One response to the Author’s Guild regarding Macmillan v Amazon

from the Author’s Guild
The Right Battle at the Right Time
http://authorsguild.org/advocacy/articles/the-right-battle.html 
“Macmillan’s current fight with Amazon over e-book business models is a necessary one for the industry. The stakes are high, particularly for Macmillan authors. In a squabble over e-books, Amazon quickly and pre-emptively escalated matters by…” <more>

Writer’s Rainbow’s response:
This battle is necessary because paper publishers have to *prove* they’re in the service of authors and literature and, frankly, they *aren’t,* not in 2010. They’re in the service of bottom lines, from which they extract a lot of money and from which very few authors (especially new ones) can expect to make more than a pittance, if they can break into the pearly gates at all.

I take issue with this part of Macmillan’s statement:

“Without a healthy ecosystem in publishing, one in which authors and publishers are fairly compensated for their work, the quality and variety of books available to readers will inevitably suffer.”

Let’s get something straight… do the research and you’ll find that authors do NOT receive fair compensation for their work UNLESS they’re bestsellers. And who decides bestsellers? Not readers, but publishers. Books with bestseller status arrive that way not through genuine sales but through financial arrangements made before those books are even published.

Yes, it’s a scam and it’s been going on forever.

Bestselling authors comprise a very small percentage of the total authors being published, and yet the lion’s share of revenues for book authors go primarily to the bestsellers. This is because big house publishers bank of the bestsellers to keep them afloat (by investing in their shelf positioning and bestseller status). Newer authors can only get in through the gates of traditional publishing as long as their publishers have bestsellers to draw income from.

Let’s not forget: *publishers* are making a heap big more wampum on books than authors are. So really, Macmillan’s statement, in a more accurate sense, might be one that says:

“A healthy ecosystem in publishing fairly compensates publishers for their products irregardless of the quality and variety of books available.”

This is not to say that bestsellers are not diverse or of high quality; it’s to say that there are huge numbers of excellent new authors turned away from the gates because they simply aren’t a known quantity. They aren’t “branded.”

Even poorly done books, when branded effectively, can be bestsellers.

I’ve tired of publishers claiming they care about literature and books when that’s the last thing on their minds at the end of the day. Theirs is a crappy business model from the 20th century that they’re still trying to pass off as a legitimate strategy in this century. It’s been failing since the 1970s; this is not an issue of “the economy” in 2010. The industry will keep on spiraling downward until publishers start thinking of their authors as something more than toilet paper to be sold at Costco.

Though, to be honest, that scenario makes them sound shrewd… like Amazon. Which is to point out that they really aren’t all that different from Amazon, just a vulture with a different kind of pattern to their feathers.

Who’s the big loser here? Readers. They don’t even know what they’re missing.

New writers at least have a fighting alternative to this closed process with POD and Amazon etc. The stats are out there: self-publishing is actually a better money maker for new voices in 2010. You *will* make more money off your book if you go this route. And if new writers can do well in that way, using Amazon as a vehicle, then Macmillan & Co need to rethink their business model or they’ll be missing out on all that literary landscape they believe they’re somehow advocating for.

Creative solutions for the writer who doesn’t want to be yet another Voice in the Dark

Something that’s been coming up a lot with my other clients: marketing issues. These boil down as follows:

• submitting short work
• finding agents
• considering self-publication
• considering electronic publishing
• finding venues for reading
• making webpages
• building reputations through P2P (person to person) networking
• online social networking
• maximizing Twitter

Are you struggling with any of these concerns? They seem so “business-like,” and yet, as a creative person, you have the right foundation for making these things work on terms that mesh with your creative life.

I’ve co-hosted a writers’ marketing group for years and many of the things we learned as a group can be applied across disciplines.

I’m no marketing guru, per se, but I know how to find ways to balance the creativity life with the necessary work of promotion and networking yourself.

I’m a firm believer that we make or do things to communicate with the larger world; it’s an existential question as to whether it matters to be creative if nobody notices. For me, and for most of the people I’ve worked with as clients, it definitely matters that people notice; otherwise, we’re just voices in the dark.

These days, the marketing models are changing as well, and social networking is becoming a great equalizer, making it possible for people to generate platforms of followers/fans/connections that are responsive to their creative work in a way that the old corporate framework never really supported.

Do let me know if this is an area where you are challenged or want to learn more about, and give me some details of what it is that you are challenged by or what you have already done but would like to do more of. I’m happy to discuss, perhaps even to demystify or de-stigmatize, this “business-side” application of your creativity.

Taking new clients August 1.

Silent mourning: The Seattle Post-Intelligencer

RIP PI

[link]

Interesting Times for Writers of the Times [cross-posted from Jane’s Stories]

from JANE’S STORIES

Interesting Times for Writers of the Times
by Tamara Kaye Sellman

Our local-yokel newspaper, the Bainbridge Review, which appears twice a week in our community, has recently adopted a once-weekly production cycle. Meanwhile, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has gone on the block on the other side of the Puget Sound, and if they don’t sell the paper, they’ll stop production and “live” on the web. It is no longer unthinkable to imagine The New York Times going under.

This really isn’t “news,” so to speak. The decline of the newspaper as a media presence has been apparent for a good while now. Who’s to blame? Bloggers? Americans? Reporters? Editors? The economy? The president?…

More

Couplets for bloggers and book authors

Two pairs of links to share today, one pair for bloggers (and those who argue that blogging isn’t a worthwhile endeavor for serious writers), and one pair for writers considering the past, present and future of book publishing and the economic realities of being a published author.

BLOGGING
Eat Sleep Publish
“The Ultimate Guide to Newspaper Curmudgeon Talking Points” (E-BOOK)
Arguments for blogging as framed by the debate positions of newspaper journalists, by Jason Preston, Tim Windsor, Howard Owens, Kyle Geissler.

The Urban Muse
“Why Should Writers Blog?”
You can’t necessarily quantify the benefits of blogging with a paycheck, but you can benefit in other ways. Here’s how.—Susan Johnston

PUBLISHING
New York Magazine
“The End: The book business as we know it will not be living happily ever after”
Marketing a book these days is like playing a slot machine; hitting one 7 won’t get you a dime.—Boris Kachka

Whatever: John Scalzi
“Unasked-For Advice to New Writers About Money”
TKS: I’m not always fond of John Scalzi’s posts, but this advice, however edged it is with sarcasm, is spot on. Not for the faint of heart or the Pollyannas among us.