Originally posted in the Huffington Post
In the climactic scene in Frank Norris’ classic novel McTEAGUE, the two antagonists find themselves in the desert. Shady San Francisco dentist McTeague has murdered his wife to steal her money (Belated spoiler alert!). He is then pursued by his former best friend Marcus, who wants revenge slash money slash I only vaguely remember this I read it in college and that was kind of a long time ago.
A scuffle ensues in Death Valley. It’s hot! Water is lacking! Tensions running high! Bad guy McTeague nearly kills Marcus in the fight. But just before Marcus dies he handcuffs himself to McTeague.
And thus McTeague finds himself handcuffed to a corpse, the keys are back in San Francisco, and Marcus has successfully ensured that even though he has lost the battle, McTeague will also die in Death Valley.
Transition.
Book publishers are currently in retrenching mode. The slumping economy has not been kind to the print world. It has exacerbated many existing weaknesses (rise of e-tailing, rise of e-books, creeping omnipotence of e’s and hyphens), and has forced publishers to examine their business models.
The publishing marketplace has been plunged into a great deal of chaos. And if, as I detailed in my last post, publishers can no longer accurately guess at an audience even for formerly safe categories like adult trade nonfiction, will they continue to gamble so much money on big advances for a small number of books whose success is increasingly difficult to predict?
Well, from a publisher’s perspective, they’re often willing to pay big advances because their profits hinge on a relatively small number of hits and bestsellers. Thus the authors/celebrities who can reliably deliver an audience become hugely valuable. If a publisher doesn’t pay a healthy advance they risk losing their bread-and-butter authors and the most promising new projects to their competitors.
From an agent’s and author’s perspective, there’s not always a strong incentive to move away from traditional advance/royalties either, simply because it’s often appealing to bank the guaranteed money and head for the desert.
In economics they call this the Winner’s Curse, which is the theory that when you don’t know what an object is truly worth (e.g. how many copies a book will actually sell) the winner of an auction will tend to overpay relative to the actual value of the object. The theory goes that someone who wins an auction is often worse off than if they hadn’t bid at all. (Was that Gladwellian? I hope it was Gladwellian.)
And so here we publishers and agents are, McTeague and Marcus style, handcuffed to each other in the desert, stuck with the advance and royalty model even if it’s ill-suited for a time when success is nearly impossible to predict. (Who murdered whose wife probably depends on whether you work at a publisher or an agency. Also: send water!)
Is it time to think outside of the desert?
Nathan Bransford says
anon-
I get the sense you haven't been around the blog too long. You might read around a little bit about my opinions before assuming the worst.
atsiko says
I'm really tired about hearning all this crap about publishers being the problem. And from "anon". Identify yourself if you're so sure you're right.
Publishers, at least the people who actuall work *for* that specific house (and not the parent companies) love books. Publishing is a not a money business. Why the hell would anyone work in it if they didn't love what they were doing.
Sorry, but "crowd-sourcing" and self-publishing are even worse options for the writers. Say it takes me a year to write a book. I self-publish it and spend months and months losing money on my investment. I probably never actually make any money. Compare that to even a $5000 dollar advance. The hell would I self-publish?
I'm sorry, but I just don't see the benefit to me as an author or reader to dropping the traditional publishing model. I barely have enough time to read the books I buy. Where would I find time to sort through all the crap on the internet? As a writer, how would I make a living while I waited for word-of-mouth campaigns to get going? A publisher brings a much larger base of original buyers to create that buzz.
Haste yee back ;-) says
McTeague… a simple solution to your dilemma – CUT the dead guy's hand off!
Back to publishing metaphor… (Pub houses, agents, authors) – who's the dead guy?
Haste yee back 😉
Anonymous says
I'm in what is probably a unique (dare I say, novel?) situation. I currently have an agented, debut ms out to two publishers … and I don't need money up front. In fact, while I'd love the green, cash has never been the exciting part. I believe my book is timely and has the potential of being a hit, if it is ever bought, that is. In thinking outside the box, I considered forgoing an advance but figured there were two problems: 1-the bigwigs wouldn't belly up marketing dollars without a hefty advance inspiring them and 2- my agent is expecting her 15%.
Oh well.
Anonymous says
I am the walrus.
I don't read. I spear things with my tusks. I'm not open to new ideas, but I will do what I can to survive with my primitive but time-tested instincts.
Anonymous says
Most people with a modiucum of intelligence and a dash of instestinal fortitude, finding themselves in McTeague's situation, after an initial oh-crap! moment, would come to the realization that the arm and/or hand has to come off.
One way to do this would be to get to a large rock and just bash the wrist to a bloody pulp until the bone breaks, and the cuffs could be slid off.
Pleasant Thoughts, courtesy of Anonytron
Anonymous says
I do love this. The BIG publishers are going to become micro publishers (no advances, low royalties, no marketing) very soon.
So why are authors still wanting an agent and a big house? I guess it's like wanting the ol' diamond ring and the wedding. You'll probably not be happy with the outcome, but there's always divorce.
Anonymous says
Some big hits (and best sellers) can be predicted, based on previous success.
New ones can't.
Hence: J.K. did not receive a big advance for her first Harry book.
Best sellers are, pardon the expression,
Black Swans.
And this is one Swan who keeps writing …
About the dessert, and water: Dylan thought times were achangin'. We ain't seen nothing yet.
In the meantime, a lot of handcuffed chaps will die in the dessert before the rains come down.
Anonymous says
"More experimentation with new publishing models, more smaller risks with debuts and the midlist, more transparency/cooperation/author partnerships rather than rights grabs and hostility, and more publishing options for less money up front in exchange for a split on the backend."
This is what many e-publishers are already doing. And if you (collectively) really pay attention to certain things, a lot of print books by traditional publishers are now being released as e-books. It's interesting, because the very same people (print publishers) who laughed at e-publishing a few years ago, are now following what they are doing.
Anonymous says
Publishing is boringly unchanging. It's even more the same now as it was 10 years ago, as it was 15 years ago. it's practically unchanged from 1997!
Big yawn on this entire topic.
Books are written, sold and published every day, as they were 150 years ago…as they will be 150 years from now.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Marilyn Peake says
Mira –
I wouldn’t turn down an offer from an agent, either; but that’s not the situation I was trying to explain. I’m definitely not talking about me. I tried self-publishing twice, and that was more than enough for me. But I know authors who turned to self-publishing after becoming absolutely exhausted from the querying process. Once they started making money through self-publishing, they usually work very hard to promote their book and write the next one. They just don’t feel they have enough energy or hours in the day to go through the process of re-querying, especially when agents have warned against doing that or risk alienating the agent. Also … and Nathan can correct me if I’m wrong … most agents aren’t scouring the Internet looking for self-published mid-list authors to represent anyway, so the authors I know never actually turned down an agent; they just give up looking for one in order to conserve energy and continue writing. A few people approach self-publishing from the opposite point in the process: they self-publish first, before doing any querying at all, and set aside enough money to promote their books. Brunonia Barry first self-published THE LACE READER; then she and her husband invested $50,000 to promote it, in hopes that she would catch the interest of an agent. Her plan worked, and THE LACE READER earned a two-book deal from Morrow for $2 million. Interesting article with a rather sarcastic title about the Brunonia Barry approach: here. I don’t think most successful self-published authors ever attempt Brunonia Barry’s risky approach. I think most of them simply bring in a limited but predictable income and then become so busy with book promotion, they don’t have the energy to step back outside the self-publishing arena.
Anonymous says
PREACH it! I just hope someone is listening.
Reesha says
😀
Well penned. Made me smile.
*sends water*
Anonymous says
I'm currently in negotiation with a reputable Hollywood producer for the TV/Film rights to my indie Kindle novel. The times they have-a changed.
Anonymous says
@anon 4:45 :
Publishing is like the music biz ten years ago. Once those eReaders costs less than $200 and people start picking them up, book readers will change. It's the iPod thing all over again. There will still be the people who read printed books just like there are still people who buy vinyl. Give it time. The clock is counting down.
And while self-publishing really sucks today. I see that changing as well. All because something sucks today does not mean it will suck tomorrow. Remember when mp3's sounded really, really bad. Well, they improved.
Remember when you actually read a newspaper. Yeah. Change is coming. Let the publishing lawsuits begin.
Anonymous says
I'm currently in negotiations with 2 Hollywood film studios for my indie ebook slasher trilogy. These guys don't give up the bucks that easy though, leeme tell ya. I feel like a stepped-on shrimp at a cocktail party. Maybe I should get an agent or a lawyer? But then maybe I'll be branded "hard to work with"? the kiss of death in this biz.
Meanwhile, I'm hacking out another straight-to-Amazon ebook wonder….
Anonymous says
Note how all the anon ebookers are always "in negotiations with" someone, but never actually "done deal". Get used to that!
Anonymous says
Also, above anon, they have to be in negotiations all the time because they're on their own and have no one to do it for them, another pitfall of the indie author. Less time writing, more time doing business. But if I'd wanted to be a businessman I'd have gotten an MBA, not an MFA.
Anonymous says
"Sorry, but "crowd-sourcing" and self-publishing are even worse options for the writers. Say it takes me a year to write a book. I self-publish it and spend months and months losing money on my investment. I probably never actually make any money. Compare that to even a $5000 dollar advance. The hell would I self-publish?"
I haven't lost any money on self-publishing to Kindle. It cost nothing up front (no fee to Amazon, uploading is free). Cover art was free (got a friend who is a graphic artist? Amazing things can be done with Photoshop).
I started making money right away. After hundreds of hours wasted on queries and rejections and waiting around (literally years of my manuscript sitting and making NO money) for the traditional publishing industry to give me some love, I said, "why the hell WOULDN'T I self-publish to Kindle?"
I'm so glad I did . . . my books have sold over a thousand copies in less than six months on Kindle, and on track to sell 4-5,000 copies in 2010 (maybe more, as sales keep accelerating about 20% a month — my books sell at the top of the hourly charts in the genre).
Yoss says
Nathan,
I wanted to leave a name, but when I clicked on 'name', wishing thereby to enter such, the blog automatically named me Anon. I've signed off on this post in case this happens again.
This is a direct quote from your website:-
'But honestly, in today's publishing clime it's just not enough to have written a good book. Treat this business seriously, because it is a business. Explore the links on the right side of this page…'
I did (explore the links) and your point that 'writing a good book' is not what it is about was richly amplified. Also 'It is a business', which I interpret to mean that it is necessary to write an Ms, of whatever literary merit, that will demonstrably generate revenue for whoever publishes it.
A few years ago I tried to find an Agent for a completed Ms. Many moons passed before a plaintive follow up to an agent who at least seemed sympathetic isolated the critical problem. My novel weighed in at 220,000 words. No publishing house, he wrote, would touch an Ms from a no-name author of fiction longer than 150,000 words. So there was no point in an Agent offering to read it.
Reminded me of an ancient UK comedy series entitled 'Never mind the quality, feel the width'.
My latest has great width, so at least one critical barrier is crossed. 50 rejections (to date) suggest, however, that there may be at least one more and when I read your advice, I understand that my query needs improvement.
I'm supposed to be able to condense the essence of my novel into three sentences that spring out of the page and grab you by the nose.
Hmmmm.
Maybe I created the wrong impression with my previous post. Touch of the rant, there. Sorry. It's not your fault the industry is the way it is and it would be grossly unfair to shoot the messenger.
You're right. I began reading your blog only recently and in case it er um was not obvious, I do find it useful. Thanks for taking the time and trouble.
Yoss
Tamara Hart Heiner says
While I'd love to have a huge advance stuffed into my bank account before my book even hits the shelf, it seems hugely impractical to me. The company I'm going with is a small press and doesn't pay advances. I'm totally fine with being paid straight royalties. I can't see how it's anything but a win/win situation, albeit slightly less exciting and immediate.
Of course, for agents, it's a different matter.
Anonymous says
No advance also means no real commitment. They' haven't actually bought the book.
jmartinlibrarian says
If publishers are stuck in the Negev, who's Moses?
Who is designing the new model of success?
Anonymous says
Where should I market my 71K Evil Hedgehog gritty suspense about a (you guessed it) hedgehog that terrorizes a family farm. Not YA. Serious horror, mature audiences only.
Should I go straight to Kindle with this? is Kindle to books as DVD is to movies?
Anonymous says
No clue what this is supposed to imply: "Note how all the anon ebookers are always 'in negotiations with' someone, but never actually 'done deal'. Get used to that!"
But FYI, indie Kindle author Karen McQuestion's "A Scattered Life" was optioned by a film company a couple of weeks ago. First sale of this type on record as far as I know and was advertised as such in Publisher's Marketplace.
Mira says
Wow, lots of anonymous today.
Anonymous, what I don't get is this: if you really think the publishing industry is dead, and self-publishing is the way to go, why are you still posting anonymously?
Come out, breathe the sunlight, show yourselves, or…..admit the game hasn't changed quite THAT much yet.
Marilyn, okay, I hear you. I guess I'm not worried. I'm not rich, so I won't self-publish. If I e-publish and start selling a thousand copies a month, you bet I'm going back to agents I like. If that forever alienates them….um, why would it? But if it does, well….I just can't see why it would. I'm so charming and sweet, and beside, how could anyone possibly be irritated because I have proof that my book sells, and want to share the profits with them?
In terms of agents, Nathan had 15,000 queries this year. I'm not worried about him either.
I think it's all good.
The danger of these type of threads is everyone gets all scared and/or angry. Times are changing abit, that's all. Nothing new. Change is the one constant.
Authors will have more options, and more freedom. Agents will re-define themselves, and the publishing houses will eventually merge with the booksellers, and become e–sell-publishers.
So, it's all good right? Books will continue to be written and read. More of them, we could find ourselves in a time of artistic blossoming, of sorts. Solutions will be found, probably by Nathan, and people will have food on the table. It will all work out.
Anonymous says
I don't know how many anons have posted here today, but I"m guessing three or four. I've posted twice today anonymously (now three times) only because I want to stay below radar until my Hollywood deal is finalized. Then you can bet I'll be posting under my own name.
I'm sure there are other good reasons to post anonymously, one being how controversial opinions so often engender bullshit, name-calling, belittlement, ostracism, etc.
Mira says
Anon – 7:23. I totally get it. I'm not saying people shouldn't post anonymously sometimes.
There was just an inherent contradiction in today's conversation, and I couldn't help pointing it out.
Good luck with your deal! Wow. That's pretty exciting. 🙂
Anonymous says
Thanks, Mira. It is exciting. I realize Hollywood can be fickle and lose interest fast, but I also can't help debating which actor to play the lead role. 🙂
Nick says
Is it sad that the chief thing I'm taking from this post is that I went over to Wikipedia to look more into McTeague and discovered it was adapted into a silent film in 1924 with a total running time of ten hours? Think about that, ten hours long. Sure, it was cut down to four hours, and cut down even further from there for theatrical release. But ten hours? Even films commonly considered epicly long, like Gone With the Wind (about 4 hrs, with overture, intermission, etc.) or films which probably only meganerd fanboys such as myself would watch (lesson: never marathon all three director's cut LOTR films back-to-back with minimal breaks. Awesome as it is, it's just a bad idea) ten hours is an INSANE running time.
So yeah, aside from the fact that my brain is pretty much exploding at the thought of a ten hour long film,
Well, at least you have a carcass strapped to your wrist. You might have to spend a loooooong time in the desert, but blood probably makes a decent drink (hey, vampires dig it) and there's carcass to eat. Ration up and you'll be fine. Or, maybe, you won't spend too much time out in Death Valley at all. Maybe there's a crop duster on the way as we speak. Just be careful. Crop dusters dustin' crops where there ain't no crops can be dangerous.
And now that I've said that I'm off to go watch my favorite Hitchcock film.
Susan Quinn says
I'm thinking the writers have the water, right? They're providing the raw materials, at least, that both the publishers and agents need to survive.
So, where are the writers in the analogy? Maybe we shouldn't torture the analogy any further.
I do think that writers will find a way to find readers, and readers will find stories, even if they have to go around the "normal channels" of the publishing industry, locked into its current Death Valley form. Whether that's e-books, or micro-publishers, or something different . . . well, my crystal ball is broken right now.
But whatever that "other" path is, savvy agents such as yourself will find a way to leverage it for their clients.
fatcaster says
Stephen R. Covey thinks outside the desert
Marilyn Peake says
Mira –
I’m definitely with you in regard to not worrying. It’s not worth it. Might as well just be happy, and write and see what happens. There are all kinds of possibilities out there for writers. I think each writer has to decide what works best for them and then follow that path.
terripatrick says
As a career writer, who has recently completed both a mid-list romance novel and a "taboo" memoir, I'm feeling rather annoyed at all the hot-air and muscle flexing in the world of publishing.
While there are comparisons behind the books-movies-music traditional business models, from the artist perspective there is a huge difference in connecting to the customer. Musicians, painters and writers all need to invest time and effort into developing their craft to have a marketable product.
A song that lasts 3 minutes, that you can listen to while driving (or reading) is different than a book that requires a time and focus commitment from the reader. Even a painting purchased to grace my home for years does not require a commitment of time and focus from me. A movie only requires two hours of my time and should be totally engaging the whole time.
A book is an entirely different thing.
My opinion of why the world of publishing is hitting tough times is the imbalance between connecting writers to their readers. In the non-fiction market, books from those with a platform are still only going to reach those readers in need of that platform so there is less investment risk from the publisher and the books hit the stands in a timely manner.
In the fiction market, the bottom line profit is determined by marketing gurus, based on the market projections at the time of acquisition. However the actual product is not available for a year or more.
I predict that e-pubs are going to continue to grow exponentially in the fiction market. Especially the mid-list genre markets. It's just common sense. The debut author has already invested the time and talent without any advance from a publisher. They want their book in the hands of readers and available for many years. E-pubs offer that opportunity for a mid-list fiction author to be more involved with their book and readers today. Not a year from now with the potential that, if readers don't find that author (or book) within a few weeks, bookstores will destroy the book.
This is the main issue with publishers business model, they undervalued their mid-list bread and butter and focused on only 10% of their product line. Brick and mortar book stores are not getting the traffic or sales because there is too much product on their shelves, they are too diversified.
And all that non-fiction product is becoming available through the web – for free.
But no worries Nathan, I'm sure you career as an agent will get you to a retirement age.
Anonymous says
I'd like a model where all rights were included: the author could choose to publish first via hard or softcover, then distribute an e book later, or the other way around. Pubs could see if the e-sales were strong enough to invest in a hard/softcover version. Why not have those options now?
Steve says
Dear pjd,
As it happens, I remember Control Data because I learned computing on one of their products (CDC 3600). But the more interesting question to me is who remembers Seymour Cray, and for what. Cray knew when to jump ship and which way to jump.
Live like him!
-Steve
Steve says
I really need to work at my day job. But that's not going to happen until this comment is done. This discussion "gets down" as we used to say in the sixties. The life and/or death of publishing as we know it (knew it, will know it) is on the line. The situation is fluid.
Observations and thoughts in no particular order.
On another blog I recently said "The dinosaurs are already dead. They just haven't fallen over yet." Okay, I was ticked off and this was hyperbole. Or was it? I want to know if there will still be a Borders in a year. I hope so, as I really LIKE Borders. But I fear not. Then, how much longer does B & N have?
The main advantage of mega-publishing has always been control of the eyeball space represented by bookstores. This is a question of physical distribution. If the two big brick & mortar chains go, will massive physical distribution still be a trump card? Existing publishers could still be players in such a world, but I don't think they would be gatekeepers. Maybe more like a venture capitalist. Agents might morph into PR firms (new school, specializing in online PR).
I think the one Anon person has some valuable insight. There needs to be a mechanism for test-marketing. Whether sites like Authonomy are effective in that role will be interesting to discover.
In looking at the revolution in the music market, I continue to be struck by the genius of American Idol. I have no idea how those dollars flow to and from particular entities within the music industry, but from the viewpoint of that industry as a whole, star-making used to represent a cash outflow. Now it represents a profit center. Get the audience hooked on the DRANA of starmaking, and let them participate. Then monetize the eyeballs. (Of course, TV has always survived on monetized eyeballs, from the very beginning.) I'm eagerly waiting to watch the first episode of "America's Next Best-Seller". Who will produce it for me? 🙂
Another question? What happens when the generation that will part with bound paper when it is "pried from our cold dead fingers" is finally buried with our favorite book. Will the following generation read bound paper? Will they PAY MORE to read bound paper? Is the "cuddle factor" intrinsic or culturally determined?
Will reading even mean the same things to the newer generations? Maybe the real nemesis of traditional publishing isn't Amazon or Kindle, but Youtube. Is literacy itself dying?
The fundamental paradox of the Internet is that whem everybody can be heard, nobody will be noticed. This comes out in phrases like "drinking from a firehose" and "everybody will be famous to 15 people" and my own "human bandwidth limit." Nobody has yet solved the problem of filtering the Internet. Just when you think you've gotten a grip on it (like, e.g. search engines) it squishes between your fingers to reform elsewhere.
With apologies to unbelievers, let me quote Tiny Tim.
"God Bless Us, Every One!"
I think we're goint to need it.
We live in interesting times.
-Steve
Anonymous says
Authonomy is currently bad at filtering, due to aspects of the game played on that site, due to it being agenda-loaded newbie authors instead of agenda-free readers doing the filtering; but Amazon does a fairly good job IMO. I don't think it'll be all that hard to improve upon what Amazon does now and really harness the wisdom of crowds in the coming years.
Munk says
"I like to watch", Jerzy Kosinski
Claude Forthomme says
Nathan, that was a great image: Death Valley, corpses and the desert!Well, I guess we all want WATER, all of us, aspiring and established writers, agents and publishers…
But aren't we getting it already? The water, I mean. Why all the scare over e-books? They're the future, they're coming and I'm sure that all this e-technology will do in the end is EXPAND the market, not kill it!
The business model hasn't changed yet, it's not dying, it's merely adapting to a new market (yeah, the e-one…)We'll still need agents to improve and sell the manuscript and publishers to run marketing campaigns. I know what I'm talking about: I live in Italy, and let me tell you, the publishing industry here is a dinausor. Fast asleep. Even the best known writers don't really get supported with a marketing campaign, and I mean a real one. For example, all they did for Dan Brown to promote his Lost Symbol was to invite him last week to an opening opera at the Milan Scala, for goddness'sake!!! Italy is supposed to be the country with the smallest number of readers in Europe, and small wonder!
No,what publishers need to is to continue doing their job of promotion and distribution and agents their job of product identification.By that I mean picking out winners, and that's an art not a matter of technology!
Cam Snow says
Anon – some of the examples of authors you are citing as being successful e-pubbers, like J. Konrath did it with books that were originally published and then went out of print – his later books fueled the successful sales of his ebooks (that, and his $1.99 pricetag didn't hurt).
As far as authonomy helping to generate hits I did a test. I put out two works – one under my own name that i am serious about, and another one that is a poorly written joke. I went with my joke account and gave a bunch of people rave reviews, and guess what, they did the same to my junk book. That site is incapable of finding the best works… it is all about begging people to give you reviews.
Cam Snow says
Oh, and now time for out of the box: How about this – I have a book that the publisher is iffy on. I am confident that it will sell b/c I wrote it. I scrap the whole advance, and pay 25% of the publishing/distribution/total costs (up to a pre-defined amount)… However, one the back side I get 25% of all profits + pre-profit royalty (in whatever percentage it normally is).
It makes me a stakeholder in my book. It elminates some of the risk to the publishing company. However, it doesn't remove all the risk – they are still on the hook for 75% of the costs, so the still want the book to sell.
The problem with this is that for people that can't afford the 25% buy-in they are screwed.
But, it is a way to lower risks for publishers and raise the possible reward for authors (you get royalty + portion of profits)
knight_tour says
I think there are many writers, like myself, who would be quite happy to be published even if it meant a small or no advance. I know that my day job provides enough for me, so I don't need an advance. I just want to be published.
I think there is a conflict of interests when new publishing divisions open that pay little or no advances, since that is the only way agents make money. Agents should have a way to make their deserved money while still using such publishers. I know that I still want to be considered by such publishers, but I think agents won't want to bother to try them because they won't get their paycheck.
Karen A Chase says
I find it very interesting that it is the publishers and agents who are handcuffed together in the desert, and that the author is conspicuously missing. Perhaps they are busy searching for the oasis on their own. After all, getting out of the desert is becoming more and more the author's responsibility.
Anonymous says
And so here we publishers and agents are, McTeague and Marcus style, handcuffed to each other in the desert, stuck with the advance and royalty model even if it's ill-suited for a time when success is nearly impossible to predict.
Who's handcuffed to whom?
Maybe publishers should move agents in-house… and put an end to this notion that agents work for authors.
pjd says
Karen, good point. I think the author plays the role of the murdered wife. Also conspicuously absent is the distribution chain, which I think plays the part of the desert.
Most conspicuously absent are readers. Perhaps those play the role of the keys to the handcuffs, left behind in San Francisco. (Or perhaps the readers are the water? I could go either way on that one.)
WitLiz Today says
Am I the only one that wants to break my Kindle into a thousand, jillion pieces when I'm trying to read a book? At home.
On an airplane, ok, got it, I can deal with it. At home, it is a major pain in the ass and it now sits on my faux fireplace top gathering an inch of dust. That's how much I use it.
Ever try reading GWTW on your Kindle? Or Moby Dick? All those lovely white spaces I look for as soon as I start a book? GONE! That's right. GWTK.
Another thing. My thumb, she gets tired. Click, click, click. Can you imagine if you're a speed reader? . . ."Look Ma, no mo thumbs!" . . . None of this delightful tiptoeing through the fine, fine texture of post modern paper using all five fingers.
I can't even begin to explain the horror of losing your place if you put the Kindle down. Yes, I know, it's supposed to power back to the original page. Got news for you. Sometimes, that does not happen. At least on my Kindle. Yes, I can find that page fairly easily, after ten hours of sweat. Or I can go back to the beginning. And click, click, click.
Or, I can get help from somebody who's really good at this electronic stuff. (But I'm not, so don't ask me).
All I know is, if I put a book mark in a 'real' book and it falls out, I can find my place alot quicker than I can on the Kindle. And if I want to read right this minute, I can pick up a real book and start reading. None of this forgetting to charge the battery stuff. Which is like, so irritating.
Ebooks DO have their place.
It will not be in my home. Not now, not ever!
But as an author, yes, I would certainly embrace the technology and publishers must as well. It's part of the future and here to stay. But I don't believe it will consume paper books.
Particularly if there are lots of people who hate to read electronically. As I most certainly do!
As for agents, they may need to redefine their jobs as publishing adapts to new technology, but there will always be a need for them, imo.
Anonymous says
It looks like Anne Rice is finding her way out of the desert:
https://www.amazon.com/tag/kindle/forum/ref=cm_cd_tfp_ef_tft_tp?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=Fx1D7SY3BVSESG&cdThread=Tx3AKBZU1OCK1TF&displayType=tagsDetail
Anonymous says
Oops, here's the tiny for the Anne Rice conversation:
https://tiny.cc/4kIeZ
Moira Young says
Shanna Swendson posted a series of entries on this very subject (I believe there were five) — she called it "The Publishing Doom Loop".
I honestly think that *something* will happen and things will change out of sheer necessity, eventually, but for the life of me I couldn't tell you what—or how soon it will happen. But it will.