Actually useful information

You may think that good writing, or hard work, or good representation sells books. You would be super wrong. You know what sells books? Metadata. And, womp womp:

"There used to be consistency throughout the retail channel," Savikas said. "Amazon and B&N and other retailers all needed the same stuff." But that was before the appearance of channels like the Apple app store: "They need completely different data," Savikas said, pointing out the impact of agency model e-book pricing. "Now there may be four or five different prices for a single book."

You might write an amazing piece of work, but no one's going to find it if Amazon can't link it up right at the bottom, and if the pricing gets effed up. And most publishers don't have the resources to make sure its right everywhere. Damn internet, ruining everything.

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Glenn Beck novel trailer!

Oh oh oh oh oh this is so exciting. By which I mean, what the fuck is going on in that video??

Summer reading, or how I keep myself entertained

Honestly, I think the only reason people put such emphasis on summer reading is because there are no massive gift giving holidays to liven up sales. That said, hurray lists of summer reading!

If you are an indie lover, check out this list of choice summer reading from independent book sellers (from NPR, naturally). If you are a steamy romance reader, check out this list of steamasaurus rexes (written by one of the women from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, obvi). And if you are just really shallow (me!), check out these classics with great new covers.

Cue reading and no work getting done.

A primer in technology

Do you feel overwhelmed by all the new doo-dads and interwebs running around? Well, I can't really help. But I can help if you're interested in the gossipy side of Silicon Valley. Behold, a reading guide to titles about the tech-mafia leaders. Nerds: they're so in right now!

Feminist toys for girls and boys

Check out the Bronte sisters action figures, and the Brontesaurus:

Do want. And thanks to Michael, for sending this along!

No one buys book apps, we are all screwed

In a majestically depressing graph, which you can check out here, we find that, while book related apps account for 18% of the apps in the iPhone app store, they only account for 3% of downloads. And, as we learned from the whole "Kindle bestsellers" thing, downloads do not mean purchases.

The caveats here are, of course, 1) that these stats were mostly collected prior to the launch of the iPad and thus Apple's bookstore, 2) that the Amazon app is a single app that you can use to download many books, and 3) these stats are crowdsourced, not official from Apple, so the potential for discrepancies are huge.

That said, I think the only right thing to do is panic about the demise of the industry. Woe to all of us, the book is dead.

E-books ruin America, make babies and puppies cry

The people are angry, reader types--angry at the e-book overlords. First they won't display all book covers on iTunes, which makes for the crankness. Very enraging, and it's only the tip of the iceberg!

Then the e-books make it harder to flirt on the subway, because you can't see the cover and strike up a conversation (even when the reader is perhaps actively giving you dissuading vibes and non-committal answers and is on her way to work and doesn't want to talk to anyone and is already lobbying to be one of someone's many fiancees and oh em gee please stop talking to me).

Also, e-books are putting monks out of business. Have ye no decency, sirs?

Twilight returns, funds blood suckers

Stephenie Meyer wrote a new novella! Which she's giving away for free on her website! Which stars a vampire who was in Twilight! And if you do buy it, money will be donated to the Red Cross! Which I assume was picked because it's ironic to have vampirism benefit blood donation! But I'm not sure, and might be giving people too much credit!

And now I am exhausted, from that sincere level of enthusiasm.

The interwebs ruins reading, part one thousand and four

Normally, I would mock someone who said technology is hindering her reading. But this rang so true for me:

My reading has taken on a strangely driven, guilty quality, as I try to justify the cost of all those subscriptions and all that hardware by consuming fiction in an unprecedentedly multiplicitous and simultaneous way. Secretly, I long to return to a world in which I had a loving, stable relationship with one paperback at a time.

Snaps to this, reader types. I get this kind of book anxiety all the time, and wish I read more non-internet texts, in part because reading War and Peace is impressive, whereas reading the same length in blog posts is...kind of sad.

A preemptive bookshelf eulogy

Woe to the world, reader types--the bookshelf is dead! Well, not actually, but it's coming. Ok, not really soon, but eventually. Russell Smith writes:

People come to see my minuscule new living room and say, hmm, you could have another foot and a half without that wall of bookshelves. True, but then you would never be able to distract yourself, while waiting for me to dress, by pulling down, at random, Weapons of World War II and 100 Erotic Drawings.

But you’d probably have brought your own e-reader with you, which you’d be looking at anyway (checking Facebook, updating: “I am so mad right now”). Book-walls are just aesthetic now, just an unusually dense wallpaper: We don’t really need them for consultation....And all our books will be invisible, like our music: The sum total of our literary experience will be a list of file names on a grey plastic machine in a briefcase.

After careful consideration, I think Smith is overreacting a little here. There will always been a need for secret bookcase passages, and a place to store trophies.

Actually, this "iPad thing" looks pretty cool

While the cell phone quality and head in the lower right hand quarter of the video imply, at least to me, that perhaps Penguin wasn't involved in the release of this video, I think Penguin UK has some cool stuff for the iPad in the works:

Well, I'm pretty sold (that is not sad, don't judge me sirs and madams). Because it's shiny and a touch screen! Also, facts about stuff besides shininess here.

Editors: Yay or nay?

Carole Baron put up a post at the Huffington Post about why authors still need editors (which, as Gawker points out, really could have used a copy-editor). Baron lists ten (valid) reasons we still need editors and traditional publishing, but I think Scott Sigler gives us an even better reason, through his own foray into self-publishing.

Sigler founded his own imprint to put out his latest book. He says he made ten times the profit per unit, but only sold a tenth of the copies he has sold through a traditional publisher (which, for the not so math inclined, implies he made the same amount both ways). Sigler, an established author, was built up first by himself through his website, where he distributed audiobooks and podcasts, and later by the publishing machine, which put out paper copies of his work, to be a profitable brand of Sigler-ness.

While he points out that his particular self-pubbing method can be profitable, he seems to believe (and rightly so) that it will only really work for established authors who "defect" from traditional publishing--his example being Stephanie Meyer. And yea, she could self-publish and make a ton of money, but a) she was created by the publishing machine, and b) anyone who doesn't have a huge cult following isn't going to do so well.

Sigler says, "[T]hat's the kind of kind of thing that could take away from big publishing and put some of that control back into the hands of authors." What he really means is that control would be in the hands of established authors, who want to take on the responsibility of editing, copy-editing, designing, and producing their own work, but editors and publishing writ large are still necessary for the unknown who wants to be a profitable author. And, perhaps more importantly for this argument for authorial control, if a number of large cash cow authors did defect, publishing houses would lose those profits, and would no longer be able to take risks on new authors, who would be in a worse position than they were originally.

Maybe Meyer could defect, publish her own books, and then start Meyer House. That way, in 50 years we can complain about Meyer House's place in big publishing, quashing the hopes of the masses.

Anything but the eyestrain

Good Lord, please no eyestrain! Alas, the screen-versus-paper debate gets more complicated:

Doctors and researchers note that in most instances, paper can offer more visual sophistication than a screen. But certain types of paper, including inexpensive newsprint and the paper in softcover books, can actually provide an inferior reading experience for our eyes than the electronic alternatives.

If only these e-versus-paper decisions didn't keep getting harder.

I think I'm turning Japanese, in order to write my cellphone novel

15 year-old "Bunny" wrote a three volume novel on her cellphone, which has been turned into a paperback and has sold over 110,000 copies and grossed more than $611,000. She's a Japanese high school student, who doesn't want her friends to know she's been writing because "It's embarassing." Dude, seriously, all of my writing profits are also an embarrassment. An embarrassment of riches! (Zing.)

The moral here is that I need to become a 15 year Japanese girl. This is only doable through MySpace or creepy chat rooms. I'll keep you posted on my progress.

Macmillan and Amazon: Not friends

I'm sure this has already reached your ears, reader types, but in case not, Amazon gave Macmillan the proverbial Facebook unfriend (defriend?), delisting all Macmillan titles from the bookseller's site. Galleycat has a great round-up of events and coverage, and John Sargent, CEO of Macmillan, issued a response, which outlines the proposed system that Amazon rejected:

Under the agency model, we will sell the digital editions of our books to consumers through our retailers. Our retailers will act as our agents and will take a 30% commission (the standard split today for many digital media businesses). The price will be set for each book individually....Our disagreement is not about short term profitability but rather about the long-term viability and stability of the digital book market.

So, interesting so far. Then Amazon released a statement, that says:

We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan's terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books.

For a little perspective on Amazon's stance, Amazon UK delisted Hachette in May of 2008 during a fight over discounting, and it doesn't appear that things were settled until June of 2009, if Bookseller's dates are accurate (props if anyone can tell me if that's right). In the Hachette situation, while titles were not removed from Amazon whole hog, the option to "buy now" by clicking one button was gone, and instead of buying from Hachette the consumer had to go through through a third party seller. So, while there is a precedent for delisting publishers for extended periods of time, I'm going to have to assume that Amazon's need to capitulate so quickly is at least in part because, as Sargent says, "The agency model would allow Amazon to make more money selling our books, not less."

I'm not a sales type (although a little birdie has told me that a sales type will be discussing this topic today), so I can only make guesses and assumptions, but I would assume that Amazon a) doesn't want e-book prices dictated by publishers (dur) and is taking an aggressive stand on it now, and b) will fold for money after taking what Cory Doctorow is calling a farcical stance on consumer rights.

Avast, book piracy!

An Attributor study has found that, in the past year, publishing has probably list $3 million to book piracy. PW says:

From the four sites that make digital download data available--4shared.com, scribd.com, wattpad.com, and docstoc.com--Attributor found 3 million illegal downloads in the final quarter of 2009 of the 913 books followed. The company estimates those four sites represent about one-third of all book piracy. (Attributor calculated the share of piracy based on 53,000 book takedown notices sent out to various Web sites in the second half of 2009).

While most of these titles were in the business and investing area (very ethical, investors), there was still a considerable fiction contingent. Read the full PDF of the study here, and start to panic: the end is nigh!

Damnit, e-readers will not democratize publishing

Galleycat posted an interview of Tess Gerritsen, who contends that the e-reader will democratize publishing. She gives all of the usual reasons: people who can't break in through traditional houses will still be able to disseminate their work, which people will then find and read and appreciate, blah blah blah.

This is chronic, terrible, oft regurgitated bullshit (which I will explain in two points!).

First, there is a reason a lot of titles can't get published, and for the most part it is because they are terrible. The last book you read that you thought was horrendous was a) probably pretty bad, yea, and b) better than anything else the agent and publisher could find.

Second, just because a title is out there doesn't mean people will read it. There are about 300,000 books published annually through the traditional model. This means that if you only read new titles for a year, you need to read 34 books an hour for the entire year to read everything put out through traditional publishing, which are the titles that were plucked out from the general morass.* Most of these titles will not sell well or be read by many people, and they will have the benefit of professional publicists and book sellers behind them. Just because a title exists on the internet does not make it equal to a traditionally published book--not necessarily because of quality, but because of exposure and the publicity weight behind it.

Scribd CTO Jared Friedman, wants to increase the number of books published annually from 300,000 to 3 million, saying:

Our thesis is that the limiting factor in the number of books that are published per year is not the amount of content that people are able to write and it's not the amount of content that people are able to read. Rather it's a structural limitation of the publishing industry itself.... We think that if we can cast off the artificial limitations that are imposed by the way the economics of the publishing industry currently work, we could potentially dramatically increase the amount of work that is published.

He cites Harry Potter's temporary stint in the slush pile, saying there are many HPotts just waiting to break out. But if no one is reading the already existing 300,000 titles published every year, who is going to dig through this new e-slush pile? Not me, thank you--I will stick with the handful of traditionally published books I slog through annually.

*Math! 365 (days per year) x 24 (hours per day) = 8,760 hours per year. 
300,000 (books per year) / 8,760 (hours per year) = 34.2 books per hour.

Jury's in: Vooks are dumb

I have previously made fun of the whole Vook concept, although the cook-Vook sound pretty cool. The staff at eBookNewser took a Vook-esque plunge with some Sherlock Holmes shenanigans, and they did not like, saying, "all the bells and whistles finally distract from the text itself, where the real action still takes place."

I stand vindicated? Oh yea.

Fox News smacks down your e-reader dreams

Yesterday, I said that buying an e-reader is an American, patriotic duty. It turns out (and it pains me to admit it) that I may have been wrong. Why? Because Fox News says not to buy e-readers.

Now, we all know Fox News is never wrong, and they are more American than an apple pie covered in peanut butter wrapped in an American flag smashed with a baseball bat. (For those of you of a non-American persuasion, that is very, very American.) Plus, your e-reader might be spying on you. Back to the traditional paper book and writing on papyrus!

E-merson for the enthusiastic

If you've heard of Hemingway (and I'm not sure if you have), you've probably heard of this "Emerson" guy as well. And for $10 on the internet, you can read the collected works of Emerson—something that would cost you hundred or thousands of dollars in a paper copy.

Clearly Emerson was all about e-books, as Mick Sussman quotes, "'To those dwelling in the old,' wrote Emerson, the new 'comes like an abyss of skepticism,' but 'the eye soon gets wonted to it' as its 'innocency and benefit appear.'" Since disagreeing with Emerson makes you a terrorist (he was a great American!), e-books must be great. Quod erat demonstrandum.