The Late Great Round Up

Friday Saturday round up time, with Laura:

Happy late round up, friends and foes. I'd promise it's going to be a good one, but you never know. You just don't. What I do know is that there's an on sale date for the next George R.R. Martin book. Does that actually mean anything? No one knows! If you need to practice reading huge amounts of text, maybe you should do a Bible readathon, even if all of the booty has been removed. If you're not interested, or you're like 30% of teens (and so only read one to two books a year), you might want to start with something less taxing, like selected Charlie Sheen poetry. It exists, I swear.

Are your books sick? Maybe they need to see a book surgeon. (And if anyone is in the market for a present for me, I'd take one of those surgered books.) Once the books feel better they can go visit matchstick Minas Tirith. While the paper books are gone, you can get a free Kindle with a new bank account, which I am actively considering. You could download some books by the self-pubbed Amazon best seller, or you can drop books altogether in favor of the Twilight convention, but only if you already have a ticket. Because it is sold. Out.

Are you excited for Bristol Palin's memoir? If so, you could probably use one of these non-judgmental reading dogs, because I am judging you so hard right now. While you're reading that I'll be participating in the presidential biography project, reading a biography of every US president. In order. Hello, Millard Filmore, you devil you.

That's it for me, tigers. See you next week!

The Agency Six

In case you haven't heard, mes auteurs, the last Big Six holdout on the agency model—Random House—has capitulated. Effective this month, their e-books are now being sold under the new pricing system.

What does this mean for you, gentle readers?

As Consumers

It means two major things: one, you'll likely be able to purchase Random House's titles directly from the iBookstore, and not exclusively through a third-party app like the one Amazon has for the Kindle; and two, you may be paying slightly more for your e-books.

As you may recall from my earlier post on the subject, the agency model treats the retailer as a middleman making a commission, not as a vendor setting his or her own price after purchasing goods wholesale. This means that rather than buying an e-book from the publisher at a predetermined discount and selling it to you at however low a price they want, retailers must now sell Random House's e-books at the publisher's price, keeping a 30% cut for themselves and sending the remainder to the publisher.

Many have speculated that this move is likely fueled by Apple's unveiling of the long-awaited iPad 2 (you can follow the event live here). If this is the case (and I don't know if it is, since the involved parties aren't commenting to the media), it would seem to betoken a certain amount of faith in Apple's business model.

As Authors

Again, this is pure speculation, but I imagine e-book royalties may be affected by this move. And not just for those of you with Random House book deals: now that the world's largest trade book publisher has signed off on the agency model, I imagine a slew of smaller publishers will follow suit. If any of you, gentle readers, know more about this than I do, please feel free to educate me/your fellow readers in the comments.

I'm also curious to see how this vote of confidence in the Apple program influences iBookstore sales. Should Apple eventually sport e-sales figures on par with those of Amazon, I think the increased competition could speed up the shift toward market parity (that is, equal dollar sales of physical and electronic books). My current guess is that 2011 will see e-books top 10% of the overall market, and that 50% of the market will comprise electronic books by the middle of 2014.

Finally, I imagine Amazon is unhappy about this, since it seriously undercuts their ability to set prices in the industry. However, they, too have not officially commented (as far as I know).

What do you think, mes auteurs? And more importantly—are you getting a second generation iPad?

More Terms to Know

In the world of publishing, mes auteurs, there are a lot of terms to know. As our digital overlords begin to claim more and more of this territory for themselves, I think an e-update of sorts is in order.

Therefore! I've put together a list of indispensable e-book/Internet-related terms I think you should know. If you think of any more (and I'm sure you will), please don't hesitate to post them in the comments.

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). A system for separating a web page's or e-book's style/formatting from its content. For example: rather than putting a tag around every block of text that specifies the font as Garamond, you can just have CSS declare that all text should be in Garamond from the outset.

Think of it as like giving directions from the passenger seat of the car: you can just tell the driver, "go straight until I say otherwise" from the outset, rather than saying, "keep going straight" at each intersection.

E-book (also ebook, eBook). An electronic book available in a wide variety of formats (e.g. AZW, EPUB, MOBI, PDF) on a variety of devices (e.g. Amazon's Kindle, Barnes & Noble's Nook).

EPUB (also ePub, ePUB, EPub, epub). The industry standard e-book format. It's basically a zipped-up website.

HTML (HyperText Markup Language). The language used to write websites and e-books. It's currently on version five (HTML5).

PDF (also .pdf). Standing for "Portable Document Format," a .pdf is a file format readable by many (but not all) e-reading devices. Its primary selling point is that it represents documents independent of the machine it runs on, so a .pdf e-book looks the same no matter what devices is used to read it. For this reason, however, .pdf files are not reflowable (see below).

Reflowable content. Content (words, diagrams, illustrations, &c) that can change or "reflow" depending on the device designed to read it. Text "reflows" when you change the font size on your Kindle or when you switch back and forth between devices with different display sizes.

This is one reason e-versions of the same title look different on different devices; another is that different e-tailers do different things to the source files they receive from publishers before making the book available to the consumer.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Basically, this is the idea of improving your visibility via search engines on the Internet. For example: if you Google "[your name] author," you want your personal website to be one of the first few hits. Taking into account how search engines work and what search terms people use, it's possible to move up the list of results (often dramatically).

XHTML (eXtensible HyperText Markup Language). A family of XML languages (see below) that serves as an alternative to HTML (above).

XML (eXtensible Markup Language). Wikipedia says it best: "A set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form." If you're using Microsoft Office 2007 or later, you're already familiar with one of XML's many uses (it's the "x" in ".docx," ".xlsx," &c).

Round Up of Champions, or Goodbye Blue February

Time for the Friday round up with Laura:

It's almost March, folks, which means one thing: February, the worst month of the year, will be dead to us for 11 months. We've had to use a lot of snow-perbole to explain why the weather was so crappy, but the real answer has been right in front of us. That's right: Jesse James' memoir is causing the end of times. I really hope bad publicity doesn't help sales, because if it does that man is going to be a bestseller faster than Snooki. Who is also a bestseller. Diagnosis: genius. It must be genius hard at work, in the Snook's brain and in Jesse James' Nazi-loving skull—why else would people shell out hard-earned recession dollars for this stuff? Blech, I think I need some book therapy.

I might just wander away from books and play the Waiting for Godot video game, or scroll through Rashkolnikov's inbox, or take a listen to Hamlet's iPod (spoiler: it's not all Dashboard Confessional and The New Pornographers). I might even play Charlaine Harris' video game. Why aren't more novelists writing video games, anyway? It must be because all of the hot girls are in publishing.

Speaking of hot things, have you checked out the hot deals at Borders' liquidation sales? (Great segue, Laura!) They're almost as hot as this description of Henry Miller's last marriage. Which is to say, not hot at all. 20% is not a steep discount, folks. Although you could pick up these essential writings about writing, and take to heart these lessons in teaching writing. Then you too will be prepared to write Vonnegut's bio, or alternately, get rejected as nicely as Tim Burton. Just don't end up one of the top 10 pirated books.

Now that you're all caught up on the super important news of the week, ponder to yourselves if you can write across gender, and see what gender you write like. And for those of you school-goers and paper-writers, remember: always make your phone write your citations. This message has been brought to you by the letter L.

Prithee, Inform Me: Retailing Versus E-Tailing

Remember, writers and readers, when I said that the decline of brick-and-mortar chains could spark an indie bookstore renaissance? Well, it turns out that Paul Carr over at TechCrunch just said the exact same thing. Great minds! &c, &c.

The point being: while Borders may very well emerge from bankruptcy and go on to survive for years, their current store closings (numbering 200, or a little less than a third) will generate storefront vacancies. Some buildings will turn into something else entirely, but I'm betting a fair number will house independent bookstores.

As Paul mentions (and as I've said), there are a number of functions brick-and-mortar stores serve (specialized knowledge, author events, cafés, the experience of physically browsing, and so on) that can't be duplicated by on-line vendors.

That said, I'm sticking with my long-standing belief that independent booksellers will make something of a comeback this decade. As for you folks: do you agree? And what would draw you away from the convenience of buying books in your living room and out to your local bookstore?

Happy President's Day!

As you've no doubt by now guessed, mes auteurs, Abe Lincoln and George Washington teamed up to get me the day off of work. (I hope they did the same for you!) Come back on Wednesday for a brand-spanking-new, sweet-baby-Jesus-February-is-almost-over post!

February Thaw Round Up

Round up time with Laura:

Happy Friday, friends and foes. I am currently torn between frolicking in the heat wave (it's 60 degrees, people!) and digging myself a bunker—New York released its official apocalypse guide. It might be timed to coincide with the new Atlas Shrugged trailer, which signals the end of the world in its own way. Say goodbye to the world, 200 Borders-es. Also say goodbye to novels with Sookie Stackhouse, who remains the most annoying character on television. Anna Paquin, you're fine—Sookie Stackhouse, you are really irritating. Perhaps she should try and get some modern lessons from the Kama Sutra—since it's HBO it's 50% sex, 50% Sookie dialogue, and I'd rather not listen to her talk, thank you very much.

Speaking of oldies but goodies, Disney found out their backlist sells best digitally. Out of the vault for 30 seconds—get your $100 bills ready to buy 2 pages of the novelization of Sleeping Beauty. Oh, Disney, why are you so good at parting me from my money? I would also give my money for the 10 best Roald Dahl books, but not for Stieg Larsson's partner's memoir. I'm sure Vonnegut has a relevant quip for this. Imagine I included it here.

What else is new? Well, gym class helps kids read better, and romance still rules the roost. Barnes & Noble (you know, the big chain that hasn't filed for bankruptcy) is trying to poach Amazon affiliates, and Kathryn Stockett is being sued by her brother's maid for using her image without consent in The Help. Sue for more than $75k, Abilene! That book made a mint!

I'm off to frolick, dear readers—enjoy your 3-day weekend if you've got it, sulk about working on Monday if you have to, and I'll see you next week for more super fun adventure time!