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By Porter Ander­son | @Porter_Anderson

From Jan­u­ary 19, 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

Imme­di­ate seat­ing available

For once, it doesn’t mat­ter how cold it is in New York. As the first big annual F+W Media con­fer­ences of 2012 heave into action, the uphol­stery is toasty. Con­fab­World is cooking.

And we don’t have to wait for the mas­sive Dig­i­tal Book World Con­fer­ence & Expo to open on Mon­day. Atten­dees of the Writer’s Digest Con­fer­ence, which opens Fri­day, will find them­selves in a Sev­enth Avenue salon super­heated by the snick­ers of self-publishing authors who think they have the biz licked – and by the fum­ing of other writ­ers deter­mined to go less gen­tly into that 99-cents furnace.

Just arrived New York. Sunny! Mak­ing an LA boy feel wel­come. #wdc12

Wednes­day 18 Jan­u­ary 12 16:36 via Twit­ter for AndroidReplyRetweetFavorite

@jamesscottbell

James Scott Bell

To reas­sure you quickly: you don’t have to be there to be there.

If you’re not able to join us on the hearth and find your own chaise-chaude in our book-ly ball­rooms, no prob­lem. We’ll be sure some smoke gets in your eyes.

Warmed by the socia­bil­ity of new media, our indus­try loves Twit­ter. Per­haps you’ve noticed. Well, of course you have. So keep these hash­tags handy: #wdc12 and #dbw12. Another good one to add day­time ET on Mon­day is #dbw­sum – that’s the DBW Mar­ket­ing Sum­mit.

I’m @Porter_Anderson in the Twee­t­erie, as you likely know, and you’re wel­come to shoot up a flare with any ques­tions. I’ll imme­di­ately hand them to Jane Fried­man, oth­er­wise known as Porter’s Brain.

Also: soft­ware will­ing, my site’s home page – PorterAnderson.com – will dis­play a self-refreshing cap­ture of hash­tagged tweets. I’ll be doing my live-tweet cov­er­age of select ses­sions, from top to bot­tom, in hopes of giv­ing you a coher­ent account of the pro­ceed­ings. And our com­mu­nity is unham­pered by shy­ness when it comes to blog­ging, colum­niz­ing, opin­ing, and scrawl­ing on vacant walls at ConfabWorld.

You keep an eye on the tweets. We’ll keep you going with comely confabulation.

Gear­ing up for a real live writer’s con­fer­ence! Alter­nat­ing between puk­ing with excite­ment and puk­ing from nerves. #wdc12

Tues­day 17 Jan­u­ary 12 15:36 via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@jasonevermorr

Jason Everett Morris

I also can offer you a series of pre­view arti­cles, with both text and video. Con­fer­ence speaker Dan Blank of We Grow Media and I have put them together:

• Pre­view: Dig­i­tal Book World Con­fer­ence & Expo 2012
• Pre­view: Writer’s Digest Con­fer­ence 2012
• Your Guide to Writ­ing & Pub­lish­ing Con­fer­ences, 2012
• How To Get The Most Out Of A Con­fer­ence
  

And as we the peo­ple of let­ters con­vene, I want to cat­a­log some of the  kin­dling – sorry, wrong word – a few of the drier twigs, that’s bet­ter, which are fuel­ing what surely is among the most fired-up con­fer­ence sea­son this busi­ness has seen since Mar­garet Mitchell fanned those other flames.

Every chair at the Sher­a­ton New York Hotel & Tow­ers is a hot seat. That’s because just about any­body who can make it to a reg­is­tra­tion table can accuse all the oth­ers of mess­ing up every­thing — and be accused of mess­ing up everything.

We’re going to see 70 agents slammed by 90-second pitches from 450 authors for three long hours at WDC.

And while the car­pet is being replaced after that, cast a wary eye over this list of com­pa­nies attend­ing DBW. Yes, that’s Our Friends From Seat­tle and Google and Barnes & Noble and Apple and the Big Three-Plus-Three and the top 400 part­ners and rivals imme­di­ately south of them — all up in there at once.

Be aware that the near­est exit may be behind you. This could sim­ply dis­in­te­grate into a 1,200-person brawl in the ball­room. Shall we finally start jack­ing up authors’ roy­al­ties? Roy­al­ties? I got your authors’ roy­al­ties right here. Why not just slug it out and be done with it?  (I like “brawl­room,” don’t you?)

Watch for dis­count code DBWFIGHT, $40 off on your ambu­lance ride.

Oh good lord.

Tues­day 17 Jan­u­ary 12 17:43 via Tweet­DeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@DonLinn

Don Linn

And as the news media close in for their spe­cial cov­er­age, here are just a few says you might see the tracer fire fly on Reuters’ video:

• How do agents feel about self-publishing authors these days? How do agents feel about pub­lish­ers? How do agents feel about agent-publishers? How do agent-publishers sleep at night?
• How do tra­di­tion­ally pub­lished authors feel about agents? And com­mis­sions? And self-publishing authors who brag about hav­ing no commissions?
• How do small pub­lish­ers feel about the Big Four-Plus-Two?
• How do the Big Six’s staffers feel about being told in meet­ings, “You guys bet­ter digi-up”?
• How do any of us feel about meta­data? It’s dri­ven Laura Daw­son to knitting.
• How do inde­pen­dent book­store own­ers feel about the Interwebs?
• How do librar­i­ans feel things are going? Pack a lunch before you ask that.
• How do self-publishing authors feel about every­body? Okay, we, we know that already.
• How does every­body feel about Amazon?
• And does Ama­zon feel any­thing at all?

So don’t get com­fort­able, know what I mean? Don’t sit back and relax. Sit for­ward and be tense.

I’m flaber­gasted by how much inter­est there is in my ses­sion with Bill Newlin of Avalon about meta­data at #dbw12. I blame @Porter_Anderson

Fri­day 13 Jan­u­ary 12 12:39 via Tweet­DeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@ftoolan

Fran Toolan

I’m going to run you through a quick litany of mul­ti­ple view­points. The road to Con­fab­World this year is paved with hot coals. Try to keep up:

I know a few agents, and they’re tear­ing their hair out. An agent recently told me “edi­tors in big pub­lish­ers are basi­cally read­ers for mar­ket­ing depart­ments.” Another said in the past year she’d got more than 10 excel­lent books to edi­to­r­ial board, with all the edi­tors staunchly behind them, but mar­ket­ing vetoed them. An edi­tor I know – very senior in terms of job title and the pub­lisher she works for – laments that she is no longer allowed to accept the rich fic­tion she loves to read and has to pub­lish shal­low sure-fire super­mar­ket titles.

London-based author, best­selling ghost­writer, and writ­ing instruc­tor Roz Mor­ris writes these and more telling obser­va­tions in Why play­ing safe in pub­lish­ing is riskier than ever

We’re too savvy to make these #self­pub­lish­ing mis­takes, so pass this to some­one who might http://t.co/vT5nrFdx #books #authors #writ­ers

Mon­day 16 Jan­u­ary 12 16:31 via Hoot­SuiteReplyRetweetFavorite

@dirtywhitecandy

Roz Mor­ris

The major pub­lish­ers have com­pletely abdi­cated respon­si­bil­ity for pro­duc­ing the dig­i­tal ver­sions of their cat­a­logs: it’s all handed over to ama­teurs. You see it through­out the indus­try. From the typo­graph­i­cal hor­ror of most eBooks, through to the lack­lus­ter iPad titles being produced.

Chris Stevens is inter­viewed by the Toronto Review of Books in Chris Stevens on Alice for the iPad, Book Apps, and Toronto: a Q & A

Chris Stevens dis­cusses his overnight sen­sa­tion of an inter­ac­tive book app, Alice for the iPad. The app is based… http://t.co/vEI4utqv

Wednes­day 18 Jan­u­ary 12 19:52 via Face­bookReplyRetweetFavorite

@WestVanLibrary

West Van Library

It seems to me that those of us who sell goods – be they books, white goods, clothes or any­thing else – need to learn to think far more closely about the user experience.

Sheila Boun­ford in On Expe­ri­ence at Off the Page (and What of the Book?) before remind­ing us “Dr Seuss famously said ‘Some­times the ques­tions are com­pli­cated and the answers are sim­ple’” in On Change (via Dr Seuss & W H Auden) 

@Don­Linn thanks for the RT, Don. I like to keep my cul­tural ref­er­ences as eclec­tic as possible…

Wednes­day 18 Jan­u­ary 12 15:17 via Twit­ter for Black­Berry®ReplyRetweetFavorite

@SheilaB01

Sheila Boun­ford

The over­rid­ing message…is that books are an entre­pre­neur­ial exer­cise, com­bin­ing the selec­tion of a sub­ject, the self-confidence to stay with it through the report­ing and writ­ing ordeal, and a com­mit­ment to mar­ket­ing the results, which for many authors is an espe­cially unfa­mil­iar process.

Peter Osnos at The Atlantic writes Good Writ­ing Isn’t Enough: How to Sell a Book in the Dig­i­tal Age, an arti­cle he bases on the Nie­man Foun­da­tion for Inves­tiga­tive Journalism’s excel­lent Nie­man Reports edi­tion titled Writ­ing the Book(a free download)

Good Writ­ing Isn’t Enough: How to Sell a Book in the Dig­i­tal Age — Peter Osnos — Enter­tain­ment — The Atlantic http://t.co/JrBZsXk1

Thurs­day 12 Jan­u­ary 12 15:36 via bitlyReplyRetweetFavorite

@fiiblog

Ricardo Lourenço

While writ­ing this post, it felt anti­quated how best­seller lists still seg­ment out sales by edi­tion (hard­cover, paper­back, mass mar­ket, elec­tronic). If these lists are printed to serve and inform readers—and per­haps that’s a huge assumption?—how much does this dis­tinc­tion mat­ter, except to those inside the indus­try? How much do these dis­tinc­tions serve to keep the old par­a­digms in place? (E.g., “hard­cov­ers” are more impor­tant or mean­ing­ful than “paperbacks”?)

Jane Fried­man, Uni­ver­sity of Cincin­nati new-media pro­fes­sor, indus­try ana­lyst, and long-suffering host of the Ether here at her site, preps for one of her pre­sen­ta­tions at WDC this week­end in eBook Sta­tis­tics For Authors to Watch, writ­ing, “You can not only find var­i­ous data sets, you can also find many inter­pre­ta­tions“

I’m speak­ing at @Writ­ers­Di­gest event this wkend. See my top ses­sion picks: http://t.co/FL5E6DJd [+save 20% if you haven’t registered]

Tues­day 17 Jan­u­ary 12 10:05 via Hoot­SuiteReplyRetweetFavorite

@JaneFriedman

Jane Fried­man

As tra­di­tional pub­lish­ers exper­i­ment with ebook sales…it seems they may be push­ing self-published authors off the list…The aver­age price of a self-published Kin­dle top-100 best­seller con­tin­ues to drop, but a new look at these titles’ per­for­mance in 2011 sug­gests these books are fac­ing increased com­pe­ti­tion from tra­di­tional publishers.

Laura Haz­ard Owen, who assid­u­ously cov­ers pub­lish­ing for paid­Con­tent, has this inter­est­ing analy­sis in Did Self-Publishing Hype Hit Its Peak In 2011?

No more new Pen­guin down­load­able audio­books in libraries. Which pub­lisher will be next to pull their titles? http://t.co/5YHitigb

Wednes­day 18 Jan­u­ary 12 18:47 via Tweet­DeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@laurahazardowen

Laura Haz­ard Owen

Amanda Hocking’s “books from Trylle Tril­ogy were removed from dis­tri­b­u­tion in August, will be repub­lished in weeks, in print and dig­i­tal for­mats – and cost a few times more.… In 2011 self-publishing was bear­ing the badge of novelty. Now it becomes the part of the dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing landscape…Publishers and authors would like to avoid such sto­ries (as Hocking’s) and that’s why they’ll find each other much sooner – and that means that less good qual­ity books will come out as self-published ones.

Piotr Kowal­czyk writes up his Top Self-published Kin­dle Ebooks of 2011 [Report], as Jane Fried­mannotes, a “help­ful pars­ing of Ama­zon data” with which we can begin to dis­cern “Is the 99-cent price tag for e-books wear­ing out?” and other issues

2011 was a year of books being self-published in “bulk”. Such a thing is not gonna hap­pen again http://t.co/dehBZgHo

Sun­day 15 Jan­u­ary 12 18:10 via Hoot­SuiteReplyRetweetFavorite

@namenick

Piotr Kowal­czyk

We should stop think­ing of self-publishing sim­ply as a nice way for indie authors to be pub­lished. Viewed another way, mea­sur­ing self-publishing activ­ity cal­cu­lates the amount of money Ama­zon (and oth­ers) are no longer shar­ing with pub­lish­ers. And it’s grow­ing.

The empha­sis is mine. This ring­ing com­ment comes from the Milano office of ATKear­ney in its upcom­ing report at DBW. Mike Shatzkin, con­fer­ence coun­cil chair, used it this week in his walkup to some of the data ses­sions in the con­fer­ence ahead, Show me the data!I may give it one more ride in a later seg­ment of the Ether, as one of the most pen­e­trat­ing evo­ca­tions yet of the indus­try — inclu­sive of Amazon

I’m at ABA’s Win­ter Insti­tute, learn­ing things. Highly inspired and amused by Ann Patchett’s great talk this morning.

Wednes­day 18 Jan­u­ary 12 20:30 via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@MikeShatzkin

Mike Shatzkin

I get mil­lions of hits a year on this blog. When peo­ple dis­cuss self-pubbing, my name often comes up. But the peo­ple who visit this blog, and dis­cuss my self-publishing efforts, are writ­ers. Writ­ers aren’t buy­ing my fic­tion. They aren’t buy­ing my non-fiction either–I have an ebook called A Newbie’s Guide to Pub­lish­ing and it is among my lowest-selling titles. The peo­ple who buy me are read­ers, and the vast major­ity have never heard of me. Read­ers find me on Ama­zon, because Ama­zon has made it easy for my books to be dis­cov­ered… If one of Amazon’s imprints offers to pub­lish you, accept. Right now they are the only pub­lisher who can increase your sales.

Joe Kon­rath – as he says, “Peo­ple con­sider me to be one of the mouth­pieces of the self-publishing move­ment” – here takes on The Value of Pub­lic­ity, posi­tion­ing it as fairly anal­o­gous to the stan­dard author plat­form encour­aged today

Kon­rath posts his Kin­dle num­bers. http://t.co/rZnZdqEA

Wednes­day 11 Jan­u­ary 12 11:22 via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@jakonrath

JA Kon­rath

We’ve com­piled an infor­mal account of all of the self-published ebook authors to make the NYT best­seller lists last year with an orig­i­nal work (thus we are not includ­ing reis­sues or short-form pieces). Con­trary to the pop­u­lar impres­sion, the total num­ber is…11. The authors, along with the date of the first appear­ance on the list, are:

Nancy John­son (2/20)
Vic­torine Lieske (3/6)
Stephanie McAfee (3/27)
Heather Killough-Walden (5/1)
John Locke (5/8)
Court­ney Milan (7/10)
Dar­cie Chan (8/28)
Chris Cul­ver (9/4)
Rick Murcer (9/4)
CJ Lyons (9/11)

The one self-published non­fic­tion author to make the list was Sarah Burleton, whose WHY ME? debuted on the 10/2 list

Michael Cader, writ­ing at Publisher’s Lunch in How Many Self-Published Authors Were Best­sellers In 2011? has the above sober­ing num­bers, sug­gest­ing, as has been stressed many times, that the Kon­raths and Hock­ings (pre-St. Martin’s) are excep­tions to the rule. And Laura Haz­ard Owen’s head­line above about self-publishing hype hav­ing hit a kind of peak in 2011, bears seri­ous consideration

Guess­ing Bertelsmann’s Results; Adding Grain of Salt http://t.co/s1RRvoEv [reg. rqrd.]

Wednes­day 18 Jan­u­ary 12 11:23 via twit­ter­feedReplyRetweetFavorite

@PublishersLunch

Pub­lish­er­sLunch

Twi­light and The Hunger Games showed young adult fic­tion to be a poten­tial gold­mine. Authors and pub­lish­ers quickly latched onto the galaxy of online book sites, where a vast young read­er­ship roams, as the key to global suc­cess. But can you har­ness that energy? Should you even try? More and more blog­gers are reluc­tant to host the author blog tours that now swamp book sites – only to find that pub­lish­ers refuse them free advance review copies of the new books they want. Who wins there?

Julie Bertagna, in YA novel read­ers clash with pub­lish­ing estab­lish­ment at the Guardian reminds us that another issue dog­ging the indus­try is the abrupt dif­fu­sion of crit­i­cal voices. The rise of blog­ging review­ers sim­ply pulls the rug out from under yet another once-orderly, stan­dard­ized ele­ment of busi­ness, the assump­tion and pro­to­col of mainstream-media crit­i­cism. As Bertagna sees it, “The hard­est thing a writer has to learn is that once you pub­lish a book, it’s no longer truly yours.”

@Aus­tralianOpen So lets talk tips and tac­tics… for us lot back home cop­ing with 3am #mur­ray coaster. #Andy­nap first or #sleep­is­fortheweak?

Mon­day 16 Jan­u­ary 12 19:33 via Twit­ter for iPadReplyRetweetFavorite

@JulieBertagna

Julie Bertagna

It is unde­ni­able: we are at trans­for­ma­tion. And I sus­pect that 2012 may well be the most impor­tant year in any of our pro­fes­sional lives and, quite pos­si­bly, in the his­tory of the book. With that in mind, I wanted to share some of our 2011 year-end results for Source­books. While these data points are just for one pub­lisher, we believe that they can help us bet­ter think about the year that we get to cre­ate in 2012. I hope that they help you as well.

Dominique Rac­cah, pub­lisher at Source­books, announces a superb per­for­mance for 2011, includ­ing an 19-percent increase in rev­enue growth and print-book sales run­ning 11 points higher than the Bookscan aver­age. It’s in the ebooks arena that she trum­pets some of her most ebul­lient news this way:

kid you not RT @Adver­tis­ingLaw Shakespeare’s ‘The Tem­pest’ Barred from Ari­zona Pub­lic Schools | WSJ Law Blog http://t.co/ku2P3pMj

Thurs­day 19 Jan­u­ary 12 00:14 via Twit­ter­rificReplyRetweetFavorite

@draccah

Dominique Rac­cah

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 and (Mon­days) ETHER FOR AUTHORS col­umn at PublishingPerspectives.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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