Happy & Brainy Group discussion

Hi. I recently posted an article to my personal blog in response to a young literary agent's blog post about what the financial meltdown means to the industry and young agents in particular.

This sort of thing excites me: My first career was in economics; I hold a BA and an MA in the subject and was a doctoral student at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. I also worked for a professor at the GSB for 18 years, helping him with his Negotiations course, and I held a few other plum jobs, like Economic Analyst of Santa Clara County.

We're in real shakedown of our economy and industry. As writers, authors, and readers, we need to concentrate on this more than the old, "I sent a query and no one answered." Or, "How do you punctuate a …" The issue I write about dwarfs this micro thinking.

Well, I wrote my heart out on my post and linked it to the young agent's site––a link to my blog hopefully follows, AN ECONOMIST’S LETTER TO YOUNG LITERARY AGENTS The last time I checked, the only response on the agent's site was another reader responding to something a mean editor said.

No! The problem is: How are readers going to get the type of books that they really want if the publishing industry responds to the downturn by "turtling up"––going for what worked in the past and continuing the trend to Mega-authors in genre fields. How are new authors going to debut and authors of non-mainstream works going find shelf space? And what are discriminating readers going to do if all they're fed is mush?

How are we as a community going to respond?

I thought this group might have a more spirited response to my blog post, one that recognizes that we're in a time that requires a re-thinking of the industry and our roles in it.

If you click the link above (which I hope I did right), you'll see my article. We need to think on these things. I just got an email from Meg Weaver's Wooden Horse Magazine News (Wooden Horse Magazine This link should take you to Meg's website. You want the October 19 2008 Newsletter.) To lift a line or two from that newsletter:

"Dear readers,

"Read this newsletter at your own risk. It may cause major depression.

"News from the magazine industry is so gloomy that Hearst not only closed COSMOGIRL* but the company-wide holiday party is canceled.

[She continues in this vein for a long time.:]

"Meg Weaver"

We readers, writers, and authors need to think on these issues, not the little issues which have beguiled us.

I put a radical and (partly) tongue-in-cheek solution to the inefficient querying process in the post on my blog.

I'd like to get this around goodreads as widely as possible. I'm a novice on posting and social interaction sites, so if you have tips as to how to spread the word, please send them or spread away yourself.

All the best to each and all of you,

Sandy Nathan
Numenon

Hello Sandy. Thank you for posting this. Best wishes to you and to everyone.

Thanks, Sandy. I've read your message with interest and will get to the rest later. Its a rough time for our country in all respects.Hopefully, that fact will bring out the best in us.

Thanks, Joseph & Ilyn,

Good way of putting it, Joeeph. Maybe the trials will bring out the best in us. Thanks for responding.

I put up another new post on my blog,an article about winning at horse shows and it's relationship to publishing success. It's illustrated with photos from our ranch and life with horses:
WHAT DOES WINNING MEAN?

[quote:]No! The problem is: How are readers going to get the type of books that they really want if the publishing industry responds to the downturn by "turtling up"––going for what worked in the past and continuing the trend to Mega-authors in genre fields. How are new authors going to debut and authors of non-mainstream works going find shelf space? And what are discriminating readers going to do if all they're fed is mush?[/quote:]

You're right: the query system is broken, and publishers are only focusing on what worked yesterday, not on what might be the new wave of the future. Rainer Unwin took a chance on "The Lord of the Rings", asking his father if he might lose a thousand pounds on an important book. His father said "yes," but who in the publishing business today would be willing to risk so substantial a sum (adjusted for inflation) on an important book of a type that had never been seen before? My experience has been that there are no chance takers left out there in the publishing biz. When I submitted VOICES UNDER BERLIN to one agent, he replied: Very Helleresque, but could you put some sex and violence in it?

I did not put in the sex and violence that he asked for, and decided that if sex and violence was what it took to get "traditionally published," then I'd take the high road and do it myself. Too much sex and violence in books was why I had quit reading in the first place. I wrote a book that imagined an audience like myself, and it has found an audience via the web and Amazon.

Is this road for everybody? No, it's not. Writing is the easy part. Marketing is the hard part, but I've learned a lot. One of the lessons is that the "traditional" publishing industry needs to quickly find a new paradigm for getting books to market, before the newly emerging technologies like those that made it possible for me to bring my own book to market make them obsolete. If I can do it, so can others. It's not rocket science, and it's getting easier.

We've come full-circle to the point that publishing was at when Gutenberg invented movable type. That was a disruptive technology that changed the way that books were created, making it affordable for people to publish their own books and sell them cheaply. Gutenberg put all the scriptoriums out of business. Print on Demand is the same kind of disruptive technology, reducing production costs and enabling a new class of writers to reach the readers who are looking for just their kind of book.

What can the publishing industry do to change? A site called WeBooks is trying an "American Idol" type selection process, under which registered users get to vote on what gets published. GoodReads could try its hand at that, serving as a filter for some agent or publisher. GoodReads already has the established reader base to enfranchise as voters for what gets published. It just needs a software infrastructure to make the election system work, and, of course, a publishing pipeline with editors and marketing specialists, which would not necessarily have to be a traditional publisher, but could be.

Another lesson that I've learned on the way to market is that authoritative reviews are the thing that drive readers to your books. With the traditional book review industry crumbling around our ears, it is sites like GoodReads that are taking up the slack, providing opportunities for real readers to offer their opinions about the books that they are reading. These days, before I buy a book, no matter how big the advertising campaign that is accompanying it, it is not the traditional literary critics who's wisdom I seek, but the reviewers on Amazon and GoodReads. If they don't like it, I don't buy the book. In other words, it is not the publisher's advertising hype that gets me to buy a book, it is the response of the readers to the book. The web is the disruptive technology that has given me access to this reading selection tool, displacing the previous traditional literary critics, who's opinions did not always coincide with mine in any event.

I, therefore, think that the answers to your questions are:

If discriminating readers are only fed literary mush, they will, either quit reading or try some of the new types of books available on the web.

New authors and authors of non-mainstream works are going to find their shelf space on the web in eStores like Amazon, and in stores with "in house" print on demand machines that allow you to order your book, go have a cup of coffee in the cafe, where they will bring it to your table when it is done. "Do you want a danish with that?"

The answer to where are readers going to get the kind of books they want if the old publishing industry does not provide them is the same as the other two: from the new POD-based publishing industry. Quality content and affordable choice are the keys to success in the new publishing world.

Amen. Great post and great points. I wrote my original post after reading daily blog posts by a literary agent. According to this guy, and according to the traditional publishing industry, ONE IS NOT A PUBLISHED AUTHOR UNLESS A PUBLISHING COMPANY HAS BOUGHT YOUR MANUSCRIPT AND PUBLISHED IT.

Well, gee. What about the burgeoning small and micro presses? What about the digital and POD presses? What about Dan Poynter and his self-publishing colleagues?

Aren't they real?

When you go the traditional route, you lose control of what your book (as you discovered with the sex and violence bit), cover, interior, marketing––how it's pitched. The whole deal. This in return (for a new author) for about 35 cents an hour for time invested. We should jump for this deal? Lots of people do.

I think the answer is increasing the production quality of POD and small press offerings so they really compete with the majors.That means content, internal design, covers.

Another way of increasing visibility is entering contests. If you've got a well written and produced book with a great cover and marketing tools (a one sheet, at least, and a professional web site), you'll do well in contests.

They're starting to close for 2008, so I'm hurrying to get my book in. There's the Benjamin Franklin Awards of the IPMA (great organization!), the IPPYs, Indie Excellence by Ellen Reid. I really like the Best Book Award contest of USA Book News.

Anyway, T.H.E., I agree with you. I've been told by one editor who works for small presses that she didn't think reviews by the major publications counted that much for sales any more. It's Amazon reviews and reviews on GoodReads and the like. Readers speak!

I'm amazed that the agent wanted you to put sex and violence into your manuscript. My experience with the current crop of editors attuned to the majors is: No sex, no violence. My editor took all the sex out of my manuscript and most of the violence. She also removed introspection, reflection, inner experience.

Given that, masterpieces like "Lady Chatterley's Lover" would never have been printed.

Good hearing from you,
Sandy Nathan

Hi Sandy, Joe, T.H.E., and everyone.

The Acknowledgements page of my website includes this:

For the glory of the print-on-demand (POD) technology:

Reason Reigns glorifies independent thinkers and technology. Thanks to the POD technology, the judgment of whether or not a book is worthy to be read now rests with individual readers.

http://www.reasonreigns.com/Acknowled...

Sandy, thanks for the tip about the contests. I agree with you wholeheartedly on that account. I have two awards from The Hollywood Book Festival: one for my collection of short stories (Once More Upon a Time: A Book of Stories that brings the Characters of the old Fairy Tales back into the Modern World, 2006) and one for my novel (Voices Under Berlin: The Tale of a Monterey Mary, 2008). I was not aware of the ones you mentioned.

I checked out their webpages, and IPPYs Indie Excellence and the Best Book Award contest of USA Book News seem to be the best fit for VOICES. IPPY is on the only one with a category that actually seems to describe VOICES (Historical/Military Fiction). For the others, it will have to be the 'humor/satire'.

Good luck in the contests with your book.

The comment from your "literary agent" that ONE IS NOT A PUBLISHED AUTHOR UNLESS A PUBLISHING COMPANY HAS BOUGHT YOUR MANUSCRIPT AND PUBLISHED IT is right in line with the guidelines from the National Endowment for the Arts. There's money to work on a book from them, IF you've been traditionally published.

I prefer to think that you are a published author IF you have readers who thought enough of your book to write a review (it helps, of course, if the review was positive). Creating a book that someone can hold in their hands (I'm not a big fan of eBooks) is only one part of the 'author' equation. The other part is the people who read what you've written. You're an author when the readers say that you are. That just comes back to the power of Amazon and GoodReads reviews that we mentioned before, and their role in shaping the new literary marketplace.

The NEA grants are a wonderful thing, but I'm not sure that their criterion will change in the near future. I have, however, found a writing fellowship that appears to judge you based on your reviews, rather than on the name of your imprint. The American Academy in Berlin offers semester fellowships to authors working on books that have some connection with Berlin, and I've pitched them with a proposal for a novel entitled "Reunification" for the next academic year (2009-2010).

It's hard to figure what agents want when one tells me 'more sex and violence' and one tells you 'no sex or violence.' As to removing all the introspection, reflection, inner experience, that smacks of dumbing books down to the lowest common denominator so that they will appeal to the broadest possible market (i.e. sell more copies), and takes us back to my story about The Lord of the Rings. That's not what it's going to take to make a book appeal to the people who belong to this group.

Hi, T.H.E. Wow. Great post and congrats on the Hollywood Book Festival award. That's a tough one, with few categories and only a winner and runner up in each, if I recall. In the other contests, if you don't find a category that seems to fit your book, you can write to the organization hosting the contest and ask them where you should put it. Very nice people run these things. The Best Book (run by Jeff Keen USA Book News) contest gets entries from the majors, too.

There's a TERRIBLE video of me on YouTube and heaven knows where else promoting the Indie Excellence Award. My friend, Ellen Reid, bought the contest after I won in it, so I did a little 60 second film for her to promote it. (It's better since she bought it, methinks, but I can't enter any more.) If you search Sandy Nathan on YouTube, you will find it. I am not that fat and ugly! Nor to I flap my eyelashes that much normally, or sound that old. I'd never been in front of a camera before. It was nerves. It's coaching time for me, while that thing lives on on YouTube.

Remember this, authors, as your prepare your videos! Do a practice run!

Haven't tried for grants, but that's an area to know about. Good luck.

I regard a book as published if it's got a cover on it with pages inside. Its author is therefore published author. That includes anyone who can get on lulu.com and all the rest. This sets the bar low, but, goldurnnit, as we ranch folk say, I'm tired of snobbery EVERYWHERE. The literary community is worse than any I've seen.

It's up to published authors (by my definition) to make sure their books and whatever's inside them are decent enough to warrant slaughtering trees to bring them to light.

With my criteria (which won't get ANYONE a grant), GoodReads reviews and Amazon reviews really matter. I had one editor tell me she didn't think that reviews from the major publications really meant much in terms of sales––just the Amazon type affected sales. How do people feel about that?

I wrote to Percival Everett, who was the chair of the English Department at University of Southern California and is now a Distinguished Professor. He's written maybe 14-15 books, traditionally published. (Check out Erasure. It's dynamite.) I was hoping for a magic bullet to cure my writer's angst. "If I go for a big publisher, will my soul be destroyed? Or should I stay small and starve?"

He said there's no magic solution. We have to deal with staying sane in an insane environment.

Which brings to mind the add sex and violence or delete it issue. Arrgh. The only answer is to be true to yourself and find a genre and audience which supports that self. A market exists on both sides.

Look at the TV program 24. This is one moving homicide-disaster. Great ratings, people love it. And then we have the Merchant/Ivory type movie with carefully drawn plots and tension. Exquisite styling. The trick is to get hooked up with an audience that likes what you do.

Gotta go. It's Saturday. Time to play. Numenon

From the date of my first published feature in 1990 the publishing industry in all aspects has been an enigma to me. I have experienced it at most every level from the local newspaper to large international publishers and have yet to decipher the code of operation or understood how they profit.
I have often felt they made money without meaning to. Now, with the storms of the Great Depression part two howling at the gates I am more than curious as to how the industry will change.
In an effort to save time suffice to say my two primary complaints are and have been a void in regards to a publishers loyalty to the author and the publishers myopic view of the world which often negates any hope of the author catching the next big wave.
The up side of the dark times we are entering is it will force the author as well as surviving publishers to think outside of the box, be more creative in marketing endeavors, and be creative in the utilization of resources.

Hello everyone,

Congratulations and Good Fortune on your books and endeavors.

This was a great thread that suddenly died out a year ago. A similar one has started up on another Goodreads group, so I thought I'd link to it here, for anyone who may want to pursue this further.

http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/2...