Nathan Bransford, Author

Imagining a Post-Amazon World

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Bransford) — Tue, 21 May 2013 16:00:00 +0000

A few weeks back I wondered why publishers haven't taken the initiative to begin selling e-books in a more-agressive way, and especially why they don't empower authors to sell their own e-books.

Reader Steve Davidson took that a step further and wonders why an author with a platform needs a publisher or distributor at all:

Very interesting, but I don't think it takes things far enough.

What I have been wondering of late is - why are established authors with inventory bothering with online distributors at all? Why are they giving away any percentage of a sale?

There are fairly easy to implement on-line store suites (some even open source) - turnkey operations - that can handle all of the transactional issues (credit cards, downloads, etc) that will also capture purchaser information.

Amazon/B&N offer an author the "those who read X will enjoy y" sales pitch - but that cuts three or more ways; a competing title might get the dollars instead - an author's website offers no competitive sales option. The author can take the distributor's cut and plow it in to promotion and advertising or pass it along to the purchaser. The author's website can offer far more background and personalized promotional information. The only thing missing is the questionable "additional exposure" or "floor traffic"; that can still be obtained by retaining a single title and a really good author's page on such sites (rather than all of the inventory). Most authors don't see any real promotional effort spent on their books by the publisher (we're being told constantly that a lot of that is being pushed off onto the author already) - so why do that extra work AND pay for the privilege when one could do the extra work and add 10 or 30 or 30 percent to their take? No, the above won't really work for emerging authors initially , but for someone with a track record who can regularly attract some press...it would be another round of cutting out the middleman, but this time the spoils go to the author.

Right now it's hard to imagine anyone but the very biggest authors commanding the ability to sell outside of existing channels. When people want to buy an e-book they go to Amazon or B&N, they don't think to Google an author and see if they are only offering a book for sale

But could this change? Could we see a shift where not only traditional publishers, but also Amazon and B&N aren't necessary for an author?

It seems to me that this is an opportunity for Google especially to undercut Amazon. Google could provide the vending platform, much as they were supposedly going to do with independent bookstores, and they could steer e-book sales directly to authors and their own websites.

These days it's hard to imagine a world without Amazon. But just as malls are giving way to specialty stores and online vending, could individual author sites pave the way for dispersed e-bookselling?

Art: The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope by Henry Rousseau

The Last Few Weeks in Books 5/20/13

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Bransford) — Mon, 20 May 2013 16:00:00 +0000

Brooklyn Heights. Photo by me. I'm on Instagram here.

Lots and lots of links stored up from the past few weeks, let's get to them!

It hasn't been long since the courts rejected a settlement between the Authors Guild and Google over Google's bookscanning project, which many people characterized as far too generous to Google. Well, now the Authors Guild is taking a different tack. They're suing Google for $3 billion (disclosure: link is to CNET, I work there).

Fear of Amazon's role in the future of books has really crystalized in some sectors of the book world, and agent Andrew Zack had a post recently in which he expressed that perspective. I don't totally agree with the post, and expressed that in the comments, but it's a very good counter-perspective.

What's the difference between a wholesaler and a distributor? Self-publishing Resources explains.

Even in the age of self-publishing there are still many benefits to having an agent (I still have one!). Agent Rachelle Gardner details these advantages.

Macmillan's Tor imprint switched to non-DRM e-book sales a year ago. The result? No discernable increase in piracy.

HarperCollins announced the formation of a digital-first mystery imprint, called Witness. Which had agent Kristin Nelson wondering: Why can't publishers pay e-book royalties on a monthly basis?

And speaking of imprint formation, The Atlantic launched a new e-book division focusing on singles and curated collections. Expect to see more and more non-publishers with a platform launch e-book programs, which is further evidence of the atomization of publishing and a reduction in the necessity and advantages of traditional publishing.

Lots of talk about F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby now that the new movie version is in theaters. The Guardian argues that Jay Gatsby has nothing on F. Scott Fitzgerald himself.

A class-action lawsuit has been filed by authors against self-publishing outfit Author Solutions, which is now owned by Penguin.

Are you ready to be a published author? Are you sure?

The trailer for the Enders Game movie was released.

What's the optimal price for a self-published e-book? $3.99, says Smashwords.

Hilary Smith, née The Intern, has advice for the parents of writers.

Need to fire your agent? Sometimes it's necessary. Agent Jenny Bent has advice for you.

In non-book news, I found this article provocative: What if the Tsaranaevs had been the "Boston shooters?"

And finally, Google I/O was this past week, which brought a whole slew of interesting new things. My friend Sharon Vaknin breaks down Google Now voice search vs. Apple's Siri:

Have a great week!

Why I'm Paying Someone to Edit My Guide to Writing a Novel

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Bransford) — Thu, 16 May 2013 16:00:00 +0000

A few months ago I announced that I'm going to be self-publishing a guide to writing a novel, and I'm pleased to report that I have finished and edited my first draft!

It has 42 chapters plus an epilogue, it covers both writing and revising, and it has more references to space monkeys than you can shake a fist at.

Now it's time to get it edited. And I'm going to pay for a professional editor.

Why you might ask?

I don't think everyone out there has to have their work professionally edited. Everyone needs some sort of good feedback on their work, whether that comes from their friends, from a critique partner, a friend, enemy... someone.

When I was an agent, I went ahead and assumed that everyone got feedback on their work, and what ultimately mattered was the final product, not who they received their feedback from. My post about whether you should pay someone to edit your work still stands. You don't have to pay for it.

But here's the thing about asking for free critiques from critique partners: It requires reciprocity. And I'm just too busy to give the kind of feedback I would need to give to receive good feedback in return. I need to pay for it instead.

Plus, I am curious about the freelance editor process because I've never done it before, and I also really do appreciate the value of having some feedback from someone who has had experience editing in traditional publishing. I'm planning to first work with my friend Christine Pride for a first edit, and then will likely turn to a second editor for some more feedback and copyediting.

As I await my edit, I'm going to spend my free time trying to figure out what in the heck I should call this thing, what my cover should look like, and how exactly one self-publishes a book.

I would love your help! More posts as this thing develops.

Art: Die Abrechnung by Josef Wagner-Höhenberg

How Do You Plan to Publish Your Work-in-Progress?

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Bransford) — Tue, 14 May 2013 16:00:00 +0000

I have not been a literary agent for over two-and-a-half years now. The main way strangers contact me is through my blog, through a link under my bio, which says I was "formerly a literary agent."

I still. get. query letters.

Query letters are the zombies in my life. Just when I think it's safe to open my e-mail, they sneak in and send a chill down my spine.

So from my vantage point, it sure seems like quite a few people out there are still pursuing traditional publication, no matter how popular self-publishing grows and how the publishing blogosphere has steadily morphed to serve the self-publishing community.

What about you? Are you planning to first pursue traditional publication? Do you see self-publishing as a first option? A fallback?

Poll below. If you're reading this on a feed reader or via e-mail, please click this link to see it.

How to Do Your Chores in 12 Easy Steps

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Bransford) — Mon, 13 May 2013 16:00:00 +0000

Step 1: Start a novel

Step 2: Write 50 pages in a month

Step 3: Write 5 pages in the next two months

Step 4: Stare at the screen

Step 5: Despair

Step 6: Open a closet

Step 7: Eye cleaning supplies longingly

Step 8: Clean every square inch of your apartment/house, marveling at how much more fun you're having than writing your novel

Step 9: Find a filing cabinet, organize it

Step 10: Find tiles, scrub them with a toothbrush

Step 11: Run out of things to clean, return to computer

Step 12: Stare at the screen in a freakishly clean living space

Art: Bridget Holmes, a Nonagenarian Housemaid by John Riley

Publishers Should Empower Authors to Sell Their Own E-books

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Bransford) — Wed, 08 May 2013 16:00:00 +0000

Despite having extensive distribution operations, publishers have long been extremely reluctant to sell books directly to customers. Whether for lack of retail expertise, out of fear of competing with bookstores they need to thrive, or lack of concrete vision, publishers have completely ceded the e-book and e-retailing landscape to Amazon and others.

Even Bookish, a site built by three publishers, is oriented around discovery and not e-bookselling.

Why are publishers so scared of selling e-books? Amazon has shown no such compunctions about creating a book-to-customer vertical, adding publisher operations to go along with their extensive retail and e-bookselling behemoth.

Moreover, publishers have one big advantage over Amazon when it comes to e-bookselling: their authors.

Just about every author out there has a website and/or a blog and/or a Twitter presence. Why not incentivize them with higher royalties if they sell direct via a device-agnostic module they can place on their sites?

This would look a lot like the way J.K. Rowling is selling her e-books, via a central site compatible with multiple e-book formats, including Kindle.

Rowling built Pottermore herself, and 99.9% of authors don't have the resources to do that. But publishers should give these tools to authors, so they can sell e-books directly to their readers.

The e-book landscape right now is built around central vendors, and there will still be appeal in that idea. But there's no reason publishers can't turn their authors into a dispersed e-bookselling juggernaut.

Art: Still Life With Books, Attributed to Jacques Bizet

Has HBO's "Game of Thrones" Surpassed the Books?

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Bransford) — Mon, 06 May 2013 16:00:00 +0000

In a battle fitting for Westeros, I've started wondering if the HBO series "Game of Thrones" has managed to surpass George R.R. Martin's books.

The list of movies and TV shows that have managed to be better than the books they're based on is pretty small. The Godfather, basically, and a few others.

It's simply extremely difficult for filmmakers to match the depth and scope of novels, and seeing characters and events on the screen almost always fails to match our imagination.

I approached the series thusly: I read Game of Thrones before I watched the series. Then I watched Season 1, and marveled at how faithful it was to the book. I plowed forward with Season 2, which was terrific, without reading Clash of Kings. I'm now simultaneously watching Season 3 and reading Clash of Kings.

I have to say, right now I'm preferring Season 3 to Clash of Kings. Yes, that could partly be because I already know roughly what's going to happen in the book, but I think it's a testament to how judicious show creators David Benioff (a terrific author himself) and D.B. Weiss are at keeping the best of the series, discarding the excess threads, and even improving certain key characters.

Neither series is finished, and it will be interesting to see how (or whether) George R.R. Martin wraps up his series and whether the HBO show will eventually beat him to it.

But right now my vote is for the show.

What do you think? Poll below:

This Week in Books 4/26/13

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Bransford) — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 16:00:00 +0000

Photo by me. I'm on Instagram!

This week in the books!

Thank you so much to everyone who participated in the #ThankAWriter project! Maggie Mason posted a recap, including how her first letter to Thomas Lynch resulted in an amazing gift from the author, some of the excerpts from the letters, and the winner of the first six books in the Penguin Dropcap series. It's never too late to participate if you haven't gotten around to writing your letters.

Meanwhile a very busy couple of weeks for me as I spent some of last week in San Francisco for work, but I was able to snag a few links from the last couple weeks for your enjoyment:

Reader Greg Peisert took the data from my post yesterday about how e-book sales are still on the rise and added very helpful linear and logarithmic trend lines to see where we might be headed. Chances are somewhere between these two lines:

Very cool!

Adam Johnson, who won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for The Orphan Master's Son. Talk about living the dream for an author.

Other winners:

Drama: Disgraced by Ayad Akhtar
History: Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam by Fredrik Logevall
Biography: The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss
Poetry: Stag’s Leap by Sharon Olds
General Nonfiction: Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America by Gilbert King

Congrats to all the winners!

Author David Gaughran wrote a provocative post about distribution service Argo Nevis, which many top literary agents offer their clients as a self-publishing option. Does it provide a good deal for authors? Gaughran concludes no. The comments section is very interesting, and I left my thoughts there as well.

Lots of writers belong to writing groups. But how many people have to cross a military checkpoint to visit theirs? Reader Nora Lester Murad shared a really great video of her writer's group in Ramallah, Palestine.

Chuck Sambuchino has a great round of advice from agents about what not to do at the beginning of your novel.

Actor Jason Segal landed a book deal for a middle grade series.

GalleyCat rounded up some writing advice for aspiring children's book authors.

And Maggie has an awesome roundup of homemade gift ideas for Mother's Day.

Meanwhile, don't forget about the Forums! If you ever want to ask me a question, connect with writers, or spill what's on your mind, that's the place to do it.

And finally, with the playoffs upon us, I couldn't get enough of Shaq's NBA bloopers of the year:

Have a great weekend!

No, E-book Sales Are Not Declining

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Bransford) — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 16:00:00 +0000

An idea has taken root in the bookosphere that e-book sales have peaked as the people who want e-books buy e-books and the people who want print continue to buy print. This may be spurred along by a January article by Nicholas Carr arguing that the e-book bubble has burst.

This is not remotely the case. E-book sales aren't declining. E-book sales percentage growth is declining. These are two very, very different things.

The 6.2% rise in book sales in 2012 were propelled to an increase by e-book sales, and in fact, e-book sales for children's books more than doubled. E-book sales were up 41% in 2012. This is less in percentage terms than the exponential 100%+ growth that was seen in previous years, but it still represents a significant rise in sales.

What is misleading about fixating on percentage growth is that it's looking at a market that started at zero five years ago.

Take these stats from the AAP:

E-book sales increase 41% in 2012
E-book sales increase 117% in 2011
E-book sales increase 164% in 2010

Seems like things are really slowing down right?

Let's look at those numbers again in real terms:

E-book sales in 2012: $1.3 billion (+$330.1 million)
E-book sales in 2011: $969.9 million (+$528.6 million)
E-book sales in 2010: $441.3 million (+$274.4 million)
E-book sales in 2009: $166.9 million

Yes, 2011 was a huge increase. But growth in 2012 (41%) was still greater than in 2010, when it represented a 164% increase.

Here's what that looks like in chart form:

That doesn't look like a decline to me.

UPDATE: As David Gaughran notes in the comments, the AAP's stats don't count self-published e-books, which could account for as many as 25% of all e-book sales.

In Order to Write, Writers Have to Live

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Bransford) — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 16:00:00 +0000

When you're in the throes of writing a novel, it's tempting to block life out. It's time-consuming, you're often lost in your own head, and you're trying to live out your dream. But it doesn't work to withdraw from life.

As part of Camp NaNoWriMo I wrote a guest post about the importance of living to the writer. Not least of which because you need to learn from real life, but also because you have to keep cultivating the relationships that give life meaning.

The Value of Life Experience

Art: Luncheon of the Boating Party by Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Estrangement in the Social Media Era

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Bransford) — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 16:00:00 +0000

Social media is built around maintaining your relationships. Facebook Timeline was introduced to help you remember your past.

But what happens when relationships fall apart and when there are parts of your past you'd rather not remember? Social media can thrust painful memories on you, often when you least expect it.

I was recently interviewed by the BBC Radio 4's show "Digital Human" about my experience with divorce in the Internet era, along with Becca Bland, who is estranged from her parents.

This is the first time I've given an interview about my divorce, and although it was a bit nervewracking to talk about my personal life, I'm really proud to have been a part of this show. It's a thoughtful examination of an area of modern digital life that is new and challenging but not without hope.

You can stream the show directly from the BBC's site or download it for free from iTunes.

My post from last year on divorce in the Internet era is here.

Art: Portrait of Ambroise Vollard by Paul Cézanne

Who Owns E-book Rights From Old Publishing Contracts?

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Bransford) — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 16:00:00 +0000

Old publishing contracts are usually silent on electronic rights and e-books, which of course may not have been invented when the contract was signed.

So. Does this mean that those rights belong to the original publisher, who can be presumed to have all book rights even if the specific technology wasn't invented yet? Or does it belong to the author, because there is a reserved rights clause that states that all rights not belonging to the publisher (including, presumably, those that have not been invented) belong to the author?

There is a somewhat under-the-radar legal battle going on right now between HarperCollins and Open Road over the e-book rights to Jean Craighead George's Julie of the Wolves that should have significant implications for this landscape moving forward.

The suit hinges over what exactly it means to publishing something "in book form."

There are tons of old publishing contracts out there, and many of them are for books that continue to sell to this day. Whether the original publisher or the author/author's estate has the right to these e-book rights will have a massive impact on the future of the business.

For authors, it can be far more lucrative to sell those rights directly to another publisher or e-publisher than to simply receive an e-book royalty from the original publisher. Meanwhile, publishers have countless backlist titles that could be threatened depending on the specific wording of very very old publishing contracts.

Stay tuned.

Art: Fencing-match by Charles Jean Robineau

#ThankAWriter Letter 5: Judy Blume

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Bransford) — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 16:00:00 +0000

Maggie Mason and I are writing thank you notes to our five favorite authors in the #ThankAWriter project. This is letter #5. Please join us! See this post to find out how to create a Go Mighty profile and see all the other inspiring letters. Every one you write and post about on Go Mighty enters you to win the first six books in the Penguin Drop Caps series.

Judy Blume needs no introduction. If you read her books, chances are she changed your life.

Dear Ms. Blume,

You may be known most for your young adult novels, and I loved those too, but the ones that truly had an effect on me were "Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing" and the Fudge series. You taught me that kids books can be funny.

More than that, you brought such an undercurrent of substance, even amid the humor, and it is that combination that influenced me the most when I started writing books on my own.

Now, it is such a pleasure to follow you on Twitter, and I admire you always being current and in the now.

You are a treasure - thank you so much for your work.

Nathan Bransford

Scott Turow and the (Supposed) Decline of the American Author

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Bransford) — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 16:00:00 +0000

In case you missed it last week, Authors Guild President Scott Turow took to the New York Times to shake his fist at the wind, lamenting "the slow death of the American author," which he attributed to, well, pretty much everything.

Techdirt published a very lengthy takedown that is worth reading in full (via agent Ted Weinstein), as did David Gaughran and Barry Eisler.

The article spares no bugaboo, but I want to focus briefly on some of Turow's points:

The Supreme Court devalued copyright by allowing the sale of cheap imported books

As Turow notes, used print book sales have always existed. It hasn't stopped the book business yet, and cheap used books are readily available for every book you could possibly want to buy.

How economically feasible is it to round up used books overseas and ship them across the ocean to dump them on the US market and hope to turn a profit? Is this really a significant problem?

Publishers aren't paying high enough e-book royalties

I actually agree with Turow on this one to a certain extent. Yes, publishers save some money without the infrastructure of print copies, but paper and shipping don't cost that much. The other costs that go into making a book, such as advances, editing, design, infrastructure, etc., still exist in an e-book world.

I don't like the 25% net industry standard royalty for e-book editions. Still, let's take a book where the hardcover is $25.00, the e-book starts at $12.99, the trade paperback is $14.99, and the mass market is $7.99. Here's how the royalties shake out:

Hardcover royalty (typically 10-15% retail): $2.50
E-book (typically 25% on publisher's share of 70% of list price): $2.27
Trade paperback (typically 7.5% retail): $1.12
Mass market (typically 8% retail): $0.63

So for a new e-book, the royalty is somewhere in between a hardcover and a trade paperback. Yes, the e-book royalty decreases with the price, but still. It's not ideal, but is that truly horrible?

Turow: "A search for “Scott Turow free e-books” brought up 10 pirate sites out of the first 10 results on Yahoo, 8 of 8 on Bing and 6 of 10 on Google, with paid ads decorating the margins of all three pages."

This sounds menacing, but as Techdirt pointed out, Turow's bigger problem may be that absolutely no one is actually searching for "Scott Turow free e-books."

Yes, e-book piracy is a problem, or at least a potential problem. But, as always, the music industry's experience is instructive. As iTunes, Pandora and Spotify have allowed consumers to consume music easily and legally: sales are on the rise and piracy is on the wane.

The solution to this is precisely what Turow would probably cite as a "problem:" Cheap e-books and e-book lending programs to discourage piracy. Such as...

Turow argues that libraries lending e-books is a potential danger

Some economic model absolutely needs to be worked out so that libraries won't simply function as a free end-around for traditional e-book sales, downloaded by users who don't even step foot in a library. And that seems to be happening.

Better yet, if publishers are really worried about lack of monetization for lending programs, why don't they start the Spotify of books?

Turow says the decreasing number of publishers in Russia means that "few Russians, let alone Westerners, can name a contemporary Russian author whose work regularly affects the national conversation."

I read a profile of Russian crime novelist and political opposition leader Boris Akunin in The New Yorker just last summer.

Zooming out a bit, I don't mean to be a pollyanna about the dangers facing authors and traditional publishers. We are absolutely in a time of transition, and there will be winners and losers.

My disappointment in the Op-Ed and Turow's seemingly rote hyperbolic response to everything Amazon does is that it fails to provide any realistic solutions to any of these supposed problems, let alone position the Author's Guild to be an advocate for authors in the new world of publishing that we are all living in, whether we want it or not.

The Author's Guild has a Back in Print program that aims to help authors get their print books back for sale with online booksellers. Where is the e-book program? Where are the social media and self-publishing tutorials and programs to help authors make a transition from a world where the midlist is disappearing to one where authors can still find their readers in new ways? (These all may exist - I couldn't find them on the Authors Guild site).

Better yet, why can't the Authors Guild use its clout to proactively work out deals with Amazon and other online booksellers to get better revenue splits for members who self-publish than they can achieve on their own?

The thing is, change is coming. I commend the Authors Guild for advocating for authors' rights, but not every single technological development and act by Amazon is necessarily a bad thing.

Instead of trying to fight the wind, the Authors Guild would serve authors better by building some windmills.

Art: Hl. Hieronymus als Kardinal by El Greco

The Last Few Week in Books 4/15/13

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Bransford) — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 16:00:00 +0000

Photo by me. Instagram!

Lots of links!

But first, in case you missed it last week the Louisville Cardinals won the National Championship, which means Susanne7799 was the winner of the 5th Annual Blog Bracket Challenge! By a wide margin, actually. It also means Ted Cross finished in second place for the third consecutive year. Amazing! Ted is officially the Buffalo Bills of the tournament challenge. Susanne, please contact me for your prize, and Ted, contact me as well I'm sure we can think of something to celebrate three years winning silver.

Thanks to BookCourt for hosting me yesterday, and in case you missed that one I have one more upcoming event this Saturday at noon at Books of Wonder in Manhattan. Come on by!

There were two fabulous and thought-provoking articles recently about feminism and young adult fiction that I highly recommend checking out. The first was by Rachel Lieberman, in which she discusses how to develop a good feminist narrative without making it preachy or propaganda. And my good friend Sarah McCarry, aka The Rejectionist, had a tour de force essay in The Rumpus about the implications of reader reactions to Lorraine Scheidt's Uses for Boys.

Authors' Guild president and bestselling author Scott Turow took to the New York Times to blame cheap foreign editions, copyright law, low e-book royalties, search engines, e-book piracy, professors, libraries, the potential of used e-book sales, Amazon, and devaluation of copyright for "the slow death of the American author." I kind of died a slow death while reading that Op-Ed, and plan to devote a full post to it tomorrow.

So, we all know that Fifty Shades of Grey made massive amounts of money. But just how much? Enough to prop up the entire multinational company above Random House.

Why exactly did Amazon acquire Goodreads? I say to eliminate a potential competitor. Jordan Weissman says because Goodreads has remarkable insight into hardcore book buyers. Ezra Klein wonders if it's to hasten social reading.

Agent Rachelle Gardner spotted a great quote about what happens when sales guys run companies instead of product people, and extrapolates to a publishing industry that too often is driven by what sales people think will sell instead of editorial teams.

Reddit's co-founder took to Reddit to ask about which book promotion activities worked. GalleyCat rounded up some of the best suggestions.

Night Shade Books has been on the rocks lately, and is trying to sell to two companies, in a deal many agents and authors have criticized. Agent Andrew Zack sharply criticized the initial deal, which was later improved, Zack and others were more satisfied with that one. If you can trace through all the back and forth it's actually a very good primer on publishing terms and contracts.

In other publishing news, Penguin will sell e-books to libraries again, the Guardian has a solid post on 10 ways self-publishing has changed the books world, and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos reminds shareholders: authors are our customers too.

And Richard Nash has written an article about the business of literature that several people have sent me that is apparently very good but I haven't had a chance to read yet. I will soon! Busy week!

Comment! of! the! past! few! weeks! goes to Michael Offutt, who has an interesting response to the post about whether we'll all be publishers in the future:

Maybe what's needed is a revamp of the traditional publishing model with regard to bookstores. Allow me to explain:

Best Buy just partnered with Samsung following Apple's model of featuring tech giants having their own stores within a retail space and then having those specialists who work for the parent corporation on site to assist in picking out products.

Why couldn't Barnes and Noble or another kind of brick and mortar store do the same thing?

Why couldn't you have retail space divided up among traditional publishers like Random House and Knopf with specialty spaces and employees that work those spaces there to talk about their books?

And finally, if we needed any further proof that success and popularity in the future will be increasingly (if not infinitely) democratized, the NY Times has a really interesting profile of YouTube star Jenna Marbles, who has now racked a billion (yes a billion) views.

Have a great week!

#ThankAWriter Letter 4: Ann Jonas

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Bransford) — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 16:00:00 +0000

Maggie Mason and I are writing thank you notes to our five favorite authors in the #ThankAWriter project. This is letter #4. Please join us! See this post to find out how to create a Go Mighty profile and see all the other inspiring letters. Every one you write and post about on Go Mighty enters you to win the first six books in the Penguin Drop Caps series.

My fourth letter in the #ThankAWriter project is to Ann Jonas, who wrote and illustrated the first book I remember loving. Round Trip is a picture book that is read straight through, and when you turn the book upside down the illustrations become something entirely different for the trip home. Completely amazing, and it kicked off my lifelong love of books.

Dear Ms. Jonas,

"Round Trip" was the first book I ever remembered being read to me by my parents, and to say that it blew my freaking mind is an understatement. I begged them to read "Round Trip Jonas" (as I called it) nearly every night, and it helped kick off a livelong love of books that culminated in me writing them myself.

Thank you for dreaming up such an incredibly inventive concept and for showing me the worlds that could be revealed through books. "Round Trip" sent me on a happy journey I am still glad to be traveling.

Nathan Bransford

In the Future, Will Everyone Be a Publisher?

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Bransford) — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 16:00:00 +0000

A few weeks back, publishing consultant Mike Shatzkin had an interesting post on the fragmentation, or as he calls it, "atomization" of the publishing industry as the act of publishing grows increasing dispersed.

Without the requirement of an organization to reach the public through bookstores and without the requirements of capital or knowledge to create printed books, any organization that is routinely reaching people interested in a common topic — whether or not they are creating content around that topic now, but especially if they do — will find it constructive to publish, and well within their reach and means to do so.

That is: publishing will become a function of many entities, not a capability reserved to a few insiders who can call themselves an industry...

This is the atomization of publishing, the dispersal of publishing decisions and the origination of published material from far and wide. In a pretty short time, we will see an industry with a completely different profile than it has had for the past couple of hundred years.

He goes on to say that while the package of services that publishers provide to authors will still have appeal, he's not sure whether those services will be enough to constitute an industry that looks like the one we know.

For now, publishers can still rely on those services and their print distribution to attract authors. In the future, they won't have that. And as those services become the central differentiator, you have to wonder if the adversarial approach publishers occasionally take with authors (slow payments, lack of transparency) will give way to a true service-oriented approach.

When everyone can be a publisher, traditional publishers will have to compete on their service.

Art: Caxton Showing the First Specimen of His Printing to King Edward IV at the Almonry, Westminster by Daniel Maclise

Upcoming Event Happenings!

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Bransford) — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 16:00:00 +0000

New York area people or those who are willing to travel great distances!

I will soon be having two events to support the publication of Jacob Wonderbar and the Interstellar Time Warp and the paperback publication of Jacob Wonderbar for President of the Universe!

First up: BookCourt, in scenic Cobble Hill, which is now my home neighborhood! I'll be reading on Sunday, April 14th at 4pm, and if you mention friend-of-the-blog status there may be an after-reading party at a place as yet to be determined in the Cobble Hill vicinity.

Add this bad boy to your calendar:

Join the Facebook Event

Then! On Saturday, April 20th at 12pm at Books of Wonder in Manhattan, I will be participating in a fantastic day of middle grade wondrousness with Charles Vess, Kevin Sylvester, George O'Connor, Lisa Greenwald, Princess Sophie Mamikonian, Rachel Wise, Peter Lerangis and possibly other people! You don't know.

(Facebook Event to come!)

Hope to see you there!

#ThankAWriter Letter 3: Vikram Seth

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Bransford) — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 16:00:00 +0000

Maggie Mason and I are writing thank you notes to our five favorite authors in the #ThankAWriter project. This is letter #3. Please join us! See this post to find out how to create a Go Mighty profile and see all the other inspiring letters.

Important update to the #ThankAWriter project! Now, not only do you have the chance to give thanks to some of your favorite authors, every one you write an post about on Go Mighty enters you to win the first six books in their Penguin Drop Caps series.

My third letter in the #ThankAWriter is to Vikram Seth, author of A Suitable Boy and The Golden Gate, who I took a class from in college.

Dear Vikram,

When I was a senior in college at Stanford I took a small class from you, where you introduced me to The Wife of Martin Guerre and we discussed creativity. I'm not sure if you would remember this conversation, but one day I went to talk to you during office hours and I told you that I thought I wanted to go work in publishing. You looked at me with a slightly horrified expression and said, "Why would you want to do that?!" and then told me that if I could depend at all on some further charity from my parents I should go instead write my first novel because you believed in my writing.

I didn't listen to you. At least not at first. I did go work in publishing and ended up becoming a literary agent. I moved to San Francisco, where I was charmed by The Golden Gate and I was thrilled to be working with talented writers.

But your horrified expression stuck with me. I did go and write a novel. That one didn't work out, and then I really depended on that expression when I wrote my next novel. That one did work out and became the Jacob Wonderbar series for children.

Having the belief of someone as accomplished as you meant such a huge amount to me. Not only did I appreciate that class and not only do I admire your work, I can't thank you enough for that conversation and for the expression on your face.

Thanks,
Nathan

Hands-free Books Are Coming

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Bransford) — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 16:00:00 +0000

Credit: Google/Screenshot by me

My friend and colleague Sharon Vaknin recently received word that she is one of the lucky winners of the Google Glass Explorers program, and will soon be able to test out this futuristic device called Google Glass for herself.

What is Google Glass? It's part screen, part camera, part enhanced reality, part translater, part voice assistant, part whatever in the heck we're going to dream up for it to do next. This video shows some of the possibilities. It's not hard to imagine a world where we soon won't have to remember each other's names because our Google Glass will tell us based on facial recognition.

Sharon and I got to chatting about our Google Glass future, and something dawned on me: Hands-free books are coming. The screen will be in front of our eyes. We'll blink to or wave our hands or just think about the page turning or it will just know somehow and it will turn.

And let me tell you this: I, for one, welcome our coming hands-free-books overlords.

Yes yes, the turning of the pages. Yes, the tactile experience of holding something in your hands as you're reading.

Me? I'll be sprawled out on a hammock or easily riding a subway or sweeping my floors or tripping over the sidewalks trying to read and walk down the street. Who knows! I just know I'll be able to read more if I don't have to have something in my hands to do it.

I haven't had a chance to try Google Glass, and from the video it looked like the screen was a bit small for long-form reading. I haven't seen books as a part of its future concepts. This is still in firmly in the hypothetical phase.

But some form of ever-present hands-free screen is coming. It's going to change our lives. And it's just a few steps away from books being beamed directly to our brains.

Count me in. What about you?

Amazon Acquired Goodreads

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Bransford) — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 16:00:00 +0000

In case you missed it yesterday, Amazon acquired Goodreads, the popular book social networking site with over 16 million users (disclosure: link is to CNET, I work there. All opinions expressed here are my own).

When the news broke, quite a few people on Twitter remarked at how much it made sense. And it does: The number one e-bookseller just acquired the number one book social networking site.

But what does this mean for the future?

Amazon acquisitions seem to fall into two broad categories. There are some companies that Amazon buys but then pretty much leaves as-is (IMDB, Shelfari), and there are others that they then integrate closely into their main platform (CreateSpace, Zappos). Which type will Goodreads be?

At first glance, an Amazon/Goodreads partnership opens up some exciting possibilities. Amazon could draw upon your relationships on Goodreads to surface your friend's notes, reviews and progress within an e-book. You could update Goodreads and leave reviews from directly within the Kindle and Kindle apps. Goodreads hinted at this in their announcement about the acquisition.

For the first time ever, books could be truly social.

Amazon could also surface Goodreads reviews on Amazon and add to one of their key value points, and fulfill e-books directly from Goodreads.

But I think the most important element for Amazon was simply to stave off a potential competitor by buying it. Goodreads has the size and critical mass of users to be a viable e-book vendor of its own, one that perhaps could have taken a chunk of Amazon's share. By simply acquiring it and leaving it as is, Amazon has already enhanced its competitive position.

In its announcement and in a subsequent interview, Goodreads pledged to stay an independent entity and for now even retain buy links to other vendors. For readers and users of Goodreads, I can't imagine that Amazon will destroy a still-growing site with such a passionate fan base.

And for publishers... well, it comes on the heels of Bookish going live, and clearly the social element of book reading is still a nut they're waiting to crack.

One thing's for certain: Amazon just got stronger.

What do you make of this acquisition?

Why the Internet Gave the Bullied Bus Monitor $700,000

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Bransford) — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 16:00:00 +0000

Over at Slate, Seth Stevenson revisited last year's viral event of do-gooderism, where an elderly bus monitor was videotaped being bullied on a school bus by some twelve-year-olds being particularly nasty twelve-year-olds.

Hundreds of people, spurred on initially by Reddit, donated to give this woman money for a vacation. But then it just kept going and going. The donations ended up north of $700,000.

Which is great. But of all the people out there who need and deserve money, why $700,000 for this one woman? As Stevenson points out, what about rape victims? Isn't $700,000 for this bus monitor a little overkill?

Stevenson talked with experts on crowd behavior, and they pointed out the extent to which we're drawn to simplicity and concreteness when banding together to take action:

Reicher attributes the giving frenzy, in part, to concretization. “For an abstract idea to affect us,” he says, “it often helps if it’s turned into something concrete and embodied. To say lots of people are suffering is an abstract concept. To see this one woman suffering, and be able to help her, is more concrete.”

This concretization also works in reverse, where people who do stupid, simple wrongs can suffer abuse far disproportionate to their initial errors. A woman who posted a picture flipping off a sign calling for peace and quiet at Arlington Cemetery was the subject of online harassment and ended up losing her job, and I'm sure we all remember the author who shot her mouth off at an online reviewer and was then the subject of an Internet witch hunt.

Unfortunately, as soon as facts get complicated we start disagreeing and it becomes more difficult to channel our collective effort. We should be punishing the architects of the financial crisis and the efforts to mislead the public to war, where the stakes are far greater for us as a society and the misdeeds far worse, but those events are complex and it's difficult to agree upon them. Somehow those misdeeds go unpunished even as we heap our collective rage on people who do one small, stupid thing.

For better or worse, we're drawn to simplicity even as we have a thirst for collective do-gooderism, and it's heartwarming to let one woman serve as the vessel of our goodwill. I hope it won't stop us from channeling our energy to punish graver mistakes and reward greater successes, even if the facts are more complicated.

#ThankAWriter Letter 2: Bill Watterson

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Bransford) — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 16:00:00 +0000

Maggie Mason and I are writing thank you notes to our five favorite authors in the #ThankAWriter project. This is letter #2. Please join us! See this post to find out how to create a Go Mighty profile and see all the other inspiring letters.

I don't know if there's anyone who inspired me to write children's books more than Calvin & Hobbes author Bill Watterson. I'm hardly alone in my admiration for him, but what's especially amazing to me is the extent to which I enjoy Calvin & Hobbes comics just as much now as I did when I was a kid.

Here's my thank you note:

Dear Mr. Watterson,

You, perhaps more than any other person, inspired me to write books for children. And most importantly, you taught me that it is important to trust in the intelligence of children. You never dumbed anything down, you always trusted the reader, and the result is that I enjoy "Calvin & Hobbes" just as much at age 32 as I did at age 12.

Your work is a tremendous inspiration and I can't count the number of times I've read the complete series. You also knew how to make an exit so I'll leave this here: THANK YOU.

Nathan Bransford

Words Have the Power We Give Them

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Bransford) — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 16:00:00 +0000

It's interesting to think about what words really are. They're air passing through vocal chords. They're pixels on a page. They're a collection of sounds and shapes that we have collectively decided have meaning. And we bestow certain words with tremendous power.

In the comments of my post about the reaction to The Onion and the Twitterverse finding enemies, we got to talking about the power of words, who can say them, and how much intent matters when they're said.

Why, exactly, do certain words carry so much power? I don't mean that in terms of history, which I understand, or why people take offense to the most hateful words, which I also understand. People are right to be offended by them.

I'm talking about, at a basic level, how did we all collectively arrive at deciding that these words or any words have totemic power?

The reason we decide on certain words to channel such power, I think, is that some words are vessels for very real and complex power disparities that exist in the real world. All of the real hate, sexism, and racism in the world are bestowed upon a few words that can stand in for forces much greater than the syllables themselves, to the point that if you say them out loud you are summoning those powers and placing yourself in league with them.

It's still kind of a strange thing though, when you stop and think about it. Imagine a perfectly non-racist or non-sexist performance artist stepping onto a New York subway and shouting certain words to no one in particular, with no intention other than to say them. Why, exactly, should that person be beat up? What if that person doesn't even understand English or the what the words mean? (Note: I am not suggesting anyone does this).

When you say certain words in the wrong context or with ill intent, you are summoning an invisible army behind you. You are assuming the mantle of the power of hate, which usually goes unspoken. You are aligning yourself with an ideology people are trying to stamp out. Use them and they may well try to stamp you out. They may be sounds and letters, but we've decided they should mean much more than that.

In some sense words really are magic spells. Say the right syllables and you assume tremendous power. But that too is an illusion, because the words themselves don't actually make you stronger.

There's real power in the world, there is real racism and sexism and oppression. People have suffered from these abuses.

The words themselves, though, are a string of sounds and some scratches on a page. They only have the power that we have collectively decided they should possess.

Art: A vanitas still life with a candle, an inkwell, a quill pen, a skull and books by Michael Conrad Hirt

RIP Google Reader, Long Live Feedly

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Bransford) — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 16:00:00 +0000

You guys I had this horrible nightmare last night that Google was getting rid of Google Reader and wasn't replacing it with anything.
— Nathan Bransford (@NathanBransford) March 14, 2013

Google, how could you?!

Yes, it is true. Google is getting rid of Google Reader (link is to CNET, I work there), the much-beloved site that kept us abreast of each other's blogs since 2005. Google Reader is shutting down July 1st.

If you read this blog via Google Reader, you will need to find an alternate feed reader before then. I aim to help!

Here are some worthy alternatives to Google Reader. I'm going to focus on Feedly because it is an incredibly easy way to port over your Google Reader experience, which I feel like has a few drawbacks but quite a few advantages over Reader.

Importing your feeds is easy. Just go to Feedly and add the web app to your browser (Chrome or Firefox only right now):

Then Connect to Google Reader, input your Google login and accept the permission:

And voila! Click on the "All" tab and you already have a pretty comparable experience to Google Reader.

Or you can use their "Today" view, which gives you a more magazine-y look:

The wide-open format of the open articles took a little getting used to, but I appreciate that the keyboard shortcuts are the same as Google Reader and I really love the "history" tab. I always hated in Google Reader how when I accidentally refreshed a page the article got marked as read and I had to go hunting for it.

You can also connect your Twitter account to see which articles your friends are sharing, and easily share things to social media or via e-mail.

The mobile app looks great, though there again the gestures took some getting used to. There's no column summary view, so instead you navigate your unread articles by swiping up. Sometimes you see an article display full screen:

Sometimes you get summaries:

You swipe up to get to the next article(s), swiping right to left gives you a selection of articles from around the Internet, and left to right gives you different views and your feed categories.

Here are some more tips on how to get the most out of Feedly.

I'm still very sad to be losing Google Reader, which I appreciated for its bare-bones interface and the fact that it was integrated with Google. Alas, alas.

Have contemplated life beyond Google Reader? Do you have a favorite RSS reader?