Wow, Authors Are Caught in the Middle Here

So, I just finished Michael Connelly's The Fifth Witness. If you like courtroom procedurals, this is your kind of book. I have several friends who are D.A.s, and I like books that delve into the strategy aspect of a trial. Unfortunately, the plot is nearly identical to the first book in the Mickey Haller series, The Lincoln Lawyer, but Connelly is a compelling writer so I think most people will enjoy this if it is a little deja vu-ish in terms of plot. Personally, I didn't think that the characterization was all that swift: (a) the new legal sidekick was boring and her moral dilemma even more boring because this issue was dealt with very effectively, again, in The Lincoln Lawyer, and we seem to be back-tracking in terms of Haller's personal moral ethos; (b) the victim was surprisingly absent in this book, merely a name, and by the end of it we really didn't care that he was dead because he was a scumbag, too; and (c) Haller's client was too much of an enigma. That is what made The Lincoln Lawyer so compelling a read. Louis Roulet was an exceptionally well-drawn predator, and we were practically eating Haller's frustration along with him. This client remains at a distance and to me that's problematic. However, I did stay up until 3:00 am reading it in one fell swoop, and I can't say that about many books these days.

What is most interesting about this book is the review war currently going on at Connelly's amazon page. Readers complaining about e-book pricing are flooding the site with negative reviews because the e-book version is more expensive than the hardcover. Yes, you read that right. And readers are pissed off. Man, are they pissed off. People are heading to libraries, waiting for the paperback, deciding to cross Connelly off their reading list, it goes on and on. The book itself is being lost over the issue of its pricing. Obviously, I don't know how much control Connelly has over the pricing model for his novels. I know that the one-star reviews are overwhelming and while a few of them didn't like the novel, the vast majority of them are complaints about the pricing.

In an era when publishers should be doing anything possible to keep their readers reading, they are alienating the readers who are their future market: those with e-readers. This doesn't make sense to me. The statistics that I've read say that 50% of the market will be electronic in five years. If you piss off the e-reading market, then I can imagine the piracy market will all of a sudden become exceptionally attractive. The only rationale that makes any sense at all is that they want to maximize their hardcover release by making the e-market release too expensive. I would imagine three months from now this will appear as an e-book at about $12.99 or less. But now there's a whole lot of pissed-off readers who aren't going to read a Connelly book no matter how cheap it is or in what format. They consider an e-release as a first-run release, and they don't care about the hardcover market. At this point I think it's a tug of war. The publishers are pushing this pricing for e-books because when most books are e-publications they will be in a position to price it like it was a hardcover; they think they just need to ride this out. Eventually readers won't have a choice.

I don't think it's going to work like that. I think that books are going to be pirated or authors are going to start cutting out the publishing houses and publishing themselves, which is already happening. I would imagine that Michael Connelly and his agent are reading every single one of those negative reviews related to pricing, and if I were him, I wouldn't be too pleased at the way this is coming down.

It's Here and Sooner than I Thought

Check out this link

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/04/29/BUIO1J9820.DTL

to the S.F. Chronicle regarding Krakauer's new non-fiction book ripping to shreds the mythology surrounding the immensely successful book, "Three Cups of Tea." I'm not going to weigh in on the validity of either book because I haven't read either book. What is fascinating is that Krakauer released his book from Byliner, a no-name e-publisher (although now soon to be a household name in publishing). "60 Minutes" ran a story on Mortenson and  "the day after the program aired, 70,000 free PDF versions of "Three Cups of Deceit" were downloaded within 72 hours of its release, according to the company. Six hours after the release of the $2.99 tablet version, available on the Kindle and Apple's iPad, it shot to the top of the Kindle Single list and has led Amazon's overall nonfiction sales ever."

I don't think anyone needs to wonder why Krakauer went with Byliner. First of all, check out the pricing: $2.99. I doubt any mainstream publisher would have agreed to that kind of bargain basement pricing. Sure, it means he has to sell a hell of a lot of downloads to make any money, but he's got the writing cred to pull something like this off. As he has proved. Will a bricks and mortar publisher pick up the paper rights to this book? I'm not sure. Because they'd have to match what is inevitably a sweetheart deal between Krakauer and Byliner in terms of profit sharing. Plus, if you don't have the e-rights, is it worth printing?

This is not to say that Byliner didn't score an incredible coup by signing Krakauer. If I tried to do something like this, it would be pointless. It takes someone of Krakauer's stature and marketability to pull this off. His track record sells him, and I would imagine it took some serious mental crunching to determine the demographics of his readership. I think they probably ran the numbers and realized that 70% of his readership has an e-reading device of some ilk (a number only bound to go up). The exposure on "60 Minutes" was the ultimate coup. All of this was very well timed, and I suspect that Krakauer went with a small publisher because his traditional publisher couldn't get their act together to publish ASAP.

The continuing disarray of mainstream publishing and their head-in-the-sand approach to the whole e-book phenomenon means that e-publishers like Byliner have a real chance of stealing a whole lot of their talent. Of course, a mention on "60 Minutes" is about as good as it gets in terms of free advertising, something not readily available to the fiction writer. But it's the wave of the future, and if I won the lottery, I'd set up an e-publishing house yesterday. Because I love books, and I don't have a lot of respect for what is coming out from New York these days.

This does raise the thorny issue of pricing. Because that sort of pricing demands that you sell a ton of downloads, but authors like Krakauer have that capability. Someone like me, not so much. And if enough authors of Krakauer's stature keep publishing books at $2.99, then there is constant and unrelenting pressure on all of us (publishers and authors alike) to match that pricing. It's like how amazon offered best sellers at $18.00 and all of a sudden people only expected to pay $18.00 for best-sellers, and good-bye independent bookstore, hello amazon and chain stores: capitalism at work.

Clearly, this is a cautionary tale for all mainstream publishers. Scrappy, fearless e-publishers are out there making deals with your writers. They are handing them the lion's share of the profit and harnessing the power of amazon.  It's a new day and publishers are hiding under the covers. Get off your butts and stop delaying publication of your manuscripts for over a year. Set up, IMMEDIATELY, your own e-division so that you can publish asap material that is hot and relevant. Some authors will work both in "print" and the "e" medium, but some manuscripts can do very nicely in only "e" versions. What you will lose in print sales you will gain by printing something relevant and CURRENT. Start labeling yourselves as hip, current, on top of what is happening. Stop seeing the e-revolution as the death knell and more of a different cash cow. Krakauer's 75,000 downloads speaks volumes. At least it does to me.

My Thoughts on E-publishing

This will be a rambling and probably somewhat incoherent post on the e-publishing phenomena. E-books is a separate post, but I note that HP has announced its version of the iPad. The technology is moving so fast that it will be only a matter of time before a majority of our reading material will be online. As an aside I do wonder in light of Egypt's abortive attempt to stop the demonstrations by killing the Internet whether it's wise for a nation to have most of its reading material hooked up to computers (which can be shut down). Of course, Hitler burned books so I guess this is the modern-day equivalent. Kill the power, kill the message. But still it concerns me, especially since with amazon you're technically only renting books from them. They can take back your books at any point, even if you paid for them. Anyway, digressing.

Publishing [and by that I mean New York (NY)] has always been the gatekeeper. I think that this has been a valid point in the past. I'm something of a 1920s, American ex-pat fanatic, and I've read probably far too much on both Hemingway and Fitzgerald to be healthy. This entailed reading a lot of their letters to their editors. There was a reason why it could be years between books. Aside from the boozing and hunting, both men worked at their books. And I mean worked like frigging dogs to get it right. People aren't working at books anymore. And you can tell when a book has been worked on. I'm reading Hillary Mantel's book on Thomas Cromwell, Wolf Hall. She worked five years on this book and it shows.

The concept of gatekeeping is not just blowing hot air. Seriously, if you'd read the first draft of my first book you would have run screaming from the room hunting frantically for mental bleach. Yes, it was that horrible. I worked at it for three years, learned some things, polished it up, and eventually sold it (and no I'm not comparing it to either Hemingway or Fitzgerald, I'm just saying that it became a better book). In this day and age, I could put up that truly horrific first draft on amazon and attempt to sell it to you. So when NY yells into the ether that they are the gatekeepers, protecting you from all that awful writing, they are, in a way, correct. They have been. Until recently. Until the big corporate buyout that reduced the numbers of publishers in NY from something like twenty to something like three. Roughly ten years ago, books ceased to be books and became commodities.

At that point the editors were fired, and the process became less about the book and more about the market. What commodity will get us the most money. Not which book is the best, which book should be published because it says something worth saying, but which book will sell. And now when NY screams that they are the gatekeepers no one is listening because they abdicated that role in search of bigger and better profits. In their zeal to reduce their overhead and produce only one book a year that sells a ton, NY decided to drop a bunch of authors that sold, that made profit, but didn't make enough profit. This is a concept that is totally foreign to me, but then I wasn't a business major. Profit to me is, um, profit. But apparently not!

So now you have all these authors who have a proven track record and now you have the technology that allows them to self-publish. And authors are doing it. Write it and they will come mentality. If you have a readership and publishers are ignoring you, then why not? Because they have readers who want to read them. These writers just don't have publishers who want to publish them. But lo and behold the technology is there and not only there but there at $3.99 or even better $2.99. What a bargain!

I think it gets trickier if you decide that you always wanted to write a book, and, hey, kindle. Because I think of my first draft and how bad it was. I put bad in italics because you have no concept how bad. I think of all these bad novels flooding amazon, and Borders, and no doubt Barnes and Noble, because all of these companies now realize that there is money to be made out of this self-publishing business. And why? Because there is NO money to be made now with the traditional publishing model. If anything will save the box chains it will be the self-publishing market.

I'm standing on the sidelines watching this. I know authors who are now forced to self-publish because NY will no longer publish them. I know people who couldn't write their way out of a paper bag and who now want to publish their stuff and there is no stopping them. I know people who are wonderful writers who see NY as nothing more than a depressing roadblock and just as NY is ignoring them, they are ignoring NY and looking at different publishing models (none of which include NY).

I received money over Christmas and I bought four books with that money. Actual books. Hardcovers! Except for one, which was an annotated version of Persuasion by Jane Austen, and it's the only decent book in the lot. The rest needed a few more turns with an editor. They aren't horrible books, but they aren't good books either. I feel cheated. That editorial process isn't happening now that authors are being pressed to churn out a book a year. It shows. Books have faulty premises or plot busts or just don't hang together well. That's what an editor does. Makes the author step outside of their head into the real world to create a book that works for most people, not just them.

What I see happening? A flood of utter dreck hitting the self-publishing market. Some really good stuff hitting the self-publishing market. Some will get noticed. A lot won't. NY pulling back like whoa on paper publishing and continuing to flog e-books at inflated prices, all while decent authors who have self-published continue to undercut them. NY finally waking up and smelling the coffee and discounting e-books, but ONLY publishing in e-form. I suspect that the majority of mystery will only be available in e-form within five years. The Lee Child's of this world will survive in paper. The rest of us? Doubtful. I see authors forming collectives, using that six degrees of separation business to sell their material to others through a loose association of authors. Those who keep their quality up could do well in this configuration.

Essentially, I think the authors who consistently reach for quality will survive. There are lots of potential models out there. What NY doesn't seem to realize is that people want GOOD books to read. They don't want what some NY marketing department is shoving down their throats. I'm at the point where I've dropped several authors from my list of must-reads because they are now producing mediocre books. And I don't blame them per se. They are reacting to market forces as well. But that doesn't mean as a reader I want to keep supporting them when they aren't keeping up their end of the bargain. And this IS a bargain. You write a good book and I will read it.

Am I Jaded?

I've just put down another book that had a stellar beginning and a magnificent promise, and an ending that sucked big time. This is the second time in three weeks that this has happened. What's even more irritating is that this book (and the previous one by a very well-known author) received rave reviews. Both of these books couldn't be farther apart on the genre spectrum but my feeling when I finished both was exactly the same. No. I'm sorry, author, but no. You didn't make it work. You had all the tools, you were in the home stretch, and the last third of your book did not work. I have yet to pick up a book this year that I haven't felt that way about. I think the last book I read that I thought was stellar was Calvin Trillin's "About Alice." But that's a different animal and non-fiction, so I don't think it really counts. Goddammit. WHERE ARE THE EDITORS?

Okay, this is a total shout-out to the publishing industry. You are in free fall. You are watching your audience being siphoned off by other media and you don't know why. I'll tell you one reason. You're publishing books that don't work. I supposed they work well "enough" in your mind, but they are fundamentally weak. Even decent authors are now getting turfed on the editorial process and it shows in their writing. You don't want to take the time to run an author through their paces. Make them fix a book with fatal flaws. And you wonder why your audience is shrinking. You don't care about what you are publishing; why should I care to buy your books?

Publishing: a Mess for Our Times

Another interesting link worth checking out:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1873122-1,00.html