Call For Guest Posts!

gentle readers!

I will be taking vacation time the week of Memorial Day, so I'm going to need five—count 'em, five—guest posts to go up from Monday, May 30th to Friday, June 3rd. And one of them could be yours!

Who: You!

What: One (1) guest post per customer. Please try to keep them in the neighborhood of 300 to 1,000 words. Be creative! Feel free to include a brief bio (50 or so words) and a link to your blog/website, if you have one. Reposts of material from your own blog are 100% fine.

When: You have until 11:59 pm on Monday, May 23rd. I'll announce the five winning posts on Wednesday, May 25th, and they'll be posted Monday, May 30th through Friday, June 3rd.

Where: Right here, on pmn!

Why: I'll be out of town and 100% incommunicado. The show, however, must go on, and I need your help to ensure that happens.

How: Please paste your post into the body of an e-mail and send it along to pimpmynovel [åt] gmail [døt] com (see link at right).

On your mark—get set—go!

Better Know A Conference: BEA

Overview

This week in Better Know a Conference: BEA, or Book Expo America.

BEA is the premier American trade show for commercial book publishers. I've been to the last four conferences, and honestly, it's overwhelming: thousands of industry professionals, publishers, librarians, and members of the media congregate to network, meet authors, sign books/have books signed, attend panels, buy/trade finshed books/advance copies, and get a look at the forthcoming titles from trade publishers all across the spectrum (and country).

Everyone from the Big Six publishers to small literary houses to academic presses will be present, so there's quite literally something for everyone. This year's conference is taking place from Monday, May 23rd to Thursday, May 26th at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City.

The Pros

· BEA is the event for trade publishers in the United States, so everyone who's anyone is usually there. (Think of it as our version of the London or Frankfurt Book Fairs.) Fancy publishers, famous authors, and members of the media (now including bloggers—see below!) will be milling about, so the opportunities to meet celebrities and/or network are pretty much endless.

· This year the BlogWorld and New Media Expo will be co-locating with BEA, so attendees will be able to learn about everything from monetization to social media marketing techniques. Welcome to the publishing world of tomorrow!

· A number of concurrent events—including a day-long "DIY" panel on publishing and self-publishing for aspiring authors on Saturday, May 21st and a book blogger convention on Friday, May 27th—will round out the Expo. Will I be at said book blogger convention? You'll have to go to find out!

· For those of you writing children's books, BEA will be featuring programming by children's book professionals, including the ABA's ABC Children's Book Group and the Children's Book Council.

The Cons

· The major con: you have to have some connection to the industry to attend. BEA uses a system of badge categories—ranging in price from $80 to $310 for three-day passes—for everyone from authors to retailers. If you don't have a direct connection to the industry, you can register as a friend or family member of an attendee, so long as they've already registered and you accompany them to the conference.

· Unlike other conferences I've profiled, BEA isn't focused on up-and-coming authors or the public, but is more centered around established authors and industry insiders. This means that there are no one-on-ones with agents, no conferences with editors, and virtually no chance of showcasing your work. You might get lucky and meet an agent or editor willing to look at your mss, but the chances are pretty much zero. Leave your most recent book at home.

· As is the case with all conferences (and New York City conferences in particular), BEA is expensive. Travel, lodging, conference fees, and souvenirs could easily set you back over $1,000, even if you only stick around for the three main days of the conference (Tuesday, May 24th; Wednesday, May 25th; and Thursday, May 26th).

· BEA is enormous, extraordinarily busy, and can easily overwhelm even the stoutest heart. This is definitely not a conference for rookies (as I quickly learned at my first BEA, which was also my first book conference ever).

Some DOs and DON'Ts

· DO wear comfortable clothes, including shoes. The Javits Center is enormous (which means a lot of walking) and is relatively far from subway stations (which means a lot of walking). For a break from walking, try the author signing pavilion for a lot of standing.

Also, the end of May in New York City is usually hot and humid. Pack accordingly!

· DON'T bring manuscripts to the conference. Don't even do this at conferences that are aimed at connecting writers with agents and editors. Which BEA is not. So don't do it.

PS: Really.

· DO bring a couple of canvas or collapsible nylon bags. They'll have them at the conference, but you're going to be taking home a lot of books (even as we progress further and further into the Digital Future of Publishing). Also buttons. Oh, and bookmarks. And pens. You get the idea.

· DON'T be intimidated. Sure, there are a lot of people. Sure, none of them are going to be interested in your writing right off the bat. So what? Chat up people manning the publisher booths, befriend librarians, make small talk with a couple of authors. I've said it before and I'll say it again: you never know when a connection might come in handy.

· Lastly, DO have a game plan. There's way too much to see and do for you to see and do it all, so make sure you review the schedule of events. You don't want to miss getting a book signed by Your Favorite Author or hearing a panel presentation on That Topic You've Had Questions About Forever.

That's it for this installment, folks. Questions and suggestions in the comments!

Bankrupt!

If you haven't yet heard, mes auteurs, Borders Group has filed Chapter 11. While this means a lot of things for the industry, I'd like to follow up on Monday's post and list just a few potential changes/repercussions you might see as authors.

In unimpeachable Bullet-O-Vision™:

· Borders will continue to operate. As I explained on Monday, Chapter 11 bankruptcy doesn't necessarily entail liquidation. Although Borders plans to close many individual stores, the chain itself will still do business while under bankruptcy protection. This means you can still buy books there and, just as importantly, your books can still be carried there.

· Borders will likely be even more cautious about investing in midlist authors. While their new loans from GE Capital will allow them to finance, among other things, the purchase of new stock, Borders is not in any position to gamble. They're likely, in my opinion, to skip more midlist titles than usual and to only spend their money on names they know they can sell. This will be exacerbated by the aforementioned store closings.

· Publishers may offer lower advances, especially on midlist titles. The industry has depended on Borders as a major market for new titles. If the publisher can't trust Borders to take a sufficiently large number of copies of a given title, this will factor into their profit and loss statements. As a result, they may advance less money to authors in order to increase the odds that any given acquired title will earn out.

· Electronic titles will probably be largely unaffected. Borders was quite the Johnny-come-lately to the e-book scene, and as a result their sales in that sector are dwarfed by their competitors'. Further, even if their sales were a large subset of the market, brick-and-mortar store closings wouldn't really affect their ability to distribute titles electronically via their on-line storefront.

· Local author events may be canceled. Fewer stores means fewer venues for readings, signings, &c. Towns in which Borders is really the only bookstore will, as you might imagine, be the most affected. You can switch to buying books on-line if your local Borders store closes; not so with author events. At least, not yet.

A lot remains to be seen, however, so I'll post periodic updates on Borders' bankruptcy filing and its impact on the industry as events unfold.

What I Learned at AWP

For those of you who aren't familiar, AWP is the Association of Writers & Writing Programs, and their annual conference was this past weekend in Washington, D.C. I had a great time and met a lot of wonderful people, and in the spirit of reliving the experience and imparting any and all wisdom I may have gleaned in the process, here's what I learned about AWP (and writers/conferences in general):

Check in early or late. I picked up my badge on the second day and completely avoided any and all lines. I hear the folks who arrived on the first day had to battle epic crowds (one of the few things that instantly gets me in a bad mood).

Introduce yourself to people. I thanked/spoke with editors who had published my work in literary magazines, chatted up folks running tables for journals I really admire, and mingled with professors, writers, and publishers who seemed cool. Who knows when a connection you make will turn into a career opportunity?

Exchange business cards. There were way too many names and faces for me to recall even a tenth of the people I met, and I'm sure everyone else felt similarly. Cards help refresh your memory and provide much-needed contact information.

Go to the hotel bar. Everyone worth talking to is there. Everyone not worth talking to is somewhere else. Everyone who doesn't want to talk to anyone is holed up in their hotel rooms.

Budget carefully. Many writing conferences have a lot of awesome books for sale, and the temptation to buy everything is pretty strong. If you're not paying attention, you could end up spending way more money than you intend (and will then have to lug 30 pounds of books home with you). That said—

Make sure you walk the floor on the last day. In this case, many publishers wanted to unload as many copies of books/journals/magazines/t-shirts/&c as possible so they wouldn't have to lug/ship them back. This resulted in a lot of great deals (and even free stuff!) on the last day of the conference.

Were any of y'all at AWP, as well? If so, please feel free to share your stories in the comments!

This Is A Business: Redux

I first made this point a little over a year ago, gentle readers, but it bears repeating.

The other day I overheard a conversation in which one book-loving acquaintance of mine expressed the opinion that selling e-books amounts to a betrayal of the physical book.

Let me be the first to say: this a bunch of maudlin nonsense.

The book business is precisely that, mes auteurs: a business. Yes, in many instances we're selling art, but I've always been of the opinion that the art of the book is almost always found in its content, not in its form; if a majority of consumers want their books electronically, any publisher or bookseller resisting that change will likely be driven out of business. If it sounds Darwinian, that's because it is. If you're not selling what people want, you're not going to be in business very long.

This isn't at all to say that the physical book is going extinct (though hardcover fiction may, à mon avis, be more or less gone within a few years)—I'm only saying that refusing to cultivate an electronic platform or sell e-books due to the misguided notion that you're somehow betraying an inanimate cultural medium is, well, childish. Books aren't people; they don't have feelings. Those who really love them will buy and sell them in whatever format is available.

The book is very old, cats & kittens, but before we had them we had scrolls and before that we had tablets and before that we had oral traditions. The codex—a book with a cover and pages—hasn't been around forever and it won't be around forever, and the sooner publishers, booksellers, and other industry insiders realize this and not only accommodate but embrace the changes that are revolutionizing the way people read, the better.

Books Without Borders?

Happy 2011, mes auteurs, and a big thank you to all the guest posters from the last seven days. You guys rock.

But alas and alack, faithful readers, it's not all sunshine and lollipops in the land of publishing. As you by now surely know, Borders is (still) in trouble.

On the last day of 2010, BGP announced it would be delaying payments to vendors (i.e. not paying publishers for books). This caused some publishers to stop shipping them books, and Borders' stock tumbled (insofar as one can tumble from under a dollar per share) as a result. After a low of $0.83/share, it's trading at heavy volume at a shaky $0.88/share. Borders' market capitalization hasn't budged much from $60 million (that's "million" with an "m"). For reference, Barnes & Nobles' (BKS) is $930 million and Amazon's (AMZN) is $82 billion ($82 thousand million).

After two top executives resigned, Borders management traveled to New York City for a meeting with major vendors, which (one assumes) included the Big Six publishers that comprise Borders' largest source of books (and therefore income). Borders is apparently asking publishers to convert delayed payments into interest-bearing debt while simultaneously trying to renegotiate their loans with GE Capital and Jefferies Group. In short: they're out of cash and trying to find a way to keep the doors open and the lights on.

With staff apparently being advised to seek employment elsewhere, however, I don't think that's going to be much longer. In my opinion, Borders will be lucky to survive the month, much less the first quarter. They're strapped for cash and straining their relationships with suppliers, and it would be the understatement of the year (granted, it's early yet) to say they're poorly positioned for the ongoing digital shift in publishing: their website is inferior to their competitors', their continous couponing and deep discounts don't seem to be slowing the decline in their sales, and without a dedicated e-reader, they're nowhere near in league with the Kindle or the Nook.

That said, gentle readers, I'm afraid (barring divine intervention or acquisition by another company) Borders is more or less finished. Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and (to a lesser extent) Apple will be left to determine the future of publishing when the dust from BGP's fall clears. I can only hope some of those empty storefronts become independent book stores.

What about you, meine Autoren? How would the demise of Borders affect you and your reading habits?

Enhancements

Apologies for the radio silence yesterday, mes auteurs, but I'm now dug out from under Snowpocalypse 2010 and bringing you a double-length post to make up for it. Think of it as Twofer Tuesday. Better yet: Twofer Tuesday™.

The word "enhanced" has taken on a funny meaning these days. First there were "enhanced interrogations," which apparently meant "waterboarding and other forms of torture." Then came "enhanced patdowns," which apparently meant "frisking bordering on sexual assault" or "strip-searching a seven-year-old." Classy, government. Very classy.

Now we have "enhanced e-books," which apparently means... well, we're still not quite sure, but it's supposed to be a hot new trend in e-publishing.

From what I've gathered over the past year or so, enhanced e-books are e-books containing "extra" material. The definition of "extra" depends on the publisher and the title at hand: author interviews/videos, social networking compatibility, iPhone, iPad, and Droid apps, and other varieties of electronic multimedia are all fair game. Books in the world of tomorrow™ will be more like the Internet and less like... well, books.

Not surprisingly, the Apple iPad is the device of choice for many enhanced e-books due to its color screen, multimedia compatibility, and app-centric disposition. But with the advent of machines like the color Nook (watch out, Amazon), that's not necessarily going to be the case in 2011.

Not to get all Lord of the Rings on you, orcs and lady orcs, but the (publishing) world is changed. Whether you like it or not, your books will become e-books and your e-books will become enhanced with Twitter roundtables, author videos, content-specific apps, and other electronic oddities. Publishers are trying to wring more money out of e-books for fear that the electronic format will bankrupt them the way it did the music industry, and "enhancing" the crap out of a book with a lot of extra material is one way to justify charging more for it.

One of the more novel—pardon the pun—applications of said enhancements is the Vook. (This beats out Barnes & Noble's ill-fated PubIt! as my least favorite publishing-related word.) Rather than tacking on the equivalent of director commentaries and blooper reels to books, the Vook relies on video files and the Internet to actually complete the written story, sort of like how brief cinematics fill in the gaps in storylines in a lot of video games.

Do I think we'll be reading Vooks (or even enhanced e-books) exclusively in five years? No—as I've said before, I expect the e-book to eventually become the (pre)dominant format, but I don't think it will utterly kill the physical book. I do think the large retail chains are in trouble, but if Barnes & Noble plays its cards right, it will continue to use the Nook to revolutionize its business practices and adapt to the new market.

As I've also said before, I think the the world of tomorrow™ will comprise e-retailers and independent booksellers, the latter specializing in rare and used physical books.

The industry is changing and will continue to change, folks, and it's undeniably becoming a more Internet-dependent, electronic, app-driven environment. As format competes with content to determine the future of publishing, I think we're going to see even bigger and more interesting developments in the new year.

That's it for today, ladies and gents. Stay tuned for the announcement of the five winning guest posts tomorrow!

Please Stand By

We're a little snowed under here at PMN today, gentle readers, but please stay tuned for today's post later this afternoon (and the announcement of guest post winners on Wednesday)!

World of Tomorrow Week, Part 2 of 4: Self-Publishing

It's no secret how I feel about self-publishing, mes auteurs. Granted, the publishing world of tomorrow is fast approaching, and with the rapid and pervasive transformations currently occurring in the industry, it's not surprising that the arena of self-publishing is also undergoing some changes. Ultimately, however, I still don't think it's a good idea to self-publish your work in an attempt to make money or establish yourself as a legitimate author. Here's why—

Faster ≠ Better

These days, nothing stops you from converting your beloved ms to a .pdf and posting it on your blog for the world to see. Not that many people do this; I'm just saying that if you're looking for quick and dirty, you can self-publish your work in a matter of minutes.

If you want your book to look a little more slick and reach a wider audience, there's a panoply of options open to you, including—but not limited to—Lulu, iUniverse, Xlibris, Trafford, and (increasingly) Amazon (via CreateSpace). Be forewarned, however, that the vast majority of titles produced via these self-publishers do not compare to their traditionally pusblished counterparts: they are not as well-written, they contain significantly more grammatical errors, and their overall design (typesetting, cover image, &c) are not as good. They also don't sell very well at all (almost all sell fewer than 100 copies).

I'm not blaming the printing technology for the general inferiority of self-published books; devices like the Espresso Book Machine can produce copies virtually identical in quality to mass-produced, traditionally published books in a matter of minutes. Frankly, I'm blaming the self-publishing authors.

You're authors, folks. You're not graphic artists, you're not marketing gurus, you're not salespeople, you're not copywriters. (At least, most of you aren't.) If you're all these things and you've written a very niche book that publishers won't touch, go ahead and self-publish. As usual, I'm not aiming this advice at the outliers: I'm aiming it at the vast majority.

So, by all means, eschew the traditional method of publication and save 18 months (minimum) if you'd rather produce a sub-standard text that no one except your friends and family will read.

This Goes for E-books, Too

More on this below the next header, but just because you're not creating a physical book doesn't mean you should skip traditional publishing altogether (so long as you're writing something you believe will appeal to a wide audience; your family's genealogy or a book that will only appeal to Kazakh agronomists living in Indonesia are good candidates for self-publishing).

As e-books become a larger and larger component of the market, more and more people will flock to e-self-publication as a means of getting their words out there. The more voices there are competing for attention, the more difficult it becomes for any one voice to succeed on its own merits. Not only does your e-book have to be phenomenal, it has to command attention in some way; in other words, someone has to vet it. (More on this under Brand Management and The Democratization of Publishing is a Myth.)

Every Author Needs an Editor

When you write a book for publication, you're creating a text for someone (generally many someones) besides yourself. This means, mes auteurs, that the presentation of your story that seems optimal to you may not be optimal for the greatest number of readers; there are probably a myriad grammatical, typographical, and stylistic errors/problems to which you are blind; and the aspects of your work that you find most clever/entertaining/engaging might distract or turn off a large number of potential fans.

That is to say: you need someone else to read your work before it goes to press.

Not only that, you need (à mon avis) someone who is familiar with the current market, someone who knows the ins and outs of your genre and can speak to what is effective and what isn't, someone with whom to collaborate to produce the best piece of art of which you're capable.

Brand Management

In the world of publishing, meine Autoren, you are the brands. As a début author, your goal is to establish yourself as a brand in your chosen field or genre; you want people to say, "Guys! The next Francisco Battlebro thriller is out!" Or, "Oh man, I just got the new Sylvia P. Conundra mystery from Amazon!" Your reputation as a writer, your name or pseudonym, are social currency in the Land of Books; you need to establish yourself if you want to succeed as a working writer.

Here's where publishing houses come in. When your book comes out from a publisher (big or small, venerable or brand-spanking-new), it says that someone besides you has read your work and loves it. (Or, at the very least, can sell it.) Further, that house is investing in your talent (they paid you instead of the other way 'round, remember?) and wants you to succeed! They want the world to know your name and buy your books and make them (and you) money. That house uses their team of professionals to design, market, and sell your book, and it's their job to help brand you and make you a household name.

When you're flying solo, that's all up to you. And the vast, vast, vast majority of the time, the author who attempts to do this on his or her own does not succeed.

Past Sales Affect Future Sales

Remember BookScan? Well, if you decide to self-publish in any meaningful way and receive an ISBN, BookScan will be able to track your sales. And, as I've mentioned before, a poor sales history can scare off an otherwise interested agent or editor.

If your poor sales are the result of publication through a previous (legitimate) house, you can at least explain to your new agent or editor that those sales were, at least in part, the fault of said publisher (poor positioning, little or no marketing money or co-op, mishandling of stock, &c). If those poor sales are the result of your efforts at self-publication, you've got no one to blame but yourself. Yourself, and the reading masses who you tried to reach directly because agents and editors were keeping you from your adoring public.

The Democratization of Publishing is a Myth

Finally, there seems to be this rumor floating around that the rise of the e-book and the sophistication of current POD systems (where physical books are concerned) will not only make editors, literary agents, and publishing houses obsolete, but will usher in a Golden Age of Publishing where a true merit-based democracy will rule, and the reading public will determine, by show of electronic hands clutching electronic dollars, who will succeed and who won't. No more gatekeepers; no more insiders and outsiders.

Alas, mes auteurs, this myth has existed since the time of Gutenberg (and probably before) and is no closer to reality than it was six hundred years ago.

As I said earlier, the sheer volume of voices competing for attention guarantees that a system of separating the proverbial wheat from the chaff will be necessary. Consumer recommendation systems (like those employed by Amazon) are helpful, but insufficient; people often give five-star and one-star ratings to books for nepotistic, spiteful, or downright bizarre reasons, and while this might not affect titles with large followings (read: established brands), it can wreak havoc on lesser-reviewed titles. Which, if branding is determined by consumer review, will be all of them.

All this to say: there has to be a way of identifying, cultivating, and branding talent such that the fresh, engaging, and important voices are heard, and the rest are left to their own devices. While word of mouth is a necessary condition for this to occur in a free market, I don't think it's sufficient. Another filter is necessary, and that filter is the publisher.

That's all for today, bros and she-bros. Tomorrow: what I think the publishing landscape will look like by the year 2020!

Frankfurter Buchmesse!

No, it's not the name for the mechanically separated meats found in the common American hot dog, meine Autoren. The Frankfurter Buchmesse (known to us as the Frankfurt Book Fair) is this week (today, October 6th, through October 10th), and is the largest trade fair for books in the world.

Publishers, literary agents, editors, authors, and other industry insiders from around the globe attend the Frankfurt Book Fair to negotiate international rights, network, and drink a whole bunch of German beer. (If it sounds mega awesome, that's because it is.) Alas, I'm not cool enough to be invited and don't currently have the spare cash to fly to Germany for a week (because if I did, I'd have already gone for Oktoberfest), but I've heard enough good stories to know that it's a productive and entertaining meeting.

The fair is open to the general public on Saturday and Sunday, so if you happen to be in the area (or feel like booking a last-minute flight), you can visit exhibitions set up by publishers from dozens of countries and learn about The Next Big Thing(s) in Publishing. I imagine it's a time-consuming and expensive endeavour, dear readers and writers, and I'm frankly (ha! "frankly") not sure how much networking you'd be able to do, so I don't recommend you go unless your editor or agent has specifically asked you along (in which case you're already there). That said, you can always ask him/her if it might make sense for you to go next year.

Conferences in general, however, particularly those run in the good ol' U.S. of A. by your genre guild of choice (e.g. the RWA, the MWA) are great events for you to meet agents and other authors, network, discuss your works in progress, attend readings, and so on, and I absolutely encourage you to try to attend one or two of these per year if at all possible. Trade fairs, conferences, literary festivals, readings, seminars, &c can be of immense value to you, your work, and your career, and as long as you're not breaking the bank to attend them, it's a good idea to make it to those being held in and around your area. If you've got the money to travel a bit, (inter)national events are great, too.

For those of you who have attended trade conferences (or even—be still, mein Herz—Frankfurt): how was your experience? What did you like best/least? Would you recommend that/those conference(s) to others, and why?

To the commments!

44% is the New 50%

In case you're not following me on Twitter, mes auteurs (and why wouldn't you be?), the results of the Barnes and Noble shareholder vote are in, with preliminary results indicating 44% supporting Riggio and 39% supporting Burkle. Quel fromage.

Riggio is looking to sell the company to other bidders, with books on the company going out to at least 20 interested parties this week. Burkle, who immediately called for a "transparent auction that delivers the best possible outcome for investors," is rumored to be considering a bid himself. If his is the highest, I'm not sure on what grounds Riggio would refuse (although I expect he will, given the bad blood resulting from the proxy war). For the time being, the incumenbent management and board members will remain.

Although this battle is more or less decided (pending certification of the final results over the next few days), the war is far from over. Shareholders will again vote in mid-November on whether to ratify the "poison pill" plan that prevents any shareholder, save Riggio, from accumulating more than a 20% stake in the company. Should the poison pill be significantly altered (say, in accordance with Burkle's proposal of increasing the trigger to 30%), we could see a whole new round of these shenanigans.

In my opinion, the 44/39 split, though close, might have resulted from a point raised by investor Howard Tannenbaum: "Riggio and his brother built up the company. What does Burkle know about book selling?" I ask you, meine Autoren: does it matter to you whether the head of the largest brick-and-mortar trade book retailer in the country knows anything about selling books?

It's Between Chapters 10 and 12

No, this isn't about Borders (at least, not directly; see below). But it is about another brick-and-mortar franchise whose very existence is imperiled by the Internet: Blockbuster.

After suffering a difficult last few years, including ever-shrinking profit margins and the delisting of its stock from the New York Stock Exchange, the (former) video rental giant announced today that it's filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy (though they're calling it a "pre-arranged recapitalization").

I think relatively few people are surprised, though I would have given them another year or two before expecting a bankruptcy announcement. Between Netflix's stranglehold on pre-planned video rental and redbox's domination of the impulse rental with their kiosk model, Blockbuster hasn't had anywhere to go for some time.

Speaking of nowhere to go: while Borders hasn't (as far as I know) given any indication that they'll be filing for bankruptcy anytime soon, I do see some similarities between the two companies. Both are apparently strapped for cash; both have been (or have been in danger of being) delisted by the NYSE (Borders' stock has hovered around the minimum average close of $1.00/share for most of 2010); both are competing against impossibly popular, efficient, and fast-growing electronic competitors (Netflix and Amazon, respectively); and both demonstrate, à mon avis, only a half-hearted and ill-informed attempt to enter the digital market (Blockbuster with their on-line rental queue feeding their mail service, Borders with their .com business and partnership with various third-party e-reader manufacturers).

Long story short: I'm not surprised by this turn of events for Blockbuster and while I don't think it necessarily prefigures a similar downturn for Borders, I think the stories are similar enough that both consumers and industry insiders should be paying attention. If Borders' management doesn't right the company quickly, it may be too late to avoid a "pre-arranged recapitalization." Here's hoping it's not too late already.

Personalities and Professionalism

Every once in awhile, mes auteurs, I post about the little dos and don'ts of interacting with agents: what to say and not to say, how to go about saying it, asking appropriate questions without driving your agent up the wall, &c, &c. After having read Bill Clegg's Portrait of the Addict as a Young Man, however, I must ask: what kind of behaviors would you and wouldn't you tolerate from your (hypothetical) agent? How far would you go to preserve your working relationship?

If you haven't read Clegg's memoir, allow me to summarize: for reasons that aren't made entirely clear, Bill Clegg decides to throw away his relationship with his family, flagrantly cheat on his live-in boyfriend, and abandon his career (deserting his pregnant business partner and dozens of clients in the process) so he can blow through $70,000 worth of savings smoking crack. (He relapses or drops out of rehab more than once.) Clegg portrays himself as not very nice and not overwhelmingly intelligent, though he does (pre-crack binge, at least) sound funny and fairly charming. That aside, however, he sounds like someone of whom I wouldn't even want to be a friend of a friend of a friend, much less someone I'd want to work with. (Full disclosure: I have never met Bill Clegg in real life.)

Here's the kicker, though: after he finally cleaned up his act, Clegg—who never actually apologized to the the aforementioned abandoned business partner—didn't seem to suffer at all from having burnt nearly every bridge he had. He not only got a pretty cushy job with William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, but even got many of his former clients back. Clients he had abandoned with no explanation so he could smoke a bunch of crack, drink liver-brittling amounts of room service vodka, and have sex with $400/hour prostitutes.

Granted, this is far and away an outlier in the Realm of Recorded Agent Behaviors, but I think it warrants attention not only because of Clegg's high profile, but because of the relative lack of professional repercussions he seems to have suffered.

This might be an easy one, but prithee, inform me: would you have gone back to an agent like Bill Clegg if you believed (s)he were the best fit for your work and/or would get you the best deal available? What would and wouldn't you tolerate in a relationship with your agent?

The Never-Ending Battle Continues

As I mentioned last month, there's a battle going on for control of Barnes & Noble (BKS). Leonard Riggio, chairman and largest stockholder of the company, wants to retain control; Ron Burkle, billionaire and founder of the Yucaipa Companies, llc, wants to seize it. Until recently, that was all there was to say about it.

Last week, however, Institutional Shareholder Services, a major proxy advisory company to stock investors, endorsed Burkle's plan to seat three of his own nominees (including himself) on the company's nine-member Board of Directors, as well as rewrite Barnes & Noble's shareholder rights (or "poison pill") plan, a measure designed to prevent hostile takeovers. Apparently, Burkle believes that BKS is "significantly undervalued" and a change of management is necessary to restore the company to fiscal health. Among his chief complaints is that Barnes & Noble waited too long to introduce the Nook, thereby handicapping the bookseller in the digital media/e-book market.

Not everyone agrees with ISS, however: three major advisory services (Glass Lewis & Co., Egan-Jones Proxy Services, and Proxy Governance Inc.) are on Riggio's side, a position somewhat strengthened by the fact that a Delaware judge ruled against Burkle's legal assault on BKS' poison pill defense. Shareholders are scheduled to vote on the proposals at the end of the month.

What does this mean for the industry and for you as authors, readers, and consumers?

Again, I doubt this battle will much affect Barnes & Noble's bottom line in the short term. An ultimate victory by Team Riggio will probably result in little substantive change for the company; a victory by Team Burkle could be game-changing, as his vocal desire to move BKS further into digital media and Yucaipa's successful history of leveraged buyouts could indicate a plan to convert Barnes & Noble into a more direct competitor with Amazon (more emphasis on e-books and related content, reduction of physical title stock, more money allocated to .com business, and so on). The times, they are a-changin', mes auteurs.

To be clear: this is all speculation on my part, and I don't know what Burkle is planning to do any more than any other moderately interested third party; I only know what's being reported in the news. I also have no real preference regarding control of the company; it's all the same to me whether it's run by a rich guy from New York or a rich guy from Los Angeles. I am, however, intrigued by the repercussions of either's victory, and I'm curious to see where this will take Barnes & Noble over the next five years.

What about you, gentle readers?

Sticking it to the Ban

In case you were unaware, liebe Autoren, this Saturday, September 25th through Sunday, October 3rd is Banned Books Week! I heartily recommend you select and read a title from this list of frequently challenged books (browsable by author, year, and decade!) sometime this month or next. I also encourage you, if you are Twitter-inclined, to tweet on the subject via use of the #SpeakLoudly hashtag (see below).

This month more than any, gentle readers, reminds us of the importance of our First Amendment rights:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

(Emphasis mine.)

In particular, I'm thinking of the YA novel SPEAK, which I've learned from the author, Laurie Halse Anderson (via Janet Reid and Tahereh Mafi) has been called "pornography" by Wesley Scroggins, an associate professor of management at Missouri State University. (His original op-ed in the Springfield News-Leader can be found here.)

Challenging books with sexual or otherwise "questionable" content is nothing new; Joyce's Ulysses was branded pornography when it was first published serially in the United States in 1918 (a charge that wasn't dismissed until the Supreme Court case United States v. One Book Called Ulysses in 1933). Many profoundly important books—including several major works of Western literature—have been challenged or banned at some point in their histories, and it's due in large part to the First Amendment and individual teachers', librarians', and activists' commitment to free speech and opposition to censorship that these books have been made available to United States citizens, students included.

Scroggins maintains that not only should SPEAK be banned, but modern classics like Slaughter-House Five (which, according to Republic Superintendent Vern Minor, has been removed from all school libraries) should also be unavailable to students (mostly due to use of "the f-word"). For context, the district in question teaches abstinence-only sex education to all students, and Scroggins has also been involved in Reclaiming Missouri for Christ, a seminar whose purpose was "to educate... all citizens... to the role of fundamental, Biblical Christianity in the establishment... of our legal... system" (again, emphasis mine). The full quote is in Laurie's post.

I, like Laurie, fear that parents (and possibly even educators) reading Scroggins' op-ed will believe what Scroggins is saying, and will pressure schools to remove valuable books from their libraries as a result. I therefore propose the following, Concerned Parents of America: before you make a decision to remove a book from a library, read it yourself. If you find you disagree with the content, communicate this to your child. Be aware of what your children are reading, watching on television, or browsing on the Internet. Just because you determine a book is unacceptable for you or your child does not give you the right to deprive other people of the right to read that book. Period.

I urge you, mes auteurs, via Laurie's post, to comment on Scroggins' op-ed, write a letter to Superintendent Vern Minor, write a letter to the News-Leader, or simply tweet this post, Laurie's, Tahereh's, or Janet's, using the #SpeakLoudly hashtag.

The freedom to read what we wish is precious and protected in this country. We don't know what we have until it's taken away.

Round-Up: The Rough, The Rad, & The Ridiculous

Friday round-up day, with Laura from Combreviations:

This week, friends and foes, I would like to start with the things that I found particularly and insanely stupid. Why? Because it's cathartic. Everyone likes to make that "Oh god why" noise in the back of their throat at work at least once for a non-work purpose. I figured I'd just help a little. First, Tony Blair—did you plagiarize from a play about you? That's kind of lame. You could have at least stolen from Wikipedia, which... doesn't count as plagiarism? What? I would say that's Orwellian, but I won't, because that's not what that means. Although maybe no one would notice, because apparently no one knows how to use "Orwellian" correctly. I know, let's get the sequel to The Secret to fix our problems: The Secret 2: For Real, This Is It. And I know this article on the best way to burn a book is in response to a reader question, but seriously, some people do not need help. Hey Florida, it may be time to pull a Governor Christie and just... distance yourself.

Of course, it's not all bad on the Internet this week. A girl read 325 books in 3 months, so hey, reading isn't dead! And this repurposed card catalog made me wish I lived somewhere with, you know, "space." I hear some places have that. For all you fontophiles, check out this database of over 70,000 free fonts, and for the bargain hunters, Groupons for books! Amateur etymologists (like myself, hey guys!) will like these food idioms, and the somewhat lost novice poetry reader should check out these toe-dipping recommendations.

So, okay. It's not all terrible. But it's not all sunshine and roses either, friends. How do we handle swearing in kids' books? Or novels about being fat? Do we condone skimming? Should we all, in fact, just man up? And dear lord, what will Oprah pick?

The world is a complicated place this week, and we've got these big, moral questions to contend with. Luckily, it can all wait until Monday. So let's all brush up on our Klingon to watch us some Shakespeare, get our geek on, cooking style, and study up for our Harry Potter final. See you next week!

Virtual Particles are the New Vampires

I've always considered myself something of a science buff, mes auteurs (although I find actually doing science, complete with statistics and differential equations, too taxing for my literary sensibilities), so I was surprised and delighted to read this article in the Telegraph about the recent rise in popularity of popular science books.

As noted in the article, if people were buying popular science books five or ten years ago, they were largely about evolutionary biology (and all the "religion versus science"-type arguments those books seem to entail). Recently, however—and, in my opinion, due in large part to physics projects like the Large Hadron Collider—popular science books about astrophysics, quantum mechanics, and parallel universes have seen unparalleled demand (pun totally intended). Books about evolution, biochemistry, and other scientific disciplines are selling, too, but it's the physics behind the structure, origin, and fate of the universe that seem to be intriguing The Reading Public these days.

I've been into popular physics since at least the late '90s, reading and re-reading Stephen Hawking (A Brief History of Time, The Universe in a Nutshell, A Briefer History of Time), Carl Sagan (Pale Blue Dot, The Demon-Haunted World, Billions and Billions), and Brian Greene (The Elegant Universe, The Fabric of the Cosmos), so while this trend may be new to a lot of people, it isn't for me (although I am, again, surprised and delighted). I will say I'm glad that more people are reading Asimov and Hawking, even if it doesn't balance out the number of people reading Stephenie Meyer and The Situation.

What I'm interested to know is: is this new and/or surprising to you, bros and she-bros? Do you regularly read popular science, and, if not, do you think you'll start doing so? Will you pick up a copy of The Grand Design or Why Evolution is True in the coming weeks or months? If so, why? If not, why not?

Bonus question: if a train leaves Boston at 5:00 pm traveling in a straight line toward Tallahassee at 90 MPH, and another train leaves Tallahassee at 7:00 pm traveling in a straight line toward Boston at 120 MPH, how long will it be before I fall asleep?

The Blockbuster Phenomenon

Nathan's post from yesterday regarding Jonathan Franzen's Freedom has gotten me thinking about the blockbuster model for book sales in general. Why does the industry invest millions of dollars in a tiny percentage of books that they hope against hope will turn a huge profit? Why do fewer than 1% of books pay for the acquisition of the remaining 99%? Why are the likes of James Patterson, Sarah Palin, and (saints preserve us) The Situation running the show?

Part of the reason is, as I've mentioned before, a sort of singlemindedness endemic to the industry that assumes anything that has worked in the past will continue to do so in the future. If Esteban Fancypants' novel The Art Dealer's Wife becomes a huge hit, he may well end up with a seven-figure offer for his second (or second and third) books. True, it's not entirely fair to blame the industry for this; time and again, consumers have returned to a brand (read: author) they love, and if enough people hear great things about (and later buy) Mr. Fancypants' first book, he's got an established audience for his future titles. Publishers throw money at "sure bets" because publishing has been and always will be something of a gamble, and if there's any indication that leveraging an author with a proven track record can produce more profit, they'll be all over that deal like a monkey on a cupcake.

HOWEVER. Simply because Mr. Fancypants' first novel sold 5 million copies doesn't mean his second and third novels will perform similarly, and for every story of the out-of-the-blue début novelist whose first book sold millions of copies, there's a story of an out-of-the-blue début novelist whose second book tanked. Maybe the second book received bad reviews; maybe it was so different from the first book that it alienated his or her established audience; maybe it comes to light that the author is a terrible person and nobody wants to be caught dead reading his or her book; the number of reasons is potentially infinite. Thing is (and it is fair to blame the industry for this), publishers 1.) perpetuate the blockbuster cycle by driving prices up at auction to patently absurd levels, and 2.) tend to chase losing brands by throwing more money at them long after the authors' audiences have either stopped caring or died.

What, then, can be done about this, mes auteurs?

Well, publishers could consistently include and enforce clauses in contracts stipulating that authors whose books fail to earn out their advances must return the balance of the advance to the publisher, but that's not going to happen unless the industry adopts this policy across the board (not to mention it's not really fair to authors who receive little in the way of marketing and co-op dollars).

I'm interested by this NPR article from last year, which mentions HarperStudio's experimenting with publishing two books a month, neither with an advance of over $100,000, and attracting authors by promising a 50/50 split on the book's profit. While I'm not sure this exact model is a solution, I think programs like it may offer a way out of the boom-and-bust, all-or-nothing blockbuster model that prevails in the industry today.

What say you, gentle readers?

Round 1: Random House

Sorry for the Friday silence, mes auteurs, but thankfully the technical problems that canceled last week's round-up have been resolved. Onward and upward!

If you haven't heard, the Wylie Agency has lost its e-book battle with Random House, meaning that thirteen of the twenty contested e-titles are back under Random House's control. While I'm sure this has soured both Wylie and Amazon (with whom Wylie made the exclusive sales contract) on The Big House, it's an important victory for the publisher and, I think, for their authors. Also, Amazon gets to sell those e-books (via Random House) regardless, so I'm not sure how upset they really are.

What does that mean for you, gentle readers and writers?

First and foremost, it means that you need to be more aware than ever about e-rights: what your contract says about them, what your royalty rates are, under what conditions those rights can revert, &c, &c. Electronic rights are going to be immensely important over the next five years, and if you and your agent aren't on top of your game, any mistakes you make can and will come back to bite you.

Second, as I've mentioned before, I do think that electronically native imprints and sales models that more closely knit the acquisition and sales forces are the way of the future. That is to say: while Wylie went about this project the wrong way, I think their idea has merit and may represent the prevailing sales model in the next decade or two (smaller agency/house hybrids with more emphasis on e-books).

Finally, it signals (to me, at least) the necessity of editorial, computer-savvy, and legal input into the publication process, meaning that regardless of where e-books go in the next few years, you're still going to want someone on your side to edit, format, and sell your book.

What do you think, bros and she-bros?

Why This is a Returnable Business

As I've mentioned before, back during The Great Depression (as opposed to today's Great Recession), a lot of things (surprise!) weren't selling, including (surprise again!) books. In order to get book stores to carry their stock, publishers allowed them to return any unsold merchandise for credit. Not surprisingly, this worked pretty well. Very surprisingly, the industry has continued this practice for the past eighty years, boom or bust, recessions, depressions, and rapidly expanding bubbles be damned.

As Jeffrey Trachtenberg points out (albeit in a Wall Street Journal article from five years ago), returns are "crippling inefficiencies of an antiquated business" and "The book industry... has been saddled with this system since the Depression." Around forty percent of books are returned (my estimate would be slightly higher in today's economic climate), comprising hundreds of millions (if not a billion or more) dollars per year in lost revenue. Many of these books are remaindered; the rest are pulped. Sad but true, mes auteurs.

So: why does the industry maintain this astoundingly inefficient business practice?

First, there's a sort of institutional singlemindedness I've discovered in which publishers seem to believe that because something has worked in the past, it will 1.) work just as effectivley now, and 2.) continue to do so indefinitely. As you can see: not the case (although, somewhat ironically, the returnable stock structure probably saved more than one book store when the recession hit in 2008). How things are done is how things are done, and this is more or less the end of it.

Second (and this sort of ties into the above), publishers are expected to demonstrate healthy growth year-on-year in terms of their sales numbers. Any year in which a publisher converts from a returnable to a non-returnable model will immediately see a 40% (or more) reduction in gross sales, and even though they'll recoup a lot of this by not having to print, package, ship, and warehouse books that will never pass through the register to the consumer, it would cause enough of an accounting and financial nightmare that most publishers will (and do) balk at the prospect, myopic as that practice may be.

Third, as mentioned in Trachtenberg's article, publishers have been steadily increasing the prices of books for years in an attempt to (among other things) compensate for the revenue lost to returned, remaindered, and pulped books. A conversion to a returnable model would almost certainly require a reduction in price point, which is great for consumers but bad for the publisher's bottom line (at least in the short term). I think there's something to be said about e-book pricing here, but that's another post for another day.

Finally, as I've mentioned in some of my co-op posts, brick-and-mortar retailers order more copies of would-be bestsellers than they really need, since they need to make those elaborate hardcover towers at the front of the store to attract consumers' attention. In a non-returnable model, they would be stuck with these books until they could either sell them at a sufficient discount or destroy them; this would in turn disrupt the co-op system as retailers and publishers scramble to reset the bar for promotional quantities.

This is all assuming a perfect world with a perfect supply chain, and as we all know, neither of these exists. Even if a publisher were to reach maximum efficiency in terms of getting books to retailers' warehouses, they would still need the cooperation of the retailers' supply chains and sales forecasting in order to make a non-returnable model work. It was easy back in the '30s to convert from a non-returnable to a returnable model when there were no superstores or Amazon; these days, converting back would be a Herculean task (though I think it would be enormously beneficial in the long-term).

What say you, meine Autoren?