Why Don't I Self-Publish?

I am reminded almost daily that I am seeking to launch a writing career at what might be the worst time imaginable. Many publishers seem to be teetering, layoffs are rampant and the media is trumpeting the dawn of a new age of self-publishing. All of which inspires family and friends to periodically poke me and ask: "Why the hell aren't you self-publishing?"

Time Magazine's January write-up of Lisa Genova’s self-published breakout novel Still Alice has served to put this question in front of me again.

The recent troubles of “brick & mortar” bookstores and the teetering finances of certain publishing giants are just fuel for this particular fire. But is an industry shakeup propagated by other economic factors really the harbinger of the Big Publishing apocalypse? According to the Boston Globe, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt's woes have a lot to do with the decline of their textbook publishing empire. Does that really presage the dawn of an anarchic state of self-publishing where every Joe or Jane Ink-in-my-veins is clawing for a spot on the bestseller lists? (Incidentally: Without publishers and booksellers to report accurate sales data, will there even be a bestseller's list in that future world?)

Not to understate the problems facing the publishing industry. Peter Olsen’s article in Publisher’s Weekly (aptly titled: “A Long Winter”) lays out the current woes of the publishing industry in stark detail, begging me to revisit the question: Why not self-publish? Isn't that the wave of the future? In a world where anyone really can write a book and get it published without jumping the hurdles of editors and agents, isn't the Big Publishing model doomed anyway?

I'm sure another spate of articles heralding the end of big-money corporate publishing and trumpeting the triumph of self-published rebels is due to crest the hill any moment now.

There’s no coincidence that the dawn of the print on demand houses the likes of iUniverse and BookSurge aligned with the rise of book retailers willing to stock anything with an ISBN number. A number of recent bestsellers – including Christopher Paolini’s breakout YA fantasy bestseller Eragon* – are trumpeted as the vanguard of this new march on New York despite the fact that both of these books were scooped-up by major publishers as a result of their early success.

Anyone with a computer really can put a novel out there.

The apparent popularity of Amazon’s Kindle2 further complicates this field as everyone from the big houses to the self-published entrepreneur scrambles to figure out how to make eBooks make money. (As the consumer tries to decide if they read enough books in a year to make the price tag of the Kindle break even for them.) Amazon offers to “translate” any book you care to write into their proprietary format for a relatively small fee and build upon their history of bookselling for the masses. If anything can attain the coveted title of "The Tipping Point" it may well be the long-ballyhooed arrival of the eBook in the hands of American consumers.

The one thing that really troubles me about a world sans publishing houses is the signal-to-noise ratio.

If everyone really does have one novel in them, and even a realtively small percentage have the gumption to put ink to paper... how is the reading public to find the wheat in all that chaff?

Every writer must already be savvy in the field of marketing in order to really ‘make it’ in publishing. Every publisher, every agency, every book by Writer's Digest tells you this up-front. But without a sizeable marketing budget, how could anyone break through the noise? Wouldn't that put real success out of reach for those who don't have the backing of venture capital? What's next? An IPO for Scott Perkins, Inc just to raise capital for my first printrun?

If an author has to shoulder the full burden of not only marketing, but editing, publishing, inventory management, distribution, and accounts payable... who would venture to break the mold? And if they hire people to fill those roles... don't they perforce become a publishing house -- albeit a small one?

Frustration is a big factor too. Editors, literary agents, publishers and booksellers are a daunting lot from the standpoint of an aspiring author. Lined up between them and their book on a store shelf like the defensive line of the opposing team. The songs of lamentation rise to the tune of foreheads banging against keyboards: “HOW DO I CAPTURE YOUR INTEREST? WHAT MAKES YOU TAKE THIS BOOK AND IGNORE THAT ONE?”.

I can't pretend that I haven't considered it. And I have the good fortune of having fulfilled all of the jobs I mentioned in the past for various book stores. It's certainly tempting to chuck the game and go it alone.

But the view of editors, agents and publishers as defending the goal often blinds us to the service they provide to readers. Shifting the slush pile at the bookstore, I got a glimpse of what the agencies and publishers aren't showing us. Cervantes' admonition that "no parent thinks their own child is ugly; and this self-deceit is yet stronger with respect to the offspring of the mind" has never been proven more definitively.

No reader is immune to the perplexing moment spent standing at the book tables of a bookstore, thumbing through the latest “I can’t believe someone published this piece of (insert epithet here)” and wondering what the publishing world is collectively smoking.

If you only knew what you are "missing".

It seems too simplistic to say: “Traditional Publishing –vs – Plucky Little Guy” (with his entire printrun in the trunk of his car) in a fight to the death. From my standpoint as an author and former bookseller, that a hybrid is infinitely more likely.

As evidenced by Lisa Genova’s story of success mentioned in the Time article, the old school is adapting - albeit slowly -to the new marketplace, setting aside the old prejudices of viewing any self-publisher as a ‘vanity press’. Publisher’s Weekly has announced that they will no longer ignore these titles either.

We’re told that the big publishers are looking for the next Harry Potter or Davinci Code and less likely to take big-money risks on first-time novelists or pay out the headline-grabbing advances we’ve seen in the past. The moral of Still Alice may well prove to be that self-publishing will eventually become the summer stock of the publishing industry. A place for mainstream authors to prove their mettle in the marketplace and demonstrate that they are worth big-money advances and full-tilt marketing pushes by their eventual big house publishers.

None of which is enough to make me run out and plunk down the money for a huge printrun and marketing support out of my own bank account. Not to mention distribution, warehousing and the sheer inventory it really takes to move even a midlist author out of the backlist.

This is not because I don't believe in my writing; it's because I believe strongly enough in it to believe someone else will too. I'm hoping it's someone with the wherewithal to make it happen on a scale a self-publisher cannot reasonably aspire to. Is that arrogant? Maybe, but I don't think it is, at least not in a negative sense. Writers can't (and won't) make it unless they are confident in the work they produce no matter who publishes them. I’m confident enough in myself and the marketplace to continue getting my work(s) out there through the classic channels.

And like every writer, I'm holding myself aloft on periodic updrafts of hope.

----

*Not to detract from the accomplishments of a 17 year-old writing a bestseller. More power to him. Nevertheless, it is my understanding that Paolini’s book was actually published by a small press owned and operated by his parents. Which goes to show that the 'Self published’ cachet seems to be a moving target these days.

Self Publish or Traditional Publish? Which is the right way?

Yesterday, my cousin, who is also an author, posted this on my Facebook wall and asked my feelings about it.

Self-publishing has become a cult@Salon.com

The writer has encountered something I've heard a million times: If you go with a big publisher, you're selling out. If you go indie it's because you're not good enough to catch a bigger fish. If you're at a small press, you're almost cool enough to sit at the table with the hip kids, but you have to wear a scarlet P and sit at the far end.

Every day at every writing conference, this plays out.

And it's all BS.

Trust me, I grew up in cow country and I know bull poo when I see it.

I think the idea that there is one path to print is behind us. In some ways, the self-publishing movement and small presses that have grown out of it are the AAA ball of publishing. Some resent being referred to as minor leagues because it hurts their feelings. I don't care about your feelings. If you wear your heart on your sleeve, keep your book in the drawer where it belongs.

Publishers are inevitable. If the Big Six fell tomorrow, a thousand small presses would fill the vacuum because most of us have no interest in doing everything ourselves. And when we do it all ourselves, for the most part, we turn out some pretty crappy, un-or-unevenly edited crap.

There are exceptions, but not many. Publishers play those roles. The middle man is not a freeloader, they provide a valuable service for reader and writer alike. There will be some who can only find a readership on their own. For others, they will never find an audience, certainly not a broad audience, without an army shouting their name until it is heard above the din.

Want to do it alone and hire professionals to edit your book and design a cover and typeset your pages? Congrats, you're a publisher. I know what I charge for covers and it means you're better financed than most and applying that level of hurdle for writers to leap before they can reach an audience leaves out a huge portion of the voices telling stories that need to be heard.

For every one truly indie author that rises from the unwashed ranks of free self-published, unedited e-books, there are tens of thousands lost in the tumult. This is the primary role of publishers. Is it always fair? No. Is it easy to get over the wall? No. Is it always good? Of course not. But it is a system that has curated our literary culture for a few centuries now and they've done more good than bad. Because while we lambast them for their Davinci Codes and their encouragement of the "Me Too" market that has turned the YA section into the "Hot Vampire" section, the dollars spent on that pap gives cover to books like The Bookthief and The Adventures of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation. And Davinci Code allows books like The Corrections and The Yiddish Policeman's Union a bit of breathing room to flourish and find their audience.

And while the midlist is frequently eulogized, it lives on in the smaller imprints that have risen up to take the slack and live leaner on smaller profit margins than the Big Six can sell to their stockholders.

Publishers are not evil. We just like to make them seem remote and uncaring and evil because it suits our personal narrative for it to be so. They're not the bad guys and we're not the heroes. We're all just trying to do the best we can to get our art made and in front of the people who want to read it.

The path for most will fall somewhere between. If you get your books in the hands of the people you want to read them and are able to write the next one, you did it the right way. If that doesn't suit someone else's vision of "The Right Way" to hell with them.

Extreme views in either direction make me stop listening. I don't have time for zealots.

tl:dr?
Watch John Green's acceptance speech for the ABA's 2013 Indie Champion Award. He's pretty darned close to what I wanted to say here.

The Circuit Board Jungle :: E-Booked

E-reader Revolt: I'm Leaving Youth Culture Behind

Emma Silvers for Slate.com

...One recent story in the New York Times went so far as to claim that iPads and Kindles and Nooks are making the very act of reading better by -- of course -- making it social. As one user explained, "We are in a high-tech era and the sleekness and portability of the iPad erases any negative notions or stigmas associated with reading alone." Hear that? There's a stigma about reading alone. (How does everyone else read before bed -- in pre-organized groups?) Regardless, it turns out that, for the last two decades, I've been Doing It Wrong. And funny enough, up until e-books came along, reading was one of the few things I felt confident I was doing exactly right.
Read more at Slate...

This article from slate was bandied about quite a bit on Facebook the other day.  Mostly, I think it draws attention because it's a voice rising from a generation that led us in lockstep into the digital world: cell phones, iPods, digital filesharing.  These so-called "Millenials" are the engine in that change, a generation that we are told has never worn a wristwatch or known a time when TV's weren't video game monitors or desks didn't have computers (or laps for that matter).  And this 'kid' (at 26, no one's a kid really) doesn't want e-Books.

Gasp.  The horror!
The statistical outlier gets the press, as always.

While it's at times funny and poignant and a lot of the points are well-argued, there's an underlying problem with it that most of the retweeting and facebooking and commentary have missed: the issue of ownership.  Therein lies the single greatest logical leap from Generation X (me) to Generation Y (Emma Silvers).

The single greatest problem we should all have (or so I arrogate) isn't that we can't read the spines to see that the burly biker next to us is reading Harry Potter, but that whether he's reading Grapes of Wrath or Artemis Fowl, it's not his.  He's just leasing it from Amazon or Apple.  We don't own our e-books or i-books, we lease them from the distributor and for the most part are only able to read them on that distributor's software preference.

Less like your local library and more like literary pay-per-view.

I think she was fishing around for it and couldn't find it.  Her generation feels that these things they paid for should be theirs -- they should be able to pass that great song or cool movie along to their friends.  "You've got to see/hear/read this!"  But to do so with digital downloads requires the breaking of laws.  And they do break that law.  In droves.

The central problem of most articles on e-books is that they avoid this topic like the plague.  When we ceded our right to own the music we listen to in solid-state, we gave up thinking about ownership.  It gets argued ad nauseum on the internet, but most people don't seriously think about it outside of the comments section of Wired magazine's latest article on the subject.  And just about all of those commenters have iPods.

The zeitgeist states that this format change could "save publishing".  If a format change is all it takes, then there's no conclusion to be reached other than there was something wrong with the prior format.  And as far as publishing was concerned, there is something wrong with print books: You could hand them to someone else or to a used bookstore and they could go on shelf-hopping forevermore without a dime making its way back to New York.

But this puts publishing in a terrible position where the fan advocacy that once pushed the great and the good to the top of the bestseller lists is shackled by the inability to press a well-thumbed paperback into the hands of a friend with the earnest insistence that YOU HAVE GOT TO READ THIS!.


I'm a writer and I want, oh yes, I want to make a living from my work.  So I am in no way, shape or form advocating that writers should give away their books for free.   Library bookloans, used bookstores, earnest friends, garage sales... those are lost sales.  Authors and publishers don't get a dime (at least in the United States) from that secondary and tertiary trade in books... but really, who cares?  There isn't a bestselling, successful author working today that wasn't helped by that trade - helped far more than they were hurt.

And to say there's something wrong with that is to say that I somehow gypped Nissan or Subaru when I sold my last couple of cars to some college kid I found on Craig's List.  A secondary market is part of doing business that only musicians, writers, and publishers in music and print seem to think they should be immune to.

The Buggywhip Defense League

I'm a big fan of buggy whips, and you just can't find anywhere to buy them anymore.  Sad, really.

In recent weeks I've been accused of being a Luddite, a snob, a hipster, and a Luddite hipster snob.  Just because I prefer printed books to the digital ones.  Or was it for whining too much about Daylight Saving Time?

Might have been both.

Earlier today, someone sent me a link which implies I'm a "Book Fetishist", which has implications I don't care to delve into here.  Though here's a hint to the guys who wrote that: you're not going to win a booklover's heart by handing them a gutted book unless it was used to smuggle another book into the former Soviet Union or something.

Preferably with the smuggled book still inside.

I do love books.  I love the sensory experience of them and feel that I retain more of the text reading paper rather than the screen, but contrary to what is apparently a popular belief, I'm not anti e-book. Being anti e-book would be like being anti paperback. In point of fact, I'm fully in favor of someone making this digital marginalia idea from the New York Times a reality with all due haste.

If they do that, I will be first in line for my ticket.  Please make it available for the Kobo.


I am blessed with a personal library that runs into the thousands of books, some of which I inherited, some of which were gifts and some of which I bought when I was a bookseller and could get them at a steep discount.  I grew up surrounded by them and cannot imagine a house that feels homey without them.  Not everyone has that luxury and not everyone has the space to store them properly even if they can acquire such a collection.  Electronic formats allow someone to acquire such a collection at a significantly lower cost in terms of both money and space.

I don't think that any booklover in his right mind would begrudge someone that joy over a simple matter of silicon & pixels versus paper & ink.

Just mind those user's agreements.  Read it before you click "I agree".  Know what you're signing away in terms of rights and privileges, because you're not getting them back.

The part of the digital domain that does bother me is the part that eliminates bookstores.  And mayhap that does make me a Luddite or one of the other things I've been called.  Nevertheless, I posit that the ecosystem that grew up in support of the written word is not the Cult of the Buggywhip as it is often portrayed.  It was the support system that gave rise to our literary culture. A support system which at present, no one has presented a replacement for it that seems to have the chops to go the distance.

I'm not actually talking about publishing.  Publishing will evolve and the publishers will evolve or not as their survival instincts dictate.  Publishing will find a way to survive, they always do.  I'm talking about bookstores.  Indies, Barnes & Noble, Borders, the lot of them.

Only recently has the Googlebooks launch made it possible to buy e-books from my local bookstore (and this time I am talking about the indie bookstores such as our beloved local independant Elliot Bay)
There's nothing wrong with reading books on an e-reader any more than there's anything wrong with listening to music on an MP-3 player, but I'm not a fan of leasing any of my media.  And while the comparison between music and books is tenuous at times, I mention music specifically because of the death of the independent music store that used to be a part of the culture of every city.

To throw that away in the name of convenience is a crying shame.  When you throw out the bathwater, don't be surprised if you look down and the baby's no longer there.

And if that makes me a Luddite, a hipster, or a snob, then so be it.

Apple, the Ebook and the consequences of free...

There has been a lot of skepticism about the big numbers that Apple claims to be putting up with their new iPad bookstore.  Apple claims that the publishers told them that they've already cornered 22% of the eBook market (which remember is still actually only about 2% of the overall market) and the even more attention-grabbing number of 5 million books "sold".

 

The reason "sold" is in quotes is the same reason it's always in quotes in these discussions, because like Amazon before them, Apple is being a bit fuzzy with their numbers.  As suspense author David Hewson asked via his Twitterfeed yesterday: "How many of those 5 million ebooks downloaded to iPads were free?"  

 

The degree to which ebooks are catching on and especially the perceived dominance of any particular vector for the things is always questionable because in truth, many of the ebooks downloaded to Kindles, iPads, Nooks, et al are free.  Either because of promotions or because the books are out of copyright and available free from places like Project Gutenberg, or even through the commercial channels.  Barnes & Noble, for instance, brags that they're offering over a million titles formatted for the iPad, over half of which are free.  It isn't clear whether those free downloads are being touted as 'sales' by Apple.

Apple isn't alone in this practice.  Barnes & Noble and Amazon too are vague on how exactly they report those 'sales'.  That's where the ebook sales numbers get tricky and one of the many reasons why it's so difficult to pin down just how many ebooks are bouncing around out there.  It is entirely possible that the total aggregate trade in ebooks both free and paid for accounts for a significantly larger portion of the booktrade.  It is just as possible -- more possible according to some -- that the percentage of the booktrade being taken over by eBooks is largely made up of these free downloads and accounts for very little in actual dollars.

 

Here's the rub: A cornerstone cash cows for the larger publishing companies and bookstores is selling editions of books that are out of copyright.  Publishers can rack up profit at little cost because there are no rights to be paid for the many editions of Dickens and Austen.  Even bookstores get in on the act, which is why so many American bookshelves have complete sets of the Classics of Western Literature with a Barnes & Noble or Borders logo on the spine.  For a long time, these books are essentially free for the publishing companies, all they have to do is print and bind them.  I can read all of them free, now via the internet or download them to an iPad or Kindle and not have to pay anyone a dime.  They won't impress anyone lined up on my bookshelves, but if the content is what I'm after rather than the perception of erudition for my house guests.

 

Just one more part of the whole puzzle as the publishing industry changes around us...

Technology @ The New York Times

Bits: Why Apple’s iBooks Numbers Are Meaningless

By By BRAD STONE

Published: June 7, 2010

Apple's advances in the e-book market are not as impressive as they sound, but could prove trouble for Amazon down the road.

State of the eBook

It's been a tumultuous month for the ebook and it's only the sixth of February.  The fracas between Amazon and Macmillan is settling while the Googlebooks lawsuits are heating back up with the Author's Guild finally getting out there and trying to explain why they settled in they first place.  (Essentially they were trying to not become the RIAA.) 

The ripples of this thing continue to spread and the book industry is just trying to surf the wave... but really, why do we care?

Warning: If you've an aversion to statistics, you might want to find another post to read.

They get 90% of the press and actually represent just one or two percent of the actual sales. e-Books are the Prius of the publishing industry.  Nevertheless, the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show was the debutante of more and yet more e-Book Readers.  The Plastic Logic Que, the HP Tablet and the Blio (among many others) were all rushed to the podium to get out there ahead of the much anticipated advent of the Apple iPad.

If you think about it, this was probably the first time since Gutenberg started printing his Bibles that book technologies were discussed on this scale.  Certainly no futurists of the 1950's would have predicted that a new way of delivering books to readers would trump coverage of the introduction of 3D Television!

So, are we really seeing publishing turn a new page in the long journey that began with Cuneiform stamped into terra cotta tablets?  Will electronic readers like the Kindle do to paper books what Gutenberg's press did to the medieval scriptorium or more recently what CD's did to LP's?

It's impossible to say without doing a little bit of math.  

In spite of the hype, adoption of e-Books has been slow.  In 2008, e-Books accounted for an estimated 0.46% of total book sales, up 68% from the previous year (APP statistics).  Exact 2009 statistics aren't available yet, but the publishers are generally agreeing that it's risen to 1% of total sales.  While that's impressive growth in an industry that only grew on the whole by about 2.5%.  The long and the short of it is that unless something groundbreaking happens and all hell breaks loose, at the current rate of growth, we're probably looking at about 2016 before they equal the current sales of audio books.

That's not a tsunami, that's just the tide coming in.  e-Books certainly aren't going away, but without some sort of unforeseen intervention in the market to drive more readers into the arms of the e-Readers, the physical book will be with us for some time to come.  So don't go tearing out those pretty bookshelves in your living room just yet.

I see three main challenges to the e-Reader market before it can truly come into its own...

• Standardization: At present, there is no standard format that can be effortlessly transported from one reader to the next.  Even ePub, which is quickly rising in favor, has problem jumping from one reader that uses it to another due to some of the DRM problems.
  
• DRM: More authors have been helped than have ever been harmed by the secondary market in used books.  Trading, loaning, and sharing literature is ingrained into literary culture and readers have been significantly less inclined to accept that they won't own their books and be able to give them to friends or resell them.  The Barnes & Noble "Nook's" loan feature is a step in the right direction, but not a solution.
  
• Pricing/Valuation: The Macmillan/Amazon battle is just the tip of the iceberg. The publishing industry is only this past week finally taking steps to preserve the valuation of books.  It's a simple fact that printing and distribution of a physical book only accounts for (at most) 20% of the cover price.  Establishing the idea that a standard price of $9.99 or less for e-Books in no way reflects the reality of production.  The inclination of people to view digital content as essentially free will take a long time to reverse.

As I've said before, we have to get away from the idea that what we see now is necessarily any indication of what will be reality in ten years.  I don't think you could have looked at the early output of Gutenberg's presses (Bibles, indulgences and religious tracts) and seen an accurate view of what would be happening once writers stopped playing with the new toy and really started to create.

I'm reading a book by literary agent Donald Maas called Writing the Breakout Novel (which I will be reviewing here in the next week or so as past of the Backlist Book Review series).  In the first chapters he gives a sort of a summary of the "State of the Industry circa 2000" (when he wrote the book).  It's interesting and I'd like to see it updated, but there is a lot there that we need to remember.  Maas has the reputation of being the agent's agent and much of what he's saying came to pass and much is still in the works.   He's especially skeptical of the predictions that were being bandied about back then of the impending ebook revolution and that "in five years print books will be finished".  It's 2010 and we're still waiting.

He is especially skeptical of the writer's fantasy that the electronic book will somehow make the publishers disappear or that such an event is even desirable.  I refer you back to  John Scalzi's play for why I think that operating without a publisher is not the panacea that many want you to believe it would be.    Check it out at Scalzi's blog "Whatever".

Verso Advertising recently compiled data gathered from 110 million internet users across 5,100 websites to compile a broad-spectrum look at the book market as it was in 2009.  There's a definite marketing slant to this information insomuch as the data is used to underline the need for publishers to advertise in order to sell books.  

The e-Book data is a mixed-bag, mostly anticipating several proposed e-Book strategies such as pricing adjustments above the $10 benchmark that Kindle used to adhere to (back in the old days) and whether they would pay a premium for a hard copy if it came 'bundled' with an electronic version.  Most interesting to me was that 29% of e-Reader afficionados admitted to downloading pirate e-Books with 8% unsure.  (Which in this case I think translates to "I don't really want to answer this question because I have enough of a conscience to feel guilty about it").  45.9% of males age 18-34 admitted to slapping the skull & crossbones sticker onto their e-Readers!

Overall, Verso concludes that a 10-12% market portion for e-Books is theoretically achievable in two years, but no promises as there is no visible tipping-point event on the horizon.  With echoes of presidential elections ringing in our ears, we are forced to conclude that the revolution still isn't here and once again the undecideds hold all the cards.

e-Books start on Slide 19

The Digital Divide... Is it separating readers and publishers?

From today's Washington Post.

E-books spark battle inside the publishing industry

By Marion Maneker

Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, December 27, 2009 "The evolution of publishing from print to digital has caused a schism in the reading world. There are now two constituencies: readers (and writers) on the one hand, and the publishing world on the other. And they don't want to hear each other. . ."

Cover Story: Designing 'The Dragon Ring'

What more can any man hope for than to sit and be creative among friends?

When it hits the digital shelves of your local online bookstore, it will be called The Dragon Ring but when I read the first draft of Maggie Secara's sweeping fantasy epic, it was still titled Sparrow's Dragon.

I was enchanted. I remember thinking: Boy, I'd love to do the cover for this...

So when Maggie told me her publisher was looking for a cover designer, as you can imagine, my hand shot up. Luckily, I've done some web design for Maggie in the past, so when I stepped forward, she welcomed me with open arms. We talked about. We talked some more. Then I received a sketch of a dragon from noted folklorist, artist, and author Ari Berk and Maggie said "Yes, something like that" and it was on.

How could anyone pass up the opportunity to put themselves in the middle of so much talent?

Cover design is more than typesetting and Photoshop manipulations; there's always an element of art direction and packaging.  The photos or artwork has to be gathered from the illustrators, the client has to feel that the images and typefaces chosen correctly reflect their desires, balanced, of course with legibility and style.

And somewhere in there, you have to create something that also fits your own aesthetics.

Photo from Wikipedia: Used under Creative Commons License

The description of the eponymous Dragon Ring is that it's viking in origin.  Appropriately, the sketch that Professor Berk sent me is loosely based on the intricate viking-era serpent carvings like those found in the Urnes Stave Church in Norway. (see photo)

I took Ari's sketch, fed it into Photoshop and started sending ideas to Maggie for comment. One of the hurdles for any project of this sort is the mental image the author holds of their ideal cover, their ideal heroine, or in this case, the ideal artifact at the center of their story. In this case, I was lucky enough to have full participation from an author who understood that cover design is not about illustrating the story, but about creating an accurate impression of the story inside. And not to get in the way of the reader opening the book to begin with.

Fifteen or so emails later, we had a couple of final ideas to send to the publisher for them to choose from.

This is a unique experience in many ways and one of those things that distinguish the "Indie" authors and small presses from the big guys. At larger publishers, the covers are very polished. The cover art is chosen mostly for marketing concerns and often drawn from stock sources rather than commissioned from artists who have read the book and discussed them with the authors.  The authors are given very little input on cover designs in the classic publishing model. I've heard stories of authors managing to get covers changed, but not very often and only with great hardship.

That's neither good nor bad. I certainly understand why it has evolved that way. I've talked to authors who would have to back a Brinks truck up to my studio to get me to take their call. People who cannot put away "This is pretty" and say "This will get people to open the book (or click on the thumbnail) and give my words a chance to capture their hearts."

Maggie gets that. Gets it in spades.

What else can I say about Maggie? We've been the 21st century equivalent of penpals for quite awhile now. She is part of my online writing group and one of the many great and surprisingly close friends I have met online but never in person. She's been a great friend and an excellent sounding board for ideas when I'm contemplating anything to do with history.


Dragon Ring has a lot of time travel in it, and seeing someone with genuine historical chops take on a story like that is always exciting. Maggie is the force behind Life in Elizabethan England: A Compendium of Common Knowledge, a one-stop shop for all matters Elizabethan. Whenever my work wanders into the time of Shakespeare, as when I was writing the first draft of Mummer's Masque last year, Maggie's website is my first stop. (She has handily turned the website into a book, which you can buy in all the finest online establishments).


Look for The Dragon Ring from Crooked Cat Publishing, available March 16, 2012! 

Cover Design by Scott Perkins, Ari Berk, Illustrator.
Copyright 2012, Crooked {Cat} Publishing.

Ben Harper, an American living in England, is an organizational guru with a popular British TV program and a great family. It may not be the career his theatrical and musical training prepared him for, but it’s a good one, and he does have a definite knack for bringing order out of chaos. But for all his success, Ben remains unhappy, aching to find a channel for his pent-up creative talents. 

A chance meeting in the pub leads to an offer from some guy who claims to be Oberon king of Faerie. Oberon--if that's who he is--tells Ben that he can help him with the career crisis in return for a favor. All Ben needs to do is take a dragon arm ring back in time and deliver it to Alfred the Great so the medieval king can make peace with the Vikings and get down to forging modern England. If this doesn’t happen, Oberon says, the world Ben knows will cease to exist... 

The Dragon Ring is filled with music, adventure, faerie magic, and dry humor. It also has solid roots in history and folklore, and some indebtedness to the worlds of Brian Froud, Neil Gaiman, and Marie Brennan. 

Read a synopsis and sample chapters here on Maggie's blog.  

Dear Amazon...

It just had to be Orwell didn't it?

I suppose it was inevitable that this would happen eventually. You've been quietly pursuing what was no-doubt the advice of a whole bevy of lawyers (what is the correct collective noun for lawyers? I'm going with 'bevy' until proved wrong.) and deleting copyright-infringing material and quietly rebating the purchase price. Illegal uploads of Harry Potter, Ayn Rand, and finally... Orwell.

It just had to be Orwell, didn't it?

This is the point where your legal rights and responsibilities under current law get annoyingly vague. And the issues too tangled for you to defend yourself without retreating into an impenetrable thicket of legalese. In many ways this isn't your fault. Our copyright law is a mess and simply isn't keeping up with technological advancement. Fair Use is undefined, as are Parody, Satire and a whole passel of exceptions and exclusions that one would hope would be clear as day. Your DRM policies weren't written on a whim. Lawyers were consulted, copyright law was parsed, and your Kindle End User Licence Agreement (EULA) was born.

You were simply pursuing the policies that we agreed to (whether we realized it or not). You wrote it in there; you told us this could happen. And America clicked the "I Agree" button as we always do. Because if we didn't, we couldn't use your gadget, couldn't keep our libraries on a hard drive and carry them around with us. 

And one day it happened -- as it was going to eventually -- you deleted something provocative. You gave the news directors of the world a hook. From a dry subject that no one wanted to cover or discuss or read about, you helped create a rallying point.

Each of the books had been illegally uploaded to your site using the Kindle's self-publishing option and people bought them. When made aware that the books were "pirate" copies, you took them off sale as you were obliged to do. But then you went a step further.

It was a bad idea.

It scared people.

It woke people up to the fact that they were actually renting their books rather than owning them. You scared the crap out of your customers and you angered many of them.

Good for you.

No, seriously, ultimately this is a good thing. For you and for all of us.

Let me explain. While some editors and bloggers resisted spinning out a scenario built upon the plot of the book, enough of them couldn't resist that it caught and then became the zeitgeist. It's a short walk from your copyright issue being resolved to government censors demanding the redaction of the printed record. A scenario with the thought-police come electronically knocking and banned books tossed into the oubliette of history, never to be retrieved.

It could have been worse, I suppose. It could have been Fahrenheit 451.

It's bad PR and probably bad for Kindle sales in the short term. And you really should give your PR people a seat at the table when you're discussing these things if you don't already. (And if you do, find new ones who are going to say "Um... let's let this one go.") But nonetheless, we really needed this to happen. And so did you.

That it surprised so many users is mostly a testament to the number of legal documents, service agreements and heaven knows what that we all sign every day without fully understanding them if we read them at all. 

And maybe what's really alarming people isn't the fact that you did it so much as the fact that you can. And as the diversity of our market expands with Barnes & Noble's competitor site introducing an e-Reader with the chops and price-point to compete, now is the time to get this out of the way. The music industry waited to have this discussion and it nearly gutted their industry. They still haven't fully recovered.

eBooks may well be the future of publishing -- for better or worse, they probably are. The definition of 'ownership' is up for grabs and readers are just now becoming aware that these comfortable notions are not fixed points in space.

This conversation was inevitable; I'm just thankful that it's being spawned now, not two decades in the future by a government-ordered redaction or some such truly 1984 scenario. It comes at a time when these things are still in flux. A time when we've yet to go too far to easily go back. I am glad that your actions brought this to the fore now and in the framework of an explicable and understandable act of copyright protection. Because of this, this largely abstract debate won't have to happen in the abstract. And the concrete issues that prompt it will add context and frame the debate.

We're awake now. And you woke us up whether you intended to or not. And in the long run, it's good for you and the industry that you currently lead. It's good for all of us because it's drawing normal people into the discussion. It's bringing people who are not dyed-in-the-wool partisans or legal wonks into a conversation about the exchange of ideas and the future of literary culture as well as the evolution of publishing. A dry debate just got more vibrant. Will it bring up the level of rhetoric? Probably not. Reasoned debate seems elusive in our polarized culture, but the addition of voices that don't come with preconceived notions attached may temper it.

Or at least force us all to speak in layman's terms.

Sincerely,
Scott

Book News?

In response to a couple of emails... Yes, I'm still keeping track of news and developments in the publishing industry and the world of literature. However, I noticed that those posts were little more than links to the stories wherever I found them originally, and there are other tools for that... like Twitter. For the latest on the strange possible-but-not-really-but-maybe-a-sequel to Catcher in the Rye, Frank McCourt's heartbreaking cancer diagnosis and other oddments of literature and publishing news (or what passes for news) in bite-sized chunks with links for further elucidation when possible, I invite you to either "Follow" me on Twitter or you can watch the feed in the right margin. "Larger" stories on which I have developed an opinion or a running commentary (such as the ongoing Google Books saga) will continue to appear in the old context for your reading enjoyment. - Scott

Free

This morning my wife called me into the room to hear this story on NPR.  A press giving away their new books in return for a charity donation.  Publicity for their authors and their causes... an interesting idea.  Wonder if they'll still exist three years from now...

"The Kindle, the iPad and e-books are all part of a revolution that's shaking up the publishing business. The big question is how to ensure the book industry can remain profitable?  There's at least one publisher, however, that doesn't care about profits. For the past two years, the Concord Free Press, has been publishing books and giving them away for free..."

via National Public Radio

Google Books Un-Settlement

If you're not following this story, you should be... it has become so much more than an argument about digitization and copyright law. It's becoming a national debate (soon to become worldwide debate) about the future of information retrieval and access to research materials on the internet. Last week, the American Library Association and Association of Research Libraries got together to issue a stern "Shhhhhh!" to those noisy folks over at the Google table. (Just kidding, librarians, you know I love you.) Actually, they filed an amicus brief (opens in .PDF) in US District Court. If you're not a librarian or if you don't know any, let me give you some background. The publishing industry has been consolidating quite a bit in the past decade. This you are no doubt aware of since you are reading a blog about books and publishing. What you may not know is that the publishers of academic and professional journals have consolidated even more than the publishers you are familiar with. To the point where the publication of these important research materials is so concentrated in a few hands that the prices libraries pay to obtain them has gotten quite exorbitant. Additionally, many of the print editions have gone by the wayside to be replaced by electronic editions at not very much cost savings for the end-users. Libraries foot this bill in a time of ever-shrinking budgets. Academic libraries must additionally weigh the demands of various deans and professors for content immediately relevent to their classes with little or now additional help in their budget to offset the increases. This is simply a fact of life in terms of library budget management. Tack on the fact that the Google settlement does not in any way indicate what they will be charging libraries and institutions for this new electronic database to which their patrons and students will be demanding access. This is another straw on the camel. Additionally, the ALA and the ARL do more to safeguard our free access to information and the privacy of their clients than we'll ever know. If the access point to all (or even almost all) digital content is concentrated in the hands of a company that has shown themselves to be inconsistent in their protection of their users from interference by the state (censorship in China, but going to bat for user privacy in the US). Whilst librarians have, can, do, will go to jail to protect the Constitutional rights of library patrons. Will the people at Google be willing to do the same?

"The associations asserted that although the settlement has the potential to provide public access to millions of books, many of the features of the settlement, including the absence of competition for the new services, could compromise fundamental library values including equity of access to information, patron privacy and intellectual freedom. The court can mitigate these possible negative effects by regulating the conduct of Google and the Book Rights Registry the settlement establishes." - From the American Library Association press release

I wish them the best and I see their point. I'm just not sure their faith in the ability and willingness of the government to exercise oversight on something as complex and nuanced as global information access is well-placed. Meanwhile, Reuters is reporting that state Attorneys General are taking a look at the Google Books settlement with an eye toward doing something about it. What, exactly, remains to be seen. After the state-by-state battles waged by Microsoft in their antitrust suits (not to mention country-by-country since the Internet's global) this thing isn't going to be resolved anytime soon.

Four years ago there were clowns... also Howard Carter

If you're on Facebook, you've no doubt noticed that Zuckerberg's minions have been peppering your feed with flashbacks to what you were doing and who you were doing it with in years past.  For some this has apparently been traumatic. The app is/seems to be optional, so if you have things in the past you'd rather forget, I'd advise not turning it on. For me, Facebook is a place for frolicsome threats to drop troupes of clowns on my friends with orders to honk with extreme prejudice.

screenshot from facebook.com

Somewhere in and among all that silliness, this week's flashbacks have been all about typing "The End" on a book. A book that would become Howard Carter Saves the World. 

Four years ago I finished writing and started the long walk to publication.

As you know, there are books about this writing business. If you click on the stack of them in the left column of this blog you'll find a listing of some of my favorites. All of them warn you to some degree or another that this publishing thing is not quick. It's not easy. It's not for someone who is going to give up three years in.

I'm not sure if all of them undersell the waiting game or if I'm just blind to such warnings. Probably the latter. If there's a thing that all writers share, it's a stubborn refusal to accept the staggering odds against success.

Four years ago Monday, I typed "The End" at the bottom of the final page of Howard's story. Next Tuesday, that story will take its final step across the threshold of your computer screens and I hope that it will live its own life in your e-reader.

Even so, Howard's story is only half done; the rest is up to you. Beyond the turning cogs of the publishing machine, beyond the pages of a book, a story really only requires two essential elements: a teller and a listener. Without a reader, a book is a meaningless pile of words, little more than a labor-intensive doorstop. The writer does half the work breathing life into the inanimate, and the reader does the rest.

So I look forward to seeing Howard once again through fresh eyes... in about nine days.

Pre-orders are live on Amazon! Just click the image below.

Rethinking Reading

In this article from WIRED Magazine, Clive Thompson proposes a bold rethink of books as static entities. Books have always been a mostly one-sided conversation between the author and the reader. The eBook has the possibility of changing that dynamic, opening up the conversation so that it can flow both ways. This is already being done by allowing a form of digital marginalia. Of old, these were notes and comments jotted in the margins and between lines by those who were inclined to do so. (I used to do this, but these days I tend to use the Post-it). These notes could be added to or commented upon in-turn by the next reader I passed it along to and lie waiting for me on the page until I pick up the book to re-read. It thus became a conversation among friends in a time before Facebook and eBooks... In the digital version, the book would be divided into modules, a chapter or even a paragraph long and shared among readers online utilizing a modular commenting system. In essence, you could think of every section as a blog post with a comments section devoted to it. The other day I was commenting upon the need to recognize the shared-experience of the book as a cultural conversation. A recognition that is notably absent from the sort of Digital Rights Managment that we've been discussing, the sort that says I'm essentially leasing the books in my digital library and the provider can yank them at any time if I do something they don't like... such as loaning my copy of Basbane's divine work A Gentle Madness to a friend. Regardless of how I, my friend or Mr. Basbane might feel about it. This model of the novel as a modular entity, alive with conversation and interaction between readers and writers brings the idea of the novel out of the dusty stacks and off the page to dance among the electrons. An intriguing idea that could be either sublime or devolve into inarticulate chaos, rife with the same trolls and flamewars endemic to other interactive Internet phenomena, easily remedied by allowing us to limit comments we see to our friends list. It's a system that one imagines as allowing the communal aspect of the artform to not only survive but flourish. It still has a long way to go as a viable publishing model, but as Mr. Thompson says in the Wired article: "We need to stop thinking about the future of publishing and think instead about the future of reading." Read the article. It really is an interesting direction to explore...

Coming Soon to a Bookstore Near You: Howard Carter Saves the World

BIG NEWS about BIG ROBOTS!

Well, books about big robots, anyway...

This week, I signed a contract with a small UK-based publisher called Crooked Cat Publishing to bring Howard Carter Saves the World to bookstores. The official announcement was made yesterday via social media.

I've been bouncing off the walls ever since.

As you may recall, Howard Carter is the novel that I wrote in public, posting chapter-by-woefully-unedited-chapter live and in front of a studio audience. (No laugh tracks allowed!) The results were somewhere between a coming of age story and a 1950's alien invasion serial. Most of all, it was an ode to all the fun and funny science fiction that I enjoyed as a much younger man and a reaction to how overwhelmingly dour and dark science fiction has become.

Which means that some of you read along as I wrote it, putting that first, imperfect, draft of Howard Carter's adventures up as they unfolded. You've been here for the free short story days and all the posts that have charted the path from idea to publication.  I'm inviting you to come with me on the next step of the journey as we prepare Howard for his debut at Amazon and other online booksellers.

This is the part where I tell you how I need your help.

Crooked Cat press operates on a model that has become popular with many small presses. Howard Carter will debut as an eBook under the Crooked Cat imprint, available from the publisher's site and everywhere that eBooks are sold. If the eBook sells well enough, it will get a print run, and we'll all be able to put a physical book of paper and ink on our shelves.

Which would be lovely, but the real goal is to put out a book that is good enough for you to read and fall in love with, one that you love enough to not only read but to recommend to your friends. I've worked in publishing at enough different levels to know one thing for certain: positive word of mouth is how success happens.

More later.

- Scott

What do e-Books really cost?

We've talked a bit about the myths and misconceptions that swirl around what it costs to produce a book, especially an e-Book.  Many bloggers seem to think that they are or should be free.  (How authors and publishers are supposed to put food on the table producing a free product is rarely discussed.)

The New York Times breaks it down for us.  And based entirely upon my experience on the bookselling end of the publishing paradigm... I think they got it right.  Very interesting for any consumer of books (e-Books or print) and well worth the read.

Business / Media & Advertising

Math of Publishing Meets the E-Book

By MOTOKO RICH

Published: March 1, 2010

E-books are cheaper to produce than print volumes, but consumers may not realize that expenses like overhead and royalties are still in effect, publishers say.

Lying for a Living

NOTE: I took Easter Sunday off, so you get two posts today. Enjoy! 

Book Review A lot of writing books have made the trek from the store to my shelves and back out again, but there's only one that I reread on a regular basis. It is also the one I enthusiastically endorse to anyone who asks me for advice on writing.

I push it into people's hands with such free abandon, you would almost think I was trying to get rid of it. (It's frankly amazing that I still have the original copy I bought at a Milwaukee bookstore back in the day.)

For my money, the classic Telling Lies For Fun & Profit is the quintessential writing book. If you can only buy one, buy this one. It's been in print without update for some time, so some of the nuts and bolts issues Lawrence Block deals with in the book are a bit dated (he talks about typewriters even more than I do) but good advice never expires. I can't think of another place you'll find this quality of advice about the writer's life and the business of cranking out lies with sufficient consistency to make a living at it.

(On a sidenote: I don't look to books for the latest on publishing anyway. Since the most current information about dealing with editors, agents and maneuvering the current publishing labyrinth changes constantly, getting that advice on the web only makes sense. Most literary agents maintain websites and many of them have highly-informative blogs, which I recommend more than any of the many books I've read.)

I have a confession to make: Years ago when I first "discovered" this book, it was because I quite frankly wanted a book with that title on my shelf. Seriously, who wouldn't want to have people peruse their shelves and find a book with this title?

After I got past chortling over the clever title, I was pleasantly surprised by the essays contained in this odd little tome.

Lawrence Block is the depressingly-talented author of over 150 books. He sold his unagented first book at an early age and on the first try back when those things really happened. He quickly established himself at a time when short stories were still a going concern and his stories of this education in the booktrade and his years turning out unabashed slush for a paycheck are hilarious and the lessons to be learned thereby are hilarious memorable.

Block's essays are compiled from his years writing for Writer's Digest, so the tone - while lighthearted - is educational. It deals with more than just the usual "Where do you get your ideas?" topics, expanding to advise the aspiring writer on finding your voice, what to study in college, procrastinating, plagiarizing, avoiding chemical dependency, and how to answer the people who ask you "So... where do you get your ideas?"

In between he also manages to cover plotting, characterization, structure and characters that speak languages fluenty which you're only passingly familiar with. His college advice will make you wish he'd written you a letter before you chose your major. The final chapter - a writer's prayer based upon AA's Serenity Prayer - will make you wish you could get it printed on a poster and hang it above your desk or writing chair.

This book should be on everyone's shelf. If only for the title and that last chapter, I dare say that it needs to be on every writer's shelf.

Welcome to Pages to Type

We have newcomers! Welcome and well-met. These are the current Standard Operating Procedures for Pages to Type. Please review the SOP's before reading further...

• This is a "novel blog" which is not really novel, but it is about a novel (sometimes) and the novelist who is writing it (mostly).
• Safety goggles or Cokebottle nerd glasses should be worn at all times. The thicker the frames & lenses, the better.
• If you should get any novelty in your eye, flush with water and seek medical help immediately.
• Nothing found herein should be construed as the entire view of the author or anyone else living, dead or existing in an indeterminate state caused by fluctuations in space and time.
• This is where I warehouse the overflow of ideas that occur to me as I write other things. If I put it here, I know where it is and can keep an eye on it.
• Please feel free to feed the ideas. One can never feed an idea too much, they're happier when they're plump.
• WARNING: Improper application may cause excessive coffee drinking, insomnia, Post-it notes on the bathroom mirror and the urge to type into the wee hours of the morning.

Read at your own risk. If we haven't met IRL, I'm Scott. I am a Pacific Northwest Writer, which means I live on an island in Puget Sound with my wife and two spoiled cats. I have one novel in circulation seeking publication and/or representation and another on the thumbdrive waiting for me to get back to it. This blog updates almost every day (unless I'm participating in a blog challenge such as BEDA.) and focuses on writing and the changes our literary culture is enduring as it transitions from ink to electrons. My passions are writing, reading, coffee, art and gardening, but what fascinates me most is the ever-changing intersections of writing and technology. The "Blog as Novel" phenomenon, the evolution of self-publishing as the 'Summer Stock' of the big publishing houses and the revival of short-form fiction on the internet are all topics I cover here at Pages to Type. I write historical fiction and mysteries, so there's always going to be an element of historical perspective in everything I post here as well. Blog Update I've added the Twitter gadget. I resisted Twitter for quite awhile, but so many of my friends are micro-blogging now I had to get an account to keep up with them. It's an exercise in brevity, a muscle writers could always stand to exercise...

Welcome!

Beyond Borders -- The Borders Bankruptcy as Seen by this Former Bookseller

It may surprise you to note that I haven't yet said anything about the Borders bankruptcy.  In part this is because I've been focusing my writing on other things than chasing the latest business debacle down the rabbit hole.  Honestly it was mostly because it's just too painful to think about.

As most of you know, I've worked for both of the major bookstore chains at one time or another and spent the longest time with Borders.  I worked for them in various capacities for the better part of nine years, mostly as a manager in one of their larger stores.

It was unlike any other job I've ever had.  I loved and hated it.  I formed friendships there that have persisted well beyond the walls of the bookstore and I formed ideas about books, publishing and bookselling that I carry with me to this day.  I also acquired the bulk of the library that currently weighs-down my house.  I think every writer should serve such an internship.

It genuinely pains me to see what is happening now.

I was in my local Borders last night.  My friends and I meet there weekly in the cafe to decide where to take our wandering 'supper club'.  They're closing our local store, meaning there won't be a bookstore of decent size within easy driving distance anymore. It's sad to see a town lose its bookstore.  Chain or independent, bookstores are the repositories of our cultural aspiration to be well-read and literate.

My wife and I usually buy a book or at least a magazine while we're there -- sometimes with a coupon, sometimes not.  Last night I picked up a nice book about cheesemaking and another one about gardens and a baking book I'd been thinking about getting anyway, and for the first time in a very long time, I had to wait in line to pay.  A friend of mine works nearby and she stopped in on her lunch break and she said at that time, the line stretched out the door.

A line at a bookstore that stretches out the door.  Imagine such a thing.

And here's the thing: the discount was only 20%, which is less than the weekly 30% off coupon that Borders has sent out to subscribers to their email list every week in recent memory.  Obviously people still value books.  They were shoveling them off the shelves with an impressive zeal.  And they were paying more for them than they would have a week earlier if they were really paying attention...

I wish I could tell you what that means, but honestly I don't know. Probably that people don't value something until they lose it, which is both cliche and true.

The other day, the Writer Beware blog posted a link on their Facebook page to an article written by a former Borders CEO which listed several systemic failures to manage resources and people and then argued vehemently that this wasn't management's fault.  Oh, and the dog ate his homework too.

Follow the link.  Read his story and tell me what you think.

To summarize his argument: Borders made a series of disastrous decisions that positioned them poorly to compete in the changing market.  They built a business to compete in the 20th century and not the 21st.  But it's not management's fault?

It's the same song we've been hearing from collapsed banks and other failed corporations.  Apparently that "Not Me" ghost that used to haunt the kids in Family Circus cartoons went back to school and got his MBA.  I hate that.  Those were management decisions and management failures.  You screwed up, own it, learn from it, make corrections and keep fighting.

If I had a publicist, I'm sure they would point out to me that it is ill-advised for an aspiring author to take a swipe at what will still (theoretically once they come out of bankruptcy) be a significant distribution node for my books.  Maybe.  But I started this blog to give my unvarnished take on publishing, writing and writing culture and here we are.

I hope Borders emerges from bankruptcy as a stronger, leaner and more agile company that learned from past mistakes.  Looking forward, I don't know if there's an ongoing place for bookstores the size of barns stocking enormous stacks of whatever the next Harry Potter novel will be.  I think probably not. While I don't think that print bookstores are the equivalent of buggy whip emporiums as some commentators are depicting them, I think that the day of the massive book barns is over.  If the national chains have a future, I believe it means getting to a smaller, lighter, faster vision of bookstores that encourages the passion and expertise of their booksellers and makes that their mantra.  Which means upper management that knows the book trade, not the grocery trade as Borders did.  Books aren't just another product, they're a thing unto themselves and those who do not 'get' that are not destined to succeed in this peculiar business.

As a bookseller, I saw the first signs of the approaching wave in the droves of browsers who used the booksellers' knowledge and expertise to find the book they wanted and then put it back, saying "Cool, I'll go order it from Amazon."

I'm still in contact with one of my former store managers and he said his partner had to talk him out of standing at the top of the escalator and shout "Where were all you people six months ago?!"   The answer, of course, is they were at their computers, pointing and clicking.

Last night, as I watched people shoveling books into baskets and hauling them up to the counter at Borders like they were stocking-up for the apocalypse, I wondered what it would take for a bookstore to inspire that kind of zeal all of the time...  but no answers came to me.

Brown Out?

It's funny. I don't think I know anyone who is actually reading the new Dan Brown book. I've been holed up with the sickness so I'm out (though I'll read it eventually) was anyone in line Tuesday morning, clambering to get their hands on it? The largest print run in publishing history, touted to be the book that can save or doom the publishing industry single-handedly... Is it good? bad? indifferent? Whether you're reading it or not, let me know what you think in comments. (If not, why not? &c.) In the meantime - if you've a hankering for some alt-historical thriller fun - you can create your own custom Dan Brown sequel using Slate.com's Handy Dan Brown Sequel Generator just pick a city and an ancient (or not-so-ancient) secret society and off you go!