book published, deciding if they are truly transformative or merely marketing on a case-by-case basis.

Our thoroughly modern editor will sometimes go by the the name project developer. Rightly so. Even today, books are projects. Acquisition, editing, artwork, production, marketing…all of these are part of the final product that is known as a book. This project must be shepherded through the entire process, guided by a strong vision. Fragmentation of vision is a guarantee of failure.

Someone needs to be in charge of all aspects of the book — whatever form it takes — from beginning to end. This is particularly true if the book is slotted as a transmedia project. Nobody — nobody! — is better positioned to execute the vision than the acquiring editor. It’s a different kind of job. It’s a visionary kind of job.

Note: Marketing material, those author interviews and recipes and tacked-on content, is just that. Never confuse the two, because your readers won’t.

It will take a different set of skills, and not every editor will be suited to the job. This doesn’t make them less valuable. The new publishing house leverages all types of specialized and generalized skills. The coordination of a multimedia project requires the ability to see the finished project, to find the right in-house or third party talent to fulfill the vision, to keep the entire project on track, and, yep, drive the marketing machine. Editing a booky-book (which may be digital, print, or both) requires other skills.

As a booky-book type person, I appreciate that editor beyond words.

(In my magic world, marketing reports to the editorial team because that’s where the vision starts.)

Editorial, Again
Editorial staff will be on the front lines of coding manuscripts; they’ve already started this. Yes, I did say coding. There will be tools to make this job easier. They will be awesome tools. They will work the way they’re supposed to work the first time. Because this is the future and things work in the future.

But the process of mark-up will originate in the editorial group and — if all goes according to plan — be finessed in what can only be called the copyediting phase (but there will be a cool job title associated with this). In order for a true XML or any digital based workflow to be effective, the manuscript handed over to production must be properly prepared. That’s the job of editorial. You cannot count on production to guess at formatting, and getting it done right by editorial means fewer passes at the manuscript.

Because this is my magic world, authors will also work with Word correctly, making the lives of the editorial staff much more pleasant.

(These skills are not crazy-fantasy talk. These are the skills that are — almost — innate to anyone who spends time in the online world. It’s not how old you are, it’s how comfortable you are with digital tools. Within a generation, this familiarity will be part of our DNA.)

Production
Obviously, the ideal is a digital file that can be output to any and/or all formats possible. The file will (ideally) be ready for a little graceful degradation — a concept that allows the book to move from a high-end system that displays all bells and whistles to the lowly eInk device (which is not so lowly). Or progressive enhancement, which is the opposite, with the same result.

Right now, outsourcing is au courant. This adds costs to the product. I know publishers are bringing digital production in house, and, speaking as a consumer, it cannot happen too soon. We get too many bad conversions, be they library titles or brand-new books. Better workflow will lead to happier consumers!

Oh, and production people will be involved, to a degree, with the creation of all that lovely multimedia stuff. They have talent in layout, design, typography, HTML 5, Flash (yes, okay, but yes), audio, and more. This is the staff who will handle projects great and small. Having the right people on staff is critical. They need to know the technology, today’s and tomorrow’s, because it’s impossible to make smart decisions without understanding what is being requested versus what can be done.

They may not have all the talents necessary, or time necessary, for projects. But if you don’t have people on staff who understand the project, how do you communicate it to freelancers and consultants? How do you get effective (read: cost effective) bids? How do you know who to hire? Who speaks the right language? Who translates between the creative team and technical team? Who makes the decisions to outsource or handle it in-house?

Hmm, overlap with marketing? I’m sure there is. It’s either the circle of life or the way teams in publishing should work. Your call.

Marketing
I sorta feel like I should leave marketing out of all this because there are smarter minds than mine thinking about how to connect books with readers. Marketing is tough, and if anyone has figured out the formula for marketing books, I haven’t heard it. In a perfect world, every book gets a huge marketing push and that helps it sell a bazillion copies. In the real world, that doesn’t happen.

Still marketing needs to be involved early and often. Not to say that they can’t figure out how to market a book editorial loves. Marketing, I think, should be yes men. Marketing should be working with editors to figure out how to best position that book to reach the right reader. We have so many options, so many possibilities, that books should be less about can’t, and more about how.

(The above paragraph should have a reasonability clause. Sometimes you need a grown-up in the room because you can definitely swing from those rafters, but someone needs to point out the rotted beams.)

There are a lot of parts to the marketing job, and the work is piling on, not reducing. Today’s marketing people must know the traditional aspects of their job as well as web analytics, web development techniques (if not to build in-house, then to clearly guide contractors), online social media (meaning offline social media, too), and more.

Marketing needs to be part of a partnership. When Jonathan Karp announced his reorg focusing on small teams, there was understandable skepticism. The vision of “…two editors, two publicists, and one marketing specialist…” was seen as fantastical. Clearly, this small team approach is only meant for some books, though the zeitgeist should permeate the entire Simon & Schuster publishing environment. At least I hope it will.

It’s a great vision, one I’ve advocated (and probably stole from Karp somewhere along the line). As you see above, I’d add in production people in certain circumstances. Teams need to be across disciplines, based on the book, not hierarchy.

I’ve worked in team environments before, and with the right team, things are amazing. There’s a flow that happens, especially when egos get checked at the door and strengths and weaknesses are accepted and embraced. I’ve worked in bad team environments as well. Made me appreciate the great teams all that much more.

Marketing needs to be focused on traditional and digital. It needs to be focused on consumer-oriented, personal communication. Social media — which is our digital version of hand-selling — needs to move beyond the push approach to the conversation. Which means marketers need to be empowered to speak to consumers directly, in the places where consumers live.

One of my favorite marketing initiatives of the past few years happened when the person behind the Little, Brown Twitter feed and a sales rep for Random House separately engaged in making holiday suggestions for readers. Yes, they pimped their own house books, but they also made thoughtful suggestions. To me, this is the best kind of marketing a publisher can do. I’m still thinking about it, two holiday seasons later.

Consumer Relations
One major publisher has, of course, looked to hire a director of piracy. In my opinion, the job description (mostly) did not describe a director-level position. Presumably there will be staff to handle the take-down notices and whatnot. That leaves a lot of free time for a director, assuming said director has staff, and if you’re a director without staff, huh?.

What I propose is creating a smarter, more robust team dedicated to consumer relations. Piracy is part of this group. Macmillan’s biggest flaw — based on their job description — is the job they’ve described is entirely focused on anti-piracy initiatives, most of which are not terribly effective. There wasn’t a single proactive, consumer-focused task on the list. Which is not to say this position is not needed. Piracy is a huge problem. But focusing on fly-swatting is not a director-level job.

Focusing on consumer relations? There’s a job. Especially if publishers are serious about moving into a business-to-consumer world. The customer service aspect of the job will increase. This group will be online everywhere, and will be all over the globe, talking to readers at festivals and conferences. They’ll be selling the publisher and catalog instead of a single book. They’ll be selling the value of books in smart ways.

Right now, no publisher is talking to readers about what they do, how it matters, how consumers fit into the ecosystem. It’s so much easier to rip of a faceless conglomerate than it is to rip off someone you know. Consumers don’t know publishers. They don’t know the business. They don’t know how their choices impact authors. Wouldn’t it be nice if they did?

Which leads me to one of the toughest consumer problems publishers face today. Handling the issues surrounding bad files and making sure readers get what they paid for (or licensed, as the case may be). I’ve spent some time trying to deal with ebook quality control issues via various the customer service areas of various publishers, and I haven’t been very pleased with the results.

The best is Random House, who uses Get Satisfaction. However, the responses still haven’t been that great, questions have disappeared, and my comments have also disappeared. Also, I couldn’t figure out to get there from the RH website; a friend pointed me toward the service. Still, I did get responses, if not satisfaction.

B2C means dealing with crazy ebook problems, dealing with piracy, dealing with Twitter, blog postings, Facebook, GoodReads, and any other forum where people are talking about your books. The job overlaps with marketing (which should offer a hint of where this job fits on the org chart), but focuses on what consumers are saying. This position (or positions) should have a voice, an ability to influence management. The consumer is not always right (oh boy!), but the consumer has a point-of-view that should be represented.

Dealing with consumers directly is hard. Trust me, I have a nasty scar to prove it. Listening to consumers is absolutely worth it. The publishers who get this will engender great goodwill. The publishers who don’t will not. The latter is not good.

I know I’ve overlooked, underanalyzed, barely considered these roles. What am I missing? What other roles need to be rethought? I’ve left out finance, I’ve left out web development. Boy, there is an entire week of essays. Most importantly, I’ve left out passion. I linked to Ami Greko’s “Three Jobs Publishing Houses Need to Fill in 2010″ at the beginning of this piece, but wanted to circle back to one job she identifies: The Passionate Insider.

I particularly like her examples of passion, and at least one of the people she calls out had her work noted in this article. Passion, talent, skills. One can be taught. One can be developed. And one can be the key to success.

These assertions are not untrue.

They are also not entirely accurate. Perspective is everything, nuance matters, and I have thoughts. Of course.

What is a book worth? Well, there’s list price created by the publisher. That seems to be the value referenced by publishers. Then there’s the price consumers actually pay. That gets more complicated, of course. You have to break it down to various levels including the price for the first sale and the price for the second sale. Library patrons pay a different price; we call that “property tax”.

Oh, and then there are the books acquired for free.

This is what I think about when I hear publishers talking about this, that, or the other devaluing the price of content. And by devaluing content, they really mean consumers paying far less than publishers would like. This is absolutely a valid concern.

Once consumers get lower price points in their minds, they might expect to pay less all the time. As noted above, the way consumers acquire books means they pay varying amounts for the same product; I’d wager the number of full retail list price sales is greatly outnumbered by all other types of sales.

Resolution: the price I pay for a book has absolutely nothing to do with how I value the book. This leads me to an inescapable contention. When publishers talk about the value of books, what they really mean is the value they have assigned. Conclusion: publishers are as responsible for devaluing the content of books as anyone else in the food chain.

Recently, some friends and I discussed an author we love. Or loved. Two years ago, I realized I was wasting my money on her work (wasting: paying hardcover prices for not-so-great books). I thought it was me. A few months ago, a friend warned me against buying the author’s current release; I confessed I’d already made the decision not to do so. Very recently, the author confessed in a public forum that she’d been off her game with her recent releases. Health issues. I can sympathize, but I kinda want a refund.

The publisher sold readers a book they knew was not very good. Yes, the publisher had to know. Someone on the editorial staff (presumably) read the book. Someone with (presumably) enough discernment to realize the book was crap. Someone who should have had the guts to say to the author that the book didn’t pass muster. You know, instead of foisting bad stuff on readers.

This particular author writes hybrid genre fiction. She is contracted to produce, at minimum, a book a year (surmising here, I don’t know her particular deal). She’s reached that point in her career where her publisher has her slotted as a hardcover author. This means, quite often based on her track record alone, readers are paying big money for titles that, by her own admission, weren’t her best work.

So much for the gatekeeping function of publishers. Is it any wonder that readers are confused? How are we supposed to discern value when we cannot trust publishers to perform the most basic duty of vetting books for quality?

I was lucky. I bought my camel’s straw book by this author for my Kindle, meaning I paid a mere $9.99. I felt ripped off. Now, there are rumblings among this author’s core audience (my peer group included) that they aren’t going to buy her in hardcover, maybe even mass market paperback, anymore. Seriously, would you pay that kind of money for a book that reads like it’s been phoned in?

The publisher has entered into a contractual relationship with the author that pretty much dictates a certain price point for each book. Costs much recouped, readers be damned! I wonder at what point does it become obvious that readers are slipping away, and word-of-mouth is so bad that the publisher investment becomes a liability?

(Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get the value of a catalog and all that. Indulge me. Focus on the meta-issue.)

So the value of this author’s books to me have dropped from “must buy” to “must consider” to “oh, no, not without five, maybe six, strong trust network recommendations”. This happened before she admitted she was submitting less-than-optimal work. That she confesses her sins after the fact angers me. It angers other readers. Or it angers the ones I’ve spoken with.

Today on list I’ve participated in since the mid-1990s (yeah, that is right), a reader complained about cliches. Another reader chimed in with a more egregious example from a major publisher. Big five, six, whatever. In this book, every time the author meant to use the word “bollocks”, the final, printed, for sale edition of the book substituted “bullocks”. If you are semi-literate, you know the difference.

The truth is, as readers, we have no idea how good a book is when we purchase it, nor can we guess at the quality of what we get, generally, until we read the entire work. Yes, there are publishers (hello, Unbridled Books) who have a tight, focused list that reflects a consistent point-of-view while publishing a diverse list. I love it when I can trust a publisher. I feel the same away about Harlequin. It’s a compliment to both publishers. Readers may not love every book published by these houses, but they know there is a certain focus they can trust. Very few large publishers offer this kinda, sorta guarantee.

There are no real clues for the reader. Think about it. Paul Harding’s Tinkers was originally released at a $14.95 price point. uncharted terriTori by Tori Spelling was released at a $25.00 price point. One of these books won a Pulitzer Prize. So price is no good way to determine value, or even quality. Yet, that seems to be the focus of major publishers. Value equals price, which is far different than the actual work being sold.

For readers, every book from a large to major publisher is a crapshoot. We cannot tell what books were victims of a bidding frenzy gone awry, a need to fill a slot on a list, a misguided notion that this is what readers want, a contract being fulfilled, damn the torpedoes.

The value of a book assigned by a publisher — and I will happily acknowledge exceptions — is not arbitrary, but that is because publishers, like all smart businesses, must look at the commercial value of a product over the quality of the words and ideas within. Book prices reflect many factors, but they do not always reflect the value of the work.

However, the value assigned by publishers feels arbitrary. I read books by long-time favorite authors and wonder if any sort of editorial discernment came into play. I read books by literary wunderkinds and think to myself that someone was buying swampland. I read non-fiction that reads like my junior high diary. I am certainly not proud of those years. Please stop me if I ever again fancy myself a poet.

I see that every quasi-celebrity on the planet can sell a book. I know that some people will buy it. If anyone can point me to one of those books that truly transcended the genre, I am obliged. Otherwise, I use these books as Exhibit A: How Publishers Devalue Their Own Content.

I try not to judge. Publishing is a business, and I am not one of those precious types who views publishing as being somehow above it all. Believe me, I get it, more than most. All that schlock keeps the lights on, keeps editors in health insurance, pays for the time and nurturing of really great books, no matter what genre/category the books falls into. Publishing is business. Writing is an art. Sometimes, the two simply do not fall into sync. Sometimes they do.

How can you tell, until you read the book?

So, I want to turn this around. Rather than accusing retailers and cheap consumers — and we are cheap, particularly in this economy — of devaluing content, how are publishers enhancing the consumer perception of the value of books?

Are they rejecting crappy books from established authors? Are they offering advances based on reality, the marketplace, rather than fantasy? Are they pricing books base on that same reality? Are they listening to what readers say?

This is not an idle thought. It’s been brewing for quite some time. Maybe it’s part of my long-overdue Reader’s Manifesto. I cannot accept publishers making the “value of books” argument — and they have done so with increasing vehemence since the Kindle bookstore ensured that readers latched onto the $9.99 price point for ebooks — when publishers are not doing a damn thing to support their contention.

(Side note: while I have been poking along on this piece, Nathan Bransford posted about the services publishers provide (and how it’s changing). It doesn’t necessarily answer the full question of value, but it gives an idea what goes into the process, and, ahem, it reminds authors of what publishers do for them. We need this same message for readers. They don’t know and they don’t care and they cannot begin to fathom what’s going on without some basic education. Times, they have changed. No more man behind the curtain.)

At least Hollywood provides me sufficient trues via trailers and commercials to know when a movie is simply going to be horrible. They are really good at signaling to viewers about what to expect. And I generally pay less for a movie anyway. It’s somehow easier to stomach the loss of ten dollars than the loss of twenty-five to thirty dollars.

I value books I paid $6.99 for over books I paid $24.99 for. I recommend books I’ve paid $26.99 for over books I bought for $14.99. I evangelize books I bought for $9.99 in the Kindle store while warning readers against books I purchased for $9.99 in the Kindle store.

The price of a book is set by the publisher. The value of a book is set by the reader.

What happened next. As she says:

I became curious. The indie publishing world is notoriously tight-lipped about money—no one, it seems, wants to quite admit how bad off things are, for fear it might make their own projects look less viable and their company less secure, causing all the rats to jump ship. What writer will want to work with a press hanging on by a thread . . . will the media take such a publisher seriously, etc.? But of course the unspoken truth is that nearly all independent presses exist in some semblance of this impoverished state, to a greater or lesser degree. I began to nose around, though in a transparent way. I emailed some of my favorite indie editors and writers, with whom I have existing relationships, and told them I wanted to write a piece about indie publishing and money, and asked them a few questions. I even told them they could answer anonymously if they wished, and that no one would be quoted by name without express permission.

A couple of publishers did not answer me at all. In fairness, this may not be because they didn’t want to divulge information; it could be because they are busy working 70 hours per week at unpaid jobs, which necessitates they work 30 hours at some paying job, and as a result they have not slept since the 1990s . . .

Of those who answered, several stipulated that they wished to remain anonymous. One said, “Don’t use my name—quote the important publishers,” which probably epitomizes the self-deprecation that is ubiquitous in our indie community . . . I, for one, would have cited this press as one of the top 10 indies in the country! Of those editors willing to go on record, Richard Nash was the most forthcoming—not surprising since Richard is widely known to be a helpful gent. . . but perhaps also because I’d asked about his work at Soft Skull, a publisher with which he is no longer affiliated, and Soft Skull itself has been acquired by Counterpoint and so no longer operates under the model Richard was citing. Thus, anything he divulged about their operations was “passé” and thereby safe . . .

Still, some other brave and generous souls also weighed in, and quickly, clear trends emerged. I’ll share them here:

• When asked how much publishers spend on printing costs for the first run of a book, the range was $4,000 to $6,000. In my experience, the more tech-savvy a publisher is, the less they are likely to pay on printing, because they do all the design and layout themselves and “printing costs” means only that: printing the book. For other publishers, printing costs include design and layout work. Many presses contract with printers who are out of state (upper Michigan is a popular area) and have never even met their printing reps in person. Not surprisingly, printing errors are horrifyingly common among indie publishers, and run the gamut from the new indies to the venerable ones. My friend Cris Mazza had some terrifying printing errors with Soft Skull, and my own galleys with Emergency Press initially produced 200 flawed copies that had to be given away rather than sent to the media. In the case of a problem with printing, in many cases the publisher may incur additional expenses if they choose to correct the problem.
• Print runs ran from 2,000 to 5,000. Keep in mind here that I only approached extremely reputable editors/publishers, so these numbers run a bit high by indie standards. Some indies put out a print run of 500 or 750 books; others are using POD to keep costs lower.
• Publishers are producing anywhere between 60-200 advance reading copies to send out to the media for potential review or other coverage. Most publishers in my survey did not talk specifically about how much their galleys cost, but I know my own publisher spent $800 on my galleys, which he had to re-pay after an error mandated reprinting the whole run, and one publisher cited galley costs as being as high as 1.5K. Notably, one has to factor in a good $500 on postage alone, even when sending books media rate, if a run of 200 galleys is being sent out the door.
• Most of the publishers I surveyed sang the praises of Consortium as a distributor, some saying they didn’t know how they would “do it” without Consortium. However, most also noted that while Consortium (or other big distributors) can assist indie presses radically in terms of getting their titles into stores, they also bring a big risk. Publishers who worked with Biblio/Atlas encountered this issue, such as the would-be publishers of my second novel, Impetus Press, when they went bankrupt in late 2008 as a result of being slammed with returns. Given the Depression-era distribution model, many chain stores—especially the Borders group—are notorious for overstocking titles in far greater quantities than they can realistically sell, and then just returning them, at no cost to themselves, to the publisher. The publisher is then doubly screwed, having paid higher printing costs to meet the demands of distribution, and then having to effectively pay “rent” for the books’ return and warehousing by the distributor from that time forward. Smaller indies often house boxes of books in their living rooms so as to avoid these fees, which can quickly eat up the entire revenue of a smaller operation.
• When asked how many titles actually make back their up-front costs, publishers varied on their take. Nash said this was “not a metric to focus on when you’re an ongoing business. You look cash flow much more than notional P&L.” Nonprofits, of course, may have many other sources of revenue other than just sales, such as grants and donations, and an indie with a larger list may lose money on all but one title in a given year, but if that one “successful” title really earns out, it could end up covering the other books, too—the big publishers in New York used that model for years before corporatization began demanding that almost all titles published by big houses earn big or be viewed as failures. That said, some editors I surveyed admitted that books that truly recoup their up-front costs are “1 in 50,” or that, “You basically never earn back the up front.” At Other Voices Books, our experience has been that most of our books have earned back almost all of their costs, so that they are not a financial liability, but that the distance between “earning back” and actually beginning to generate real revenue is incredibly steep: only one book we have ever published (out of 7) has really achieved true money-earning status. We also lost 6K on one of our earlier books, for a complex myriad of reasons, even though the title was well-reviewed and a finalist for a reputable prize. It’s easy to see that a publisher could quickly go bankrupt if faced with two or three titles like that in a row . . .
• This all made me curious how other authors I respect are faring economically. Like most writers, my literary friends run a gamut from those whose novels are being selected as “Target Breakout Books” and stocked by the many-thousands at megastores, to those who cannot find an agent, to those who are publishing DIY books without any conventional distribution, to those who have published more than a dozen books with reputable indies. Our financial situations, “why” we write, and how we write are wildly diverse. One friend, Allison Amend—who is also a former Other Voices Books writer and whose debut collection, Things That Pass for Love, I edited—has had a very similar journey to mine, and her second book was released a month before Slut Lullabies. Amend’s book had broken even for Other Voices/Dzanc, which is itself an achievement, but had not reached a point of her earning money on the book. She says of the money she spent touring and promoting, “I ended up about two thousand dollars in the hole after my first book. This time, it’s more like 800.” She went on to explain that novels simply “sell better,” but that she also has gotten far less shy about asking others to buy her book. “I tell my friends who aren’t lit types that they have to buy a copy, but reading it is optional,” she says. “A lot of them look relieved.” Amend adds that she’s received job offers and other opportunities that would never have come her way if her first book hadn’t come out, and that therefore, as Nash indicated, efforts may be “worth it” even if they don’t translate directly into revenue.
• Thus far, the results of my questionnaire seemed pretty predictable. As a publisher, I was not terribly surprised. The big shocker for me came when I asked these editors how many of their sales were happening via bricks-and-mortar bookstores vs. through online avenues like Amazon. Given all we hear about the “online” books market and how bookstores are being shoved out of business by Amazon, I expected this hysteria to have hit the street with indie publishers too, and perhaps for some to begin disavowing traditional distribution at all, insisting they could sell enough copies online on their own. This, however, proved to be far more media hype than reality. Almost to the last, these editors claimed that close to 90% of their sales come from bookstores, with only 10%, or at most 20% happening online. This, of course, goes a long way towards explaining why publishers continue to “put up” with a distribution model set up to rape publishers: we need the bookstores as much as ever.
• Finally, what about e-books? Other Voices Books just started doing them, since they’re all the rage. So trendy, in fact, that when Emergency Press failed to release an e-book of Slut Lullabies simultaneously with its paper release, I all but panicked . . . now with the recent release of my collection in e-form last month, I was geared up to be tickled by how positively this would impact my sales. Well . . . the editors I spoke with deterred such optimism, to put it mildly. Nash said that, when he left Soft Skull, e-sales were “all but negligible,” albeit he’s been gone from there a couple of years now. Eric Obenauf of Two Dollar Radio, however, confirmed this: TDR is an uber-hip press that’s been on the cutting edge of technology, yet Obenauf states that the press makes at most a couple hundred bucks monthly on e-books. Kate Gale of the West Coast indie icon Red Hen said, when asked what kind of business e-books generate, “Not much.”

The consensus of how difficult it is for indies to stay afloat seems clear, but what also emerged is that the book publishing—and book selling—model has not changed nearly as radically as the media seems to want us to believe. At BEA 2009, I remember sitting in panel after panel where publishing professionals got their knickers in a twist about Twitter and Kindle, insisting new technologies were not just the wave of the future but already firmly upon us, and that any publisher not jumping on the boat with gusto was going to be left to dog-paddle with the sharks. By the end of BEA, I had a Twitter account and was busting my ass to figure out how to interact more fully as a publisher and author on Amazon. And yes, meanwhile ipads are selling faster than Apple can make them. But maybe these things are simply not impacting the indies the way they do the big boys in New York. After all, a customer going onto Amazon to buy a book—either an actual, physical book or an e-book on Kindle—goes to the site already knowing what s/he wants to purchase. The huge thing about online shopping is that it is still something you do when you know what you want to buy, punch in the title, and there it is, at your fingertips. Whereas indie books—not prone to get the media hype or have the name recognition of Dan Brown or J.K Rowling or . . . who’s the Mormon chick who wrote Twilight?—still may benefit most from readers who wander into a bookstore to “browse” and are taken by a cover, a blurb, a description, a title, or simply by thumbing through the book and falling in love with a stray line. It turns out that indie presses need bookstores—especially indie bookstores—as much as ever, and that e-books and online shopping are still very secondary—or less—to our success . . . yet consuming a great, great deal of our dialogue and time.

We speak of publishing as being a business “in transition,” and surely this is true. I’m not advocating that we all disavow e-books and pull our titles from Amazon, surely! There are trends afoot, and publishing is in the process of a change that will impact the rest of our careers, and how future generations define reading, and those of us who really care about this business will want to be part of that transition. Still, what my dialogue with other publishers led me to is a re-instilled belief in the basics. It also prodded me to explore what, precisely, my goal is, as both an editor and an author. If it seems clear from all sides that indie publishing just does not generate much money for anyone, and that authors generally lose money in the bargain . . . then what exactly are we all doing here? What am I—a 42-year-old mom of 3 young children—doing schlepping to Portland, scrambling for childcare and putting off that new sofa for another year? Shouldn’t we all, for god’s sake, just give up, forget these expensive book tours, and go home?

And therein lies the mystery of writing and publishing. At the end of the day, not one editor I spoke with suggested that the work was not “worth it,” and while none provided a fully-funded book tour, and most provided no money towards touring at all, every one professed that touring is “good for authors.” Because the prime goal of writers has never been to make a living, crazy as that may seem. The goal is, pure and simple, to be read—just as the goal for indie publishers is not to create a wealthy company so much as to put good books out into the world and keep a certain literary tradition alive and thriving, while also trailblazing new directions. In the oft-cited heyday of publishing, even the biggest houses understood that books existed, to a large extent, outside a traditional economic model, so that many books—often the “best” books; the editors’ favorites—were all but expected to lose money. At one time, writers of such books toiled in relative obscurity with only their editors and their own small circle of writer-friends for reassurance and communion about their work—but now, with the advent of online literary communities and blogs, writers and their readers are connecting more directly than ever before. And for all that everyone likes to make a buck, to a very real extent every reader a writer is able to reach makes touring and other forms of self-promotion singularly “worth it.” Because writers do not write to get rich, or even to be read by a million people. We write to be read by one person: by each individual person at a time.

To achieve connection, indie writers need to remain willing to go guerilla: to sleep on sofas; to take on extra paying gigs to fund our tours; to drive to and from Iowa City in one day, returning at 1 a.m. to avoid hotel costs. We need to make the process itself—the community—its own reward. And when you consider what many writers spend on MFA programs or high-profile writing conferences (neither of which necessarily leads to publication), the amount spent on promoting an actual book is a drop in the bucket, whether or not costs are recouped. So on to Iowa City, to Portland, to Seattle I forged, keeping in mind the inimitable Richard Nash’s parting advice to writers: “Reach out to concentric circles of supporters and fans from now until the day you die.”

BS here. I appreciate Gina’s time and energy and openness as she wrote this. I think we’re all tired of hand waving. I think we’re all looking for more people to tell it like it is. I suspect a dose of reality won’t dissuade those whose passions are writing and publishing. Learning from others, however, will help next generations make smart choices.

It turns out there is far more optimism, pragmatism, and creativity than there are worries about the demise of the industry. Today and tomorrow, I am pleased to feature author and publisher Gina Frangello as she focuses on independent press and book tours and making money in the world of small press. The first installment focuses on her experiences surrounding her current story collection Slut Lullabies. The second will look at the state of small press.

And now to Gina:

I have done just about everything there is to do in publishing, except actually get paid.

Well, okay, maybe that’s a misleading sentence on a couple of fronts:

1. I do get paid a little, for some of my writing/editing pursuits
2. “Not get paid” is, alas, very much something to do in indie publishing, so could actually go in the “things I’ve done” column as well as functioning in the negative.

At this point, I have been working in publishing for fifteen years. In my experience, there are two ways one enters the publishing arena. The first is to go to Oberlin (substitute Sarah Lawrence, Brown, etc.) and get a low-paid, entry-level position in New York at a corporate publishing house, where you slave for several years before working your way up the ladder, become a senior editor eventually, enjoy some period of (underpaid but prestigious) success, make a misstep in your editorial choices and lose money for your corporate shareholders, lose your job, and either get lucky enough to be snagged by another corporate imprint, or proceed to spend the remainder of your days on Twitter, snarking about the demise of publishing.

The second is to volunteer as a “first reader” of an independent or university-affiliated literary magazine, where you slave for several years before working your way up the ladder, become the Associate Editor, wait for the Editor to retire, take over the magazine, launch a book press, teach at various universities to make ends meet since your editing work does not actually pay, enjoy some period of (unpaid but fulfilling) success before your indie magazine/press goes bankrupt, or get lucky enough to find a Sugar Daddy to acquire you as an imprint (go, Dzanc Books!) Otherwise, revert to spending the remainder of your days on Twitter, snarking about the demise of publishing.

In first of the scenarios, you will have more expensive shoes and will receive invitations to the Hamptons.

In the second, you will have more editorial control, and are virtually guaranteed never having to work for a Republican.

Life is all about choices; that’s all I’m saying.

Needless to say, I came up through the second route. My work at Other Voices magazine eventually led to co-founding Other Voices Books. Publishing short work in literary journals eventually led to my meeting Lidia Yuknavitch, who herself went on to launch a book press—Chiasmus—and published my first novel, My Sister’s Continent. That novel led, indirectly, to my being invited to blog for the online literary collective The Nervous Breakdown, where I was eventually invited to become the co-editor of the Fiction Section, and my work at OV and TNB has led to various invitations to guest-edit anthologies or serve as the faculty supervisor for TriQuarterly when the magazine transitioned online. Indie lit circles led me to meet my current editor, Bryan Tomasovich, at AWP 2009, where he solicited a manuscript from me—a collection entitled Slut Lullabies—that was just released at the end of May.

My collection was ten years in the making, and seeing it out in the world was a dream come true. Sometimes, when one dream comes true, a girl can get greedy. Another lifelong dream of mine? Book tour!

See, when my first novel came out, I was nine months pregnant and in the hospital for double pneumonia. I then spent the first few months of my novel’s life nursing my son, unable to leave Chicago for longer than a few hours. This time around, I resolved to do pretty much anything anyone invited me to do. Podcast, interview, reading, book group, panel. Writer for hire!

Well, figuratively speaking. I mean, I was only hired twice, by universities, to come in and read/speak to the students. The rest was gonna be on my own dime.

My fabulous publisher, Emergency Press, is not long on money. I was about to defensively stipulate that “no indie is,” but these days, almost no publisher is, period. Author book tours have been slashed and burned by the big houses too, with only select writers each season being chosen as the likely big-sellers and paraded around. Other big-house writers often languish on the vine, as under-promoted as indie writers or more so, since indies at least tend to have smaller lists and, even if short on money and time, focus their energies on fewer writers.

I, however, was undeterred by financial constraints. Due to an academic invitation, I had my plane fare to LA covered, and a stipend for my gig out there (in Palm Springs) that would cover two additional tickets—to Austin and New York. Other legs of my tour would focus on the Midwest (Iowa City, Ann Arbor, Grand Rapids, Madison, Milwaukee), where I would drive around with several other writers, sharing gas expenses and—whenever possible—returning home the same night so as to minimize costs. I was scheduled to hit Seattle (where my editor lives) and Portland in late July, by which time my book would have been out for two months. My blithe assumption was that, by then, the book would have made enough money that my publisher would be able to cover my costs to the Pacific Northwest . . .

I know, I know: I am a publisher; I should have known better. But hope springs eternal.

Even once it was clear that my fabulous book had not rendered Emergency Press so flush with cash that it would start handing out tickets to Seattle on street corners, no problem: an academic invitation in the Midwest promised a stipend that would cover those costs, and a running workshop in Tacoma would help too. Back on track! Have book, will travel . . .

And so, two months in, I have “worked it.” I’ve read in some of the coolest, warmest indie bookstores in the country, from Bookwoman in Austin to WordWord in Brooklyn to Chicago’s own Book Cellar to Prairie Lights in Iowa City to Powell’s in Portland—my new personal fave being the living-room-like, cozy Pilot Books of Seattle. I’ve appeared at series ranging from Rachel Kramer Bussel’s “True Sex Confessions” at the Happy Ending Lounge in New York, to Stan Kent’s “Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll” series at the Hustler Hollywood in LA. (Oh, it just strikes me that these last two do not provide much of a range! Okay, also The Nervous Breakdown Literary Experience in Denver, and an upcoming appearance at the Cherry Bomb in Grand Rapids.) To say I have had a blast along the way would be a radical understatement. Writers can be an isolated lot, and while the thriving online community has done much to make this less true than in previous eras, it is still a rare pleasure to get to read with and hang with one’s writer friends from other states. Particularly in New York (where Emergency Press threw me a book release party), and in LA (where The Nervous Breakdown is based), I have had so much fun that there can be no justification for calling this tour “work.” Yep, I am extremely fortunate to have a job that I love so much I would do it for free.

Especially since I actually do it for free.

Still, everyone in publishing knows what book tours are really for, and it’s not money. As indie-publishing-god Richard Nash put it, when I asked him if book tours are worth it: “I wouldn’t separate out the book tour and ask is it worth it. We shouldn’t be doing anything to market books if it isn’t providing a decent return. But we have to look more holistically at the return. For a debut writer who tends write 20 books in a lifetime, to spend $500 cultivating a relationship with a few influential book people in a given town—a blogger, a critic, a local producer and two bookstore staff persons, could provide a superb ROI even if you only sell 8 books that day. But to land in a town, meet no one, sell 35 books at the local B&N, and move onto the next, that might not be worth it at all. It is all about making connections between people . . .”

As Nash alludes to, the hope of local media coverage is a major impetus behind touring. A writer is, of course, far more likely to be booked on a radio show or have a feature written about her if she is actually in town and having an event. And the radio program or feature may ultimately lead to more book sales—or more name recognition that could benefit the writer down the line—than anything that happens in the actual bookstore or reading series where the author is making her immediate local appearance.

Of course, media coverage right now is more of a long shot than ever. With review space shrinking in almost every print publication in the country, an out-of-town, indie writer promoting a short story collection of all things (!), has less hope of traditional coverage than was the case when my first novel came out in 2006. And so bloggers and local podcasters often stand in for the big guns of old. For example, my first novel was reviewed by Booklist, but even though the publication had given me a previous rave and my author “platform” has grown in the past 4 years, this time around my collection was not covered. I admit that, as far as indie collections go, I’ve proven much luckier than most writers: my first moments of obscene excitement came when Slut Lullabies was plugged—all of one sentence!—in June’s Vanity Fair, and recently a lengthier recommendation in More magazine all but caused me to hyperventilate (mainly with happiness, but also because you know you’re really over 40 when More starts touting you!) Still, if looked at on a national level, Slut Lullabies’ coverage—while unilaterally positive to date—has been shorter on traditional review venues like newspapers and print mags, and longer on blogs or other online forums . . . excepting in my hometown Chicago, where the media is very good to its writers. Locally, I’ve been covered by the Sun-Times, Tribune, Reader, Newcity, and on several radio programs as well as Chicago Tonight, to the point that a number of my Chicago friends have enthused about “all the attention” my book is getting, unaware that all this “attention” is mostly happening here, where I live.

In the end, all the “fun” I’ve been having—all the nice reviews and the thrill of hearing journalism legend Rick Kogan read from my book aloud on his radio show—has effectively set me back a couple grand.

Yes, yes, I know: I just got finished justifying how those academic stipends funded my book tour, based on invitations I’d received because of my new book . . . so that’s not really the same as paying for my tour out-of-pocket, right? Well, looked at one way, that’s true. Without the book, I wouldn’t have received those invitations or earned that money. But looked at another way (which I try to avoid), if I’d simply pocketed those stipends—instead of going to NYC, Austin, Seattle, Portland, etc.—I’d have walked away with a nice, tidy little sum that I could have applied to my son’s preschool tuition, or our need for a new sofa that hasn’t been drawn on with permanent marker (or ever vomited on by 3 kids or 2 cats.) Then, had I kept the cash and viewed it as “income,” rather than “tour funds,” I might be less strung out that it’s becoming apparent I may never actually see any money on Slut Lullabies, since my publisher first needs to recoup its own costs so as to keep its head above water and keep fighting the good fight for indie lit—me included, since EP aims to publish another of my books down the line.

And as a publisher myself, I know the score. I know how few of Other Voices Books’ authors have ever actually received checks from us after their original (tiny) advance, because the money we put in—for printing costs, distribution (warehousing, returns), events, travel stipend (unlike most indies, we do offer one)—easily ends up amounting to 10K for any given title. And what it takes for an independently published short story collection (OV specializes in collections, so again, I knew going in how hard they are to sell) to earn out more than 10K could be described not just as “Herculean” but almost “preposterous.”

Who did I think I was, Jhumpa Lahiri?

Well, no . . . but. But. After all this touring, blogging, podcasting, interviewing, and a small but glorious little flurry of nice press—could it be true that my book was just not going to make any money? When I mentioned this concern to my friend Cris Mazza, who was a mentor to me early in my career, I noticed she all but snorted at the crazy expectation that I would . . . get paid. I thought of how guilty I’ve felt every time I’ve been unable to really pay my writers what I believe they deserve, and how every single time—even after all these years—I convince myself that the next book is going to be “the one” that makes some significant money: that Dzanc will be rewarded for all their support; that our brilliant author will be able to go on a splashy vacation; that my co-editor Stacy Bierlein and I will even have a little something left over for ourselves. And every time it doesn’t happen, I wonder what I did wrong—what angle my author and I failed to hit; what hours I spent sleeping that I should have been pimping my writer’s book. Had those worries all been delusional? Was the lack of income—for any of us—a given from the get-go, no matter what we did? After fifteen years in the publishing trenches, was it possible I had simply missed this memo?

Tomorrow: What did Gina Frangello, publisher, learn?

“We will take our 700 clients, see what rights are not allocated to publishers, and establish a company on their behalf to license those e-book rights directly to someone like Google, Amazon.com, or Apple. It would be another business, set up on parallel tracks to the frontlist book business.”

And, as predicted, there was sturm and drang. Random House huffed and puffed and said they wouldn’t contract books from Wylie authors. That’s a fine stance, and I think it will last until they decide there’s a book they want enough to change their collective corporate mind. There’s principle and there’s business. One makes more money than the other.

I don’t have cohesive thoughts on this, but that’s what bulleted lists are for, right?

• Exclusivity: The Wylie deal (or Odyssey, as the publishing arm is called, deal) is apparently a two-year exclusive agreemen with Amazon/Kindle. I am not a fan of exclusive deals. I think it’s better to make your books available everywhere. My personal feelings aside, if you’re going exclusive, Kindle is the best possible platform. You can read the books you purchase on every possible device, from phones to desktops. Sure there are territorial issues, but y’all know I write long, so we’ll skip that.

  I have three theories on why this is a Kindle-exclusive deal. The first, and most obvious, is that when Wylie started this process a year ago, the digital books landscape was very different. Kindle dominated. Even today, going with Kindle alone is not a bad bet for publishers. Second, it’s possible Amazon offered some fine incentives for an exclusive deal. These deals are not unheard of, and if you’re going for market share, what better way to reach customers than having something nobody else has?

  The last theory is weird and squidgy, but I like it. If you, agent, are trying to convince authors/heirs that going digital is a genius idea, what seems safer than Amazon? Nothing. Recall, if you will, that many old school authors are digital skeptics, believers that books equal print. If you are going to be coaxed into the digital age, you want to go with a name brand.

• Pirate Killer: It should not surprise anyone that the books on Odyssey’s list are also readily available on pirate sites. In fact, any book on any college syllabus is available. Unless you’re studying the really odd stuff, in which case, awesome! As of last night, these authors are being paid for their digital books. For the first time. That has to count for something. Every day’s delay is lost money.

  For all the promises and assertions of major publishers, they have not been able to accomplish this simple feat: paying all of their authors for their digital works. The mind boggles. They are digital aeons behind on this process, and that’s just for the rights they own free and clear. Again, every day without a legitimate paid alternative is lost money.

• Royalties: I know it’s crass to talk about money, but we are not talking about new authors realizing their artistic vision. We are talking about library titles that have (presumably) earned out advances and are making what I call bread-and-butter income for publishers. Yes, there are costs of creating a digital version, but offering a 25, 30% royalty is insulting.

  I am going out on a limb and thinking — based on previous reports — there were negotiations between Wylie and other publishers, and the publishers didn’t offer what Wylie thought was reasonable in terms of money. I don’t know who was right or what the middle ground was (and I have my thoughts on agents also serving as publishers without requisite arms’ length negotiations), but the parties involved seem to believe the Odyssey deal is in their best interest. I hope they are sophisticated enough to weigh all pros and cons

• A Moment: I’ve suffered through a lot of crappy backlist conversions from major publishers. For better or worse, the Odyssey books are quality. They look good, the images are well done. These books are, so far, the quality ebooks we’ve been craving. So much so that I’m not going to debate price with myself.

• Agents, More: I have spent my adulthood fighting on the side of The Man. I have worked to preserve, for lack of a better term, the business practices of the distributor/publisher/whatever. I am really good at justifying these practices, and, because I am a lousy liar, I know there is a good business justification for things that seem wrong to the peanut gallery.

  Agents know what I know. The economics of a library title are far different than the economics of a new release. And they know that digital margins are far different than print margins. They are going to fight for the best interests of their clients (and not only because those best interests align). What is emerging, a tad more rapidly than I predicted, are robust, serious alternatives.

  In this particular game, it’s up to the legacy publisher to prove its worth. I’m afraid that means money, since we’re mostly talking the kind of books that sell themselves. I say that not only for library, but also for current titles. Contracts must evolve and quickly. Too much competition is lurking for them to remain business as usual.

• Another Moment: I think I’ve mentioned a time or two that I hate most publisher websites. Too messy, too unfocused. The Odyssey website is pretty and clean. And their digital book covers are appropriately suited to the medium.
• What Is a Book?: I am less interested in the exclusivity question than I am in this. The rights question — can Wylie do this crazy thing? — depends on the contract between each author and each publisher. For the books in question in the Odyssey, the definition of book was pretty clear to both parties: hard/soft cover, paper with words printed on them. So much has changed since then. How will judges and juries view these old school definitions and the applications today’s marketplace?

• Litigation Madness: Outside of RICO (thanks, Kirk, though we know it’s a mad stretch!), I don’t think there’s a way for a publisher to assert a class action suit against its stable of authors. Each agreement will have to be litigated separately. Taking name authors to court is dangerous for publishers — do you really want The Man versus poor author? Taking smaller authors to court has equal challenges.

  Litigation keeps America working. I am proof of this, and I’m not a lawyer. Not that I have anything against lawyers. Some of best friends are lawyers. But litigation is expensive, and publishers would have to bank a good number of judgments before the other side cries uncle.

  On the other hand, the threat of litigation will deter smaller authors from pursuing action. Litigation is expensive. How many authors will roll over because they cannot afford to defend their rights?

I know I have more, but, hey, that’s the start of a conversation, right? What are you thinking?

Though everybody is writing about ebooks and the digital experience these days, I find I don’t have much new to add to the conversation; I’ve said it all before. Sometimes I was right, sometimes I was wrong, sometimes I evolved. I still absolutely believe that user experience is — after the content of the book — the most important place for publishing types to focus their attention.

I’ve given up on reading banal analysis and wild conjecture. I ignore anything with the word “killer” in the headline or lead. If there’s a question mark in the headline — Will the iPhone Destroy How We Cook Dinner? — I don’t even bother to click through. I presume it’s a question the writer is asking himself, not actually bothering to consider with any depth. It’s just vague punditry designed to fill the web equivalent of column inches.

That is not to say there isn’t smart analysis out there, but tea leaves from a moment in time do not predict the entire future. We spend far too much time worrying about who will “win” (what this means, nobody can say) and who will “lose” (again, what does this mean?) and what people really want. This final one annoys me the most because the pronouncements often come from those who have no idea how the technology they are praising — or dismissing — is used by real people.

Which leads me to an email I sent to my friend Melissa Klug, a book and paper aficionado. She thought she was asking for a few quick thoughts on the future of print. She got a medium-length essay (mostly reproduced below…mostly, because I cannot resist editing and revising and rethinking and updating). For those who prefer an abstract to reading long pieces, I’ll make it easy: print will remain important, but our relationship with print will change.

Print is not dead. It is not even dying, at least not yet. Think of print like an overweight beast, shedding excess weight. The result is a leaner, more defined, more beautiful experience. What we buy in print will be increasingly valuable as readers shift to the digital realm — and they are shifting so amazingly fast, it’s almost terrifying.

Print, for many types of information, will become far less important. It’s too slow for our world, too clunky for an increasing number of people. I read that a publisher is “crashing” a book on the Deepwater Horizon disaster. It’s due out in September. Given the volume of information already published and the way public interest flags, is this too long a delay? What will the book offer than other sources don’t? It’s the same relevance conundrum facing newsweeklies.

Major newspapers will continue to see diminishing print runs, but this mostly because the kind of information they provide is more easily consumed in the digital environment — it’s the old joke about reading yesterday’s news. Clay Shirky is giving newspapers fifty years. I think he is being generous.

With the Internet and television combining forces, “news” becomes more immediate. Newspapers/news publications did a horrible job of anticipating the future. They did a horrible job of understanding their own strengths. This doesn’t mean news is no longer important. It’s that these organizations seemed to miss what made them critical in the first place. We don’t pay for the weather, we don’t pay for box scores (anymore), we don’t pay for day old breaking news. We don’t pay for print versions of stories that are changing by the hour.

Of course, that leaves the world of analysis as the currency of journalism. The news is the easy part. Putting the information into context is valuable. It’s what is necessary to encourage people to pull out their credit cards (see above about vague punditry — it’s not what people want). In fact, analysis, context, synthesis are the future of information, and I worry that journalists have lost this talent. I will spare you more thoughts on this except to say: your children should all be library science majors!

So print — cheap, disposable, ephemeral print — will become marginalized, probably faster than we realize. But also slower than the doom-and-gloom types believe. “Print” is not a small idea. We print all sorts of things for all sorts of reasons, and that isn’t going to come to a full stop. Until our robot overlords decree otherwise, we will be creating all sorts of printed materials.

Most will not survive the day they’re created. This goes for books as much as newspapers and other time-limited information.

Setting aside the cheap, throwaway print products, the future of print is valuable, beautiful, useful…quality. As I sit here, surrounded by print publications of all types, I see what I value. I read. A lot. I haven’t been precious about format in well over a decade. Or decades. I was the kid who read cereal boxes — sometimes the same box of Life over and over — if there were not other words available. I want to read. What I find now is that I gravitate toward the format that best suits the type of reading I want or need to do at that moment.

For fiction and narrative non-fiction, I am 100% digital. It kills me that I get so many ARCs in print — if it’s something I want to read, I’ll buy the digital version of a book a publisher sends me for free, just because I want to read in my preferred manner. I do a lot of reading at the gym, on planes, during the interstitial moments. Digital works for me on so many levels, particularly because I am aligned with the Evil Empire. They created a seamless purchasing and reading experience for me. That’s another post.

(Aside: on my last trip to Europe, I impulsively tossed a hardcover in my suitcase because I loved the author and — funny — the last print book I’d bought was hers. Never let me loose in Waterstones! I was flying business, and my suitcase, packed for three weeks, two divergent climates, was just a smidge overweight. Yep, the book. So I pulled out the book and shoved it into my already heavy backpack — two laptops, a Kindle, my phone, various chargers, and a hardcover book. Yeah, that was me, bent over double. Sadly, the book was one of the author’s weaker efforts, a shame as her previous book was really compelling.)

So, print. I buy magazines in print. I haven’t warmed to the digital versions. I think magazine publishers are going out of their way to make the experience as unlikeable as possible. It’s not a feat to replicate the print edition in digital format, full page fidelity and all. What I — and it seems so many others — want is a magazine that takes advantage of the technology. Magazine publishers don’t seem to get that, or maybe they think we are happy with okay, good enough, sloppy.

We’re not.

Much of what I read in magazines is available for free on the web, but I find my relationship with the print content and the web content are different. I like to revisit them, to touch them, to buy the special issues (did you know there was a Dwell “100 Houses We Love” special issue? I am too messy to be modern, yet I drool over Dwell). I like to cut out pages, to save pieces, to enjoy the rhythm of reading magazines. It’s different, you know.

I want my digital magazines to give me that sort of joy — it is obvious that magazine publishers/app developers haven’t really thought much about the user experience of digital magazines, or, heck, the user experience of print magazines. Reading the articles is just part of what happens.

I’ve stopped subscribing to print magazines. I buy individual copies when I remember because I’ve been burned by magazine publishers. They’ve shuttered the titles I love and, to fulfill their own terms, substitute stuff I have no interest in reading. I don’t trust the publishers to do right by me. I’d probably consider iPad subscriptions if the product and prices were better, but so far, no dice.

Then the books. I am a bit of a cookbook addict. While I love the How To Cook Everything app (shopping lists, timers!), I also love flipping through glossy pages and seeing the finished dishes — knowing mine will never look that good — and lists of ingredients. I will buy the print version of this book. I love the books published by Ammo. I still get giddy over my art of Samurai Shamploo book (what? you haven’t watched the series? We need to talk!). I went to two independent bookstores to find an art book the husband didn’t know he wanted. I saw it at last year’s Comic Book Day, knew it was perfect, noted the title, and, sigh, Vroman’s didn’t have it — I started at Vroman’s because they have awesome greeting cards, and that is really important to me, since it was a holiday gift and all.

So yeah, I was that slightly older woman in the comic book store buying their last copy of the book. The box was a little messed up, but that is fine. The pages are filled with the artwork he digs.

I also have this crazy weird book from the 1970s of houses from a home decor magazine (can’t recall title — think Architectural Digesty) that I adore even though not a single thing is something I would ever consider for my home. Also, we have a precious copy of Arlene Dahl’s Always Ask a Man. It is the basis of my household’s “always let him think it’s his idea” philosophy.

These are books I want in print, want to flip through, want to touch as I remember lines or images. There are many more of these in my collection. The print books we — that collective we — want to keep are a blip compared to the books produced every year. For me, they are a blip compared to the number of books I read in a year. Most of those have very little value to me. I read, I discard.

There’s no telling what book might find a place in a permanent collection, but five seconds in a used bookstore (physical or digital) is enough to prove that much of what is printed isn’t valuable enough to remain a permanent part of most libraries. These are the type of books I believe we’ll see dying in print first.

My theory is that readers will grow more and more intolerant of those books that have no real value, books that are worn out before they are unembargoed. And no point in pretending you can keep the best parts from leaking out. The future of print is not day-late print versions of last year’s news. Let’s be honest here: most of these print books are bought at deep discounts by consumers. The “value” assigned by purchasers is far less than the value assigned by the publisher.

This is why, when the bookcase fairy finally delivers my dream bookshelves, I will not be dragging out every book I have stored in the garage. In fact, the longer the books remain out of sight, the less important displaying them becomes. Just as friends are comfortable browsing the house’s iTunes library, they happily page through my Kindle, sampling and discussing. What I will keep when I finally open those boxes — ah, the love and care with which they were packed! — will be those books on the endangered species list. Books that cannot be bought in any other way.

Most, but not all, of these are candidates for digital repurchase. Yes, you read that right: I will rebuy books I love in the format I prefer. As long as publishers don’t engage in stupid pricing tricks (see: book originally published in 2006). I’ll be honest, these book are not must-haves for me. They are want-to-haves. It’s the job of the publisher to make it an attractive purchase for me.

I cannot predict when the shift from mostly print to mostly digital will happen. I suspect it will be like a patchwork quilt. Print becomes more valuable when it becomes less disposable. We will happily invest in quality because what we buy is something we want to preserve — and display — for a long time. I think we interact with different media in different ways. I’m not a smell of books person, but I am a tactile person. Different types of content (the wrong word here, but nicely umbrella) demand different types of interaction.

Print and digital are different experiences. It’s not good or bad or right or wrong. It’s what the book, the story within (be it fiction or non-fiction), requires. Some stories can be told in every format possible. Some must be purely digital. Some demand the pace of print.

To me, the future of print is irrevocably tied to the consumer’s ability to acquire those books they deem valuable to them. This might mean buying a gorgeous book from Ammo Books from the get-go. It might mean buying a beautiful edition of a long-loved book. It might mean acquiring a physical copy of a digital book (or, vice versa: the digital companion of the print book).

What is important is that these print version be quality — good covers, excellent paper, binding that doesn’t fall apart. Handmade, one-of-a-kind, original, limited edition, personal. The shift to digital reading is taking place rapidly, and there will be a point in the not-too-distant future where we stop thinking either/or and embrace either/and.

Is this the future you are preparing for?