Archive for category Publishing

Copyrights, collective works, and misunderstandings

Jul 12

Posted by Tony Burton in Publishing, The business of writing | 1 Comment

If you have investigated the Wolfmont website, you know that I have published quite a few anthologies.  It’s because I like the short story form, and believe it is a real challenge to write a short, succinct story that engages and entertains the listener–perhaps more challenging even than writing a decent novel.

The first anthology I ever published (2006) was titled Seven By Seven, and was an anthology of 49 flash fiction stories by seven different authors, all focused on the seven deadly sins as described by the Church. It was a success, earned a fair amount of money for all the authors, and in fact is still in print.

As I say, this was in 2006, and since I was new to the publishing business, I was not thinking of ebooks at the time, so there was no specific mention of this in the contract.  Along came the Kindle, and the publishing world started to change.  Early this year, I decided to put the book into Kindle and ePub format, primarily because people had been asking me if my company’s books were available in ebook format.  It was a lot of trouble, since I didn’t have the original word processing files for Seven By Seven, but ultimately I got it done.

The book didn’t do as well in ebook format–selling only three copies for a total of $5.25 in revenue.  But recently two of the authors from the original cadre of Seven By Seven contributors took issue with my conversion into ebook format, and began to make a public spectacle of it.

Now, I’ll admit right now that I was mistaken about copyright law in this, but it is an innocent mistake.  Before I did the ebook conversion, I had read what I thought were the relevant sections of law in the United States Copyright rules, as they apply to collective works. The book is copyrighted to my company, and my understanding was that the copyright applies to the entire work, in any format, although the copyright to the individual stories still remained with the original authors. So, I had proceeded with the conversion.  (Believe me, if I had not thought I was right, I would not have gone to the trouble of converting and restoring the word processing files!)

After the two authors contacted me, I called the US Copyright Office, and when I spoke with someone at the USCO, I asked them if copyright meant the entire work was copyrighted to me in any form, and the person I spoke with said yes, that it was.  They do say they will not offer legal advice, but they will answer basic questions about the rules.  I had also communicated with an intellectual property lawyer via the Internet, told him the problem, and he had agreed that my stance was correct. However, in order to try to stop the issue from escalating, I removed the Kindle version from Amazon and requested that Apple remove the ePub version from their iBookstore.

This morning, I called one more IP lawyer and spoke with him over the phone.  He was gracious enough to give me a few minutes of his time without payment, and I encourage anyone needing an IP lawyer to get in touch with Terry Williamson. Now, the truth is, what he told me didn’t make me happy, but at least it did clarify matters.

The world of publishing, especially digital publishing, is a rapidly changing one.  Ebooks present a new field of endeavor for lawyers and courts as they decide how to work with old assumptions about copyrights, print rights, and so forth. What it came down to, regardless of what the previous lawyer told me, and regardless of what the representative of the USCO may have said over the phone, copyright to a book in print form does not necessarily give the publisher the right to publish the book in any other format.  It appears that the publisher has this right, from the verbiage set down in the United States Code, but my guess is that this is an older rule and needs to be modified somehow to take newer ways of producing collective works into account.

In short, I was wrong.  It was an innocent mistake, but I was wrong.  The contract I had with those authors did not give me the right to publish the original book in any other form, no matter what I thought and no matter what the other IP lawyer had told me.

In my defense, I had researched the problem and thought I was in the right. I asked a lawyer, and I asked the source of the rules, the United States Copyright Office. Even before I spoke with the attorney today, I took the offending work off the Kindle platform, and as soon as Apple complies with my request, it should be off the Apple iBookstore platform as well (it has never sold a copy there, anyway.) And if they want it, I’ll be happy to send each of the seven authors seventy-five cents via PayPal, which is one-seventh of the total $5.25 I made from selling the ebook form.

Now, the truth is, I daresay that if I asked ten different IP lawyers about this issue, I’d get at least three different opinions, simply because this is such a new area of endeavor. But in the end, in this case at least, it is simpler to let it go.  After all, from a purely financial standpoint, I’ve already spent almost six times as much as I made on the ebook, simply to get an erroneous legal opinion from someone!

The exchange between that author and myself became particularly rancorous, primarily because the individual “went public” with the dispute, and made a lot of implications that I was trying to harm authors, that I was trying to steal from them, etc.  To me, this is something that should have been handled privately and without noising it about in a public forum.  That is tacky.

The dust has yet to settle, and whether or not this will be a lasting blow to Wolfmont’s reputation, I have no idea.  But I have learned from it, and in the end, that is a good thing.

Copyright 2010 Tony Burton

More About Returns

Apr 25

Posted by Tony Burton in Publishing | 1 Comment

The idea of books being returned by booksellers is a perennial problem, even in this day of ebooks.  Recently I got into a bit of a… shall we say “warm” discussion with an author about returns.  The author couldn’t understand why I did not wish to take all returns, universally.

Returns are a horrible, horrible thing for small press publishers.  Here is a fable of woe for you, based on a real-world event.*
Let’s use that same theoretical book that sells for $10, with a 45% discount to wholesalers.
Also, let’s say that I am having it printed on demand, since that’s what 95% of my books are.
Let’s also say that it costs me 3.50 to print it, and I elected to make the book returnable.
I’ll also say that I pay a 75-cent per copy royalty, which is 7.5% of retail, and that’s about in the middle of the usual range.
OK.  The book costs me $3.50, I pay .75, so the book actually costs me $4.25.  I get $5.50 from the wholesaler for each copy sold, so I make $1.25 on each copy, and from that I have to pay for cover design, ancillary marketing materials, promotional copies sent out to reviewers, etc.
I get that money 90 days after the month the books are purchased, even if the retailer pays the distributor for them on the spot, simply because that’s how the business works.
Now, let’s take it a little further.  Let’s say that the book wins an award of some kind… say the Benjamin Franklin Award for Fiction.  Woo-hoo!  That’s great!
So, the book buyer for B&N gets excited about it, and orders 200 copies through distribution.
But the economy takes a downturn, and sales don’t do too well.  The B&N book buyer tried to stick it out because he’s embarrassed over making a blunder, and spreads the copies around all over the U.S. so no single store carries more than one, maybe two copies.  I get paid in 90 days, and I pay the author her royalties of $150.
The story gets a little sadder.  Sales plummet in general, and after a year, the book goes out of print.  The author gets her last royalty check, and we part friends.
Six months later, some bean counter at Barnes & Noble takes a look at things and says, “Holy cow! We’ve got 184 copies of this book sitting around, and we haven’t sold a copy since third quarter of last year. Send them all back!”  They can do that because we are still within that 12-month window after the book goes out of print.
Step back a bit.  When I set up that title for the $10 book and made it returnable, I had to choose whether I wanted them to destroy all the copies that came back, or if I wanted to have them shipped to me.  That’s a quandary there.
If I tell them to destroy them all, then I don’t have the chance to salvage any of them at all.  Maybe quite a few of them are salable: not stained, torn, fingerprinted, etc., but probably not all of them.  Maybe I could resell some of them.
BUT… if I tell them I want the books sent to me when they are returned, then I have to pay $2.00 per each copy returned, no matter what condition it’s in.  And you know what?  That $2.00 per book is more than I would have MADE on each copy I sold.
Let’s see:  184 copies returned and shredded, I lose the sales revenue for 184 copies, or $644.00.  And after that, I have absolutely nothing to show for it, plus I have already paid the author her royalties of $150 and there’s no way to recoup that.  So, effectively I’m out $794.00.
If I have chosen to have those copies sent to me, I’m still out the $794… PLUS I’m out another $368 for the returned book fees on the 184 copies, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to salvage a few books out of those returned that I can effectively re-sell somewhere, maybe to a remainders dealer for pennies on the dollar.  Essentially I’m out over $1,100 but have a POSSIBLE chance of selling some of those returned books… at a loss.
It’s an untenable, unsurvivable situation for most small press publishers, and why so few of us accept returns, and why those who do, usually regret it as they are going out of business.  Indie booksellers cry and whine about not being able to return books and how they have to be able to do it to survive.  Well, I feel no empathy.  If a bookseller buys a book of mine that doesn’t sell, he can mark it down or just hold onto it, and even if he doesn’t sell it, he’s out the cost of the book—in this case, $7.00.
If he returns it, I’m out the cost of the book, PLUS the royalties I’ve already paid on the book, PLUS the returned book fee if I said I want them to send the books to me when they are returned.  So, I’m out $5.50 + $0.75 + $2.00, or $8.25 per copy.
In this whole scenario the only ones who make out in the end are the distributors.  They have no real risk.  They serve as a conduit for the books going both ways.  They make money when the books are going in one direction, and they get money returned to them when the books go back the other way.
* I actually talked to an author once whose book took a plunge very, very similar to this one–only it was much worse.  His book won a big award, and the publisher pushed it hard to the book buyers for the chains.  The printed and ordered and RETURNED copies were more like 2,000.  It ruined the small press publisher, and the author had a very, very hard time finding another publisher to take him on.  His reputation followed him around like the smell of a skunk.

Returns are a terrible problem for small press publishers.  Here is a fable of woe for you, based on a real-world event.*

Let us talk about a theoretical book published by a small-press publisher (my company) and let’s say that same theoretical book sells for $10, with a 45% discount to wholesalers.

Also, let’s say that I am having it printed on demand, since that’s what 95% of my books are.

Let’s also say that it costs me $4.00 to print it, and I elected to make the book returnable.

I’ll also theorize that I pay a 75-cent per copy royalty, which is 7.5% of retail, and that’s about in the middle of the usual range.

OK.  The book costs me $4.00 to print and I pay a 75-cent royalty, so the book actually costs me $4.75.  I get $5.50 from the wholesaler for each copy sold, so I make 75 cents on each copy, and from that I have to pay for cover design, ancillary marketing materials, promotional copies sent out to reviewers, etc.

I get that money 90 days after the month the books are purchased, even if the retailer pays the distributor for them on the spot, simply because that’s how the business works.

Now, let’s take it a little further.  Let’s say that the book wins an award of some kind… say the Benjamin Franklin Award for Fiction.  Woo-hoo! That’s great!

So, the book buyer for B&N gets excited about it, and orders 200 copies through distribution.

But the economy takes a downturn, and sales don’t do too well.  The B&N book buyer tries to stick it out because he’s embarrassed over making a blunder, and spreads the copies around all over the U.S. so no single store carries more than one, maybe two copies.  I get paid my $300 in 90 days, and I pay the author her royalties of $150.  I have $150 left, and I use it to pay bills.

The story gets a little sadder.  Sales plummet in general, and after a year, the book goes out of print.  The author gets her last royalty check, and we part friends.

Six months later, some bean counter at Barnes & Noble takes a look at things and says, “Holy cow! We’ve got 184 copies of this book sitting around, and we haven’t sold a copy since third quarter of last year. Send them all back!”  They can do that because we are still within a 12-month window after the book goes out of print. (This is required for returnability by most distributors.)

Step back a bit.  When I set up that title for the $10 book and made it returnable, I had to choose whether I wanted them to destroy all the copies that came back, or if I wanted to have them shipped to me.  That’s a quandary there.

If I tell them to destroy them all, then I don’t have the chance to salvage any of them.  Maybe quite a few of them are salable: not stained, torn, fingerprinted, etc., but probably not all of them.  This often happens, but maybe I could resell some of them.

However, if I tell them I want the books sent to me when they are returned, then I have to pay $2.00 per each copy returned, no matter what condition it’s in.  I don’t get to pick and choose. And remember: that $2.00 per book is more than the gross margin on each copy I sold, much less the net margin.

Let’s see:  184 copies returned and shredded, I lose the sales revenue for 184 copies, or $736.  And after that, I have absolutely nothing to show for it, plus I have already paid the author her royalties of $150 and there’s no way to recoup that.  So, effectively I’m out $886.

If I have chosen to have those copies sent to me, I’m still out the $886… plus I’m out another $368 for the returned book fees on the 184 copies, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to salvage a few books out of those returned that I can effectively re-sell somewhere, maybe to a remainders dealer for pennies on the dollar.  Essentially I’m out over $1,200 but have a POSSIBLE chance of selling some of those returned books, although at a loss.

It’s an untenable, unsurvivable situation for many, if not most small press publishers, and why so few of us accept universal returns and why those who do, usually regret it at about the time they are going out of business.  Indie booksellers often insist on being able to return books, saying they have to be able to do it to survive.  Consider this, though: if a bookseller buys a book of mine that doesn’t sell, he can mark it down or just hold onto it, and even if he doesn’t sell it, he’s only out the wholesale price of the book.

If he returns it, I’m out the wholesale price of the book, PLUS the royalties I’ve already paid on the book, PLUS the returned book fee if I said I want them to send the books to me when they are returned.  So, I’m out $5.50 + $0.75 + $2.00, or $8.25 per copy. Maybe I can recoup some of that, but maybe not.

In this whole scenario the only ones who make out in the end are the distributors and wholesalers.  They have no real risk.  They serve as a conduit for the books going both ways.  They make money when the books are going in one direction, and they get money returned to them when the books go back the other way.

*As for this fable, I actually talked to an author once whose book took a plunge very, very similar to this one–only it was much worse.  His book won a big award, and the publisher really promoted to the book buyers for the chains.  The ordered and RETURNED copies were more like 2,000.  It ruined the small press publisher, and the author had a very, very hard time finding another publisher to take him on.  His reputation followed him around like the smell of a skunk.

The next time you are upset over a publisher who doesn’t want to accept returns universally, stop and think about it for a moment, and ask yourself if it’s fair to the publisher.

Ebooks – Nifty, But Still Immature

Mar 14

Posted by Tony Burton in Publishing | 15 Comments

As someone with more than a few ebooks in publication, I’m thrilled with the advent of ebooks in general.  Kindle versions of both Wolfmont and Honey Locust books have done well, and I’m pleased about that.  Plus, we have some other versions of ebooks for sale at The Digital Bookshop, and those have been moving, too, though at a slower rate than the Kindle versions on Amazon.

But I hear rumblings of discontent from both readers and authors about a few things, and I’d like to address a couple of those things. (No, we won’t talk about DRM here, as that is a business decision and not a technical one.)  One of them is the multitude of formats: ePub, Mobi, PRC, PDB, LIT, LRF, PDF, ad nauseum.  But think about this: it took a very long time for the most basic of business documents, the word processor document, to settle down to two or three basic formats for most of the business world: Microsoft Word, RTF, and OpenDocumentText.  There are still a few holdouts using WordPerfect, and many home and non-business users using Microsoft Works, but on the whole we have very few standard formats.  This has only come about fairly recently, though, and think of how long word processors have been around!  The first home word processor I ever had any experience with was for the Coleco Adam in 1982, and the next one was on an Apple IIc in 1984.  Of course, neither of these machines could read word processor files from the other.  Think of how long ago that was, and how long it has taken for the industry to settle down to a basic two or three formats!

The second big issue is the apparent differences in how the same ebook document will look, depending on which e-reader or software package you use to read it.  There are many dedicated e-readers on the market: the Kindle, Sony has two or three, of course the new nook from Barnes & Noble, and lesser-known dedicated e-readers from Ectaco, Plastic Logic, etc.  As for ebook reading software, there are yBook, Adobe Digital Editions, EReader, Stanza, Mobipocket… and there are often versions of these to use on different platforms: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and a variety of smartphones and PDAs.  But, often the same ebook file will look very different when viewed on two different e-reader programs!

For those of you who are upset with this aspect of ebooks, let me remind you of something: HTML, the common term for Hypertext Markup Language.  HTML was first defined in 1990 and was introduced to the public in 1991.  Since that time, its use has multiplied geometrically as the old ARPANET/MILNET became the Internet and now almost everyone thinks of the World Wide Web as the primary highway for the Internet, although that was not originally the case.  Even though HTML is at least nineteen years old, there still issues with its performance when you move from one platform to another.  Have you never experienced the the weirdness where you go to a web page and you are told, “Sorry, you cannot view this page with your browser.”  Or if you are a web designer, you probably have seen how some browser settings can totally screw up a beautiful page you just created.

Ebooks in general, and ePub and Mobi formats for ebooks in particular, are nowhere near the maturity of HTML, yet somehow many people expect them to be totally solid and stable across all platforms.

I’m here to tell you: it aint that way, folks, and probably is not likely to be that way for some time. You’re going to have glitches.  Sometimes a file will look beautiful on a Sony reader, but look like crap on your PC when you view it through Stanza, or even through Adobe Digital Editions (one of the cleanest of the readers.)  Or it may look great on your computer, but when you read it on your iPhone, it may look… well, odd!  The original font or font size may not carry over, and sometimes the centering or spacing will be off–but only on some platforms, and if the original ebook creator didn’t test it on your particular platform, he or she may not realize it.

Even more annoying, they may not be able to fix it even if they DO know about it.  I know that I have tweaked and finagled an ebook where it looked beautiful on Adobe Digital Editions, and when I took it to Stanza… oy vey! Such a mess it was!  And even the messes are not consistent, because the next one I create in the exact same way may look great on the Stanza platform, but not so hot on the eReader.

Here’s the  bottom line: If you want to read or produce ebooks at this point, you’re going to need a couple of qualities–patience and understanding.  Nobody can produce ebooks, even in the most popular formats (ePub and Mobi/PRC), that look great in every possible reader.  About the only way you can create an ebook that looks exactly as the original publisher wanted it to look, is to publish it as a PDF file, and even though that is the type of ebook that hews most closely to the original in visual presentation, it seems that not so many people want that.

Oh–I guess you could distribute the ebook as a text file, but that removes from the publisher the ability to use special formatting, boldfacing, italics, underlining, or any of the other cool things that help make a book more readable and understandable.  It condenses and pares the book down to its essence–words alone–and while that is sometimes enough, often it handicaps the publisher from making the greatest possible impact with the ebook.

I guess we all need to take a deep breath and relax, try to understand that ebooks are still in their toddler-hood, if not infancy, and it will probably take quite a while before there is both a shakeout to standardize the “best” two or three formats, and before there is some true standardization that means your copy of War and Peace will look the same on a Sony reader as it will on your Apple iPad or your little netbook.  You wouldn’t toss out your baby because he didn’t conform to all your expectations, would you?  Well, have some patience with ebooks, too, because they are still developing.

Hey, at least we don’t have monks sitting in dark scriptoriums, writing out one or two pages of text a day!

Monk in scriptorium

Monk in scriptorium

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Fish nor Foul? (pun intended)

Feb 28

Posted by Tony Burton in Humor, Publishing, The business of writing | 4 Comments

Recently, I’ve had cause to examine my professional standing, and consider exactly where I fit in the writing/publishing/ bookselling hierarchy.  It’s a problem for me for a variety of reasons.

You see, I’m an author.  I’ve been published in magazines, online, newspapers, in anthologies, and I self-published two novels.  (I mean real self-publishing, where you buy your own ISBNs, set up the relationship with the printer and distributors, do your own typesetting, etc.)  I teach creative writing online and at the local arts center.

In the process, though, I also built a publishing company.  It now has a couple of imprints, and other than my own two books, I’ve published a number of anthologies, a couple of other folks’ novels, a couple of books of poetry, a book of plays, and a few non-fiction books.  I pay royalties, by the way, even though I mostly use Print-on-demand printing.

At another point late last year, I got the idea to start a new endeavor, an online bookstore.  I sell print books and ebooks there from a number of publishers.

At this point, I argue with myself a lot.  Think about it: for some reason, a default adversarial relationship has somehow been defined as the relationship between authors and publishers, as well as between booksellers and publishers.  For example:

“Publishers are bloodsuckers!  They take all your hard work and make tons of money, and what do you get? Almost NOTHING!! And they want ME to promote my own book.  Heck, I wrote the thing—isn’t that enough?”  (Frustrated author)

“Authors are lazy primadonnas who aren’t willing to work with the editor, who think their every word is precious and can’t be changed! And don’t they realize that, in this competitive marketplace and economy, I can’t afford to promote them as much as they would like?”  (Aggravated publisher)

“Publishers aren’t willing to give me the discounts I need or accept returns for up to a year after the book goes out of print!  They’re taking bread out of the mouths of my children!”  (Despairing bookseller)

“How am I supposed to pay royalties, the power bill, the phone bill, and promotional considerations, if the bookseller wants such a huge discount?  And why do they return books that look like they were used as puppy toys??”   (Furious publisher)

“How dare a publisher even call itself a legitimate publisher if they don’t print at least 1,000 copies in the first run, and pay at least a $1,000 advance?”  (Elitist writer’s organization)

“How can a writer’s organization ignore the economics of reality, that says in the long run it costs more and can put a small publisher out of business, if they only use old-fashioned printing methods that are ecologically unsound and wasteful of both money and resources?”  (Dumbfounded publishers AND authors)

It’s strange, really.  I get into internal debates all the time!  And for that matter, which professional organization(s) should I join?  I am an author, but when I go to some professional writer organizations’ websites, it’s like there is this big “Them versus US!” mindset.  I wonder: would I be considered an US or a THEM? Would I be found out, and considered a fifth column publisher, secretly learning all the author secrets so I can go back and… do what??

For a while I was a member of an organization that was supposed to be focused on independently-published authors.  What does that mean, exactly?  It’s sort of vague, right?  Does that mean the author’s publisher is an independent, not associated with one of the big publishing conglomerates that control three-quarters of the book sales revenue in the U.S.?  Does it mean that the book was vanity published or subsidy published?  Or does it mean that the author actually self-published the book, starting their own small press, buying their own ISBN(s), etc.?  While I was a member, once or twice I spoke up about some issues (I’m against paid reviews, for example, and I believe an author should have a professional editor work on the manuscript before it is published).  When I did I was snubbed and treated like a pariah dog.  You see, I am not only an author, but a commercial publisher, and sometimes I (ye gads!) reject a manuscript!  How dare I do that!

And of course, publishing organizations are generally focused on a lot of issues that are not that germane to the kind of publishing I do.  There is one I belong to, which shall remain nameless, that in the last year or two has seemed to morph into an organization primarily for self-published authors.  While I understand and can respect a well-considered decision to self-publish, that’s not my main consideration.  Another publisher organization I have investigated focuses primarily on non-fiction and how-to books—which is not my company’s area.

Because I have an online bookstore and live in Georgia, should I join the Southern Independent Booksellers Association (SIBA)?  Would it really help me, or would it be just one more organization that drains membership funds from me, that I could put to better use paying for promotional pieces or extra ARCs? According to their website, they are for “independent, privately held, brick & mortar, commercially zoned bookstores with a retail storefront, in our region.”  That lets me out.  But then again, I know some authors who are members of SIBA, and they don’t have any sort of bookstore!

I dunno.  Maybe I need therapy.  Is it possible to have multiple-profession-disorder?

Lower Standards for Children’s Literature? I Don’t Think So!

Feb 6

Posted by Tony Burton in Publishing, Writing well | 14 Comments

Recently I was asked to take on an editing job, freelance, for a children’s book.  I had no problem with it being a children’s book–I think kids’ books are great things, and the more of them children have, the better off they are!  Now, this particular job was not a high-paying one, but supposedly a simple moderate-level editing job, comprising both copyediting and some minor corrections of grammar, usage, etc, of a mix of short poems and very short stories.  No sweat.

However, once I received the manuscript and spent some time with it, I understood why the two previous editors who had this particular gig had dropped it.  (Gee, why didn’t I consider this before?!)  The writing was poor, the poetry was inconsistent, the stories tended to wander all over the landscape and most of the time ended up far from any particular denouement.

This was not an editing job.  This was a rewriting job, at the very least.  I emailed the person who had commissioned me for the job (luckily, she was not the author) and informed her of my issues with the manuscript.  It would, I told her, take much more than moderate editing.  It would require substantive editing and rewriting, and would involve much more time than she was willing to pay me to do.  I gave her my feedback on the quality of the writing, and told her that I honestly didn’t think she would be able to find anyone competent to do the job for the amount she was budgeted to pay.  The person who commissioned me owns a pay-to-publish company, by the way, and this book was never intended for the open market—only for the author’s grandchildren.  I can understand having a book published for your grandchildren, something to leave behind.  Still….

The publisher was not happy with me, perhaps understandably, but here are a couple of comments that threw me for a loop:  “I disagree with your description of  [AUTHOR'S] work. I don’t think it’s as bad as you describe. These are stories for children, not adults, and that makes a big difference in what is acceptable.”

I’m sorry, but that is wrong, wrong, WRONG.

Maybe this author didn’t intend to have the book published in order to get it onto the shelves of Barnes & Noble, but that doesn’t mean that kids’ literature should have lower standards for grammar, usage, quality of story, logic, and construction.  Children deserve to have well-written books just as much as adults do.  Why would anyone think otherwise?  The words read by kids, the stories and poems consumed by their minds, help to form their concepts of reality and how to deal with the world around them—especially when these words come in the form of poems and stories written by a grandparent!

Badly-written books leave a nasty taste in the minds of those who read them.  Children especially don’t need to have poorly-written dreck thrown at them.  Do we want to turn off our kids from reading?  Do we want them to get the idea when they are young, that all books are poorly written?

But let me step back to the original concept that bothered me: Kids’ books are not required to meet the same sort of standards as adults.  I will agree that children’s books have a different set of parameters: different vocabulary, shorter sentences, etc.  But a book written for ANY reader should:

  • have good sentence construction and word usage
  • have a consistent voice
  • have stories that have recognizable and distinct beginnings, middles, and endings
  • NOT make the reader grimace at the poor choices of words or the way words are used
  • not confuse the reader with sentences that wander all over the place and end up going nowhere

If you think that kids’ books don’t have to be written well, tell that to J.K. Rowling, Theodore Geisel, Louisa May Alcott, Sir James Barrie, L. Frank Baum, Judy Blume, Roald Dahl, Fred Gipson, E. B. White…. I don’t have room or time to list more.  The point is, children’s literature is not where we try to pass off the stories and writing that are not good enough for adults.  Indeed, probably the writing should be better: more concise, tighter, more creative use of words, more inventive.  Kids’ minds are growing—they don’t need literary junk.

Tell me: would you say that children don’t need food that is up to the same standards as their parents?  What about the things they drink?  I’m sure you wouldn’t prepare food for children that was missing key ingredients, or give them chicken that was only “mostly” cooked, let them drink milk that was only a “little spoiled,” or feed them vegetables that are “pretty clean.”  You’d want the best possible quality for them, even if the grocer told you that such things were OK for children.  ”Standards are different for kids.  They don’t need the same quality.”  Do you believe that?

Stories and poems read by a child are the food and drink of the child’s mind.  Don’t try to tell me that standards of quality are lower for a child—especially not if you are a publisher.

Sailing the Troubled Waters of Bookselling

Jan 31

Posted by Tony Burton in Publishing | 1 Comment

In a recent discussion regarding the bookselling/publishing industry, the discussion moderator asked this question: “How can we get bookstores and the rest of the traditional publishing business into the twenty-first century? Any ideas?”

I replied there, but as I thought about it, I came to the realization that my observations might be of interest to those outside the discussion, so I’m expanding on them here.

Once when I was in the Navy, I had the chance to ride on an aircraft carrier. It was the USS Eisenhower, with about 6,000 souls on board. The Eisenhower was a huge ship, with tremendous mass and thus, tremendous momentum. Once she got going in a particular direction, it was very difficult to either turn or stop her, and it would be impossible without destroying the vessel if those at the helm didn’t want to change direction or stop.

The bookselling and publishing businesses are conjoined in a way that is much like that carrier.

Unless and until major publishers stop making these returnable deals with the bookstores, most booksellers will want all books to be returnable.  People are like that: once they’ve had what they consider a “good deal” for a while, they tend to think of it as a right instead of a privilege.  But the large publishers at the top make so much money from the present system that they don’t want to change it, and most fear that, if they do, booksellers will not order so many books from them.

Those same large publishers also fear that, with a more level playing field, booksellers will order more books from small-press publishers. After all, you’re a bookseller and you have been considering ordering some of those small-press titles, but didn’t because they weren’t returnable.  Suddenly the system changes and no books are returnable, so why wouldn’t you order some of the small-press titles?

So, the larger publishers and the majority of booksellers (the chains, especially) are joined at the hip in this, and they stand at the helm of the good ship Brick and Mortar Book Business. It will take a major blow to the vessel in some way to make them reconsider their direction of travel.

Of course, in the last few months, sneak and not-so-sneak attacks by the Online Bookstore Guerrillas and the E-book Commandoes have made those at the helm nervous. As recently as yesterday, Amazon and MacMillan got into a tiff over ebook pricing, and several MacMillan titles were pulled from Amazon because of it.  Also, recently at least one publisher has decided to shoot themselves in the foot by announcing publicly that they will delay releasing ebook versions of their new hardcopy releases for as long as four months.  This rather graceless announcement cause no small amount of anger in the community of ebook readers, and many of them said they would simply abstain from buying that publisher’s titles, in any form.

We have to remember that Amazon, the largest online bookstore in the world, has recently revealed that on Christmas day sales of ebooks outstripped sales of hardcopy books, and that they announced this week that for every ten hardcopy books they sell, they sell six ebooks.  My friend, those are compelling numbers!

Amazon has also been known to land salvoes amongst the small-press and independently-published authors. (Remember when they were going to turn off the “Buy Now” buttons for any POD books not printed by them?)

My opinion? The only way you will get the industry to change direction is at the point of an economic sword. In other words, both booksellers and large publishers will have to be hit in their wallets, and hit hard. Booksellers must realize and accept that they will have to change their way of doing things and order books responsibly, without being able to return them. Book publishers will have to realize that printing 25,000 (or more) copies of a book in their first run with no guarantee of sales is lunacy and ecologically irresponsible… no less so than driving a Hummer to take  your kid to soccer practice.

But booksellers have been in this mode since the Depression, and large publishers run their business to a great extent on hyperbole nowadays, so large print runs are indicators of “blockbuster” status, and making such a realization hit home will need to be done dramatically. Thus, the economic sword. Both will need to be pushed to the realization that their present business models are untenable, and if they continue they will run their ship aground. But doing so will be very, very difficult, and in the end, may not work at all, leaving the only ships afloat those whose bookselling businesses are primarily online.

Already the vicious cycle is begun: Because of low sales from a poor economy, bookstores are closing all over the country.  Yet, Amazon, B&N Online, and other online bookstores have growth.  As people get out of the habit of going into brick-and-mortar bookstores because they need to drive farther and farther to find one, more and more will close, forcing buyers to go to online sources.  And if the bookstore will not (or can not) keep copies on hand, but rather has to order a copy of the book I want, why should I drive fifty miles to do that?  I can order from an online bookseller, and have it without spending money on gas.  So, bookstore traffic dwindles even more.

It all feeds on itself, and unless something drastic happens to interrupt the cycle, it will not stop.

Publishing hostility

Jan 2

Posted by Tony Burton in Getting published, Publishing | 5 Comments

I’ve come to accept that many conventionally-published (read that as those published by larger commercial publishers who most likely have offices in NYC) are disdainful of anyone who is published by a small press, or who self-publishes.  Though regrettable, it seems sort of natural, like the attitude that was displayed by upper-crust Victorian-era folks toward those who were lower on the social ladder. Thankfully, there have been a lot of advances in social consciousness that have eliminated much of that.  (Not as much as we’d like, but the world is a work in progress.)

However, I’d like to make some observations about the sneering and hostility I sometimes see and/or hear going in the opposite direction, by individuals or groups of those who are unpublished or are published in a less “conventional” way (self-published, independently-published, etc.)

I have a foot in both camps, so perhaps my viewpoint is different.  But the way I see it, as long as self-published and independently-published authors continue to display a hostile attitude toward those who are commercially published, three things are evident:

  1. It validates the lack of professionalism that commercially published authors often use to label the unconventionally-published.
  2. It also shows a remarkable lack of acceptance of those who choose the commercial path of publication.  Isn’t that what the unconventionally-published are seeking for themselves, acceptance? If so, why not give it to others?
  3. It makes the unconventionally-published look just as bad as those others who are acting like jerks because they were published commercially.

Perhaps the unconventionally-published have never read Orwell’s ANIMAL FARM. Remember what happened?  There was a revolution against oppression, and as time passed, the rebels became the oppressors.

Intolerance of a person’s choice of publishing path, and displayed hostility, animosity, or disdain toward that person’s simply because of the way they chose to publish, is a bad thing no matter from which direction it comes. I’ve seen the same sort of reverse snobbery occur when poor people sneer at the middle class, when middle class people sneer at the very rich, or when people on either side of a particular racial divide sneer at those on the other side.

That kind of attitude is not productive. It’s not professional. It makes those who do it look bad, and by association, others who are in the same group with that person. There is enough room in the book-publishing and book-selling world for all sorts of publication paths, and manifesting a sneering, sour-grapes sort of attitude makes for a very ugly reputation.

If you are conventionally published, wonderful!  I congratulate and salute you, and wish you many successes!

If you made a carefully-considered choice to self-publish or subsidy publish, or to go with a small press that does not pay an advance or print huge print runs, congratulations for that, too!  I wish you well, and hope you sell many, many copies of your book(s).

If you are a member of any of those groups, and you sneer and turn up your nose at those who are “the others,” I feel sorry for you.  You’re displaying a remarkable lack of maturity and way too much ego.  Focus on promoting your book by writing well, by showing us how great it is, by letting us know how much we will enjoy it.  Don’t try to make your own work or choices look good by cutting down the other guy’s choice.  It doesn’t work very well most of the time, and you just come off looking like a self-centered cretin.

Print-on-demand or offset: which is better?

Aug 22

Posted by Tony Burton in Day to day living, Publishing | 4 Comments

There has been a lot of discussion on an online list I frequent, about the relative value of using POD (print-on-demand) to produce books as opposed to using offset printing.  Some have commented that there is a difference in quality, that the books are more expensive and therefore less competitive, that booksellers don’t want to carry POD books, and so forth.

The questions of whether POD is an “acceptable” method of printing, whether or not it makes books overpriced, whether or not booksellers will carry POD, are going to have different answers depending on who you ask and what method THEY prefer.  However…

1.  I challenge any average everyday consumer to pick out the POD books from a stack of mixed POD and offset-printed books. The process has improved tremendously, and unless you are going to pull a Sherlock Holmes with magnifying glass, I doubt you will see any differences at all. Certainly there are variations in quality between printers, but that occurs in both POD and offset printing. I’ve had offset books that fell apart after less than a year, and I have POD books that I have had for years with no signs of excessive wear and tear.  And it’s not like only small, “fly by night” operations use POD technology to produce books.  Simon and Schuster, Harcourt, Zondervan, and many university presses use POD because it makes more sense for many titles.

2. We can’t argue with the fact that, on a per-book basis, POD printing is more expensive than offset printing—IF all you consider is the cost of printing. However, as both business persons and citizens of the Earth, we have to step back and look at things from a broader perspective. Yes, it costs me less PER BOOK to print 5,000 copies of a book. But when I do that, (1) I have to pay for climate-controlled storage and fulfillment, (2) I have to ship those 5,000 books by some method, to that storage facility, and (3) I have to come up with a lump sum of money to print all 5,000 books at once. What if they don’t sell well, or hardly sell at all? It can happen.  (4) Of course, if I keep all these books past the time to file my taxes, then I have to inventory them and count them as an asset, which makes me liable for more taxes!  (5) Then I have continuing storage charges on books that are not making any money for me, or I end up selling them at a big loss to some dealer of remainders, at pennies on the dollar. Personally, I believe that for new and mid-list authors, the risk of printing several thousand books is usually higher than I want to bear.

As a responsible citizen of the Earth, I look at the ecological cost as well:

  • Hundreds of dead trees, whether we want to admit it or not.
  • Petroleum-based inks in most cases.
  • The petroleum to ship the pallets of books to their storage place.
  • The extra electricity used to keep those books in a climate-controlled environment.

If I’m going to create a carbon footprint, I’d like to do it in small, manageable increments rather than risk all that money, paper, manufacturing electricity, storage electricity, etc., in one fell swoop. I’ve been to a few of the remainders book shows, and it’s a frightening thing.  There are hundreds of thousands of titles—literally tons of books—some by famous authors, being sold for nearly nothing, and sometimes only to be sent to Japan or other countries, to be recycled to make toilet paper. Every author and publisher should spend a day at one of these shows to see how many books never sell, or having been shipped to a bookseller, get returned and sold for a pittance. It is an eye-opener to the realities of the economics of printing and publishing.

3.  I’m not a bookstore owner, but we cannot control what booksellers will or will not carry. I’ve had Barnes & Noble to shelve some of our POD books, returnable or not. I’ve also seen books shelved in stores and then get returned months later–even books printed by offset presses. It is very often a crap shoot as to what ends up on the bookstore shelves, what sells, and what gets returned and what doesn’t.

Certainly there are situations where offset printing is better or even necessary, and that’s fine. But the insistence upon using offset printing methods simply because they may be initially cheaper is just as arrogant and irresponsible as using lots of oil because “we have plenty of it” or shooting buffalo by the thousands because “there are millions of them.”  We have reached a point where as authors, publishers, and even as booksellers, we have to balance the profit against the impact on the environment as well as against the impact on our bank accounts. It’s altogether too easy to say, “Oh, let someone else worry about all that. I have to thrive.” Is your conscience that thick-skinned?

As someone once said, “If not you, who? If not now, when?”

Copyright ©2009  Tony Burton

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Genres, Cross-Genre and Mutant Novels

Aug 2

Posted by Tony Burton in Getting published, Publishing | 16 Comments

I want to preface this with something… sort of a pre/postscript: Kevin Tipple pointed out to me that I was misusing the term “crossover” and although I disagree with his definition of the term, I agree that I was misusing it.  More correctly, I should have been talking about cross-genre novels, not crossover novels.  (See my comment in response to Kevin Tipple.)

But one problem is that in discussion among authors, the terms become muddled, and though the term “crossover” is sometimes used for “cross-genre,” I should not have added to the confusion by using it that way myself.  You have my apologies!  So… I’m going to change the post now to reflect “cross-genre,” where before I had written “crossover.”

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In one online discussion group to which I belong (Murder Must Advertise, in Yahoo! Groups), there has been some recent discussion about crossover cross-genre fiction, and how easy/hard it is to get it published or to sell it.  I understand how some fiction could be labeled as “crossover” cross-genre fiction, but I wonder how ultimately profitable it is to specify so closely all the possible pigeonholes into which an author could successfully fit his or her work.

For example, I really enjoy Louis L’Amour’s books.  Typically, most are classified as “Westerns.”  But in almost every one, there is a love interest, a damsel in distress who is somehow helped by the hero. Sometimes there is a love triangle; sometimes there is an evil man also fighting for the love of the lady, or an evil woman also trying to win the affection of the hero.  But almost universally, there is a love story that travels the length of the novel and often provides the driving force for the protagonist(s).

Do we classify L’Amours books as romance novels?  No.

The same thing applies to Tony Hillerman’s Navajo reservation crime novels. In each one there is the primary story, but there is also the romantic entanglement between Jim Chee and an attorney, another police officer, a teacher, etc.  And in some of the stories, there was a dual romantic thread with Jim Chee and his loves, plus the lady professor who has (somewhat) stirred the juices of Lt. Joe Leaphorn.  Again, we do not label these books as romance, but if the romance were removed, some of the plot lines would simply fall apart.

What drives us (authors) to try to classify/pigeonhole our work in so many ways?

Are we trying to find every possible way to interest an agent, editor, or a reader in our work?  Problematically, that doesn’t seem to work very well, at least for me.  It’s almost like the author can’t seem to settle on what the book is supposed to be if I am approached by an author who says something like, “This is an historical paranormal gay mystery set in 1800s London… with space aliens.”

As a publisher, this puts me in a difficult position. How the heck am I supposed to market a book like that?  Who am I supposed to target with mailings or ads?  And where in the world would B&N decide to shelve such a book? (Note: As Kevin points out in his comment, in the Sci-Fi section.  But would that satisfy the mystery fans?)

If I were an agent, what publisher would I approach?  Which publisher would feel comfortable with a book that has so many different genres thrown together?

It’s not that we can’t have romance in a mystery, or a gay protag in a suspense novel, or even a space alien in a book set in 1859!  I guess what I’m trying to say is, by trying to focus on every possible iteration or niche into which the book could fit, we weaken our position both by confusing the possible buyer(s) and by seeming to waffle on where we are headed with our story.  It’s like the author cannot make up his/her mind.

Of course there are valid “crossover” cross-genre novels.  But trying to ferret out every possible genre that might fit a novel manuscript doesn’t help things.  The old expression, “He’s a jack of all trades but a master of none,” could apply.  If you have written a romantic suspense novel, great.  Call it that.  If you have written a history mystery, that’s good, too.  But don’t try to force your novel into different genres or to be crossover cross-genre, if those other things are incidental.  If your story is science fiction and the protagonist happens to be gay, you don’t have to say it’s “Gay sci-fi.”  If you have read the McCaffrey “Dragon” novels, you know that a very large number of the characters in the novels are gay, but the stories are never called “gay science fiction.”

What is the primary purpose of your story/novel?  Is it to tell the story of the solution of a murder mystery?  And is it vital to the structure of the story that the setting is 1850s London?  Then fine, call it a history mystery.  But if it is simply a good story that happens to occur in 1850s London, and could just as well occur in Chicago in 1970 with a few minor changes, it’s a mystery, pure and simple.

Never complicate what you are trying to sell to someone else.  Make it simple for them to understand, simple to classify.  People like to be able to say, “Oh, it’s a …,” and be confident in that. But (in general) if you make it difficult for people to grasp exactly what sort of book you have written, you make it harder for them to decide to spend the time figuring it out by reading it.

OK.  Those are my opinions.  Disagree?  Hey, I’d love to read your comments!

Copyright ©2009  Tony Burton

Writing for Publication

Jul 19

Posted by Tony Burton in Publishing | No Comments

Usually when I speak with aspiring writers, be they essayists, poets, short story writers or whatever, I ask them this question: “Why do you write?  What is the purpose of what you do?”
Some people say they write strictly for personal enjoyment, others say they feel they have this book inside them that wants to get out…. I won’t go into all the reasons here, but what it boils down to eventually for most writers is this: they want someone to read what they write, and to be paid for it.
But, if you want to be a commercial writer (in other words, to be paid for what you write), you must consider your audience—your potential buyers, if you will. Often that is the very last thing people think about.
One online discussion group I frequent is all about publishing and promoting writers’ work.  A particular discussion thread there lately has centered around one author’s book and how to make it sell better.
I won’t go into detail about the book subject, as it would undeniably identify the author and I don’t want to do that.  But I do want to use his experience to point out some important things about Writing A Book.

Usually when I speak with aspiring writers, be they essayists, poets, short story writers or whatever, I ask them this question: “Why do you write?  What is the purpose of what you do?”

Some people say they write strictly for personal enjoyment, others say they feel they have this book inside them that wants to get out…. I won’t go into all the reasons here, but what it boils down to eventually for most writers is this: they want someone to read what they write, and to be paid for it.

But, if you want to be a commercial writer (in other words, to be paid for what you write), you must consider your audience—your potential buyers, if you will. Often that is the very last thing people think about.

One online discussion group I frequent is all about publishing and promoting writers’ work.  A particular discussion thread there lately has centered around one author’s book and how to make it sell better.

I won’t go into detail about the book subject, as it would undeniably identify the author and I don’t want to do that.  But I do want to use his experience to point out some important things about Writing A Book.

(read the rest of the article here….)

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