It's All About Freedom and Creative Control

Breaking Publishing Chains of the Past

How many books have been written, songs composed and sang, plays performed and movies produced about breaking some kind of boundaries and rushing into new found freedoms?

Literally thousands and thousands, I suspect. In stories from history, in present time and in futuristic presentations. 

Well, one such present time occurrence has and is taking place in the publishing/writing industry. 

Some refer to it as the changing state of affairs in the legacy and the indie publishing arena --- Some even are calling it a revolution!

I, for one, say the revolution part has already beckoned and been fought - and what is advancing now is the resulting growth and evolution of the new order, so to speak.

Both newbie and established authors are now self-publishing books for various reasons - such as a newbie not finding a traditional publisher for his/her new masterpiece or an established/published author who wants to shift more of the financial, risk and creative control to his/her side of the equation.

After the initial exit from traditional publishing (TP), due to the ever growing realization that TP's were really not manned to process and market the writing supply nor were they structured (interested) to develop new talent as much as they were geared for immediate profit margin AND the introduction of slick, new technologies, writers (the product producers) started to don entrepreneurship clothing and became more knowledgeable Re the business side of the publishing/writing industry as a whole - especially the new tech allowing more professional self-publishing and distribution avenues.

Even independent publishing has evolved into something new today. Fifteen to twenty years ago it referred to small presses that were not associated with the big corporate publishing houses. Today it refers to indie authors who are okaying, processing and publishing their own work.

Indie authors today have truly broken through the old boundaries and burst out upon a new landscape scattered with more level playing fields.

There are some land minds to be aware of, however.

As Brooke Warner, publisher of She Writes Press and SparkPress, president of Warner Coaching Inc., and author of Green-light Your Book, says "Self-publishing still carries some stigma, largely for two reasons: (1) because anyone can publish a book, and people who don’t care about standards do—and often; and (2) because the industry itself—steeped in tradition and invested in retaining the status quo—actively resists implementing changes that might truly level the playing field for indie authors."

It is also important for the indie authors/publishers to learn and maintain the highest standards of writing/editing, publishing and professionalism. If not, the real gatekeepers of worthwhile books, the reading public, will simply not buy - Talk about a 'self-correcting' feature!

I have said many times that a self-published book today is like the query letter of old - with benefits! If your self-published effort is somewhat successful a big publishing house may offer you a traditional deal, also. In fact, many authors have chosen to be so-called 'hybrid' authors; those who publish both traditionally and non-traditionally.

Yes, I would say that the freedom and creative control now enjoyed by successful indie authors will guarantee their continued growth.    

Can PubSoft Be Helpful in Pulling Traditional Publishing Into the Digital Age?

So much has changed in the publishing industry almost at mach speed --- And yet, so much has remained the same, especially in traditional publishing (TP).

TP wants its old business model (print) to remain as much the same as possible, especially now since the majority of revenue (though declining) still comes from that model. That being said, TP also realizes, more and more, that the tipping point is fast approaching when most revenues will result from digital products; as such, they are fervently searching for economical and efficient ways to adapt and transition to digital.

Enter PubSoft - 'Pubsoft is publishing software for the next generation of great publishers. The strength of the system is in the intuitive and easy-to-use administrative portals that allow publishers and authors control over their marketing and platform building activities. Publishers can manage author accounts, upload ebooks, sell direct to customers and distribute royalties. The system can be used to automate daily administrative tasks, provide a direct to consumer sales opportunity that builds a strong, engaged reader following, and provide a two-way marketing and sales environment for authors.'

This purported publishing solution software appears to have a lot to offer to both major houses with several imprints, down to a handful-of-titles independent publisher.

More details at Good-E-Reader by Mercy Pilkington:

PubSoft’s New Platform Stands to Revolutionize the Publishing Industry

While so much about publishing has changed in just the last few years, one of the unfortunate truths about publishing is that so much has not changed. The traditional publishing model, as most authors, readers, and booksellers know it, has not changed much in the last few hundred years, in fact. With the advent of digital publishing, self-publishing, and ebook-0nly and digital-first publishing, traditional models are looking for ways to keep up with the changes coming at them.

PubSoft, a new platform aimed at helping publishers brand themselves and reach out to a category of consumer called “influencer readers,” released some news today about what it has to offer to a wide variety of publishers, from major houses with several imprints, down to a handful-of-titles independent publisher.

“Pubsoft’s unique digital publishing engine is a game-changer in the publishing sector. With Pubsoft, publishers can quickly and easily create and manage a custom ebook store to enable direct-to-consumer ebook sales, including branded mobile publishing for iPad devices. The Pubsoft platform gives publishers the power to engage and manage authors with SEO-optimized author and book landing pages, social media marketing integration, distribution capabilities across multiple channels and online content sampling and multiple point of purchase options.

“The platform streamlines backend workflow tasks, automating online marketing functions and administrative work and allowing publishers to capture and analyze author, reader and revenue data. Pubsoft delivers a dashboard that gives publishers the power to capture metadata and drill down into book, author and reader levels for insights that can supercharge marketing campaigns, inform key business decisions and drive broader product strategy.”

Good e-Reader spoke with Kbuuk and PubSoft’s Dougal Cameron about what this platform has to offer everyone involved in the life of a book.

article continues

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Are They Publishing Gatekeepers or Publishing Grim Reapers?

Are you really reading the
best book publishers could
have given you?

Many writers are pushing past the publishing gatekeepers already - AND, further, gaining accolades, credibility and success. In fact, the blocking and tackling of the so-called 'gatekeepers' has been going on in greater numbers of late.

Publishing gatekeepers have an overall poor track record of recognizing good content and/or of analyzing the market and the real world emotional demographics.

Tonight's post reads like creative nonfiction and relays a true but scintillating story by an authoritative  author that has published both traditionally and DIY. His recent self-publishing effort came as a last resort but taught him many wise insights, it seems.

So, relax, kick back, enjoy and learn from him:

Blowing Past the Publishing Gatekeepers

By Frederick J. Chiaventone - Published in The American Thinker

Toward the end of a full career as an Army officer I was asked to assist in a test-run of a new course at the US Army's Command and General Staff College. We were going to take senior officers on a new version of the 'staff ride' an established method of examining the actions of commanders on the actual sites of momentous battles. We had done this successfully at Gettysburg, Chickamauga, even Verdun but this time we were going to try it at the site of the disastrous fight at Little Bighorn. The idea was for combat commanders to learn from past mistakes. Well, this exercise was a real eye-opener for all of us. I have addressed the issue of the significance of the staff ride in other forums but in this case the subject of 'lessons learned' has relevance to an entirely different field of endeavor - writing and getting published.

After retiring from the Army it became quickly evident that I should have to find something else to occupy my time. I had done a bit of scribbling for various professional publications but the staff ride experience at Little Bighorn stuck in my mind and so decided to try my hand at reconstructing that fight in the form of historical fiction. The results exceeded my expectations when publishing great Michael Korda called me from Simon & Schuster and said, "Fred, I want to publish your book." As a result my novel A Road We Do Not Know was published by Simon & Schuster, went on to win the Ambassador William Colby Award for Literature, and remains in print.  My second work of historical fiction Moon of Bitter Cold (about the Fetterman fight) won the Western Heritage Wrangler and the William Rockhill Nelson awards for literature. It too remains in print to this day.

Not a bad second career one might think. Ah, but the world of publishing was changing. Shifting focus slightly I decided to take a similar approach with historical fiction to an under-appreciated aspect of the American Civil War - the brutal guerrilla conflict along the Kansas-Missouri border, a theater which was the training ground for such people as Frank and Jesse James, the Younger brothers, "Wild Bill" Hickok, and "Buffalo Bill." A fascinating subject so I thought. I was supported in my delusions by two old friends who read the first draft - General Dave Petraeus and Ambassador Karl Eikenberry - both of them serving in Afghanistan at the time. Karl, Dave and I go back many years to when we were all commanders together in the fledgling Rapid Deployment Force. Both Dave and Karl loved the novel saying "This is great stuff, Fred. It's just what we have had to contend with in Iraq and now here in Afghanistan...the technology has evolved but human motivations and behavior remain essentially unchanged." Well then, thought I, this is a great subject and perfect timing for this book.

Perhaps not. For the publishing industry had changed since my first two, successful books. Agents complained that they were unable to place a manuscript which editors refused to even look at. "No one's interested in the Civil War!" they snorted. After a few years, and three different agents, things were looking a little bleak. There was some small comfort when one considered that the same publishing houses we had approached had all turned away a young woman, a novice writer, telling her that the public had no interest in an aspiring young wizard. "Utter nonsense," they had declared. Fortunately for J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter, and millions of young readers they were quite wrong. Unfortunately for many aspiring writers, most of those individuals who rejected the first Harry Potter novel are still figures of power in the great publishing houses of New York.  The question then became, well, how does one get around the gatekeepers of publishing?

The answer, I strongly suspect, is within easy reach of most would-be authors. Technology. Over the past few years we have seen a phenomenal growth in the reach of computer and internet technology. Now, being a bit of a dinosaur myself, I was quite accustomed to using typewriters (and then computers) to write the material and then embark on a laborious and ofttimes rather expensive round of printing out manuscripts, sending out query letters, mailing out both, with return postage, of course, and then waiting endlessly for a response. Agents too were expected to adhere to these time honored and ultimately fruitless methods. And all too often the publishing houses were hopelessly cavalier in their response, if they responded at all. Thus, when a fellow author suggested another route I thought, "Why not? It's certainly worth a shot." Thus I took the manuscript of my new novel Gone To Kingdom, and turned to another route. This other route was to take advantage of the opportunities provided by the internet. With a completed and carefully edited manuscript ready to go it was a relatively simple task to upload the entire volume to the powerhouse which has become Amazon.com (link here)and wait to see what transpired.

The results were rather surprising. Within days enthusiastic notes started to come in from readers in Ireland, Great Britain, Germany, Belgium and even South Africa and Swaziland (this last stunned me) as well as all over the United States. The reach of the Kindle technology is fairly amazing and readership numbers are going up continually.  Well, there were over 100,000 people at Gettysburg alone for the commemoration, which I suspect gives one an idea of the level of interest in the subject matter.  Shortly afterwards I got a great note from Steve Pressfield (his work includes the books Tides of War, and Gates of Fire etc. as well as The Legend of Bagger Vance -- both book and screenplay). Steve said;

Congrats to you on doing it yourself -- and on the tremendous response! I can't believe any editor told you there is "no interest in the Civil War."  I have a friend who takes me to dinner once a year and bemoans my fascination with the ancient Greeks.  "Steve, put the Confederate battle flag on the spine of a book and ten million crazed Civil War buffs will eat it up." He explains to me the mindset of the Civil War aficionado.  "They do not say, 'Oh no, another book about Antietam.'  They say, 'Oh boy, another book about Antietam!'" All of which bodes very well for "Bushwhacker."  Have you pursued Hollywood with this?  Remember "The Outlaw Josey Wales?"  The scene where Clint Eastwood lines up a barge in the gunsight of his mile-range telescope sniper cannon ...

BANG!

CLINT

Well, Mister Carpetbagger, we got a little thing out here

(spits)

called a Missourah Boat Ride.

Think about Tinseltown, Fred.  There could be something there. Congrats again....you've got following winds!

Similar notes came in from such distinguished writers as Carlo D'Este (Patton: A Genius for War, Warlord: A Life of Winston Churchill at War), W.E.B. Griffin (Brotherhood of War series), and Ralph Peters (Hell or Richmond, Cain at Gettysburg) who applauded the move.  Other marvelous notes started arriving from professors of American and military history such as Edward "Mac" Coffman, Paul Hutton, Jeremy Neely, Reina Pennington, Nichole Etcheson, and others. Folks who study, teach, and write about the period and loved the way the book read and the accuracy of the feel for the time, place, and people.   So the e-book experiment seemed to be working pretty well in its first few days. Civil War enthusiasts were delighted. Copies of the Kindle edition of "Gone To Kingdom" continue to sell world-wide and notes continue to come in from enthusiastic readers.

Thus, the bottom line for aspiring authors is to think outside the box of brick-and-mortar publishing houses and to consider embracing electronic publishing. Consider the above tale as a sort of "staff ride" for writers and learn from the mistakes of others. Explore the opportunities afforded by new technology. Certainly they are not for everyone but they are rapidly becoming viable alternatives to traditional approaches to writing and publishing. It can be ultimately less frustrating and possibly more rewarding.

Disagreement Over Relevance of Traditional Publishing

Debate on Relevance
of Traditional Publishing

What the hell is really happening with TP's?

In this writer's humble opinion the TP's have been surrounded by the e-book nation and are fighting with their last round of ammunition: marketing (and that is definitely debatable) :)

Marketing is the big advantage to go with a TP according to Michael Pietsch, soon-to-be CEO of the traditional publisher Hachette Book Group.

BUT, Mark Coker, founder of the self-publish book distributor Smashwords, says "over the next few years, traditional publishers are going to become more and more irrelevant."

Hmmm --- can't really argue with that; especially from the point of view of newbie authors who never received any appreciable marketing from TP's any damn way --- They had to do there own marketing --- Talk about being left out on a half sawed-off limb! A really hit-n-miss career building model.

Anyway, tonight's post is an NPR interview/debate (and you can also listen to it) between Pietsch and Coker (with some great follow-on comments by readers/listeners) on:

Why Traditional Publishing Is Really In A 'Golden Age' (or not - added by John)

How healthy is the traditional publishing industry? Not very, says Mark Coker, founder of the self-published book distributor Smashwords. On Monday, Coker told NPR's Audie Cornish that "over the next few years, traditional publishers are going to become more and more irrelevant."

But Michael Pietsch, soon-to-be CEO of the traditional publisher Hachette Book Group, disagrees. "I think we're in a golden age for books — reading, writing and publishing," he tells Cornish. "And the ways that publishers can work to connect readers with writers now are the kinds of things that publishers have dreamt of doing since Gutenberg first put down a line of type."

Pietsch joins Cornish to discuss how marketing sets a publishing deal apart from the self-publishing model.

Interview Highlights

On why writers pick publishers over self-publishing

Read and/or listen and learn more

Navigating the Many Roads of Alternate Publishing

Which Publishing Path
Should I Take?

In numerous previous posts I often said something to the affect that traditional publishing wasn't dying or dead but merely wasn't the only kid on the block anymore.

Publishing has indeed been changing --- BUT, it has always been changing --- since the beginning of parchment and quill (you get my drift; by the way the history of paper is interesting as well as writing instruments).

We have just been caught up in (experiencing) a link of time in the long chain of publishing change. Call it the digital link, if you will.

So, in this particular publishing link (change-cycle) we call digital publishing alternate publishing. Simply because it's new.

The new, faster and cheaper paths to publishing has caused confusion among writers.

What should a writer do? How should s/he publish? Traditional, digital, self-publish or otherwise?

Well, it depends on who your audience is and what purpose your writing serves.

You see, publishing has grown more hands and legs to shake hands with or dance with :)

This interesting insight is from Sharon Short and David Braughler writing in the Dayton Daily News :

Alternate publishing: What should a writer do?

Many writers wonder about the various paths to publication. Is pursuing a traditional publisher the best route for their work, or should they consider the alternate paths that have become seemingly more accessible with the digital age?

Those alternate paths include publishing e-books (electronic books) or self-publishing print books with a company like Amazon.com or with a more traditional printer. I’ve received numerous e-mails about this subject and thought it was time to pursue the answer on behalf of interested Literary Life readers.

Well, the answer depends … on the work, the writer, the writer’s goals and interests, say two alternate publishing experts. They spoke at Books & Co. on Nov. 18 as part of the Antioch Writers’ Workshop’s (www.antiochwritersworkshop.com) on-going free mini-workshop series.

“The most important questions we ask writers are ‘why do you write’ and ‘who did you write this for,’ ” says David Braughler, publishing advisor for Greyden Press (www.greydenpress.com) in Dayton. “Truly thinking about honestly answering those questions helps writers focus on their goals.”

For example, a writer who has a specific target audience, or a specific goal, such as capturing expertise in a book that would be made available at speaking engagements, might do well with self-publishing. “Not every solution is right for every writer,” Braughler says.

His company helps authors with their work, from editing to cover design to printing; the cost to the author varies by project. Although Greyden also helps authors find distribution through online vendors such as Amazon.com, and finds “grassroots” opportunities for promotion such as signing booths for authors at local festivals, the bulk of marketing and distribution rests with the writers. That’s why, Braughler says, it’s so important to embark on this path with clear answer to those two all-important questions.

Read and learn more

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Good Reasons To Self-Publish AND Good Reasons To Traditional Publish

The much advertised reasons to self-publish have become well known to interested students of the art of late ... But, there are equally good reasons to traditional publish as well :)

Journalist and author, Edan Lepucki, mentions her reluctance to become “Amazon’s bitch” ... I just love that expression!

Mathew Ingram, a senior writer with GigaOM, writes a cool article with many informative links (including Edan Lepucki with a nice list of reasons why a writer might decide NOT to self-publish): 

What purpose do book publishers serve?

We’ve written a lot about the disruption in the book-publishing industry over the past year or so, with Amazon not only creating a huge market for authors to self-publish on the Kindle — thereby avoiding traditional publishers altogether — but also signing writers to its own imprint, and cutting the Big Six publishing houses out of the picture. But it should be noted that working with a publisher can have its benefits as well as its disadvantages, and writer Edan Lepucki has put together a nice list of reasons why someone (including her) might decide not to self-publish. If publishers have any weapons against Amazon, they are on this list.

Lepucki, who writes for a magazine called The Millions and is also an author, says while she sees the benefits of self-publishing — the freedom from a traditional book contract, the ability to control the way the book is marketed, that self-publishers typically keep a larger share of the proceeds, and so on — she has decided not to self-publish her first book. In an earlier essay, Lepucki wrote about how she had given up trying to market her work to publishers, but despite a number of authors describing how easy self-publishing is, she says she has decided to pursue a traditional book deal (others have come to different conclusions: despite some misgivings, Marc Herman says he decided to publish his journalism about the Middle East as a Kindle Single instead of as a traditional book).

Publishers can help a book rise above the noise

One of the reasons the author says she has come to this conclusion is that, while many people seem to see the publishing industry as dead in the water, she still believes there are good publishers out there, that they serve a purpose and that their recommendation of a book has value. As she puts it:

I trust publishers. They don’t always get it right, but more often than not, they do. As I said in the piece that started me off on this whole investigation: “I want a reputable publishing house standing behind my book; I want them to tell you it’s good so that I don’t have to.”

This gets at one of the issues that keeps coming up every time I write about self-publishing, and how Amazon’s Kindle and other tools allow a writer to reach readers without having to go through a publisher. These posts often get comments that could be paraphrased as: “But then the world will be full of terrible writing, and how will we find the good stuff?” And certainly one of the primary functions a good editor or publisher can provide is to filter through content and select the best (of course, that also means that much potentially valuable writing is not chosen).

Read and learn more

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Sayonara to Traditional Publishing?

Traditional publishing has not disappeared just yet; but it is irrevocably changed!

I don't believe trad pub will ever disappear. I see it morphing some more and settling into a type of "status" or "collectable" entity.

At any rate, I just finished reading an article in the Today's Zaman (your gateway to Turkish daily news) by Musa Igrek that gives a most succinct, complete story behind the emergence and acceptance of self-publishing and the resulting, traumatic impact on the publishing industry as a whole:

End of the road for professional publishing?

The world of publishing is gradually becoming more and more dominated by technology.

Up-and-coming authors can now have their books published in e-book format through the self-publishing system, first introduced by the giant online bookstore Amazon.com.

Authors who self-publish bypass the publishing house phase, drastically reducing the cost of having a book published in hardcopy. The author can sell their e-book at whatever price they wish, and through programs available on self-publishing sites, can decide each and every detail regarding the book -- from typeface to cover design, from editing to distribution. This way, the author also holds all the rights to his or her work. The system bypasses numerous levels in having a book published, such as the editor, the publisher and the distributor, as well as the marketing stage.

The global market in self-publishing is constantly growing, particularly because it offers an area of showcase for first-time aspiring authors. There are authors who have sold hundreds of thousands of books through self-publishing. The arena of self-publishing also serves as a showcase for publishers to pick from, so self-publishing authors can sometimes be picked up by a publishing house, too. Turkish online bookstore Idefix unveiled last week its upcoming self-publishing project called “Açık Kitap” (Open Book), which will be launched next year. The company will start serving self-publishing authors in exactly the way Amazon.com does. The project’s director, Bora Ekmekçi, says the website does not intend to make a leap to the publishing business with the launch of its self-publishing branch. “We will be providing amateur writers with tools with which they can produce their own e-books and a platform on which they can publish their works,” Ekmekçi explains. “This project will set [book] production free, there will be more material [to read] out there and it will also help publishers discover new authors.”

Read and learn more

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How Many Authors Are Dumping Their Publishing Houses to Self-Publish?

"Until someone comes up with an algorithm to sort the good manuscripts from the bad, publishers and their human network of agents and editors maintain an advantage," McQuivey said. 'But sooner or later someone will create a new way for readers to find the books they most want to read, and that someone may or may not be a traditional book publisher.'"

Great, previously-traditionally-published authors are jumping from their old publishing houses to self-publishing to take advantage of higher percentage earnings, cheaper operational costs and faster distribution directly to their readers.

New technology, eBook stores, apps and platforms are blooming all over the bloody place!

This phenomonon, coupled with the fact that big plublishing has been lousy "gatekeepers" for at least the past three decades (or since they essentially sold out new authors and talent for their quick bottom-lines--sort of the greedy condition that happened on Wall Street), was exactly the stimuli needed to invent better ways to accommodate writers, recognize more talent and satisfy the vast market of unquenchable readers.

I believe big publishing has always underestimated the reading market.

Further, big publishing became arrogant and got the cart before the horse; putting greater value on just the business of selling a creative commodity over the commodity-creators themselves and just leaving the real producers/artisans chump change.

Alex Pham reports these details in the LA Times:

Book publishers see their role as gatekeepers shrink

Writers are bypassing the traditional route to bookstore shelves and self-publishing their works online. By selling directly to readers, authors get a larger slice of the sale price.

Joe Konrath can't wait for his books to go out of print.

When that happens, the 40-year-old crime novelist plans to reclaim the copyrights from his publisher, Hyperion Books, and self-publish them on Amazon.com, Apple Inc.'s iBooks and other online outlets. That way he'll be able to collect 70% of the sale price, compared with the 6% to 18% he receives from Hyperion.

As for future novels, Konrath plans to self-publish all of them in digital form without having to leave his house in Schaumburg, Ill.

"I doubt I'll ever have another traditional print deal," said the author of "Whiskey Sour," "Bloody Mary" and other titles. "I can earn more money on my own."

For more than a century, writers have made the fabled pilgrimage to New York, offering their stories to publishing houses and dreaming of bound editions on bookstore shelves. Publishers had the power of the purse and the press. They doled out advances to writers they deemed worthy and paid the cost of printing, binding and delivering books to bookstores. In the world of print, few authors could afford to self-publish.

The Internet has changed all that, allowing writers to sell their works directly to readers, bypassing agents and publishers who once were the gatekeepers.

Read and learn more

An 'Old-Fashioned' Publishing Story!

Lately, stories about eBooks and digital publishing models and platforms have been rampant...So, it was a little refreshing to read a story about the firing of a top executive from a large traditional publishing house (Simon & Schuster, to be exact), his mulling over and re-thinking of publishing career directions AND his eventual hiring by ANOTHER large traditional publisher (Penguin, to be exact) as a top executive in a newly created department.

David Rosenthal (pictured) is the publishing exec who fell from the sky but landed on his feet.

Leon Neyfakh of The New York Observer writes this account:

David Rosenthal Puts on His Penguin Suit

The problem with losing your job when you're a high-level executive in contemporary book publishing is that your options are basically to become a literary agent or do something vague and most likely super-boring involving e-books. So one could have forgiven David Rosenthal for feeling a little gloomy this past summer after being fired abruptly from Simon & Schuster and being replaced by Jonathan Karp, a guy 10 years his junior, at the head of the CBS-owned publisher's flagship imprint.

This week Mr. Rosenthal is celebrating a happy landing. On Tuesday morning, it was announced that come January he will be running his own boutique imprint at Penguin Group USA, arguably the healthiest of the big New York houses as well as home to a number of the 56-year-old's former colleagues. Once he gets going, Mr. Rosenthal—whose roster at Simon & Schuster included Bob Woodward, David McCullough, Bob Dylan and Jim Cramer—will be on charge of a small but full-fledged operation at Penguin, with dedicated publicity and marketing muscle and a list totaling somewhere between 24 and 36 books per year.

Over lunch on Tuesday at the Half King in Chelsea, Mr. Rosenthal said Penguin president Susan Petersen Kennedy reached out to him shortly after his firing, and had been "aggressive and enthusiastic" in their talks. He is stoked to go work for her, he said: "People at Penguin don't bitch about their place of employ nearly as much as people elsewhere. Everybody says, 'The only person you ever want to work for in publishing anymore is Susan.'"

Read and enjoy more

Best-selling Author Dumps Traditional Publishers

The publishing and book world is ABUZZZZZ with the news that Seth Godin, a top selling marketing author, is dumping his traditional publisher because they take too long to get his product to his readers AND he has developed a close enough relationship with his readers, through his online blog, that he feels he can sell directly to them and dispense with the laborious publishers.

Phew! That was a long and laborious sentence, I'm out of breadth...It says a lot though:

First, it points out the importance of blogs to establish an author's online platform and relationships.

Second, life is too short to waste it jumping through the traditional publishing hoops.

Third, the internet can tell you just who your readers are (and provide better tracking).

This from Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg of the Wall Street Journal:

In a significant defection for the book industry, best-selling marketing author Seth Godin is ditching his traditional publisher, Portfolio, after a string of books and plans to sell his future works directly to his fans.

The author of about a dozen books including "Purple Cow" said he now has so many direct customer relationships, largely via his blog, that he no longer needs a traditional publisher. Mr. Godin plans to release subsequent titles himself in electronic books, via print-on-demand or in such formats as audiobooks, apps, small digital files called PDFs and podcasts.

"Publishers provide a huge resource to authors who don't know who reads their books," said Mr. Godin in an interview. "What the Internet has done for me, and a lot of others, is enable me to know my readers."

It's unclear how many, if any, best-selling authors will follow Mr. Godin's lead. However, his departure from Portfolio, an imprint owned by Pearson PLC's Penguin Group (USA), comes at a critical juncture for the industry. With many new titles spending less time on best-seller lists and in bookstores, publishers are increasingly dependent on brand-name authors such as Mr. Godin to deliver significant book sales.

Read more http://alturl.com/keqy6

The Dirty Secret of the Traditional Publishing World

More on the changing (or leveling) of the traditional publishing industry...

When lenders charge exorbitant interest and fees it's called "usury"...What do they call it when a business (in this case traditional publishing) takes a usurious percentage of the profits?

"Immoral" is the best word I can think of...even if the usurious division of profits is technically legal...it is still immoral and, to me, "legal theft". Talk about a redistribution of wealth!

Traditional publishing has been taking advantage of writers and authors almost since it's inception and is guilty of usurious practices. When the administrative and purely business processes of getting a creative product to market makes more than the creation itself...something is drastically wrong...AND, publishers want the writers to do their own marketing/publicity at their own expense! BALDERDASH!

Effective marketing was the single thing that the old-timer publishers did that half-way made their expense worthwhile...When they relinquished that (except in some cases for already established authors), they became more or less impotent... and it was just a matter of time before their over-priced house-of-cards would fall.

This report is by Moe Zilla from Helium :

It's already happening. Instead of buying books, people are now buying something else: digital e-books. Amazon.com recently announced that they're selling many more e-books than they are of the traditional hardcover print editions. And this is great news for aspiring authors, because in the digital world, it's much easier to get your book published! But it's also going to bring a lot of big changes to the world of professional book publishing.

The dirty secret of the traditional publishing world is that most book authors don't make much money now! The "advance" they're given is just that - their publisher will then keep thousands of dollars from the book's profits until they've earned back all the money that they advanced the author to write it. But in addition, many publishers expect writers to use that advance money to line up their own publicity! (After all, the writer has to ensure that their book sales are high - so the publishers will want to publish their books again...) And even with all that, most professional authors earn less than $20,000 for their books. If you think about it, that's less than you could earn at almost any regular 40-hour a week job.

In the past, writers just had to accept this sorry state of events - but with digital publishing, they now have a very attractive option! In fact, the worst feature of a traditional publishing house is that most authors only earn a small part of the book's cover price. Some of it is eaten up by the cost to print the book, but a large chunk goes to the publishing house, with the writer getting whatever's left. Self-publishing allows these writers to bypass that publishing bureaucracy altogether, and keep more of the money for themselves!

Of course, most publishers also lose money on most of the books that they publish, so there's also ways that they could benefit from digital publishing. The biggest improvement would be the elimination of most printing costs. (If they misjudge the popularity of a new title, they won't lose the tens of thousands of dollars that it cost them to print it!) And I've heard some publishers simply locate the most popular e-books - and then offer those authors a chance to sell those same books with hard covers.

Publishing will definitely change in the digital age, but there will always be a place for the traditional hardcover book. For example, I'm not sure people want to prop their Kindle up in the kitchen so they can squint at a Kindle cookbook and try deciphering all of its ingredients!

What Is The Biggest Opportunity and Threat To Publishers?

And the answer is, according to Jason Fell of FOLIO magazine: new technology!

Yes, all the new e-readers and iPads, etc, have opened up all kinds of new opportunities and venues for publishers...but, like roses, they come with some thorns!

From Jason Fell today:

“I’m far more worried about 500 million people on Facebook than I am about 2 million people watching Fox.”

That’s what CNN U.S. president Jonathan Klein said Wednesday during the opening keynote of Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s two-day Media Summit, held here for the seventh year. An overarching topic of a number of the sessions was about the confluence of traditional publishing/advertising/distribution with emerging technologies. In his discussion with BusinessWeek editor Josh Tyrangiel, Klein, who led CNN to its most profitable year in 2009, said the company’s growth areas are online (including CNNMoney.com), mobile, U.S. cable, and said it is placing a “greater emphasis” in online video.

But while evolving technologies are offering CNN some of its biggest opportunities, Klein said they also are facilitating its biggest threats. “The competition I’m really afraid of are social networking sites, not only because of the sheer numbers of people who engage in Facebooking and Tweeting,” he said. “It used to be that Internet prime time was daytime, but now you come home and you engage in the world of Facebook, and so that’s just an alternative that threatens to pull people away from us. On top of that, if you think about it, the people you’re friends with on Facebook or the people you follow on Twitter are trusted sources of information.”

The conversation surrounding the merging of content with new technologies, and the inherent difficulties associated with it, continued during a morning workshop. One panelist, Spin magazine founder Bob Guccione Jr., said that while “print is not dead,” the wave of new tech coupled with the economic fallout has weeded out the industry’s most “inferior and inadequate” publications. “There are a lot of boring, generic, afraid, unimaginative, unopinionated magazines and the market is telling us that we don’t need them,” he said. “And e-reader devices have not yet scratched the surface of ‘saving print.’ They’re not the future of magazines. Magazines are the future of magazines. The people who make them need to find better new ways to captivate their audiences, or they will fail.”

But one way some publishers are hoping to “captivate” audiences is by producing content for the new crop of e-reader devices. Bob Nell, director of business development of Sony’s digital reading business division, said a lot of the necessary details, like revenue sharing models and content control, are still being hashed out. “Should the publisher control the iterations of their magazine across different platforms and control pricing, etc.? That’s all playing out,” he said. “Generally, I think the publishers should manage all of that.”

The Advertising vs. Pay Wall Conundrum

What would a conversation about the collision of traditional publishing and new technologies be without talk about ways to monetize it? Panelists kicked off an afternoon workshop called “Models for Change: Experimenting with Subscriptions, Pay Walls, Display and Search Advertising, Syndication, Live Events and Brand Extension Opportunities,” by dredging up Wired editor Chris Anderson’s well-known “freemium” concept—offering basic content/services online for free while charging a fee for premium features. “Unless the price of creating content becomes free, just because content is online doesn’t mean it should be free,” argued CNNMoney.com senior vice president of sales Liberty Carras. “When value becomes established, content is something that should be charged for.”

While developing multiple content platforms and diversifying revenue streams is a top priority for publishers like Conde Nast, Julie Michalowski, the company’s vice president of business development for its consumer marketing division, said the publisher is not considering erecting any pay walls. “What we want to continue to do is to build digital relationships so that we can have a multi-channel relationship with our consumers that includes print and includes other ways that they want to access us,” Michalowski said. The trick, she said, is for publishers to find a balance between “discoverability and profitability.”

Marc Ruxin, executive vice president and chief innovation officer at McCann WorldGroup San Francisco, said publishers and advertisers need to develop new ways to make online advertising effective for both parties. One example he noted was allowing the consumer to determine the types of ads they want to see on the sites they frequent.

“Content has been subsidized by advertising since day one, but display advertising doesn’t cut it now,” he said. “New models need to emerge to continue to support content creation.”