Prithee, Inform Me: The McTitle

The Memory Keeper's Daughter.
The Bonesetter's Daughter.
The Heretic's Daughter.
The Calligrapher's Daughter.
The Hummingbird's Daughter.
The Concubine's Daughter.
The Gravedigger's Daughter.

Are we perhaps seeing a pattern?

I'm not sure whether this is something authors are unconsciously doing (due to their constant absorption of contemporary fiction), something agents and publishers are purposely doing because it's the new "[Insert Adjective Here] Wife," or both, but it's an interesting trend and I'd like to get your take on it. Have you noticed this before, or with other title "templates"? Do you think it's a sign of homogenization within the industry?

Have at it!

Nothing To Do With Fourth-Grade Math

If you've been around these parts long enough to have read my Terms to Know, then you know that in publishing, remainder (or remaindered books) are titles that are no longer selling in sufficient quantities and are being sold off by the publisher at a steep discount in an attempt to 1.) make at least some money off the remaining copies, and 2.) clear out space for new inventory in the warehouse. How does this process work, though? Well, I'm glad you asked. (Not really—it's sort of depressing.)

Where I work, there are a number of inventory managers whose job (among other things) is to monitor the rates of movement of their titles through retailers. If any fall below a certain threshold, the inventory manager will make a recommendation to the publisher to remainder those titles. The publisher reviews these recommendations and, if he or she agrees, those titles are officially remaindered. Generally, the first step is to offer the unsold copies to the author at unit cost; that is, the author has the opportunity to buy his or her unsold stock and do whatever he or she wants with it: try to sell it him/herself, donate the lot to charity, fill a water tower with it and swim around in it like some kind of bibliophilic Scrooge McDuck. The sky's the limit!

If the author doesn't want the unsold copies, however, then the books are auctioned off to retailers that specialize in remaindered books, such as Crown Books (not to be confused with the Random House publisher of the same name). As mentioned, the publisher loses some money (but not as much as they would by simply pulping the stock), makes space in the warehouse for titles that are moving, and savings are passed on to the retailer and you, the customer. The publisher loses out a little bit, and the author loses out a lot (since, as far as I know, no royalties are issued on sale of remaindered books).

Clearly, all authors want to avoid having their titles remaindered, but the sad truth is: there's nothing you can do about it besides write a killer book and do whatever you can to help sell it. Your efforts are often necessary to make your book a hit, but almost no amount of effort on your part can save a book if it's just not taking hold in the market. Not unless you and Oprah are BFFs.

Friday Plugs, Er, Round Up

Ladies and gents, Laura's Friday round-up:

Oh, hey, what's going on? Well, funny you ask! Monday was the inauguration of my solo blog, Combreviations. So, if you only read one blog, quit reading this one, jump ship, and clicky clicky over to Combreviations—I post three times a day, straight up fluff content. If you read more than one blog, you should probably add it to your rotation. Because... my posts cure cancer? And I'm a lady, and ladies are great. (Tempting though it may be, do not listen to Laura. Her posts neither cure cancer, nor are they as great as mine. – E)

Although we all know the lady-types are great at writing, sometimes we do not treat their writing as we should (shame on us). We patronize women by calling their work "chick lit," we say they write female poems, and we don't give them awards. Atone with this feminist reading list—find your feminine mystique.

A dyed-in-the-wool bra burner, who in no way encourages women to like stalkerish men, Stephanie Meyer will be appearing on Oprah, and has a biography coming out. She would probably disapprove of Cory Doctorow's response to parental outrage over teen sex (oh no!), since her universe has no teen sex.

A high school teacher who also believes in teen sex assigned a really sexual Palahniuk short story to his students and got in a ton of trouble. I, like Meyer, choose to believe that no teen has ever had sex, and will spend my time reading my Bible handwritten by 30,000 people or my Xbox Bible, depending on how I feel.

Please, stem your outrage (over teen sex, my mockery, or my Jesus joke—oh, wait, that was last week). Take deep, meditative breaths and remember that the inventor of the AK-47 originally wanted to be a poet. Yea, you thought you knew everything about poetry? I bet you can't even pass this poetry quiz (gauntlet: thrown!).

Fine, let's stray from the sex and guns and poetry. Here's the story behind Clifford the Big Red Dog, and you can generate your own children's book title, which may or may not involve animal noir.

If you're looking for gifts for your favorite Friday round up writing blogger (or your "friends and family"), you can always get these awesome bookends. Especially the Star Wars ones. Or you could buy this someone a copy of T-Rex's autobiography! You could order a Nook, but they're on back order, or you could get this old-fangled paper book about really ridiculous science flops.

I know, I know, the paper book. What a joke, my friends. Don't paper books know that the mall bookstore is dead? That the library is now a social scene, not for reading? That the 1768 Encyclopedia Britannica was totally inaccurate?

Sometimes life is hard. But, readers, life doesn't need to be hard for you. Because we can hang out every day, over at Combreviations. I know, I know—I'm excited too.

The Times, They Are A-Changin'

After looking at the results of yesterday's poll and some of the comments you all had re: the evil that is e-ink, I (as usual) have formed some opinions and generated a few thoughts in response. (I have lots of thoughts and opinions, most which have to do with books and/or cookies.)

First, the problem of eye strain. As mentioned in the comments and in Nathan's Jedi mind-reading mirror poll, most e-reader screens are made with e-ink, meaning they reflect light like a book page does, rather than generating light like a computer screen. Though I'm still warming up to my Sony reader, I have to say that eye strain isn't an issue for me, and I'm curious as to whether the problem of eye strain is generally related to personal experience or is merely assumed to be true based on a perceived analogy between backlit computer screens and e-reader screens.

Second, the price. True, e-readers these days will cost you a bundle, but much like the VCR (remember those?), DVD player, and pretty much any other media device, the price is going to drop precipitously once multiple generations of the machine are available and market penetration reaches a certain point. I voted in Nathan's poll, indicating I'd spend $100 on an e-reader, though to be fair I might drop $150 if I really, really liked it. At $100 for a reader and $10 (roughly) per book, it would only take 15 "hardcovers" to pull a full copy ahead of the p-book game. Observe:

$18 per print hardcover x 14 hardcovers = $252.
$100 e-reader + $10 per book x 15 "hardcovers" = $250.

And I'd recoup my initial investment on the 13th copy ($18 x 13 = $234; $100 + $10 x 13 = $230). True, readers aren't retailing for $100—yet. But eventually they'll get there. Will you buy one then? (I'm starting to feel a little like Sam-I-Am here.)

Third, there's the problem of having your entire library in one place. Admittedly, yes, if you drop your reader in the toilet, you'll lose all your books. Unless, of course, the future is graced by a magical yet strangely ominous entity that ties your virtual library to an on-line account, not an individual reader, so if you order a new reader from them and access your account on it... all your books will be back.

This does not happen if your house burns down with all your print books in it (heaven forbid).

Fourth, resale and lending. Barnes & Noble's newfangled nook (no capitalization allowed, apparently) has a rudimentary lending feature, and there's no reason to think better lending applications won't be integerated into future models. True, resale will probably be forever beyond the ability of the e-book (or, more accurately, retailers will prevent this capability in order to maintain profits... unless they decide to take a cut of whatever profits you make on the resale), but why would you need to resell an e-book? Is it taking up too much space on your e-shelf or in your e-garage? Personally, I don't find this a serious problem.

Agreed, you can't get an e-book autographed—yet. But the first completely wireless, slim, full-color, touch-screen-with-stylus (for my personal annotations and Michael Chabon's signature) reader that comes out for under $200 will have my hard-earned cash faster than you can say "nook." Yes. That fast.

Poll is the New Blog

First: happy Veteran's Day!

Next: business. The last time I ran a poll (three long weeks ago), I wasn't too surprised to learn that about half of you are waiting for e-reader technology to improve before you'll decide to buy one. I must admit, however, that I was a taken a bit aback by the fact that nearly a third of you insist you will never buy one of those damnable devices so long as you live.

In the interest of science, I hereby submit to you the following follow-up poll:

Fun Fact: The MTI Bump

"MTI," of course, standing for "movie tie-in." It's probably no surprise to you that the sales of a book jump when the film version comes out, but there are a few interesting facts regarding the MTI phenomenon that may surprise you:

• The publisher not only accounts for the number of copies of that fancy movie tie-in edition when gearing up for book sales around the movie release date, but also tries to factor in how many copies of the original edition they'll sell due to the publicity surrounding the film. Yes, both the movie tie-in version with that shiny screen shot cover and the original version get a nice sales push from the movie. (This is more pronounced if the book has already been published in paperback form.)
• Even if the reviews for the movie are uniformly abysmal, there will still be a bump in sales for the book. No one is quite sure why this is, but my theory is that most people bank on the book being better than the movie (or, alternately, they want to see whether the book was just as bad).
• As far as I can tell, there's no real second jump in sales when the DVD of the film is released.

Many of you have asked how the movie tie-in phenomenon is figured out in-house. It depends on a lot of factors, but the most important one is: the film rights for your book have to be optioned and somebody (somebody pretty important) has got to turn your book into a movie, which can take years. And that's just not my department. I'll do some research to see what I can dig up, but the honest truth is that without a novel that will translate well to the screen (which is very different from a generally brilliant, salable novel), you're pretty much out of luck.

And besides, if you're writing books in the hopes of having them made into movies... why not just cut out the middle man and write screenplays?

Rightsizing is the New Downsizing

There comes a time in every young Sith apprentice's life when he or she must decide to turn on the master and kill him/sell him out to the Jedi/decimate his sweet Google Analytics stats by diverting web traffic to her new blog. That time is now: Laura has just started her own blog, Combreviations, where she will talk about... whatever she wants. Fear not, gentle readers: she'll still be doing the weekly round-ups here at PMN. You just have significantly more content to read every week. Hooray for you, and congratulations, Laura!

Speaking of Laura's new blog—or, more specifically, the content of her first post—if you haven't heard, Walden is being "right-sized" to 130 stores (down from around 330). Now, it'd be easy to go a little nuts and declare this another nail in the Borders coffin (for those not in the know, Borders owns Walden), but I don't think this is the case. Here's why:

· While I think decreased foot traffic through malls (vis-à-vis the recession) has been partly responsible for the decision, you have to realize that these stores have been on their way out for nearly a decade. Borders has been steadily reducing the Walden store count since 2001 in an effort to increase efficiency and profitability, and if pushing the count down to 130 stores helps them do this, then I encourage it—although I am sorry for anyone losing a job due to the restructuring. My good thoughts are with you (yes, I occasionally have good thoughts).
· Theoretically (and according to the company), this "right-sizing" will allow Borders to finally fully integrate Walden into their computer system, which will be a huge relief for everyone in the industry currently having to juggle the separate (and oft-incompatible) Borders and Walden systems. This alone will contribute considerably to increased efficiency in title (re)orders, getting titles listed in the computer system, and so on.
· Barnes & Noble is making a similar move with their B. Dalton mall stores, which indicates to me it's more of a "mall book store" problem than a chain-specific one. With the rise of e-books imminent and the current print-book market currently split between the the superstores, Amazon, mass merch retailers, and large independents, there's not much room left for the mall folks, and that limited space is shrinking fast. I'm not even sure I know anyone who buys books in a mall anymore.

What do you think?