Alice’s Pop-up Theatre Book, illustrations by Alex Vining, paper engineering by Nick Denchfield. Tenniel pictures on the cover. Text adapted from the original.

Published by Ted Smart/ Macmillan Children’s Books, 2002. First edition hardback pop-up book. Damaged, but repearable.

ISBN: 0333961374

This book contains a pop-up theatre with a book of six pop-up scenes from Alice. The characters are moved about the stage on sticks, like the old penny plain, tuppence coloured Pollocks theatres. But, to be honest, it’s not as beautiful, despite being tied up with a neat little ribbon.

Amazon: Alice’s Pop-up Theatre Book

As of January 1, the children’s companies that are part of the Macmillan Kids’ group are no longer accepting unsolicited submissions. Materials will not be read or returned.

The companies that will no longer be accepting unsolicited submissions are:

Henry Holt and Company Books for Young Readers
Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers
Roaring Brook Press
First Second
Feiwel and Friends

This includes query letters. If you already work with one of these, your work isn’t considered unsolicited, so no change there. And if editors speak at conferences and invite attendees to send submissions to that editor, those are considered solicited manuscripts and will be read and handled as usual.

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 Amazon blinked this morning. 

Amazon pulled Macmillan — e-books and paper–because Macmillan smelled blood in the water and circled in for a bite at more profit. Macmillan stood its ground. As of this morning, Amazon is selling Macmillan titles once again.

Anyone under the impression that publishing is a game for ladies and gentlemen with high artistic ambitions is invited for a swim in the shark tank.

Until two weeks ago, the only serious game in town for electronic distribution was Amazon’s Kindle. With the announcement that Apple and its iPad hadcast an eye on Amazon’s lunch, Macmillan stirred, smiled its biggest teeth, and asked, “Who is your Daddy?”

Amazon had set a price designed to push the Kindle into the market, creating a de facto monopoly. At ten bucks per Kindle title, a lot of readers were excited, publishers were thinking about moving to smaller quarters and writer—always at the bottom of the food chain—were asking their spouses to remind them exactly why they had just spent three years writing that book. Amazon was selling their work for less than it costs a family of four to dine at Mickey D’s.

Writers still need publishers, but it’s hard for this writer to be terribly sympathetic to the publisher’s despair at e-books. Those of us born prior to last week recollect when the publishing world boasted dozens of publishing houses (nearly all in Manhattan between Gramercy Park and 59^th Street). But globalization has consolidated publishing in the US to a meager five corporations. Sorry, Bunky, you may think you see dozens of imprints on the spines of books, but 90 percent of all books are published by only a very few companies.

They are:

• Hachette Book Group (owned by French company Hachette Livre)
• HarperCollins
• Macmillan
• Penguin Group
• Random House (subsidiary of media conglomerate, Bertelsmann)
• Simon & Schuster

(with thanks to  John Brown)

 This is one sorry-ass state of affairs. Are you looking for book-people?

HarperCollins belongs to Rupert Murdoch— “nuff said.

S&S, wirh 20+ imprints (remember Atheneum? Pocket Books? Scribner?) is a subsidiary of National Amusements, a privately held company whose most lucrative assets are movie theaters.

The Penguin Group is really part of Pearson; if you want to know what a “group” looks like, take a peek at this Wikipedia page—go ahead, we won’t tell your teacher.

Bertelsmann, the book behemoth, is converting dollars to deutschemarks with titles from Knopf, Anchor, Doubleday, Dial Press and Modern Library, all companies once headquartered on the Eastside in the 50s (that’s how New Yorkers locate themselves).   

Meanwhile, on the Internet, small presses grow like kudzu.

Izzat the future?

Watch this space.

Alice’s Pop-up Wonderland.

Published by Ted Smart: Macmillan Childrens Books, 2000.

Illustrations by Tenniel and Alex Vining. Laminated pictorial covers.

There are six pop-up scenes and a heavily abridged text. The covers can be tied open with the attached ribbon to make a 360 degree scene, and a central pop-up also doubles as “the queen’s croquet game”.

ISBN: 0333901134

Mine is a very tatty copy, with some bits missing, but it was 79p in Oxfam, so I can’t complain.

Amazon: Alice’s Pop-up Wonderland

My two latest books, A Shadow in the Dark and Living It Up to Live It Down, came out in late October and have never had the advantage of being sold on Amazon. In fact, Amazon posted inaccurate information about the books (giving the wrong release dates for the book, saying they’re out of print, saying they’re hardcover when they’re actually paperbacks, and listing reading levels as 9 to 12 when the books are aimed at middle schoolers), and despite repeated requests from me to correct this information, they’ve refused. They won’t even post the cover images of the books, and the buy buttons are turned off.

Why?

Amazon has been requiring small publishers to provide books at steep discounts. One small publisher told me they require her to provide her books at a 65 percent discount. She is making no money on the books, but when Amazon accounts for 75 percent of the books sold out there, she can’t walk away from them either.

Royal Fireworks Press, the small publisher for my latest two books, did walk away. Amazon required the publisher to sell the books at a steep discount. At the end of the year, Amazon would return unsold books at the publisher’s expense. At the start of the new year, Amazon would request the same books back again. Royal Fireworks Press found themselves paying to ship books back and forth while losing money on any books sold at discount. The publisher stopped providing books to Amazon, and Amazon turned off the buy buttons for their books. 

I’ve seen similar pricing strategies and business practices used on the larger publishers of my books also. Most authors can buy their books at a 40 percent discount (plus the cost of shipping) to resell on their own. But new copies of my picture book appeared on Amazon at a 70 percent discount. Amazon customers could buy my books much cheaper than I could from my publisher.  In fact, independent bookstore owners have told me that they can buy books cheaper from Amazon than from their distributors. Where is an author’s royalty in all of this?

If you’ve followed publishing news lately, you’ve undoubtedly heard that Amazon ran into trouble trying to use similar high-discount pricing strategies with big publishers. Macmillan refused to sell e-books at the $9.99 ceiling Amazon set. Now Hachette and HarperCollins have joined in:

http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/bookselling/authors_guild_defends_macmillan_in_amazon_price_fight_150730.asp

I can understand Amazon’s desire to compete with Wal-Mart.com, but most books have a slim profit margin to begin with. It doesn’t cost as much to produce an e-book, but when the sale of those e-books cuts into the sales of hardcovers and paperbacks . . .  Well, even big-name publishers can withstand only so deep a discount. Macmillan said no to Amazon, and Amazon turned off the buy buttons for their books.

I’m hoping the big publishers win this war with Amazon, and that Amazon treats smaller publishers better too. I’d like to see the buy buttons turned on for my books. The books are not out of print. They’re available directly from Royal Fireworks Press at http://rfwp.com/series96.htm.

They’re great books! And without Amazon offering them, they’re never going to get any cheaper, so you might as well buy them when they’re new.

I’ve spent hours reading about the e-book pricing battle between Amazon and MacMillan. I’ve wondered if I should simply bypass looking for an agent someday and publish my book on Kindle. Can I do the same for the I-Pad?  Or, should I set myself up as a small publisher on Amazon Advantage? I could round up all my aspiring writer friends and we could publish under our own label, use Facebook and Twitter to get the word out about us. Why not? Meanwhile, my book sat. I didn’t write many new words for a couple of days.

So, it’s back to my core business — writing. I need to figure out how to develop more characters in my memoir to avoid boring my readers to death with words only about yours truly. THEN and only then can I focus on the publishing industry.

Apple may have stepped on Amazon’s turf when Steve Jobs announced the iBookstore for the iPad, but Amazon was immediately, and pre-emptively, on the offensive. In response, Amazon announced that the Kindle will be open for apps. Sure, the idea has been in development for a while, but the timing of the announcement (the official press release went out just a week before the iPad was unveiled) was what made it important.

Now Amazon has taken it further by purchasing Touchco, a company that makes flexible touchscreens. With this touchscreen, expect to see color, because Amazon will make sure that, with the iPad shipping in March and April, the Kindle is ready to do combat.

However, all these changes raise a point I’ve made before: E-readers are becoming obsolete. The way they are now e-readers won’t be able to compete with the iPad. These changes Amazon is making to the Kindle, the touchscreen, the apps and who knows what’s next (MP3 player?) are making the device less an e-reader and more a tablet. Soon there will be no such thing as a device used solely for reading e-books. And why should there be? That’s a one-trick pony in an industry that values gadgets with multiple functions.

Another shake up for Amazon following the iPad’s announcement has been the price of e-books. Publishers, now that Jobs announced books around $12.99-$14.99, are clamoring for Amazon to also increase prices. MacMillan was the first to successfully get book prices increased and Rupert Murdoch with HarperCollins followed suit. Two days ago, Hachette Book Group entered the fray. With two publishing companies left, Penguin and Simon & Schuster, it is looking more likely that Amazon will have to match Apple’s prices.

The BUY buttons for Macmillan hardcover and softcover books began to reappear on Amazon over the weekend.  Their e-books remain conspicuously missing.  It is unknown at this point whether Macmillan had to make any concessions in their ongoing e-book pricing battle with Amazon in order to have the buttons restored.  In a statement on the company’s website, Macmillan CEO John Sargent said,  ”Many of you are wondering what has taken so long for Amazon and Macmillan to reach a conclusion. I want to assure you that Amazon has been working very, very hard and always in good faith to find a way forward with us. Though we do not always agree, I remain full of admiration and respect for them. Both of us look forward to being back in business as usual.”  Though the statement gave no timeline, it expressed optimism that all Macmillan products (presumably including e-books) would be available again on Amazon in the very near future.

This time last week I rattled off the world’s laziest column. I was struggling against my book deadline which expired 24 hours later and I simply didn’t have time to write anything else. This week should have been different; I should have finished the book days ago and now be sitting on a beach in the Caribbean, sipping a Diet Coke martini and lazily writing a long, well-thought-out column about some vital issue of the day. Why it’s inadvisable to write a mea culpa in the passive voice (otherwise it’s just a ‘culpa’). Something like that.

And yet, and yet – the fact that, seven days later, I’m still sitting at my desk and I still haven’t delivered the manuscript to my publisher, should give a hint to how perilous things are right now. I’m Wile E. Coyote about five seconds after he looks down and realises he’s overshot the cliff. And yet despite my urge to sack off this week’s column and focus on lessening the size of crater I’m about to leave in the desert floor, there’s something on which I can’t remain silent on any longer. Four words which I’ve been seeing again and again all week, and which threaten to drive me mad…

“A victory for authors.”

That’s how some people are describing Amazon’s capitulation to Macmillan over the pricing of ebooks. They say it in the same tone as people describe more expensive milk as “a victory for farmers” or subsidies for domestic cars as “a victory for American auto workers”, which is to say the same tone as you might use to pity a cat with three legs.

Poor authors, after all, need all the help they can get. They work for years on their Great Novel, probably subsisting on stale cheese and rats’ milk as they do so, and what thanks do they get? A measly royalty, chipped away at by heavy discounting in book stores. Thank God then for Macmillan taking a stand against Amazon and its aggressive discounting. And thank Jesus for all of the other publishers bravely following them.

Oh please.

First a few facts, in the form of a disclosure statement. I am an author. Before that I was a publisher. Although my publisher is now Hachette, I’ve been published in the past by Macmillan, both in the UK and the US. Macmillan were a partner of the publishing house I co-founded, and were responsible for distributing all of our titles. Richard Charkin, the former CEO of Macmillan, was an advisor. I like Macmillan. I feel, then, somewhat qualified to call bullshit on the claim that this deal is good for anyone – including Macmillan and especially including authors.

Much like the monarchy, Macmillan started life in Britain even though it’s now controlled by Germans. Its British roots go to the very heart of their negotiations with Amazon. In America, books have always been available at a discount – with book stores relatively free to set prices as they wished. Of course, publishers still choose their wholesale price, but there’s nothing to stop, say, Borders from heavily discounting bestsellers to get people through the door. Publishers didn’t necessarily like this as it led to booksellers demanding more aggressive discounting (sometimes more than 60% off the cover price), but they didn’t have much of a choice but to accept. The fact is that publishers couldn’t justify opening up their own stores, so if they wanted readers to be able to actually read their books, they had to keep bookstores happy.

But that’s not how things used to work in the UK.

In the UK, way back in 1900, publishers corralled retailers into the Net Book Agreement (NBA); an agreement between British publishers and booksellers that books would be sold at the price specified on the cover. If a bookseller offered so much as a penny discount, then the publisher would simply withdraw all of their books from that bookseller and encourage other publishers to do the same. The arrangement suited everyone; book shops were the only place to buy new books and the NBA meant they didn’t have to worry about rivals undercutting them; this particularly benefited independent bookshops. For their part, publishers knew exactly how much they’d be getting for each title and authors knew how much of that would form their royalty.

It took until the late 90s for the Restrictive Practices Court to declare that the Net Book Agreement was anti-competitive and should be scrapped. Shortly afterwards, Borders entered the UK market, hundreds of UK independent bookshops went bankrupt and publishers decided to change their contracts with authors. Now, instead of being based on the cover price of a book, the author’s royalty would be based on ‘net receipts’, which is to say the price that publishers actually received from bookshops.

Since 1997, that’s how things have stayed. Authors learned to adjust pretty quickly, especially as fewer than 20% of titles actually ever earn back their advance and start paying royalties. But publishers have remained annoyed. Deep discounting cuts directly into their profits. There was one area, though, where publishers could still make a killing on every sale: hardback books. The fact is that printing a hardback book, as opposed to a paperback, costs a matter of pennies more. But there is a perception amongst book buyers that they are far more expensive, a perception that it has been in no one’s interest to correct as it allows them to be sold for twice the price of paperbacks. Even with booksellers demanding deep discounts, the publishers still make a ton of profit on each hardback sale. By releasing the hardback book months before the paperback, publishers can subsidise a huge amount of their business from hardback sales, while booksellers can still discount highly to get people through the door.

And then along came the Kindle and everything went to hell.

Before e-readers, publishers didn’t care about ebooks. You could tell this by the fact that they gave authors really generous royalties on their electronic sales. It was an easy item to appear generous over – so they could fuck you on the paperback royalty. No one read books on their computer so it was no huge loss. For the same reason, publishers were happy to release ebooks at the same time as hardbacks – it wasn’t like the sales of the former were cannibalizing the latter.

But now, with ebook sales soaring, and with the iPad looking to make them soar even higher, publishers are panicking. Thanks in part to deep ebook discounting by Amazon, but also because the same people who can afford hardback books are the same people who can afford e-readers, people are starting to buy ebooks where they once bought hardbacks. The only cash-cow remaining in publishing is disappearing, like CD sales for music, and DVD sales for movies.

The publishers’ answer to this? A de facto return to the Net Book Agreement, for the whole world. Publishers don’t need booksellers as much as they used to. If an ebook isn’t available from one place – Amazon, say – it will be from somewhere that’s just a click away. Amazon on the other hand, can’t sell Kindles if a huge chunk of popular books aren’t available on it. Furthermore, thanks to the ease of distributing an ebook directly to the customer, there’s nothing stopping a publisher – or group of publishers – from creating their own store. Most sell ebooks directly online already. The balance of power has swung back to publishers, and they’re making the most of it, especially when then know they can play Amazon off against Apple.

For the first time in the UK since 1997, and ever in the US, publishers are able to set – and enforce- their own prices on ebooks. And they will; not to make a fair return on ebooks but rather to cripple their sales in order to protect early hardback book sales. They’ve admitted as much themselves, saying that prices will start high on hardback release, before dropping steadily over time.

The idea that this benefits anyone, least of all authors, is laughable. Every day, thousands more book lovers move to ebooks. These are people who devour books, and who are attracted by the convenience of getting new releases delivered instantly. Yes, there’s a chance that they’ll keep buying hardback books if ebooks go up in price. But now they’ve already invested in ereaders so there’s even more of a chance that they’ll simply turn to piracy to get their fix. It’s like if record labels had tried to encourage people to keep buying CDs by raising the price of mp3 downloads (or slapping restrictive DRM on them). All that would likely have done is drive even more people to Limewire.

Piracy isn’t an industry-killing problem for publishers yet, and if they can keep prices low enough and delivery mechanisms convenient enough, it could even stay that way. Macmillan’s attempt to bring back the NBA though, while it might result in a few more hardback sales in the short term, can only end in disaster for everyone concerned.

As an author, I don’t see a pricing strategy that encourages piracy as a victory. I see it as a backwards-looking quick fix that will do far more long-term harm than short-term good.

Youa culpa, Macmillan.

Macmillan printed books and eBooks began to return to Amazon last night following a dispute over Amazon’s $9.99 eBook pricing scheme. Under the agreement, publishers can now raise prices to up to $14.99.

Macmillan, which was later joined by fellow publisher Hachette, requested the price increases over fears that Amazon would undercut its hardcover sales.

“In the Blogosphere” is a weekly series, which lists links to writing-related blogs I’ve stumbled upon throughout a given week.  Most posts will be from that week, but if I find some “oldies but goodies,” I’ll throw those up here as well.

I never find as much time to read blogs as I want, but here are a few posts that struck me this week.

THE CRAFT

A fellow Northeast Ohioan gives some advice on constructing scenes in her Writers & Teachers blog.

In this post, YA writer and ferret aficionado Jodi Meadows talks about how to challenge characters on her (W)ords and (W)ardances blog.

IN THE NEWS

This week, Amazon and Macmillan duked it out.  Curtis Brown Ltd. literary agent Nathan Bransford did a great job of summing up the whole mess here.

LITERARY AGENTS

The Query Shark herself, FinePrint Literary’s Janet Reid, discloses a common agent pet peeve.  As well, over at the Guide to Literary Agents blog, two guest bloggers, Donna Gambale and Frankie Diane Mallis, share Reid’s tips from the Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group workshop on keeping your queries to 250 words or less.

At her Rants & Ramblings blog, WordServe Literary’s Rachelle Gardner outlines the top 10 query mistakes she sees.

And, amidst an industry where all we hear about is how tough times are and how impossible it is to make it, Nathan Bransford gives us a glimmer of hope by reminding us it’s a great time to be an author.

SOCIAL NETWORKING

Daniel Scocco of Daily Blog Tips weighs in on whether or not inviting guest bloggers helps or hurts your readership.

Last but not least, DailyLit’s Maggie Hilliard creates a new adage out of an old one.

Stop reading & take me for a walk!

It’s Saturday. I’m snowed in. The perfect time to give my opinion on the  Amazon / Macmillan showdown – as a mostly disinterested party.  How so?  Well, I’m not an author, not a publisher, not an Amazon or Apple exec, and have no relationship with any of the above other than through reading.  I do own a Kindle – but would be just as happy with a Nook, Sony or iPad, if it met my requirements.

(Disclaimer: some of this is recycled from comments I’ve already posted on forums at Bookninja, Biblibio & Fighting Monsters with Rubber Swords).

A quick rundown of events so far…

1/27/2010 – Apple launches iPad, which everyone mistakenly hails as Apple’s long awaited entry into the e-book reader market (more on that later).

Date unknown – Macmillan informs Amazon that the $9.99 price structure is no longer acceptable and dictates new terms based on those that 5 of the “Big 6″ publishers set with Apple’s iBookstore.

1/30/2010 – Amazon stops selling Macmillan titles from Amazon.com.  They are still available on the site through 3rd party sellers.

1/30/2010 – Macmillan sends out a letter rallying the troops

1/31/2010 – Amazon responds with this (frankly, embarrassing) post on its Kindle forums – basically amounting to a “blink”.

2/4/2010 – Macmillan takes out ads in the NY Times (which are kinda funny).

2/6/2010 -  Amazon finally concedes and resumes selling Macmillan books on Amazon.com. Here’s another link, just cuz I love the NY Times.

2/6/2010 – Amazon is universally mocked (ok, so this link is actually from 2/1, but it pretty much summarizes the gist of what’s been going around).

_____________________________

First, I find it surprising that no one is talking about the fact that the Amazon $9.99 model is based on the iPod 99-cent model originated by Apple. Or that $9.99 is not a pricing structure that exclusively benefits the Kindle.  (A quick peek on the Nook store shows e-book editions also priced at $9.99).  Which leads me to conclude that the whole point of this “loss leader” is not just to establish Amazon market dominance – it’s to clearly establish the benefit in the cost/benefit  analysis consumers go through when deciding whether or not to shell out the money for an e-reader.  E-books need to be cheaper than paper books. It’s how Apple was able to convince the world to switch from CD’s to iTunes.

The other connection no one seems to be making is that Apple doesn’t care how much they have to charge for e-books.  Why?   Bullet time!

• Apple already has a large share in digital media market.  In fact, losing the $9.99 price point will hurt other e-readers much more than having it would help the iPad.  Why?  Glad you asked….

• iPad sales are not dependent on it being sold as an e-book reader, so what do they care?  The iPad is NOT an e-book reader.  Let me repeat – the iPad is not an e-book reader.  It’s just a really big iTouch (no digital ink folks, you might as well be reading off your computer).   And did everyone forget that 2 years ago at about this time, when asked about the Kindle, Steve Jobs made the following statement:
  

  “It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore. Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.”

Ultimately,  I don’t think Amazon is being any more ridiculous (or sinister) in wanting to charge $9.99 for e-books than Apple was with it’s 99-cent iTunes pricing. I don’t think publishers are embracing technology.  I don’t think that  Apple really gives a damn about the e-book market, because according to Jobs publishing is already an industry on the wane.   And while I love the convenience of my e-reader – I don’t want to pay $15.99 for digital content that is usable on only one platform, that I can’t re-sell or lend to friends.  Especially when I can buy the physical book, which allows that, for the same amount or less.

(But what about the publishers’ costs, you ask?  I’m still a bit fuzzy on that.  A quick look at B&N reveals that I can buy James Patterson’s new release in hardcover for $16.79 and a paperback copy of The Book Thief, a NY Times Bestseller, for $8.63 – AND have both shipped to me for free.  How is that possible, and profitable, if they’re losing money on a $9.99 e-book?  If someone can explain that, please leave a comment below).

With the release of the iPad Macmillan saw an opportunity to push.  Amazon tried to push back.  Ultimately Apple, book publishers and Amazon are all just doing what businesses do – protecting their pocket of the market.  I do not fault them for it.  Just like the music industry a decade ago, the publishing industry is in flux. Everyone is adjusting.  But we knew this was coming, so why is everyone suddenly acting disingenuous?

Well, it looks like as of yesterday, Amazon has restored the “buy” buttons for books published by Macmillan.  During the past week, Macmillan has been negotiating terms with Amazon. Apparently they have reached an agreement. We don’t know the details. Two days ago, Macmillan CEO John Sargeant said: “Amazon has been working very, very hard and always in good faith to find a way forward with us.” Good faith, huh!  I’m not sure that pulling a publisher’s books from the digital book shelf  during negotiations is indicative of bargaining in good faith. It certainly showed no good faith to the Macmillan authors whose books were unavailable for a week and to the readers seeking those books.  As more major publishers revise their terms for e-books, it will be interesting to see whether Amazon will stop selling those titles while negotiating in “good faith”.

This entire affair has highlighted some very important issues that go well beyond the squabbling over crumbs by  two large corporations.  You can read some of the comments on this blog and others. What are the dangers of  monopolistic concentration  in the distribution of ideas? How important are e-books in the literary future? How do commercial values conflict with literary values? What is the role  of the community book store as books turn to digital? How will authors be fairly compensated for their work under the new e-book business model? What provides the better reading experience: e-books or paper books? Are the major publishers dinosaurs? How much is a book worth?

And then there is this  notion that “information wants to be free”. We have discussed this in a previous blog entry about the book, Free by Chris Anderson.

 Amazon was playing to the house throughout this affair by implying that they were trying to protect consumers by offering e-books at a good (i.e. loss leader) price. Amazon fans made their opinions known with numerous comments that books weren’t even worth $9.95.

Humorist Roy Blount Junior, who is president of the Authors Guild,

 made a brilliant and witty statement about this curious notion in the Authors Guild winter newsletter. I’ll quote it here:

“Then of course there is the school of thought that books shouldn’t cost anything, because “information wants to be free.” One thing wrong with that notion is that just as a pie is more than its ingredients (and does anyone other than a child living at home expect pie, or even pie ingredients, to be free?), a book is more than information. It’s someone’s –several people’s—work.

“Another thing wrong with “information wants to be free” is that it is espoused, it’s my impression, by three categories of people:

“One: People who are paid by universities to teach occasional seminars and write books that not many people would want to buy anyway if they could help it. To send one’s child to one of these universities costs (say) an author maybe $50,000 a year. How about College wants to be free?

“Two: People who have invented a high-tech gimmick that has enabled them not to need any more money the rest of their lives. How about High-tech gimmicks want to be free?

“Three: People who live at home with their parents.”

Good for you, Roy Blount! Once again the best weapon against bombast is ridicule.

Great post on TechCrunch that talks about the Amazon vs Publishers vs Apple war.

What a week in the publishing world! Like most people with an interest in writing and publishing, I’ve been following the ongoing Amazon vs. Macmillan situation. (Kristin Nelson does a nice job of summarizing the situation here with an update here). I feel so sorry for the affected authors. I can only imagine what it feels like to put so much into creating a book, and then have it end up as potential collateral damage in this battle over principles.

My muse seems to be unaffected by these skirmishes, however, since new book ideas continue to come fast and furious. Last Sunday, out of nowhere, I got this two-word phrase in my head. And I just knew – that’s it! There’s a book in that. For the rest of the day I kicked ideas around in my head, and on Monday I did an infodump into my Alphasmart while meinem kind was in school. Got 1000 words down in just under an hour, but I didn’t have any opportunity for the rest of the week to try to write.

Once I have my initial infodump of whatever I already know about my main character, and any situations or dialogue that were part of my initial inspiration, I can’t write any more until I have an idea of where the story is going, and how it’s going to get there.

However, one thing I realised after my infodump was that this story was going to be Middle Grade. Middle Grade fiction is new for me – all my previous ideas were in the Young Adult or Adult genres. So, although I didn’t have the quiet (or the plot direction) that I needed in order to write this week, I spent quite a bit of time researching the genre.

This afternoon I sat down with pen and paper and started doing my little free-association exercise. I ask myself a series of questions about the character and the plot: the what and who and when and why questions. Then I write down the first thing that pops into my head. The very first question that I answered while doing this exercise gave me the premise for the book. I knew what was happening to my main character, and why. I knew who the other characters in the book are (although a few still need names). And I knew several of the things that are going to happen along the way. Now I could begin to write again.

Later, after I got meinem kind into bed, I got out my alphasmart and started typing in all of the ideas that I had put down with pen and paper earlier. In the process of doing that, some of the sketchy descriptions of situations turned into dialogue and full blown scenes. After about 2 hours I had another 2200 words and some of the other characters were coming to life (one in particular). Once I stopped typing, I scratched out a few more things with the pen and paper, and then it came to me: the ending of the book! Woohoo! Have roadmap, will travel.

My ballpark wordcount for this is 40k, so I am well on my way. In my ideal world, I’d like to have a rough draft ready for mid-March when my friend comes to visit from the US. Not sure if that will be achievable but I’m going to shoot for that and see how far I get.

Alright, I’ve had some fun today chatting with some new industry friends over my earlier post on John Sargent

I thought I would continue the fun with this video and poll:

Last week, Amazon.com and publishers started going head to head with the business model that Amazon.com has set up for their Kindle eBook store. With the recent release of the Apple iPad, new alternatives have been opened for publishers. With it, there has been a flood of problems and statements from all edges of public opinion about not just the power that Amazon.com seems to be able to field, but also to the very nature of the place of e-books.

The background of the story lies with Amazon’s preference for a lower price for an e-book on their Kindle device. Typically starting at $9.99, one of the major publishers, Macmillan, went to Amazon with new proposals for how to sell their books. From how I understand it, it would introduce a graduated pricing system, starting their new books at $15.99 and gradually dropping the price as demand falls away. This is something that’s already pretty well established in the book industry, with hardcovers of the really big books starting off at $25 to $30, before dropping down to trade paperbacks (Around $15 each) going to or going directly to mass market paperbacks, generally around $7.99 each. There’s a new, taller book (I’m not sure what it is called) that typically runs around $9.99 per copy.

A big part of the issue is that profits that go to the publisher, and eventually, the author, have been cut into, as it is a cheaper way to distribute the book. This made a lot of sense for Amazon.com, because after purchasing a multiple hundred dollar device, because it helps the more economically minded consumers actually use the device. While it’s just a little more than the mass-market paperback, buying a new release book that would normally be $30, for something between $9.99 and $15.99, makes a lot of sense, especially for the consumers who really matter – the ones who buy hundreds of books a year.

This makes good for the consumer, for sure, but it does impact other elements down the publishing line, and indeed, the bookselling line. Pundits, for years, have been predicting the demise of brick and mortar bookstores with the introduction of online bookstores such as Amazon.com, and with the slowly growing rise of e-books and the Kindle, it’s coming back, and for good reason: bookstores are getting hurt by this new competition. I recently was laid off from Borders when they closed down 200 of their smaller stores in order to consolidate to their larger ones. While there are other issues at stake there, it is clear that people buy far more off of the internet than from in a store. When given a chance, I’ll do the same thing – I can pick up other books cheaper from Amazon’s used bookstore, but also from used bookstores around the area.

This is all part of a larger consumer culture that seems to be pushed along by giants such as Amazon.com, Walmart, Home Depot and other stores: consumers want to pay the lowest possible price for what they want. Bigger stores can make that happen, and we’ve been conditioned to respond to that sort of thing. One of the problems, however, is in how the consumer values the product that they’re intending on buying, and how much the creator, whether it’s a publisher or manufacturer, and there’s a growing gap that’s pushed forward by these larger stores. It’s good for the consumer and good for these stores in particular, but it’s not good for the manufacturer of whatever good you’re trying to buy.

I’m not sure that that is a good thing, because eventually, the manufacturer’s ability to produce will have to be decreased due to lack of profits. In the publishing industry, forcing a publisher to take a smaller cut for their books means that less money could make it to the author, who will either need to sell more books or negotiate a better deal with their publisher. This is even more of a problem when stores, such as Amazon.com sell a majority of your books, and where your entire publishing company has been taken off, as is the case with Macmillan.

I think part of the issue is addressing just how much a publisher should value their e-books, and making customer expectations meet that. Books have a lot that go into them, from editing, layout, marketing and so on, and in a consumer culture where expectations towards lower and lower prices are pushed as well, that particular detail is going to be lost. It would seem that the publishing industry has reached a level where they don’t want to move any further.

How exactly does one value an e-book? I can say with certainty, that I will typically go with the price on the back of the book for a majority of the books that I purchase in a year. I try to find something with a discount, and made use of my employee discount, but once purchased, I know that the book was mine. When it comes to e-books, there are a whole lot of other options, especially with Amazon.com, which essentially sells you a license for the book, which can be revoked at any point. (This happened, somewhat ironically, with the book 1984, recently). This is the same with music and software, and has been around for a while, so I’m not sure why everyone is raising a fuss about it now. Thus, people purchase a product that they cannot transfer or resell as they could the physical product. Even if it is cheaper, I think that even $9.99 isn’t a good value for the consumer, as opposed to my feeling that $25 is a very good value for a physical book in some instances.

Who’s at fault for this? Well, everybody has blamed everybody. The publishers have been blamed for distrupting Amazon’s plans, the consumers have been blamed for wanting low prices, the publishers for demanding too much, and the authors have been blamed for whining and complaining about this. This has always been an issue with business, because there are numerous people who get different cuts, and everybody wants a larger piece of the pie. Personally, I think that the publishers are well within their rights to set the books at whatever price they want – how they value their product – because they are primarily in charge of the creation. Amazon has just enough leverage to force their own prices on the publishers because they account for large portions of the sales. Authors, I think are largely blameless in this, because they simply have no control over how these books are sold, marketed and edited. Consumers, I think, need to have a more realistic value in their heads for what they buy.

The bottom line that I see here is that this row isn’t the end, but in this instance, it’s not unreasonable for a graduated pricing system, as publishers want. While Amazon.com is looking to entice people to their Kindle, I think that there is sufficient momentum on their part for moving people to digital formats. People aren’t necessarily going to be scared away by higher ebook prices, because these higher prices will still be better than the alternatives. Just as casual readers will wait for a year for their favorite author’s book to come out in paperback, the buyers who really matters, the repeat customers who buy a larger volume of books will buy the books as they come out, generally at the regular price, or at the sales price that drops that just a bit. Unfortunately, as Amazon.com has moved to punish a publisher, the authors have been caught as collateral damage.

This, more than ever, just reinforces my desire for a hardcopy book, rather than an e-book. The tactile crap that a lot of people go on about just doesn’t figure into it. When I buy a book at a bookstore, that is my property, not just a piece of data that can be revoked by a company as it sees fit, and I can sell it and return my losses as I need. Plus, I don’t need to worry about a battery for any of the books that I own.

The title of this post is, for me, a rhetorical question. Despite Amazon and many of its customers crying foul over Macmillan’s refusal to meet Amazon’s terms on lowering the prices of its e-books, as both a bookseller and a member of a democratic and capitalist society, I am thrilled that Macmillan has stood firm on its pricing policy. Macmillan’s stand paves the way for other publishers to do the same, and to assert control over their products and services–something Amazon has been trying to take for themselves in subtle and overt ways.

I’ve discussed the issue in the past, and during this week, with people outside the bookselling world, and their thinking is often along the lines of, “Well, publishers make plenty of money–they’re just being greedy;” and on the subject of Amazon ceasing to sell all Macmillan titles since Friday, “That’s Amazon’s perogative.” The second comment is certainly true–Amazon can choose to sell or not sell any products it wishes. Despite this particular move coming off as a bit of a temper tantrum to some, that fact remains. As for the first comment, the concrete numbers of publishing profits continue to elude me. I am not going to argue one way or the other on that issue–or on the issue of the value of good literature.

For what it’s worth, here is my take on the matter.  This conflict with Macmillan (and any other publishers that come to their senses) is all about the online retailer trying to bully publishers into doing business Amazon’s way. Amazon is a huge company that, for many publishers, is their biggest account, and this gives the company a huge amount of leverage in any negotiations. At least, that’s how it’s been up to this point. After all, this isn’t the first time Amazon has tried strong-arming a publisher by ceasing to sell its books (perhaps one of Hachette’s motivations in joining Macmillan’s side in the e-book price war).

However, as The Amazon Kindle Team so misleadingly put it in their “poor us, trying to stick up for the little guy” * letter to customers, publishers do, indeed, have a “monopoly” over their books. That is, if you define “monopoly” as one company owning the rights to the products that it produces and sells. I think most of us would agree that, while the vocabulary might be correct in a literal sense, it in no way corresponds to the typical use of the word.

Macmillan and other publishers need to finally realize that, yes, they do own the books that they sell, and that means that they get to have the final say in how they price and distribute those books. I’m not suggesting that all of the publishers join together in setting prices for their books–that would be getting into monopoly territory, and very illegal–but they each need to determine the appropriate value of their books, in physical or digital format, that will sustain both the publishing house and the larger industry long into the future. If the publishers don’t assert themselves now, it will only get harder down the road, and they may find themselves out of business after allowing Amazon to drive them down to unsustainable prices while driving the publisher’s other customers (i.e. your friendly neighborhood booksellers) out of business.

More links:

Macmillan’s jab at Amazon, in a New York Times ad

Macmillan’s latest comment

It’s important to remember the other injured party here: the authors whose works are being made unavailable by Amazon. Of course, this works to the advantage of other booksellers (Indiebound!) when authors choose to link to Amazon’s competitors.

Author John Scalzi (a Macmillan author) has had a lot to say on the subject

• More here and here

A really wonderful post by a fellow New England bookseller

I’d love to hear from you on this–thoughts, questions, debate. What’s your take? Do you feel this affects you one way or another…or not at all?

*Sorry, I don’t buy it. It was Amazon’s choice to take a loss on e-book sales by pricing them below wholesale. By demanding that publishers make $9.99 (or less) the standard retail price, Amazon is trying to save face with their customers and start making a profit on sales again.

Hachette and HarperCollins have both joined Macmillan in the e-book pricing war with Amazon.  Both have announced their intent to re-negotiate e-book pricing with Amazon based upon their new deals with Apple.  The owner of HarperCollins made a statement this week that he feels that Amazon’s $9.99 e-book pricing policy “devalues books and hurts retailers of hardcover books.”  In a memo to agents, Hachette says that they are “not looking to the agency model as a way to make more money on e-books. In fact, we make less on each e-book sale under the new model; the author will continue to be fairly compensated and our e-book agents will make money on every digital sale.”

With three of the “big dogs” in publishing now pushing the new price model, it is likely that Penguin and Simon & Schuster will soon follow suit.  Fans and readers of e-books should therefore prepare for the fact that they will soon by paying $12.99 to $14.99 for all of their e-books, regardless of publisher.

You can’t play the game scared – Al Kaline

I now have a new hero.  That’s right!

John Sargent, Macmillan CEO, and now, world renowned Amazon agitator.

There have been a lot of op-ed articles and posts written about the battle between Macmillan and Amazon concerning e-books, pricing, and what not.  Macmillan saying that they wanted a new revenue structure when it came to selling ebooks on kindle…Amazon pulling the buy button on all Macmillan products like the kid who gets mad and takes his ball home from the kickball game.

I don’t want to talk about that.  Everyone has their views on how Amazon is greedy, how publishers are greedy, how customers are greedy for wanting everything for free, hells…the whole world is greedy.

Let’s face it, everyone wants to get everyone else’s money.  There are no altruistic companies.  As soon as we all realize this the better.

No, what I want to talk about is the cajones that John Sargent must have had walking into Amazon and dictating new terms. On a business level, to go to arguably your biggest account in a down economy and say that the gameboard is changing takes guts.  To watch as your biggest account pulls your product line from sale takes nerves of steel.  To hold fast believing that you are doing right for your organization is on another level altogether.

Sticking to your guns can either be seen as stubborn and arrogant or smart and courageous. It depends on what side of the aisle you are on.  Perhaps in this case there was a potpourri of all four.

Amazon finally capitulated, and Macmillan product is back on sale (or are they?  hmmm…some are, some aren’t…hells, I don’t know).  Hachette has reported that they are moving to the same terms as Macmillan.  More will pile on I am sure.  It appears that publishers still have some leverage…for the longest time it seemed that they had none.

Right now I can imagine two scenarios:

1.) John Sargent is sitting at his desk in a plush high rise sighing a big sigh of relief.  “Phew…I can’t believe I did that.”

Or

2.) John Sargent is sitting at this desk in what appears to be the bat cave repeating to himself “I am the ultimate bad ass…I am the ultimate bad ass…”

In either situation, somewhere in the remote regions of Seattle right now, Jeff Bezos has a Sargent voodoo doll with a billion pins in it.

"hahaha....wait...What did you just say?"

Suppose you hanker to read the expose of John Edwards, presidential candidate, homemade porno-star, and general shit-heel. No one would blame you for not wanting to be seen in public buying this ephemeral bit of ordure, but if your plan was to read it on your Kindle or have it shipped in a plain brown box to your door from Amazon—you need a new plan.

For book people, that game this Sunday in Miami is the second most interesting competition around. Faster than a runaway Toyota, we are seeing the book biz rules rewritten by the imminent introduction of the iPad.

Once the only serious game in town, Amazon and its Kindle dictated the price for reader content, and at $10.00 per book, publishers saw their dreams of villas in Europe and Ivy League educations for their kids transform to damp rented condos at the Jersey Shore and Sallie Mae loan packages to attend State U.

But before a single iPad has been sold, on the mere threat of the announcement of a Kindle competitor, big-ass Apple has the book biz dancing like mice in electrified cages.

Earlier this week, Macmillan reopened talks with Amazon. The subject was its pricing policies. Macmillan wants more money.

Amazon retaliated. Oh, the temerity! It stopped selling all Macmillan titles. Not just e-books. If you want to find out how big a scumbag John Edwards really is, you may need to drive to a bookstore (don’t take the Toyota).

You might also try the third largest bookstore in the US: Books-A-Million which—oddly—is featuring Macmillan titles.

Amazon’s grief is just begun. It seems that another publisher, Hachette, is reopening talks with Amazon. Those are the French folks who bought Time-Warner and Little Brown.

Jeff Bezos, CEO and founder of Amazon, must feel like Darth Vader in the Death Star just as the Rebellion’s pesky Tie Fighters started buzzing around like gnats.

Writers are, for now, caught in the middle. After all, if you are a Macmillan author, the world’s largest bookstore is not selling your title; if Macmillan has just published your book, and you are in that critical first six weeks of sales, then you are hurting indeed. The business will shake out in the long run, with a better shake for readers who will have choices, and writers and publishers who will get more for their work, but in the short run, writers are getting squeezed.

That seems a damn shame.

A new message from John Sargent went out yesterday to Macmillan Authors and Illustrators via Publisher’s Lunch.

A New Message to Macmillan Authors and Illustrators
This message ran as a paid advertisement in the February 4 edition of Publishers Lunch.

To: Macmillan Authors and Illustrators
cc: Literary Agents
From: John Sargent

I am sorry I have been silent since Saturday. We have been in constant discussions with Amazon since then. Things have moved far enough that hopefully this is the last time I will be writing to you on this subject.

Over the last few years we have been deeply concerned about the pricing of electronic books. That pricing, combined with the traditional business model we were using, was creating a market that we believe was fundamentally unbalanced. In the last three weeks, from a standing start we have moved to a new business model. We will make less money on the sale of e books, but we will have a stable and rational market. To repeat myself from last Sunday’s letter, we will now have a business model that will ensure our intellectual property will be available digitally through many channels, at a price that is both fair to the consumer and that allows those who create and publish it to be fairly compensated.

We have also started discussions with all our other partners in the digital book world. While there is still lots of work to be done, they have all agreed to move to the agency model.

And now on to royalties. Three or four weeks ago, we began discussions with the Author’s Guild on their concerns about our new royalty terms. We indicated then that we would be flexible and that we were prepared to move to a higher rate for digital books. In ongoing discussions with our major agents at the beginning of this week, we began informing them of our new terms. The change to an agency model will bring about yet another round of discussion on royalties, and we look forward to solving this next step in the puzzle with you.

A word about Amazon. This has been a very difficult time. Many of you are wondering what has taken so long for Amazon and Macmillan to reach a conclusion. I want to assure you that Amazon has been working very, very hard and always in good faith to find a way forward with us. Though we do not always agree, I remain full of admiration and respect for them. Both of us look forward to being back in business as usual.

And a salute to the bricks and mortar retailers who sell your books in their stores and on their related websites. Their support for you, and us, has been remarkable over the last week. From large chains to small independents, they committed to working harder than ever to help your books find your readers.

Lastly, my deepest thanks to you, our authors and illustrators. Macmillan and Amazon as corporations had our differences that needed to be resolved. You are the ones whose books lost their buy buttons. And yet you have continued to be terrifically supportive of us and of what we are trying to accomplish. It is a great joy to be your publisher.

I cannot tell you when we will resume business as usual with Amazon, and needless to say I can promise nothing on the buy buttons. You can tell by the tone of this letter though that I feel the time is getting near to hand.

All best,
John

First, full disclosure:

• George Orwell’s 1984 is one of my favorite books of all time:  a great novel of what a horrible future could still await us all, and how we must be vigilant if we are going to limit it (I don’t think we can fully prevent it).
• I’ve recently purchased a Kindle DX.
• Jeff Bezos is a fellow Princeton alum.
• We are enthusiastic customers of Amazon.com, taking great advantage of its unlimited free two-day shipping through our Amazon Prime membership which costs only $79 a year.

That said (I hate this phrase now, due to its vast overuse, and Larry David did a great job skewering its use recently in his show Curb Your Enthusiasm), I am not happy one bit that Amazon has played Big Brother one more time in its dispute with the book publisher Macmillan.  According to the Huffington Post:

NEW YORK — New copies of Hilary Mantel’s “Wolf Hall,” Andrew Young’s “The Politician” and other books published by Macmillan were unavailable Saturday on Amazon.com, a drastic step in the ongoing dispute over e-book prices.

Macmillan CEO John Sargent said he was told Friday that its books would be removed from Amazon.com, as would e-books for Amazon’s Kindle e-reader. Books will be available on Amazon.com through private sellers and other third parties, Sargent said.

It’s not the first time that books have disappeared from Amazon’s virtual shelves. Last summer, Kindle users were surprised and unsettled to receive notice that George Orwell works they had purchased, including “1984″ and “Animal Farm,” had been removed and their money refunded. It was a deletion of pirated copies that had been posted to the Kindle store, but the ordeal highlighted a concern – that a book already paid for and acquired can be revoked by an e-tailer. The Kindle operates on a wireless connection that Amazon ultimately controls.

Bezos later apologized, and Amazon offered affected customers free books or $30.

Amazon later capitulated to MacMillan, and restored its books, but this is another reminder that even though I’m enjoying my Kindle DX, I can’t trust that I what I purchased for it from Amazon, which should be my property as long as I want it to be, can be taken away from me at any time.  I guess I’ll be checking out the Apple iPad when it becomes available this spring…

I’m not going to write anything about the Amazon/Macmillan Scuffle. I don’t really have much to add that other, smarter people in the publishing world haven’t already covered. But, I wanted to post a couple of really good blog articles in case there are those of you out there who are curious, but not really sure what’s going on.

Scott Westerfeld talks about it here.

Tobias Buckell talks about it here.

I think they both link to others (and each other). There’s enough info there to get anyone updated.