The Future of Publishing Again

Someone asked my view on e-books, and though I answered in depth at Debbi Mack's place, here's a new summary:

1. Paper books will be around for the rest of our lifetimes, but bookstores will be weird and rare little shops in big cities.

2. Ebooks (and the Internet) will be how most people do their reading by 2020.

3. Reading will continue to decline and books will change as technology evolves, just like everything else about our lives changes.

4. The people who love to smell books and hold books? It's purely nostalgia, which doesn't minimize it, but that's all it is. Some people still love vinyl albums because they think they sound "warmer" and more "authentic." Some people said that about the old wax recording cylinders. People said CDs sounded "sterile." Yet how does almost everyone listen to music? How many home videos are on 8 mm film strips? The essential core of the information and story and entertainment won't change, but the structure will change. Even books themselves have evolved. Don't forget, this all started with sticks in the mud and berry juice on cave walls.

BTW Smashwords just announced an increase of royalties for Kobo, B&N, and the other tiny e-book outlets and also an agency pricing agreement that means those outlets won't be reducing prices anymore.

Also selected winners for Overbite: Blood Lite 2 (congratulations, Vicki Tyley) and for the Pandora's Box of e-books on Twitter. The DM was deleted so I assume that winner does NOT want the 100 free ebooks but I will wait five days before I announce another winner.

I still have some space for free Red Church Kindle copies on my list so please email me if you want a freebie tomorrow sent as a gift via Amazon. I have 26 more copies to give away in thanks for your support on the blog tour.
###

The Numbers Game

JA Konrath has only sold 100,000 ebooks. As usual, he makes a good case for the wisdom of controlling content. I spent a good part of the first half of the year pinballing around and learning, taking on the publishing industry, analyzing numbers, trying to inspire indie writers to quality, and it's just a big explosion of everything. It feels like the 1960s music scene must have, lots of everything of all levels and genres, all getting out there in a vibrant mix.

Time sorts it all out. And the publishing industry is wonderful if you can get in it and are smart. But you have to be smart no matter what, and you're smarter than I am. So I will be doing less and less of that kind of analysis, and focusing more on my own stories.

In the meantime, if you want to get started publishing your own work, I'd recommend Blood Red Pencil for finding an editor, Stephen James Price to do your page layout, Neil Jackson for cover art (if you want a "thriller" look), and Dellaster Design for e-book layout.

Today's stop on the Kindle Giveaway tour is Crazy For Books. Last day to comment at Bookhounds. Tell a friend!

###

William Meikle--Thoughts on Re-reading Lord of the Rings

(One of the joys of the new era is getting to discover writers who have been around a while but flying under the radar. William Meikle is a Scottish native who falls into the esteemed category of "campfire storyteller." Whether you like pulp fiction, horror, science fiction, mystery, dark fantasy or plain old weird fiction, chances are Meikle has written it and written it well. Now he's not so secret, as his B-movie sci-fi novel The Invasion is currently ranked #244 on the Kindle bestseller list and #1 in a couple of categories. I am unabashedly trying to ride his coattails with my own alien-invasion release, Forever Never Ends, a revised edition of my 2003 paperback The Harvest. Welcome, William and his revisiting of favored lore. William is also giving away a free PDF of Crustaceans to the best horror joke posted in the comments. His choice, winner picked in seven days. You''ll want Crustaceans. Billed as "Giant Crabs Take Manhattan." Period.)

Lord of the Rings
By William Meikle

This book changed my life. Before it I was a spotty 14-year-old hooked on my science studies. Then I read LOTR, and, at the same time, discovered women existed and...but that's enough of that. You want to hear about the book.

By now there are few people who haven't at least heard of LOTR, and most of them have an opinion. There are the fans, almost fanatics, and there are the people who have read fifty pages or so, sometimes five or six times, but just can't get it, and don't understand what the fuss is about. I might have been one of them, if it hadn't been for an accident.

I asked my local librarian to recommend a book for me as I had read all the Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov works they had. She pointed me at LOTR, and handed me what she said was book 1 of 3. It was only when I got home I found I had book 2: The Two Towers. I arrived in the story just at the point where the first film ends - The Fellowship is broken and Frodo and Sam are heading for Mordor.

I think that is what made me keep reading -I had started at a point of crisis and I needed to know what happened next. Of course I had a lot of blanks to fill in, but I managed to pick up most of them as I went along , and I caught up with the first book as soon as I'd finished the third. (I bought the big all-in-one paperback, the one with the yellow cover. If you were a student in the seventies, it was obligatory to have one lying about, all battered and torn to show that it had been read several times. You used to see backpackers in their hundreds on the trains going south through Europe, all with this version of LOTR falling apart in their hands.)

As for starting at the beginning, I believe the reason a lot of people give up is that they are expecting heroes, wizards, and high magic. What they get is, in great detail, the rural goings-on of a bunch of small hairy creatures who eat and drink a lot and seem to live in an idealised version of the Home Counties. Anyone who has read "The Hobbit" will know that there is more to the Hobbits than that, but newcomers often feel cheated and give up.

They don't know what they're missing.

The story only picks up AFTER Bilbo's birthday party, and after the passing of his ring of invisibility to Frodo. Gandalf, a wizard, discovers the true nature of the ring. It is a magic item of great power, belonging to Sauron himself, a dark god intent on taking dominion over the world.

Gandalf tells Frodo that the ring must be taken to a place of safety, to Rivendell, where the high-elves hold out against Sauron.

And so the great journey starts, with Frodo and his friends, Sam, Merry and Pippin, taking the road to Rivendell. On the way they have many adventures, and the mood begins to darken with the appearance of the dark riders, servants of Sauron intent on finding the ring.

The traveling band is befriended by Strider, a ranger of the north, and he helps them get to Rivendell, but not before Frodo is wounded by the dark riders, and starts to understand the power of the ring.

At Rivendell, many things are revealed; the history of the ring is told, Strider is shown to be Aragon, the rightful heir to the kingdom of Middle-Earth, and a fellowship is forged, of wizards, elves, dwarves, men and hobbits. They form a band of nine who will try to take the ring to Mount Doom, a volcano where the ring was forged, and which is the only place where it can be destroyed.

And so the adventure truly begins. From here on we have battles in deep mountain mines, the loss of one of the Fellowship, encounters with elves in enchanted forests, treachery and betrayal leading to the breaking of the fellowship - and we're still in Book 1!

Books 2 and 3 deal with the fight for middle-Earth, with Aragon and his allies taking the battle to Sauron and his minions and Frodo and Sam trying to reach Mount Doom to destroy the ring. There are huge, stirring, battle scenes, moments of humour (especially when the younger hobbits meet the Ents), spectacular feats of high magic when the White Rider enters the battle scenes, and moments of great friendship and tenderness - I defy anyone to have a dry eye when Sam and Frodo are parted at Shelob's lair.

It all builds up to a terrific climax, and the story comes full circle back at Hobbitton where we see the effect the war has had on the rural life of the Hobbits.

And that is why the beginning is important--you might not see it till right at the end, but it is teaching us a lesson about the value of the simpler things in life--respect them and fight for them... or lose them.

Tolkein's genius lies in melding these simple aspects with world-shattering events, showing how even the "little people" have their part to play in the fight against the darkness.

And he also knows that the best villain is a mysterious one....Sauron hardly appears at all in the books, but his dark presence stretches over everything, and he's always there, his evil eye seeing everything.

I used to have nightmares about that large, red-rimmed eye, but that was before I discovered women, grew my hair, developed a liking for Hawkwind and Led Zeppelin, and started to write fantasy fiction. I've never been the same since... but that's another long story.

------
William Meikle has published 10 novels and more than 130 stories, appearing in 12 countries and eight different languages. Other e-books include Crustaceans, The Valley, Road Hole Bunker Mystery, Island Life, and more.

Book of chips

We had a great discussion tonight at the library about how e-books are changing the world--in how content is experienced, in how authors deliver it, and in how various media are going to co-exist and overlap. I believe the e-book model is going to roll in faster than most industry and tech analysts expect, with expectations about six months ago that e-books would comprise 15 percent of the market in five years. Now 50 percent in five years is the general agreement. I think it will happen exponentially faster than that, as various pressure points collide--more and cheaper e-books, more established authors moving over to independent publishing, and cheaper e-readers and tablets that will put them in the reach of most households.

I remember in the late 1990s when people were raving about e-books as the immediate future. I laughed at them. I remember in 2002 when I signed my first book deal and e-books weren't mentioned, or the next year when I gladly gave away half the digital rights because "they were worth nothing." I even had some short stories on FictionWise that earned me a dollar every month or two--I was laughing then. Then I put up my out-of-print title The Red Church in January.

I put it out with a little bit of trepidation, afraid my peers would snub me because I was "vanity publishing." Actually, they didn't notice. They had their own worries, like declining paper sales and the real fear of getting dumped by their publishers. The Red Church went out solid and has stayed steady. Enough that I have put out three original titles this year, something I would have considered unthinkable even a year ago. My mindset has revolutionized itself. I am no longer laughing.

Since I entered this new arena, my creative life has been fulfilled and joyful--there's not enough time in the day to do all the things that should be done. Promotion, blogs, tweets, reading up on my new "industry" (though it is much more like a village than a factory), getting formatting and covers, and making time to write. It's probable that money will follow, because I am now doing what I fully love. But even if money doesn't come, I have won--I have found the right thing to be doing, and the best reason to do it.

Because I work for you. You can fire me if you want. You can buy my next book and encourage me to write another. You can make me drop my price. You can tell me I need to write a different kind of story. You can change the way I deliver content and stories (and it will change in ways we can't even imagine). I'll work for you as long as you will let me. You're the boss. Thank you for giving me the best job in the world.

###

Four Ways to Be A Better Reader

I've heard that people are more likely to read a blog with short bulleted lists because then they can skim to the most useful information. So I am leaving out all the information you don't need and hitting the high spots (but I'll bet you didn't read this because you went right to the bullets.)

1. Use your library. If you haven't been in a while, your library is not just books anymore. I love to grab audiobooks for long car trips. It's sort of like averaging an extra book per week. They also have computers!

2. Read aloud to kids. You want your kids to develop good habits and be able to educate themselves, or else they will have to rely on others for an education that's probably going to suit the educator better than it suits the child. Any reading is good reading--comics, picture books, tweets, blogs, Don't just cram down the usual "classics." MOBY DICK has killed the joy of reading in millions of teens. TWILIGHT has created millions of readers.

3. Diversify. Keep a book by the bed, by the tub, in the seat of your car for red-light stops; try e-books, you may find them convenient. While buying books supports more writing and books, free and cheap is good, too.

4. Spread the love. Tell friends about books you like and engage in conversations. You might be surprised who else has read the same book. That's a better, more intimate connection than "American Idol."

There. How to be a better reader without having to read too much about being a better reader!

###

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!
###

ScotTALK

I've just started doing some podcasting and audio recording, starting with a babble called "So You Want to be a Writer?" Mostly autobiographical...

Interesting article on Kindle Nation Daily about the new influx of ebook prices, proving the conventional wisdom that publishers couldn't long sustain the artificially high e-book prices. As an author with cheap e-books (I prefer the label "working-class fiction"), I had hoped the window would stay open longer but now it appears even the smaller authors are going to have to compete with the big names at low prices.

Having recently finished the first draft of a YA novel, it's time to tackle a couple of revisions and adapt one screenplay into a novel (I know, I know, that's backward from the usual order of things, but I tend to do everything in a series of disconnected left turns.)

Recent posts include a guest slot on Straight From Hel called "Publishing Ground Zero" and the first up in my regular gig at Blood Red Pencil, this one on building non-fiction clips.
###

E-release before paper release?

Traditional publishers have taken a strategy of minimizing e-books by pricing the digital content so high that it forces most consumers to choose the paper version. A second strategy is to delay e-book release in much the same way a paperback is held six to 12 months after a hardcover release. One poster in an Amazon forum suggested publishers should release the e-book first and watch the sales before deciding to go with a paper version.

I just don't think there's time for that model to evolve...a few Kindle stars like Boyd Morrison were cherry-picked, but if the most loyal book consumers were the early Kindle adopters, and they are not returning to bookstores, where is the second-wave audience? Clearly the Kindle owners are the people who are the most interested in digital books.

Besides that, you have iPad owners who are reportedly not buying books (1.5 million books "sold" for the 1 million iPads sold equals a book and a half per device owner--compare that with Kindle behaviors). The core audience is already moving to e-books, and they clearly want low prices, and that means a shrinking role (and profit margin) for traditional publishers.

I just received the Author Central update where Amazon is giving authors more authority to change editorial content on the product pages--even if they were posted by a publisher. That, along with higher royalty rates, suggests Amazon is anticipating a model of more independent authors, with Amazon the gathering place for content and purchase. Or, if you prefer to view it ruthlessly, bypass publishers and stores altogether. Amazon already owns printing presses and servers and an e-book device. They have no stake in propping up bookstores or an inefficient distribution system.

If the e-book revolution is indeed accelerating beyond expectations, then there may not be any bookstores in five years beyond a few dusty specialty shops. Many were predicting the tipping point to come by 2020, then revised it down to 2015. Science-fiction author Michael Stackpole just predicted it for a couple of years from now.

Could Amazon and Apple conspire to put publishers out of business and then impose Draconian conditions that make the current publishing industry look benevolent, altruistic, and generous? It's possible they could become the Walmart of literary content. Apple has already shown a predilection for ratcheting down the controls and censoring content. Amazon has worked on the opposite model, opening the floodgates in the marketplace of ideas, but its goals seem to be one-stop shopping for all your needs, not any particular interest in what those needs might be. The publishing industry doesn't protect us from such crass concerns, because it has the same profit worries as any other industry.

As usual, I look at these things from the writer's point of view. Which route will earn me the most money and the most readers over the course of my career? Right now, it looks like releasing my own products is the way to go, through whatever outlets I can find. That could change tomorrow. But since this is my life's work and I want to rely on the products of my imagination in my old age, I'm already looking beyond the industry crash to the next crash--what happens when people are no longer willing to shell out even a buck or two for an e-book?

###