With the paper version of DF10 coming out late in May, AWP Books decided that it needed to redo the cover art from scratch. Yesterday they sent me the prelims. A few minor tweaks may happen (mostly centered around font choice), but on the whole, I think I like it–so I wanted to share it with all of you:

Feel free to chime in!

[poll id="2"]

You may vote for two of the three options (this is to let you voice your desire for hardbacks, as well as priority). Let us know what you want!

Vanity
For your starter today, I’ve recently finished Sam Harris’s book The Moral Landscape. We recently had a three episode set discussing the premise and arguments Harris addresses in the book. I’ve also posted a review at Goodreads. It’s an interesting and provocative book–if you have an interest in ethical philosophy, I highly recommend it.

Whimsy
This is an oldie, but goodie, video of a squid filming its own escape from a skin-diver.

Civil Liberties
Are you offended and frightened by the recent shooting? Wish you could silence people who are talking about “targeting” and “taking down” the opposition? Think that such speech is the moral equivalent of a terrorist threat? I humbly suggest that you might want to rethink your position in light of this excellent piece from Slate.

In a similar vein, the attempt to silence political speech on the Internet has been whole-heartedly embraced by the Obama administration. EFF brief here.

Politics
In the “I reserve skepticism but it’s starting to look like I was wrong” department, there’s encouraging news about the early effects of the new health care bill.

Business and Writing
In the “cool research for Steampunkers” department, the Guardian talks about the FEMALE criminal underworld in Victorian London.

Ever wondered what the real scoop is on the most important part of you’re book’s marketing (i.e. the cover)? Turns out that Laura Resnick did a very extensive series of articles a few years back that goes in depth on how the whole business of covers works. Well worth the read.

The charming Kate Elliot posts a great article at SFWA offering advice to teen writers from someone who’s been there. If you’re a teen writer, check it out.

Bob Mayer expresses admirably why I’ve not yet done a book trailer, and why it would take a special project for me even to consider it. A quick read, worth the click.

For your treadmill-listening pleasure, Gail Carriger gives a delightful and characteristically witty interview with SF Signal, discussing the impact of social media on the book industry and the author’s business model.

Nathan Lowell’s publisher Robin Sullivan does a guest blog for J.A. Konrath in which she busts some myths about indie publishing and talks about the sales growth curve of her authors. Interesting, useful stuff.

If you thought 2010 was tumultuous for the publishing industry, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Borders is in the process of a crash-and-burn, and depending on how it goes down, it could do anything from expanding the print-book market to seriously shrinking it over the near-to-medium term (though I doubt it will actually sink any of the publishing houses along the way, it may mean a lot less cash going around to buy new titles). If you have print books on the market or on the way to market, it behooves you to read Joshua Blimes’s excellent and thorough Borders post-mortem report.

Science and Technology
As an enthusiastic tender of a bacteria culture (lacto bascillus San Francisco), this kind of stuff fascinates me. An in-depth article, with sub-links, on the unique ecosystems that exist within cheeses.

Perhaps I’m showing my age–and I can’t believe I just said that–but I’m still blown away by the return of lay people to the sciences. Last week, a ten-year-old girl discovered a brand-new supernova, and setting a world-record in the process.

The Singularity (in the loose sense) continues apace with the development of contact lenses that display information directly in the field of vision. This is the very epitome of “augmented reality” technology. Wonder how long it’ll be until we can buy them at Walgreens.

Another nifty extra-solar planet discovery–this one very like Mercury.

It’s early days yet, but there’s more rumblings from legitimate autism research that might just have nailed down one of the reasons for increasing incidence and prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorders in the last couple decades. Encouraging news, as this one is completely preventable. Also weird as hell, which tickles my interest-o-meter.

In archeology news, physicists seem to have cracked the secret of the Mayan ability to make dyes that last forever.

At the end of December, the BBC did a wonderful 1-hour documentary on the most world-shaking scientific and technological advantages which, thanks to the marvels of YouTube, you can now see for yourself.

Along similar lines, here’s an article on 8 Science Fiction gadgets and plot devices that became a reality in 2010.

Laser weapons deployed for use on the high-seas! That’s right, non-lethal stun lasers are now being tested for use against pirates. No joke!

And, for the sake of great science-fictiony fun, here’s a great essay by Ronald Bailey speculating on the GOOD things that the lack of ET signals could portend.

Orwell
In other news, moral crusaders continue to Bowdlerize and lie about history “for the sake of the children.” If I can point to the single most harmful strand of human nature, aside perhaps from the propensity to commit genocide, this is the one I’d pick.

On the other hand, there are people of genuine moral fiber still circulating in the world. If you want something that will make you cry or stand up and cheer, check out this statement by the father of one the 9-year-old girl slain in the assassination attempt this week. Someone who takes his responsibility as a member of the body politic seriously enough that he’s unwilling to call for the curtailment of the civil liberties of others as salve for his grief? Uncommon! And displays most excellent character.

Weird Apps
Digital Life has info on an app for all you iPhone folks that will tell you when you can leave the theater to hit the bathroom without missing any plot points in currently-released movies. Behold, RunPee!

And that’s it for this time. Catch you around next time the world gets weird!

Crazy Silly Creative Things
To start off with our garnish, you could do no better than watching this 3 minute video about what Welshmen really do with sheep. Don’t worry, it’s work safe–but you won’t be while watchign it. This is seriously, amazingly cool.

Johnny Carson presents The Great Flydini, an utterly silly and borderline obscene magic act that will leave you in stitches. Don’t let obscene put you off — it’s work safe.

While you’re at it, put down your drink before reading this story about the trials of moving house with a pair of neurotic dogs.

Writing
Gail Carriger shares a surefit of useful research resources for those interested in the Victorian world.

Publishing
Some industry analysts are just flat terrified of change. The tired old doom-and-gloom saw, complete with a helping of elitist nuttery and starry-eyed nostalgia, receives a very articulate (and surprisingly informative) defense in the Boston Review article Books After Amazon. Fortunately for readers, most publishers aren’t this short-sighted, but it is a very informative view into the mind of those who think that ebooks will kill the publishing industry.

Copia, a latecomer to the ebook market, is hoping to create a major third-mover advantage by leveraging social media in a pretty creative way, turning its reader into a Facebook-meets-Twitter-meets-Goodreads-meets-kindle type “experience.” Time will tell.

While we’re on the subject, the official word on Google Editions is that they ARE coming…someday. At least, we think so.

If you sell a story during 2011, be sure to drop an email to this guy. He’s editing the “Best Of” anthology for 2011.

By the way, James Bond? Yeah, his author’s estate gave its publisher the boot and went independent. Details here.

Science
By now you’ll have heard all about the new life form discovered at Mono Lake. Here’s a sober and understandable account of this very exciting, but fairly overhyped, discovery.

Speaking of which, I’m getting very tempted to declare the 21st century the century of virology. It turns out that a lot of cancers, possibly obesity, and now possibly schizophrenia are caused by the irritating little bastards.

Moving to the meteorology front, the Telegraph has an article full of amazing photos of supercell tornadoes that’s well worth a squint.

Miscellaneous Cool
I stumbled across a whole bunch of color movies from the 19th century. Our notion about the Victorian Era being drab and grey where the clothing is concerned? Yeah, that’s a load of crap, and here’s the evidence.

Space Travel
It’s not quite a moon base, but it’s still kinda cool: NASA aims for a base at L2.

Vanity
And finally, your moment of torture. On Get Published, I cackle in my surly way about writing, marketing, publishing, and making a living off of fiction in ways I’m hardly qualified to do.

But first, I begin with a special treat for my free-wheeling brewer friends. Beer has always been a problem in space — not because of drunk piloting, but because weightlessness does weird things to the sense of taste. There’s also the question of what the bubbles will do to the body, and how drinkable beer will be in zero G anyway. Fortunately, someone is officially working on these problems so that we can take into space with us the drink that made civilization possible in the first place: Click here for Space Beer!

Now, on to the main courses:

Consumerism
As part of the Book Retailer wars, Sears will double your Christmas shopping budget by effectively giving away free books.

Autodidacticism

Can’t afford a Harvard education, but have the drive and desire to get one? Well then, today’s your lucky day. Harvard has started offering some classes online for free

History
Bet you, like most people born after WW2, thought Color Photography didn’t really get going until the late 1930s, right? Well, think again. Here’s some gorgeous Color Photos from the great depression in Colorado and some even more amazing Color photos from Imperial Russia (the Ukraine and Uzbekistan, near as I can make out).

Writing
If you live with a writer, or are dating a writer, or think writers are sexy (we are), there are a few things you should know.

Here’s some advice I should pay more attention to: How to write magnetic headlines

An attempt to make an IMDB for Speculative Fiction books and audio: SpecFicDB

For those of you looking to get press for your new indie book, or those of you looking to sample something that’s not just published slush, here’s an Aggregate list of indie book reviewers

Some delightful fan mail from the Golden Age Science Fiction magazines, all written by girls.

Jordan Summers has a series of reports from the Novelists Inc. conference on piracy, some low-down contractual moves by publishers as they panic in the new marketplace, and more. A must read for any writer.

Vanity
Fair Warning: These next couple writing-related links feature me. First, my post on The Creative Penn’s blog about How To Survive the Ebook Apocalypse

And then, there’s an hour of me talking turkey and story with Mark Jeffrey on his video podcast This Week in Books The goofy looking guy is me.

Science
The man who gave us The Thumbprint of God, Benoit Mandlebrot, died this week. Check out his glorious TED talk here. If you don’t know who Mandlebrot was, or how he and a few of his friends fundamentally changed the game in ever sphere of life, check out This BBC Documentary

Over in Climate-change land, the fight has broken into four camps: The alarmists, for whom we are all doomed and deserve it as punishment for our technological/capitalistic sins; The Warners, who think we’d better do something so we don’t royally screw ourselves; the Skeptics, who are cautiously doubtful of policy prescriptions but also cautiously accepting of a preponderance of evidence; and the Deniers, who think it’s all a left-wing anti-business plot (this taxonomy stolen shamelessly from Stuart Brand). Sometimes, there’s an interesting dataset that allows the skeptics and Warners to make common cause, despite any underlying differences, because they share the same respect for good science. Here’s one such instance, very intelligible to laypeople: a climate history that takes into account all known natural climate cycles AND anthropogenic effects.

If you ever lost a pet as a child, chances are you heard some version of the “Doggie Heaven” story. The one I heard was that Heaven will be happy, and if I want my dog when I’m there, she’ll be there waiting for me. Of course, as we get older we realize that this is a lie told to us by well-meaning parents who, regardless of whether they believe in human heaven or not, don’t really believe in doggie heaven. After all, dogs don’t have a spirituality, do they? Well, according to new neurological research, if humans have anything that can be called “spiritual awareness,” then so do dogs, and most other higher animals.

Social Scientists have a lot to say about educational policy,economics, politics, family values, and culture, so sometimes it’s important to step back and take a long hard look at what they do and do not actually know at this point in history. (This is an excellent article)

Ethics:
And, finally, from the philosophy of ethics department, a paper that argues lucidly that you can’t be good without Science Fiction.

More Reprobates and the final Balticon Adventure next week!
And don’t forget to buy the new Clarke Lantham mystery And Then She Was Gone next Friday!

This week’s Link Salad contains elements of science, sex, publishing market reports, book reviews, and is garnished with interesting cultural tidbits. Here you go:

Publishing:
The Mammoth Book of Steampunk is now open to Submissions and Recommendations. So if you know any stories (cough-Cold Duty–cough) you think should go in there, now’s the time to go mention them–they’re looking for reprints until Oct 31. They’ll be looking for original stories after that.

Matthew Leiber Buchman is doing a blog series, detailing how he sold a four-book series (including doing all the negotiation) without the help of an agent–not because he didn’t want to, but because he couldn’t get anyone to take a freebie commission. Astounding story — and VERY useful information for those of you who, like me, are currently churning through the New York and London markets. Find it here (link to the second post in the series, about the query that sold).

Icarus Magazine, a semipro gay SFF market, is now open again. Details here.

Science:
Economist Robin Hanson is “shaken to the core” by Sex at Dawn. His review is very provocative and interesting in its own right and has convinced me to put this book on my reading list.

How would you like to travel to Mars in less than ten days? For those of you who thought the fast space travel in Predestination bordered on the silly, check out the new designs for the deuterium-fusion pulse drive which will do just that.

And for the truly radical (and speculative) in physics, check out this proposal for synthesizing degenerate matter made my head hurt so good.

Culture:
Clay Shirty explains why he thinks that we are not yet tapping our ultimate resource: Cognitive Surplus.

Clarissa Thorn, professional sex educator and kink activist, talks in depth about the demonization of male sexuality.
In a paper which has implications for writers in characterization, as well as far-reaching implications for politics, psychology, and business ethics, The Harvard Business Review goes against the current cultural tide by talking about how powerlessness creates a self-perpetuating cycle of corruption and collapse.

Ethics philosopher Jonathan Harris tackles a BIG taboo Cannibalism!

Politics:
From Blake Charlton, a very good overview (and fairly dispassionate) of the different attitudes and concerns of people about Health Care Reform (explains what the policy is, talks about why people don’t like it. As someone who is marginally irritated with the law, I found this very fair and well done): click here

If, appearances to the contrary, the customer actually sets the price in a marketplace, and all this hullabaloo is about ebooks, then what is the proper price for an ebook?

Nobody knows. The market is still shaking itself out, and pricing models require some fairly complex calculus about tradeoffs (some of which Moses Siregar III covers here). J. A. Konrath is firmly advocating for the $2.99 price point, and his number seem to back up his decision. A number of newcomers are pricing their books at the rock bottom end of the market, on the very sensible assumption that, since they have no established name, they need to be an impulse buy if they’re going to sell at all. Others are pricing above the current median range of $2.99-4.50 (where over 70% of the top sellers sit, according to my research over the last few months) on the assumption that looking expensive will attract the buyer looking for material that rises above the slush, and attract that buyer well enough that any sales hit they take from the higher price will be more than made up for in the higher income that the higher prices generate.

It’s a calculated bet, and at the moment there are precious few people conducting any experiments with pricing. This leaves the field to the experimenters–and in any open marketplace, experimentation provides that most precious of commodities: information.

However, one thing all these people have in common with savvier established authors and publishers: they understand what business we’re in.

No matter how pretty or profound or affecting our prose, we’re in the entertainment business. There is art to what we do, and passion, and often a deeply held hope that what we write will connect with people and make a difference in their lives, but none of that gets past the most basic, essential piece of advice any writer ever gave to another about the business:

“Let’s not kid ourselves: We’re fighting for their beer money.” -Robert A. Heinlein

Science Fiction/Fantasy
Tor.com
Cobblestone
Heliotrope
Clarkesworld
F&SF
DailySF
The Pedestal
Analog
Chizine
Pulp Fic Press
Realms of Fantasy
Asimov’s
OSC’s Medicine
Lightspeed
Abyss&Apex
Beneath Ceaseless Skies
Grantville Gazette
Fantasy Mag
Shock Totem
Strange Horizons
Flash Fiction Online
Futurismic
Cemetery Dance
Spectra
Escape Pod

Mystery
Gumshoe Review
Alfred Hitchcock
Ellery Queen

I’m sure I’ve missed some — please chime in in the comments!

I kid you not. This is indispensable. Here’s the link again. It’s the kind of information I started ANMAP to help disseminate. Go there. Now.

Now, back to producing the next podcast (hopefully tonight) and the next Principles of Contracts article (Thursday), and prepping for a big announcement (Monday).

Since I enjoy being entertained (even while having my manuscripts torn up), I suggested something which I would be proud to hang on my wall for the sheer conversation-starting value.

So, here is my ideal rejection letter for completely hopeless writers:

Dear [writer],
Thank you for your submission. While we do not think it advisable for you to commit suicide this early in your career, your writing displays the kind of promise and angst that have made unknowns like Sylvia Plath, Anne Frank, and John Kennedy Toole into posthumous best-sellers. These writers made the crucial mistake of dying with only one or two books to take the world by storm–don’t let yourself fall into that trap!
Unfortunately, our policy only permits us to publish fiction in your genre after your scandalous death, so we encourage you to build up your backlist and contact us again when you feel you have said your piece.
Sincerely,
[editor]

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must go to the mailbox to check for today’s round of rejection slips.

What are some of the best rejections you’ve given, gotten, or heard of? Chime in in the comments!

No, I’m talking about industries and businesses that don’t yet know they’re dead. The ones whose future demise is as certain as the next big earthquake: we don’t know quite when, and we don’t know quite where, but the prospect that somebody will huff and puff and blow the house down has a probability of 1.

There’s a pretty reliable way to spot a zombie, and it’s on display everywhere in publishing right now. This summer, I’ve seen it everywhere from PW to BEA to some of the audio leaking out of WorldCon to Litopia (where it’s becoming such a regular feature that I’m beginning to think that the otherwise erudite, urbane, and thoroughly enjoyable panel have all been sniffing from the same glue barrel). It’s predictable, it’s boring, and it’s the thing that will, in the end, make publishing go the way of the music industry (hopefully not the buggy whip industry, though that’s always possible):

An entitlement mentality.

In other words, when faced with changes, the industry starts talking about “value” as if it’s something intrinsic. They talk about falling prices and lower barriers to entry “cheapening” the “reading experience.” They talk of the problem of “wading through the crap” and of falling advances, and fret about how agents and publishers and writers are going to make a living.

As a writer who’s currently pursuing multiple release avenues for his work, I’ve got a vested interest here. I want to get paid for my work, more than I get through my tip jar (though, if you do drop cash in the tip jar or buy books through my Amazon links, thank you!) or through selling tech articles. I’ve never made a secret of the fact that I’m in this game for the money: I love telling stories, and I want to make my living at it.

But, I do not deserve to make my living at it, unless I can find the people who want the stories I have to tell. All businesses, of all kinds, exist for one reason (and one reason only): because they meet a market demand.

The Real Cost of a Book

Michael Shatzkin has gone over what the margins are on differrent types of books at different pricing structures, and it gives an idea at least of what publishers report their margins as.

Michael Stackpole has also done a whole series on ebook pricing, during which he makes the point that what costs are involved in ebook production could be drastically reduced if publishers would move their operations out of New York. Not only would they be able to reduce overhead and salaries without reducing quality of life for their employees, they’d also be in a position to get out of their rather expensive mafia-controlled (not kidding) shipping contracts, and their complicity in money laundering (a plus all around, I’d think).

Suffice it to say, the marginal cost on an ebook is 10-20% less than on a mass market paperback, without factoring in returns. More units sold equals lower marginal costs, while the per-unit profit grows accordingly. And that’s without moving anyone out of New York.

So, if you’re going by costs, an ebook should cost, at lowest, around 20% less than the mass market paperback of the same book.

But, believe it or not, I don’t think this matters at all.

Literary Conceit

To explain why I think that way, I have to walk you through a bit of Econ 101.

A market is anyone willing to trade, and there are a lot of different markets out there. Writers have, for years, been marketing to publishers, not to fans. We sell, or don’t sell, according to the tastes of editors. Most editors have pretty damn good taste, others not so much, but their job is to acquire books that they can sell to their market: the people who buy books.

You see a problem built into the system already: other economic considerations aside, because only a certain kind of person has the temperament and bearing to be an editor (it is, after all, a highly political job best suited for well-educated, intelligent, personable people), the books made available to the customer will appeal to only a limited subset of the potential reading audience.

As a multi-NYT Bestseller told me a while back (and no, I’m not saying who): “Fans? I don’t give a damn about the fans. I can’t afford to. I have to keep my editor interested if I want to keep writing.”

So, in books, the consumer is not the customer, which is (to put it mildly) kind of perverse. But, just as with the music industry, digital product is changing where the power lies and putting it where it belongs: in the hands of the consumer.

The consumer is, after all, the ultimate end of the supply chain. Giving them the proximate power means that a lot of the rest of the economic model of publishing has to shift, or it won’t last. And the consumer sets the price in any market. If a consumer doesn’t buy an item because the price is restricted, it’s overpriced. If the price of an item induces so many people to buy it that it creates a supply shortage, the price is too low. All businesses, whether they realize it or not, set their prices to take advantage of a sweet spot where they get the most profit possible per unit (well, not all businesses do this. Those who are unable to find this price point or control their costs so they can live at this sweet spot go belly-up pretty damn quick).

But, of course, some writers, agents, and publishers think they’re indispensable. They are the curators and bastions of culture, after all. If it weren’t for them, we’d all be awash in the lowest form of vulgar entertainment. There’d be no place for art (this is a nearly-verbatim paraphrase of a line I heard recently on a well-respected literary talk show).

This also is a huge crock of shit. Charles Dickens and Victor Hugo were paid by the word. Poe wrote for money and was considered a hack. Shakespeare was vulgar popular entertainment. There is no qualitative difference in the recipe of art versus schlock that any of us can see now, though an entire industry (critics) exists to try to hide that basic fact. The difference between vulgar entertainment and high art isn’t the intention of the writer, the heart she puts into her story, or social consciousness. The only difference is “What are people reading a hundred years from now?”

The stuff that ages well, that stays relevant and motivates people to keep recommending it, reading it to their children, and passing it on—that’s art. That’s the stuff that’s hit something vital in the cultural soul. The rest of it is just vulgar entertainment (some of it transcendentally beautiful entertainment, some of it boring or crappy as hell—your mileage may vary).

Writers. agents, and publishers (in common with other successful businesses) also tend to believe that they deserve their position. They don’t. Markets are fickle. You deserve where you are today because you earned your way there by meeting a market demand and being relevant–you don’t deserve to stay there tomorrow unless you’re relevant tomorrow.

I don’t care if that’s not fair (and I also actually don’t like it, because it means my retirement probably isn’t ever going to happen), it’s the way life works. As Doni Kollin (whose day job is as an economics professor) said to me over a drink recently, “In business, as in evolution, the big don’t eat the small. The fast eat the slow. And the big guys are usually slow.” If you’ve grown big, you have to be more competitive, not less, because the young-and-hungry are nipping at your heels.

For a recent parallel, look at the IT world. Fifteen years ago, Microsoft ran the world, Netscape was dead, Google didn’t exist, and Apple was on the verge of bankruptcy. Now, Apple is the biggest IT firm in the world, Google runs the internet, Firefox is the most popular browser, and Microsoft no longer defines the industry. This is what happens in a normal ecosystem.

So, How Do I Spot a Zombie Again?

Zombie businesses and industries suffer under a trio of delusions:

1) They’re indispensable.

2) They set the prices.

3) They deserve their position.

Not one of these things are true.

The notion of indispensability depends on the assumption that “The way we do things today is the optimal way.” It’s almost never true. No industry—not the oil industry, not the auto industry, not the banks, not farming, and not writers—is indispensable. All of them exist because they meet a market demand. Sometimes, that market is lobbyists, governments, editors, ad executives, or the teeming masses of humanity—but if they stop meeting that demand, they stop existing. Once a business starts thinking they’re indispensable, their days are numbered.

Consumers set prices. There is no such thing as “intrinsic” value. An item is only worth what people are willing to pay for it. If you price ebooks at $15.00 a unit, as many people will pirate them as buy them. Price them at $3.00-$5.00, most people will buy, not pirate (because pirating is more trouble than buying at that price), and your aggregate profit margin will be better. Start thinking that you control your product’s price, and your sales are going to fall.

And as far as deserving one’s position? Don’t make me laugh. The more open a market gets (and by ‘open’ I’m talking transparency as well as freedom), the more meritocratic it gets. The people who succeed are those who meet the needs of their consumers. Period. You don’t meet those needs, you fade.

So, no, I don’t think it matters how much it costs to produce an ebook. It only matters that there are some people and businesses who are willing to take the risk and bear the costs in an attempt to meet a market demand, because if they meet the demand well, their marginal costs will go to near-zero.

The Real Meaning of eBooks

Economists have a term for what happens when a new player enters a market and, through innovation, changes the fundamentals of how it works: creative destruction. By making old ways of doing things obsolete, or by creating viable persistent alternatives, growth happens in a marketplace. Opportunity is created. Sometimes, the fabric of society is radically transformed. Almost always, this means that folks wedded to the old paradigm are in for a rough ride.

Now, in the publishing world, the barrier to entry is so low that thinly disguised fan fiction writers can have a shot at the market. It is, truly, turning into a slush pile out there. But that’s not a bad thing. Some of those slush writers will succeed brilliantly the same way Rodriguez and Tarantino did with independent film as outsiders. Most won’t.

Why? For the first time ever, fans matter in a measurable way. Sampling, podcasts, any one of the now 31 (and growing) genre-friendly, pro-rate paying e-magazines, and market innovations such as Stackpole’s Chain Story help customers discriminate between good and bad product. They build reputations. Reputations matter.

But there’s another, even better effect of having the barrier to entry set very low: there is room for literally thousands of new niche markets to develop. Just like what cable did to TV, just like what the internet did to music and radio, so too e-readers and smart phones and POD and open marketplaces are doing to literature: filling out the bell curve, feeding pent-up demand in sectors that were previously under-served, and providing opportunities for oddballs like me to find audiences who really want us.

Viva la Revolución!

This post has a follow-up, which you can find here.
—
Copyright 2010 J. Daniel Sawyer

Don’t delay — read for yourself the story of the woman who loved the Blues so much that, when the world ended, it was the only thing she still wanted.

Me? I think I’m going to go celebrate. Where is that Leadbelly album?

Literacy is like heroin – it’s habit-forming. The more people try out the habit, the more likely they are to retain it. Exposure to books breeds consumption of books, which is good, because the act of reading requires deliberate commitment. This is important to keep in mind, particularly for those who wish to arrest the publishing industry’s current implosion before it becomes more like the razing of Carthage than the decline of the British Empire.

Despite its pretensions to the contrary, publishing is a business. The novel, the newspaper, the short story, and the magazine were all shaped to fit market niches, not vice versa. Eventually, somewhere along the line, the people who actually produce and polish the content (i.e. the writers, editors, and publishers) have to get paid.

We writers – and the publishing companies that once made a tidy profit off our work – don’t have a divine right to exist. If there’s no market, we go away.

ARTIFICIAL SCARCITY IS A LOSING GAME

The artificial scarcity strategies that media companies have (unsuccessfully) employed to preserve their markets won’t work for books, even in theory. All DRM is laughably easy to crack or circumvent. Also much DRM strips both content creators and consumers of their rights. Readers, like music fans before them, won’t put up with that. They will pirate instead.
While publishers try to create market scarcity by fiat, writers are trying to stay alive — and readers are trying to figure out how to find the books they want. In the struggle to limit readers’ ability to read the books they pay for, publishers (like the movie and music industries before them) are cutting their own throats, because readers (unlike movie and music fans) have ALWAYS been able to go elsewhere to get what they want. It’s perfectly possible for almost anyone in the western world to read for a lifetime without ever paying a dime for the privilege. That’s been true ever since Andrew Carnegie started endowing libraries.

Therefore, the game for book publishers is different than it is for music or film publishers. People like to search favorite books for quotes. They expect to be able to excerpt passages. They prefer books that are always available. While DRM doesn’t work well for relatively disposable entertainment like pop music and movies, it doesn’t stand a chance in the world of publishing. No copy protection scheme could possibly work, and no reader will endure draconian limits placed on her for long.

LIBRARY AS PUSHER

Public libraries might be a contained threat for now – but increasingly they are going online like a monster version of Google Books. How can our culture survive that? Authors’ copyrights will be shot, our revenue streams will dry up, and the whole literary establishment of the western world will…

..Oh, wait. I’m sorry, for a moment there I thought I was a record company executive.

But seriously, what of freely available books online? If everything is on Google Books, isn’t our business model blown?

No. Google Books merely samples sections of books – a drug pusher’s trick, wonderful for whetting the reader’s appetite. Our libraries should do the same thing, and go one step further:

Let people rent online access to books.

If someone wants to read a book online — or maintain access to one for a research project, or just have an old favorite at the ready wherever there’s wifi — let him pay a dollar for a week, or $2 for two weeks, or $10 for lifetime access. Let him read it on his Kindle or his Mobi or his laptop or his iPhone. And let it remain on the library’s server accessible only with his library card account.

This approach benefits both authors and publishers by providing a new revenue stream for themselves and for libraries. It creates a new market segment without gerrymandering artificial scarcity. And it does all this without curtailing the existing rights of readers, who may still walk into a library and check out the book, or buy the book in a bookstore.

It might also boost e-book sales: creating a niche market among travelers and others who want access to a broad catalog while away from the ‘net, and who will accept draconian restrictions in exchange.

Of course, there will always be a segment of the literate market who won’t actually read. For a variety of reasons, some readers will always gravitate towards audiobooks. Well, libraries could rent out streaming audiobooks. They could even promote print books with audio samples – call it a “gateway drug” strategy.

The audio sampling method is a proven success. A number of novelists (myself included) are already cultivating new markets by giving away audiobook versions with resounding success. Scott Sigler, the front-runner in this new game, hit the NYT Bestseller list for a print book he’s also giving away online in audio form. His strategy is enough like a drug dealer’s that his fans call themselves “junkies.”

THE END OF THE BEGINNING

Saving its market won’t be enough to save book publishers — but it will help them survive long enough to fix their other massive internal operational problems. Between print-on-demand, e-books, and Google Book Search, we have the opportunity to grow- the literate market share from its current historic lows, rather than letting it continue to shrink.

If we’re going to do this we must adapt to the market rather than try to strong-arm it into standing still for us. Tom Lehrer had it right for heroin, but he could have been talking about literacy, too. Remember the less on of the Old Dope Peddler:

He gives the kids free samples
Because he knows full well
That today’s young, innocent faces
Will be tomorrow’s clientèle.

Cold Duty: Selected Readings from the Diary of a Gelusian Repairman is the tale of a stable boy who gets caught working on a steam engine, which lights off an adventure in the big city and a 100-years too early scientific and technological revolution. Steampunk memoir – and a tale very close to my heart. If you haven’t heard it yet, I hope you’ll give it a listen.