Back from Book Expo, June 2010

©The Editing Company, LLC, 2008

Back from Book Expo ©The Editing Company, 2010

If you’re at all interested in the future of publishing and the book, read on: Book Expo is the publishing industry trade show; it’s huge circus celebration of print media, attended by publishers, agents, librarians, book vendors of every stripe, technology mavens and, of course, legions of hopeful authors. The venue includes a vast maze of publishers’ and national promotional booths, informational seminars and quasi-advertising presentations (by the likes of Google), and a great tidal swell of self-agrandizing speeches and signings. Note: the Keynote Address this year—at an extra admission cost— was by that publishing giant Barbara Steisand.

I go to this granfalloon to sniff the zeitgeist and get a grip on how to better help writers who might want to publish.

Here’s the upshot: heavy breathing over next year’s Big Books written by Big Names; a strophe/antistrophe of moaning/soothsaying over the changes wrought by technology; and a undertow of confusion as the power of the industry is ripped from the grip of the Lords of Publishing, who had, for the past four centuries or so, controlled authors and audiences alike from their Dark Towers. As I noticed last year, there was a great divide between those jaded potentates in the Towers of Old Publishing and those wry jokesters on the information highway of the New Technology.

Old Publishing Up above in the publishing monoliths—the editors and publishers, the print journalists, the agents, and all the hard copyists— there was both denial and strategy.

Denial: Is book technology that has served so well from scroll to bestseller for 6,000 years really going the way of the horse and buggy? No doubt.

Agents, publishers and their ilk have dwindled in number by more than 2/3 in the past 15 years. Libraries are closing in the economic downturn, and the indie bookstore has been eradicated faster than polio in the 50s.

Yet, from the Tower, the Lords continue to believe in a push model—the central supplier controlled economy—of the industry: which means the authors and customers will still come to centralized power centers hoping to get editorial and fabrication skills. The Olde Potentates believed they were still fully clothed, but the winds of change had blown their last garments away when the Ipad hit the market.

Nor were they embarrassed to show any shame in schizophrenia, for as they declaimed their necessary centrality, they showed many fevered strategies to stay in the e.game (as they believe it’s changing). Evidence suggests that in about 18 months, half of all books will be read on computer or e.reader: a fact that means indie bookstores are just a leading indicator, and that agents, publishers, hard copies, big chain bookstores, and even libraries are becoming irrelevant at the speed of pixilation. So it was no surprise to hear that agents are reconsidering their cut of the action (taking less), while publishers whined about how much harder it is to publish an ebook than a hard copy, what with editorial, marketing, tracking, copyright, ISBN, etc; the publishers actually believed they should be paid more. Meanwhile, best-selling writers (often topically lifted by the zeitgeist) of political or environmental books, vampire novels, “humorists” with newspaper exposure, and authors who have been brand-named were groovin’ along, pitching hard cover sales, but those with younger audiences were very concerned with their internet presence and Twitter.

The Tower makes their money on blockbusters, prize winners, and book club selections, so here’s what we know looking up at the Tower from the street: 1) Next year’s Big Book which has an advertising and promotional budget of a half-million dollars is Keith Richard’s biography: A Life. Fact: celebrity sells hardcover books, still. Streisand, Rachel Ray, et al. These authors get play. 2) If you want to get an agent, be famous, be connected, or be the best friend of an author signed to an agent. Repeat: be famous, be connected. Otherwise, you can hope your satire on golf is excellently written and that you happen to connect with an agent who loves to waste a good walk... 3) If you manage to find an agent, get your book published, but you’re not famous and no major book review puts your book on page one, prepare to do all your own marketing. Find time to travel while keeping your day job: good luck getting a visible shelf position at the big stores. (More later)

So, let us depart from Fantasy Land and take a look at some data and hear from the information highway. For starters, there is no doubt that we have tipped past the point of the publishing push/supplier centric model over to consumer driven/demand model.

The e.book and the e.reader are soon-to-be the dominant reading technology. The most powerful marketing tool today is the internet which is chaotic, gigantic, and yet empowers trends or markets to emerge in ways that defy the supplier model of print and marketing.

USA book buying is down 12% since 2001. Weekly time use of American adults: print reading is down from 5.5 hours in 2007 to 3.5hr in 2010; computer use it 15.9 hours in 2010. 6 in 10 people own cell phones worldwide; this is more people than have addresses of a place of residence. 2007, in Japan, 10 best selling novels began as cell phone novels, then went to print and each sold more than 400,000 copies. In Japan 85% of high school girls read cell phone novels.

Amazon will make 2/3 of their profit from ebooks in 2012.

Paper publishing technology is wasteful: big print runs are gambles, books need to be warehoused, displayed, remaindered: waste of materials, storage, labor, and transportation energy.

Ebooks require none of the above. Ebooks can be self-published and self promoted: many popular ebooks have gone to hard cover, and some to movie sales. People are no longer keeping books; book swaps, library donations, used books have all changed the market. 1995, the new published titles available as e.books on internet in: 0; in 2009, 20%; new publications will approach 100% in a few years, possibly as soon as 18 months.

Google has made books heretofore out of print or forgotten available through their library project. More books are more available now than ever before. As ebooks, not print. Once a consumer adapts to e.book, they will still buy some print: books will be soon be bundled, hardcopy w e.book for discounted price.

The Ipad seems to be a game changer: it sold more in one month than the iphone in one year; although it’s heavy, it has advanced e.reader features.

Despite the Itunes model, Ipad is working with publishers to undercut Amazon’s $9.99 price point (which is a loss of $3-6 per sale for Amazon in an attempt to corner the market with the Kindle; it remains to be seen if Amazon’s gamble will pay off).

The Google Android Slate will be available in 3 months to compete with the Ipad, the Kindle and other e.readers.

Consider the Google model: 2 million books are currently available on Google, and most for free (public domain). Through Googlebooks, for free or very cheaply, an author will soon be able to copyright with ISBN, sell, track, protect, and market in e.book format. Googlebooks will work from the cloud, like gmail. Once you own a gbook, you can print your own copy, download it, annotate it, share your annotations, book mark your place, work on it offline, and own your “copy” on whatever e.reader you use (unlike the Kindle model). Google with collect and deposit your royalties, piracy protect your text, and track your sales (see also gmail).

The Future: E.books. Books will still exist, but they will be personalized artifacts, children’s books, autographed copies, or some other specialized or personalized edition.

For authors the future is self-publishing and self-marketing. If you generate audiences, you keep royalties or you use leverage to negotiate with bigger distributors. Self-publishing and self-marketing will require teams of experts, assistants and allies for editorial, design, dissemination. These teams will be managed by the “author/marketer” and will need network support. Ergo: Why go through an agent or a big publishing house when you can market yourself? Which is what you’ll have to do anyway. Even A-list authors declared the importance of Twitter or blogging: give your book a internet site and Facebook page; give yourself a webpage; learn how to optimize your presence; join chat groups that are germane to your subject matter.

Books will soon be hubbed rather than marketed: the traditional bookstore will change into a site for handling information exchange: some will print books on demand on site, all will offer e.sales and bundling; human-to-human expertise will still be in demand; technology expertise and book app sales, etc.