The Dark Side of Publishing

I was privileged to be a presenter this week at the Pacific Northwest Writers' Association Conference, discussing what we referred to as "The Dark Side of Publishing." Joined by authors Terry Persun and Boyd Morrison, we discussed the impact of small presses, self-publishing, and eBooks on the writer trying to break into publishing. The conversation was lively to say the least. But it was also fueled by the declaration of Agent April Eberhart that in 18 months she saw the role of agent being replaced by author advocates and self-publishing as a both a viable and dominant form of publishing in the future. This sentiment was also echoed in an interview with Agent Jackie Meyer who said "We are at a tipping point where authors may be better off self-publishing."

This week, the conversation has also been fueled by yet another industry dust-up involving the Amazon Kindle as super-agent Andrew Wylie signed an exclusive eBook contract for 20 works with Amazon. Meanwhile, Random House considers those rights to be theirs and has declared they will no longer do business with Wylie.

The problem (if there is only one that I'm dealing with) is that writers seem to be reaching a point where they don't trust the agent/editor/publisher infrastructure any more, but at the same time are being led to believe that all they have to do is put their eBooks on Amazon and they will start selling 4,000 a month. This can't really be blamed on hearing Boyd Morrison's fairytale ending for his new book "Ark." It can really only be blamed on our own credulity for believing there is any easy way to see our novels, memoirs, or non-fiction published. It still fundamentally requires a great story, well-told, perfectly edited, attractively presented, and marketed the hell out of.

The industry is going to change. Boyd declared that when he published his eBooks on Amazon in 2009, it was 45 years ago in Internet time. Mainstream publishers and even alternative publishers like Long Tale Press will have to be nimble in order to keep up in the next 18 months which will be like another 65 years of Internet time.

We are going to return to more technical information on this blog that will address fundamentals of creating eBooks, but we will continue to intersperse industry information in with it as we go. And I will be continuing to follow news posts on excellent sites like Media Bistro's GalleyCat. Follow @wayzgoose for continued updates on Twitter.

How Books Are Chosen at Long Tale Press

I originally conceived this site for fairly technical information on how to create and design eBooks. You'll find bits of that throughout, but the world of eBooks is the world of publishing, and there are a lot of interesting things happening in the publishing world. Recently, the Twitter hashtag #dearpublisher has inspired a lot of conversation about publishing as well as a few publishers (like Peachtree Publishers) to give people a look inside the publishing process. So I thought I would take people for a tour inside what happens at Long Tale Press in celebration of its second anniversary open to the public.

Long Tale Press was conceived based on the concept that there were a lot of good stories that would never see publication because their market was limited, they didn't make the right connections with agents and editors, or the author simply didn't have the ability to sell her work. On the other hand, technology was changing rapidly. It was apparent to us that eBooks were going to capture an increasing amount of the market, especially in niche markets where mass production was prohibitive. Our initial intent was to focus exclusively on eBooks, but we've expanded that considerably.

At Long Tale Press we decided that we would build the publishing process around what people wanted to read. So we developed a juried selection process. It works simply: Any author can submit up to the first 5,000 words of his novel at our site. Readers read and review the excerpt, rating it in four significant areas: Story concept, Writing quality, Character development, and Would you buy it? Excerpts accumulate points based on these ratings. Exceeding 100 points gains the writer an invitation to submit the entire manuscript to Long Tale Press. From the review pool, three reviewers are chosen (volunteers) to read the entire book and provide the author feedback. This will take from 30 to 90 days as the reviewers are all people who read for their enjoyment, not people whose jobs are to read through the slush pile. While the primary job of the review pool is to determine if the entire manuscript lives up to the promise of the first 5000 words, we encourage the review pool to be detailed and specific in their comments. These are passed on to the author with our publishing recommendation.

The publishing recommendation will be one of three things.

1. Thank you, but we don't feel the book is ready to be published. The work needed to get it ready is more than LTP feels it can invest in.


2. Thank you, let's get this book published. We're ready to invest our time in editing, design, and production.


3. Thank you. Your book shows great promise and we'd like to see it through, but you'll notice the comments from the review pool suggest some revisions that need to be made. If you are willing to make the commitment to revise and rewrite as necessary, according to the comments that are enclosed, we'd like to pursue helping you get it ready for publication.

The last option is the most likely. Before you go with the "Aha! They want money," conclusion, Long Tale Press doesn't sell any services, nor do we recommend the purchase of services to edit a book or get it ready to publish. If an author is ready to make the commitment to revise, we will continue to review the work as it progresses, make comments and suggestions, and encourage the author in getting it finished. We're just not going to do the work for him.

If we determine that the author has fulfilled her agreement to rewrite and we can take the book to publication, we offer a contract to publish the work. When the book comes in "ready to publish" our real work begins. Before we release a book, we will do a line-by-line copy edit. We don't want typos, copy/paste errors, or wrong words (like then/than, sit/set, lay/lie, etc.) to slip into a book. Then we take care of cover art and design, layout, and production. Long Tale Press is neither self-publishing nor vanity press. The only time an author pays LTP anything is if the author decides to buy print copies at wholesale cost to sell at events, book-signings, speaking engagements, etc. We offer a generous royalty based on net received above cost of goods, figured on a book-by-book basis, not up front costs.

Then there is the question of whether we are going to produce a print book or an eBook or something else. When we make this decision, it is based on a number of factors regarding the specific book market as we see it, the quality of the reviews received, the cost of production, and our gut feeling in the matter. Our baseline is to publish as an eBook and if all the other factors merit it, publish a short-run print edition (100-500 copies). In nearly all cases we will do a print-quality layout and design of the book to make it available as a PDF eBook or print-on-demand book. We'll also create an industry-standard ePUB book. The book will be sold through the Long Tale Press bookstore, Amazon.com, and other channels as we can open them.

Having discovered that even avid eBook readers really like something to put on their bookshelf, we've begun publishing our eBooks on CD-ROM. The disk holds both the ePUB and PDF versions of the book and is packaged in a book-like case with the full cover art so it can be put on the bookshelf and installed on any computer or reading device the reader would like. They can even put it in their garage sale if that's what they decide to do!

Well, that's a peak inside Long Tale Press. We continue to be committed to finding and publishing quality fiction.

eReader Wars

It has been an interesting week in the eReader market. Following Apple's spectacular entry into the eReader market with the iPad, we started experiencing all kinds of fallout in the eBook industry. First there was the pressure by the major publishing houses to force Amazon into an agency model. This was to duplicate the deal they got with Apple and the supposed protection of first release hard cover book market. The net result of this model is that Amazon no longer sets the price of eBooks. The publisher is the seller of the book and amazon collects a commission on each sale. So, Amazon no longer needs to make its profit on the Kindle. Now it makes 30% profit on each eBook sold. So if cheap books don't drive the Kindle adoption rate (or any other eReader) then the price of the reader itself has to become more attractive. (Did you really think that eReaders were so expensive to produce that a fair retail price was $300?)

According to an AP story in the Seattle Times, "Michael Norris, a senior trade analyst at Simba Information, said the Nook's price cut indicates New York-based Barnes & Noble "is admitting that when they're up against a $500 digital photo frame on acid that does everything, they can no longer keep a straight face when selling something for $259 that only does books.""

Apple's "digital photo frame on acid" is not the only pressure that Amazon is facing. Earlier this month, Borders Books began preselling the forthcoming Aluratek Libre eBook Reader Pro for just $119, joining its $150 models of the Sony Reader and Kobo eReader. Borders has not tied itself to just one reader like Barnes & Noble did with the Nook, even though its eBookstore is powered by Kobo.

So yesterday Barnes & Noble announcd a seemingly dramatic price drop in the Nook to 199 and announced a WiFi only version (no "always connected via cellular") at $149. Amazon followed in a few hours with a dramatic slash in the price of the Kindle to just $189.

Of course, on the downside of all this great pricing news, we read that News Corp. bought Skiff, LLC for its platform, but declined to buy its much-touted eReader which now waits in obscurity for another buyer.

The summary of this is that it is now cheaper to enter the eReader market. Not below $100 yet, but edging ever nearer for quality 5" readers. Independent publishers of eBooks should rejoice over this since one of the barriers to selling even <$5 eBooks has been the number of people with eReaders. It is not likely to effect the sale of the new more expensive mainline publisher eBooks. Is it time to buy an eReader? Certainly. But read the fine print and make sure you are getting what you think you want: plug-in synchronization, WiFi, 3G, single library/bookstore, open platform. It's all out there.

[EDIT]Just saw this bit about the Sony eReader Touch edition price drop to $199. This article is very perceptive about Sony being lost in the noise of Kindle/iPad. It is a great reader! Sony Reader price drop = tree falling in the forest.[/EDIT]

Kindle Wireless Reading Device (6" Display, Global Wireless, Latest Generation)

What is a book?

Just when we thought we'd made progress in getting people to recognize eBooks as books, we start muddying the waters again with how much interactivity we can put in an eBook! I'm really not going to be a curmudgeon about this, but watching Liza Daly's demo at IDPF Digital Book 2010 really got me thinking about the future of the book again. You can take a look at her excellent demo at the Threepress Consulting Blog.

It strikes me that we can come up with all kinds of demos to show practical applications of possible technology, but only time will tell whether our cool technology will actually be adopted for general use, whether it will be limited to very specialized applications, or if it will go the way of the irritating and ill-fated "blink" attribute in HTML. There are really two fundamental questions regarding the adoption of technology in any artform, and I include books as an artform.

1. Does the technology solve a problem that currently limits artists?


2. Does the technology inspire new uses that expand the art?

The motion picture, for example, may not have solved a specific problem that early photographers had, although some of the technology regarding the speed of film and developing techniques certainly had a positive impact on still photography. It did, however, inspire a new artform. There are still photographers, perhaps in greater number today than ever before. There are also movie-makers and videographers. They are not necessarily the same people, even though they have common roots.

So when I look at new eBook interactive technology, I can see the development of some new artforms that may or may not have the take-up speed of motion pictures. I don't see adding interactive maps, satellite views of the Seattle Waterfront, and a video poker game to my noir mystery book (For Blood or Money) just because the detective lives and travels around Seattle, has an office on the waterfront, and plays poker. Frankly, I think that would detract from a novel. It might, however, be a great project for a new medium--maybe even one that I'd like to explore. I just wouldn't sell it as a book.

I recently adopted one of my on-line novels (Stn. George & the Dragon) as a stage play. While there are words in common in both renditions, the play is vastly different than the novel. It is a different medium. In the same way, I think the introduction of vast amounts of interactivity in what was a book and then an eBook heralds the introduction of a new artform. I can see some incredible developments in the area of textbooks and learning materials coming as a result of eBook interactivity. I can also see a whole new entertainment medium being born. I guess what I don't see is an effect on the novel. On the other hand, if someone solves significant problems like good adaptation across different device sizes, variable spacing and hyphenation for justified text, and page turning speed on eInk devices, that could solve some real problems with eBook novels.

In summary, the terms "book," "eBook," and "interactive eBook" may describe advances in technology, but they do little to define the artform. This will be done by people writing novels, textbooks, and interactive entertainment.

It's not about the content

One thing that the recent events surrounding the release of the iPad and the subsequent rebellion of top publishers against Amazon's pricing model has made abundantly clear is that no matter what we want to believe, the worth of a book has little to do with the content of the book. That may sound harsh, and I am not suggesting that my little noir mystery that has sold a grand total of Garrison Kiellor's projected 14 copies is equally as valuable as Lee Child's 61 Hours (this week at #1 on the NYT Best Sellers list). But it is reflected in the fact that Child's book is available at Barnes & Noble for $13.49 as an eBook, $16.38 in hardcover, $20.16 in large print paperback, and $8.99 in mass market paper.

The difference in the price is based on the medium, not on the content.

To some extent, I can see that there could be a difference based on cost of production. But the truth of the matter is that readers do not recognize equal value between a hardcover and an eBook--even though the content is the same.

It seems to me that the best and fairest way of pricing a book in any medium is a single consistent margin above cost of goods. (The direct costs of creating a book have to be figured in "x" since the publisher will put different amounts of effort into the creation of different content.) When we arrive at a price then for a book that costs $3.50 to get from manufacturing, including shipping, we could easily say that the book sells for $13.50, cost plus $10. The eBook would sell on-line for $10. The audio book on 10 CDs would probably not cost any more than the hardcover as the cost of goods would remain the same.

What is more important to me as an author and as a publisher, is that there is a consistent value placed on the content of the book on which the royalty and publishing costs are paid. Inventing an 8% of retail price when the book is priced at $22.95 and sells for 16.38 yields the same result as a 50% split of the net on the $13.50 book in my example. And the author always gets the same amount, whether on a paperback, hardcover, or eBook. That would truly show the consistent value of the content and separate it from the value of the molecules used to produce it.

This method is flawed. You begin to see the flaws when you start dealing with the retail channel and discounts, but that is not the only place. However, the concept of consistent value for content regardless of medium is one that I believe has potential for resolving both the perception of readers and the self-worth of authors. It is worth considering.

How much design compromise?

Sadly, I am not at BEA this week, nor at the IDPF Digital Book 2010 conference being held in conjunction with it. But I am following the conference closely via Twitter and half a dozen blogs. I was interested to hear one book designer comment that we would just have to compromise our design standards for eBooks.

I understand where this designer is coming from, but I'm not quite in agreement. The truth is, we have to learn a whole different way of designing. We learned a certain kind of tool years ago that was created to design images on paper. Some of those images were letters that made up words. We could position them precisely where we wanted them and they would never dare to be in a different place the next time the book was opened. We could finely tune the spacing of characters (remember 1/50,000th of an em kerning?), rotate the text, hand draw parts of the book, add images and charts and tables, and it all turned out perfectly.

Well, if you design paper books, you can still use those tools and still create exactly the Renaissance masterpiece that you want to have.

But the Kindle, Sony Reader, Nook, iPad, laptop, and desktop computer are not made of paper. No ink hits the screen (no matter how they talk about eInk). The book bits that you design may be on a 3" iPhone screen when one person reads it or on a Kindle Deluxe when another person reads it. That means that for the first time since a human first put ink on paper, the design of books has to change. The tools have to change. The whole concept of what it means to "design" has to change. And fundamentally, designers have to change. Put down the X-acto knife and step away from the drawing board. (Ooops! That was the last publishing revolution!)

The tools of the eBook designer are XHTML and CSS. And now we have to go back to the basics of great book design and ask how can we make this a more pleasant reading experience. There is nothing in the OEB specification that will prevent you from designing a fantastic reading experience. Can't rotate the type on the page? Let it go. That was a different artform. Can't kern the space between characters? Let it go, that was a different technology. Can't use color? Can't have the exact typesize? Can't control the table-cell widths? LET IT GO!

Now that you've got your hands empty, look at what you can do and learn how to design with that. And always always always keep in mind that you are the only person in the world that will see what the eBook looks like on your computer screen. The people who look at your design will all look at it on their own screens, at their computer or eReader's resolution, with the particular little quirks that Kindle, iPad, Nook, or Sony have built into it. Yes, according to the IDPF spec, you can make a drop-cap. But none of those devices will display it. You can turn on hyphenation, but none of those devices support it yet. You can designate what media size certain attributes should be applied at, but most of these will ignore that you have a style sheet at all if you try. So instead, you learn the key features that will work across the entire range of devices, and you design for those.

Here is the dirty little secret of designing for eBooks. The less you try to control the position and size of things on the screen (i.e. treat it like paper), the more likely it is that your books will look well and thoughtfully designed.

There are a few little things that you can do to improve the look of your eBooks, and they aren't hard.

1. Use the full range of legal XHTML elements when you create your docs. If you use only the "p" tag and create a new class for every element, nothing in your book will ever change or adapt for different reading devices. (Did you hear that Google Books? If you can identify different classes of "p" then you can assign them different element names in the first place!)


2. Correct default settings that were developed for Web pages in browsers. eReader manufacturers blindly accepted the most popular display faults for Web browsers when they created their internal defaults. You don't have to accept space between paragraphs and no indents. You have the power to change them.


3. Use flexible units that will appropriately change with the devices. The measurement units that you should use more than any others are "em" and the small, medium, large font sizes.


4. Until and unless you have hyphenation working, align text to the left and don't try to justify it. Come on. You know what it was like to try to justify text on an old Mac in MacWrite. Don't do it!

And get both the OEB (IDPF) spec and the referenced W3C XHTML spec and memorize them. These are your tools for great design in the future.

At what price infinite readership?

Pick up a copy of your favorite book. Feel the weight in your hands. Touch the cover, the dust jacket. Touch the paper. Ask yourself these questions.

1. How many pages are in this book?


2. Who designed the cover?


3. How long did it take the author to write?


4. How thick is the paper? Is it smoothe? Is it textured?


5. What typeface did the designer use?


6. Are there drop capitals starting the first paragraph of a chapter?


7. Is there a running head along the top of each page?


8. Where are the page numbers?


9. How much did it cost to produce?


10. How much is this book worth?

Of course your answers will be different if you chose a hardcover first edition over a mass market paperback. They might change based on whether you bought the book new, at a half-price used bookstore, or borrowed it from the local library or a friend. The answers might even change based on whether it is fiction, general non-fiction, or a textbook. But whatever the answer to these questions, the fact remains that there is a material object in your hands. It is really no easier to reproduce this material object (to copy it, if you will) than it is to make a copy of a Danish Modern dining room set or a Gucci blouse. When you put it on your bookshelf, you expect it to be there for years. You expect that someday you will give it away, sell it second hand, or let your heirs inherit it.

Now, let's take a look at the same title as an eBook. Ask yourself the same questions. Why is it that when you finish the list of questions, the last answer is so extraordinarily different than with a paper book? Probably more radically different than even the value difference between a hardcover and a paperback.

It comes down to the fact that even if the eBook was well-designed, had good typography, was illustrated the same, and had the same exact content, it isn't real. It doesn't have a material existence outside the reader or computer I view it on. Copying it takes a matter of seconds and the copy is indistinguishable from the original. As readers, we cannot separate the content from the medium. The same book, by the same author, is worth less if it doesn't exist in a material form. So it is not like copying it is a big deal. We didn't actually take something off a bookstore shelf and walk out without paying. It never even existed in the bookstore!

In a strange way, I agree. Don't get me wrong. I believe that the words an author writes are worth the same no matter what medium they are delivered in. But the publishing industry has tied the value of the author's words to the retail price of the book, or more recently to the actual sale price, or even to the wholesale price. So even from an author's perspective, it is hard to value the eBook as highly as the printed version. I've heard myself answer the question "Have you been published?" with the words "Yes, but only as an eBook." Ouch! My writing isn't worth the paper it is printed on!

Yet when we remove the cost of materials for a hardcover book from the equation of how much the book costs, we assign over 500% increase in value based on the physical materials! (BookJournal.com quotes the materials cost for a $27.95 hardcover book as ~$2.83!) But, take away the $2.83 worth of materials and produce it with electrons and we expect to pay $9.95 at Amazon (now up to as much as $14.95) for top-end best sellers. Then, we expect to be able to copy them, give them to our friends, and post them on the Internet for free.

Because they aren't real!

The point of this rambling article is that if we just gave away eBooks instead of trying to sell them, we would have all the eyes that we could get through the pirated copies. Potentially infinite readership. But no one makes any money, except for those few people who will read, enjoy, and then go out to put the paper version on their bookshelves as a "real" asset in their library.

What are we going to do? I'm a proponent of free eBooks. Not stolen eBooks. The problem is that somehow we still have to pay for the design, art, promotion, marketing, editing and—oh yes—authoring of the book. So, do we build advertising messages into the eBook so that someone might possibly, eventually, click on one of our ads and generate a few pennies revenue? Do we place ourselves at the mercy of the readership with a "donation" button in every book? Do we cut all the expenses (except authoring, of course) by not doing professional design, covers, marketing, or advertising for our books and hope they "go viral?"

I don't think there is a right answer that has emerged for this yet. But I do know that some activities increase the likelihood of pirating. The first of those is staging or "windowing" the release so that the paper book has a two to six-month lead before the eBook is released. The pirated electronic copies will hit the Internet before the paper book is in the store! The second is charging the same price or a less discounted price for the eBook. Charging $14.95 for eBooks instead of $9.95 won't help sales of paper books, it will only increase pirated eBooks. The third is stronger digital rights management (DRM) that makes unbreakable copy protection. We should have learned this lesson from the music industry by now. It failed there and it will fail in publishing as well. And of course, fourth is more rigid enforcement, closing down of book exchange sites, torrents, and sharing sites has certainly proved ineffective for video and music. There is no reason it would be more effective for publishing.

So what do we do? Give up? Give it away? Ignore it and hope it will go away? What is the future?