The New OpenRoad Venture

In June, 2008, after ten years at HarperCollins, Jane Friedman announced she would be leaving her job as CEO prior to the end of her contract and prior to the reporting of another year of lowered profits at HC.

In June, 2009, Friedman announced she'd raised $3 million for her new start-up company, OpenRoad, devoted to "developing a platform for eBook marketing and publishing."

Earlier this month Friedman talked about her new venture at her alma mater, NYU. The video is available online and worth watching.

She begins by talking about the "traditional tenets" that she still clings to:

1. Publishing is a business of relationships; a publisher must foster relationships.

2. You must hire the right people and ensure the right people are in the right position.

3. Authors are your best asset; make them your most important focus.

4. Know your market; concentrate on the consumer and what motivates him to purchase.

5. Move with technology. Embrace digital development.

Friedman then talks about the origins of OpenRoad and explains that it began with her efforts at HarperCollins to digitize not just the front list, but the back list as well. She wants to "Go back to the future" and publish the great authors of the past.

She describes OpenRoad as a "layer cake" where each layer impacts and blends the whole. She then went on to explain each layer of her publishing cake:

• The base is the author-branded backlist which includes William Styron (of Sophie's Choice fame), Dame Iris Murdoch (Under the Net) and Pat Conroy (Prince of Tides).
• e-Riginals: Original titles that are "born digital" with a POD capability as well as titles whose rights have reverted and which do not have a physical presence in America.
• OpenRoad will also consider doing non-returnable print runs (either licensing print rights to legacy publishers or publish the works themselves as a p-book, using a distributor)
• Discovery: A self-publishing arm offering existing self-publishers OpenRoad's marketing expertise and perhaps offering an OpenRoad self-publishing option.
• Forming marketing partnerships with legacy publishers, particularly those who operate in niches. Already working with Kensington (romance, African-American, gay & lesbian and mystery) and Grove Atlantic (independent literary). She pointed out there are 80,000 independent publishers in America.
• Producing marketing videos in the space between book release and the film version of the book.
• DigiEnt (Digital Entertainment): Option and produce full-length features based on e-books.

The plan is to "push out content" to social communities like FaceBook and Twitter and to blogs related to the content of a book.

Probably the most interesting comment of Friedman's talk was her statement that OpenRoad's platform will be offered to EVERY author and genre on their list to increase the author's exposure "to the broadest audience possible."

Friedman believes that, because OpenRoad does not have the "overhead and ibidem" of traditional publishers, they can be more flexible and quick to market. As a data-driven company, they can "access what is working in real time."

OpenRoad will embrace technology, profit-share with authors (no advances), treat content as king and treat booksellers as partners.

She describes "Revolution, not Evolution."

Watch the video here. The questions-and-answer videos are interesting. I'll talk more about them later in the week.

SFWA Joins RWA and MWA

Last night at 11:07 PM, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) posted their comment about the new self-publishing division of Harlequin.

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc. (SFWA) finds it extremely disappointing that Harlequin has chosen to launch an imprint whose sole purpose appears to be the enrichment of the corporate coffers at the expense of aspiring writers. According to their website, “Now with Harlequin Horizons, more writers have the opportunity to enter the market, hone their skills and achieve the goals that burn in their hearts.”

SFWA asks that Harlequin:

1. Admit that the Horizon titles are not going to be on bookstore shelves
2. Acknowledge that no editor will be reviewing the Horizon manuscripts with an eye to publishing them.

SFWA believes that money should flow TO the writer, not FROM the writer and warns that writers publishing with Horizons may "injure" their writing careers.

So now we've heard from the romance writers, the mystery writers and the sci-fi and fantasy writers. Everyone is dogpiling Harlequin.

Once again I ask, "Where are the Christian writers?" Why did they NOT greet the news last month that Thomas Nelson was launching a self-publishing imprint with the same amount of outrage?

In my mind, Nelson deserves more criticism than Harlequin for their statement that they will pay a referral fee to agents who send newbie authors to Nelson's WestBow.

Go here to read about Nelson's initiative.

Go here to read the SFWA statement.

Harlequin Horizons Provokes Controversy

On Tuesday I reported that Harlequin had announced it would be launching a "self-publishing partnership with Author Solutions, Inc."

That announcement has provoked comment and reaction across the publishing industry.

First, Romance Writers of America (RWA) issued a letter to its members from its president, Michelle Monkou. Here is a portion of that letter:

Dear Members:

Romance Writers of America was informed of the new venture between Harlequin Enterprises and ASI Solutions to form Harlequin Horizons, a vanity/subsidy press. Many of you have asked the organization to state its position regarding this new development. As a matter of policy, we do not endorse any publisher's business model. Our mission is the advancement of the professional interests of career-focused romance writers.

One of your member benefits is the annual National Conference. RWA allocates select conference resources to non-subsidy/ non-vanity presses that meet the eligibility requirements to obtain those resources. Eligible publishers are provided free meeting space for book signings, are given the opportunity to hold editor appointments, and are allowed to offer spotlights on their programs.

With the launch of Harlequin Horizons, Harlequin Enterprises no longer meets the requirements to be eligible for RWA-provided conference resources. This does not mean that Harlequin Enterprises cannot attend the conference. Like all non-eligible publishers, they are welcome to attend. However, as a non-eligible publisher, they would fund their own conference fees and they would not be provided with conference resources by RWA to publicize or promote the company or its imprints.

Sometimes the wind of change comes swiftly and unexpectedly, leaving an unsettled feeling. RWA takes its role as advocate for its members seriously.

According to agent Kristin Nelson of Pub Rants, "Harlequin was very surprised and dismayed" by the action RWA took.

In an effort to silence its critics, Harlequin has decided to remove its name from the previously titled "Harlequin Horizons" imprint. The company clearly hopes that this move to rename its self-publishing arm will mollify both RWA and the Harlequin authors.

Apparently neither Thomas Nelson nor Harlequin sees any conflict of interest in newbie authors being lured into spending significant sums of money in the hope that the parent company will offer a publishing contract.

But, wait!! Another county heard from.

Kristin Nelson also posted a letter from Mystery Writers of America (MWA), expressing concern over "the Harlequin Horizons self-publishing program and the eHarlequin Manuscript Critique service (aka 'Learn to Write')."

MWA had already written a letter to Harlequin, demanding a number of changes to put the critique service at arms-length from the publisher when the new Harlequin Horizons was announced.

My favorite line from the MWA communique was this: "We are taking this action because we believe it is vitally important to alert our members of unethical and predatory publishing practices that take advantage of their desire to be published."

Three cheers for MWA!

Corporate greed is a cliche these days. Ethical conduct by companies is now so rare that we remark upon it when we happen on a business with scruples.

I was unbelievably disappointed by Thomas Nelson's plan to pay a "referral fee" to any agent that steers a newbie author toward Nelson's WestBow self-publishing unit.

Where are the Christian writer trade organizations or networks? Why are THEY not concerned about Nelson's obvious conflict of interest issues? I find it fascinating that the romance writers and the mystery writers are speaking up, but not the Christian writers.

You can read both the letter from Harlequin and the MWA message on Kristin's blog here.

Barnes & Noble Creates a Poison Pill

In early January, billionaire investor Ron Burkle disclosed in a filing to the SEC that his Yucaipa Companies had purchased 8.3% (over 4 million shares) of Barnes & Noble stock. According to Publishers Marketplace (PM), two days later, Goldman Sachs upgraded its rating of the bookchain's stock from "sell" to "neutral."

Last week, Burkle filed new papers with the SEC, revealing that he had more than doubled his stake in B&N. Publishers Marketplace says that while Burkle's 16.8% holding is enormous, it is "still only about half as much as the big block of stock controlled by [B&N] chairman Len Riggio":

[The] question is how Burkle hopes to cash in on what has become a large position in Barnes & Noble. Together Burkle and Riggio truly control the company. Given Burkle's investment history, expect renewed speculation on the possibility of BN going private.

Then on Monday, Burkle announced yet another SEC filing revealing a further accumulation of B&N stock, raising his stake to 17.8%.

B&N's response was rapid. On Tuesday, the world's largest bookseller issued a press release announcing that its Board of Directors had approved the adoption of a "poison pill," which would be "exercisable if a person or group, without Board approval, acquires 20% or more of Barnes & Noble's common stock or announces a tender offer [hostile takeover] which results in the ownership of 20% or more of Barnes & Noble's common stock."

A poison pill is a strategy a company employs to ward off an unwanted suitor. The goal is to make the target company so expensive that the acquirer gives up its attempt to take it over.

B&N's poison pill is a very common approach called the shareholder rights plan. In this strategy, B&N announced its "stockholders will receive rights to purchase shares of a new series of preferred stock in certain circumstances."

If Burkle should acquire 20% of B&N or if he announces a hostile takeover that gives him 20% of B&N's stock, the shareholders will be permitted to convert their rights into common stock. The press release explains:

If the rights become exercisable, all rights holders (other than the person triggering the rights) will be entitled to acquire Barnes & Noble's common stock at a 50% discount.

More stock dilutes the value of the acquirer's holdings and makes it more expensive for him to continue trying to buy the company.

Under the terms of the Rights Plan, the rights will expire on November 17, 2012.

The ball is back in Burkle's court.

Gag Me With a Spoon

Regular readers of this blog know that there are two publishers I routinely mention when talking about creative and cutting edge initiatives: Thomas Nelson and Harlequin.

Both houses have shown resilience and a remarkable willingness to "think outside the box" in order to reinvent themselves in this tough publishing environment.

Last month here, I reported on Thomas Nelson's latest initiative:

. . . Thomas Nelson has launched a self-publishing imprint, WestBow Press--though they are outsourcing the bulk of the operation to self-publishing giant Author Solutions. AS will design, publish and distribute the books. Nelson's primary roles appears to be sharing revenue and promising customers an "opportunity to be discovered by parent company Thomas Nelson.... For authors who hope to one day be signed by a traditional publisher, this is an opportunity to get your foot in the door."

I was not happy:

If the book in question is the typical self-published mess and the writer is entertaining the fantasy that Nelson will soon be offering a contract, will WestBow disabuse the writer of such notions? Is WestBow going to offer a reality check, or are they simply going to collect a check?

Yesterday Harlequin followed Thomas Nelson's lead with this press release:

Harlequin Enterprises Limited . . . announced Tuesday the launch of Harlequin Horizons; a self-publishing partnership with Author Solutions, Inc. . . . Harlequin, Book Business magazine's 2009 Publishing Innovator of the Year, regards the self-publishing venture as an accessible opportunity for emerging authors to bring themselves to the attention of the reading public.

Like Thomas Nelson, Harlequin is waving the lure of "possibility":

Harlequin will monitor sales of books published through the self-publisher for possible pickup by its traditional imprints.

At least Harlequin didn't promise to pay a finder's fee to agents referring newbie authors to their vanity press the way Nelson is doing.

My girlfriends and I often joke about our jobs, saying there has to be easier ways to earn a living. Periodically, after a rough day, one or the other of us will groan, "Maybe I ought to just go down to Harry Hines and set up shop."

Harry Hines Boulevard is the Dallas street notorious for its prostitutes and hot sheet motels.

Although we joke about it, none of us would actually do it.

But I guess some people simply don't mind screwing others for money.

At least down on Harry Hines, BOTH partners in the transaction know what to expect and what each is getting from the deal.

Lies Told By the Self-Publishing Industry

One of the many obstacles facing newbie authors is that of overcoming their own impatience to be published. Lying in wait to use writers' hunger to see their works in print against them is the vanity press industry. Taking advantage of all the buzz about print-on-demand, the vanity presses have redoubled their efforts to lure unwary writers into paying to have their novels published.

Self-publishing does make sense for certain segments of the population. If you are wondering whether you should self-publish, go here to read my post from August, 2008, which will walk you through the decision-making process.

There are lots of "entrepreneurs" out there, looking to capitalize on newbie writers' naiveté by giving a few facts and a half-truth or two and then leaving it to the reader to infer something that never happened.

Example: On the website titled "Self-Publishing Resources" here, it says:

Many famous authors and their books were rejected multiple times. Publishers turned down Richard Bach’s Johnathan (sic) Livingston Seagull no less than 140 times; Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind received 38 “no’s,” while Stephen King’s Carrie was turned down 30 times. J. K. Rowling’s original work was pooh poohed by 12 publishers...guess who’s kicking themselves now that they passed on Harry Potter? And E. E. (sic) Cummings first work — The Enormous Room, now considered a masterpiece — was ultimately self-published...and dedicated to the 15 publishers who rejected it.

Yes, many famous authors were rejected multiple times. However, Bach and Mitchell were first published by Macmillan, King was first published by Doubleday, and Rowling was first published by Bloomsbury. And note the half-truth: e.e. cummings' first (and only) novel was The Enormous Room, but it was published by Boni and Liveright. It was his manuscript for No Thanks in 1935 that his mother financed. According to Emory University, "With characteristic sarcasm Cummings named the 14 publishers who had rejected the manuscript of No Thanks in the volume itself and said 'Thanks' to his mother, who had financed its publication."

On a website flacking his book about self-publishing here, John Kremer lists the following fifty famous authors who have self-pubbed:

Margaret Atwood, William Blake, Ken Blanchard, Robert Bly, Lord Byron, Willa Cather, Pat Conroy, Stephen Crane, e.e. cummings, W.E.B. DuBois, Alexander Dumas, T.S. Eliot, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Benjamin Franklin, Zane Grey, Thomas Hardy, E. Lynn Harris, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ernest Hemingway, Robinson Jeffers, Spencer Johnson, Stephen King, Rudyard Kipling, Louis L'Amour, D.H. Lawrence, Rod McKuen, Marlo Morgan, John Muir, Anais Nin, Thomas Paine, Tom Peters, Edgar Allen Poe, Alexander Pope, Beatrix Potter, Ezra Pound, Marcel Proust, Irma Rombauer, Carl Sandburg, Robert Service, George Bernard Shaw, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Upton Sinclair, Gertrude Stein, William Strunk, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Henry David Thoreau, Leo Tolstoi, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, and Virginia Woolf.

The list above is sorted alphabetically, which is a bit misleading. Commercial publishing as we know it today did not really get its start until the middle of the 19th century. According to the Encyclopedia Brittanica, until 1750, Britain produced only 100 new titles a year. It wasn't until 1850 that mass production brought down the costs of books, and it was 1900 before that 100 titles a year became 6,000 titles a year.

A number of the famous commercial publishers we still recognize had their start during the 19th century: Harper & Brothers (HarperCollins) in 1833; Houghton Mifflin & Company in 1880; McGraw-Hill in 1888 and Macmillan in 1896. Prior to 1850, there was NO traditional publishing as we know it today. The business model was totally different with self-publishing being the norm. Therefore, it's comparing apples and oranges to list historical figures together with modern authors.

A quarter of the above authors were writing before the advent of modern commercial publishing and have no business being included on the list: William Blake; Alexander Dumas; Benjamin Franklin; Nathaniel Hawthorne; Alfred, Lord Tennyson; Lord Byron; Alexander Pope; Thomas Paine; Edgar Allen Poe; Percy Bysshe Shelley; and Henry David Thoreau.

And finally we have what I call "The Big Lie," the one everyone has heard: Stephen King owes his success to self-publishing.

In late October, 2005, I wrote about King's experiments in self-publishing. I called it bold, brave and inspired. Here's a portion of that post:

King first burst onto the public consciousness in 1974-75 with the release of his books, "Carrie" and "Salem's Lot." He tapped into readers' desire to be scared out of their wits . . . By 1995, he had become an icon, and e-publishing
was still in its infancy.

In early 2000, King proposed selling his novella, "Riding the Bullet," online through his publisher, Simon & Schuster. No one was prepared for the onslaught of fans trying to download the new release. In no time at all, he'd sold 400,000 copies of the novella online. Even though e-publishing had been around for more than five years by then, one estimate claims King's sales figures were greater than all the e-books sold on line collectively to that point.

Emboldened by his success, King came back a few months later and tried a second experiment. This time he left Simon & Schuster out of the equation--and I'll bet they weren't happy about it. King decided to sell his novel, "The Plant," directly to readers via Amazon. In a quixotic gesture, he opted to sell the serialized novel on the honor system for $2.50 per installment. He was forced to pull the plug because readers were downloading the installments without paying.

Again, I think there are legitimate reasons to self-publish. However, if you are thinking about it, please take the time to educate yourself. Don't let your impatience justify forking over several thousand dollars. Having a physical copy of your book is the start, not the finish. Remember: Even with a website or a listing on Amazon, you still need to find a way to drive traffic to your book.

Here's a quote that I have always liked:

Three hundred years ago a prisoner condemned to the Tower of London carved on the wall of his cell this sentiment to keep up his spirits during his long imprisonment: 'It is not adversity that kills, but the impatience with which we bear adversity.'

Point and Counterpoint

Another Author Strikes Back controversy.

On October 15, George Packer reviewed Mark Danner's book Stripping Bare the Body: Politics, Violence, War for the New York Times Book Review. Read that review here.

On November 4, Danner wrote a 1,400-word Letter To The NYT Editor, protesting the review. While it's not news for an author to protest a review, it is news for the Times to print such lengthy letters in their entirety. Read it (and Packer's response) here.

Greg Mitchell of Editor and Publisher wrote an article on the point-and-counterpoint duel here. And The Huffington Post picked up on the story, reprinting Mitchell's article.

I have come to believe that responding to critics and criticism is not a useful pastime. Below are my favorite quotes about critics:

Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea. --John Updike

Do what you feel in your heart to be right. You'll be criticized anyway. --Eleanor Roosevelt

Abuse if you slight it, will gradually die away; but if you show yourself irritated, you will be thought to have deserved it. --Tacitus

Note to My Readers

I wrote my post for Thursday at about 4 AM when I got up to take my scheduled antibiotics. When I resurfaced and re-read it at a decent hour, I made some changes, including to the title.

The Web of Domination

Herbert Marcuse, a Marxist philosopher and socialist, once said: "The web of domination has become the web of Reason itself, and this society is fatally entangled in it."

The irony of tying this post to a socialist is not lost on me.

Back on May 13, Amazon announced a new program called AmazonEncore. Here is the description of the program from their press release:

AmazonEncore is a new program whereby Amazon uses information such as customer reviews on Amazon websites to identify exceptional, overlooked books and authors that show potential for greater sales. Amazon then partners with the authors to re-introduce their books to readers through marketing support and distribution into multiple channels and formats, such as the Amazon Books Store, Amazon Kindle Store, Audible.com, and national and independent bookstores via third-party wholesalers.

You can read the entire press release here.

The first book to be re-released by the AmazonEncore program was Legacy, written by fourteen-year-old Cayla Kluver and self-published by her and her mother a year later. The book was released under the AmazonEncore imprint on August 18.

Yesterday, AmazonEncore issued a second press release, announcing they would be releasing three new books in February, 2010. All three books had previously been self-published by the authors using Amazon's BookSurge unit. According to the new press release, the three books are:

“Perfect on Paper: The (Mis)Adventures of Waverly Bryson” by first-time novelist Maria Murnane; “A Wish After Midnight” by Zetta Elliott, an American Library Association 2009 Notable Children’s Book author; and “They Never Die Quietly” by former book editor Daniel Annechino.

Read the press release here.

It would be easy to hail this initiative simply as an opportunity for deserving self-pubbed authors to get broader exposure. Unfortunately, I don't see it that way. Amazon has now crossed the line into publishing books under its own imprint instead of merely providing print-on-demand services to other publishers and writers.

Talk about vertical integration [See 10/20/06 post here for definition of vertical integration]. Amazon is using feedback from its Amazon.com customers to identify the most popular or well-received books printed by its own BookSurge unit to then make deals with authors to market their work through other Amazon units (i.e. Amazon Books Store, Amazon Kindle Store, Audible.com).

Back on 6/5/08, I did a post here that included this:

I have said repeatedly . . . I think Amazon poses a threat to the publishing industry. But, increasingly, I believe that threat stems from Amazon's vertical integration of the book market, not because I think the Kindle will become the dominant e-reader.

Now let's talk about the carrot-and-stick approach. Remember yesterday's post here? Amazon brought a dozen well-known agents to Seattle to "open a dialogue." There was supposition as to whether Amazon was trying "to do an end-run around publishers and make direct e-book deals with major authors." That was the carrot.

The new Amazon press release is the stick. Let me translate what Amazon was really saying during those cozy little talks with agents in Seattle:

"We are now poised to publish p-books (through BookSurge), e-books (through Kindle), and a-books (through Audible.com and Brilliance Audio). We can both distribute (CreateSpace) and sell those books (Amazon.com). And we can even sell used books (AbeBooks, Bookfinder and Gojaba) and soft-market the books we want to push through our social networking sites (LibraryThing and Shelfari). We have a hand in every point of the chain leading to the customer:

Manufacturer => Wholesaler => Marketing => Retailer

"Bottom line: We at Amazon are the future of publishing. Get on board while you can because otherwise you'll be left in our dust."

Amazon Tries a New Tactic

Crain's New York Business had an interesting report about Amazon on Monday afternoon.

The online retailing giant flew out a dozen of New York's top literary agents last week for a day of meetings at its Seattle headquarters. Steven Kessel, senior vice president of worldwide digital media, led the all-day presentations and discussions, which centered on Amazon's wildly successful Kindle e-reader and the future of the e-books business.

In the words of one agent, the day-long event apparently was intended to convince the group that Amazon is "not trying to destroy publishing as we know it.”

Some publishing insiders speculated whether Amazon might be planning to ask the agents to act as middle men to make "direct e-book deals with major authors." Amazon was quick to deny this charge.

It turns out this wasn't the first feeler Amazon had put out to literary agents. Lynn Nesbit of Janklow & Nesbit acknowledged meeting with Amazon on a previous occasion in New York.

While Crain's article did not name any of the agents at Thursday's meeting, Paul Constant of The Slog website in Seattle did. In pointing out that this approach is new to Amazon, Constant said:

They usually don't play ball with the New York big-shots, and putting agents like Melanie Jackson, Ira Silverberg, Charlotte Sheedy, Nicole Aragi and Melanie Jackson at the Hotel Andra is a big deal for the company.

Read the Crain post here.

Read The Slog here.

Harlequin Announces Carina Press

Yesterday Harlequin announced "the launch of Carina Press(TM), a digital-only publishing house that will operate independently of their traditional publishing businesses."

Carina Press will sell its e-books direct-to-consumers via their website here.

Angela James, well-known editor from Ellora's Cave and Executive Editor at Samhain--and most recently associated with Kassia Krozser's now defunct Quartet Press--will be the new venture's Executive Editor. Angie also announced her new gig on her blog yesterday here.

Carina Press' website had this to offer:

Both the contract and distribution channels are very different:

• The Carina Press contract does not include an advance or DRM, and authors are compensated with a higher royalty.
• Unlike Harlequin there is no guaranteed series distribution (no standing order, no direct mail, no overseas translation markets).
• Carina Press titles will be sold direct to consumers through the Carina Press website, and we’ll be securing 3rd party distribution on other
  websites.

Go here to read the press release.

Earlier this year Harlequin celebrated its 60th anniversary. I remain impressed by the company's think-outside-the-box mentality. They've accepted the crumbling of their book club empire, but revived the direct-to-consumer sales with an e-book division. AND they are moving to a straight royalty, no advance approach which has the potential to make the author a true partner in the deal.

I'll be curious to see what kind of royalty rates Harlequin offers their new "partners."

Something For Everyone

I'm going to direct you to a variety of articles so you can pick and choose which ones to read.

If you're interested in self-publishing, USA Today had an article titled "Publish Your Own Book For Fun and Profit." Go here to read it.

If you've always wondered how other writers write, the Wall Street Journal has the article for you. Titled "How To Write a Great Novel," it describes the writing habits of seventeen well-known writer. Read it here.

The Tennessean has an article updating us on Thomas Nelson's new self-publishing arm. "Thomas Nelson said its twin goals are to boost revenues and search for up-and-coming writers to add to its roster." Grrrrr. Read the TWO-PAGE article here.

The New York Times slams Publishers Weekly because PW's Top Ten List of the best fiction and non-fiction for 2009 is an all-male list. Read the story here.

I was actually more disturbed by PW's reaction to the dustup over their all-male list. They published an expanded list, adding genres AND females. I'd have felt better about it if they'd had the courage of their convictions to stick to their original list. The expanded version is clearly a sop to political correctness. See the expanded list here. (If you can't read it, would someone please let me know).

The New Yorker has an article on the current Wal-Mart, Amazon, Target price war over books. Read it here.

Happy Reading.

The Honor Roll

This morning, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram printed the names of the people killed at Fort Hood.

Michael Grant Cahill, 62, of Cameron, a physician’s assistant who was working on the post as a contracted civilian

Maj. L. Eduardo Caraveo, 52, of Woodbridge, Va.

Staff Sgt. Justin M. DeCrow, 32, of Plymouth, Ind.

Capt. John P. Gaffaney, 54, of San Diego

Spc. Frederick Greene, 29, of Mountain City, Tenn.

Spc. Jason Dean Hunt, 22, of Tillman, Okla.

Sgt. Amy Krueger, 29, of Kiel, Wis.

Pfc. Aaron Thomas Nemelka, 19, of West Jordan, Utah

Pfc. Michael Pearson, 22, of Bolingbrook, Ill.

Capt. Russell Seager, 41, of Racine, Wis.

Pvt. Francheska Velez, 21, of Chicago. She was pregnant.

Lt. Col. Juanita Warman, 55, of Havre de Grace, Md.

Spc. Kham Xiong, 23, of St. Paul, Minn.

I didn't realize until I read the list that there were fourteen deaths. While I believe in a woman's right to choose, I also believe that the mass murderer took a child's life.

Whatever your belief system, take a moment today to remember these innocents . . . whether in prayer or simply in recognition of their sacrifice.

Heaven on Earth

Niccolò Paganini was a noted Italian pianist and composer. He wrote 24 "Caprices for Solo Violin" between 1802 and 1817. He is best remembered for his Caprice No. 24 which has been used as the basis for other works by many composers ranging from Brahms to Benny Goodman to Andrew Lloyd Webber. The most famous of these variations is "Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini" by Sergei Rachmaninoff, which is one of the best-loved pieces in all classical music.

Paganini's No. 24 is considered a very difficult piece for a solo violin player. Below is a short segment of Hilary Hahn playing No. 24 at a 2007 music festival--just so you can get a taste of it--before we get to Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody.

Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody has 24 variations on Paganini's Caprice No. 24. By far, the most famous of these variations is No. 18, which is often played by itself. You have probably heard it many times in films and as part of other musical recordings. John Barry (known for the James Bond theme) won a Golden Globe nomination for his use of No. 18 in the 1980 film Somewhere in Time.

No. 18 is played slow and upside down. Instead of using Paganini's A minor, Rachmaninoff plays it in D flat major. Supposedly he immediately recognized the appeal this variation would have for audiences. Stories claim he quipped, "This one is for my agent."

I've had tickets to the Dallas Symphony for over twenty years. Last night I heard Stephen Hough play Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody--all 24 variations--in 23 minutes. It was simply glorious. The audience stood and cheered for several minutes afterward. I plan to go back either tonight or tomorrow afternoon to hear it again.

YouTube has Mikhail Pletnyov (or Pletnev) playing the entire Rhapsody over three videos. He begins the third video playing No. 18. You'll immediately recognize when it ends because Pletnyov looks to the orchestra and the tempo picks up as the 19th variation begins.

Enjoy!!

Borders Accelerating Store Closures

Borders announced yesterday that it "is accelerating the pace of closing stores in its Waldenbooks Specialty Retail group."

According to Publishers Weekly:

[Borders] will shut approximately 200 outlets in January. The retailer has been steadily closing its mall-based stores since 2001 and will have about 130 mall stores after the downsizing is completed. Stores to be closed fall under the Waldenbooks, Borders Express and Borders Outlet names. Superstores are not part of the downsizing nor is the company’s mall kiosk business and airport stores.

Borders CEO Ron Marshall described the initiative as "right-sizing" Borders' presence in the communities it serves. The press release also said:

With the store closings in January, approximately 1,500 positions--the majority of which are part-time jobs--will be eliminated. Employees have been informed of the right-sizing plan and efforts will be made to place qualified individuals in other positions within Borders Group. Displaced employees will receive severance.

The mall-based right-sizing initiative has been ongoing at Borders Group for a number of years as the retailer has closed underperforming Waldenbooks Specialty Retail stores annually as part of its overall turnaround strategy. The company shuttered 112 stores in the segment in fiscal 2008 and from fiscal 2001 through 2007, closed an average of 66 stores per year within the Waldenbooks Specialty Retail segment.

You can see the tentative list of stores to be closed here.

Harlequin Reports Another Strong Quarter

Harlequin's parent company Torstar announced its latest quarter results yesterday morning. Here are the portions of the press release relevant to Harlequin. Direct-to-Consumer used to only mean the book clubs. However, it now includes the sale of e-books. All dollars being reported are Canadian:

Book Publishing operating profit was $22.9 million in the third quarter of 2009, up $4.2 million from $18.7 million in the third quarter of 2008, including $2.0 million from the impact of foreign exchange.

Year to date, Book Publishing operating profit was $63.1 million, up $9.9 million from $53.2 million in the first nine months of 2008, including $5.1 million from the favourable impact of foreign exchange.

Underlying results were up in North America Direct-To-Consumer and down in North America Retail for both the third quarter and year to date. Overseas was down in the quarter but up year to date.

Note that North American Retail [bookstore sales] are down but North American Direct-to-Consumer is up.

Late in the first quarter of 2009, Harlequin announced the decision to close its direct-to-consumer distribution centre in the U.K. and to outsource that function. This will result in annual savings of $0.6 million and a reduction of approximately 16 positions. Approximately $0.2 million of these savings will be realized in the fourth quarter of 2009.

I'm reading between the lines here. I think they are closing a p-book [print book] distribution center because Direct-to-Consumer is now more focussed on e-books.

Harlequin has done a terrific job of reinventing itself in the digital world. Back in February, I did a post on all the changes they've implemented. Read it here.

Slicing Up the Book

Back in November, 2005, shortly after I started this blog, I reported here that:

Amazon Pages "will 'un-bundle' . . . buying and reading a book so that customers can simply and inexpensively purchase and read online just the pages they need. For example, an entrepreneur interested in marketing his or her business could purchase the relevant chapters from several best-selling business books.

In that same post, I said:

Random House . . . announced "its intent to work with online booksellers, search engines, entertainment portals and other appropriate vendors to offer the contents of its books to consumers for online viewing on a pay-per-page-view basis."

Earlier this year, I told you about a new e-book app called Shortcovers. The Wall Street Journal described the app this way:

It will allow readers to get free samples of blogs, magazines and books -- say, the first chapter -- and then buy either the entire work or other individual chapters or sections, which the company calls "shortcovers."

From Monday's Publishers Weekly:

Simon & Schuster has started to sell individual e-chapters to its bestselling You series of titles written by Dr. Michael F. Roizen and Dr. Mehmet C. Oz . . . For answers to questions that appear in one of the You titles, S&S created an e-commerce widget that will allow consumers to purchase just the chapter in which the answer was found as well as providing the opportunity to buy the complete book in digital, physical, and audio formats.

According to PW, prices for those chapters will be between $2 and $3. You'll have to go to Oz's website here to purchase the book slices. I visited the site, but didn't see reference to this program yet.

I can think of a number of non-fiction titles where I might only be interested in a chapter or two of the book. If I could download that chapter for $2 rather than shlep all the way to the library where I have to pay parking, I'd do it in a minute.

I'd be less inclined to pay for fiction this way. I use the "Search Inside" kind of features to sample fiction to see if I would be interested in buying them.

Just Another Day in Paradise

Sorry for the delay in posting today. I got sidetracked.

I've mentioned before that I have a redhead's fair skin. As a result, I also have more than a nodding acquaintance with skin cancer. I visit the dermatologist the same month I visit the dentist twice a year. Getting my teeth cleaned is the cue to set up an appointment with the dermatologist.

This morning my dermatologist advised he was referring me to a surgeon to have a basal cell cancer removed from my right temple. He'd removed the lesion a couple of weeks ago and the biopsy was positive.

I could choose to go to a plastic surgeon or a dermatology surgeon. My doctor said the plastic surgeon would do a general anesthesia while the dermatology surgeon would use a local. The decided me. After my major surgery back in February, I'm not looking to have another general anesthesia any time soon. The hell with worrying about the scar.

So, next Tuesday, I have a 8:40 AM appointment. They said to allow four to six hours for the Mohs surgery.

I'm familiar with Mohs from previous experiences. The surgeon draws a circle with a cross inside it. He removes one quadrant of the lesion at a time. The goal is to keep expanding outward until he finds a clear margin with no abnormal cells in it. He moves from quadrant to quadrant, sending each tissue sample off to be biopsied until all four margins are clear.

The last time I had a basal cell cancer removed (June, 2007), I wrote a PSA on this blog. The husband of Maureen Reagan wrote me after that blog to say thank you.

Please go here to read that post. I care about you.

Stephen King in the New Yorker

Stephen King did a fiction piece for the New Yorker. You can read it here.

Thanks to Publishers Lunch for the tip.

Maybe We All Need a Little Ubuntu

This post was prompted by two events that occurred last week:

First, last Monday, agent Janet Reid did a terrific post here about what makes a writer.

Then on Friday, a couple of writers on a loop complained about the "poseurs" who self-publish and then go around "bragging" that they've been published.

The thing is, I can remember how irritating it was while I was still querying agents to have someone who had self-published offering me advice about writing in general and publishing in particular. This was especially grating because, deep in my DNA, I am extremely competitive.

My three brothers and I were raised by a father who pushed all of us to succeed. To Daddy, everything was a contest, and he weighed our worth by how well we did. If I came home from school with five "A"s and one "B", rather than celebrating the "A"s, Daddy would berate me for the one "B".

It took some years (and a bit of therapy) for me to overcome my need to be perfect. I'm still incredibly competitive, but now I channel it.

A fair amount of my time as a management analyst is spent encouraging teamwork or "collaborative work" among employees. Periodically, I pull whatever group I'm working with into a large room where we can play games that force them to work together. Afterward, we debrief, talking about what led to either winning or losing in the game. Fortunately for my purposes, more often than not, everyone agrees that working together as a team was the chief key to success.

Now to the point of this post.

Publishing is a brutal business. Writers compete for agents. Agents compete for editors' attention. Editors compete for slots on the publishing schedule. Publishers compete for manuscripts. Everyone competes for readers. It's one big dog-eat-dog world.

While Amazon and Wal-Mart are slugging it out for online market share, this is a great time for us to remember that, as writers, we're all together in this leaky fleet of boats flying the "Publishing" ensign. We may take different routes to the fabled City of Gold: traditional New York print, indie publishing, university press, online publishing, self-publishing. But whatever direction we take, we're a band of fellows, a community of adventurers. As such, we need to watch out for each other, pass along warnings of pirates and offer encouragement to our peers if they begin to flounder.

I think I've pushed that metaphor as far as it will go.

John Donne said, "any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind..." I would argue that another writer's success does not diminish me for precisely the same reason.

There is a Bantu philosophy often voiced by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. It is called "ubuntu." The Archbishop described the concept this way:

A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished . . .

As I drive into work every morning, I try to spend a few minutes focussing on unbuntu, with the goal that I will affirm at least five people I meet during the day. And not with phony or shallow compliments. I will find something genuinely good in what they are doing and offer each a valid affirmation.

Why should I feel diminished or insecure by another's success (or perceived success)? That's a losing proposition. Instead I seek the company of constructive, successful people. They encourage me to strive harder. They teach me. And they support me.

And I do everything I can to pay the favor forward.

Try offering your fellow writers a little ubuntu today.

Help For Independent Bookstores

There's been a lot of talk about the demise of bookstores lately. B&N and Borders have been scrambling to keep their sales up, and independent bookstores are having an even tougher time. Neither group is helped by the price war being waged by Amazon, Wal-Mart and Target.

Yesterday's book section of the Huffington Post had this statistic: "In 1993, the American Booksellers Association (ABA) had 4,700 member stores. By the start of 2009, the number had fallen to 1,600."

That means that two-thirds of the ABA's membership (largely comprised of independent bookstores) has died off over the last sixteen years (or at least dropped their membership in their own trade organization).

In June, 2007, two management consultants, Praveen Madan and Christin Evans, bought a bookstore called Booksmith in San Francisco, determined to figure out how to keep independent bookstores alive in today's hostile environment. This month, they are doing a series of blogs about the experience on the Huffington Post.

Madan claims that "Independent bookstores account for 10% of the total retail market for books, but on the internet our combined market share is less than a tenth of 1%." He believes independent bookstores need to "reinvent and reinvigorate" their businesses. He suggests the following:

1. Literary Community Building
2. Author Services
3. Enhancing the Browsing Experience
4. Print on Demand
5. New Markets

Author Jason Pinter also offered suggestions to help independent bookstores. Here are a couple of them:

1. Don't put the bargain books right in the front of the store
2. Cell phone coupons
3. Make every author event available online ASAP

Go here to read the Madan post.

Go here to read Pinter's post.,

Talking About e-Book Royalties

Publishers Marketplace had an item in yesterday's lunch:

Macmillan ceo John Sargent wrote to agents earlier this week to present for the first time a new standardized boilerplate contract across all of the trade publisher's imprints and divisions that the company intends to introduce as of November 9, featuring a number of comprehensive changes in their basic business terms.

Agent Richard Curtis actually posted a link to Sargent's letter on his blog here (You'll have to scroll down to 10/28).

The New York Big Six have been offering authors e-book royalties of 25% of the net receipts (publishers usually receive about 50% of the list price). So on a $15 e-book, the publisher's net is $7.50 and the writer gets $1.88 of that.

Sargent said that all Macmillan imprints were going to a "single royalty rate" which would "apply to all exploitation of the content of the book in digital form." Curtis reported that Macmillan planned to go to 20% of net, reducing the author's share from $1.88 to $1.50 per e-book.

The New York Times had this to say about Mr. Curtis' stance:

Richard Curtis . . . said the difference between Macmillan’s standard e-book royalty and other publishers was not the point. “The point is whether we should be playing on such a low ballfield at all,” Mr. Curtis said, “and whether the industry should not really be thinking about a 50 percent royalty of net receipts.” He argued that because the cost to publishers of producing e-books was so low, authors should get a higher proportion of sale proceeds.

Interesting how Macmillan is in such a rush to lock in e-book royalty rates.

Read the New York Times article here.

And the Winner is . . .

It's that time of the year again. Time when the winners of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest are announced.

The contest began in 1982 at San Jose State University to honor the memory of Earl Bulwer-Lytton who penned those well-known words "It was a dark and stormy night." Each year the contest looks for the worst opening sentence possible.

This year's grand winner:

Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin' off Nantucket Sound from the nor' east and the dogs are howlin' for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the “Ellie May," a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin' and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests.

The runner-up was:

The wind dry-shaved the cracked earth like a dull razor--the double edge kind from the plastic bag that you shouldn't use more than twice, but you do; but Trevor Earp had to face it as he started the second morning of his hopeless search for Drover, the Irish Wolfhound he had found as a pup near death from a fight with a prairie dog and nursed back to health, stolen by a traveling circus so that the monkey would have something to ride.

But my favorites were:

Peter shaded his eyes from the brilliant April morning sunlight as it suddenly illuminated the Bunny Trail, contemplated his handiwork, (separating all of those pearly white chicks-to-be from their mothers) and prepared for the final task to complete his mission-yes, this was a good day to dye.

As Oedipus watched his mother gracefully glide across the great hall, he felt a stirring in his loins which he immediately regretted but then quickly dismissed, for he knew if these wanton desires for his mother were wrong then someone would have named the condition by now, thus proving once again that where his emotions were concerned there was only one description for Oedipus . . . complex.

She walked into my office on legs as long as one of those long-legged birds that you see in Florida - the pink ones, not the white ones - except that she was standing on both of them, not just one of them, like those birds, the pink ones, and she wasn't wearing pink, but I knew right away that she was trouble, which those birds usually aren't.

Medusa stared at the two creatures approaching her across the Piazza and, instantly recognizing them as Spanish Gorgons, attempted to stall them by greeting them in their native tongue, "Gorgons, Hola!"

Go here and find your own favorite lines.

New Interview in Poets & Writers

Thanks to Nathan Bransford for pointing to a Poets & Writers interview with Jonathan Karp.

If you pay attention to publishing, you already know that Jonathan Karp is the publisher and editor-in-chief of Twelve, the Hachette Group imprint that only publishes twelve books a year.

I had a particular reason for being interested in this article. Four months ago, in late June, Mr. Karp gave another interview . . . to the Washington Post. During that interview, while talking about the "ephemera" on bookstore shelves today: "self-aggrandizing memoirs by recovering addicts; poignant portraits of heroic pets; hyperbolic ideological tracts by insufferable cable TV pundits" -- you get the picture -- Mr. Karp made the following statement:

Many categories of books will be subsumed by digital media . . . Readers of old-fashioned genre fiction will die off, and the next generation will have so many different entertainment options that it's hard to envision the same level of loyalty to brand-name formula fiction coming off the conveyor belt every year. The novelists who are truly novel will thrive; the rest will struggle.

Humph! As a proud writer of formula fiction and a devoted reader of genre fiction, I found Mr. Karp's humor engaging, but his comments patronizing. And I responded:

While Mr. Karp and I are in agreement that consumers today have a dizzying array of choices on which to spend their entertainment dollars, I think his hope that "the age of disposable books won't last . . ." is somewhat elitist. I suspect it is also a form of self-soothing for a man who suddenly finds himself trying to cope with a turbulent industry facing radical change.

The new interview left me with a different opinion of Mr. Karp . . . I'm sure he's relieved [grin]. I found him self-deprecating, generous with his praise for both his authors and peers, and thoughtful.

In talking about Seabiscuit, one of his non-fiction books, Karp said

"What I learned from editing that book was just how important it is for a book to actually leave you with a feeling. I had been a very analytical guy up to that point, in terms of my editing. For nonfiction, I had always assumed that if it made sense and was well written and had an important point to it, people would respect it and like it. But that isn't what it's about, ultimately. People have to be moved by it."

My love for genre fiction was imprinted on my soul at a very early age. I was a spooky little shrimp of a kid, all orange hair and freckles, and scared of my own shadow. I was also a huge fan of boys' books. I preferred the brash courage found in those novels over the pallid books written for girls. I can remember reading all of Edgar Rice Burroughs (especially the Barsoom and Pellucidar series) and all of Zane Grey.

As I look back on those days, I suspect I was vicariously trying on different emotional suits, learning how it felt to be brave and fearless and decisive.

Those "disposable" formulaic genre novels provided me with the hope that I would one day be able to step out of my corner and be audacious.

I've often said on this blog that readers seek specific emotions when they buy genre novels. And I don't think that need will ever go away.

The author of the interview asked Mr. Karp "about the three main reasons why people read . . ." He responded,

". . . there are three Es. People read for entertainment, education, or the expressiveness of the language. The best books combine all three . . . I was so amused that right after Seabiscuit, people began publishing all of these books about horse racing. They completely missed the point. The book didn't succeed because people were dying to read about horses. It succeeded because it was a beautifully written story that was emotionally satisfying and interesting from beginning to end."

Jonathan Karp completely won me over when, in talking about the only novel he'll be publishing next year, he said: ". . . it's one of these novels where characters reveal things that, in your own life, people never say out loud."

What a delicious thing to say about a novel.

To read Mr. Karp's June interview in the Washington Post, go here.

To read his latest interview in Poets & Writers, go here. He has some great insights into the relationship between writer and agent, too.

For Every Writer I Know

Courtesy of my critique partner, Linda.

Bring Change 2 Mind

Check out this video here.

Nine E-Reading Devices

Brenna Lyons pointed the way to this link on Time.com displaying "Nine E-Readers to Gawk At."

Take a few minutes to peruse the photo gallery.

Revisiting Writers Beware

Back in mid-August, the Mystery Writers of America (MWA) decided to co-sponsor the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America's (SFWA) Writers Beware website.

The Writers Beware website is among the first sites newbie writers are directed to visit by more seasoned writers. According to Publishers Weekly (PW), "SFWA launched Writer Beware in 1998, and its Web site is available to all writers, regardless of subject, style, genre, nationality or professional standing."

Since reading the news item in PW a couple of months ago about the support of MWA for Writers Beware, I had not visited the website until this weekend. I was delighted to see its look had been updated, making it easier to navigate among the features.

Take a few minutes to visit the site here.

Go here to read case studies of scams.

Go here to read the list of literary agents who have been given a thumbs down. The list was updated 8/13/09.

I was disappointed that the list of publishers had not similarly been updated.

My thumbs up to Victoria Strauss for the good work she has done and is doing.

Apple Changes Its Position On Free Apps

Last Friday, Wired.com pointed out a change worth noting:

"Apple on Thursday made a subtle-yet-major revision to its App Store policy, enabling extra content to be sold through free iPhone apps. It’s a move that immediately impacts the publishing industry . . ."

What Brian X. Chen was saying is that Apple's previous policy had placed a burden on newspapers and magazines considering moving online: Apple did not permit content-creators to use its free apps to sell content. Apple required content-creators to use its paid apps for commercial purposes.

Consumers have grown accustomed to getting their news and entertainment online for free. Getting them to pay for content to begin with is a challenge. Adding the cost of the app to that content charge was an added obstacle.

Chen said:

By allowing commerce within free apps, Apple creates the opportunity for a free media app to serve as a gateway for readers to get hooked on a newspaper’s or magazine’s content, which could help lure them into paying for exclusive premium content.

Go here to read the entire Wired post.

ABA Contacts the DOJ

The Board of Directors of the American Booksellers Association (ABA) has sent a letter to the Department of Justice, asking for its Antitrust Division to investigate the possibility of "illegal predatory pricing that is damaging to the book industry and harmful to consumers" on the part of Amazon, Wal-Mart and Target.

This move was, of course, prompted by the price war between Amazon and the big box stores. Prices for best-sellers have gone as low as $8.98.

Below please find the text of the letter as printed in Publishers Weekly:

October 22, 2009

The Honorable Christine Varney
Assistant Attorney General
Antitrust Division
Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Suite 3109
Washington, DC 20530

Molly Boast, Esquire
Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Civil Matters
Antitrust Division
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Room 3210
Washington, DC 20530

Dear Ms. Varney and Ms. Boast,

We are writing on behalf of the American Booksellers Association, a 109-year-old trade organization representing the nation's locally owned, independent booksellers. A core part of our mission is devoted to making books as widely available to American consumers as possible. We ask that the Department of Justice investigate practices by Amazon.com, Wal-Mart, and Target that we believe constitute illegal predatory pricing that is damaging to the book industry and harmful to consumers. We are requesting a meeting with you to discuss this urgent issue at your earliest possible opportunity.

As reported in the consumer and trade press this past week, Amazon.com, WalMart.com, and Target.com have engaged in a price war in the pre-sale of new hardcover bestsellers, including books from John Grisham, Stephen King, Barbara Kingsolver, Sarah Palin, and James Patterson. These books typically retail for between $25 and $35. As of writing of this letter, all three competitors are selling these and other titles for between $8.98 and $9.00.

Publishers sell these books to retailers at 45%-50% off the suggested list price. For example, a $35 book, such as Mr. King's Under the Dome, costs a retailer $17.50 or more. News reports suggest that publishers are not offering special terms to these big box retailers, and that the retailers are, in fact, taking orders for these books at prices far below cost. (In the case of Mr. King's book, these retailers are losing as much as $8.50 on each unit sold.) We believe that Amazon.com, Wal-Mart, and Target are using these predatory pricing practices to attempt to win control of the market for hardcover bestsellers.

It's important to note that the book industry is unlike other retail sectors. Clothing, jewelry, appliances, and other commercial goods are typically sold at a net price, leaving the seller free to determine the retail price and the margin these products will earn. Because publishers print list prices indelibly on jacket covers, and because books are sold at a discount off that retail price, there is a ceiling on the amount of margin a book retailer can earn.

The suggested list price set by the publisher reflects manufacturing costs - acquisition, editing, marketing, printing, binding, shipping, etc. - which vary significantly from book to book. By selling each of these titles below the cost these retailers pay to the publishers, and at the same price as each other, and at the same price as all other titles in these pricing schemes, Amazon.com, Wal-Mart, and Target are devaluing the very concept of the book. Authors and publishers, and ultimately consumers, stand to lose a great deal if this practice continues and/or grows.

What's so troubling in the current situation is that none of the companies involved are engaged primarily in the sale of books. They're using our most important products- mega bestsellers, which, ironically, are the most expensive books for publishers to bring to market-as a loss leader to attract customers to buy other, more profitable merchandise. The entire book industry is in danger of becoming collateral damage in this war.

It's also important to note that this episode was precipitated by below-cost pricing of digital editions of new hardcover books by Amazon.com, many of those titles retailing for $9.99, and released simultaneously with the much higher-priced print editions. We believe the loss-leader pricing of digital content also bears scrutiny.

While on the surface it may seem that these lower prices will encourage more reading and a greater sharing of ideas in the culture, the reality is quite the opposite. Consider this quote from Mr. Grisham's agent, David Gernert, that appeared in the New York Times:

"If readers come to believe that the value of a new book is $10, publishing as we know it is over. If you can buy Stephen King's new novel or John Grisham's 'Ford County' for $10, why would you buy a brilliant first novel for $25? I think we underestimate the effect to which extremely discounted best sellers take the consumer's attention away from emerging writers."

For our members-locally owned, independent bookstores-the effect will be devastating. There is simply no way for ABA members to compete. The net result will be the closing of many independent bookstores, and a concentration of power in the book industry in very few hands. Bill Petrocelli, owner of Book Passage in Corte Madera, California, an ABA member, was also quoted in the New York Times:

"You have a choke point where millions of writers are trying to reach millions of readers. But if it all has to go through a narrow funnel where there are only four or five buyers deciding what's going to get published, the business is in trouble."

We would find these practices questionable were they taking place in the market for widgets. That they are taking place in the market for books is catastrophic. If left unchecked, these predatory pricing policies will devastate not only the book industry, but our collective ability to maintain a society where the widest range of ideas are always made available to the public, and will allow the few remaining mega booksellers to raise prices to consumers unchecked.

We urge that the DOJ investigate and request an opportunity to come to Washington to discuss this at your earliest convenience.

Sincerely,

ABA Board of Directors:
Michael Tucker, President (Books Inc.-San Francisco, CA)
Becky Anderson, Vice President (Anderson's Bookshops-Naperville, IL)
Steve Bercu (BookPeople-Austin, TX)
Betsy Burton (The King's English-Salt Lake City, UT)
Tom Campbell (The Regulator Bookshop-Durham, NC)
Dan Chartrand (Water Street Bookstore-Exeter, NH)
Cathy Langer (Tattered Cover Book Store-Denver, CO)
Beth Puffer (Bank Street Bookstore-New York, NY)
Ken White (SFSU Bookstore-San Francisco, CA)

CC: Oren Teicher, CEO, American Booksellers Association
Len Vlahos, COO, American Booksellers Association
Owen M. Kendler, Esquire, Antitrust Division, U.S. Department of Justice

B&N Unveils the Nook

After weeks of rumors about B&N releasing its own e-reading device, the company CEO and president held a press conference on Tuesday to unveil the Nook, which has a dual screen: A six-inch gray E-Ink display on top and, according to Publishers Weekly, "a full-color backlit touch-control screen situated just below—that raises the ante on E-Ink devices."

The color touchscreen has five sections: The Daily, My Library, Shop, Reading Now and Settings. The Daily permits you to subscribe to newspapers or magazines. B&N will also provide free "articles from the best writers" according to the online video. Reading Now will keep your place in the book you are currently reading.

The Nook has two GB (1,500 e-books) of memory and offers a 16 GB SD card of expandable memory. According to Publishers Marketplace, the SD card will hold 17,500 books.

B&N is going head-to-head with Amazon, offering the Nook for $259 and selling best-sellers for $9.

You can see the Nook here. I recommend you watch the video of the device's features. It has a wireless 3G connection to B&N for which you don't have to pay. With the wireless feature turned off, B&N says you won't have to recharge the book for ten days, permitting you to take it along while you're traveling without bringing a charger. B&N will offer free Wi-Fi for the Nook in its stores.

Publishers Weekly says:

The device supports EPub and PDF as well as the Fictionwise eReader format (the e-tailer was acquired by B&N last year), and consumers can purchase titles directly through the machine. Indeed, B&N is going all out to highlight its e-book flexibility—Nook owners will be able to move their e-books from device to device and read their B&N e-books on their iPhone, Blackberry . . .

The Nook raises the bar for e-book reading devices. It permits you to loan a book for up to two weeks. During the period of the loan, you cannot access the book yourself. And, according to Publisher Marketplace, you can only lend each book one time. B&N says it is still in negotiations with publishers to permit broader lending rights.

B&N is also investigating selling a bundled p-book together with the e-book.

The Nook goes on sale at the end of November in time for Christmas sales.

Help your local B&N. Buy a Nook instead of a Kindle.

The Saga of Le Handbag

My three brothers are determined to keep our mother, who is suffering from Alzheimer's, living at home as long as possible.

Some days are better than others.

My youngest brother Jack has assumed the responsibility for taking Mom to the grocery store, the bank and the doctor's office. He and Mom generally get along well, and Jack enjoys their outings together . . . with one exception.

Mom has an obsession about someone stealing her purse. To prevent this dread possibility, she hides the handbag. And then, of course, she forgets where she hid it.

This means that Jack has to tack extra minutes on the front end of any excursion to provide enough time for him to locate the purse before they leave the house.

In the beginning, it was simple. He'd find it in a drawer under her sweaters, or in the linen closet beneath the towels. During our calls, Jack would chuckle about where he'd found it that week.

Then . . . almost as if she sensed she wasn't providing enough of a challenge, Mom started to rachet up the level of difficulty. Instead of merely putting the purse under the bed, she'd hide it behind the table leaf that leaned up against the wall under the bed. Or she'd build a little fort of boxes of saran wrap and aluminum foil in the pantry with the handbag hidden inside.

The search began taking longer and longer each week, and Jack's humor on our calls started to sound a little forced.

The breaking point came the day he had to abandon the search because he didn't want to be late for Mom's 10 AM appointment with her doctor. Jack paid her co-pay out of his pocket.

When they returned home, he resumed the search. As he told it, Mom followed him around the house helpfully suggesting that perhaps she had been burgled. She was wringing her hands; he wanted to wring her neck.

If memory serves, that was the day he found the purse in a jigsaw puzzle box on the top shelf of the hall closet.

Mom occasionally provides playful moments. Jack has long since abandoned checking the "easy" places, expecting far more difficult solutions. One day she led him a merry chase until--on the verge of despair--he opened the dresser drawer where she'd kept her purses for nearly thirty years and found her handbag right on top in plain view.

I don't ask about the purse search when we talk on the phone these days. Jack is no longer lighthearted about the hunt. It's serious business.

He and Mom went to the dermatologist's office today . . . sans bourse.

Mom is always agitated when she has to leave home without the bag on her arm. Today she had day surgery on a skin cancer awkwardly placed. The surgery took three hours. Jack said a steady stream of nurses, techs and lab assistants came out from the exam room to ask him if he had Mom's purse.

In the car on the way home, she panicked, thinking she'd left the handbag in the doctor's office. He reassured her "the damn thing" was at home. However, when they got to the house, he had to stand and deliver.

During our phone call, he described his increasingly frenzied search. "I even thought about getting the ladder out and checking the roof," he said. "Until it dawned on me that the neighbors would have seen her up there and come running."

I was silent, afraid to ask the outcome of this bizarre Easter egg hunt.

"I walked into the den," he said. "You know the couch in there is too low to the ground for her to slide the bag under it." He paused
--whether in reflection or defeat, I couldn't say. "I was about to go check the Florida room when I noticed a buckled place in the rug."

You'd have to know my mother to understand the significance of this augur. Mom is a compulsive housekeeper. A buckle in one of her rugs is a world-shaking event.

"I walked back over and hoisted one end of the couch to look under it," Jack continued. "I couldn't believe it. That freaking bag was squished flat, but it was under that sofa."

"But how?" I asked.

"I have no idea," he responded. "She's five-feet-nothing and weighs about 106 pounds."

"And yet she found the strength of ten Grinches, plus two!" I said with reverence.

I can't wait until next week's treasure hunt.

Random House Settles Libel Lawsuit

Random House has settled the lawsuit brought against it three months ago in London by wine expert Michael Broadbent.

Broadbent sued the publisher (although not the author Benjamin Wallace) of the book The Billionaire's Vinegar for libel. According to Slate magazine:

Broadbent, the legendary former head of Christie's wine department, alleges that Wallace defamed him in his gripping whodunit about the so-called Thomas Jefferson bottles—a trove of wines initially said to have belonged to the oenophilic Virginian but now almost universally believed to have been fakes. Three of the bottles, all Bordeaux, were auctioned off by Broadbent in the 1980s, and of the many wine luminaries caught up in this saga, his reputation has suffered the most damage.

According to the New York Times:

. . . Mr. Wallace suggested that Mr. Broadbent was too credulous in his assessments of the Jefferson wines. Why? According to the book, he was eager to please patrons like Hardy Rodenstock, the German collector who claimed to have found the Jefferson bottles, because he depended on them for access to older, extraordinarily valuable wines.

Random House issued an apology, agreed not to distribute the book in the UK and paid an undisclosed sum to Mr. Broadbent.

Wallace, the author, was very vocal in saying that Random House's decision was a business one, "in order to contain its legal costs and exposure in the UK." He reminded everyone that he, the author, had not been sued, that the settlement did not require "a single word" of his book be changed, and that the book could still be sold everywhere else in the world outside of the UK. He added that he did not think Mr. Broadbent acted "in bad faith" during the auction of the bottles.

Eric Asimov, the chief wine critic of the New York Times, referred to an email he had received from Wallace that said about Broadbent:

“Why, in his court filing, didn’t Michael Broadbent make any claim about the authenticity of the three Jefferson bottles he sold?’’ he asked. “If he thinks the bottles are legitimate, why didn’t he try to prove that in a court of law.’’

The controversy started in 1985 when a German collector by the name of Hardy Rodenstock put the bottles up for auction. Rodenstock claimed he'd purchased them in Paris where workers tearing down a house had found them behind a false wall in the cellar. The bottles were engraved with the initials Th.J., and Rodenstock insisted they had belonged to Jefferson, who'd lived in Paris while he served as America's Minister to France from 1785 to 1789. Jefferson is widely regarded as America's first great wine connoisseur. Rodenstock refused to reveal the location of the house or the number of bottles found.

Broadbent sold the first bottle--Lot 337, a 1787 Château Lafite--at Christie's in London on December 5, 1985. The New Yorker described the bottle this way:

. . . handblown dark-green glass and capped with a nubby seal of thick black wax. It had no label, but etched into the glass in a spindly hand was the year 1787, the word “Lafitte,” and the letters “Th.J.”

It was purchased by Malcolm Forbes (with his son Kip acting as his surrogate during the bidding) for $156,450--"a record price for a single bottle" according to Slate.

Rodenstock continued to sell bottles from his cache. Another American billionaire, William Koch, purchased four of them in late 1988 for half a million dollars. You may remember Koch because his boat won the 1992 America's Cup.

Koch sought to authenticate his purchase through the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello. Cinder Goodwin, a Monticello scholar, had already pointed out to Broadbent two discrepancies: (1) that Jefferson recorded all of his wine purchases, and there was no record of the Rodenstock bottles; (2) Jefferson signed his correspondence with a colon (Th:J.)

Koch hired experts to validate his purchase and was not at all pleased to learn the Th.J. initials had been etched on the bottles with an electric power tool.

The vengeful Koch wanted to file both civil and criminal complaints against Rodenstock. In August, 2006, he filed a civil complaint in a New York federal court. Koch's chief investigator told The New Yorker "he estimated that since 2005 Koch has spent more than a million dollars on the Rodenstock case—twice what he paid for the wine."

Investigation into Rodenstock's background revealed that he was not connected to the famous German optics manufacturing family as he'd told people. His real name was Meinhard Goerke; Rodenstock was a pseudonym.

Rodenstock/Goerke refused to submit to the New York court in Koch's case. The New Yorker says he claims that, even if the court issues a default judgment, "the German courts will not enforce it."

To read the New York Times article, go here.

To read The New Yorker article, go here.

To read the Slate article, go here.

I suspect all the publicity about this case will help promote The Billionaire's Vinegar. Settling the case was probably a good business decision on Random House's part as well as cheap insurance to guarantee the publisher can continue to hawk the book around the world.

Wal-Mart.com and Amazon Start a Price War

From yesterday's Publishers Marketplace:

Following the Amazon ebook pricing reset that publishers have cursed and feared, on Thursday Walmart.com dropped the price on their top 10 pre-orders titles (Palin, Crichton, Grisham, Crichton, Patterson, Koontz, etc.) to an even $10, with free shipping included. More broadly, they are offering their top 200 books at discounts of 50 percent or more in a program called America's Reading List.

Wal-Mart's action didn't go unnoticed by Amazon.com, which matched Wal-Mart's new prices.

Miguel Bustillo and Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg have a story in this morning's Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on the Internet price war. They reported on this ". . . battle for low-price and e-commerce leadership heading into the crucial holiday shopping season. Wal-Mart soon fired back with a promise to drop its prices to $9 by Friday morning -- and made good on that vow by early evening Thursday."

This holiday showdown was inevitable when you consider that Amazon has been steadily moving into other products besides books, music and film.

And, according to the WSJ, Wal-Mart is now selling other retailers' merchandise on its website.

The Business Insider had this to say in its post on the subject here:

Who's going to win?

In our opinion, Amazon.

Why?

Because it's better at ecommerce. And because it can't afford to lose.

This is Amazon's core business. It's a sideline for Walmart.

The WSJ quoted Wal-Mart.com CEO Raul Vasquez:

"If there is going to be a 'Wal-Mart of the Web', it is going to be Walmart.com . . . Our goal is to be the biggest and most visited retail Web site."

Go here to read the entire WSJ article.

Buckle your seatbelts . . .

More on Ford

I didn't realize how much controversy my post on Henry Ford would create. I got a number of emails and comments pointing out that Ford was a controlling, intolerant individual.

I won't argue that. The Ford Motor Company actually had an investigative division called the Social Welfare Department to make certain that employees were living according to Ford's moral code--being thrifty, taking proper care of their families and not getting drunk. He also disapproved of employees taking in boarders, "regarding their homes as something to make money out of rather than as a place to live in."

I'm not going to defend Ford. He doesn't need me to write an apologia for him. Like all of us, he was a multi-faceted individual. He also remains a personal hero of mine. He was constructive, enthusiastic, and he loved his work. Instead of whining when he encountered obstacles, he sought solutions.

Publishing could do worse than study his life. As an example, here are three of the innovations he put into place in his factories:

• In January, 1914, he raised wages for qualifying employees (remember that Social Welfare Department) from $2.34 to $5 a day, more than doubling their pay.


• In his book My Life and Work published in 1923, Ford explained his workers were now receiving $6 a day for an eight-hour day instead of the nine-hour days they had previously been working. Workers in other factories were still working much longer days.
  
• U.S. employees had been given Sundays off in order to permit them a day of rest and a day on which to worship for some time. Jewish immigrant workers complained about being off on Sunday when Saturday was their day of worship. Labor unions agitated for more time off. Ford began closing his factory on Saturday in 1926--reducing the work week from 48 hours to 40--long before other industrialists did so.

While all of these innovations were pro-employee, each allowed him to solve a business problem:

• Higher wages helped reduce employee turnover. In My Life and Work, Ford says: "In 1914, when the first plan went into effect, we had 14,000 employees and it had been necessary to hire at the rate of about 53,000 a year in order to keep a constant force of 14,000 . . . Today we keep no figures; we now think so little of our turnover that we do not bother to keep records."
  
• Ford went to an eight-hour day in order to run three eight-hour shifts, raising his factory's productivity.


• Increased productivity permitted Ford to produce his cars more inexpensively. Increased wages permitted his employees to purchase those more affordable cars. However, he realized something was missing--the leisure time to enjoy the vehicles. According to NPR's Marketplace program on September 4, 2009, Ford gave his employees Saturday off and invented the concept of the "weekend road trip" to help sell his cars.

What I liked about Ford's solutions was that everyone won: Ford, his workers and the American economy.

New York publishing today operates with a zero sum game mentality. In order for someone to win, someone else has to lose. In order for the publishing house to be profitable, the author has to take a low royalty rate, the reader has to pay outrageously high e-book prices and the hardcover has to be protected from price erosion.

In November, 2008, I heard an interview on NPR's Weekend America about the current state of the U.S. auto industry. The commentator said: "Auto makers are going to have to get more creative. They are going to have to innovate, to redesign and re-imagine the way they do things, the way they do business."

I wrote that down because I thought it was apropos of the publishing industry as well.

Publishing could do worse than think like Henry Ford.

Today's Ford quote: "I am looking for a lot of men who have an infinite capacity to not know what can't be done. "

Amen, brother.

Is This Really How You Want to Make Money?

Two years ago, I wrote a post here on April 28, 2007, in which I said:

So how DOES a publishing house justify its existence in a digitized world?

. . . While anyone may be able to produce an e-book, the failure of most self-published books is evidence that merely having a book is not enough . . . What I suspect is going to happen is that the lines between publisher, distributor, bookstore and author are going to start blurring. Unusual contracts among the different parties are likely to emerge.

Yesterday a piece in Publishers Marketplace reminded me of those words--and not in an entirely comfortable way:

. . . Thomas Nelson has launched a self-publishing imprint, WestBow Press--though they are outsourcing the bulk of the operation to self-publishing giant Author Solutions. AS will design, publish and distribute the books. Nelson's primary roles appears to be sharing revenue and promising customers an "opportunity to be discovered by parent company Thomas Nelson.... For authors who hope to one day be signed by a traditional publisher, this is an opportunity to get your foot in the door."

Thomas Nelson is, of course, the world's largest Christian publisher. Mike Hyatt is the president and CEO and someone for whom I have enormous admiration.

Author Solutions, as I've described it previously, is the Mother of Self-Publishing. Among other properties, the corporation owns AuthorHouse, iUniverse, and Xlibris. Entrepreneur interviewed Keith Ogorek, Author Solutions' director of marketing in April, 2008: "'As a company, Author House will publish about one of every 17 titles in the United States this coming year,' Ogorek says. That's about 20,000 titles."

I squirmed when I read the blurb by Publishers Marketplace, thinking "Who are we kidding here? The self-publishing industry has made millions stomping on newbie writers' dreams for money. And now Nelson is going to help lure more people into using a vanity press with the vague hope that they'll get a 'foot in the door'?"

My mood was not helped by this statement from the Nelson press release yesterday:

Titles published through WestBow Press will be evaluated for sales potential and considered for publication under the Thomas Nelson imprint.

Come on, folks. What are the odds that a writer self-publishing through a vanity press will end up with a traditional publishing contract?

And before anyone points to The Shack, please go here to read my previous blog titled "Should You Self-Publish?" William P. Young did not go to a vanity press. He went to a pastor friend he trusted. That friend and another former pastor formed their own company, Windblown Media, to publish the book.

In other words, someone besides the writer saw the value in the book and was willing to invest cold hard cash in it. The writer ("a former office manager and hotel night clerk" according to the New York Times) did not pay to be published.

Mike Hyatt wrote about the new Nelson division in his blog yesterday here. The post made me feel both better and worse. It also left me with questions.

Mike specifically said, "If prospective authors are convinced their book should be in print and are willing to fund it, they should be able to do so without the fear that they might be ripped off."

I worked as a licensed social worker in both inpatient and outpatient settings for a number of years. The medical field uses "informed consent" forms in order to make sure that any patient considering treatment has "a clear appreciation and understanding of the facts, implications and future consequences of an action" (thanks, Wikipedia). In other words: the patient must understand the risks involved before commencing treatment.

So, is WestBow going to ensure that potential clients are offered informed consent? If the book in question is the typical self-published mess and the writer is entertaining the fantasy that Nelson will soon be offering a contract, will WestBow disabuse the writer of such notions? Is WestBow going to offer a reality check, or are they simply going to collect a check?

In his post, Mike offered a list of seven situations in which self-publishing makes sense. I completely agreed with four of them (the third, fourth, fifth and seventh). The first, second and sixth sounded dangerously like the pap most self-publishing companies offer.

The thing that disturbed me most about Mike's post was the following statement:

We also want to work with agents and consultants as “WestBow Press Affiliates,” so that they can help more authors realize their dream of getting published. Rather than simply send a rejection letter, they can now offer a legitimate alternative and earn a referral fee in the process.

So now we're offering agents the opportunity to pick up extra cash by making referrals to a self-publishing company.

I know things are tough in publishing today. But seriously, guys, is this the way you want to go?

Thomas Nelson enjoys a sterling reputation in the publishing business. Newbie writers are going to be reassured to see that WestBow belongs to Nelson. To me, that says Nelson has a higher obligation to provide information and assistance before taking a check from a still damp, newly hatched fledgling writer.

That's the Christian thing to do.

Henry Ford, Publishing Needs You

I've been thinking about Henry Ford a lot lately.

Ford is often credited as the father of the assembly line (he was probably more its godfather). Despite developing mass assembly factories that used interchangeable parts, he was an individualist. He was also blunt, pragmatic and optimistic--all qualities that appeal to me a great deal.

I can usually find a Ford quote to suit any occasion. Today's quote:

History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present . . .

I was reminded of that quote when I read an article in last Wednesday's New York Times here with the depressing title of "Book Sales Are Down, Despite Push."

The story focussed on the disappointing sales of blockbuster titles like Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol, the late Ted Kennedy's True Compass and Audrey Niffenegger's new book after The Time Traveler’s Wife.

The Times went on to say: "And over all, according to BookScan, book sales were down about 4 percent compared with the same week last year . . ."

Henry Ford, where are you?

We all know publishing is first and foremost a business. Corporate heads roll with depressing frequency. Last Monday, Publishers Marketplace reported:

"After just five months as chief executive at the Headline group in the UK [owned by Hachette Livre, which also owns Grand Central Publishing], Kate Wilson has left the company by 'mutual agreement' according to a brief statement . . . Wilson was supposed to be taking over from Martin Neild as he prepared to retire from the company in 2010."

Two weeks before that, Steve Rubin--whose position as president and publisher of Doubleday was eliminated in December--announced he'd be leaving Random House, the parent company of Doubleday, after 25 years.

With these kind of examples, you can understand why New York is risk-adverse and very focussed on the bottom line. The problem is that this reluctance to take risks has publishers placing large bets on a small group of celebrities and best-selling authors.

Thinking that well-known names are more likely to sell than unknown names, the New York houses compete at auction, offering huge advances to obtain the rights to a few releases they hope will become blockbusters.

You can see the problem. In an effort to avoid risk, publishers gamble millions of dollars. If it works out . . . fine, they can relax next summer at that rental in the Hamptons. But if it doesn't work out . . . splat!

Because all of them follow the same (supposedly conservative) strategy, they are inadvertently contributing to greater risk for all by bidding up the price of books. Instead of offering more safety, this herd mentality is actually increasing the risk.

Last December here, I talked about the Boston Matrix as a model for assessing product lines. The problem publishing faces is that they are pouring too much money into their "cash cows" rather than investing money into up-and-coming writers who could become "stars."

While I'm at it, I also take issue with the way media reports book sales, including that New York Times quote about sales being down four percent compared to the same period last year.

According to a June, 2008 article in the New York Times, Nielsen's BookScan "usually tracks about 70 percent of sales." BookScan collects information from over 12,000 locations weekly, including bookstores (like B&N, Borders and college bookstores); discount stores (like Amazon.com and Target) and non-traditional stores (like Kroger and Starbucks). While they are working toward making their results more meaningful (they added the non-traditional category just last year), BookScan misses segments of the market. As examples, they don't capture either Wal-Mart's sales or e-book sales.

Even the Census Bureau, which releases retail sales each month, doesn't include used book sales. The Book Industry Study Group (BISG) reported that 8.3% of all books sold in 2004 (one out of every twelve) was a used book. They anticipated that number would be one out of every eleven by 2010.

Consider. Rather than overall book sales being down, perhaps consumers are shifting venues. It's possible in this slow economy the reading public is purchasing used books or shopping for new books at Wal-Mart where they can get a deeper discount.

I'd also argue that it's possible consumers are buying e-books instead of hardcovers.

I've said it before. The publishing industry needs to pay more attention to their consumers . . . and their consumers' reading and buying habits.

And, of course, Henry Ford has a quote for that, too.

It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages.