By Porter Ander­son | @Porter_Anderson

From March 8, 2012
Part of my series of columns on pub­lish­ing, Writ­ing on the Ether, appear­ing Thurs­days through the kind (and brave) benev­o­lence of Jane Fried­man at JaneFriedman.com

Over­ture: If music be the food of love

Before we begin to gnash our teeth over indus­try and insult this week, I’m pleased to offer you an embed­ded stream from Q2 Music. That’s the 24-hour NPR–affil­i­ated  contemporary-classical ser­vice I’m always gassing about on Twit­ter.

Music may have noth­ing to do with your work, I real­ize. No prob­lem. And this music, most of it cre­ated by the world’s top liv­ing com­posers, may put your muse right through the windshield.

But I hope you’ll con­sider hit­ting play while you’re here today — catch an echo of the Ether in spaces that lie light years beyond our words. Today’s pro­gram­ming includes a playlist curated for Q2 by David Byrne (2pET), open­ing a three-week Amer­i­can Mav­er­icks festival.

And Q2 is always there, always ahead of there, actu­ally: The fear­less and rel­e­vant music you crave. Free tunes. Most of which you couldn’t hum to save your life.

And now, dear Eth­er­naut, shall we tear our hair together?

U.S. warns Apple, pub­lish­ers that it plans to sue them on e-book pric­ing, alleg­ing col­lu­sion: http://t.co/IBs0gNCf

Thurs­day 8 March 12 06:28 via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@DavidCarnoy

David Carnoy

eBooks: Are authors priced out of the market?

The future is going to be filled with ama­teurs, and the truly tal­ented and per­sis­tent will make a great liv­ing. But the days of jour­ney­man writ­ers who make a good liv­ing by the word — over.

That’s Godin to authors: You have no right to make money any­more. Thank you, Seth.

These domi­noes of mer­ci­less wis­dom fall in an inter­view at Dig­i­tal Book World picked up by Mathew Ingram of GigaOM. Here’s Ingram:

The cru­cial prin­ci­ple at work (is) …your real com­pe­ti­tion isn’t the book or news out­let that is bet­ter than you; it’s the one that is good enough for a major­ity of your audi­ence. …Maybe those vam­pire books by Amanda Hock­ing or the detec­tive nov­els from million-selling author John Locke aren’t as good as yours, but for hun­dreds of thou­sands of week­end read­ers they are prob­a­bly good enough.

Heart sink­ing yet? I should have offered you a drink, not music.

In the ongo­ing debate about how to price ebooks prop­erly, it can seem that the author — whose per­sonal invest­ment and effort usu­ally tops every­one else’s — is being over­looked, swat­ted aside.  And Ingram, as right as he is, does noth­ing to soothe the sav­age breast:

Godin’s point isn’t that you can’t make money; it’s that you have to think dif­fer­ently about how to accom­plish that task.

For obvi­ous rea­sons, this arti­cle kind of makes my blood boil. http://t.co/YQahjNx6 Writ­ers, you have NO RIGHT to be paid for your work!

Wednes­day 7 March 12 11:45 via Tweet­DeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@RachelleGardner

Rachelle Gard­ner

Let’s get past Seth (where is the duct tape?) and hun­ker with Ed Nawotka at Pub­lish­ing Per­spec­tives, where he’s ask­ing the com­par­a­tively hand­some ques­tion, What’s More Fairly Priced at 99 Cents, Non­fic­tion or a Novel?

Matt Gart­land / WinningEdits.com

Nawotka begins by not­ing that in many non­fic­tion books, “a sin­gle chap­ter or two sup­ports the whole enter­prise.” That’s a nice way of say­ing there’s one idea and 250 pages. Nawotka goes on:

To me, sell­ing a “dig­i­tal short” non­fic­tion piece for 99 cents or even $2.99 is a much more valid com­mer­cial trans­ac­tion than buy­ing a fic­tion title for the same price, espe­cially if it is vet­ted and edited by a proper publisher.

And your lit­tle man­i­festo, too, Seth. (Sorry, I don’t know what came over me. It’s all this vio­lent mod­ern music, that damned Q2.) Nawotka soars on:

To me, fic­tion — prop­erly vet­ted and edited fic­tion — is some­thing that should go for more. It’s often a far big­ger invest­ment in a writer’s time than a magazine-length non­fic­tion piece.

Splen­did fel­low, this Nawotka, isn’t he?

As for the 99-cent nov­els, well any­one in their right mind would tell you that it is purely mar­ket­ing. My bet would be that very few nov­el­ists hon­estly want to see their books sold so cheaply (yes, it works for some, but it remains to be seen if you can build a long-term career on such foundations).

And how softly Nawotka has landed me at another of the bet­ter reads to be over­looked by most peo­ple lately.

In the recently released sec­ond part of Brian O’Leary and Hugh McGuire’s Press­books project, Book: A Futurist’s Man­i­festo, Kas­sia Krozser’s A Reader’s Bill of Rights estab­lishes with com­mit­ted vivac­ity the alliance of author and reader.

I am here to say it is the pub­lish­ers who are doing their own prod­uct the most harm. Every time a pub­lisher allows a print book or ebook to be released with poor edit­ing, poor proof­read­ing, and poor qual­ity, the value of books in gen­eral dimin­ishes in the mind of read­ers. We deserve bet­ter.

Krozser is pretty splen­did, her­self, you see. And I hope you’ll spend some time this week­end with her excel­lent essay, as well as oth­ers in O’Leary and McGuire’s grow­ing book. It can be read free (not “for free,” damn it) online.

@book­square @smart­bitches @mygirljuju …um, what’s a duck­beaver, eh?

Sat­ur­day 3 March 12 13:09 via Twit­ter for iPadReplyRetweetFavorite

@FRANCOMEDIA

Kevin Franco

@FRANCOMEDIA accord­ing to @hughm­cguire, it’s a cana­dian term for platy­pus. also, anal­ogy for dig­i­tal publishing.

Sat­ur­day 3 March 12 14:11 via Twit­ter for MacReplyRetweetFavorite

@booksquare

Kas­sia Krozser

But there’s one point I’ve put to Krozser after read­ing her essay, and she’s been gen­er­ous in com­ing back to me on it.

I’ve explained to her that I’ve had reser­va­tions about her dis­cus­sion of ebook pric­ing when she con­cludes, “ebooks cost too damn much.” I’ve won­dered if she had taken into account the fact that noth­ing about the author’s com­mit­ment changes for an ebook.

In this  dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion, the one ele­ment not dig­i­tized? — is the author. She or he must still go through the years of night­mar­ish work; the divorce when the neglected fam­ily falls apart; the cus­tody bat­tles; the for­fei­ture of all social life, up-to-date cloth­ing, and men­tal health. Just take a good look at the next author you see.

Krozser answers:

First and fore­most, I am a writer. I am an author. I am a pub­lisher. I am that weird per­son who is torn between the “oh yeah” of angry authors and very real real­i­ties faced by any­one who goes into pub­lish­ing as a business…So. I do not believe that, bar­ring the rare JK Rowl­ing, there is ever a way to fully com­pen­sate an author for the price of his/her cre­ative labor.

Well, then, how do we rec­on­cile the Reader’s Bill of Rights with what Mar­garet Atwood terms the “cheese sand­wich” that every writer must have to keep churn­ing out the sto­ries? Basi­cally, Krozser answers, we don’t.

There is absolutely no cor­re­la­tion among advances paid or sales or price or buzz or any­thing and tal­ent. If there were, Paris Hilton would not have received a dime from a pub­lisher. Pub­lish­ing is, first and fore­most, a busi­ness. Yes, it some­times pre­tends to be a cre­ative indus­try — espe­cially when it comes to the dis­con­nect between advances and actual sales — but the bot­tom line is very much the goal (well, that and exec­u­tive bonuses).

Just had email from friend (not in book busi­ness) ask­ing for my opin­ion on one of today’s sto­ries about publishing.…

Tues­day 6 March 12 15:23 via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@Ginger_Clark

Gin­ger Clark

My response “do you want an eye­roll at the inac­cu­ra­cies, or an actual thought­ful response? I can do both.” I can do both. Barely.

Tues­day 6 March 12 15:23 via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@Ginger_Clark

Gin­ger Clark

I’ve asked Krozser what’s wrong with the $9.99 that Ama­zon made its orig­i­nal, gen­eral Kin­dle book price? Is an author’s life’s work truly not worth ten US bucks?

For tra­di­tion­ally pub­lished authors, there is an agree-upon fair pric­ing struc­ture, so authors are being paid for their work. How­ever, pub­lish­ers con­tinue to cor­re­late print and ebooks, with­out regard to the lim­i­ta­tions of the lat­ter. Peo­ple seemed happy with a $9.99 ebook that didn’t come with the same rights and mate­r­ial as the $23.99 hard­cover. They are less tol­er­ant of a higher-priced ebook that is incom­plete or poorly treated by the publisher.

And so what of the self-publishing authors who seem bent on bound­ing from 99 cents to $2.99 to free-giveaway promotions?Aren’t they dri­ving down the whole mar­ket?

For self-published authors, they aren’t really dri­ving the cost of the mar­ket down as much as they are dri­ving their own worth down. It’s pretty clear that read­ers are hap­pily pay­ing higher prices for qual­ity books, though there is a tol­er­ance point. I can­not say if these authors feel their pric­ing is worth it to them — I guess some will offer up an emphatic yes. Me? I disagree.

So when I look at the author as the one step in the pro­duc­tion chain not dig­i­tized — for whom noth­ing is stream­lined other than a lit­tle word-processing soft­ware and thank God for Drop­box — maybe I’m not look­ing at some­one for­got­ten, but at some­one who eas­ily can become self-defeating in a mar­ket­place of opportunism.

I want Krozser to play us out here:

Being a writer is a cre­ative endeavor. Being an author is a busi­ness. The authors who price them­selves at .99 are, in my opin­ion, bad busi­ness peo­ple. They are bank­ing on the gen­eral cheap­ness of human­ity. They are hop­ing they’ll win because peo­ple will buy their books in droves.

This is bad busi­ness because the roy­al­ties are lower. This is bad busi­ness because we (the read­ers) equate cheap with lower qual­ity. This is bad busi­ness because, well, it tells the world what you really think of your work prod­uct, your  tal­ent, your worth. This leads to a mar­ket­place flooded with crappy sto­ries, and these authors are going to be increas­ingly lost in the mire.

I look for­ward to the day when I never have to read another Seth Godin ‘expert’ quote on pub­lish­ing again.

Tues­day 6 March 12 15:32 via Tweet­DeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@DonLinn

Don Linn

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

About Porter Ander­son

Porter Ander­son, BA, MA, MFA, is a Fel­low with the National Crit­ics Insti­tute and has done spe­cial read­ings in the psy­chol­ogy of the arts at the Uni­ver­sity of Bath, UK. As a jour­nal­ist, he has worked with three net­works of CNN (CNN USA, CNN Inter­na­tional, CNN.com) and was on the lead devel­op­ment team for CNN.com Live. He also has worked on The Vil­lage Voice, Dal­las Times Her­ald, D Mag­a­zine, Sara­sota Herald-Tribune and other out­lets. He writes the weekly (Thurs­days) WRITING ON THE ETHER col­umn at JaneFriedman.com. Ander­son also is a reg­u­lar con­trib­u­tor to WriterUnboxed.com and to Dig­i­tal Book World’s (DigiBookWorld.com) Expert Pub­lish­ing Blog. He has been posted by the United Nations to Rome (P-5, laissez-passer) for the World Food Pro­gramme, and served as Exec­u­tive Pro­ducer to INDEX: Design to Improve Life in Copen­hagen. He is based in Tampa and his pri­mary medium is Twit­ter. Fol­low him @Porter_Anderson

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