Fitting the Puzzle Pieces Together: Amazon and Our Future

In case you missed it last weekend, many gay-themed books, including Annie Proulx's Brokeback Mountain, went missing from Amazon's ranking system. Depending on who you listen to, it was either a poorly conceived attempt to control adult content, a cataloging error, or a hack intent on showing how inappropriate content functions can lead to problems.

Either way, a lot of content that was there one day, was gone the next. And Twitter (specifically, the hashtag #amazonfail) became the rallying point for the reaction. Amazon relented or changed its inappropriate content rules or did something, because the content is back there.

And as if that weren't enough, Amazon's ebook reader, Kindle, has a propreitary format. If you want your book on a Kindle, you have to go through Amazon one way or the other. And if Kindle becomes the bookreader, suddenly a glitch or hack could essentially kill a book's sales.

All of this assumes we're going to e-publishing. You can count on the answer eventually being yes. The economics of publishing are forcing it that way. Publishers are now hungrier than ever for home runs: books they know will sell. The current economic model makes chance-taking on unknowns far too risky.

So if I produce real quality work, and I can't get a foothold with a major publisher, why not make it a PDF and sell it online. All I need is a mention on a few influential blogs (Murderati and The Kill Zone come to mind, but there are others), a little search engine optimization, and maybe an effective Facebook and Twitter campaign, and I might have a hit anyway.

But even then, how do I get paid? I could charge people for the book, maybe after giving them the first 35 pages. (I'd need some sort of protection from someone sticking it on a server someplace for all to download.) Maybe I blog it and get ad revenue based on clickthroughs.

No one knows the answers yet, but next time you go to Borders or Barnes and Noble, pay attention to the floor space dedicated to books. It's shrinking. They don't know what the answer will be, but they have a pretty good idea what it won't be.

CPSIA Rules Ease, But Is It Enough?

The CPSIA took effect yesterday amid small fanfare and much confusion. The confusion stems from the applicability of the law, which may have been clarified substantially, at least for books, by guidance put for this week. According to the guidance, the law does not apply to books published after 1985, as long as they are not intended primarily for play, or have not been altered or processed in any way that might introduce lead.

In addition, vintage childrens' books that, because of their age and value, are no longer intended for children, are exempt. All other books intended primarily fall under the auspices of the law. Apparently, ink in childrens' books used to contain lead. However, according to this article, the lead would have to be ingested somehow for it to effect childrens' health.

This guidance will assist bookstores and many other organizations, but libraries, whose budgets are suffering from the economic downturn, may suffer disproportionately. In particular, libraries in poorer areas and school districts that lack the budget to turn over their books more regularly. The question is, how many of those books are more than 24 years old? The answer will become apparent based on the number of empty shelves in the coming weeks.

In summary, while this act still needs to be improved, some reasonable accommodations have been made. Here's hoping future changes will continue to add sanity to a necessary law.

And now the news...
Publishing and the Economy
HarperCollins lays off employees, closes division -- The bleeding continues as HC announces a layoff of a "small percentage" of it staff and closes its non-fiction division.

More details on HarperCollins layoffs -- Several editors and a PR director were let go.

Kindle/e-Books
Authors Guild Questions Kindle 2 Audio Feature -- The new Kindle will read your book for you. But that may present an intellectual property issue.

Battle Brewing Over Electronic Books -- Amazon appears to be modeling the Kindle business approach after Apple's iPod, but that may not work.

Self-Publishing
Be Your Own Book Publisher -- Createspace.com publishes your book on demand for free. You get a cut for each copy sold.

Osprey Launches Self-Publishing Offer -- The new service, AuthorHouse, is aimed at military writers. Unfortunately, it's a British publisher.

Kindle 2.0: Friend or Fraud?

As detailed previously in this space, digital publishing will emerge, it's just a matter of when it does and what it will look like. I'm betting the new Kindle 2.0 won't be the final form.

According to this review in Information Week, the new Kindle is a thing of beauty. Other coverage says it's about a third of an inch thick, can accommodate 1,500 books, and holds a charge for two weeks. At $359, it's a lot of cool. But $359 is a lot of money just to read books.

And, as the review notes, the books you can read on the Kindle have a proprietary format that you can only buy from Amazon. Because you can't go elseware for your Kindle books, Amazon can charge more for them. And does.

When Major League Baseball tried to deal with the media age that dawned with cheap, available radio, it ran away from it at first. After all, if people could listen to the game on the radio, why would they buy tickets and go? As time went on, teams grudgingly broadcast road games. Then, eventually, they broadcast home games, as well. Although at first, the games didn't bring a lot of revenue, they built interest and actually helped the attendance. Ask any Dodgers fan from the seventies and they'll tell you about sitting at Dodger Stadium listening to Vin Scully on their transistor radio.

Amazon should consider this model in selling its Kindle hardware. In this time of economic uncertainty and half a million layoffs a month, it's hard to justify paying more than $300 for hardware that does only one thing. I can get a low-end laptop for not much more, or a phone that does everything except make a sandwich for me.

I'd be much more inclined to buy a Kindle if I could get books for less than five dollars for older paperbacks, and less than ten dollars for new best sellers. As the Kindle and other e-readers mature, prices will come down. And when they do, buying habits will already be established. Forcing people to buy Kindle content from Amazon will drive people away, especially when someone comes out with a lower-cost alternative.

My prediction is that the cost of the hardware will fall considerably, and most people will get their e-readers when they sign up for a subscription to buy a specified number of books over a specified amount of time.

The only question, really, is how long it'll take to get there.

Publishing News -- 12/8/2008

Publishing and the Economy
Tribune files for Chapter 11 -- Filing includes Chicago Tribune, LA Times, Baltimore Sun, but not the Cubs or Wrigley Field, which have been on the market for months.

Ad losses send newspaper industry into a tailspin -- More than 30 papers are up for sale, and buyers are scarce.

Agent Predicts More Celeb Books -- In a world of austerity and risk-averse publishers, celebs are a known commodity.

Author Tools
Blog Book Tours Yahoo Group --Planning a release in Spring 2009? Check in here to plan a blog book tour.

The Radio Show for Authors -- Not sure how big the value proposition is, but if nothing else, you can get used to being interviewed.

Digital Publishing
Sony Sells 300K Digital Readers -- iPhone also has a digital reader. Both compete with Kindle.

e-Book Romancers Set Out to Capture New Mass Market -- Ravenous Romance, a venture partially owned by Florida Writers Association friend Lori Perkins, has online offering with prices ranging from 99 cents (short stories) to $4.99 (novels) to $12.99 for MP3 audio books.

The Death of Print Magazines and Other Fairy Tales -- Pro and Con about the future of print and digital media.

Social Networking
Regulation for Social Networking? -- Recent online suicide, MySpace suicide lead some to call for oversight.

How Photographers Use Twitter for Fun and Profit -- Except for the specific photogs named, the model could also apply to writers.

Top Social Networking Sites -- More sites (and types of sites) than you can shake a stick at.

Surviving the Recession
Ten Ways to Use LinkedIn -- LinkedIn is a business social networking site. It's a useful tool for reaching out to others in your industry.