E-Books or Physical Books? Do We Get the Same Reading Experience? (they do coexist, you know?)

King: A book is 'an object with a nice cover.
You can swat flies with it.'

One of the interesting things I’ve discovered since blogging about things digital and print Re their interfacing in the changing publishing industry: the belief that they are mutually exclusive and are at odds with each other.

And this belief is held NOT ONLY by non-professionals that were just raised in a certain era and refuse to change --- BUT, ALSO by some supposedly educated, publishing professionals (that were just raised in a certain era and refuse to change).

I’ve received comments from literary agents, editors, booksellers, distributors and various publishers that consistently and aggressively argue, or try to argue, that print has not been changed but a wee bit due to digital tech and that it will always be as dominant as in the past!

Of course, you have to consider the source for these comments coming from pipe dreams of ones who have lost positions/money or are deathly afraid of its coming inevitability (unless they adapt,  change and grow).  

Let’s get a couple of things straight --- print IS still the dominate format in publishing and, I suspect, will be for the near future --- But, print’s dominance is being gobbled up at a light speed rate considering digital and e-books nanosecond existence compared to print’s 573 year existence (German inventor Johannes Gutenberg invented a printing press process in 1440).

Also, the print (traditional) publishing industry is, and has been for some time, shrinking down and adjusting through mergers and acquisitions, staff/structural and contract changes to tighten up, fit in and be more competitive in the new changing publishing environment --- where digital and print will be more sharing dance partners rather than adversaries.

Now for an outlook by famous author Stephen King in an interview with Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg:

Why E-Books Aren't Scary

Stephen King has filled HIS share of printed pages: Since "Carrie" was accepted for publication in the spring of 1973, he has written more than 40 books and countless short stories. His latest work, coming Nov. 9, is a collection of four stories titled "Full Dark, No Stars." In an author's afterword, Mr. King notes that he wrote one of them, "A Good Marriage," after reading a piece about Dennis Rader, the "BTK Killer" (for "bind, torture and kill") who murdered 10 people in Kansas between 1974 and 1991. He wondered what would happen if a "wife suddenly found out about her husband's awful hobby."

Mr. King is realistic about where books are headed. In digital publishing, as a writer, he's what might be called an "early adopter." Back in March 2000, Simon & Schuster Inc. issued Mr. King's story "Riding the Bullet" as an e-book that was downloaded from the Web onto hand-held devices or computers.

More recently, Mr. King's novella "Ur" was written exclusively for Amazon's Kindle e-reader when the second generation of that device went on sale in February 2009. In the interview below, Mr. King discusses his thoughts on the future of digital reading and publishing:

The Wall Street Journal: Do we get the same reading experience with e-books?

Stephen King: I don't know. I think it changes the reading experience, that it's a little more ephemeral. And it's tougher if you misplace a character. But I downloaded one 700-page book onto my Kindle that I was using for research. It didn't have an index, but I was able to search by key words. And that's something no physical book can do.

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Nook: From B&N To Microsoft for Cool Billion?

News is out that Microsoft is ready to offer B&N one billion dollars for their Nook ebook and tablet media business.

After this leak found its way into some speculative news media articles last week, B&N’s stock price soared --- All this comes about one year after Microsoft’s $300 million investment into Nook Media to bolster its faltering sales and expand Microsoft into new digital areas. This gave Microsoft about a 17% stake in Nook Media.

If B&N does divest itself of its Nook Media sector – what in the hell is to become of the struggling B&N? It begs questions such as what will B&N do with the one billion? Will they invest it in their brick-and-mortar shops and return to being primarily a purveyor of print and other sidelines? Hmmm.

AND can Microsoft, who actually was one of the first innovators of ebooks (remember?) with their launch of the Microsoft Reader in 2000, manage their foray into this sector better this time around?

Some interesting facts and insights provided by Dennis Abrams and Edward Nawotka in Publishing Perspectives:

If Microsoft Takes Over Nook, What Next?

Last week, ABC News noted that Barnes & Noble stock prices soared afterTechCrunch reported that they had seen internal documents indicating that Microsoft is considering offering Barnes & Noble $1 billion to buyout the Nook Media business. Microsoft, after last year’s $300 million investment, already holds a 16.9% stake in Nook Media. Pearson, which invested $89 million in Nook Media and holds a 5% stake. In exchange for the additional $1bn, Microsoft would then redeem some of its shares in Nook Media, and take control of the Nook ebook and tablet business. According to TechCrunch:

The documents also reveal that Nook Media plans to discontinue its Android-based tablet business by the end of its 2014 fiscal year as it transitions to a model where Nook content is distributed through apps on ‘third party partner’ devices. Speculation about the plan to discontinue the Nook surfaced in February. The documents we have seen are not clear whether the third-party tablets would be Microsoft’s own Windows 8 devices, tablets made by others (including competing platforms) or both. Third-party tablets, according to the document, are due to get introduced in 2014.

But what are the implications of such a buyout for Barnes & Noble? Microsoft, while a technological powerhouse, has has been star-crossed when it comes to interacting with the book business.

Microsoft was one of the earliest companies to get into the ebook business, via the launch of Microsoft Reader, which debuted in August 2000. It was tied, in part, to the launch of Microsoft’s Tablet computers, the first on the market, and generally seen as a failure. The Reader software and its proprietary .LIT ebook format were discontinued in 2011. The company’s Live Book Search project — which had scanned 750,000 books and indexed 80 million journal articles — lasted just two years, from 2006 to 2008, before it was scuppered.

Should Microsoft take over Nook Media and opt to put an end to B&N’s own ereaders, where that will leave Nook is anyone’s guess. Windows 8, Microsoft’s latest release, has had a lackluster debut and adoption of their most recent Tablet computers incorporating this software have been lackluster.

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Seems We Get the Publishing Industry We Deserve

Celebrity Publisher??

Do we, as well as past generations, actually get the books and culture we deserve? Or did an elite few (read blessed or cursed with more of the resources of the day) tell the rest of us what we should like or accept as 'cultured' culture (pun intended) --- Simply and probably because someone had told them what was acceptable in their time.

Never mind growing and expanding ideas and knowledge that would certainly sway concepts and complex thought/s and therefore literature and culture. I would say this applies to both the heavier and lighter sides of literature/culture/art/books/etc..  

But, back to the question: Do we actually get the books and culture we deserve? 

Hell no! (Realizing there is no one answer to this question due to no one concept of culture and good/bad books). 

But, it's not because of what we like, enjoy or desire (from the most educated among us to the least) --- It's because of what is jammed down our throats in the name of the almighty dollar from those in control of the business.  

Alexander Nazaryan, a very entertaining book reviewer and 'culture commenter' who enjoys his commentary with heavy doses of facetious irreverence and hyperbole, writes this for the New Republic:

When Celebrities Take Over Publishing Companies ...

Every age gets the publishing industry it deserves, whether it’s Babylonian scribes etching the Epic of Gilgamesh into stone tablets, medieval scribes toiling away at illuminated manuscripts or Maxwell Perkins laboring over the sentences of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. Which is why, I suppose, today we have imprints from the comedienne Chelsea Handler, the rapper 50 Cent (Handler’s erstwhile beau, but I wouldn’t read too much into it), the chef Anthony Bourdain, and actors Viggo Mortensen and Johnny Depp, not to mention mystery writer Dennis Lehane and former Men’s Health editor David Zinczenko.

All these are small imprints, usually folded into publishing conglomerates and producing only a few books each year—and always announcing the celebrity affiliation with unabashed pride of the sort that must make the wise old men of the publishing world, the two or three still left, cringe. All were founded in recent years, as the publishing industry has searched ever more desperately for a solution to its chronic, worsening woes. They suggest, to me at least, that the business of discovering, editing, publishing, and promoting a book has become little more than that—a business, on par with hawking energy drinks or endorsing restaurant chains. Yes, publishing has always been about making money. The rise of the celebrity imprint indicates that it is now about little more than that.

That the publishing world—buffeted by the forces of Amazon and apathy—has turned to celebrities for salvation is not surprising. Considering how much of a premium our society places on fame—independent of how that fame is achieved, regardless of whether it is deserving—it makes perfect sense that at HarperCollins someone said, “Hey, we should have that guy fromPirates of the Caribbean edit some books.”

That guy—Depp—is apparently serious about his imprint, Infinitum Nihil, having recently published a long-lost novel by Woody Guthrie, House of Earth, with an introduction by the historian Douglas Brinkley, who is also publishing The Unraveled Tales of Bob Dylan with Depp. And Mortensen founded Perceval Press on his own—in some degree to publish his own works of photographs, but also as an outlet for what is all-too-readily dismissed by bigger publishing houses as "literary fiction," as well as works on history and art. Not too shabby, I think, for two guys who work in a town where anything more ponderous than a Rotten Tomatoes review is considered longform.

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Editors! --- Views from Both Sides of the Editor's Desk - And then Some

There are editors and then there are EDITORS. There are many types of editors - some administrative, some improve grammar, some evaluate potential manuscripts, etc. Some are for hire to writers while others work in publishing houses, literary agencies or the publishing operations of universities and professional institutes.

Literally a forest of editors. Here is a representative, but, by no means complete list:

Assignment editor

Authors’ editor

City editor

Copy editor

Developmental editor

Duty editor

Editor-at-large

Editor-in-chief

Literary editor

Managing editor

Picture editor

Executive editor

Acquisitions (or Commissioning) editor

Editors are not normally publishers but are sometimes part of a publishing team within a publishing house. Usually an editor deals with content and a publisher deals with the financing, risk, printing and making the product available.

Tonight we will be discussing acquisitions editors with links describing other types.

This by W. Terry Whalin:

What's an acquisitions editor?

How can I help this editor?

 

Sometimes when I introduce myself, I'll say that I'm an acquisitions editor. You can almost see the glazed look come over listener's faces and mentally they ask a question that sometimes they don't verbalize, "What's an acquisitions editor?" Its simple, I find the books for my publishing house to publish.

For the last five years, I’ve worked as an acquisitions editor at two publishing houses. Most full-time acquisitions editors acquire between 15-20 books in a year.

Many editors have acquisitions as a part of their job responsibilities but it's the total responsibility for an acquisitions editor. It means that I'm often the first contact for an unpublished writer. Each of the two publishers, where I've worked, consider or accept unsolicited manuscripts. Because of the poor quality of these submissions, most major publishers do not accept unsolicited manuscripts. Their submissions come from a literary agent or an author with an established relationship with the publishing house. When a publisher considers unsolicited manuscripts, it is a virtual onslaught of material. The majority of this onslaught is presented in an unprofessional manner and not written well--truth be told.

An acquisitions editor not only finds the manuscripts but they champion the manuscript within the publishing house. I've often told writers that I characterize publishing as a consensus building process. I may be convinced your book project is perfect for our needs--but I have to convince a number of other people including my fellow editors, sales people, marketing personnel and the leaders of the publishing house your book is worthy to appear in print. For any publisher to take your book and print it, they will spend about $50,000 to $100,000--and this cost includes only a modest advance to the author ($5,000 or less). As an author who had written over 55 books with traditional publishers, I had no idea the publisher was investing this amount of money in my idea to put it into print--before several years ago when I started working inside a publishing house. The author never sees the actual financial numbers for the cost of the paper or the editorial or the marketing expenses for the book yet I know firsthand the investment. It's a considerable investment--and numerous people seriously weigh the risks.

Not Waiting for the Bestseller

Most acquisitions editors are not waiting for the golden best-selling manuscript to simply drop into their mailboxes. We are proactively looking for new projects. I've been in publishing many years and have rolodex with personal phone numbers, addresses and email addresses for some high profile people. I'm actively using this information to contact my friends to see if they have some project that I could acquire. Why? There is much less risk for the publisher to take a well-known author (even who has never published with you) than an unknown author and make them known. Also it involves much less work for the publisher.

Before you think there is absolutely no opportunity for an unpublished and unknown author, don't be discouraged. Publishers are looking for your work but it has to be excellent and a good fit for the needs of the particular publisher.

Five Ways to Help the Acquisitions Editor

 

Read and learn more

Related article: What Does an Acquisitions Editor Do? With links to what other types of editors do by Ian Linton

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source mat'l from "what does an acquisition editor do?" (Ian Linton) and "what's an acquisition editor?" (W. Terry Whalin)