The Treachery of Images

Of relevance to the day thing, it was time to revamp this classic.

Also
Ceci n'est pas une author.

Oh great internet brain

I keep getting this impulse to post my evolving drafts of the query letter to my blog (for some reason). I didn't know if this was a faux pas or not, as I don't believe I've seen writers post their query letters. There's some agents that have (including the Query Shark link I posted the other day).

Would it be bad if I did that? (Like prior publishing or something like that)

Nine Ladies Dancing

I hurt. My shoulders are killing me and I'm in desperate need of an adjustment. So that makes today an aspirin day. This is the result of too many days sitting in a broken down couch typing. Add in that this afternoon I decided to reward myself by starting up one of the games Bette got me for Xmas, Force Unleashed.

Yeah, yeah, you all got done playing this like five years ago. So, now my whole upper body hurts. I kept trying to beat that damn first rogue jedi. Note to game developers, rotating camera angles are not your friend. Really, quit screwing around with them. If I lock the camera on an opponent, the camera should make a third point in a direct line between my opponent, me, and the camera, and it should always remain fixed looking at my opponent. No, I don't care about "cinematic" crap. I'm trying to win a game here. If I can't see WTF I'm doing, I can't do that.

It looks like this year we're going to have a discussion on e-books and pirating. Several people have posted their pontifications on it, and most of them miss the mark, IMHO. Again, they're making the same mistakes as the RIAA and MPAA did in thinking it was all about them. Clue to everybody, if music had been as effected by piracy as much as the RIAA would like you to believe, considering they under-estimated the amount of piracy by at least a hundred percent, they wouldn't be making any money at all. Piracy is a much bigger problem that what they ever expected, and it's mostly inconsequential. And unfortunately the book publishing industry is probably going to go down the same rabbit hole (although some seem to have a clue, paranoid authors and their agents will force some issues). Because, unless you think it's a bad idea that people share books, go to libraries, used bookstores, and all the other secondary markets, book piracy isn't as big a deal as people think it is. Is it an issue? Yes, it is a real issue that needs to be addressed. However, it isn't an apocalyptic issue people are making it out to be. The software industry has been dealing with this issue since the 80s, and they've been losing. They're still making money, and still producing new software. A much bigger issue in publishing, IMHO, that completely dwarves the piracy flap, is the distribution models and metrics (how collected, and definitely how used).

Enough playing hooky, time to get back to work. How's your new year going so far?

Oh, and I'm going to experiment taking the captcha off. We'll see how it goes. edit with the first Anon comment, it appears that the comment tracking function broke right after that. So, sorry folks. I don't want to leave the blog open to spamming overnight. We'll try again soon. If anyone wants to own up to the first Anon comment, I'll be glad to reconsider. I definitely don't want to remove the anonymous commenting, but I also don't want to become a link farm for spammers.

Another Round in the On-Going "Industry Must Innovate" Saga

Via S. Andrew Swann over at Genrewonk we have a link to Dear Author and an article about the doom of book publishing. Okay, well it's more a "change or die" article.

There are a few pieces I disagree with with the author, such as POD machines in stores (the cost per piece is much higher than even an offset printed book with quantity), but there is plenty I do agree with. I suggest if you're in this writing business thing you give it a read. Lots of good advice backed up with examples from other entertainment industries.

Arts and Crafts Movements

Sarah Monette talks truth to power about The Art of the Short Story. This is actually an article in the sporadic series with a longer title of "Routes to Publication May Vary According to Your Talents" being written unconjunctively by many authors on many blogs.

But she speaks a lot of truth. The first paragraph is what I'd like to discuss, though. In there she says that, basically, Short Stories aren't the same species as Novels. This is a fact. She also discounts the "business route" of writing shorts to make a name for yourself and then start writing novels. This is also true. However, this is the route I've taken. And I think there's a lot of established authors and editors who add on motivations to my move (because they've advised me against it).

I think my natural writing length is a novel. I started out wanting to write novels and I still do want to write novels (as I hope to be working on them this year). Also, novels are where the money is at in this game. So, yeah, novels it is.

However, as my first attempts at writing them showed, I didn't have the foggiest clue as to how to tell a story. I took a community education class taught by a somewhat famous romance novelist that was supposed to help us write novels. It was that experience, the wrestling with the opening chapter, that demonstrated to me that I needed to learn some craftsmanship.

It's the End of the World for a New Year

(Cross posted on Genre Bender)

If you've been paying attention to the publishing world lately, you know that they've been predicting Armageddon for all of the past November-December. As the economy hits the skids, publishers haven't been immune from the bird-flue epidemic of layoffs and cutbacks. Since Harper-Collins' executive announcement about not purchasing new manuscripts leaked out, it's all been doom and gloom.

Well, genre sales have gone up this past Xmas buying season. You wouldn't know that except for actually looking at bookscan data (no, I don't have access, but those who do tell me it's true).

But things aren't all rosy. Since the 70s, genre publishing has been on a downhill slope. This was made manifest to me by going to a panel honoring Betty Ballantine at the 2007 World Fantasy Convention. Part of that panel interviewing and honoring her covered how the industry has changed since she helped start Ballantine Books. Of the major changes, print numbers and sell-through (how many actually sell) have been the most drastic (besides the switch from paperback to hard-cover and the rise of the trade paperback). In the 70s is wasn't uncommon to print 30,000 books for a new author and sell 90% of those. These are numbers a best-selling author would envy today. 30M (30,000 in print speak) books is the same as the combined total of the first, second, and third printings of a new author. And 70% sell through is considered good.

Here are two blog posts that shed light on not only the current state of genre publishing but also the history of how we got here (thanks, BTW, to Jay Lake's link salad).

First up is Charlie Stross' Why SF & F novels are the length they are.

Here's another from Scrivener's Error on the Publishing Squeeze.

Hope that helps with perspectives. As for me, I'm going to spend my Xmas Borders' gift cards as quick as possible and hunker down on the new work for the new year. Here's hoping with have happier news to talk about at the end of 2009.

I write I'm sorry but my letter keeps coming back

(Cross posted on Genre Bender)

S. Andrew Swann points us (through his blog post which has a really good LOLcat) to a new publishing group at HarperCollins that's trying something different. Here is a Reuters article giving the basic overview and a NYT article with more details about the new group and what they maybe trying to do.

I think it's good that some publishing house has not only realized that the distribution and business model of book selling is broken, but is trying something new to fix it. The "share the profit instead of an advance" has me a little worried and sets off my "Scam" alarms, but with the HC name behind it, I'm willing to give it a little room to wiggle. For that part to work, accounting at the publishers and distributors will have to become simpler than the full work-up astrology charts they currently resemble. Really, there's a whole art to figuring out when advances earn out and how much royalty is due afterward. Go ask any published author who has actually earned a royalty check. Santeria has more straightforward rules.

The process of "stripping" is also something that should be abolished and this new venture goes a long way to plunge the stake into it's heart. For those of you not in the know, many moons ago the publishing houses realized they were losing money on return shipping (having started the process of full credit returns during the last depression IIRC) so for paperbacks, they allowed the stores to strip the covers off and return just the cover for credit. The store was then to destroy/pulp the book themselves. I'm sure you've all seen the warnings to never buy a book without it's cover. You wouldn't need such warning if it hadn't been such a widespread practice. Personally, I'd rather see the front side of distribution change with adding more actual people on both the handing books to the stores and the stores buying books (IMHO, this is where printed fiction has lost the majority of their audience, the automation of the process and the reduction of real humans who actually knew what people wanted to read in their local markets on both sides of the transaction).

How this will affect the whole life cycle of a book remains to be seen (publish, sold, shelved, returned, discounted, remaindered). And as you can see they're only tackling one part of this. That part is pretty important (constant shipping of one book can soak up more than the royalty), but it exists in a larger context of the business model.

Unfortunately I see this as becoming into a more traditional "partnership" with the publisher. And it still remains to be seen how the other aspects of publishing are handled (marketing, shelf space, printing complexities, art direction, etc) with this model. For some reason (call me a cynic) I don't believe the publisher will re-shoulder more of the marketing responsibilities. Although 25 books a year is considered "boutique" from what I understand, there are small presses which publish more books. So they may be able to give more in all these concerns.

In the overall scheme, I think this is a good new practice. I have some minor quibbles, but it doesn't even sound like they have it all together yet anyway. It'll be interesting to hear from the authors that sell into this new imprint. I hope they will share and can share their experiences. It'll also be interesting to see how this would stack up against other small press deals (who I would see adopting a business model close to this faster than the larger imprints).

A Chilly Morning Drive - Publishing News

(I've typed and then deleted this post three times already. I guess I should just post it. Hope it all still makes sense.)

So, I'm driving into work on Friday, and this story comes on NPR, Publishers Push for New Rules on Unsold Book. In the story they talk about the crazy world of returns, and how expensive it's getting shipping books back and forth several times.

And then the clinker where the CEO of Barnes and Nobel talks about how the policy of returns is insane and that the industry should come up with a different idea. Like printing fewer titles.

Shazam! (insert ominous music here)

With fewer titles they can then focus on making all bestsellers. They don't have to ship, stock, mark-down, dust titles that won't sell more than a handful of books. B&N could standardize their catalog (centralized control of the market) more. "Everybody will buy these books because we're not going to offer them a choice," is what the CEO is saying.

Now, there are benefits to fewer titles. Maybe books would have longer shelf lives (which translates to better sales), the share of marketing money and drive would see each book get more, etc, etc.

However, fewer books means if the publisher doesn't think they can sell at least 20,000 units of your title, you're not going to get a contract. How many authors out there would be published with that standard? See how few hands were raised. Okay, of those left, how many of you would have made the cut with your first books published?

See why that ominous music is still playing.

The small press renaissance would be killed. New author development, already stifled, would be knifed. And, within a decade, the industry as we know it would be radically different. And I would predict, B&N which is the 800lb gorilla in the room (with buying and distribution) would be dead. Yes, what the CEO is asking for would lead to his own company's demise. Publishing relies on fresh blood. Sure, walk into the horror section and you can evenly divide the place by King/Koontz/Straub and Everybody Else. Look at the shelf space for SF/F and you can see the heavy weights taking up the shelf space. But all those other titles keep the whole ball of wax rolling along. Who knows who will be the next BNA? Hemingway wasn't Hemingway when he was writing for The Kansas City Star.

It's not all bad. Young and mid-list authors would be forced to develop web delivery of their product. Someone would figure out how to monetize it. Creation would still go on. The signal to noise ratio would worsen, but I think the markets would shake out. Print-on-demand may actually come into being, as consumers would be forced to this option. However, that means successful authors would have to become their own publishers (which is already happening with the loss of marketing money and with the direction of self-publishing). This, IMHO, is not a good thing.

With fewer titles B&N would see an immediate profit increase as overhead decreased. After a few years, though, customers would wander away in search of their next book fix. Sales would decline. B&N would look at the last time they made a profit (when they cut titles) and redo the actions (cut more titles). Eventually no one would really care to enter their stores except for textbooks (which are leading the way for electronic delivery). As they watch the top line dive for ground cover the B&N executives would decry the death of the printed page, all the while it would be thriving in niche markets and stores. If B&N didn't control so much of the distribution chain, I would say independent stores would reblossom. Unfortunately, with the direction to fewer titles being given by the 800lb gorilla, the supply of new titles would be choked off at the source.

This is the same death Apple nearly suffered as it focused on a smaller core audience, and then started sub-dividing that audience. Fortunately, Steve Jobs came back without nearly a decade of "focus on the core" being drummed into his head, and then the digital music revolution happened.

The best thing to happen would be to have the CEO deploy his golden parachute early.