Fear and Loathing in the Book Industry

It doesn't matter if you are a local plumbing company or a major record label, you are undergoing digitization in your industry. Understandably, a good dose of anxiety is accompanying this change. Will your new websites, blogs and digital products be worth the investment? What are the new standards? How necessary is digitization for you? Typically alongside this fear is enthusiasm and opportunity. The new media offer tremendous possibilities for both corporate and independent companies, but the publishing industry seems to have skipped the possibilities section of this brave new digital world.

The literary press holds its breath at every single development or upset. Whether it's Amazon throwing around its monopolistic weight or an indie press subverting the standard book release process, the industry watches with apprehension, fear and even anger. Many publishers do not have a level of digital fluency. E-books, blogs and twitter accounts are seen as an impending giant casting a shadow over their once peaceful village.

Their anxiety is making them resistant to changes that, for better and worse, are not able to be stopped. To quote the iconic Richard Nash:

The publishing business is not in trouble because there's no demand for books. It is in trouble because there are changes afoot in how best to satisfy the demand, changes to which there are suitable responses, two of which are fostering fan culture and generating a sense of occasion, and the leaders of the largest publishing organizations are failing in their professional responsibility to implement these responses. By reducing their participation in BEA at the same time the media participation has increased by almost 50%, by refusing to open the Fair to the readers on Sunday, these CEOs have effectively thrown in the towel. They are managing the demise of the book business, pointing fingers at any generic social forces they can find, failing to see the one place the responsibility can be found, their own damn offices.

Many publishers are becoming their own worst enemy. Absolutely, risk is implicit in experimentation, but risk, at least, offers a chance for success as well as for failure. Standing still is suicide.

In this interview, Don Linn offers thoughtful and sane advice for publishers. Start educating yourselves, start experimenting with the less expensive new media forms. Get in the game or you will get left behind.

iPads and WePads and Flash, Oh My!

Berlin company Neofonie is taking advantage of the iPad interlude and filling in the gaps that Apple left out: http://www.stern.de/digital/computer/wepad-a-fresh-alternative-to-apples-ipad-1553767.html

The Replacement Press releases their first book

As an infant press in the Twin Cities, the Replacement Press is a publisher to watch. Composed of a husband-and-wife team, they publish out of their apartment, maintain day jobs and pour themselves into their venture. Both in their late twenties, Andrew and Sarah De Young have one solid advantage: an ease with the social media that makes other publishers cringe. They tweet, update their facebook status, post faithfully to their blog. They see ebooks and digital readers as a possibility to diversify literary voices rather than as a death blow to independent publishing. I see them as the potential of indie publishers' future: passionate, adaptive, glocal.

Perhaps I'm drawn to Andrew and Sarah De Young's adventure because their success could go beyond the personal. Starting from a vantage point inside the new digital era, they could begin to set the pace for 21st century publishing. After reading so many blog posts and news articles about the dim future of publishing, the Replacement Press offers an encouraging counterpoint. Yes, they are young. Yes, they are a fledging company, but they are creative, flexible and fueled by new possibilities.

As their first book launches this weekend, I wish them the best and will be following their progress.

Virtual Credit, Virtual Value, Virtual Ripoff?

Galley Cat recently posted this article which discusses lessons from Farmville that can be acclimated to the publishing industry. The main success they are interested in adapting? Virtual commerce. So, as opposed to paying a flat rate for an annual subscription or investing in a one-time purchase, readers would pay for virtual credits that are used up as they read.

After watching the video, it seems that what publishers love about the potential of virtual credit is exactly what consumer watch group would abhor. Virtual credit has one wonderful, magical principle that has many industries licking their chops: it is hard to evaluate the value of vcommerce. What does 33 credit per dollar mean to you? Or 42 credits per dollar if you buy wholesale? Since the time or amount allotted to virtual credit is completely arbitrary, there is no comparison shopping and no competitive edge keeping prices low. There is no standard that a consumer can use to compare and contrast. Virtual credit is hard to wrap your head around. Which is why some publishers are so excited about it.

Something about vcommerce seems underhanded to me. There is something very slippery, completely opaque and potentially dishonest about this sort of purchase. Into the midst of digitization frenzy, the whole publishing industry is scrambling to figure out how to make money. Yet championing a business practice that takes real money in exchange for something that essentially does not exist is not a way to create a good relationship with your potential consumer. In fact, under that term, it is an anti-new media practice because it takes advantage of the personal, familiar interactions of Web 2.0. It underminds the inherent trust. The utter delight at a consumer disadvantage disturbs me. The industry excitement about taking real money and returning a virtual product that defies evaluation, very simply, gives me Enron flashbacks.

Tit for tat: what digitization means to the writing process

This post is among several recently that have questioned what changes in media formats mean for the writing process. How will writers contend with e-books and vooks? Do they change the writing process?

The implication is often that new forms will facilitate a poor quality of writing. Me, I'm not so certain that the digital formats are a threat to quality writing, but I understand the concern. Digital formats seem to be occurring in a less organic way than we're used to. Typically new formats evolved as writers push and stretch standard forms until someone breaks the barriers alla "The Wasteland" or "Ulysses." Certainly, in the cases of vooks or kindle, the experiment seems to have come before the experimenter. But this was also the case with the Gutenburg press.

Do writers who create in the new formats suffer a creative crippling because of e-structures? The writing process has always and will always take form into account. A writer does not approach an essay in the same way a novella. Structure carries its own set of restrictions and opportunities that influence the final product. Kindles and blogs are no different.

Perhaps what unnerves us is the sudden onslaught of so many new types of final products, so many new considerations. But I have faith in our literary craftsmen. A new format will not change a writer's intention. Regardless of available formats, a writer choices to produce lead or gold. Perhaps because big publishing houses are transitioning with best-sellers and pulp-style writing, we get the impression that this type of writing will set standard. Well, that's their standard for the old formats, too.

But the steps between a writer or (an indie publisher) vastly decrease with the new formats. Costs shrink, and visibility rises in a way that begging a corporate bookstore for shelf time never accomplished. So perhaps, ebooks and kindles can encourage unestablished writers. Whether or not they strike it big, their literary children can enter a world that was previously an impossibility.