Dear Author: Romance Novel Reviews, Industry News, and Commentary

There are a few very interesting (and some long) pieces on the current publishing business model and the way that it will need to adapt and change in order to survive.

• Michael Nielson’s long post on how publishing is failing and how smart parts of publishing can reinvent itself. It’s definitely worth reading but it’s not an article that can be read and absorbed in one sitting.
• John Green talks about advances versus royalty rates. Like many a good blog post, the topic inspires many good comments.
• The Espresso Book Machine is becoming a favorite of patrons in an independent bookstore in Vermont but it’s used mostly to publish self published works.
• Chris Anderson and Malcolm Gladwell are arguing on the issue of free. Seth Godin weighs in.

From a reader at Information Week, Barnes and Noble’s eBookstore aka Fictionwise + eReader will match the prices offered at Amazon.  Now if Fictionwise could only get its act in gear and offer the books that are released this week in a timely fashion.  Hard to get excited about good prices when significant books are missing from the ebookstore.

Here is the info I got from them in their weekly email yesterday.

• All new eBooks are $9.95 or less.
• No eBook over $12.95. They aren’t moving all ebooks to $9.95 or less, only newly published ones. Cutting to $12.95 is a substantial cut for many older books though.
• All books on the New York Times Bestseller list are $9.95, whether it is new or has been there a while.
• 15% rewards on each purchase.

Via Publishers’ Weekly.

I thought this might be of interest to DA’s readership. The PC-compatible writing software, Liquid Story Binder, is on sale for 50% off today (June 30) only.

http://daily-deals.iconico.com/software/liquid-story-binder/

The Book Depository, a company that ships anywhere for no cost (I have no idea how they do this) is coming to the US. Next month, the North America specific site will launch. They plan to be competitive against US booksellers. I love the Book Depository for sending international prizes. It’s a very easy to navigate shopping site.

Perhaps Diane Pershing misread the temperature of the membership when she said that those who didn’t like what RWA is doing should leave because her comments have spurred those who do not want to leave the organization but would rather stay and change it. Others within publishing are beginning to notice.

• Bookseller picked up on the debate here.
• GalleyCat gives a “beginner’s guide” to the discussion here.
• SmartBitch Sarah explains why she loves RWA and doesn’t want to leave.
• Katiebabs gives voice to her opinion.
• Azteclady of KarenScott’s blog wonders why RWA gets to decide who is having a legitimate career in publishing and who is not.
• Kassia Kroszer notes that suppressing information about digital publishing isn’t the way to decrease disinformation among the members.
• Heather Massey points out how many authors started in epublishing.
• Don Linn questions the need to ghettoize digital publishers.

Need more information? Check out ESPAN, the electronic publishing chapter of RWA (I know, it’s totally ironic) and the growing RWA for Change yahoo group.

University presses are facing closures and lack of funding in these difficult economic times. Michael Jensen, director of strategic Web communications for the National Academies Press urged university presses to rethink publication and scholarship:

Scholarship must be “de-linked from print publication,” such that books are “the exception” and no longer the norm for disseminating new scholarship. With colleges and universities unlikely to be providing major budget increases to libraries, the reality is that within a decade “we will be unlikely to be able to sell print books to to libraries at the prices we need to charge,” adding that “it’s crazy to think we can continue to do what we have been doing.”

Following this conference, the AAUP announced a partnership with IPublishCentral to make digital publishing available to membership academic presses.

In the meantime, the University of Virginia Press and University of Pennsylvania Press partner with Ingram Digital. The Indiana University Press went online last week.

Oh look, a print publisher runs out of money, stiffs its writers, and no one is certain the outcome. Inkwell Publishing Solutions was a book assembler hired by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and others to put textbooks together. Inkwell would hire freelance writers to provide content.

Inkwell has owes about 50 freelance writers, editors, page designers, and others. Some are owed $3100 and some are owed $10,000 or more. Inkwell blames HMH for non payment.

When asked for a comment, the president of Inkwell had this to say:

Ms. Cooke, who also is the company’s president, did not think the unpaid people from her factory warranted any attention.

“What business is this of yours?” she asked. “I’m not going to say anything about any of our clients.”

Pseudononymous writing has been part of our culture for as long as the written word existed. Text by “anonymous” existed even in Ancient Greece. A detective in Britain lost a suit wherein he tried to stop a newspaper from revealing his true identity. The blogger wrote about the local police department and won a prestigious reporting prize for political writing. Since his outing, the blogger deleted his blog and was subject to a written reprimand from his superiors.

My understanding is that British and US laws are very different on this subject but I doubt that even a US blogger could get an injunction to prevent a newspaper from revealing a blogger’s identity. There have been cases which prevent ISPs from giving up identifying information, however; and there is a long history of US caselaw supporting anonymous speech.

(Thanks to Anion the Evil for bringing this to my attention).

Coming on the heels of speculation that Kindle might be  considering some kind of epub participation either by offering epubs or opening the Kindle up is the release of source code for the Kindle, Kindle 2, and the Kindle Dx.  I think this points toward Kindle opening up its platform to accept other formats (and maybe not just epub).  The source code can also lead to improvements like folders or some type of category management system that the Kindle currently lacks. (According to Courtney Milan in the comments, this is not the true developer code, only code that is released for GPL purposes)

In other Kindle news, Forner is estimating that Amazon is selling 600,000 Kindle books a week which translates, roughly, into a Kindle owner buying, on average, 1 book a week.  Times has an article about Amazon taking over publishing which is something we’ve discussed here at Dear Author.  (self pat on the back).

All articles via Teleread.org.

According to a survey of 7700 respondents, ReadingGroupGuides.com discoverd that at least half of the members are participating in online social book networks like Goodreads or Facebook and that only 15% read only paperbacks while 83% read both paperbacks and hardcovers.  The Times, Oprah, talks shows are sources of information regarding books.  72% want a way to connect to other book club readers around the country.  Via Publishers Weekly.

Marjorie Liu is releasing a special letter from the hero of Darkness Falls to his unborn daughter. The letter will be released in four parts. The first part is available for download at RomanticTimes.com; the second excerpt will be posted at www.tor.com on June 15th; the third excerpt will be posted on June 22nd at www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com; and the final installation will be on “select blogs and forums” as well as sites of major retailers.

>From the Press Release:

New York, June 15, 2009 – If you haven’t heard of author Marjorie M. Liu yet, that’s about to change.  This summer, she’s on fire with a number of major new projects: she has the new Dark Wolverine series co-written with Daniel Way, and the special NYX: No Way Home collection, both from Marvel, coming out in June.  This will be followed by the urban fantasy, Darkness Calls, on June 30 and The Fire King, a paranormal romance novel, on-sale at the end of July.

A group of elderly residents in West Bend Wisconsin have filed a suit to gain the right to burn Francesca Lia Block’s Baby Be-Bop. Baby Be-Bop is a young adult book featuring a protagonist dealing with his sexual identity. The suit also claims that the group has suffered emotional distress from being exposed to a book display at the library.

One suit filed to have the book removed has already been thrown out and this legal claim is likely to be rejected as well.

Via Guardian.

The subtext of every one of these types of posts is “If you can’t beat them, join them”. Scribd has become a haven for pirated content but given that it commands 50 million viewers per month, it has a market that is hard to ignore. Simon & Schuster is the most recent publisher to avail itself of the Scribd platform by making over 5,000 of its digital titles for perusal and ultimate sale on Scribd.

I think part of the strategy is to not only for publishers to expose themselves to Scribd’s audience but hopefully to reduce the possibility of Amazon becoming a dominating market force in digital publishing.

I linked to the Crain’s article because I thought this passage was particularly illuminating:

Ms. Pittis said that piracy is “probably pretty low in this country,” but worries about it more overseas, where millions of Scribd users live and where “there’s such a culture of piracy.” Asked to identify a book damaged commercially by piracy in another country, Pittis said she couldn’t, but added, “I don’t want a HarperCollins title to be the test case.”

Simon & Schuster’s prices are high. For example Seduce the Darkness by Gena Showalter has the …

ACE has partnered with Dabel Brothers to bring a second series of Patricia Briggs’ to the comic crowd. The Mercy Thompson series has already been adapted by Dabel Brothers (has anyone seen one?).

The Alpha and Omega series will debut in August as a four part comic series to be fully encapsulated in a graphic novel to be released in November.

California is having a terrible budget crisis.  One of the ways Governor Schwarzenegger is attempting to reduce educational will be to eliminate purchase of print textbooks and require the use of electronic textbooks.

The pilot program will be launched next August.  High school students will be provided an ebook reader to access the math and science textbooks.

Despite the fact that I am a big proponent of digital books, I don’t believe that there are devices out there that adequately meet a student’s need for learning.  There is limited interactivity with the current devices.  At best, you can highlight but annotation is difficult unless you have the very high end Iliad.

The good part of this plan is that by next August, there might be new digital readers including a tablet style netbook with a transreflective screen that mimics eink but also has the functionality of a computer.   The bad part of this plan is that we just don’t know what the future holds for digital devices.

(Thanks Susanna Kearsley for the link)

According to the book sales monitored by the Association of American Publishers (AAP), domestic sales are down 4.1% for the year but up 3.3% from last April for a total of $494.9 million.

Down

• Adult Hardcover $95.7 million (-11.0%) – YTD decline 16.2%
• Adult Paperback $114.8 (-0.8%) – YTD decline 25.7%
• Adult Massmarket $51.0 (-4.0%) – YTD decline 10.2%
• Audio Book $9.5 million (-32.9%) – YTD decline 43.6%
• Religious Books $38.7 (-7.1%) – YTD decline 9.1%
• University Press Hardcover $5.0 million (-6.3%) – YTD decline 7.5%
• University Press Paperback $2.3 million (-12.4%) – YTD decline 7.8% El-Hi (elementary/high school) basal and supplemental K-12 category $154.8 million (-23.4%) – YTD decline 16.4%

Up

• E-books $12.1 (+228.3%) – YTD increase 154.8%. March sales were the first time that ebooks were a larger share of the market than audiobooks and this was reflected in April stats as well.
• Children’s/YA Hardcover $44.6 (+13.6%) – YTD increase 35.9%
• Children’s/YA Paperback $39.9 million (+0.9%) – YTD increase 2.0%
• Professional and Scholarly $46.3 million (+1.1%) – YTD decrease 8.9 %
• Higher Education $33.5 million (312.4%) – YTD increase 42.4%

Apple introduced a new iPhone yesterday called the Apple GS (S stands for speed). The new models go on sale on June 19 for $199 at 16GB and $299 for the 32 GB. The current 3G model at 8GB will be priced at $99.

Apple’s new iPhone software (3.0) will feature in app purchases. Scroll Motion was highlighted during the keynote speech as having 50 magazines and over 1,000,000 books. Current Scroll Motion prices for books have been very high, sometimes almost 2x as high as the Kindle pricing.

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that while e textbooks are welcome by colleges and universities the hardware devices are not meeting the students’ needs for tables, illustrations, ease of use.  

The Kindle Dx, an education aimed device, is selling out.  According to Teleread.org, there is now a delay in shipping of the Kindle.  Also at Teleread.org is the news that the Kindle Dx store, full of textbooks one presumes, will go live July 1.

The Kindle could be pushed aside by cheaper, better technology that could address the concerns of the students in the first article.  The Pixel Qi is an LCD screen that has two modes: color and transreflective. The transreflective LCD is nearly eink like and uses much less power than the color LCD screens. Also, it is much cheaper to produce.  Coming soon to netbooks this fall.  

The Guardian takes to task inaccurate industry figures over piracy.  While it is unstated, the key here is that overstated piracy figures hurt the fight against piracy.  

Michael Cader, of PublishersMarketplace, takes on BISG and its methodology and number projections. If the numbers are inaccurate and the publishing industry is relying on them, …

Pirate Bay was found guilty last month of assisting piracy and sentenced to fines and incarcerated time. To combat this, Pirate Bay did not think appeal; instead they thought revolution. In elections that took place on Sunday, Pirate Party of Sweden won enough votes to secure a seat with European Parliament.

Read more at Ars Technica.

Update: The Wyndham is preparing a statement that will be posted at RT (and I’ll repost it here) that will have additional contact information.

Many (possibly hundreds) of people who attended RT convention in Orlando and stayed at the Wyndham have been the victims of credit card fraud. The hotel has launched an investigation and is asking that any victims contact them, and RT has been asked to be notified as well.
Wyndham contact information:

8001 International Dr
Orlando, FL 32819
(407) 351-2420

RT via Jo Carol:

jocarol at rtconvention dot com

This is a fascinating interview by Billboard with Hilary Rosen who was the industry head of RIAA at the time that Napster got shut down. She resigned in 2003.

The take away from the article is that digital downloads brings the consumer closer to the manufacturers of the product and that interoperability should have been an adopted standard before iTunes came along. Rosen’s response for piracy:

What’s your reaction to the recent Pirate Bay verdict?

There is a sad irony there that they get a similar verdict and they’re similarly powerless to stop the piracy. For many years, I argued to deaf voices that the industry needed to do some public education campaign about music appreciation. That there wasn’t enough sense that music had value, that it mattered. The record companies themselves weren’t used to being companies that were answerable to the public. Chalk it up to the old flavor of rock and roll, which is “against the man.” Since artists were always against the man, and record labels always represented the man, it didn’t matter that they were giving the artist millions of dollars in advances, they were still the bad guy. Essentially, fans adopted that

…

Pennsylvania Senate voted to approve a 50% cut in library funding. If you live in Pennsylvania you might want to check out this article at DailyKos that gives you information on how to reach your representatives.

One of the Egyptian reporters today said that the biggest danger in the larger world is ignorance and that education can reduce ignorance which can, in turn, reduce violence. Libraries are an important part in the fight against ignorance.

As an avid reader, my eyesight is one of my most precious assets. In the “what limb would you give up first” game, the eyes are the last to go so any cure or treatment for blindness is always welcomed with great relief. Earlier this year, there were reports that stem cell research had developed a cure for macular degeneration. Now comes the news that contact lenses cultured with stem cells are curing blindness. What a miraculous breakthrough this is.

All three patients were blind in one eye. The researchers extracted stem cells from their working eyes, cultured them in contact lenses for 10 days, and gave them to the patients. Within 10 to 14 days of use, the stem cells began recolonizing and repairing the cornea.

Via Gizmodo.

An anonymous author, JD California, sold his manuscript to Nicotext, a Swedish publisher who owns UK-based Windupbird Publishing. 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye is billed as an unauthorized sequel to “Catcher in the Rye.” It’s written in the same style and features the same main character: Holden Caulfield.

JD Salinger has not published since 1965 (and has no need to do so as Catcher in the Rye sells hundreds of thousands of copies per year). On Monday Salinger filed papers enjoining the publication and sale of the Coming Through the Rye. It will be interesting to see what the courts will say as to whether this derivative work is creative enough to be a fair use or whether its infringement.

David Eddings, fantasy author, has passed away at the age of 77.

Eddings is best known for The Belgariad series, the first installment of which, The Pawn of Prophecy (1982), prompted Lester del Rey to tell him, “You’ve written a classic.” The series introduced many to fantasy, and inspired some to write themselves (including Stephen Hunt, whose tribute to Eddings is here). Eddings was himself inspired by the success of The Lord of the Rings, which he was startled to discover was in its 78th printing when he encountered a display copy in a bookstore.