How NY is Fueling Its Own Demise

I don't like to talk sales numbers, because it inevitably sounds like whining or bragging, but since Jan. 4, I have sold more books than Snooki, according to this article.

I know the major publishing industry is desperate and that's part of the reason they have been tossing real writers overboard while others are fleeing like rats from a burning ship. Every "sure bet" deal for Snooki or George Bush or Sarah Palin or Madonna sends 100 real writers to the soup kitchen.What's stunning is how New York is so actively and willfully tossing gasoline on the flames of its immolation. By failing to recognize the tastes of readers or developing the literary talents of tomorrow while engaging in a wholesale denial of what people want to pay and how they want their books delivered, their ship will soon be a smoking cinder slipping beneath the waves.

Not coincidentally at all, those writers look for their audience elsewhere, and the largest, hungriest audience in the world is sitting next to their Kindles as we speak. The Kindle/Nook phenomenon is not just a tech craze or a groovy new consumption model. It's a release valve for the pent-up desires of so many people craving a wealth and diversity of reading material. Your average public book display will have 20 copies of the same 20 books all across America. Those books are the top 20 on the bestseller lists for obvious reasons.

People now have a choice. Nearly a million choices, really. And it's only the beginning.
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La Chiesa Rossa--red in any language

Some good insight by Sarah Jae Jones, a St. Martin's editor, on the different types of book readers and how the digital era might affect their reading habits. My own thoughts as a writer are similar--I believe the bestsellers in hardcover will still have a print following, especially those casual readers who only read the blockbusters they see on the cover of People or Entertainment Weekly--Da Vinci Code, twilight, Harry Potter, and the like. They read a few books a year, what Jones' accurately describes as "seeing what all the fuss is about." And, if you press them, those types of readers would describe themselves as "well read." I doubt if I'll ever be able to reach that audience.

The middling crowd, those counted on to support bookstores, are likely to migrate to digital books. I'll probably do both. I already read on the PC Kindle for Desktop, but I am waiting to buy an e-reader when the prices come down and there is more uniformity of format. I do like to re-read certain books, but I gave away cases and cases of books from my personal library when I realized "once was enough" or that I'd likely never be interested in reading a particular book (I used to do a lot of hoarding at rummage sales, which explains the random pile of genre fiction). I still have more paper books than I can comfortably read in a lifetime, but I've never been a trend or fad reader--I don't need the hottest bestseller or the "book everybody's talking about." I figure it will always be around and if it stands the test of time I can pick it up for a quarter in 10 years.

And that's the kind of stuff I write, the quarter books. I'm more of a disposable, working-class writer, a storyteller. I am fortunate enough to have some readers who like to collect all my books, but it would be difficult for me to sustain a hardcover audience, because that involves a huge contract. I would also have a hard--but not impossible--task of publishing genre fiction in midlist, mass-market paperback, but the cold truth is that the wait, the short shelf life, and the years and years of content loss means it's not only a bad move financially, it also doesn't really build a career.

I was talking to one of my translators about how this new era works. Making $5 a book per day may not seem much, but if you have 10 books on the market, that's $50. If you have 10 translations of those 10 books on the market, that's $500. A day. Sure, the translation work is difficult, and adds complications, but you also never know where you are going to be a hit--France, Germany, Spain, China. Everyone's buying the iPad, and the frontiers are just now busting open. In a global market, the first one overseas wins. I'm not sure I can get there fast enough, but here's to trying!
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