Posts Tagged ‘publishing’
Can Indie Bookstores Matter?
The book business has always struck me as a bit bipolar, prone to bouts of dire pessimism followed by flights of exaggerated optimism.
“That’s New to Me”—Book Marketers Please Take Note
In a recent post, Mike Shatzkin took note of how some publishers were reshaping their publishing lists around their core strengths and strategic vision. Along the way, Mike offers his view on how the diminished role of booksellers and the rise of online discovery may effect sales of publisher backlist titles.
When digital first started to happen, it seemed like the backlist might be the biggest beneficiary. After all, stores had limited shelf space and online merchants can “carry” all the books they want, particularly if there is no pre-purchased inventory required. (There isn’t for ebooks and there increasingly isn’t for printed books either, which can be purchased from wholesalers for next day delivery, even if they are printed on demand!)
But, Mike goes on to say that, “it turns out that the current state-of-the-art for merchandising and presentation of books online is not very helpful to backlist.” I have a somewhat different view on this.
The Best & Worst of Traditional Publishing
A recent blog post on“Writing on the Ether,” by Porter Anderson—an always a very thoughtful and nuanced journalist and commentator on the publishing industry—got me thinking about what seem to be common misperceptions authors and readers hold about what traditional trade publishers do, what they do well, and what they do not-so-well.
In commenting on Porter’s post, I wrote “One function of traditional publishers is as an investor in future revenue” — in other words that “publishers subsidize some portion of their published list.”
Porter replied, “There’s a concept on the street now that advances have fallen apart and publishers are investing very little at all in their new authors. So while your point is right, I’m not sure it will fall on very receptive ears in a community that has largely decided the traditional publishers are abdicating their own leadership.” Continue Reading…
The Death of (the Debate Over) DRM
Smart and smartly written recent posts by Brett Sandusky and Jessie McDougall, and comments by Brian O’Leary following these posts, got me wondering again about the debate over eBook DRM–a debate that has going on for millennia when measured in digital book years. It’s a topic I’ve thought about first as a publisher and now as an industry observer, specifically, “What are the benefits and risks to publishers of going DRM-free.”
Every chance I get I like to ask folks in publishing to explain to me the possible rational(s) for sticking with DRM. The only coherent answer I’ve ever here goes like this:
While it’s true that DRM doesn’t really have anything to do with piracy, that’s really not the question. The question is, would causal file-sharing–which DRM-free eBooks would more readily allow–negatively affect sales.
You’re Gonna Have to Serve Somebody (Sorry, Bob)
Peter McCarthy–a keen and experienced digital marketing expert–recently quoted a friend who once told him:
The only two constants in the publishing value chain are authors and readers. Authors create, readers consume. Everyone else in the middle serves merely to make that exchange as efficient, scaled, and pleasurable as it can be.
Whether you agree or not is likely to turn how the word merely strikes you. I expect it would cause many literary agents, editors, publishers, marketers, and publicists to scoff. The arbiters and gatekeepers of what counts as worthy of publication naturally feel that their role is crucial. It is. I’d say the function they provide is more essential to the vitality of the author-reader relationship than ever before, but it’s migrating away from the domain of traditional publishers in myriad different directions and taken up by: Continue Reading…
The Future of the End of Bookstores
First off, accept my apologies in advance for the length of this post. Over the past several weeks, I’ve been ruminating about the future of bookstores, if there is one, what it might be. This is the likely the last post on bookstores that I’ll write for a while, for reasons that will become clear.
Kepler’s 2020
I just recently attended Kepler’s 2020, an unusual gathering of nearly 80 booksellers, publishers, book industry service providers, librarians, and members of the Menlo Park community in Silicon Valley, where Kepler’s Bookstore is located. The gathering took place over two-and-a-half very packed days of conversation and debate. Publishers represented included Sourcebooks, Chelsea Green, Chronicle Books, and Workman Publishing. Also represented were folks from Village Books (Bellingham, Washington), Book Shop Santa Cruz, and Booksmith and City Lights (both in San Francisco).
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