Richard Eoin Nash

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Slightly infuriated

So, I’m feeling slightly infuriated, and all because of one little sentence, a brief almost parenthetical comment by a book industry person in response to the posting of Cory Doctorow’s very nice account of the importance of the publisher’s sales rep to the building of buzz around book titles.

This is the kind of longitudinal, deep, expensive expertise that gets books onto shelves, into the minds of the clerks, onto the recommended tables at the front of the store. It’s labor-intensive and highly specialized, and without it, your book’s sales only come from people who’ve already heard of it (through word of mouth, advertising, a review, etc.) and who are either motivated enough to order it direct, or lucky enough to chance on a copy on a shelf at a store that ordered it based on reputation or sales literature alone, without any hand-holding or cajoling.

Exactamundo. The first email I sent, after the announcement of my resignation, was to the Publishers Group West sales force, to thank them, because their work was the only reason anyone gave a fuck about my resignation.

However, this comment, given on the Facebook forwarding of this note, included a sentence to the effect that this was a nice article, given all the blather “about the death of the book.”

People, the book will live on with the publishing business!!! That is not really what is changing, and to the extent that it might be, it will only be because the writers and the readers want it to.

The book isn’t in trouble, it’s that everyone who takes some of the money that a consumer pays for an author’s content need to re-justify their share and not assume that because they used to get that % they still in fact deserve that %.  And I sense too many people hiding behind the notion that this has something to do with grandiose cultural notions about the life and death of the book rather than more quotidien concerns about the vision and competence of individuals populating this business.

On one extreme, booksellers, wholesalers, sales reps, publicists, editors, and agents could all fail to make a good case for a piece of the action; another extreme is that they all succeed in making that case. Unsurprisingly, I think it will likely be somewhere in the middle—some intermediaries are likely to be necessary, others not. I firmly believe that people with the talent to persuasively communicate the merits of cultural content are going to do immensely well in the future (and, depending on their inclinations, immense could mean lots money, or lots high-brow authority, or both, or something else immense entirely) and I suspect that people who are now publishers’ sales reps, and indie booksellers, and publicists, and so forth will number amongst those.

Who exactly, and structured in which way, that’s what remains to be seen. But the book is fine. Focus on connect writers and readers and you won’t have to ask for whom the bell is tolling.

Richard Eoin Nash, Mar 04, 2009

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Well put, Richard.  Those between the author and reader, the “two fixed points in the cultural economy of books” (I keep repeating that phrase to myself), so often seem to forget that this whole process ultimately is not about THEM.  Most of them are certainly well-meaning, and some of them will certainly still be essential as we move into a less structured and less stratified time, but authors and readers will certainly find each other no matter what happens.  The demand for books is now and will continue to be great, and the desire to write books seems to be greater than ever. No business decision, stock price, sales model or technology is going to change that.

    – David Nygren (03/05 04:36 PM)

I find talking about an ‘author’s content’ thoroughly dismaying. Perhaps that’s why I prefer to remain indie in the true sense of the word - independent of the entire publishing world. Yet I don’t seem to suffer from lack of demand - my first novel Mortal Ghost is downloaded about 50-100 times per day, the podcasts even more. And all without booksellers, wholesalers, sales reps, publicists, editors, and agents…

    – Lee (03/06 09:19 AM)

Richard,

eBook readers are starting to pay attention to the St. Martins, Harper, Penguin,and the rest of Main Street publishers that care more about lining their pockets with money than actually finding readers for their books.

We know that eBooks cost pennies to make.

Before the invention of the eReaders from Amazon and Sony, no one paid attention to who published our favorite authors.

Now, however, we are noticing those publishers that are trying to pull a fast one by pricing their digital books at 25.99/23.99 and so forth.

We don’t take kindly to the fact Publishers are trying to take advantage of readers (and authors) by overcharging because they’re unable to run a business in a profitable manner.

Their refusal to listen to us as readers, and as consumers, has opened the door wide open for authors and publishers who are pricing reasonably.  We’ve started a website devoted to showcasing those authors/publishers that ask for reasonable digital list prices, and a list of authors/publishers that are at the top of the Greed Chain - http://www.mad4kindle.com

I read an MSNBC post that states before the release of Kindle 2 there were 500,000 Kindle owners.

Let’s do the math:  If a Kindle owner bought 1 ebook A WEEK @$5.00 that is $2,500,000 A WEEK and most of us buy more then 1 ebook a week or for 1 YEAR that Totals $30,000,000 and at $9.99 an ebook that is $4,995,000 A WEEK or $59,940,000 a Year.

We all want to pay Our Authors & publisher’s fairly but this is beyond fairness for Ebook pricing.

Charles Darwin once said it’s Survival of the Fittest, however, do to the fact we will now be purchasing from publishers and authors that are taking advantage of new technology and the failure of Old School Publishers to adapt to the environment, I’d have to say it’s ARRIVAL of the fittest.

Sadly, Main Street publishers are days late to the party.

We will not be fooled by them anymore. And we will not be buying from them anymore.

Madison
http://www.thearsonistaffair.com

    – Madison McGraw "Girl Arsonist" (03/10 12:17 PM)

From David Byrne in Wired a few years ago:

What is called the music business today, however, is not the business of producing music. At some point it became the business of selling CDs in plastic cases, and that business will soon be over. But that’s not bad news for music, and it’s certainly not bad news for musicians.

http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/magazine/16-01/ff_byrne?currentPage=all

    – Claire Cameron (03/10 12:47 PM)

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