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.

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.

Looking for the person in the blog

So far I must say that I have been sorely disappointed with many small publishers' blogs. Many small presses are using blogs as an advertising opportunity. Their posts are filled with marketing copy announcing their latest releases and events. Company updates are fine, along with other content, but that balance is often missing.

I am not certain if some publishers are using blogs this way because news updates are their driving purpose behind the blog or if they are uncertain as to how use the medium. Although Laura Hazard Owen is focused on twitter in her article "Twitter isn't stupid-but publishers need to be smart about using it", her advise on successful micro-blogging easily spills over into the use of company blogs. Asserting that twitter is not an advertising tool, Owen points out that social media are an opportunity to get personal and connect with the audience.

I have to agree with her. Publishers, yes, tell us about your releases. Yes, tell us what products you are excited about. But tell us also your concerns about the future of publishing; tell us who you will be reading on the couch this weekend. We've met the product, now we'd like to meet the person.

Independent publishers engage in the new media era

The independent literary press has always had its work cut out for it. The publishing world, particularly in the last fifteen years, has become drastically concentrated into the hands of a few international media giants whose first order of business is turn-and-burn bestsellers. Now there is nothing wrong with a great story or entertainment for entertainment’s sake, but an overload of enjoyable, yet empty, diversions does not enrich us. Without a balance of voices that speak to the deeper chords of human experience, our lives are flattened, cheapened.

Struggling to maintain a presence in a publishing world dominated by fleeting amusements, small-scale publishing houses are gaining ground by engaging in new social media practices that, ironically, were initially popular for the quick entertainment they provided. The independent press now tweets, updates their Facebook statuses, diggs other publishers’ releases and blogs about the literary world (interesting that companies that survive by selling words now offer them for free).

Media Bistro’s Gallery Cat has declared that independent literary presses are actually leading the publishing industry’s transformation into the new digital era. Online, armed with social media tools, indy publishers have gone interactive. They have distinct personalities: some, like Soft Skull, are edgy and boisterous, others, like the Etruscan Press, are contemplative and graceful. Our smart phones, readers and notification boxes now light up with small updates that life is rich, exciting and full of great literature.