Yes, you heard that right. We’re hosting a breakfast with Vanity Fair called Re-Set Business.

Vanity Fair is our media partner, and Seth Godin is the host/moderator.  The four panelists are Anna Bernasek, Michael Eisner, Tom Peters and Gary Vaynerchuk, so we are guaranteed a provocative conversation about what it will take to succeed in the “re-set” business world ahead.

It’s taking place at the Harvard Club, 35 West 44^th Street (bet. 5^th and 6^th Avenues), on April 20, 2010, from 8:00 a.m. to 10:45 am (there will be a V.I.P. reception from 11:00 am to noon, which requires a separate ticket).

TICKET PRICES INCLUDE BOOK BY EACH AUTHOR.

Pre-registration (closing 3/05): $275

Early Bird Registration (closing 3/19): $320

Standard Registration: $375

V.I.P. Reception (limited capacity): $225 additional

For more information, pls go to www.resetbusiness.com, or call 917-338-0491.

Hope to see you there!!!

Oh…..and one more thing……you can keep in touch with us about the conference on Twitter and Facebook.

I reblogged it on Tumblr.

I reblogged it mostly because I was impressed that a young woman in the publishing industry would be bold enough to fearlessly and intelligently state her opinion about the controversial subject of piracy in such a public forum. Whether one agrees or not with Marian, there is no denying that her candor is rare among young women, and for me, a cause for celebration.

Reading this quote from Marian’s blog, I can’t imagine she’s not representing many readers in her generation:

I’m poor, I understand technology, and I guarantee I can find any book online, for free, in 10 minutes or less. You can delete and sue all you want, but at the end of the day the internet is a wide and limitless place, meaning it’s a waste of time, money and energy to fight it. Embrace the change and find another way to make money without a) annoying your audience, b) suing your audience, and c) losing you audience by wasting cash on completely ineffective “precautions”.

My Tumblr automatically feeds to Facebook, and before I knew it, men from the publishing establishment were leaving comments that felt scolding about the post on my wall. Yes it’s controversial and it’s not the opinion of many (most?) people employed in mainstream publishing — but it’s an honest opinion by a young woman who’s brave enough to share it with us — and that’s RARE! A few women chimed in on my wall that a dose of honest opinion is good for us, her piece is smart, etc.

Here’s the bottom line for me — whether you agree or not with Marian Schembari’s views on piracy, she has given us a glimpse into the psyche of a Gen Y reader. I appreciate her honesty. I believe this is a gift. I think we should listen.

“So I get email from a good former student, applying for a job and asking for a recommendation. “Sure”, I say, “Tell me what you think I should say.” I then get a draft letter back in which the student has described their work and fitness for the job in terms so superlative it would make an Assistant Brand Manager blush.

So I write my letter, looking over the student’s self-assessment and toning it down so that it sounds like it’s coming from a person and not a PR department, and send it off. And then, as I get over my annoyance, I realize that, by overstating their abilities, the student has probably gotten the best letter out of me they could have gotten.

Now, can you guess the gender of the student involved?

Of course you can. My home, the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU, is fairly gender-balanced, and I’ve taught about as many women as men over the last decade. In theory, the gender of my former student should be a coin-toss. In practice, I might as well have given him the pseudonym Moustache McMasculine for all the mystery there was. And I’ve grown increasingly worried that most of the women in the department, past or present, simply couldn’t write a letter like that.

This worry isn’t about psychology; I’m not concerned that women don’t engage in enough building of self-confidence or self-esteem. I’m worried about something much simpler: not enough women have what it takes to behave like arrogant self-aggrandizing jerks.”

The reactions to Shirky’s comments were mixed among my friends. One person said “I know a SHITTON of self-aggrandizing blowhards who also happen to be women. Regardless of gender, I always think karma’s at work anyway and if you are ultimately just faking it, it will bite you in the ass in the end when people eventually realize you’re full of shit!”

I am curious to hear what people think. Is there some kind of ultimate karmic justice in the world? Do people agree with Clay Shirky’s take on women?

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”

- A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

Decades from now, when we look back at the book business in 2009, it seems likely that we’ll see it as a threshold year, one in which all of the signs were there for what followed. It was a year in which sales held steady (Nielsen Bookscan, which covers 75% of the market, reported that overall unit sales through December 20 were 724 million copies, only a 3% drop from last year—and adult hardcover fiction was up an amazing 3%), and a few authors were so successful (Stephanie Meyer, Jeff Kinney) that the fates of entire publishing houses were altered by them; however, it was also a year that saw publishing’s profit margins squeezed in perplexing new ways. It was a year in which some of the most highly-respected bestsellers (Audrey Niffenegger’s Her Fearful Symmetry; Andre Agassi’s Open; Edward M. Kennedy’s True Compass) were also apparently the year’s biggest money-losers for their publishers, due to their multi-million-dollar advances; at the same time, some of the books with the highest rumored advances (Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol; Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue) were likely the most profitable. It was a year in which e-book sales increased exponentially, with the cherry on the sundae being Amazon’s announcement that they had sold more e-books on Christmas Day than p-books (though of course this was helped by all the people who got Kindles as presents and spent the day filling them); but it was also a year in which the prices charged for those e-books made them a threat to the health of the p-book retailers on whom publishers continued to rely, and possibly a future threat to publishers’ ability to make money on the e-book format itself, in spite of that format’s wonderful ability to eliminate the costs of production, distribution, and returns. It was a year in which the largest publishing houses slowed title acquisitions and reduced the number of titles they published, while one company—Author Solutions—increased its annual output to a remarkable 24,000 authors (even more remarkably, these authors were all paying for the privilege). It was a year in which review coverage of new fiction disappeared almost entirely, and yet one first novel (Kathryn Stockett’s The Help) sold more than a million hardcover copies thanks to word of mouth alone. It was a year in which publishers continued to spend exorbitant amounts of money on print advertising, in spite of data showing how ineffective such advertising tends to be, but also a year in which some publishers discovered the power of online media to reach niche markets at significantly lower costs.

What does this mean for the future? That for every trend there will be a counter trend. And since this is the time of year for Top Ten lists, here’s mine:

1. Trend: The large publishing houses will continue to reduce overhead as profits shrink in the years ahead. Counter trend: Publishers will be looking for mergers and acquisitions to compensate for those shrinking profits. The Big Six could be the Big Three within five years.

2. Trend: These companies will continue to focus more resources on fewer titles, using their strengths as large-scale marketers and distributors to publish brand-names. Title count at the largest houses could drop by as much as fifty percent over the next five years. Counter trend: At the same time, self-publishing (including partnerships like the one announced recently between Author Solutions and Harlequin) will grow exponentially.

3. Trend: Title reduction will be most significant for new talent, with the largest houses entrusting support of new authors to a handful of editorial imprints. The editors at those imprints–editors with proven ability to choose new material successfully–will increase in value. Counter trend: Editors whose job is to handle existing talent will find their roles diminished.

4. Trend: In terms of advances, the amounts paid for brand-names will continue to increase, with seven-figure or eight-figure acquisitions commonplace among authors with established track records. Counter trend: There will be an increase in five-figure acquisitions (perhaps with profit-share arrangements) for less predictable material. The six-figure advance—that dangerous neighborhood inhabited by books with lots of potential but few guarantees—will become a rare species within the decade.

5. Trend: E-book sales will grow exponentially, with the proliferation of new devices and applications for reading on smartphones, etc… Within five years, half of all reading will be done electronically. Counter trend: There will be a resurgence of appreciation for well-designed physical books, as keepsakes, gifts, etc… While e-books will create a downward pressure on pricing, there will be notable exceptions (as seen this year with Carl Jung’s The Red Book, in great demand at $195.00, or Thomas Keller’s gorgeous Ad Hoc at Home, a bestseller at $50.00).

6. Trend: As more consumers become e-book readers, demand will increase for the availability of e-books simultaneously with p-books. Counter trend: Publishers will try a variety of strategies to meet this demand while not undercutting their p-book sales, such as offering more expensive “enhanced” e-books at publication and plain vanilla, less expensive e-books several months later (the strategy recently announced by Macmillan) or by offering a variety of “bundled” discounts to purchasers of multiple formats (prediction: within five years, it will be common practice to give every p-book purchaser a “free” e-book version of that book at time of purchase, as is already the case in the music business, in which someone who buys a cd can also listen to that cd on other devices in digital form, without paying a separate fee).

7. Trend: Fewer and fewer books will be sold to publishers at “auction,” and that practice will disappear completely within five years, as more and more publishers realize that the “winner” in such auctions—the publisher willing to pay more to acquire a book than any of their competitors–is often actually the loser in the end. Sales will be made either by brand-name authors to their previous publishing company or by new authors to carefully chosen editors with strong reputations. Counter trend: Instead of auctions for the highest advance, there will be auctions in which a basic advance is established by the agent, with the auction winner being the publisher who bids the most in marketing committed to the book.

8. Trend: As the initial sale becomes less of the focus for authors, the agent of the future will become more of a business manager who handles every aspect of an author’s career, overseeing the author’s online presence, developing sources of revenue outside of book sales such as workshops and lecture tours, and acting as the author’s publicist in between publications. Counter trend: Publishers will create free-standing departments whose services can be purchased a la carte by authors, whether that author is self-published or published by a competitor who doesn’t offer such services.

9. Trend: As the Boomers lose their eyesight and their children become teenagers, demographics will favor books for young adults over books for adults. This is also the generation most likely to embrace a variety of online and offline formats, without feeling the need to choose one over another. Counter trend: While auctions and advances diminish for adult titles, they could heat up for young adult material as publishers bet big in search of the next Stephenie Meyer. (Prediction: publishing houses will soon have entire departments devoted to developing books about the undead.)

10. Trend: Every year for the foreseeable future, books will be purchased between Thanksgiving and Christmas about how to prepare high-calorie foods (a favorite from this year: Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, by Jennifer McLagan). Counter trend: Every January for the foreseeable future, the bestseller lists will be dominated by books about how to lose the weight gained by eating those high-calorie foods. (Not much of a prediction, sorry…but I needed a tenth trend to complete the list!)

Even Chris had to admit that the experiment of giving away his most recent book for free in e-book form had been a mixed success. “Free” was given away to 500,000 people via various e-book platforms, but sold less than what Chris’s previous book had (“The Long Tail“). But as I told Chris after the panel, the problem wasn’t the experiment. The experiment was a great learning experience, and even if they sold only ten percent of the sales on “The Long Tail,” that would have been a success if the book had been done on a low advance/profit-sharing basis. The problem is when authors want to have their cakes and eat them, too…getting a large advance but wanting to experiment with free content models, or getting a large advance and then deciding that what they really want is more marketing. I love to experiment, too…but we should all benefit equally from the results.

Among the many discoveries last week was a site called Animoto. I heard about it from speaker Brian Boero.

Simply load your photos, choose some music (I used their music because I knew it was kosher)……and voila. Animoto makes magic. The whole process took about 3 minutes.

You’ve got to check out life on Animoto. Watch out……it’s addictive.

Jennifer Gilmore made this awesome trailer for her book using Animoto:

Anyone want to guess what the point of the video was?

I’ll leave the answer in the comments tomorrow. In the meantime, enjoy the video. I loved it.

I discovered Marian Schembari yesterday when I noticed her ad on my Facebook page saying she wanted to work at HarperCollins. How clever. I clicked through on the ad and found the most awesome, “2009″ resume.

A few hours later, I saw a screenshot of this ad on another HarperCollins employee’s Facebook page with a note saying “Uh, this is kind of scary.”

Of course I had to chime in with my 2 cents

Not scary at all, I countered. I think it’s creative and innovative and blah blah blah. On and on I went……..to which she replied that it’s the Facebook tool of using her personal information to target ads to her that she finds scary. I must point out that we both have the fact that we work at HarperCollins as part of our Facebook profiles — so I’m not sure Facebook has used anything we declared as private for this woman to be able to target us with her campaign. I’m sure what’s fair game information is all in the fine print of Facebook.

The conversation went on a few more rounds with others chiming in about the brave new world and their thoughts on targeted ads, etc..

Here’s the bottom line for me: I would so much rather have an ad that is targeted to me than some spaghetti on the wall generic message that I could care less about. Please, give me an ad about a book or someone in publishing rather than make me endure a laundry soap commercial or car ad or any of the other products that I care nothing about and yet am held hostage to as the price to pay for consuming traditional media. Hyper-targeting is one of the many advantages that internet media has over traditional media platforms, and is a modern day gift to marketers. It’s Nielson ratings versus Google Analytics — and it’s why I think Facebook and Twitter and all of the other free platforms that we use are going to be just fine in the new economy.

Now if marketers could just be fabulously creative and interesting with their targeted ads, we could all be happy and prosperous.

Hirschorn looks at The Economist‘s somewhat staggering ad revenue which saw a 25 % increase last year (as opposed to Newsweek and Time which, he says, dropped by 27 and 14 percent, respectively). The secret to The Economist‘s success? Well, it’s complicated (exemplary branding, a global recession) but the short answer, and one we might learn from is this: The magazine does not try to be all things to all people. It fills a need. Its promise is clear. In Hirschorn’s words, “niche is sometimes the smartest way to take over the world.” (Read the article here)

I mean, I think the big issue online and the pressure publishers are feeling is that publishers online are having a hard time replicating the economics that they saw offline. And many of them are looking at that through the lens of copyright…. I think where I would just draw a distinction is I am not so sure that copyright is really the culprit in a lot of this…that that’s an imperfect lens and an imperfect remedy.

Listen to the podcast here.

The local bookstore signing – something every author wants and yet few know how to handle. We talked to a bookseller, let’s just call her Bookseller X, to find out how to make a local event work…and keep your local booksellers happy.

It’s finally happened, your book has been published, and you’ve managed to set up a signing at your local bookstore. Congratulations! You think publishing was the tricky part? You’re only just getting started. Here are some things to think about as you get ready for your Big Day:

1) We are investing in you. Invest in us!

When a bookstore agrees to host a reading/signing for you, it’s more than just slotting you into a schedule: it’s an investment. We are agreeing to invest both time and money into you and your book by ordering in copies, giving them prime shelf-space, using staff time to plan and execute your event, etc. So invest right back! Use your own list of contacts to help bring people in. If you’re willing and able, help out with promotional materials like posters or flyers, or maybe even refreshments at the event. Local author events are at their best when the authors have invested in them just as much as the bookstore has.

2) Don’t spread yourself too thin.

More is better, right? In terms of events, this can be dead wrong! You may be tempted to pepper your area with signings and readings, trying to get the most exposure you can. But keep in mind that unless you’re in a huge metropolitan area, you may just be handicapping your own events. Most cities only have so much of an audience for author events, and if you have too many too close together, attendance and sales will suffer for it. Some bookstores will require that, if you are to be hosted at their store, theirs is either the only or the first event. It’s not because we’re greedy, I promise! Rather, we want to have the best event we can (see #1!), and if you’ve already signed at two other bookstores plus a couple of Costcos, it’s not likely to go well.

3) Please don’t second-guess the bookstore.

We know you want to sell a ton of books. And maybe you’re doing #s 1 and 2, investing in your event, making sure that it’s a big launch, calling each and every person in your high school yearbook, inviting your entire extended family including third cousins twice removed. Make sure your bookstore knows exactly what you’re doing to help out, and then, step back. Over the years we’ve come to know our stores and our events, how many people to expect, how many books to order, how many staff to have on hand, what kinds of formats work best for which kinds of books. It’s our job, after all, to make sure events go well! If you think your bookstore is underestimating your event, then the best thing to provide them with are facts: How many people did you invite? How many did you hear back from? What organizations are you connected with that might provide big crowds? Are your friends big spenders? Are your family coming to buy every book they can get their hands on? Let us know, by all means! But don’t expect us to necessarily change our orders or logistics, and don’t be offended if it doesn’t happen. It’s our job to get it right; trust us!

4) Stay calm; do not panic!

The big day is approaching, there are a million little things that could go wrong, and you’re up every night dreaming about them. Take a deep breath, and remember: it’s our job to get it right! Your event manager has probably not only thought of each and every one of those million little problems, but dealt with 99.99% of them. You’ll probably be tempted to call or email (possibly several times a week, if not several times a day–yes, this has happened) each time you think of a new disastrous possibility. Don’t! If you can’t resign yourself to trust your bookstore, then try this instead: start a running list of things you’re worried about. Put down as many things as you can think of. Give yourself time and permission to get a really good list going. Then, let it sit for a day or two. Take another look. Is it really likely that a plane will crash into your signing? Probably not, cross that one off the list. If you feel like you have legitimate concerns, concerns you’ve thought about and considered, then send your event manager an email detailing them. Just one. Yes, an email, not a phone call! Not only is it less intrusive, but it allows your event manager to consider it at their leisure, when they have time to focus on it. Don’t demand answers or immediate action, but rather put it out there for their consideration: “You’ve probably already dealt with/thought about this already, but I was a little concerned that…” Chances are you don’t need to worry about any of it. But if you absolutely can’t let it go, try to make it as easy for the event manager to understand and respond as possible. If you call five times in three days, or if our email boxes overflow, you can bet we’re going to be more frustrated than receptive!

5) Enjoy your big day!

Let go of any expectations, worries, hopes and fears. If you’ve done 1 through 4, then you’re bound to have the best event you can expect, be on good footing with your local bookstore, and give your book a nice bump!

Whether you’re a blogger, an editor, or a flea market fanatic, it’s important to have a discerning eye.

“Let’s make a viral video,” I keep hearing. To me, it feels like saying “Let’s publish a bestselling book” or “I’m going to be popular.”

I keep wanting to shout from the rooftops “just make it GREAT!”

Olympus has done just that with this great video.

As part of our ongoing Q&A series with people in publishing, we talked to one of our international colleagues, Scott Pack, publisher at The Friday Project, an imprint of HarperCollins UK in London.

Q: We have to ask – why The Friday Project?
A: There was a significant, if somewhat tongue-in-cheek, social movement a few years back which called for everybody to be given Friday off work. By making the weekend longer we’d all be happier. The founders of The Friday Project (TFP) subscribed to that notion and the name was chosen.

Q: You’re the publishing arm of HarperCollins in the UK but you function pretty independently. What’s the biggest difference between the US and UK publishing industries?
A: On a commercial level it is the discount. Retailers in the UK can, and usually do, discount books significantly from publication. So you can usually find the biggest book of any given week at half price in the shops. Some people think this is a bad thing but anyone who has ever been hooked by a 3 for 2 promotion (probably the biggest vehicle for selling books over here) can testify that it definitely works in terms of selling books. Elsewhere, I don’t think we have any one influencer that can make a huge book overnight. A wonderful New York Times review or a mention on Oprah can often create a bestseller in the US but there isn’t anything with that impact here now that Richard & Judy have left terrestrial television.

Q: What’s the hot trend right now in the UK? Cat books? Vampires? What should we be watching for?
A: There do seem to be a lot of vampire books around, and zombies. Right now every publisher and his uncle is rushing out a Michael Jackson book (we are not, I should add). I guess there are always mini-trends or waves of interest but ultimately the only consistent trend is the readers’ love of a great story.

Q: What do you wish every US-based author knew before getting his or her book published in the UK?
A: That there are a hell of a lot of ways you can promote a book without leaving your seat. If you make yourself available through Skype, blogs, instant messenger, Twitter and really put some time into online promotion you can reach many UK readers even if your publisher doesn’t have the cash to fly you over. Also that we really don’t care about the baseball or basketball scores over here. Not a bit. Your excitement is not ours to share.

Q: eReaders. We can’t do a Q&A without asking about them. Love or hate? Or both?
A: Love them, in all their forms. At present the Kindle isn’t available over here and Amazon doesn’t seem to be in any great rush to change that. To be fair, I think it is down to the fact that they will need to have an option for the whole of the EU, not just the UK, before they go live. That means that the Sony Reader has a genuine foothold here. But there are still issues over pricing, availability and content for eBooks that need to be resolved before they will really take off. They are part of the future and we need to adapt to that.

    Check out the history of the word Trousers (which also seems to be a case study on Victorian prudishness) here or click here  to learn more about the tumultuous history behind this gargantuan thesaurus

 So the question is: can Book Publishers follow suit?  In a time where creative ideas are welcome, perhaps we need only look at Merge Records to realize that trust, cautious decision making and staying grounded may lead us in the right direction.

Click here  to read the article or here to listen to the intriguing piece.

“I really feel like my problem isn’t piracy.  It’s obscurity.” – Cory Doctorow

Now, basic knowledge of HTML is the new requirement for membership. At least according to me. Seriously, Kathryn, our Rotational Associate, came to us with HTML skills, and it comes in handy every single day — to the point where I realized I needed to learn 101 HTML skills to stay ahead of the curve.

Cut to a few weeks ago when I got an email from Maggie Hilliard at DailyLit telling me that their newly formed Digital Publishing Group was offering up a “free,” basic HTML class (I say this very quietly for fear that everyone’s going to realize what I already know — which is to say that this group is a gift to publishing and I’m afraid there won’t be room for me if I miss the email and don’t RSVP fast enough). To make this offer even more insanely appealing, the class was being taught by DailyLit founder Susan Danziger‘s husband, Albert Wenger, a partner at Union Square Ventures. Check out their portfolio and you’ll know why I placed such high value on this offering.

Space was limited. First RSVP, first serve.

To say I hit the “Reply YES” button so fast your head would spin, would be an understatement.

The class took place last night. I’d say there were about 25 people there — seemed to be a mix of age and gender (though mostly women, and mostly younger!) — and I’m proud to say there were 5 HarperCollins peeps in the crowd (woo hoo @DominicanPie — I should have known you’d be there. I knew as soon as I met you that you get it.).

It was the most potent, amazing, useful, 2.5 hours I’ve spent in a long, long, time.

THANK YOU ALBERT! And thank you Susan Danizger and Maggie Hilliard for bringing this group together. You guys are amazing, and Book Publishing is lucky to have you.

A recent Times article “Kickin’ Down Madison Ave., Feelin’ Groovy” cited the election of Barack Obama as the driving force behind the shifting of the cultural tide (they also cited the musical Hair??).The piece quoted several marketing executives and advertisers who said things like “The ’60s era embodies the culture of thinking for yourself and taking a stand.” This made me smile. And, lo and behold, companies like Proctor & Gamble, Macy’s and General Mills all have 60s oriented campaigns -and let’s not forget this year’s Barney’s Holiday catalog!

That same day I read an amazing Esquire feature by Colby Buzzell that was evocative of the 60s in a very different way. (Colby is writing a book for us called OFF THE ROAD in which he travels across America and documents his experience.) His cover story, “Down & Out in Fresno and San Francisco” is a Kerouac-esque portrait of the crack filled Tenderloin district in San Francisco, a neighborhood he calls “the pot of shit at the end of the rainbow.” The article is dark and dizzying. I have no doubt that Colby’s book will reveal some deeper truths about contemporary America, because that’s what he does. And that is why I’m excited to publish him. But this Times article made me realize something: At the end of the day, I guess I’ll be selling the 60s, too.

A few observations:

1) Attendance: I’m just guessing here, but there seemed to be fewer people overall than last year. Maybe it’s the economy, not sure. The good news though is that I saw many more book publishing people. That’s a really good thing as far as I’m concerned. In fact, if I were boss , I’d send dozens of people from all different departments to conferences such as these — especially when in New York. I’d make it mandatory. Editorial, sales, marketing, publicity — could all benefit from hearing these speakers. To my mind, it would be money well spent.

2) Twitter had a much bigger role this year (obviously). I was on Twitter last year for the conference, but not really working it — though I did have one of those ah-ha moments last year when I saw Robert Scoble demonstrated on the big screen that people were watching the conference live and responding around the world in real-time. This year everyone was on Twitter, there was a hashtag (#mbcircus), and you could get live responses during the conference. For instance, day one, there was not an outlet in sight. Crazy. I mentioned this on Twitter — and the next day they had outlets everywhere. Love that! Thank you Mediabistro.

3) Steve Rubel from Edelman was a standout again this year. He talked about how companies can successfully use social media by appointing “corporate all-stars” and empowering them to connect with customers through social media. This is better than any advertising or marketing that money can buy. Great examples are @comcastcares from Comcast, @scottmonty from Ford, and Kelly from Quicken @quickenloans.

4) John Byrne from Business Week was another standout. John spoke about Business Week’s “Engagement Strategy” where they encourage their journalists to connect with the commenters on the site and let the conversation inform their stories. They also reward their top commenters by naming the Top 100, and even inviting the Top 10 to New York to have dinner with the editors. As far as I can see, John Byrne is creating the future of journalism and I trust any future being forged by him. He seems to “get it” in a visceral way. I’d hitch my wagon to John’s if I were in journalism.

5) Valeria Maltoni from Conversationagent.com and Eileen Gittins from Blurb.com were also inspiring. If I wanted to publish a book, I would seriously consider using Blurb and Conversationagent.

6) Carmen Ruest from Cirque du Soleil came and spoke, and then some of the performers did a unicycle act. I’m not sure what the connection was to the conference (I had to step out to take a call and missed most of her talk) — but the performance was an enjoyable end of the day touch.

Wow. I love them! Every service company should take note. And lessons.

Mark my words, next year there will be MUCH more of this type of thing.

Check out Comcast Cares on Twitter: http://twitter.com/comcastcares

and Comcast Bill: http://twitter.com/ComcastBill

and Comcast Bonnie: http://twitter.com/ComcastBonnie

Apple, Verizon, Cablevision, UPS, AT&T……take note!

You can also join the fight against literary censorship by signing The Right to Read petition here.

What do you think?

Jeff Jarvis, author of What Would Google Do sums it up perfectly in Business Week this week:

Stop trying to control the message
“Institutional” speak is not a good way to have a relationship with your customer
Unleash the power of the people
Beta is a statement of humility and humanity (just ask Google)
Be free to fail
Perfection is a myth
People are generous and forgiving

And in case President Obama and Jeff Jarvis haven’t convinced you that transparency is “in,” check out Gary Vaynerchuk in his blog last week:

I am constantly asked for “strategies/’secrets’ for surviving the recession.” I try to appear wise and informed-and parade original, sophisticated thoughts. But if you want to know what’s going through my head, read the list below:

You work longer.
You work harder.
You may well work for less; and, if so, you adapt to the untoward circumstances with a smile-even if it kills you inside.
You volunteer to do more.
You always bring a good attitude to work.
You fake it if your good attitude flags.
You literally practice your “game face” in the mirror in the morning, and in the loo mid-morning.
You shrug off shit that flows downhill in your direction-buy a shovel or a “pre-worn” raincoat on eBay.
You get there earlier.
You leave later.
You forget about “the good old days”-nostalgia is for wimps.
You buck yourself up with the thought that “this too shall pass”-but then remind yourself that it might not pass anytime soon, so you re-dedicate yourself to making the absolute best of what you have now.
You eschew all forms of personal excess.
You simplify.
You sweat the details as you never have before.
You sweat the details as you never have before.
You sweat the details as you never have before.
You raise to the sky the standards of excellence by which you evaluate your own performance.
You thank others by the truckload if good things happen-and take the heat yourself if bad things happen.
You behave kindly, but you don’t sugarcoat or hide the truth-humans are startlingly resilient.
You treat small successes as if they were Superbowl victories-and celebrate and commend accordingly.
You shrug off the losses (ignoring what’s going on inside your tummy), and get back on the horse and try again.
You avoid negative people to the extent you can-pollution kills.
You eventually read the gloom-sprayers the riot act.
You learn new tricks of your trade.
You network like a demon.
You help others with their issues.
You give new meaning to the word “thoughtful.”
You redouble, re-triple your efforts to “walk in your customer’s shoes.” (Especially if the shoes smell.)
You mind your manners-and accept others’ lack of manners in the face of their strains.
You are kind to all mankind.
You leave the blame game at the office door.
You become a paragon of accountability.
And then you pray.

A little bit of digging into the concept lead me to Pecha Kucha, a style of presentation that was born in Japan and is spreading around the world. Turns out there are Pecha Kucha nights everywhere. Book lovers like 800ceoread are already deep into this Pecha Kucha movement — which then got me thinking that maybe it’s something that all authors should give a whirl when their book is published?

My favorite suggestion from Menaker’s hilarious list? When asked if you have read a book, never say “No.” Instead, say “Not personally.”

From the Comments Section of PW:

“Full disclosure: Jonathan Karp is my publisher.) Twelve additional suggestions for improving publishing:

1. Prohibit the use of all san-serif typefaces for the body text of all non-hobbycentric books.

2. No more landscape- or seascape-only cover images.

3. Proscribe the use of “stunning” in all flap copy. Also “mythic,” “romp,” “iconic,” “tour de force,” “deeply affecting,” “masterful,” “disturbing.” Maybe all adjectives come to think of it and all adverbs, too. They all need a rest. Also, no more than two noun series/flap copy.

4. Impose a two-year publishing injunction against books about the irrationality of decision-making; books in which any animal comes anywhere near thinking like a human being; books in which any dead family member communes with the living; books in which the beginning of civilization is attributed to the invention of any minor artifact: butter, buttons, banisters, brassieres, ballpoint pens, etc.; books about the Red Sox; books about the Yankees; books about the Brooklyn Dodgers (one more book about the Chicago Cubs allowed); books in which the Freemasons are shown to run anything besides the Freemasons.

5. In all publishing meetings, install a deafening, voice-activated foul horn for repetitions of something someone else even your boss; particularly your boss has already said, no matter how artfully rephrased. Two bleats for the second iteration, etc. Another voice-activated foul horn for cliches such as “to the next level,” “push the envelope,” “because I can,” “from your lips to God’s ear,” etc. Tip: When asked if you have read a book (a rude question to begin with), never say “No.” Instead, say “Not personally.”

6. Be more honest about marketing plans. For instance, don’t list ads in five DelMarVa Pennysavers as “National Print Advertising Campaign.”

7. Eliminate Potemkin co-op arrangements such as a publisher’s using a writer’s book-tour schedule to finagle two-hour prominent placement in airport bookstores during author boarding and deplaning along the Vanity Trail.

8. Quit egregiously rounding up sales figures to authors and agents. If you must say “About fifteen thousand copies,” immediately add, “Fifteen as in ten.”

9. If you must start a new imprint, do not name it after any aspect of the weather.

10. Do not claim credit for successes that are obviously the result of happenstance, as so many are. For example, if you happened to publish a novel about a heroic Portuguese water dog two weeks before Bobama showed up in the White House, enjoy your luck but don’t preen.

11. Remember that publishers and editors are essentially salespeople.

12. Remember that publishers and editors should not be essentially salespeople.”

It turned out to be pretty complicated to combine physical and digital shopping carts to make these offers, since there are very few places (online or otherwise) set up to handle combined transactions. Even for the bundles sold from our website, we’ve had to advertise the discount codes separately from the purchase page. (For anyone reading this, here’s your code for 20 percent off and free shipping: 20H09C.)

We’re in the early stages, clearly, and we’re looking forward to feedback on this first attempt. We also hope that it won’t be long before both online and bricks and mortar booksellers start offering a range of combinations of physical and digital formats.

So, enjoy the book–however and wherever you read it–and let us know what you think!

Listen to John Wray read his novel on NPR.

Would you pay $10,000 to sing on Jill Sobule’s album? Someone would.

IT’S ABOUT THE CONTENT AND COMMUNITY AND OUTREACH AND CARING AND AUTHENTICITY……

One of the many brilliant lessons from Gary Vaynerchuk in his upcoming book, Crush It! Turn Your Passion Into Profits in a Digital World.

Gary made this video in my office the other day……

And two minutes later it was posted on his increasingly popular video blog:

According to Debbie Stier, SVP and Associate Publisher of HarperStudio, “we’ve been wanting to experiment with free for some time, and having Seth and Chris on board for the free lunch aspect really adds an element of excitement for us.”

From Tom Peters:

BEGIN THE HUNT FOR HYPOMANICS!

-Reread: “These men were outrageous-arrogant, provocative, unconventional, and unpredictable. They were not ‘well adjusted’ by normal standards but instead forced the world to adjust to them. … Without their irrational confidence, ambitious vision, and unstoppable zeal, these outrageous captains would never have sailed into unknown waters, never discovered new worlds, never changed the course of our history.”

To survive competitively in the turbulent decades ahead we need to find & cherish such people. What-exactly-is your “Hypomanic Recruitment Plan?” (No kidding. It may be the most serious question you ever try to answer.)

And from Seth Godin:

For me, a bootstrapper isn’t a particular demographic or even a certain financial situation. Instead, it’s a state of mind.
Bootstrappers run billion-dollar companies, nonprofit organizations, and start-ups in their basements. A bootstrapper is determined to build a business that pays for itself every day.

(You can sign up at Daily Lit to read the whole thing for free.)

I’ll be referring back to these wise words this week when I run up against all of the Computer Says No people of the world.

Jason Kottke linked to an article on User Interface Engineering which explains how it works:

“As we’ve watched Amazon customers make purchases on the site, we can clearly see that promoting the most helpful reviews has increased sales in these categories by 20%.(One out of every five customers decides to complete the purchase because of the strength of the reviews.) From this, we can project it has contributed to Amazon’s top line by $2.7 billion.”

The 2.7 Billion Dollar Question begs its own question: what other little steps have produced revolutionary results?

Yes, it’s true: In one of the great under-told media success stories of the past decade, NPR has emerged not as the bespectacled schoolmarm of our imagination but as a massive news machine poised for what Dick Meyer, editorial director for digital media, half-jokingly calls “world domination.” NPR’s listenership has nearly doubled since 1999, even as newspaper circulation dropped off a cliff.

[fast company]

Here’s my list of Top Five Take Aways:

1) SXSW seemed to be more about networking than breaking new ground. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I did find myself listening to to the keynotes thinking I’d heard it all before though, and wishing I’d hear what’s next. Tony Hsieh and Chris Anderson are great speakers — and if you haven’t heard Tony’s message about customer service and company culture before, or Chris Anderson’s “Free” schpeel — you should definitely watch the videos and read their blogs. If you follow them, as I do, there wasn’t much new to learn.

2) Panels about “building community” (and there were many variations of this) were a waste of time. It all seemed to be common sense — a one minute message drawn out for an hour (or longer).

3) Interesting panels lurked in less obvious places. “Making Ideas Happen” was one of my favorites. Creativity x Organization = Impact, chemistry is more important than experience when hiring, and have “standing” (as in not sitting) meetings where everyone leaves with action items — are a few of the lessons I walked away with. “Presenting Straight to the Brain” was great too. Who knew PowerPoint could be so much fun. Trial lawyer Craig Ball was a hoot — and really informative. I will definitely be consulting his blog the next time I have to give a presentation.

4) No women keynote speakers? What’s going on with that.

5) Seeing Gary Vaynerchuk is practically a religious experience. His energy is contagious, the message is great (i.e. YOU CAN MAKE IT HAPPEN!!!) and the audience can’t get enough.

Overall, inspiring five days, a lot of fun, met great people.

I’ll be spreading the word that more publishing people should attend next year. Enough with the whole industry at the Book Expo. We need to start swimming in a different pond to stay inspired, keep it fresh, meet new people, hear new ideas.

Last month, a team of RISD students made a consulting trip to the headquarters of Random House, the venerable New York publishing house whose widely-publicized financial troubles earlier this year required company-wide layoffs. Random House CEO Markus Dohle extended a personal invitation to the students, who were paid a six-figure consulting fee and tasked with “re-energizing Random House’s artistic mission by challenging our notions of creativity in business settings.”

Thomas Friedman

What do you think? Does Friedman’s argument apply to book publishing?

“In our web 2.0 world, we can empower the public by providing them with raw data that they can remix and reuse in new and innovative ways”

- Mike Honda, Vice chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on the Legislative Branch

[wired]

This is a guest post from our friend Ryan Chapman at MacMillan.

The Criterion Collection has taken an interesting step forward, almost contrary to their “mission statement.” A little background first: way back in the day, they invented the Director’s Commentary and the “Deluxe Edition” with their line of laserdiscs (remember those?), and soon after moved to DVDs. They’re essentially an arthouse imprint for lost and underrated classics of world cinema, like the Taschen or Rizzoli of DVDs. (Bob Stein of the Institute for the Future of the Book was a co-founder.) Each film is presented in the best possible format, with updated packaging, scholarly essays, definitive “Director’s Editions” and clean, beautiful transfers. A 1953 film like The Wages of Fear looks better in a Criterion edition than most recent DVDs. If anyone would resist the digitalization of content, it would be these guys.

Well, surprise: with their website re-launch, Criterion is offering online rentals of a broad selection of their almost 500 titles. For five bucks you get to watch the film as many times as you want for one week. A little like iTunes or Netflix, sure. But their real innovation, in my opinion, is that your rental fee also acts as a coupon off the purchase of the physical DVD from their online store. They’ve found a great way to link the online and offline content experience.

Would this work for books? The subscription model idea has been kicked around the industry for a while now – what if it was tied to an easily accessed online platform? What do you guys think?

5 Pillars of Ecommerce:

1. Selection
2. Value
3. Ease of use
4. Trust
5. Merchandising

I highly recommend checking out Wingo’s full analysis in which he explains what is widely known as the “Bezos napkin diagram.”

Check out our newest poll: It’s tax time. How much did you spend on books last year?

And how would you feel about having one micropayment system track your every move online? The idea that a functional micropayment system could somehow defibrillate the newspaper industry and solve “the free problem” is nothing new (enormous logistical challenges as well as questions about privacy have prevented anyone from making it work thus far). But yesterday’s roundtable discussion on the Freakonomics blog got the wheels turning in my mind. Here were some of my favorite responses:

“News is not like an iTunes song; it’s perishable.” – Marshall W. Van Alstyne

“It’s an unavoidable relationship: for good information to flow from journalists to readers, proportional revenue must flow the other way.” – William Baker

“Put another way, the fantasy that small payments will save publishers as they move online is really a fantasy that monopoly pricing power can be re-established over we users. Invoking the magic word “micropayments” is thus grabbing the wrong end of the stick; if online publishers had that kind of pricing power, micropayments wouldn’t be necessary. And since they don’t have that pricing power, micropayments won’t provide it.” – Clay Shirkey

[Freakonomics]

- Julia

Biggest take-aways from the week (besides DRM is dead) are:

1) Content should be customizable. The free version, premium version, phone version, etc. can all exist together. Let the customer drive the format and delivery and tell you how they want their content. Listen to your customer. Content needs to travel with a lot of functionality and social potential. Mobile reading is going to explode. Phones are everywhere.

2) Free and paid can co-exist. Don’t get caught in the “nobody will pay” mentality. People are paying for access to information. The internet is not free! People pay for basic service. “Paid is coming back big time.” — Tim O’Reilly We have to reinvent what it means to add value. As American Express says, “Membership has its privileges.”

3) Curation still matters. The job of a publisher is to confer status.

4) The tribalization of business is extremely powerful because it’s letting humans behave the way we were built to behave. Communities done right are self-perpetuating and don’t need ads or marketing. They will recruit on their own, are passionate, and want to be with others.

5) If you have an IT department that can’t make it happen the next day, you’re in trouble.

6) How do you NOT find time to be on Twitter? (Tim O’Reilly)

7) Don’t just make announcements. Talk about issues that matter to you.

8 ) Share what you learn. Be disclosive.

9) Read the Digitalist blog.  I have been a fan, but when I saw Sara Lloyd speak on Manifesto 2.0: What Does the Future Look Like For Publishers, it was a profound experience — not to mention that 8 out of 10 of her top TOC list would have been the same as mine  had I not gone to read her blog before I wrote mine. Now I can add a few others.

10) “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” — Tim O’Reilly

Why should e-books cost the same as physical books, just because some publishing company’s profit model would be disrupted otherwise?

As a heavy consumer of books (and a former independent bookstore owner), I’m not particularly interested in what publishing executives tell me books should cost — what matters to me is what the market tells me they actually do cost.

If the market as a whole can produce and distribute printed books profitably for $27.99, it seems to follow that it can produce and distribute e-books (which are logistically much simpler) profitably for $9.99. Empirically, the market is doing so now — and, over time, the prices of e-books will fall further, as book distributors figure out (as Apple did) that lower prices will result in higher volumes, revenues, and profits.  Simon & Schuster, and everybody else, will either get with the program or be left behind.

I’m afraid that the publishing industry is at just about the point where the music industry found itself in 2004: insisting on an old pricing model, even as the rest of the world routed around them and created a new one. There’s nothing magical or eternal about the old economics of book publishing, any more than there was anything magical or eternal about horse-and-buggy transportation, or the telegraph.  When a new model came along that the market decided was better, the new model won.

None of this is to say that the coming adjustment won’t be difficult or disruptive or painful.  But, on principle, I have no sympathy for business executives who tell me that the price of something “should” be higher than the market says it is.  Amazon is already selling enough e-books at $9.99 (presumably without losing money either for itself or for the publishers) to demonstrate that e-books can be sold for less than hardcover retail; ergo, they will be.  End of story.

In the traditional questioning model of HarperStudio, Bob doesn’t entirely agree:

I agree that e-books should be priced lower than physical books.  But I don’t agree that being profitable at $27.99 translates to being profitable at $9.99.  It only costs us about $2.50-$3.00 less for us to publish the e-book, not $18.00 less.  The right price is certainly one that a consumer will pay, but we won’t have books for them to buy if authors and publishers can’t make any money.  So we need to find the right pricing somewhere between the hardcover list price and the money-losing $9.99 that Amazon is teaching consumers to expect.

What do you think?

Martha comes to us from Brazil where she was an entrepreneurial publishing sensation.  She’s now a graduate student at the NYU School of Continuing and Professional Studies where she’s working on a graduate degree in their Publishing Program.

You can learn more about Martha in this video:

I can’t imagine a more deserving candidate to receive this scholarship.

CONGRATULATIONS MARTHA!!!!!

A subscription model in the vein of Total Music would be another alternative. As an aside, it’s worth noting that The New York Times could send each of their subscribers a Kindle and spend half as much money as they do printing the physical paper.

The Printed Blog selects its content depending on reader votes and their location, creating news that is suited for each community and delivered in two editions (AM and PM).  This is a revolutionary integration of web-based syndication technologies and printed media that acknowledges the movement toward individualized information.  “This isn’t about the newspaper, this is about you.”

We love the shifted focus that The Printed Blog is bringing to the table (literally!).  Sure, we can scroll through our feeds on our screens, but now we can enjoy the added boost that off-screen, printed media needs to survive.  You know we’re all about embracing technology here, and we’re glad to see it popping up elsewhere.

The first issue of The Printed Blog was distributed in Chicago and San Francisco today, but they also have it available online for download – naturally.

In this case, the site was conceived as a complement to, not a replacement for Dante’s work. In other cases, however, technology is used as part of the reading experience, like this book made by the German author Christoph Benda with Google Earth illustrations. It is considered a “geo novel”, with pages accompanied by a satellite view of the current location of the story.

Should technology be part of the reading experience, as Christoph Benda’s suggests, or should it just be a complement for books, like Danteworlds?

- Martha

Website vs. Blog

We’ve been having a debate on the 26th floor about what sort of web presence we “need” to make our publishing business successful.

Given that we’re planning extensive digital marketing campaigns for each of our books, we need a great website, right?

While we figure out the next step, we started this blog, www.26thstory.com …..for about $15 a month; It’s scrappy. It’s no frills…….but it does show videos and photos, and it takes questions and comments, and has living, breathing author pages such as these for Emeril and Joann Davis, and will have one for each author as we sign them up.

Which then leads me to ask: Why do we “need” a website? We’ve been looking at proposals for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and I am still not clear what we would accomplish with a website that justifies that amount of money. I certainly understand the difference between their functions, just not the ROI.

Nearly everyone who’s opinion on the matter I highly regard says we need one. Certainly the companies we’ve looked into hiring say yes. And yet no one seems to be able to explain to me “WHY” in a way that makes sense to me.
So I’m asking YOU……what could we gain with a website that’s worth spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on?

Your comments to the question were AMAZING. I read and used every one. The result is that we decided to forgo the expensive website and instead build a WordPress site. We had a developer named Steffen Rasile, from SRA Design Studio in Helena, Montana, work with us on the technical stuff. Love Steffen. He’s great to work with.

The whole thing came in under $10,000. It’s easily maintainable by all of us and our authors. We hope it’s a fun place to hang out. It’s a work in progress.

Here it is, day 1. Would love to hear what you think.

Thank you for always being so helpful!

–Debbie

 No, I don’t. And neither do you.

 Ever since I subscribed to themediaisdying on Twitter I get dozens of updates a day reporting layoffs in print media, radio, television, advertising, you name it. Updates based on anonymous, unconfirmed tips:  A dozen layoffs at WGBH! The SUN-TIMES MEDIA is closes printing facility! 80 Jobs to go at MTV UK! A magazine editor friend of mine who used to poke fun at Twitter said she’s been “gobbling it up like candy.”  Well, so have I and, like a kindergartner the week after Halloween, I’m sick to my stomach.

Apart from the obvious irony of learning about layoffs in print media through a social networking platform, and the fact that we’re already saturated with bad news about the economy which contributes to our tooth-grinding dreams (or lack of sleep), themediaisdying feeds a kind of mob mentality that is unproductive at best. Did journalists at the Cleveland Plain Dealer worry about people at the Los Angeles Times during the Great Depression? Maybe they did. But nowadays when I log on to Facebook and see a so-and-so “is stressed” I immediately wonder: Did they get sacked? Should I call? Send a tweet? 

I’m grateful for the kind of grass roots mobilization that platforms like Twitter and Facebook enabled during the election season, and I love reading – in real time- about my friend’s baby’s first bath, but when it comes to the death of the media, I say all 7,339 of us Twitter subscribers hold hands and press “remove.”

Besides, as our favorite Twitter-rock-star-entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuck said recently on his Twitter feed: “u can’t cry u just have to HUSTLE”

- Julia

–Bob

Throughout your career have people warned of “the death of print” and, if so, how is this time any different?

Well, not to be rude, but duh! My time includes not only meat rationing but no television for about ten years, and after that huge, crate-like wooden boxes with 4″X4″ black-and white-screens, on which strange, target-like  test patterns provided a majority of programming.  Traditional publishing has, generally,  always provoked the same kinds of complaints and lamentations–see Mark Twain’s letters to his publishers about skimpy distribution, and the correspondence between Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer about the creative accounting required to record some of the razor-thin profit margins of Random House’s early days.  So no, while everyone has been telling the same evergreen stories about the dire state of publishing for centuries now, no one warned very loudly about the “death of print” until computer technology and the Internet evolved into a real threat. Ten years ago? Twenty at most, I would say–though science-fiction writers and visionaries like Ted Nelson may have foreseen this evolution earlier. Even though the e-Cassandras have been at it for a decade or two now, this will not turn into an evergreen story, unless somehow, miraculously, e-publishing subsides into being a mere a niche of traditional publishing, when the reverse seems to me far more likely. This promises to be a major structural and qualitative change, rather than simply new clothes for an old model.

Does a good editor have to have good business instincts?

Book editor? Yes–if she or he is to survive.  But since the success of books is for the most part such a random matter (as Nassim Taleb explains in “The Black Swan”), no matter what anyone tells you, “instinct” is the right word.  Because numbers and comp titles and previous successes and the state of the marketplace and current events and all the other supposedly rational factors that go into what is called “planning” in publishing, as with investing, will generally do the planners no better than throwing blindly at a dartboard made of book jackets,  in terms of prediction. But there are some people who do seem to have a “knack.” I won’t say who I think they are, but I will point to some recent examples among  popular music producers–Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler and John Hammond–who discovered Bob Dylan, who was referred to at his label, Columbia, as “Hammond’s folly” until he started setting one sales record after another.

In Leon Neyfakh’s recent Observer article “What Makes Moguls Believe They Belong In the Book Business?” Eric Wolff said he hoped publishing would “return to what it once was, and what it is probably best suited for: a prestige business for rich people.” What do you make of his statement?

It seems possible, for some boutique operations, but the huge electronic shift I believe is coming seems to me far more important to the dissemination of text of all kinds than does the continuation of “book books.”  E-readers will get to be really, really good in less than five years, I would bet.

Is there one book you particularly regret not having published?

Atul Gawande is the contemporary  writer I most regret not having been able to acquire.  Pride and Prejudice, Great Expectations, The Great Gatsby, Lucky Jim, and Catch-22 are all books for which I would have loved to serve as a paraliterary (that’s what an editor is, essentially). Right now, an association with  Henry Hitchings’ “The Secret Life of Words” seems enviable.  I’m glad you didn’t ask me about books I regret publishing. Or perhaps I should say, having to publish.

What was the most difficult aspect of being Editor in chief at Random House?

The coffee in the pantry, the sun in my eyes from my panoramic river view–very annoying–and you, in your more stubborn moments.

Are you confident a younger crop of book editors will evolve into the Fisketjons and the Loomis’s of today?

Well, there will always be people who can help to make writing as good as writers themselves would make it if they were always writing at their highest level. That’s what I think good editors do, essentially.  And some of those editors, no matter what their medium is–print or pixel–will be supremely good at it, like Bob Loomis.

Why aren’t you on Facebook?

What is Facebook, again? 

Name three books that changed your life.

Paul de Kruif’s “The Microbe Hunters,” the aforementioned “Catch-22,” by Joseph Heller, and Theodore van de Velde’s “Ideal Marriage”  (which I purloined when I was ten). (or maybe my parents put it there on purpose. Probably. They resupplied  that shelf soon with a more up-to-date book called “A Marriage Manual.”)

Can you envision a future in which people would simply self-publish online without the help of an editor or publisher?

No, but I can and do see something closer to this than the model we have now, which appears at the moment to be breaking up like Arctic ice. I see consortiums of writers or single, bankable writers selling their books, e-books, directly–especially if the techies can come up with non-print-outable and non-forwardable texts–and paying editors and publicists and marketers to help them with editing and marketing. No more 15% royalties–each sale, at, say,  $9.95, might well mean $8 or $9 revenues for the author. Probably can’t happen exactly that way, though: bootlegging and all.

How would you characterize the state of contemporary fiction?

With the 2008 election as a touchstone and with notable exceptions like Aleksandar Hemon’s “The Lazarus Project,” generally Arkansas-esque.

-Julia

[photo credit: Nicole Bengiveno NYTImes]

• It gets much worse before it gets better.

• Online advertising demonstrates it isn't immune to gravity.

• Media ownership consolidates.

• Ad pullback whacks big broadcast TV networks.

• A picayune change in how magazines count circulation is O.K.'d by industry arbiter Audit Bureau of Circulations.

• New York Times Co. (NYT) sells About.com to buy time for its flagship paper.

• A sort of shadow media industry is born—properties created and staffed by those pink-slipped in '08 and '09. This sets the stage for epic clashes with existing players in '10 and beyond.

[Businessweek]

The New Yorker's book blog, The Book Bench, talks to HarperStudio's Bob Miller about the recent publishing shake-ups…

“ADISN is a next generation Digital Ad Agency that uses relationship data from the social web to enhance targeting I.E. we have a GRIP of 
technology. ADISN has proven that the aggregate of web conversations, web profiles, online blogs, and behavior create millions of relationships between seemingly unrelated topics. Our technology mines through those relationships and applies the strongest ones to enhance online targeting to the benefit of publishers and advertisers across the web. We call it Relationship-based Targeting.”

“The Tumri AdPod marries advanced targeting capabilities with a dynamic, interactive presentation layer, enabling advertisers to craft highly targeted marketing messages to consumers on-the-fly. The Tumri platform seamlessly deconstructs ad creatives into core sub-components (i.e. brand logo, background image, product image, offer/price, call to action, attention grabber, etc.), then allows advertisers to adjust each sub-component by targeting or performance parameters.

By delivering the right message to the right audience at the right time, advertisers and publishers can now cut through the clutter of irrelevant content that overwhelms consumers online today.”

Here Irene Webb talks about her days at Knopf in the 70s when instinct and passion were the driving force behind acquisitions. “Book marketing as a concept didn’t yet exist,” she said.

1) Why do you think companies continue to pay for online ads when the metrics show they don’t work?

My first response to this question was that they do it for the same reason atheists pray to God: what if he actually does exist? It couldn’t hurt to get a message in front of Him.

I think it’s the same with online advertising. I think companies these days almost feel an obligation to have a presence on the web. This is the brave new world of marketing, much maligned and much misunderstood, but nevertheless an important wave 
of the future. Everyone wants to get experience on the web so that they can learn and not be left behind. Online ads are easy to create, easy to track and they are a relatively minor investment compared to traditional advertising vehicles. I think there’s an “I’d better be there” attitude when it comes to online ads and they’re the path of least resistance on the web. But as marketers get more sophisticated with web marketing, online ads are less and less prominent in favor of more interactive, seamless and community-oriented web activities. These are much more complex to create, execute and maintain.

You know, like everything else, when advertising is done right – with the right messages aimed at the right target – it can be gold. We have one client who’s been running a banner ad that’s delivered a better return for them than any other message they’ve ever run. It’s been running so long they’d like to do something else, but it’s too successful to remove it.

 2) Does Peggy Olson accurately portray what it was like to be a young ambitious woman in a Mad Men’s world?

In the 1960’s, there may have been a few icons in the advertising business, like Mary Wells, who had the chutzpa of Peggy Olson, but even when I entered the business a decade later, women weren’t typically that aggressive. I mean Peggy really stands up for herself in situations when the men are happy to accept her work and then take the credit for it themselves. She also demands recognition for bringing in a piece of business single-handedly (truthfully, it is rare to accomplish anything in the ad business single-handedly) and she negotiates a great office right next to her boss. When Don Draper finally comes back to work and sees where Peggy is located he says, “Am I working for Peggy now?”

One thing that I think might be accurate, though, is the mistake young women often made by getting involved with married men. I saw this a lot when I was young, but I don’t see it or hear much of it now. Young women seem to have too much self-respect to get entangled in relationships with married men.

3) If you had one piece of advice to give to young women in the corporate world, what would it be?

Find a mess and fix it. There’s no better way to get recognition, respect, gratitude and advancement.

Nina DiSesa is the author of Seducing the Boys Club

A new book, The Numerati, by Business Week writer Stephen Baker, is based on the idea that we can all be identified by some sort of equation and that online marketers (aka The Numerati) are out there tracking down the variables and plugging them in to figure out exactly what we need and think we need. What you eat, what music you listen to, whether or not you sucked your thumb as a kid. You are quantifiable.

But is there an equation that can determine the books you like? And is it different depending on which books you will buy vs. which books you will actually read? (How many of us don’t have unread books on our shelves at home?)

With yesterday’s news of an expected downturn at Barnes & Noble from head Len Riggio and the drop in consumer spending in general, the pressure to generate book sales is on. But does that mean creating books for specific groups of people? Or finding the people who might read the books we are publishing after we’ve already decided to publish them? Which comes first? The chicken or the egg? The book or the reader?

Sarah

Photo courtesy of nertzy

Here Jessica Stockton Bagnulo of McNally Jackson makes an interesting suggestion about first chapters: 

What kind of online marketing works?
I think the building or seeding of buzz online is important–as with film, music or TV, word of mouth is invaluable.  That buzz can come through building relationships with bloggers, writing posts that you then try to get linked to, starting up a social network or “fan” group, and/or creating original online content.  The main thing is just to be out there–be writing, be posting, be Twittering, be engaging in conversation with other people in the blogosphere.

Should publishers build websites for their authors?
Ideally, they would all have a mechanism for the authors to be featured online–the publishers’ homepage, etc.–and/or perhaps kick in part of the budget to build one.  But a website is the kind of intellectual property that an author may want to own.  As you well know, authors frequently move houses, so if publishers owned author sites, it would be problematic if an author leaves.  Also, certain authors might have ventures beyond books that they want to feature online.

Do you believe social networking can be leveraged to sell books?
I’ve joined a number of Facebook groups for books, which allows the author to email the members of that group about onsale date, notable publicity features, etc.  There are also fan pages for authors through which like-minded readers can find each other.  It’s a way to speak directly to your audience.

You and I have cooked up some of our projects together. Is that something you do a lot of?
Somewhat.  It depends on the editor.

Name two websites or blogs you love that most people haven’t heard of?
Fimoculous.com and Kottke.org

-Julia

We’ve been hearing about the demise of the book review for years now. Pages, editors, entire sections have been cut.

But what if the real problem isn’t the end of the book review, but the end of the newspaper?

On Monday, the Audit Bureau of Circulations announced that the top 25 newspapers in the country (including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post) are losing paid subscriptions faster now than they have in the past. And not just during the week – weekend subscriptions are falling, too. Apparently, fewer people feel the need to sit and read the paper while they leisurely drink their coffee on Sunday morning.

But what does this decline mean for book publishing? It’s simple, really. No newspaper? No book review. At least not in the traditional print-and-mortar sense.

It seems that the value of word-of-mouth buzz, whether it’s online or in person, is increasing as quickly as newspapers are deteriorating…

Sarah

Photo courtesy: laffy4k

What about Oprah?

The omission of women in Outliers says more about the nature of “big think” books than it does about Mr.Gladwell. Since the publication of The Tipping Point we’ve seen a proliferation of books that present a single, shrink-wrapped idea as a means of understanding the world at large: books like The World is Flat, The Black Swan, The Wisdom of Crowds, The Long Tail.  Now some of these books (the ones written by behavioral economists) tend toward the gee-whiz-isn’t-that-interesting set like Predictably Irrational, Freakonomics, and The Undercover Economist. But the point is, all of them promise access to a club whose sole activity is the exchange of ideas; all of them promise, however covertly, to make us feel smarter. And all of them are written by men.

It is hard to know whether women are better at telling stories than propagating ideas (I’m thinking of Susan Orlean, Mary Roach, Karen Abbott), or whether the intellectual audacity required to sell our hypotheses about the world simply isn’t in our genetic makeup. But until we get in the ring and start claiming our own big ideas in book form, I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised if current discourse leaves us on the sidelines. Still, Malcolm Gladwell is one of the most influential public intellectuals of our time and it’s a shame he didn’t use his platform to celebrate a few women outliers.

Julia

On the subject of free, check out Hugh McGuire’s Huffpo piece What Publishing Can Learn From Music.

Julia

Can these electronic editions of amalgamated magazine content be considered books? Is that question even relevant?  Do these four – let’s call them kinooks – represent an important new content package for readers?

Julia

1. We’ve heard a lot of doom and gloom about the publishing business in recent days (last week’s article by Boris Kachka in New York magazine, for instance), but the biggest bestsellers are selling more copies than ever before.  If bestsellers are doing so well, why is the business in trouble?

I do not agree that it’s all doom and gloom in the book business. Obviously, these are challenging economic times and for our industry as well. Like all of retail, our business is impacted by the overall economic environment and by industry trends and that’s why we are managing our company conservatively from a financial perspective.

That said, I think people are always going to want books…they will always want to be entertained and informed by books and I do not see that changing.  It’s true that the format books take may change over time and evolve, and the places where people buy books and how they access them have changed over time and will change further, but books themselves will always be part of our culture and our world in my opinion.

I think what has changed the most is that there are now more outlets for consumers to purchase bestsellers.  Certainly, the internet, the warehouse clubs and discount stores were smaller stakeholders just some years ago and have grown to large ones today.  It is a changing environment.

As far as bestsellers, they are not the biggest part of our business as a retailer. Bestsellers for Borders represent about 15-20% of our total book sales. Clearly, most of our business is driven by our backlist, which is the most important part of our sales as a retailer and the most challenging to get precisely right from an inventory standpoint and that’s one of the things we are working on right now.

Look at it this way.  When we can host midnight Stephenie Meyer “Breaking Dawn” parties in our stores that bring 225,000 people out to Borders on one night and we sell over 250,000 copies of the book in one 24-hour period, does that seem like a dead business? It’s exciting and proves that the book business can be full of vitality if you have great content and give the customers compelling reasons to come to your store. With more and more demands on people’s time, a specialty retailer like Borders needs to do everything we can to drive customers to our stores. We cannot simply rely on the bestsellers, which are now available in more outlets than ever.

I contend it is not the book business itself that is lacking, but it is the business model that has been in place for decades and is broken. The entire lack of focus in the industry on inventory productivity has put us all in a very challenging situation.

There are now more books than ever being published.  Publishers bring us thousands of titles each month and many publishers are not as focused on the sell-thru of their titles as the buy-in. We are working together with our publishers to help change that mindset. Their focus has been on opening order from the retailer and not always on the net quantity sold after returns.

In the past, our buyers would essentially buy a significant number of all titles in their attempt to have us covered in terms of inventory. But this practice has wrought a broken business model because when these books don’t sell, they are returned…a costly process for the publishers and for us.

In my career, I haven’t seen a retail model that operates like this and it needs to change dramatically and fast.  Inventory productivity is a HUGE initiative here at Borders.  We are very focused on buying smarter to start with and have teamed up with our publisher partners to figure out from the start the right buys at the right level that will actually sell thru at acceptable levels, thereby mitigating the returns.

In addition, we need to work with publishers on logistics.  We need to get more just-in-time with inventory deliveries so we can more effectively distribute books based on their selling in individual stores.  In many cases It would actually be better economically for publishers if they held the inventory and made it quickly accessible to us when we are selling a title than to ship it all in at once and have us hold excessive quantities on the idea that maybe it will sell and then when it doesn’t, we ship it back.  Some publishers have started using staged deliveries which are common practice for most retailers in non-book product categories, but it is still not an industry-wide practice for books and is one of the easiest things we could do to increase efficiency quickly.

What to do?  We need to work closely with publishers on maximizing inventory productivity. That is not just our job as a retailer, it is the job of the publisher and retailer TOGETHER to realistically assess sell thru and take on only those titles and quantities we both think will perform to the degree we need them to. We need to buy smarter…know our customers and select those titles that resonate with our unique shopper. Together we need to address logistics and get more “just-in-time” with shipments.

Finally, at Borders, we are rolling out the new Borders.com e-commerce site on our in-store kiosks so that we can keep store inventory productive and still offer customers a very easy, prompt way to get the titles that may not be in the store, but are available to them via our e-commerce site. It’s a big part of our overall cross-channel strategy, which as it continues to evolve, is going to enrich the customer experience tremendously.

2. Returns on new adult hardcover books are running at an industry average of 40%.  That seems like an awful lot of waste.  What can we all do about it?

I think all of my comments above address this.

3. As you know, Amazon is selling e-book versions of newly published hard covers (for download onto their Kindle reader) for only $9.95.  Do you think that this will result in downward pressure on the pricing of hard covers?  Would Borders consider lowering the prices of the e-books it sells, possibly by combining e-book and hardcover sales in a bundle of some sort?

No, I don’t think this will push hardcover prices down.  I simply do not believe that most customers who are buying an e-book are making that decision based primarily on price. They have bought into the technology of the device and the e-book is just the format in which they are acquiring content. They have selected their preferred delivery method and that’s what it happens to cost to acquire new content.   Therefore, I don’t think we need to lower e-book prices or hardcover prices. I think we always need to make sure we offer a value to the customer that they perceive is a good one. Books represent a great value compared to lots of other forms of entertainment. The hours of enjoyment and enrichment people get from books per hour is so much less expensive than many other options.

As far as a bundle, that may make sense and is certainly an option we would consider…we are always looking at value and what our customers would find a value in…so if combining the two would be viewed as a better value than buying separately and there was a demand, that’s something to look at. All options are open for us.

4. Traditional forms of marketing such as paid advertising on television, radio and print are increasingly expensive for publishers and possibly less effective than other forms of marketing.  What other forms of marketing have you seen actually driving sales in your stores?

Borders is actually positioned extremely well here. We do very little if any traditional advertising, as we have a tremendously effective and cost effective marketing vehicle readily available to us in our 29 million member Borders Rewards loyalty program.  We are still growing membership in this program at over 130,000 a week and capturing emails along the way.  We market directly to these customers primarily through our weekly Borders Shortlist emails, which we know our customers love because they have a high open rate, a high sales ratio for titles featured and represent the real “heart” of our company—the editorial voice and respected brand we bring to books, music and movies that is so trusted by our customers universally.

Our Borders Media content is incredible as a marketing tool. We create exclusive high quality video programming in house—shows like Borders Live at 01, Borders Book Club and Borders Kitchen, among others—are highly watched and help us drive sales. Now that we have Borders.com, we can have a “buy button” right there with this content which further drives sales. We have hundreds of episodes archived and our customers truly love to engage with this content.  Frankly, we’ve been doing it longer and we do it better than anyone else, so it’s carved out a position for us with customers that cannot easily be unseated.

Speaking directly to an engaged population of customers is absolutely the way to go and we’re leading the way on it…the sky’s the limit!

5. Finally, what are you reading now? 

I just finished “The Monster of Florence”, by Douglas Preston and I’m now reading “The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life”, by Alice Schroeder.

–Bob

Could it be true? Is the iPhone the most popular eReader on the market? And how could anyone actually know since Amazon won’t release any real stats to the public? And frankly, just because more people are downloading an app on their iphones than buying the Kindle, does that mean they are actually reading more books on the iPhone?

I had to try Stanza (the self-proclaimed “Revolution in Reading”) and the program that allows users to download book content for free to their iPhones, myself. It reads well, and it’s true that there are thousands of books available for free – but most of them are from the public domain. What if you want to download a newly published book? What if you want to read the latest #1 bestseller on your iPhone?

After a little research and a few additional articles, I found myself back in common territory.

Stanza “does not currently support reading books that are encumbered with Digital Rights Management (DRM).”

It seems all roads lead back to DRM…

- Sarah

Free Books
What it is: A box of free books, each purposely missing its last few pages
What it means: “I’m playing with the functional aspect of something versus its value as art,” explains artist Eric Doeringer. “By destroying its value as an actual book, I’m transforming it into a work of art.”

Art really is in the eye of the beholder. While I admire the Doeringer’s creativity, as someone who might actually pick up a “free book,” I’m not sure I would really appreciate the artistic value in getting to the last chapter of a book and finding it missing. What about you?

Sarah

Here’s an excerpt from a talk he gave at Microsoft (click here to download the book in its entirety, for free):

Greetings fellow pirates! Arrrrr!

I’m here today to talk to you about copyright, technology and DRM, I work for the Electronic Frontier Foundation on copyright stuff (mostly), and I live in London. I’m not a lawyer — I’m a kind of mouthpiece/activist type, though occasionally they shave me and stuff me into my Bar Mitzvah suit and send me to a standards body or the UN to stir up trouble. I spend about three weeks a month on the road doing completely weird stuff like going to Microsoft to talk about DRM.

I lead a double life: I’m also a science fiction writer. That means I’ve got a dog in this fight, because I’ve been dreaming of making my living from writing since I was 12 years old. Admittedly, my IP-based biz isn’t as big as yours, but I guarantee you that it’s every bit as important to me as yours is to you.

Here’s what I’m here to convince you of:

1. That DRM systems don’t work

2. That DRM systems are bad for society

3. That DRM systems are bad for business

4. That DRM systems are bad for artists

5. That DRM is a bad business-move for MSFT

Publishers are still grappling with decisions about the importance of DRM. We would love to hear your thoughts on the subject.

Julia

But what about now? Sarah Palin might be able to fire librarians to keep certain books outside of brick walls, but she can’t shut down the Internet to keep curious minds from finding out who Daddy’s Roommate is.

If today’s technology makes it possible to thwart the Sarah Palins of the world, is book banning still technically possible? I would like to think that in this day and age, no one – especially not Sarah Palin – can keep us from reading whatever we want.

In honor of books once banned, here’s a tribute to one of the most banned of all time, courtesy of "Mad Men."

“Supporters had considerable discretion to use MyBO to organize on their own; the campaign did not micromanage but struck a balance between top-down control and anarchy. In short, Obama, the former Chicago community organizer, created the ultimate online political machine.”

[for full article including interview with 29 year-old CTO Jascha Franklin- Hodge, click here]

Can a platform like MyBO be built solely around reading? An authentic space where authors can communicate directly with their fans? Or does it make more sense for conversation about books to live within the context of a broader social network like Facebook? (And please don’t say Shelfari)

As an aside, whoever came up with this “Great Schlep” video is GENIUS:

The Great Schlep from The Great Schlep on Vimeo.
credit (chart above): MIT Technology Review

Julia

Me: Which aspects of the bailout – if any – are not being discussed in the mainstream media?

Bernasek: There are so few details that it’s clear there are many things still left to be discussed. What I find remarkable is that there has never been an adequate explanation for why Lehman was allowed to fail and other institutions were not that would enable investors and the public to be confident in the judgment of the officials involved.Then there are key questions that are have not been adequately addressed such as whether this action will be sufficient and what it’s true cost will be. More fundamentally, there is no articulated vision for an improved regulatory structure that would underpin the confidence of the public. Also, we need to know who is going to bare the losses? And who is going to gain from the new system?

Me: What will happen to the Hedge Funds?

Bernasek: This is a vital question. They may be the source of more problems than the banks. Maybe the other shoe to drop?

Me: Who will profit from this disaster?

May be more interesting to think through who will ultimately bear the financial losses. That question has not been answered.

Marcy Kaptur’s rant on the subject is truly worth watching:

If that phrase catches your attention, you’ll understand why I read Theresa Brown’s article "Perhaps Death Is Proud: More Reason to Savor Life" in last Tuesday’s Science Times section of the New York Times.  "At my job, people die" is the first line in Brown’s essay about her first "Condition A" as a new nurse…"Condition A" as in "cardiac arrest"…as in watching someone die.  I was in Brown’s thrall from that first line to her last ("The antidote to death is life"), so wrote to her on the Times website asking if she might want to write a book about her experiences.  Happily, the answer was "yes," and yesterday afternoon Brown’s agent Lynn Johnston, who had approached Theresa for the same reason I had, and I shook hands verbally on a deal.  Brown writes so well that I can’t wait to read the whole book, let alone publish it.

Bob

Me: Do you agree with Krugman’s “Cash for Trash” op-ed this morning?

Bernasek: I agree with Krugman’s analysis and I think his ideas are good ones. But I doubt there is only one way to solve this problem. There’s enough uncertainty about Paulson’s plan that it’s difficult to critique.

Me: Could Goldman and Morgan potentially make a killing as a result of this meltdown?

Bernasek: Yes of course. This will present a historic opportunity for experienced financial dealmakers to profit.

Me: Does integrity factor in to this meltdown?

Bernasek: Integrity has everything to do with it. That’s the part that can’t be fixed with the stroke of a pen. And it’s the part we need to focus on. If we don’t, it won’t matter how many $700 billion bail outs there are, the rescue will fail.

Julia

I spent last week at the O’Reilly Web 2.0 Expo in New York. Wow. I can not believe that was the first time I attended. Here are a few take-aways from a book publishing perspective:

1) SEO is 6 times more effective than a banner ad. 80% of Internet users begin a session on a search engine.

2) iPhone has a fraction of the handsets but 75% of the internet traffic. Google sees 50 times more searches from iPhones than from any other type of phone.

3) The “walled garden” mentality that I face with the media nearly every day is O V E R. The tech people will all tell you that links out lead to links back in. What’s that old saying….. “If you love something set it free, if it comes back it’s yours, if not it was never meant to be?”

4) Collaborative work is the way of the future. Everyone’s using Wiki’s.

5) Publishing should look far beyond its own industry when considering how to face the future. To my surprise, even a software company can be a great source of inspiration as a business model (thank you Jason Fried)

6) Passion rules. I already knew that, but Gary Vaynerchuk (Wine Library)  drove the point home for me. Man is he inspiring. I would have quit my day job after seeing him if I didn’t love what I do so much.

7) Speakers at a tech conferences curse a lot and business casual would have looked formal.

I will definitely be spreading the message to the book industry that business clothes are out, cursing is in, working less is more, bigger is not better, “sharing” is not just a nice manner your mother taught you, and we should all learn what wikis are and start using them. The rest of the world has already figured it out.

Debbie

Julia

You might think I’m referring to Boris Kachka’s article, “The End,” in the September 22 issue of New York magazine. But no, I meant Franklin Foer’s article, “Book Publishing,” published in the online magazine “Slate”—on December 7, 1997.

Clearly, Kachka’s five-plus months of research (allegedly involving interviews with seventy-five publishing executives) have not turned up anything new about the challenges that have faced trade publishing continuously for the past decade.  Yes, these problems are still there. But it seems a shame that Kachka didn’t look at what has changed from 1997 to 2008 instead of repeating the same old themes.

For instance, in 1997, the top bestsellers often sold hundreds of thousands of copies, but in 2008, the biggest books have sold in the millions. The short end of the tail has moved higher up the graph.  Meanwhile, online bookselling has bolstered the long end of the tail, creating easy access to thousands of backlist titles that might not earn their spot on a physical shelf. These two differences offer significant good news for authors and publishers with top-selling titles such as The Shack, or The Last Lecture, or Eat, Pray, Love, and also for publishers with extensive backlists.

What’s new about the current situation is that the same escalation in sales for the biggest titles that has enriched Dan Brown has also created exponential inflation of advances for the books in the middle of the tail—the place where most trade publishing tries to make a living. After all, if a first thriller might be the next Da Vinci Code, why stop bidding at only a million?  If that book goes on to sell twelve million, you would have been a fool not to keep bidding past four…or maybe one last best bid at five…

The logic then follows that you should distribute several hundred thousand copies of this thriller, and spend several hundred thousand dollars marketing it. But since only one in twenty of these big “make fiction” titles will succeed, the other nineteen will experience 80% returns, and the publisher who has missed the jackpot will be out an ante of several million poker chips. In fact, the only way to recover will be to find another book whose profits might outweigh the losses of the first before the fiscal year ends.

To quote Kurt Vonnegut, “so it goes.” And goes, and goes, until the once-profitable middle is the worst possible place to be. And we’re left with an industry that can only do two things: gamble bigger and bigger on the next big thing and milk the backlist for all the new formats it might be worth. If this trend continues, we’ll all be the poorer for it, because the middle should be a place where we can take interesting chances without risking the farm, not a place we go to put our careers—and our corporate parents—on the line.

Bob

Since book publishing has been buzzing about e-ink for awhile now, I was eager to see how this experiment turned out.

The initial reviews of the cover, like reviews of most things, are mixed…even negative. Wired calls it a "21st century flop" and Gizmodo says "it’s one of the worst ideas I’ve heard from a publication in awhile." (But hey, all publicity is good publicity, right?) And most of the stories acknowledge that the e-ink cover is a genius marketing ploy.

I have to agree. Not only did Esquire get Ford to sponsor the expensive venture (genius move #1), and get tons of press for being the first to mag to make the move into e-ink (from NPR to the New York Times (genius move #2), but now people are hacking the cover (unintentional genius move #3).

In a fourth move, their most genius one yet, Esquire is encouraging the hacking.

After all, getting people to read about your latest marketing strategy is one thing. But getting people to actually play with your latest marketing strategy? They must realize that not even Ford can buy that kind of exposure.

I can’t help but think about how this relates to DRM and book publishing. To-have-control, not-to-have-control is a constant topic of discussion among publishers…will releasing a book’s full content bastardize the book? What about the author’s rights to his or her creative property?

What do you think? Should books have DRM or should publishers try to take the Esquire route and encourage people to experiment with them?

Sarah

Within days, the films, (created with Sundance as a sort of marketing experiment) were everywhere: CNN, WIRED, they even made it onto the cover of Le Monde. (How could the French resist?!)

So my eyes lit up when Bob asked me if I had heard of the films, and if I thought they could be adapted to a book (“OMG Yes” I think was my response). 

Fast forward a few weeks, and the two of us are sitting with Isabella in the studios of Base Design talking about possible interiors. This is definitely one of the more unusual projects I’ve worked on, but one I am very excited about.

Much more to come on Isabella and the sex lives of bugs…

Julia

I went to the video store with my fifteen-year-old son yesterday, where we ran into the latest version of free samples. We’re already pretty excited about the debut of True Blood on HBO, since it was created by Alan Ball, whose Six Feet Under was a favorite in our house. And we were planning to watch its debut on September 7. But why wait? There on the shelves of our local Blockbuster was Episode One–ahead of the broadcast! And not only that, when we went to rent it we were told it was free of charge this week.

The old ideas about broadcast “windows” are clearly falling fast. In a recent article about an upcoming collaboration between David Byrne and Brian Eno, they announced their plan to offer the album as a digital download before making it available as a disc. In another interesting move, the Obama campaign had the New York Times print his Democratic National Convention speech on their website about 15 hours before he spoke live.

Book publishers are beginning to experiment with new approaches as well–and why not? If giving a book away for free–or at least a portion of it–helps interest readers in a book, then we’ve achieved an increasingly difficult goal. Must a paperback always follow a hardcover by a year? Must an electronic book be released at the same time as the hardcover? We need to find ways to avoid pitting one retailer against another while at the same time keeping our eyes on the prize: getting people to hear about the books we publish, and possibly even read one–in some form or another, sometime!

Bob

I don’t think it’s news to anyone that there’s more content in every format vying for the same 24 hours we’ve always had or that marketing a book is getting harder by the minute.

Gone are the days when a newspaper would give a rave review and everyone would run to buy the book. Today a reader can google, read blogs, watch videos, subscribe to an author’s RSS feeds, read the Amazon reviews, and then click to buy (or not). Andrew Bruce Smith described it perfectly in his blog about how he decided to buy Dan Roam’s BACK OF THE NAPKIN book…and this video of one author (who doesn’t even refer us back to his book) says it better than I could ever:

The more I investigate how to be heard above all the noise, the more overwhelmed I feel by the vastness of it all. It reminds me of college astronomy when my brain could barely comprehend how expansive and infinite the universe is.

Everyone’s encouraging authors to blog these days…”blog, vlog, twitter…connect with your readers…blog, vlog twitter, network…”

Ok. Blog. Now.

It turns out that it’s really hard for some of us to think of something relevant to write about on the spot.  I know…I’m trying.

I’ve developed new and deep respect for authors who’ve got this down and have been making it look so easy:
Freakonomics
Stephanie Klein
Felicia Sullivan

And a new sense of empathy for authors who find it agonizing and overwhelming and exhausting:
Joe Andoe  ,
Rick Newman

And the authors who manage to do great video blogs…OMG…what multifaceted talent:
Meg Cabot

I keep feeling like there might just be an informational big bang and suddenly we’ll be back to rotary phones and Franklin Day Planners…and it’ll be manageable again and we’ll live happily ever after.

I’d love to hear how you find out about books these days.

Debbie

In fact, it’s that lack of knowledge that lead me to the start-up of HarperStudio, which I see as a chance to experiment with new approaches and see what works–and what doesn’t. That’s why this needed to be a start-up, separated from other existing imprints (the five of us are even sitting on the 26th floor at HarperCollins, with nothing else here except our copier machine): so that there is a firewall between us and other, ongoing book divisions.

The problems of the business are pretty clear: skyrocketing advances that only rarely earn out in sales; overly aggressive distributions that try to justify those advances but often result in massive returns; overspending on ineffective marketing to help move those overdistributed books; downward pressure on pricing from new digital formats; etc…There are plenty of success stories in the midst of these trends; the biggest hits continue to get bigger, so if you are the publisher of Stephanie Meyer, or The Secret, or The Last Lecture–or if you are Jonathan Karp–you might not feel the pain. But for every Da Vinci Code  there is a Gargoyle, and even the gamblers with a hot hand eventually crap out at the tables. The more trade publishing looks like Vegas, the more the "house" wins–but the house in this case isn’t a publishing house, and while authors on whom the biggest bets are made seem like winners today, ultimately the health of the industry is at stake, and there won’t be anyone at the tables in a few years if we don’t find new ways to succeed.

So we are offering fifty percent of the profits to authors who are willing to forgo six or seven-figure advances, offering higher discounts to booksellers willing to limit returns, putting all of our marketing efforts online, and trying out new combinations of formats–however "disruptive" those combinations may seem. Because while we have no more idea of what publishing will be than anyone else does, we’re willing to risk some embarrassment to find out.

Bob

There is a wide range of disagreement about whether or not this is a good or bad thing . Will the e-book undercut pricing in a way that further erodes the profitability of our whole business? Will the e-book have limited sales potential but become the way in which books are browsed and sampled before purchase? Or will the e-book become the new standard, with old-fashioned books becoming collectibles, like LPs? And if it’s the latter, what will a bookstore be? A place to drink coffee while waiting for your book to download or print out?

It’s anybody’s guess, but if you’ve tried to read on a Kindle or a Sony E-Reader, you know that it’s almost as pleasurable as reading the same book on paper. And while there isn’t as bright a page, there are other advantages: the ability to carry 80 or more books in your carry-on bag, and in the case of the Kindle, the ability to download 80 books you forgot to bring…wirelessly…while stuck on the tarmac.

At HarperStudio, we certainly plan to use our tabula rasa status as an excuse to experiment with these new formats, in hopes of finding out what a reader might actually want. Now that I have a Kindle and an ipod, for instance, I find it frustrating that I have to purchase the same book three times to read it in bed (treeware), on a plane (Kindle), and as I drive (audio download to my ipod). I imagine that there will be a growing number of consumers who share this frustration, and I’m interested in what O’Reilly Media is doing to offer a range of choices to consumers who might want only the physical book, or only the e-book, or only the audiobook, or might instead want to pay only a bit more for two or three of these formats at once.

We’re certainly going to try this approach as one of our experiments. And we’d love to hear your suggestions for other new twists we might try as well.

Bob

Who in their right mind would want to do that, you might wonder? Especially during a time of such great tumult in the publishing industry. The truth is, those of us who examine the excel spreadsheets at the end of every fiscal year see what is on the horizon for book publishers; we’re hanging on a cliff.

But rather than gaze down over the edge of that cliff, and worry about the future of the publishing industry, I decided to look up. I wanted to see if a publishing company could be profitable without playing the high-stakes game of the book auction (a game in which I heartily participated); I paid more for The Last Lecture than any other book I’d ever bought. I wanted to offer authors an equal share of the profits if they were willing to forgo that game as well. I wanted to experiment with online marketing, and find a way to use the internet to enrich people’s reading experience, not impede it.

I wanted blue sky.

And while I was at it, why not try to eliminate returns? I was always amazed that we were in a business that found it acceptable to waste forty percent of what we produced.

So I am asking booksellers to buy books on a non-returnable basis in an exchange for a higher share of the revenue.

Now the challenge lies before us at HarperStudio: to bring a fresh set of eyes and ideas to the publishing process; to find new ways to connect with readers, and discover new ones; to embrace technology and create communities with others who believe books are a vital part of our culture.

What lies ahead is uncertain. I hope you’ll join us in this experiment and share your thoughts and ideas about the future of book publishing. I hope you will join us in looking up. Look up to the 26th Story and come visit.

Bob