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Three Agents, Changing

In time, there’s going to be so much self-publishing that you’ll have to invent publishing.

Never mind that David Mitchell, Ian Fleming’s estate, John le Carré, Susanna Clarke, Dun­can Fal­low­ell, Nel­son Man­dela, Adam Thorpe, Carl Hiaasen, J.K. Rowl­ing and a lot of other key writ­ers were rep­re­sented at the table. Agent Clare Alexan­der had her audi­ence laugh­ing, their chuck­les as rue­ful as merry.

Because, who’s going to be able to tell what’s any good? In time, you’ll need to cre­ate some­thing that says, ‘This is what’s good.’”

I want to return today to some moments that touched mainly on the boom in self-publishing in our Chang­ing Role of the Lit­er­ary Agent panel from Monday’s Future­Book 2012 Con­fer­ence, orga­nized and pre­sented by Nigel Roby’s The Book­seller with Philip Jones and Sam Miss­ing­ham in London.

If any­thing, the dig­i­tally enabled rise of self-publishing is emblem­atic of the trans­for­ma­tion that agents, like pub­lish­ers, are hav­ing to con­tem­plate. And if there’s a sin­gle term for what agents do up ahead, “man­ager” seems to be part of it.

These experts’ com­ments were as ger­mane to US and other nations’ authors and agents as they were to UK pros. But they were also reflec­tive of the man­age­r­ial role(s) that agents are cul­ti­vat­ing for them­selves to accom­mo­date deep and some­times sur­pris­ingly mature shifts in their world.

It hasn’t been the sell-a-book-over-lunch busi­ness for a long time. And what do they man­age? — copy­rights? pro­duc­tions? multi-platform pres­ence in the mar­ket? pub­lic image? pri­vate devel­op­ment? a mesh of both tra­di­tion­ally and self-published con­tent? All that, per­haps, and more. These are not your dis­ser­ta­tion authors’ agents.

And what we heard Mon­day from them were the opin­ions of four strong per­son­al­i­ties — three agents (Clare Alexan­der, Neil Blair, Jonny Geller) and one author (Joanna Penn, pub­lish­ing as J.F. Penn) — each flu­ent and engaged daily in her or his under­stand­ing of what’s happening.

As mod­er­a­tor of the panel, I had prompted Alexander’s com­ments on self-publishing when I brought up authors who declare them­selves to be ded­i­cated self-publishers for life but are eagerly using their self-published books to try to attract a tra­di­tional con­tract. She knew the type:

It’s like dat­ing. You say, “I don’t really want to go out with you,” but you do.

A part­ner with the Aitken Alexan­der agency, Alexan­der made it clear she likes to warn her indus­try col­leagues about using self-published work as a new dig­i­tal slush pile for new authors. The con­stant scan­ning for mate­r­ial, she says, can make them seem pro­fes­sion­ally ADD:

Every­one is so fright­ened that they’re miss­ing some­thing else going on out of the cor­ner of their eye that they’re for­get­ting to stick to their plan about pub­lish­ing well those books they believe in.

Jonny Geller, whose Cur­tis Brown UK has one of the most envied lists in the busi­ness, was quick to respond to Alexander.

I’m going to dis­agree with you on this. I think that what’s emerged from the Pear­son acqui­si­tion of Author Solu­tions and the E.L. James phe­nom­e­non is two mod­els of busi­ness. One is the cura­tion and taste model, the top-down model, one that’s lasted for a long, long time, and the one we’ve made our liv­ing in. The other is — and I don’t use this term pejo­ra­tively — the bottom-up. Where you get any­body writ­ing any­thing, and the best will trickle to the top.

And I assume what will hap­pen is that Model A (top-down) will go to Model B (bottom-up) and try to mon­e­tize it at a later date. So in a way, it’s us (agents, in try­ing to scan for good “bottom-up” poten­tial) doing the work for the pub­lish­ers. It’s actu­ally up to us, then, to invest money and time into devel­op­ing Model B (that scan­ning for mate­r­ial that Alexan­der feels is the wrong focus).

Joanna Penn, the self-publishing author on our panel, jumped in here to point out that all self-publishing authors aren’t just say­ing “I don’t want to go out with you” at all:

It’s just that those who aren’t flock­ing to pub­lish­ers aren’t news­wor­thy. “Author Doesn’t Sign With Pub­lisher” has no ring to it. And the “tsunami of crap” doesn’t make any difference.There are mil­lions and mil­lions of books on Ama­zon that don’t suck. So for me, as a busi­ness­woman, it’s impor­tant what ranks, what sells, and the mini-brand that all authors are build­ing. We all grow our own email lists now (as tra­di­tional pub­lish­ers do). What’s funny is that now, I’m sim­ply a micro-publisher. There’s room for every­body in this market.

 

Geller’s firm has arranged to have more than 200 back­list titles pub­lished on Ama­zon for some of its key authors, engaged with Penn. I have more for you on that angle in a sec­tion below, Cur­tis Brown in Ama­zo­nia.

“So one advan­tage of a pub­lisher is that it’s spread across sev­eral plat­forms?” he asked Penn, mean­ing that the pub­lish­ing com­pany has offices and spe­cial­ists to han­dle func­tions a self-publisher finds more dif­fi­cult. He elaborated:

It’s about your own soul, your work. You don’t want to be up at 3 in the morn­ing talk­ing about Lat­vian rights. Most self-published peo­ple I’ve met, actu­ally do want to make the tran­si­tion (to a trade pub­lish­ing contract).

A cou­ple of quick points:

• On the usual assump­tion that an author gets less atten­tion in a big agency, Geller pointed out that each agent at Cur­tis Brown UK (which has some 80 staffers total) has three sup­port peo­ple, giv­ing an author more atten­tion than a very small shop can produce.
• Neil Blair, whose still-young agency The Blair Part­ner­ship rep­re­sents no less a leg­end than J.K. Rowl­ing, agreed with Geller. He responded, as it hap­pened, to  a ques­tion from Pot­ter­more CEO Char­lie Red­mayne on the floor about pos­si­ble agency con­sol­i­da­tion Blair said that with the com­plex­i­ties of the busi­ness now com­ing into play:

The indus­try won’t be able to sus­tain these hun­dreds of (small) agents as it has for so long.

• On one of Penn’s most press­ing ques­tions going in was about agents try­ing to take com­mis­sion on self-published work. The panel’s agents were clear that this is wrong, and that trans­parency in con­trac­tual points is mandatory.

Alexan­der spoke to this one:

It sounds crazy to me (for an agent to get com­mis­sion on an author’s self-published work). I think it has to do with old-style agent­ing agree­ments that haven’t moved on and reflected the dif­fer­ent ways that authors might par­tic­i­pate in that rela­tion­ship. We do have con­tracts with com­mis­sion income, of course, but that’s based on our doing the work, not on the author doing the work.

 

When I asked the agents what we’ll call them in five years or 10 years, Geller tried to get away with “older.” (He wasn’t done, either — he tried “dynamic force of good” on us a few min­utes later for the agent’s future title, to the room’s loud amusement.)

When Blair took up the ques­tion, he stressed that the gen­eral direc­tion already seems clear:

I think it’s hard to find a word that doesn’t have “man­ager” in it…I think the author is going to want help, and to be hand-held in an ever-growing com­plex world. And there will be oppor­tu­ni­ties for that man­ager to pro­vide advice and ser­vices in lots of dif­fer­ent areas, and to help the author help themselves.

When I asked Blair if this didn’t mean that he and his col­leagues must start with a much larger range of skills at their own dis­posal to cover this widen­ing range of ser­vices, he and the other two agents quickly agreed.

And for her part, Alexan­der cau­tioned against provin­cial­ism. She described it in UK terms, but in the dig­i­tal glob­al­iza­tion, agents world­wide are hav­ing to face this reality:

I see that we’re all lit­tle Eng­lan­ders. I think there are a lot of lit­tle Eng­lish agen­cies. I think we want to be in India (as her agency is, very aggres­sively) where there’s fab­u­lous writ­ing and where there’s a grow­ing market.

I think we want to be in Canada. I think we want to be in the United States. We want to be more open to the world.

Some tra­di­tion­ally pub­lished authors, includ­ing JamesS­cot­tBell, have raised warn­ings to their col­leagues of pub­lish­ers being resis­tant to authors self-publishing novel­las or sin­gles to bol­ster the sales of their major contract-published book. The answer? — the panel said  trans­parency. Geller made his com­ment in a nod to Blair and Pottermore’s Redmayne.

I think where Pot­ter­more has really had a vision — and, of course, we all keep say­ing that JK Rowl­ing has spe­cial power — but they’ve said, “OK, we want to do this, heaven knows what the rights sit­u­a­tion is, but why don’t we get them all ’round the table and sort it out? And that, surely, is the way for­ward, whether it’s a brand-author or a author who has one huge suc­cess­ful hit, or an ongo­ing suc­cess. No pub­lisher will cut off their nose to spite their face if they can see a proper busi­ness plan.

The agents were asked if they were con­cerned about merg­ers mak­ing the pool of major pub­lish­ers smaller.

As Penn had men­tioned, con­sol­i­da­tion can con­tribute fur­ther to a “shrink­ing breadth of cre­ativ­ity allowed in these big con­glom­er­ates,” with less and less tol­er­ance for niche interests.

Over­all, the agents were san­guine about con­sol­i­da­tion and unafraid of it nar­row­ing the num­ber of poten­tial sales outlets.

Geller had the last laugh on the ques­tion, when I pressed him about just how many pub­lish­ers are really needed:

Porter, all you need is two.

| | |

New, addi­tional and related writ­ings on Future­Book 2012 include:

Philip Jones’ strong edi­to­r­ial: Imag­ine:

We are at a moment where the future is not fixed; a time when what we do and how we do it can change per­cep­tions and busi­ness mod­els. If we fail, it will not be because we lacked the skill, or the struc­ture, or even the finance, but sim­ply because we lacked the imag­i­na­tion, and pos­si­bly the con­vic­tion to see it through.

And for con­trast in terms of the agent’s role and bear­ing in the indus­try, see Paul Vitello’s New York Times Books obit on agent Robert Lescher, who once worked with Singer, Tok­las, Frost and others:

Mr. Lescher epit­o­mized a kind of Old World ideal of author’s agent — courtly, lit­er­ary and invis­i­ble — reflect­ing both his nature and his wealth of con­tacts in the book world, where he began his career as an edi­tor and some­thing of a wun­derkind. He was named edi­tor in chief at Henry Holt & Com­pany before he was 25.

 

More on the con­fer­ence is in this week’s Ether for Authors at Pub­lish­ing Per­spec­tives, and in a com­pi­la­tion The Book­seller’s Philip Jones has posted at The­Fu­ture­book, Liv­ing the Dig­i­tal Dream. An Epi­log­ger account aggre­ga­tion is being main­tained here. Please tag any tweets with hash­tag #fbook12, so we can cap­ture them.

 

Click to read this week’s full Writ­ing on the Ether col­umn at JaneFriedman.com.

Table of Contents

1. Flex­i­bil­ity: Lis­ten­ing to the Pub­lish­ers’ Convo
2. Tech-ing Up: ‘Trans­for­ma­tive, Excit­ing, Alarming’
3. Authors on Pub­lish­ers: Who’s Sorry Now?
4. Your Turn: Sur­vey­ing Discoverability
5. Except Some Coun­tries: Amazon’s Inter­na­tional Competition
6. Craft: Sto­ry­board­ing as a Sales Tool
7. Craft: Mak­ing the Scene
8. Craft: Take Aim at Foot and…
9. Con­fer­ences To Con­sider (And Tell Me Yours)
10. Books: Read­ing on the Ether
11. Those Busy ‘Arti­sans’: Self-Publishing Books

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Flex­i­bil­ity: Lis­ten­ing to the Pub­lish­ers’ Convo

Let’s say an author has writ­ten, over time, a twenty-book series. Because pub­lish­ers so often take the print edition/file as it was when the first book was orig­i­nally pub­lished, the list­ing of con­nected books in the series is miss­ing in the ebook.

In The Smartest Thing Pub­lish­ers Can Do Is Be Flex­i­ble, pub­lish­ing con­sul­tant Kas­sia Krozser is not talk­ing directly to authors. But she’s mak­ing a lot of sense on issues of how the con­tent they cre­ate is handled.

By the twen­ti­eth book, we, of course, have a com­plete list­ing – but that doesn’t help the ebook reader (or, to be hon­est, the print book reader!) buy­ing the first book today. Why not have those ear­lier edi­tions updated to reflect new books in the series and/or new books by the author?

One of the things I try to do in Ether for Authors is come to you with mate­r­ial that isn’t aimed directly at authors. So many of the dis­cus­sions dri­ven by the dig­i­tal dynamic affect authors, and yet may not include them. Tra­di­tions  of the indus­try, after all, tend to see busi­ness as some­thing dis­cussed and debated by pub­lish­ers but rarely shared with writers.

If any­thing, not fol­low­ing the debates being held at the indus­try level is one of the biggest mis­takes some authors make. The “just write the best book you can and keep your head down” model won’t work any­more. You need to know what the busi­ness is hear­ing and saying.

I know Lord Byron sounds like he was prob­a­bly fas­ci­nat­ing but I sus­pect he was the kind of douchebag who is ter­ri­ble at mak­ing conversation.

— Gin­ger Clark (@Ginger_Clark) Decem­ber 10, 2012

 

If I were stuck next to him at some kind of indus­try lunch he’d be com­pletely silent and brood­ing and there­fore BORING. — Gin­ger Clark (@Ginger_Clark) Decem­ber 10, 2012

This is one rea­son I’m glad to see both Tools of Change and Pub­lish­ers Launch  cre­ate all-new authors’ con­fer­ence events – Author ®evo­lu­tion Day and Authors Launch, respec­tively; see the Con­fer­ences sec­tion below. Their arrival has to do with a recog­ni­tion of the author’s newly under­stood promi­nence. As Bookigee’s Kris­ten McLean puts it in her first of two arti­cles about devel­op­ing the ®evo­lu­tion Day program:

We had a grow­ing aware­ness that the kinds of con­ver­sa­tions and infor­ma­tion we were deal­ing with at TOC—important con­ver­sa­tions about the future of publishing—were not mak­ing it over the fence to the peo­ple who needed it most: the authors and creators.

And as pub­lish­ers work to reframe their con­cepts of the author’s stance — and his or her rela­tion­ship to the reader — an author must lis­ten to these con­tro­ver­sies, track devel­op­ments, under­stand the trends they rep­re­sent, and learn to take advan­tage of the industry’s evolv­ing picture.

3:45 Hon­olulu time. Head­ing out for my first (and likely only) marathon! — Kas­sia Krozser (@booksquare) Decem­ber 9, 2012

Krozser has a great point about the poten­tial for what Bowker’s Laura Daw­son refers to as “net­worked books.”

Linked data, I believe, is the next big thing. I’m sure oth­ers have their def­i­n­i­tions, but here’s mine. The con­nec­tions in books, between books, between books and other media, between books and the real world.

And in this inter­view at 40K Books (its novel­las and essays take around 40 min­utes to read), Krozser has brought together a suite of fac­tors mak­ing pub­lish­ers’ jobs tricky but with her char­ac­ter­is­tic inter­est in writ­ers and writ­ing never far below the surface.

Where are the women satirists? We asked our agony aunts for the answer: ow.ly/fWbd9 — For Books’ Sake (@forbookssake) Decem­ber 11, 2012

For exam­ple, she’s asked by 40K what she thinks are the “three unavoid­able steps for pub­lish­ers today. Excerpt­ing from her answers:

Flex­i­bil­ity…From my per­spec­tive, the smartest thing every­one in the pub­lish­ing food chain can do is be flex­i­ble. This means pub­lish­ers, authors, dis­trib­u­tors, mar­keters, and ser­vice providers. World­wide Rights…I get frus­trated when a book is only avail­able in the UK, yet is get­ting all kinds of pub­lic­ity in the United States. Think of all the books pub­lished around the world — and think of how many books will be made avail­able to me between now and the time a pub­lisher deigns to bring out that book in my ter­ri­tory. Rethink­ing Pric­ing. For bet­ter or worse, self-published authors are chang­ing the (trade) book econ­omy. And, for bet­ter or worse, tra­di­tional pub­lish­ers have not artic­u­lated a great case for them­selves. I am not advo­cat­ing cheap books, but I am advo­cat­ing *cheaper* books. More thought­ful pric­ing. More con­sid­er­a­tion of the audi­ence. More atten­tion to qual­ity (which we now spell “qaulity”).

Her ref­er­ence there is to her pre­sen­ta­tion at the Books in Browsers con­fer­ence in San Fran­cisco, “What Do Read­ers Want? Books! How Do They Want Them? Every Way Pos­si­ble!” You can see her ses­sion on video here, the tape’s TRT, or total run­ning time, is 16:31 min­utes. That video is part of an O’Reilly col­lec­tion from the con­fer­ence — pro­duced in asso­ci­a­tion with the Inter­net Archive. These tapes are view­able at no charge. And Krozser adds one more “unavoid­able step” we hear being echoed fre­quently these days around the work of newly empow­ered writers:

Fear­less­ness. We talk a lot about pub­lish­ers exper­i­ment­ing, but there isn’t a lot of truly exper­i­men­tal ideas com­ing from pub­lish­ing houses…Pushing the bound­aries of read­ing – or even get­ting pub­lish­ing as we know it into the same realm as the web (where peo­ple already are) – requires tak­ing great leaps into the unknown.

Krozser’s inter­view works as a use­ful posi­tion paper, and it’s the kind of thing I hope more authors are tak­ing the time to read these days. Craft work is grand, but when it comes to under­stand­ing the busi­ness in which that craft must be pub­lished, authors can no longer “stick to the writ­ing blogs.” Know­ing what pub­lish­ers face in today’s mar­ket is the only way for an author to find a place for him– or her­self. Back to Table of Contents

Awe-inspiring aurora bore­alis pics from Mar­tin McKenna: bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northe…

— Dave Mor­ris (@MirabilisDave) Decem­ber 11, 2012

 

 

Tech-ing Up: ‘Trans­for­ma­tive, Excit­ing, Alarming’

We have a blank can­vas in front of us now that is capa­ble of so much more than just print.

By coin­ci­dence, another key observer has just been inter­viewed at 40K Books, much of what O’Reilly Media’s Joe Wik­ert has to tell  Letizia Sechi there dove­tails hand­ily with Krozser’s comments.

In Pub­ll­ish­ers Need to Immerse Them­selves in Tech­nol­ogy, one of the things Wik­ert notes in describ­ing the fac­tors that make the dig­i­tal dynamic alarm­ing in pub­lish­ing is:

All the walled gar­dens that are being erected. Ama­zon is the per­fect exam­ple here. Cus­tomers are attracted by the irre­sistible deals but will even­tu­ally real­ize they’re locked into the Ama­zon plat­form, or at least the con­tent they pur­chase is locked into it.

When asked what might stand as an inter­est­ing inno­va­tion in the pipeline, Wik­ert points to the idea of ebook sub­scrip­tions — the con­cept often ref­er­erred to as a “Spo­tify for books.” He points out, how­ever, that in pub­lish­ing, the widest wash of inter­est may not work like it does in music:

As a con­sumer I’m more inter­ested in spe­cific gen­res with a great deal of depth, not a broad list of titles, many of which I don’t really care about. So a sports sub­scrip­tion, a his­tory one or a bio­graph­i­cal one would be very appeal­ing to me. Many con­sumers (myself included!) scoffed at the idea of a music sub­scrip­tion pro­gram before Spo­tify. That mind­set is chang­ing rapidly.

What a beau­ti­ful (if chilly) day for the start of our Win­ter Cer­e­monies. Con­grat­u­la­tions to every­one grad­u­at­ing today! bit.ly/XyLCPM

— Uni­ver­sity of Bath (@UniofBath) Decem­ber 11, 2012

Not sur­pris­ingly for the gen­eral man­ager and pubisher at O’Reilly, when Wik­ert gets Sechi’s “three unavoid­able steps for pub­lish­ers ques­tion,” he goes right for the dig­i­tal­iza­tion of it all:

Embrace tech­nol­ogy…How can you get a sense for the customer’s point of view if you’re not using a tablet and/or eInk device on a reg­u­lar basis? Think beyond just the portable, pack­aged for­mats…HTML5 is a tech­nol­ogy pub­lish­ers need to fully embrace. Aban­don DRM. It’s time to start trust­ing your customers…This will also help tear down those walled gardens.

As with Krozser’s com­ments to 40K, the author who assumes these points are “just for pub­lish­ers to worry about” not only isn’t fol­low­ing what’s hap­pen­ing in the indus­try — and what pub­lish­ers are being told about it — but also where points of poten­tial lever­age for the writ­ers’ corps might lie. Back to Table of Contents

4 stage direc­tors react to the con­tro­versy about La Travi­ata — bit.ly/12izMZE — La Mon­naie De Munt (@LaMonnaieDeMunt) Decem­ber 11, 2012

Authors on Pub­lish­ers: Who’s Sorry Now?

 

Across the board, authors unhappy at pub­lish­ers’ mar­ket­ing efforts sub­stan­tially out­weigh those who are sat­is­fied. “Mar­ket­ing strategy? Don’t make me laugh,” says one. There are plenty of com­plaints about pricing—though they are split between those who con­sider it too high to attract read­ers and those think­ing it too low to prop­erly reward authors. “Publishers seem in dis­ar­ray with regards to pric­ing,” com­ments one author.

Almost as soon as we all got back from the Future­Book 2012 Con­fer­ence in Lon­don last week, the third annual Dig­i­tal Cen­sus was pub­lished by The­Fu­ture­Book and The Book­seller — “a detailed pic­ture of dig­i­tal trends and issues across the indus­try.” The sur­vey, made in Sep­tem­ber and Octo­ber, “drew responses from 2,459 peo­ple with pro­fes­sional links to books or pub­lish­ing,” accord­ing to Sam Miss­ing­ham of The­Fu­ture­Book. It should be noted, too, that respon­dents to this sur­vey are self-selecting, vol­un­teer­ing their responses when invited to par­tic­i­pate. Try­ing to extrap­o­late results to the widest pop­u­la­tion of pub­lish­ing pro­fes­sion­als with assump­tions of sci­en­tific via­bil­ity — or even to the over­all pub­lish­ing com­mu­nity of the UK — may be unwise. How­ever, as an annual snap­shot of what a pool of issue-aware, engaged pub­lish­ing peo­ple are say­ing about their indus­try and out­look, the Dig­i­tal Cen­sus makes for inter­est­ing reading.

Authors who get help with story edit­ing, copy edit­ing, proof­read­ing, and cover design make 34% more than the aver­age. blog.taleist.com/2012/05/24/rep… — Wendy Mon­aghan AE (@WMEditing) Decem­ber 4, 2012

Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est? Atti­tudes among authors about their pub­lish­ers. “Nearly two-thirds (64.2 per­cent) of our sur­vey respon­dents are based in the UK,” sur­vey doc­u­men­ta­tion tells us. “But responses were received from around the world, with good pro­por­tions con­tribut­ing from the US and Europe in par­tic­u­lar.” Some 13.2 per­cent responded from the States; about 10.5 per­cent sur­veyed were in parts of Europe other than the United King­dom; and Aus­tralian and New Zealand respon­dents accounted for 5.3 per­cent of the input. Respon­dents describ­ing them­selves as tra­di­tion­ally pub­lished authors accounted for 9.8 per­cent of the over­all sur­vey group. Those char­ac­ter­iz­ing them­selves as self-publishing authors com­prised 5.3 per­cent. What may put a wry smile on the faces of many Amer­i­can authors are the pre­dom­i­nantly non-US — but fully famil­iar — opin­ions of the respond­ing authors to ques­tions on the sur­vey ask­ing them to appraise their publishers.

• Three in five (61.8 per­cent) either strongly or mildly agree that their pub­lisher com­mu­ni­cates well with them.

 

• But fewer than half (49.5 per­cent) think that their pub­lisher does every­thing in their power to sell their books.

 

 

• A sim­i­lar num­ber (48.2 per­cent) strongly or mildly agree that they have con­sid­ered switch­ing to self-publishing.

 

 

• Asked about their sat­is­fac­tion with what their pub­lisher achieves, on a scale of one to 10—where one is very unsat­is­fied and 10 is very satisfied—their aver­age rat­ing is 6.2. That would seem to sug­gest a ver­dict that pub­lish­ers serve them rea­son­ably well but could do better.

 

 

 

Keep­ing in mind that the sur­vey uni­verse here of self-described authors is not large — either tra­di­tion­ally pub­lish­ing or self-publishing — there nev­er­the­less are some inter­est­ing ele­ments of com­par­i­son to note.

Sur­vey Shows Pla­gia­rism a Reg­u­lar Prob­lem in Schol­arly Research, Pub­lish­ing, But Action to Pre­vent Falls Short heraldonline.com/2012/12/05/446…

— Pla­gia­ris­mOrg (@PlagiarismDtOrg) Decem­ber 5, 2012

 

Pre­ferred plat­forms for self-publishing

As it does for pub­lish­ers, Ama­zon dom­i­nates self-published authors’ work. Nearly nine in 10 (88.3 per­cent) [of respon­dents to this sur­vey] use its Kin­dle Direct Pub­lish­ing plat­form to sell their e-books. The next most pop­u­lar plat­forms are Smash­words (used by 43.3 per­cent), Cre­ate­Space (39.2 per­cent), Barnes & Noble’s PubIt  (25.8 percent), Kobo’s Writ­ing Life (23.3 per­cent), Apple’s iBooks Author (19.2 per­cent), and Lulu (14.2 percent).

What do self-publishers pay for?

Just over half (52.9 per­cent) of self-published authors [respond­ing to this sur­vey] pay for pub­lish­ing ser­vices.
Edi­to­r­ial and cover design are the most pop­u­lar ser­vices, though some also pay for adver­tis­ing, dis­tri­b­u­tion and for­mat­ting support.

What do self-publishers want?

Two in five (43.3 per­cent)  [of those authors respond­ing]  say they would ulti­mately like to get a trade book deal, with a sim­i­lar pro­por­tion (44.3 per­cent) express­ing ambiva­lence and only a small num­ber (12.3 per­cent) set firmly against the idea.

I found this par­tic­u­larly inter­est­ing, the ques­tion of self-publishers seek­ing trade con­tracts. As we’ve seen in past Ether cov­er­age, the more mil­i­tant mem­bers of the self-publishing authors’ com­mu­nity tend to talk as if self-publishing is their intended career-long mode. But train­ing pro­grams and con­fer­ences for self-publishers fre­quently seem focused on the hope of attract­ing a tra­di­tional pub­lish­ing con­tract through a good show­ing in self-publication.

Some of the com­men­tary in the survey’s 35 pages gets at the irony here of self-publishers hop­ing to move into tra­di­tional pub­lish­ing for ele­ments of sup­port and pro­duc­tion that some tra­di­tion­ally pub­lished authors bit­terly assert are no longer offered.

Those who would like a deal [say they] value the pres­tige and the reduc­tion in work it would bring, and think it would give them more money and mar­ket­ing support—though as has been seen, it was a short­age of these two things that drove other authors into self-publishing in the first place.

New national alco­hol sur­vey shows 48% of 16 & 17 year olds con­sumed more than 4 drinks on one ocas­sion in the last week nationaldrugstrategy.gov.au/internet/drugs…

— Michael Thorn (@MichaelTThorn) Decem­ber 10, 2012

Bot­tom lines Finally, the survey’s in terms of sales on the self-publishing side seem to reflect what’s being seen on the wider stage. Big rack-‘em-up sales aren’t the norm by a long shot, despite what some of the respond­ing authors seem to be say­ing about their hap­pi­ness quo­tient when out from under the con­fines of a tra­di­tional contract.

Being sat­is­fied does not nec­es­sar­ily mean they [self-publishing authors sur­veyed] have sold a lot of books. Three in five (60.3 per­cent of) self-published authors say they have sold fewer than 1,000 e-books, with smaller num­bers sell­ing between 1,000 and 5,000 (11.6 per­cent); between 5,000 and 10,000 (6.6 per­cent); or between 10,000 and 50,000 (9.9 per­cent). Only one in nine (11.5 per­cent) has sold more than 50,000 e-books.

Suf­fice it to say, the announce­ment of the survey’s find­ings car­ries an apt understatement:

Authors are still find­ing their feet in the new digital order.

| | | The full report is avail­able from The­Fu­ture­Book and its par­ent, The Book­seller, at £97 for sub­scribers and £127. My thanks to Sam Miss­ing­ham, Philip Jones, and Nigel Roby for the chance to offer a few of the Dig­i­tal Survey’s wide-ranging results. Back to Table of Contents

We are keen to learn more about your #eBook read­ing habits! This won’t take you more than 2 min­utes bookboon.com/blog/bookboons… #Pub­lish­ing #Sur­vey — Jan van Schup­pen (@vanschuppen) Decem­ber 5, 2012

 

Your Turn: Sur­vey­ing Discoverability

There’s a new sur­vey under way and I hope you’ll con­sider offer­ing your input on it. Joseph Espos­ito has led the way on this one, and is being sup­ported by Joe Wik­ert and O’Reilly Media, with the par­tic­i­pa­tion of Forbes. In his intro­duc­tion post on the sur­vey, A short sur­vey about turn­ing dis­cov­ery into sales, Espos­ito writes, empha­sis mine:

We are liv­ing at a time of enor­mous inno­va­tion in all aspects of pub­lish­ing. Well, almost all: the pri­macy of the dis­tinc­tive author has not changed at all. But every­where else–how we pro­duce books, where we buy them, how we share them (if we can)–innovation and dis­rup­tion are the norm. Not all of the new ven­tures in the book busi­ness will sur­vive, but it is far too early to be pre­dict­ing a shakeout.

As whole con­fer­ences are mounted on the ques­tion of dis­cov­er­abil­ity, authors are becom­ing as aware as pub­lish­ers of the real chal­lenge: even “the dis­tinc­tive author,” as Espos­ito describes her or him, is fight­ing to be found as the so-called “tsunami of crap” enabled by dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing devel­op­ments inun­dates mar­kets and all but sub­merges read­ers in a drown­ing pool of choice. Espos­ito writes:

The key stip­u­la­tion of this sur­vey is that it asks you to focus on books that you actu­ally pur­chased for your­self. Gift books don’t count. Where did you first hear about these books? Which are the media orga­ni­za­tions that pub­lish­ers should be pay­ing atten­tion to?

If you’re too pressed for time to read more of Esposito’s ratio­nale in his post, you can go directly to the sur­vey. It is quick, as promised. Back to Table of Contents

Hor­ror movie ;-) The life of books after the death of print — dis­sected by bored house­wifes youtube.com/watch?v=kJ14c3… — Sebas­t­ian Posth (@sposth) Decem­ber 11, 2012

 

Except Some Coun­tries: Amazon’s Inter­na­tional Competition

If you look at the offi­cial rules for Amazon’s new com­pe­ti­tion for a 2013 “Break­through Novel,” you find that entrants can­not be national or legal per­ma­nent res­i­dents of  Burma, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan or Syria. You have to won­der if the inter­na­tional polit­i­cal con­straints that per­tain here don’t keep us at times from find­ing good, new lit­er­a­ture that might bring us closer. Nev­er­the­less, as Laura Haz­ard Owen reports at paid­Con­tent in Revamped Ama­zon Break­through Novel con­test is (sur­prise!) all about Ama­zon, the six-year-old com­pe­ti­tion is being updated and made richer by Seat­tle this year. She writes:

The contest, which in past years offered grand-prize win­ners a $15,000 advance and a con­tract with big-six pub­lisher Pen­guin, will now give the win­ner a $50,000 advance and a con­tract with Ama­zon Pub­lish­ing. This, says Ama­zon, means “a faster pub­lish­ing time­line, higher roy­al­ties, abil­ity to launch the books in mul­ti­ple for­mats (print, audio, ebook) and world­wide distribution.”

And the com­pe­ti­tion is def­i­nitely inter­ested in inter­na­tional par­tic­i­pa­tion from authors, with a dead­line of Jan­u­ary 27 (11:59:59 p.m. Eastern/New York Time). Recep­tion of sub­mis­sions opens on Jan­u­ary 14 and will close as soon as there are 10,000 entries. Here is more infor­ma­tion on the com­pe­ti­tion from the com­pany. Best of luck to any­one enter­ing. And if you’ve had some expe­ri­ence of the vari­a­tions in roy­alty rates on Ama­zon in var­i­ous coun­tries, please let me hear from you. You can reach me through my con­tact page at porteranderson.com.

Sales of e-readers plunge in 2012 (pre­sum­ably due to mar­ket sat­u­ra­tion + rise of tablets) thenextweb.com/mobile/2012/12… (via @evgeny­moro­zov)

— Tom Standage (@tomstandage) Decem­ber 11, 2012

 

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And in related read­ing: See Carlo Car­renho and Iona Teix­eira Stevens’ report for Pub­lish­ing Per­spec­tives, Amazon’s Grand Plan for Brazil: “Sell Mil­lions of Kin­dles,” says Nag­gar:

The works of the poet who wrote the orig­i­nal Por­tuguese lyrics for the most famous Brazil­ian song, “The Girl From Ipanema,” are now avail­able as ebooks in Brazil, and not thanks to a pub­lisher. It was Ama­zon that brought Vini­cius de Moraes’ four Por­tuguese titles to dig­i­tal life, as they launched their ebook­store [in Brazil]. The books are exclu­sive to Ama­zon, as is a title from Paulo Coelho, O Livro dos Man­u­ais, which is being sold at a dis­counted price of just $1.41 in US dol­lars, as well as the ebook edi­tions Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid series.

Back to Table of Contents

“A law that can be used to arrest a man who said ‘woof’ to a dog has no place in our coun­try” bit.ly/TN7KzW

— David Jolly (@davjolly) Decem­ber 11, 2012

 

Craft: Sto­ry­board­ing as a Sales Tool

I use both prose, cur­rent day pho­tos, and pho­tos and video and draw­ings and pho­tos from the time of the story [in Duty, Honor, Coun­try, A Novel of West Point & The Civil War].  The Civil War was the first exten­sively pho­tographed war, so that helps. Also, I find the draw­ings done by U.S. Grant and W.T. Sher­man to be fas­ci­nat­ing.  We still took draw­ing when I was a cadet at West Point.

In his blog post How To Sto­ry­board a Book for Mar­ket­ing Pur­poses, author-publisher Bob Mayer has an inter­est­ing look at a way to use Slideshare.com. Are you famil­iar with Slideshare? It char­ac­ter­izes itself as “the world’s largest com­mu­nity for shar­ing pre­sen­ta­tions.” Tout­ing 60 mil­lion monthly vis­i­tors and 130 mil­lion page views, Slideshare says it’s one of the 200 most-visited sites in the world. Mayer’s exam­ple in his post has a 28-slide pre­sen­ta­tion. You can also see it here along with a selec­tion of other slide decks from Mayer and Cool Gus, his pub­lish­ing com­pany. Authors who give pre­sen­ta­tions at con­fer­ences, con­ven­tions, in class­rooms, and at library events, all may have a good dual use for such an approach, first devel­op­ing pre­sen­ta­tions for their pub­lic appear­ances, then using them for pro­mo­tional pur­poses, as well.

Imag­ine a for­est. On sum­mer sol­stice, the trees cut down humans and plant them in the meadow. Some­times they for­get to water them. — Dan Krokos (@DanKrokos) Decem­ber 7, 2012

The kind of thing Mayer shows work­ing so well in this exam­ple makes good use of a slide deck’s abil­ity to have infor­ma­tion “pop” for the viewer in a mem­o­rable way. For exam­ple? One slide points up that in the Amer­i­can Civil War, West Point-trained offi­cers com­manded both the Union and Con­fed­er­ate forces in 55 of the war’s 60 major bat­tles — a dis­turb­ing thought, and a way to bring home quickly the kind of dis­as­trous divi­sions that the con­flict imposed on the U.S. national per­son­al­ity in the 19th cen­tury. Mayer writes:

One rea­son I started using Slideshare was that at the Dis­cov­er­abil­ity Con­fer­ence in New York ear­lier this year, one of the pre­sen­ters pointed that peo­ple search for images almost more than keywords.

It’s a good point, the visual fac­tor. The con­fer­ence Mayer refers to, in late Sep­tem­ber, was pro­duced by F+W Media, which also is pro­duc­ing the Dig­i­tal Book World Con­fer­ence + Expo com­ing to New York in Jan­u­ary. As long as Mayer has raised the point of visual attrac­tion in mar­ket­ing, I’d like to see the good folks at Bowker Mar­ket Research con­sider study­ing the effect of book cov­ers on dis­cov­er­abil­ity and/or sales “con­ver­sion” (get­ting an inter­ested reader to buy). We know, of course, that cov­ers today need strong titles and unclut­tered design because they’re seen in thumb­nails at online retail sites. But I’d like to know more in terms of whether read­ers will actively reject books with cov­ers they deem ama­teur. And, of course, I’d love to know if it’s pos­si­ble to nail down some cri­te­ria that might add up to “amateur-looking” in the untrained per­cep­tions of poten­tial buy­ers. Mean­while, Mayer’s use of slide decks as pro­mo­tional mate­r­ial via Slideshare is worth authors’ con­sid­er­a­tion. I’ve seen a lot of video book trail­ers that might have saved every­body a lot of embar­rass­ment if replaced by a good slide deck. Back to Table of Contents

First Sat­ur­day with­out a full col­lege foot­ball slate on TV since August. I already have a ner­vous tic going on. — Don­Linn (@DonLinn) Decem­ber 8, 2012

 

Craft: Mak­ing the Scene

 

The scene—that most inte­gral, most obvi­ous, most uni­ver­sal part of any story—is also the most over­looked and least under­stood when it comes to the craft of storytelling.

Edi­tor K.M. Weiland’s post Struc­tur­ing Your Story’s Scenes: Mas­ter­ing the Two Dif­fer­ent Types of Scene is the first part of her devel­op­ment of the issue. And she’s right, of course, that for some rea­son there’s a ten­dency for the scene’s place in writ­ing to be overlooked.

The scene is where we find the con­flict. This is the action part of the action/reaction dynamic duo. Big stuff hap­pens in scenes.

In Weiland’s think­ing, “the micro­scopic level of para­graph and sen­tence struc­ture within the scene.”

Plot points change the course of the story. Char­ac­ters act in ways that affect every­thing that hap­pens after­ward. These are the scenes that will loom large in your stories.

 

Please do not sug­gest that we hire any more mar­mots. We have too many already and the pro-marmot lobby has really been lean­ing on us.

— NaNoW­riMo (@NaNoWriMo) Decem­ber 7, 2012

 

Wei­land makes a dis­tinc­tion between a scene, per se, and a “sequel” — not the oblig­a­tory film-after-the-film “sequel,” but some­thing more refined.

The sequel is a much qui­eter, but just as impor­tant, fac­tor in your story. Within the sequel, we find the char­ac­ters react­ing. Usu­ally, there’s not too much out­right con­flict, but there’s plenty of ten­sion. These are the scenes in which char­ac­ters and read­ers alike are allowed to catch their breath after the wild and grip­ping events in the pre­vi­ous scenes. Reac­tions will be processed and deci­sions will be made so char­ac­ters can jump right back into the next scene.

It’s sur­pris­ing that writ­ing isn’t taught more fre­quently at the scene level. In our episodic age, we think in scenes. We may esti­mate how many of them a TV show can fit into a block of time before the next com­mer­cial break, we may mar­vel at how long a sin­gle track­ing shot in a well-made film can hold and pressure-cook action in a sin­gle scene…but we don’t always under­stand books in scenes.

So I’m glad to know that Wei­land is start­ing one of her always-worthwhile series of posts on this strangely ill-considered com­po­nent of writ­ing, named from the Greek, skene.

We’ll talk about how to struc­ture the arc of each scene, how to link all scenes and sequels so they all behave like proper lit­tle dominoes, how to use scene knowl­edge to spot plot prob­lems, and we’ll even dig down briefly onto the micro­scopic level of para­graph and sen­tence struc­ture within the scene.

Back to Table of Contents

Now that Spo­tify is piv­ot­ing back towards gate­keep­ers, what new shiny will replace it in the “Spo­tify for books!” drink­ing game? #cmon­son

— Guy L. Gon­za­lez (@glecharles) Decem­ber 7, 2012

 

@glecharles Not sure, but likely called ‘Book­ify’ or ‘Sptfy’ — Kate Rados (@KateRados) Decem­ber 7, 2012

 

@kat­er­a­dos Oh, geez. “Book­ify” actu­ally exists! blurb.com/make/bookify — Guy L. Gon­za­lez (@glecharles) Decem­ber 7, 2012

 

Craft: Take Aim at Foot and…

 

No mat­ter where you are in your writ­ing career you can always find a rea­son to be unhappy about it. You’re una­gented and you want to get an agent. You’re unpub­lished and you want to be pub­lished. You’re pub­lished and you want to be read. You’re read but not read in the num­bers you hoped. You’ve gone indie and your books aren’t sell­ing enough to buy you a monthly mocha.

Author James Scott Bell’s most recent litany at the Kill Zone shared blog­ging site is on  10 Ways to Sab­o­tage Your Writ­ing. I’m par­tic­u­larly taken by his first entry: “Think­ing about your career more than about your writing.”

What you ought to do is write more. When you’re into your story and you’re pound­ing the keys and you’re imag­in­ing the scene and you’re feel­ing the char­ac­ters, you’re not camp­ing out in the untamed coun­try of unful­filled expectations.

 

Ew @ the thought of ambrosia salad.

— Brett San­dusky (@bsandusky) Decem­ber 9, 2012

 

Bell goes on to list envy, ran obses­sion with rank­ings, “the com­par­i­son trap,” “try­ing to be the next James Pat­ter­son,” “I’m not good enough to make it,” fear, hang­ing on to dis­cour­age­ment, let­ting neg­a­tive peo­ple get to you, and “lov­ing the feel­ing of being a writer more than writing”:

Don’t fall into the trap of writ­ing a few words in a jour­nal, lin­ger­ing over the won­der­ful vibra­tions of being alive with the tulips of cre­ativ­ity bud­ding within your brain, and leav­ing it at that.

Back to Table of Contents 

Am in the Bea­gle in Chorl­ton with best mates. Feel­ing bet­ter. Happy Days. twitter.com/samatlounge/st…

— Sam Miss­ing­ham (@samatlounge) Decem­ber 8, 2012

 

Con­fer­ences To Con­sider (And Tell Me Yours)

Please note that my list­ing here of pub­lish­ing con­fer­ences upcom­ing is not meant as a com­mer­cial pro­mo­tion for them but as an infor­ma­tional guide high­light­ing major events ahead and pro­vid­ing dis­count avail­abil­i­ties for writerly bud­gets wher­ever I can. If you have a pub­lish­ing con­fer­ence event com­ing, please notify me through the con­tact page at porteranderson.com, and I’ll be happy to con­sider list­ing it. Reg­is­tra­tion con­tin­ues for Dig­i­tal Book World (#DBW13) (January 15–17) — and the asso­ci­ated Children’s Pub­lish­ing Goes Dig­i­tal (Jan­u­ary 15) and Authors Launch (Jan­u­ary 18, see below). Sub­stan­tial sav­ings are avail­able, and you’re most wel­come to use my affil­i­ate code PORTER to trig­ger them as you register.

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A 20-percent dis­count has been offered on reg­is­tra­tion for the all-new Jan­u­ary 18 Authors Launch one-day con­fer­ence. It’s being pro­duced by the Pub­lish­ers Launch team of Mike Shatzkin and Michael Cader (seen, for exam­ple, at Frank­furt Book Fair). To get the reduced rate, use code AL395 as you reg­is­ter. This is the day­long series of spe­cial­ized pre­sen­ta­tions from a ros­ter includ­ing Peter McCarthy, Dan Blank, MJ Rose, Randy Susan Mey­ers, Jason Ashlock, Meryl Moss, Ether host Jane Fried­man, David Wilk and more. Areas of cov­er­age dur­ing the day include SEO strat­egy for authors; hir­ing mar­ket­ing and pub­lic­ity help; audi­ence engage­ment; and media train­ing issues.

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Author ®evo­lu­tion Day (#TOC­con) (Feb­ru­ary 12) from O’Reilly Tools of Change and Pub­lish­ers Weekly has spe­cial early pric­ing end­ing Decem­ber 20. Among fea­tured pre­sen­ters: Cory Doc­torow, Eve Brid­burg, Laura Daw­son, Allen Lau, Jesse Potash, Dana New­man, Kris­ten McLean, Peter Arm­strong, Tim Sanders, Michael Tam­blyn, Rob Eagar, Kate Pullinger, Kat Meyer, and Joe Wik­ert. You’re wel­come to use my affil­i­ate code AFFILIATEPA for a dis­count of $300 on your registration.

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O’Reilly Media’s Tools of Change (#TOC­con) Con­fer­ence  (Feb­ru­ary 12–14) has a Decem­ber 20 cut­off date for early pric­ing, and includes a major brace of work­shops for indus­try pro­fes­sion­als dur­ing Author ®evo­lu­tion Day (your pass must include Tues­day), plus two more days of multi-tracked offer­ings. Use my affil­i­ate code AFFILIATEPA for a dis­count of $300 on any reg­is­tra­tion package.

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For an updated list of planned con­fabs, please see the Pub­lish­ing Con­fer­ences page at porteranderson.com. Back to Table of Contents

Friedrichshafen And Beyond: Trea­sures Galore In A Day .. #Travel (pics)baldhiker.com/2012/12/09/fri…

— paul steele (@paul_steele) Decem­ber 11, 2012

 

<h1Books: Read­ing on the Ether

The books you see here have been ref­er­enced recently in Ether columns or in tweets. I’m bring­ing them together in one spot each week, to help you recall and locate them, not as an endorsement.

• APE: Author, Pub­lisher, Entre­pre­neur by Guy Kawasaki and Shawn Welch
• Book: A Futurist’s Man­i­festo edited by Hugh McGuire and Brian O’Leary
• Come to the Edge by Christina Haag
• Cre­at­ing Space: The Case for Every­day Cre­ativ­ity by Ed Cyzewski
• Dig­i­tal Ver­tigo by Andrew Keen
• Dog Hills by Michael Hogan
• Duty, Honor, Con­try, a Novel of West Point to the Civil War by Bob Mayer
• Mem­oirs of an Imag­i­nary Friend by Matthew Dicks
• My Mem­o­ries of a Future Life by Roz Mor­ris
• Pen­te­cost by J.F. Penn
• Quilt or Inno­cence: A South­ern Quilt­ing Mys­tery by Eliz­a­beth S. Craig
• Sell Your Book Like Wild­fire by Rob Eagar
• Sis­tine by Michael Hogan
• A Sum­mer in Europe by Mar­i­lyn Brant

Back to Table of Contents

Homeland’s Brody — Eng­lish actor Damian Lewis — is in the National Por­trait Gallery. #lon­don twitter.com/DwightGarner/s…

— Dwight Gar­ner (@DwightGarner) Decem­ber 9, 2012

 

There’s also this nice sketch of J. K. Rowl­ing. twitter.com/DwightGarner/s…

— Dwight Gar­ner (@DwightGarner) Decem­ber 9, 2012

https://twitter.com/DwightGarner/status/277586695585685504/photo/1

@dwight­gar­ner What — no water­color of the Down­ton Abbey cast?

— Nemo Jones (@RedSkyUK) Decem­ber 9, 2012

 

Those Busy ‘Arti­sans’: Self-Publishing Books

A good friend and col­league wrote Mon­day to remind me that ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist and orig­i­nal Mac­in­tosh marketing-team mem­ber Guy Kawasaki was self-publishing his book on self-publishing. Kawasaki and his asso­ciate Shawn Welch have named this one APE: Author, Pub­lisher, Entrepreneur-How to Pub­lish a Book. And you’ll find on Kawasaki’s own page about the book, that he’s call­ing it “arti­sanal pub­lish­ing” now. He has a site for the book here, on which the “arti­sanal” lan­guage is very big, very central.

Guy and Shawn call this “arti­sanal publishing.” Artisanal pub­lish­ing fea­tures writ­ers who love their craft, and who con­trol every aspect of the process from begin­ning to end. In this new approach, writ­ers are no longer at the mercy of large, tra­di­tional pub­lish­ers, and read­ers will have more books to read

Imme­di­ately, a cou­ple of wor­ries arise here, and for­tu­nately, the charis­matic, buoy­ant Kawasaki is the kind of per­son­al­ity about whom you don’t have to worry. His projects float well on the energy of his beam­ing enthu­si­asm. Kawasaki is a peren­nial suc­cess. The qualms? There are two. First, “arti­sanal.” In his dis­patch last month from the sov­er­eign state of Brook­lyn – The Mass Pro­duced Arti­sanal Break­fast Sand­wich – digital/publishing con­sul­tant Brett San­dusky did what needs doing to the buzz-word buffa of our hive culture:

Until we get to that place, where pub­lish­ers become media/technology com­pa­nies build­ing dig­i­tal prod­ucts in-house with agile teams and strong cus­tomer rela­tion­ships, we’re sim­ply sell­ing our cus­tomers (and our­selves) a bunch of mass pro­duced arti­sanal books. It sounds great, kind of, until you real­ize it’s just empty mar­ket­ing. At which point, you real­ize: an indus­try in the busi­ness of using words to con­vey con­cepts should know better.

And he was right. Peo­ple who work with words for a liv­ing have very lit­tle excuse for the buzzery of every­day sales-palaver. Sandusky’s piece was based on the pub­lish­ing industry’s grab at “agile” as a “new and improved!” phrase to slap on things (while point­ing out that actual agile process is rarely found in the busi­ness, if at all). “Arti­sanal” is that same thing, he was say­ing: a rather silly, ill-fitted bit of hype that mar­keters stole from cathe­dral stone masons (or was it 17th-century musi­cal instru­ment mak­ers?). And now they’re rid­ing the term until its legs fall off. “Organic” long ago became the same leg­less crea­ture of com­mon usage. “Free range.” Do you see feet? Let alone legs. And here’s our respected, always wel­come Kawasaki doing “arti­sanal.” The sec­ond prob­lem here involves what “arti­sanal” means, and he says it well in his over­take of the term — that “writ­ers who love their craft, and who con­trol every aspect of the process from begin­ning to end” lingo. You can almost smell wood shav­ings hit­ting the warm, rough-hewn planks of the hon­est journeyman’s shop floor, can’t you? Sun­light streams through the gath­er­ing dust of busy car­pen­ter­ing, the fabled, linen-clad crafts­peo­ple turn back to their faith­ful whet­stones to do what­ever one does with a whet­stone, it may be sharp­en­ing “back in the day,” but it sure is get­ting dull here in the 21st you know what, isn’t it? #Cmon­son. As was touched on at the Future­Book Con­fer­ence just last week — and has been observed and recorded and reported and will con­tinue to be devel­oped — the truth of self-publishing at this point is that many authors (not all, but many) are not in it to be leather-aproned arti­sans, and has any­body seen Kawasaki with sand­pa­per in his hand? In fact, they are work­ing (sup­ported by many of the con­fer­ences and work­shops they go to) to find them­selves tra­di­tional pub­lish­ers through self-publishing; to rack up some num­bers to prove the via­bil­ity of their writ­ings to the unsteady estab­lish­ment; to flag down a car and take a load off their own legs. How­ever well or oth­er­wise the pitch plays, what’s unde­ni­able is that Kawasaki and Welch   won’t be lonely. I did a quick Google Book Search to see the many, many, many, many (enough?) books on self-publishing out there. A few: Self Pub­lish­ing for Vir­gins You Can Do It! a Guide to Chris­t­ian Self-Publishing; How to Self Pub­lish Comics: Not Just Cre­ate Them; The African-American Writer’s Guide to Suc­c­cess­ful Self Pub­lish­ing; The Naked Author — A Guide to Self-Publishing; Cam­bo­dian Grrrl: Self-Publishing in Phnom Penh; Get Rich in a Niche — The Insider’s Guide to Self-Publishing in a Spe­cial­ized Mar­ket; and Self Pub­lish­ing Mil­lion­aire: How To Hus­tle Books by the Thou­sands. These are some titles that caught my eye. The total num­ber of self-publishing how-to titles num­bers, eas­ily, in the hun­dreds. I can’t imme­di­ately get a count from Google’s search return because it also includes, iron­i­cally, Kathryn Stockett’s novel, The Help. A lot of refine­ment in the search would be nec­es­sary to see what it could really do in telling us how many self-publishing how-to’s are out there.

Wrap­ping up work on our Rogue hol­i­day short story col­lec­tion. Sto­ries by @rocu­zon @don­rear­den @edwardweinman1 Avail­able tomorrow!

— TheRogueReader (@theroguereader) Decem­ber 10, 2012

 

Kawasaki and Welch have their work cut out for them. I wish them well. I also, seri­ously, respect them. Don’t mis­take my con­cern for their mar­ket­ing pitch and its impli­ca­tions as a lack of gen­uine appre­ci­a­tion for the energy and clever self-reinvention Kawasaki has brought to his career. He’s earned that lovely smile.

I sim­ply won­der how eas­ily he and Welch can dis­tin­guish their book in the mar­ket­place from these hun­dreds of oth­ers already there to “APE” it. Or is it, actu­ally, “aping” them?

And I won­der whether they might not be seen by some as authors cap­i­tal­iz­ing on the ill-prepared dreams of other authors. Is a planet of such APEs what we really want?

It’s a time to take care in how we think of self-publishing, no longer the big, new sonic boom thrown off by the rate of the fall of tra­di­tional publishing.

Now that we know so many self-publishers are really try­ing to snag trade con­tracts? — sure looks as if neces­sity is the mother of “artisanal.”

Back to Table of Contents

Giant rub­ber duck swim­ming up the Thames…bridge is up to let it through. Sur­real delay twitter.com/LovesickHank/s…

— Nic Fildes (@LovesickHank) Decem­ber 11, 2012

 

 

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Porter Ander­son is a Fel­low with the National Crit­ics Insti­tute, a 32-year jour­nal­ist with sev­eral news­pa­pers and three net­works of CNN, as well as a pro­ducer posted to the Rome head­quar­ters of the United Nations’ World Food Pro­gramme. His Writ­ing on the Ether is read Thurs­days at JaneFriedman.com

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