Andrew Wylie has much to say about the book business, but it's not for the faint of heart. In his keynote address at the International Festival of Authors (and in the Q&A with CBC's Carol Off that followed), the internationally renowned agent of Martin Amis and Salman Rushie offered up his characteristic zingers, calling Amazon "the equivalent of ISIS," 50 Shades of Grey "one of the most embarrassing moments in Western culture," and self-publishing "the aesthetic equivalent of telling everyone who sings in the shower they deserve to be in La Scala."
Links of the week October 27 2014 (44)
Our new feature links to interesting blogs or articles posted online, which will help keep you up to date with what's going on in the book world:
3 November 2014
On the slush pile The only unsolicited submission, I believe, that we have taken on, is a book called White Teeth by Zadie Smith... William Maxwell, a legendary editor at The New Yorker taught me this: I was working out my small apartment, and I had two books that I had high hopes for. [I told him] I have these two books and I've read 200 pages of one, and now 80 pages of the second one. He said, "What's the first paragraph of the second book, you want to read it to me?" And I read it to him. And he said, "What's the first sentence again?" And I read it to him. "And what's the title of the book?" And I told him. And he said, "Right." And I thought, "1've just got a lesson in how to read submissions."You can tell good writing from the first paragraph, and you can tell bad writing from the first paragraph.
This week's screed against book publishers comes from Matt Yglesias at Vox.com, who proclaims, "Amazon is doing the world a favor by crushing book publishers"--a headline that shouts clickbait but fairly reflects his piece. Yglesias, whose work I have often admired, notes that he's the child of two authors and has published a book himself, so his hatred seems to be honestly earned. Writing of the "fundamental uselessness" of publishers, he says they are going to be "wiped off the face of the earth soon" by Amazon "and readers will be better for it."
Book-business types rolled their eyes at Yglesias' hostile tone and ignorance of some key facts, but I saw it cited as smart and "thoughtful: by a number of media people and others who I'd have hoped would know better. So at the risk of repeating points that have been made many times before (but seem still to be widely un-apprehended), maybe it's worth briefly reminding ourselves just how publishers do add value in connecting writers and readers. So, pace Matt Yglesias, here are some of the services publishers perform.
Copyright is a human right, says Dougal Thomson.
The debate over whether copyright laws need to be reformed is welcome. Because of copyright's importance to the publishing industry, it's good that the issue is stimulating minds. Unfortunately, while copyright attackers are effectively pushing madcap slogans such as, "Make the world more democratic!", the voices of millions who depend on copyright for a living are less frequently heard. What needs to happen to redress the balance?
We all have a responsibility to be able to articulate why copyright matters, given that it supports not just publishing, but the whole knowledge economy. It may surprise you to learn that copyright is a human right. Article 27(2) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says: "Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author." Copyright makes it possible for creative people (writers, journalists, musicians, artists, etc) to earn money from their talents. It incentivises them to produce great content, rewarding them fairly for their efforts and protecting them from people stealing or trying to profit from their creations.
It starts with a familiar name, but then takes a turn.
Jay Gatsby actually faked his death, and is now reunited with Daisy. "Scandal's" Olivia Pope is somehow working on Robert F. Kennedy's presidential campaign. And a member of the boy band One Direction is falling in love on a college campus - making roughly 250 million online readers swoon.
These are plot twists found in the universe of fan fiction, where authors borrow from another writer's world, taking characters, places and even real people and putting them in stories all their own. Despite fan fiction's reputation among old-school publishers for being nothing more than Harry Potter erotica, the online communities have grown to attract all kinds of stories.
And now, that online popularity is shaking up the divide between fan fiction and traditional book publishing. What used to be a disregarded copyright nightmare is a new, youth-friendly approach for publishers."Fan fiction has absolutely become part of the fiber of what we publish,! said Jennifer Bergstrom, vice president and publisher of Gallery Books, a division of Simon & Schuster. "This is changing at a time when traditional publishing needs it most.'
What's the impact of social media on book sales? Yesterday, The Bookseller co-hosted an event at YouTube looking at the ways the channel is influencing the business of books.
As Pete Stower, who works in the content partnerships at YouTube, said at the event: "People are uploading more and more video than ever - about 100 hours is uploaded every single minute. We are also watching more and more, watch time is growing 50% a year." He commented: "To not have a strategy related to YouTube is a missed opportunity."
But that does not mean it will be easy for publishers to come up with the right strategy. With so much new content uploaded every minute, the big questions are about how publishers differentiate their content, make it discoverable, and more importantly how they measure the return on investment. There are no simple answers to any of these questions.
YouTube has developed a sophisticated network of book-related content, which Jessica Elvidge creative strategist at YouTube, distilled into three categories: Book bloggers (or booktubers, as we learning to call them), book edutainment (for deeper analyses of book content), and book adaptions (shows based on classic literature). What is true (and perhaps also alarming to this audience), is just how much of this has been developed outside of the traditional publishing sector. Surprisingly, there was little mention of "book trailers" once seen a major opportunity for publishers to bring their titles to life on YouTube, indicating just how swiftly this medium marches forwards. The numbers for the booktubers are staggering. Booksandquills for example has 106,000 subscribers, and the channel has had 5.5m views. Booksandquills is, of course, Sanne Vliengenthart, now also digital coordinator Hot Key Books. What's attractive about the booktubers, says Elvidge is their authenticity. They are spreading enthusiasm for the books they love to read - backlist, frontlist, even midlist. They live outside the "publishing pipe" unlike more traditional book reviewers, and yet they speak to a demographic publishers have found hard to get to.
27 October 2014
Delivery methods come and go, Michael Bhaskar writes, but high quality content endures.
For years the thinking in digital media circles went like this: content is valuable only inasmuch as it funnels eyeballs to adverts - platforms, not content, are exciting. Technology drives things forward, not the messy business of content. After all, the value of content is sliding inexorably to free, while tech valuations soar to improbable levels (which have quickly become normal). Meanwhile, publishers bust guts shifting a few books.
Publishers instinctively felt this narrative was nonsense. Yet the march of history continued: Whatsapp sold for $19 billion, and publishers struggled for growth. However, in the long run it will be content - writing, ideas, creativity and knowledge - that wins out.
In fact, across all media segments the value of prime content is being driven up, not down by the digital revolution. Although we have access to almost unlimited viewing, listening, playing or reading matter, actually what we want is the best. This is why people, and companies, pay enormous premiums for rights to things like the English Premier League or HBO's Game of Thrones. The audience ultimately doesn't care about the channel to market. It cares about the end product. Despite a huge surplus of content, the most valuable material defies economic logic and only grows in worth.
Last week's announcement that Richard Flanagan had won the Man Booker prize for fiction has propelled the Tasmanian-born writer into the international literary orbit, but it also has the local publishing community seeing stars.
Flanagan won for his novel The Deep Road to the Narrow North. He has said the most satisfying part of the prestigious award, which comes with prize money of £50,000 (A$91,000: $80,000), was "the recognition as a writer on the world stage".
However his win could have significant implications for other Australian writers, says Sue Hines, trade publishing director at Allen & Unwin. "Non-Australian readers of Richard's book may look for other books by him because of the award and a few adventurers might even go looking for other Australian authors," says Ms Hines. "As for the publishing industry outside Australia, they may take more notice of our books and go looking for other authors to publish. By that means, a few more Australian books will get published and find new readers."
Among the many ideas that rose to the forefront of discussions at this year's Women's Writing Festival was the idea of collaboration among writers, an idea that has come of age with the digital revolution. The best example of collaboration is the creation in 2013 of EWWA, the European Writing Women Association by Italian authors Elisabetta Flumeri and Gabriella Giacometti - primarily an Italian organization but open to all Europeans and engaged in a series of networking activities, with now some 165 members. Collaboration was a leitmotiv at the Festival this year too and often came into the discussion which centered on the "digital disruption" in the book market.
As might be expected in any discussion about the digital revolution and self-publishing, points of views diverged and the discussions between panel members were often heated. High points were reached when Maria Paola Romeo moderating a panel playfully suggested that the figure of the editor/publisher was on her way out.
The battle between Amazon and the Big Five publishers is complicated by the fact that neither "side" is exactly easy for authors and readers to be on. No one who cares about a diverse and healthy literary marketplace, where new ideas and writers can reach a wide audience - and even non-blockbuster authors are paid enough for their work so that they can continue doing it - can reasonably side with Amazon.
But the publishers have botched so many opportunities in recent years, and have been so maddeningly slow to adapt to the digital marketplace, that it's hard not to feel that they deserve some kind of comeuppance. So when Matt Yglesias writes a Vox explainer about how we shouldn't feel sorry for publishers, who are "superfluous" and "terrible at marketing" and deserve to go out of business, it's excruciating to read not because it's so off-base - which, for the most part, it is - but because it's not entirely wrong.
Publishers' interests aren't always aligned with those of authors, or readers, and a lot of their business practices don't make, and have never made, much sense. In spite of that, though, there are a few great reasons why writers and readers need to stay on their side.
Prominent New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has criticized Amazon for using its power in ways that "hurt America".
The Nobel Prize-winning economist, who has been described as The Times' "most heralded" columnist, used a piece in the newspaper yesterday (19th October) to argue that Amazon has too much power and is "abusing" that power by using it to push prices down.
He said: "So far Amazon has not tried to exploit consumers. In fact, it has systematically kept prices low, to reinforce its dominance. What it has done, instead, is use its market power to put a squeeze on publishers, in effect driving down the prices it pays for books - hence the fight with Hachette. In economics jargon, Amazon is not, at least so far, acting like a monopolist, a dominant seller with the power to raise prices. Instead, it is acting as a monopsonist, a dominant buyer with the power to push prices down."