Publishing – Page 20

The New Money Flow

December 1, 2009 By Mark 39 Comments

Recently, while reading a write-up of a self-publishing nightmare, I ran across mention of something called Yog’s Law, attributed to one James D. Macdonald. Having never heard of Yog’s Law before, I clicked through and learned the following:

Macdonald is well known for his work in educating aspiring authors, particularly for his advice on avoiding literary scams. Early in his career he was asked by such an author how much he had paid to have his books published, and in response began a campaign of educating other writers about the problems of vanity publishers. As part of this campaign, he coined Yog’s Law, which states “Money should flow toward the author,” which is often quoted by professional authors when giving advice on getting published.

Less than a day later, I read this in a blog post by Richard Curtis:

The line that once sharply separated traditional publishing (“We pay you”) and vanity publishing (“You pay us”) has all but dissolved in this corrosive environment of fabulous riches.

Mere hours later I found Yog’s Law quoted a third time, in a Jane Friedman blog post analyzing the Harlequin Horizons debacle:

People like to say (and I’ve said too) that money should flow TO the writer, not AWAY from the writer.

But I can see a business model emerging where publishers work with authors in more diverse ways. What we’ve held to be sacred—that a writer should NEVER pay to publish—may change.

To be clear: there are a lot of literary scams out there, and a lot of naive writers who get taken to the cleaners as a result. Whatever work James Macdonald has done to protect writers from predatory service providers who peddle false promises is a good thing.

Understanding Yog’s Law
As maxims go, Yog’s Law is not bad. In a moment I will speak to the fallacy of Yog’s Law, and to the convenience of revisiting the rule when the publishing industry decides it wants to get in on the writer-servicing business, but as a general guideline I think Yog’s Law does what it needs to do. It tells writers that anyone asking them for money should be viewed with suspicion, and that’s correct. That this core tenet could be expanded to cover most aspects of anyone’s life does not detract from its effectiveness as a general rule for aspiring writers. [ Read more ]

Marketing Fatigue

November 28, 2009 By Mark 2 Comments

I’ve been a subscriber to Popular Photography for four or five years. I didn’t buy my first digital camera until two years ago (a point-and-shoot), but I’ve had a life-long interest in photography and I’ve been using Pop Photo to keep up with the evolution of digital tech.

I still have an analog SLR and three lenses that I love, but I wouldn’t go back to film if you offered me the choice. Between the per-image cost of processing, the film requirement of processing all images instead of tossing the mistakes, and the difficulty (impossibility) of getting good prints at anything less than custom prices, I’m completely sold on digital.

Still, I’m not an early adopter when it comes to tech. I tried that, and it’s just too expensive. I’d love nothing more than to own a DSLR today, but I wouldn’t have said that even two years ago. Why? Because two years ago camera manufacturers were still in a megapixel race, which, like the return of the horsepower race in cars, provides only limited end-user utility. It’s only in the last two years that the DSLR feature set has matured to the point where you can buy a camera now that won’t be obsolete in six months. (Not that there won’t be advances. But the question of image resolution in digital formats has been thoroughly asked and answered. If you want to take good pictures that can be printed to 8×10 or larger, that’s now a given in any DSLR, and true for many point-and-shoots as well.)

In terms of knowledge and information about cameras, my subscription to Popular Photography has been well worth it. As an unexpected bonus, however, I’ve also learned a bit about what’s happening to the analog magazine business in the age of digital information, none of which would come as a surprise to regular readers. (See also my take on PC Magazine. Which, by the way, recently launched a new web site that is much improved in terms of clutter, but even less trustworthy than before in terms of mingling editorial content with advertisements posing as press releases posing as editorial content. Consider yourself warned. Again.)

I don’t remember what I paid for my first Pop Photo subscription, but it was cheap. Twelve issues for pretty much nothing. Or maybe it was two years (24 issues) for pretty much nothing. In any case, when I received my annual renewal reminder last year I was shocked to see that another twelve issues would cost me five dollars. As in $5. As in five hundred pennies. As in: are you kidding me? [ Read more ]

Richard Curtis Observes Hypocrisy

November 23, 2009 By Mark Leave a Comment

Last Thursday, in a post about the Harlequin Horizons debacle, I wrote this:

The idea that all of these novice, amateur and un-published professional writers are suddenly going to take advantage of self-publishing tools has got to be making traditional publishers both mental and green with greed.

Today, Richard Curtis writes this:

With so much money being thrown at subsidy publishers, and with the blessing of mainstream publishing, the evolution of vanity from the margins to the center of the publishing universe is complete. The erosion of traditional gatekeepers like reviewers, critics, newspaper book editors, and other refined literary tastemakers makes it clear why even a conservative publisher might lose its head over the prospect of all that money – and be tempted to go into another racket.

Publishers go where the money is. For a long time the money was in gatekeeping, and particularly in gatekeeping the content-distribution process. The internet ended the ability of publishers to dominate distribution, so they are looking for new revenue sources, including partnering with (or getting in bed with, or joining in abusive practices with) the very vanity and subsidy publishers they used to decry.

The idea that publishers are victims of anything is now dead.

— Mark Barrett

Self-Publishing: A Cautionary Tale

November 22, 2009 By Mark Leave a Comment

Mick Rooney put a post up on his site today that details a long-running dispute between an author and self-publishing company in the UK. I think it’s worth a read because it draws attention to a number of ways authors can become enmeshed in processes that consume time and money, as well as stomach linings and sanity.

We don’t often end up in court, but most of the things we do each day have the potential to land us there, whether or not we’re the ones motivated to seek some sort of justice. We also tend to think of our online communications as social networking or community building, but our online personas also establish a permanent record and obligate us to conversations we might not otherwise want to have.

Self-publishing is an opportunity, and online methods of marketing our works and ourselves are a benefit in that regard. But there are still risks to be recognized and managed, and our individual conduct may matter more than we think.

As I noted in the comments on Mick’s site, you don’t have to choose sides to see his post as a series of cautionary tales. Given the explosion of author-service providers — including the already re-branded Harlequin Horizons, and other publishers and imprints working with Author Solutions — it only makes sense to be cautious.

The goal, it seems to me, is professionalism. From the people who provide us services, and from ourselves. In this case being a professional means arming yourself with knowledge gleaned from the experience of those who have gone before you. Because it might keep you from losing, time, money and sleep.

— Mark Barrett

Revealing Costs

November 21, 2009 By Mark 4 Comments

The ugly if not predatory mechanics and economics of the just-renamed Harlequin Horizons imprint bring to mind a question I’ve had about the book business for some time….

Over the past few months I’ve read post after post from apparently knowledgeable sources such as agents, editors and publishers — people who’ve been in the publishing business for years — speaking to the issue of publishing costs. Here’s a recent example:

Hardcover:
Editorial: $8,000
Packaging (cover design & production): $5,000
Typeset & Interior layouts: $3,000
Printing & binding: $18,000
Marketing: $15,000
Warehousing: $6,000
Sales: $10,000
Author royalty (a typical advance is calculated in this model): $25,000

Leaving out the royalty issue, all these numbers seem to jibe (loosely) with other numbers I’ve seen — as if this is pretty much the going rate. What I’ve yet to see, however, is how much profit there is built into these rates. What does it really cost the publishing industry to provide these services? [ Read more ]

Updated: Sullivan’s Experiment in POD

November 19, 2009 By Mark Leave a Comment

Andrew Sullivan’s print-on-demand (POD) experiment continues apace, with interesting results so far:

How did we get the price down by half? We did it the way publishing houses do it – with a twist. We didn’t guess the demand or market test it, we simply asked for pledges. We crowd-sourced the price. We got enough pledges to do a print run of 2,000 which brought the price down to $16.25. But unlike the publishing houses, we’re not pocketing the difference. We’re handing it over to you in a lower price.

The idea of pooling demand for a print-on-demand book, then using that aggregated demand to drive the per-book cost down, is interesting to me. Provided it doesn’t cut into the profits of the publisher (in this case, Blurb), there’s no reason not to do this, and particularly so for impending releases. (Pre-ordering of content is now quite common in the games biz, but there’s rarely a break on price for ordering early.) Here consumers win twice: they can elect to order prior to availability as a convenience, but can also drive the price down in the process.

In Sullivan’s case, however, the price drop seems to be a one-time event:

A catch: Once those 2000 copies are bought up, however, the price will return to $29.95, so secure one today.

I wonder if this is necessarily the case. It may be that there simply needs to be an additional mechanism added to the purchase of a POD book: one that offers to delay shipment until a certain number of offers are stockpiled, at which point the price drops accordingly. How much book-buying is spur-of-the-moment, and how much is for later gifting? Would consumers be willing to defer a purchase to save a few bucks? Or, once the purchase decision is made, will people see paying more (full retail) as the cost of getting it sooner? How can demand be pooled more than once? (For example, can I have the option to get a book now for the regular price, or choose to go into a pool of people waiting for a lower price?)

In the end, I think Sullivan’s example not only blazes trail, it indicates that self-publishing and POD are going to continue to evolve to meet market needs. The landscape we see today is not going to be the landscape we travel tomorrow.

— Mark Barrett

Jackie Kessler on Harlequin Horizons

November 19, 2009 By Mark 5 Comments

Here’s everything I know about romance writing:

Fabio.
It’s not my thing.

Which is why I didn’t really know what to make of Harlequin’s recent announcement that they were starting a self-publishing/branded-imprint hybrid called Harlequin Horizons. Fortunately, people like Jackie Kessler know a good bit more than I do about such things, and in a post on her blog today she pulls the wool back quite nicely:

What is the difference between what Harlequin is doing here and what scammer agents do when they reject an author but then steer them to Papa Jack’s Editorial to pay a lot of money to “clean up” their submissions…and Papa Jack is another business owned by that agent? Easy: none.

Read the whole thing, it’s more than worth it. And if you know anyone who has stars in their eyes about this supposed opportunity, make sure they see Jackie’s post.

I also suspect this is only the beginning of such shenanigans. The idea that all of these novice, amateur and un-published professional writers are suddenly going to take advantage of self-publishing tools has got to be making traditional publishers both mental and green with greed. Ergo Harlequin dangles its brand in front of the uninitiated, works a bait-and-switch, and takes a cut. Ugly, but oh-so lucrative.

(By the way, I’d never even heard of the RWA before, but good for them for saying, “No.”)

Update: April L. Hamilton weighed in on this debacle as well, and as always April gets inside the numbers:

For example, as of this writing it costs $35 to register a U.S. copyright online; HH/ASI charges $204 for this same service.

Depressing and predictable at the same time.

Read April’s post. If you’re too busy, read the UPDATE at the bottom, then find time for the rest later. This kind of thing is not going to go away, it’s simply going to become more sophisticated.

(The people at Harlequin are not embarrassed that they’ve been caught red-handed, they’re embarrassed that they didn’t make things so convoluted and obscure that no one could really tell what was going on. Like your cell-phone contract.)

Later update: John Sclazi rips up the remaining shreds.

— Mark Barrett

Whither Literary Journals

November 19, 2009 By Mark 5 Comments

Here’s how it used to work in the old days. If you wrote literary short stories, poetry, or literary criticism, you published those works in small literary journals. Some of these journals were famous, like the Paris Review, others not so famous, but the common bond was respect for artistic merit — however that might have been defined at any point on the often-trendy cultural continuum.

Last time I checked, most literary journals published only a few times a year, as most. Most paid little or nothing, or provided compensation in the form of one or more copies upon publication. Many if not most had stringent requirements about submissions, including refusing to consider multiple submissions. Many if not most took months to respond to authors, such that an author armed with a literary short story who followed all the rules might only be able to submit to two or three journals in a calendar year — with little or no assurance of eventual publication.

As the internet has grown, I do know that literary journals have added new wrinkles to protect their reputations, markets and cultural standing. One of these rules is that publication online in any form disqualifies a story or poem from consideration. It’s an understandable adaptation, but ignores the reality and importance of the internet in liberating the very voices that literary journals traditionally advocated for in the face of entertainment-driven commercialism.

All of which leads me to a whole spate of related questions…. [ Read more ]

Format Freaking

November 18, 2009 By Mark Leave a Comment

Whether you know a little or a lot about the interactive entertainment industry, it’s worth reading this (short) article if only to see how pervasive the current uncertainty is in all content-driven mediums. You might think the software business would be less at-risk of the internet as a distribution mechanism, or to concerns about formats, but you’d be wrong.

The article is also hilarious in demonstrating the kind of outdated reference that suggests key executives in all content-driven industries are missing the bigger picture:

For example, [Yoichi Wada, CEO of Square Enix] said, films are generally two hours long or less; television is a half hour or an hour, and runs in a series regularly for several months; and a newspaper is delivered in roughly similar size every morning.

Those mediums could have evolved in very different ways, but at a certain point, they standardized, and consumers know roughly what to expect when they experience one.

Newspapers? Delivered? Wha….?

Note, too, the complete omission of reference to the book industry, which is going through its own format freakout. Each industry will evolve in its own way, but if you believe that form(at) follows function (and I do), then all of these format issues are really just an(other) result of the inevitable move to internet distribution.

— Mark Barrett

Lying With Oprah

November 16, 2009 By Mark 2 Comments

As regular readers know, I think ghostwriting should always be acknowledged. If you have a ghostwriter help you with your book and you don’t admit you had a ghostwriter help you you’re a liar. It doesn’t matter who you are, what you’ve accomplished, which political party you belong to or which deity or god you worship.

Which brings me to Sarah Palin’s appearance on Oprah today, and the fact that — apparently — Oprah Winfrey decided not to ask Sarah Palin about her ghostwriter, or if anyone helped her write Going Rogue, which bears only Palin’s name as author. In fact, the only remotely relevant portion of the interview that I’ve been able to find is a clip posted on Winfrey’s website which did not air in the broadcast interview.

At the 1:44 mark in a clip titled Sarah Palin Explains Why She Wrote Her Book, the following exchange takes place after Palin explains that she has written and kept personal journals for much of her life:

Winfrey — “So when you started to write this book — cause I was wondering how you could remember in such detail, you know…specific events, but that — understood.

Palin — “Yeah, I have detailed prayers that I had prayed over the years, um…different episodes in my life, and — so, logistically speaking, practically speaking, it wasn’t a really difficult exercise to write the book.”

Again, I understand that this is how the publishing business works. If you’re a celebrity and you want a book written, you hire a ghostwriter to write you a book with the understanding that the ghostwriter will not take credit. It’s no different than when you hire a chef to create those easy-to-heat, old-family-recipe meals that impress all your society friends. It’s what busy, wealthy, important people do because there are only so many hours in the day. [ Read more ]