Bear's Magnificent Eon Trilogy United in E-Book Format

In Nebula and Hugo Award winner Greg Bear's Eon, the arrival of a 300-kilometer long stone was the answer to humanity's desperate plea to end the threat of nuclear war. Inside the deep recesses of the stone lay the remnants of a human society versed in English, Russian and Chinese. The artifacts of this familiar people foretell a great Death caused by the ravages of war. Deeper still within the stone is the Way. For some the Way meant salvation from death, for others it was a parallel world where loved ones live again. Here is some of the outpouring of acclaim for Eon:

"Eon may be the best constructed hard SF epic yet."
—The Washington Post

"Sharing aspects of Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama, its uniqueness arises from Bear's bold imagination. Bear is a writer of passionate vision. Eon is his grandest work yet."
—Locus

"A powerful, imaginative novel."
—Library Journal

"The only word for it really is blockbuster. It is big and breathtaking; the story and the concepts are ambitious to the point of mind boggling."
—Isaac Asimov's SF Magazine

Now, in Eternity, Bear returns to the Earth of Eon and it's clear that the first novel was a prequel to an even grander story. The crew of the asteroid-starship Thistledown has thwarted an attempt to sever the link to the Way, an endless corridor that spans universes. The asteroid had settled into orbit around Earth and discovered that the tunnel snaked away, forming a contained universe of its own. Forty years later, war breaks out to reopen The Way. And humankind is about to discover just how completely it has underestimated its ancient adversaries.

Eternity completes a trilogy that includes the prequel Legacy, and all three titles are now available for download at E-Reads as well more than a dozen other unforgettable works by the author rightfully described as the heir to the late Arthur C. Clarke's mantle.

RC

Do You Try Your Agent's Patience?

If you do something so horrendous as to provoke your agent to declare, "Life is too short," you'd better start looking for someone else to handle your work. It means you have tried his or her patience beyond its limit. You're a walking dead author.

We recently described good timing as one of the most important virtues a literary agent can bring to the job. There's another that most good agents possess, and that's patience. If timing is the art of "when to," patience is the art of "when not to." Unfortunately, that often means when not to knock my head against a wall, wring an author's throat, or hop in a taxi, race over to a publisher's office and trash it.

Read how agents' patience is tried. And ask yourself whether you have a high PITA Factor.

Everything You Need to Know About the Net Generation is in Your Kid's Bedroom with the Door Closed

They came out of the womb with keypads grafted to their hands, monitor cables trailing from their optical nerves, thumbs hyperdeveloped for texting, and umbilical cords terminating in USB's ready to interface immediately after weaning. They passed up electric trains for video war games, dolls for Facebook accounts, and Little League participation for YouTube and Craigslist.

They are the Net Generation, also known as Millennials. And if you don't understand them, or aren't sure you like them even if they belong to you, thank your stars that Don Tapscott does. And if you're a businessperson hoping to make a market on them, you'd be smart to listen very, very carefully to him. For proof of this assertion, ask the President of the United States. Barack Obama's juggernaut political campaign drew its power from the social networking values of Net Gen youth the way a hurricane sucks up energy and momentum from warm open ocean water. Here's a blurb on the book:

Poised to transform every social institution, the Net Generation is reshaping the form and functions of school, work, and even democracy. Simply put, the wave of youth, aged 12-30, the first truly global generation, is impacting all institutions. Particularly, employers, instructors, parents, marketers and political leaders are finding it necessary to adapt to the changing social fabric due to this generation’s unique characteristics. Within its comprehensive examination of the Net Generation, and based on a 4.5 million dollar study, Don Tapscott’s Grown Up Digital offers valuable insight and concrete takeaways for leaders across all social institutions.

Harry Hurt, who has written many an entertaining New York Times feature, is grateful to Tapscott for decoding his 11-year-old son. "How can an otherwise healthy boy like mine spend a sunny day playing World of Warcraft for five consecutive hours instead of playing soccer or baseball outdoors?" Hurt asks. His answer? Tapscott's book, Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation Is Changing Your World, "gives parents from the baby boom generation — like me — reason for optimism."

Tapscott, an adjunct professor of management at the University of Toronto, writes a really interesting blog about the Net Gen, drawn in some measure from his observations of youngsters like his own children. His book cogently summarizes those observations, and for anyone hoping to bottle and monetize the Millennial zeitgeist, Tapscott's points are worth committing to memory. As Hurt summarizes them:

* They prize freedom
* They want to customize things
* They enjoy collaboration
* They scrutinize everything
* They insist on integrity in institutions and corporations
* They want to have fun even at school or work
* They believe that speed in technology and all else is normal
* They regard constant innovation as a fact of life

Paul Lynde's "Bye Bye Birdie" lyric asks, "What's the matter with kids today?" Actually, it sounds like the Millennials have their heads screwed on pretty tightly.

RC

Obama Health Plan Prescribes Tablets at $50 Billion a Pop

I've been carrying the torch for Tablet PCs from my very first glimpse a decade or so ago, but like the object of a crush who's just not that into you, my passion has been unrequited. Despite a huge array of potential applications - education alone is as rich in possibilities as Alaska's fabulous El Dorado Gold Mine - developers and manufacturers have stubbornly resisted commitment to tablets. It's a big relief to find out I'm not alone, to learn in fact that I'm in such august company as Bill Gates. I urge you to read Conrad Blickstorfer's expert analysis of just why, for all its superb qualities, the "slate" (another term for tablets) has not yielded to our protestations of abiding love.

One sector of the computer-using community that has kept the embers burning, however, is the medical profession. As soon as Microsoft released the first version of Tablet PC, doctors seized on it as the answer to their prayers. At last they were liberated from the bondage of paperwork that cost them one hour of clerical duties for every hour spent attending to patients. With its portability, handwriting recognition and easy interfaceability with centralized databases, doctors could make their rounds with Tablet in hand and enter information in real time. Tablets even recognized the traditionally execrable handwriting of doctors, but e-ink and virtual keyboards have replaced the pen and all but eliminated the possibility that the computer could read "atropine" for "aspirin."

And now, with President Elect determined to create a $50 billion national computerized medical archive at the heart of his health care initiative, the tablet will at last find its place in the sun.

A microcosm of this world to come can be seen in Steve Lohr's New York Times examination of a small Wisconsin clinic that in 2003 introduced wireless tablet computers to its medical staff and required it use them. Lohr describes the many virtues of the program:

A paper record is a passive, historical document. An electronic health record can be a vibrant tool that reminds and advises doctors. It can hold information on a patient’s visits, treatments and conditions, going back years, even decades. It can be summoned with a mouse click, not hidden in a file drawer in a remote location and thus useless in medical emergencies.

Modern computerized systems have links to online information on best practices, treatment recommendations and harmful drug interactions. The potential benefits include fewer unnecessary tests, reduced medical errors and better care so patients are less likely to require costly treatment in hospitals.

The widespread adoption of electronic health records might also greatly increase evidence-based medicine. Each patient’s records add to a real-time, ever-growing database of evidence showing what works and what does not. The goal is to harness health information from individuals and populations, share it across networks, sift it and analyze it to make the practice of medicine more of a science and less an art.

You can see a typical computerized e-health patient record here.

Okay, that's one industry about to be conquered by the tablet. But I won't rest until I see one under the arm of every college student.

RC

Gizmodo Picks Top Ten Android Apps

This is the week when everybody picks their ten best and worst things of the year gone by, and I hope we'll be forgiven if we don't play the game. But that doesn't mean we won't enjoy reading someone else's Best Picks. I like John Mahoney's The 10 Best Android Apps of 2008 posted on Gizmodo. It sounds like there are more Android developers than users right now, but the level of initiative in putting the technology to use is amazing.

You'll remember that Android is an open platform, meaning anyone can play. Whether you're a serious developer or a Sunday hacker, go to Android's site and download the code. Our favorite is the barcode scanner application, which instantly compares the price of the product you're interested in buying with all available prices offered elsewhere, and even directs you to the shop nearest you carrying the bargain. Using your Android in Saks Fifth Avenue calls for a bit of nerve, though, after you point your cell phone at the tag on the six hundred dollar suit you've just tried on, then walk out of the store and head for Men's Wearhouse.

RC

Nine Gazillion Pound Gorilla - 2008 Holiday Sales Best Ever

Amazon reports that the 2008 holiday season was the online retailer's historic best. On its peak day (December 15th), the retailer shipped 5.6 million items.

Amazon did not break out book sales, so we don't yet have a clear idea of how they compare to those of traditional bookstores and store chains like Barnes & Noble, Borders and Books-A-Million. Amazon retails a wide variety of nonbook products, and we know from other sources that among the items moving briskly out of their warehouses were Nintendo Wii, Samsung's 52-inch LCD HDTV, the Apple iPod touch and the Blokus board game.

Amazon is a key bellweather for the emerging digital retail business model, and the weathervane this year has pointed to fair weather for etailers. Worries arising from the economic crisis have had traditional retailers on edge, and a great many brick and mortar stores slashed prices to the bone, causing a drop in overall holiday spending, according to a credit card transaction tracking outfit. If some of those stores were booksellers, it will tell us a lot about book-buying patterns.

In the absence of hard trends, I'm putting my money on the Nine Gazillion Pound Gorilla.

RC

Greg Bear's Pasts: as Compelling as His Futures

Greg Bear is famous for his award-winning futuristic science fiction, but in Dinosaur Summer he brings us back to a lost world frozen in time for 70,000 years, replete with avisaurs, centrosaurs and ankylosaurs.

A professor mounts a daring expedition to return these Jurassic giants to the wild. Two filmmakers, a circus trainer, a journalist, and a young Peter Belzoni must find a way to take the dinosaurs across oceans, continents, rivers, jungles, and, finally up a mountain.

Read it either as an e-book or trade paperback, and when you're finished with Bear's prehistory, return to the future. E-Reads carries the largest selection of his science fiction of any publisher - seventeen at last count!

RC

Greg Bear's Collected Fantasy Tales in One Volume

Greg Bear is best known - celebrated -- for his science fiction. Less well known are his fantasy stories. But they evince the same imagination and meticulous craftsmanship as the works he has produced in the so-called "hard" genre, and they too are reason to celebrate.

Bringing together six stories in old paradigms, Sleepside features "Webster," "The White Horse Child," "Sleepside Story," "Dead Run," "Through Road No Whither," and "Petra." This edition also includes a special introduction by the author: "On Losing the Taint of Being a Cannibal."

Round out your collection of Beariana with Sleepside Stories, and watch this space for announcements of new uploads.

RC

The E-Book Celebrates its Coming of Age, with the Times Reciting the Benedition

Hallelujah! The New York Times has blessed the e-book.

In Turning Page, E-Books Start To Take Hold, a full-dress, front page treatment by Brad Stone and Motoko Rich, the "Gray Lady" (as the flagship of the printed word is affectionately nicknamed) recognizes that downloadable books are here to stay.

The article summarizes technological and commercial advances made by the Kindle and Sony Reader and foretells new devices and programs on the way including Plastic Logic and Polymer Vision, Blackberry and iPhone. We've written up all of these items and more, but if I hotlinked every reference this blog would glow as orange as a tropical sunset.

Do we forgive the New York Times for taking ten years to get with the e-book program? Are we okay with them telling us stuff we've known and written about for months or even years? Do we care that the official information organ of the establishment has finally given our band of visionaries its imprimatur?

The answer to all of the above is an unequivocal YES. On behalf of all the futurists, technologists, programmers, geeks, freaks and early adopters who saw it coming ten, fifteen, twenty years ago, I can say that recognition is sweet and very welcome.

As the Times points out, we're really just at the end of the beginning. As cool as the Kindle and Sony are, they are really the Gutenberg printing presses of the digital revolution, and there are many refinements on the way. In fact, if you do check out some of the reading devices we've heralded here, you'll see that the game is far from over. A number of would-be Kindle- and Sony-killers have the the prize in their sights, and a year or two from now could see more miracles than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

But for now, we'll take a day to rest on our laurels.

Richard Curtis

For Agents, Timing is Everything

Few authors realize it, but one of the most important reasons for hiring agents is that they have a superior sense of timing. "Timing is everything" might almost be called the agent's motto ("Patience is everything else" might be considered the agent's second motto). The most successful agents are those who understand that there is a season to push and a season to ease up, a season to fight and a season to turn the back, a season to watch and wait and a season to strike. Sometimes the moment presents itself on a platter; sometimes it has to be worked with brute force like steel on a smithy's anvil. And there are times when, for all an agent's scheming, for all his exertions, for all his manipulations, he simply cannot make the thing happen. (That's usually a signal for me to go shopping.)

To understand timing - and test your instincts against your agent's - click here.

Richard Curtis Verses the Publishing Industry

For seven or eight years in the mid 1980s and early '90s Publisher's Weekly ran literary agent Richard Curtis's end-of-the-year summary, in tongue-in-cheek verse, of the highlights of the year in the publishing industry. The annual rhymes carried such titles as, "Merger, He Wrote," (1986), "Wedding Bells Are Breaking Up That Old Industry of Mine" (1989) and "Stop the Millennium, I Want to Get Off" (1990).

After a hiatus of some fifteen years, the verse-atile agent returned to PW in 2007 with "The Year of the Platform," which boasted such lines as,

But are our values turning asswards
When opening books requires passwords?

PW's 2008 year-end issue is out and carries Curtis's latest poetic effusion, "The Coming of the POD People". Here's a taste:

Just when you feared you would be fired
Or simply forcibly retired,
Wait! Belay robe and pajamas --
Acquire books about Obamas!
First Puppy, Guppy, Daughter, Spouse,
A veritable Obama House.
Success? One thing alone is vital:
Just put the Big O in the title.

Curtis's original verses as well as his prose spoofs are collected in The Client From Hell and Other Publishing Satires.

The only problem is that if you really enjoy his latest poem, you'll have to wait a whole year before you get to read another new one.

John Douglas

Poem excerpts (c) Richard Curtis reprinted from Publishers Weekly, December 31 2007 and December 22 2008, Reed Elsevier Magazines.

Their Information Is Not Free. Could That Be Why They're Making Money?

David Carr of the New York Times reports that, TriCityNews, a newspaper serving Monmouth County, New Jersey does not make its editions available on the Web, and has no intention of doing so. Except for a display of ad and product information, there's no link to the news section of the paper. Okay, don't believe it. Click here and see for yourself.

“Why would I put anything on the Web?” Carr quote the paper's owner and publisher Dan Jacobson. “I don’t understand how putting content on the Web would do anything but help destroy our paper. Why should we give our readers any incentive whatsoever to not look at our content along with our advertisements, a large number of which are beautiful and cheap full-page ads?”

It's tempting to call Jacobson's attitude counter-intuitive, but it's actually completely intuitive and logical. It's also completely successful: according to Carr,

Into the teeth of a historic recession, the newspaper had just published the biggest issue in its history. The product is double-digit profitable, and it has been growing at a clip of about 10 percent a year since it was founded in 1999, right about the time the Web was beginning to put its hands around print’s neck.

Carr thinks it's too early to call it a trend. TriCity is pretty much mom-and-pop in size and local in distribution. It may simply be that a lot of old-fashioned people like to read an old-fashioned newspaper the old-fashioned way, with newsprint on their fingers. At the same time, some major newspapers and magazine are rethinking this Information Wants To Be Free gimmick, which is truly counter-intuitive, especially when your bottom line is plummeting because nobody's paying for clicks and Web ad revenue is not as lucrative as the paper version.

Look for a retrenchment of the "Free" business model to be a theme of the year to come. The Reformation started with an itemized list of complaints posted on a church door. Maybe the modern equivalent will be launched in Monmouth County, New Jersey.

Read the Times's piece in detail. Go ahead. It's free!

RC

Julius Fast, 1919-2008

Even though you've known someone for decades, you always learn something when you read his obituary. Such is the case with Julius Fast, who recently passed away and whose life is celebrated in an obituary in the New York Times. In Julie's case, I did not realize that he was the very first recipient of the Edgar Allan Poe Award, the highest honor achievable by mystery writers. It was awarded to him in 1946, the inaugural year of the "Edgar", for his 1945 first novel Watchful at Night. Nor did I know that he had served as an army medic in World War II.

What I've always known about him is that he was a prolific, versatile and speedy writer with a journalist's nose for a hot trend, as many of his nonfiction books demonstrate. None was hotter than the psychological research revealing how much our body language reveals to those perceptive enough to pick up cues in the attitude of our head or the fidgeting of our hands. The appropriately named Fast seized on the revelations and produced Body Language, which E-Reads publishes in e-book format.

Adios, Julie.

RC

Twillers: the Literary Equivalent of Gamma Rays

Whole Foods uses it to update product information;
The L. A. Fire Department uses it to alert firefighters to blazes;
NASA uses it to break news of Mars Lander discoveries;
And a certain presidential candidate used it to update voters on his political activities.

Now Twitter is being used by would-be novelists to blast installments of their books in progress to friends. Twitter is the social networking service that enables users to blog in microbursts of no more than 140 characters. To give you some sense of what that means, the previous two sentences are 187 characters long, meaning that if they were a scene in my novel I would have to trim 47 characters to bring it down to the length of an acceptable "tweet," as Twitter posts are called. If you tend to logorrhea, Twitter is an excellent antidote. I have revised the above two verbose sentences and pared them down to a 139-character miracle of concision:

Pre-Twitter:

Now Twitter is being used by would-be novelists to blast installments of their books in progress to friends. Twitter is the social networking service that enables users to blog in microbursts of no more than 140 characters.

Post-Twitter:

Now Twitter, the social networking service, is being used by novelists to blast installments of books in progress to friends. Blogs must be less than 141 characters.

It's possible that, at 140 characters per installment, a work of Jamesian length and quality is achievable, but don't count on it. In fact, authors are loath to dignify their creations with the term "novel". Even "novelette" may be far too grandiose. Teeny-Weeny Novelini? Actually, there is a word for the new genre, according to Matt Richtel, writing about the phenomenon in the New York Times. It's called a Twiller - that is, Twitter-thriller. The author - or perhaps tweeter, to avoid confusion with such practitioners as Tolstoy and Balzac - delivers blasts to other users signed up to receive them, and voila! - in three or four centuries, you have a full-length book! Here's the plot of Richtel's story:

It’s about a man who wakes up in the mountains of Colorado, suffering from amnesia, with a haunting feeling he is a murderer. In possession of only a cellphone that lets him Twitter, he uses the phone to tell his story of self-discovery, 140 characters at a time. Think “Memento” on a mobile phone, with the occasional emoticon.

Where can I sign up? Here.

We've been updating you on the Japanese proclivity for cellphone fiction, but it would seem that our Asian counterparts are far too long-winded for American twiller tweeters impatient to claim their Nobel Prize for Literature.

So, tweeters, work on discarding those adjectives and adverbs. And while you're at it, cut down on those character-bloating verbs and nouns. And I've always wondered just what the hell we need pronouns for, anyway.

Richard

This is Not - Repeat Not - A Sci-Fi Cover Painting

Last summer plans were revealed for a Dubai building so spectacular that if someone told you it was a rendering for a fantasy set in the 24th century painted by an artist stoned on ganja, you would nod and say, Of course. In fact, construction of the 80 story Dynamic Tower office/hotel/residence is scheduled to commence in 2009 and completion is slated for 2010.

Who would live there? The very rich, and obviously a few of that breed have survived the current economic horror show. One reporter writes that "Over 140 reservation requests have arrived from the United States, followed by the UK (94) and Australia (57), as well as Italy, China, New Zealand, and other countries throughout the world. More than 50 reservations were submitted specifically for the Dynamic Tower’s luxury villas, with prices starting at 20 million Euros (US $30 million)." There's another tower like this one in the works for Moscow.

And what is it about this building that inspires superlatives? How about, each floor revolves at its own speed? How about, each of the luxury "villas" on the top ten floors has its own parking space and swimming pool? How about, the building is energy efficient thanks to horizontal wind turbines separating each storey from the ones above and below? How about, the building is being prefabricated in Italy? How about, the architect says he never designed a skyscraper before this? One blogger describes it as "the single biggest mindf**k of our time...80 stories of rotating madness."

Check out Eye on Dubai: Spinning Skyscraper Lines Up 140 U.S. Buyers?!. A video is accompanied by Richard Strauss's Also Spracht Zarathustra, the same megapompous theme used in Stanley Kubrick's 2001, but one has to admit that the first glimpse of the tower inspires awe akin to that first breathtaking view of Kubrick's space station.

The structure does raise a few questions: plumbing, for instance. So let me get this straight: my master bedroom toilet starts out over your master bedroom toilet, but in ten minutes it will pass over your kitchen; ten minutes after that over your swimming pool, and ten after that over the Bentley in your garage. All this while the blades of a gigantic wind turbine whirl between my floor and your ceiling. So, when exactly do I flush?

Just asking.

RC

Observer Gives Names and Faces to Victims of the Digital Revolution

If you think that a book editor experiences less terror over the prospect of losing a job than an automobile plant machinist, you'll want to read Leon Neyfakh's New York Observer article, FSG Feels Icy Bite in Publishing Freeze. "Those individuals who are being spit out in the process," Neyfakh writes, "particularly those veteran editors and executives who have been booted from high-level positions, are having a harder time than ever finding jobs in the industry that are appropriate to their level of experience and offer the authority they have grown accustomed to wielding in the course of their careers."

Scores of musical chairs have been yanked out of the publishing ballroom and when the music resumes - if it ever does - there just won't be that many seats. Editors and other publishing executives, as well as untold numbers of junior workers, find themselves considering freelance editorial jobs, starting literary agencies or taking on menial tasks, but may find even those pickings slim, too. Some shockingly big names are standing outside looking in and it's getting cold and discouraging.

It's easy to say that the publishing industry brought this on itself, but in this season of compassion we do well to remember that the "industry" is made up of people with names and faces, people with bills to pay and mouths to feed. And it's easy to talk about the Digital Revolution, but revolutions produce victims. A great many of those who have lost jobs are our friends, and our hearts go out to them.

RC

An Award-Winning Story That Comes With Its Own Study Guide

The centerpiece of Women in Deep Time, Greg Bear's trio of stories with a common theme, is the Nebula Award-winning novella Hardfought. The common theme is "the female psyche, multiplied and divided," says Bear in the book's introduction. "There's probably something Jungian in common with all three. At any rate, throughout my writing career (and for whatever reason) I've been fascinated by the feminine voice."

Featured in this special collection are "Sisters," "Scattershot," in which the inhabitants of many universes meet in limbo, and Hardfought, which deserves more than passing mention. In Bear's own words,

"Hardfought tells of a small portion in an eons-long war between humanity and the very ancient species of the Senexi. The narrative focuses on Prufax, a girl barely entering her adolescence, and Aryz, a Senexi whose job is to first understand humans and then, if successful, commit suicide. The violent coming together of these very different beings illustrates how understanding between humans and Senexi might be achieved and how such understanding could lead to peace."

In response to intense fascination with the story, Bear prepared a Study Guide in BookRags, but you will benefit best from it after you read the story and its sisters. "Hardfought is very densely written, intense in action and theme, and it demands that readers think," Bear advises. So, read it and come to your own conclusions before immersing yourself in the Study Guide.

The collection is available at once in paperback, and will soon be online for download, so revisit our site for updates, and check out the other superb works by this master science fiction storyteller for sale on E-Reads.

RC

Update: Greg Bear's Blood Music Ready for Download

Earlier this week we told you that Greg Bear's Blood Music was back in paperback. Now it's available as an e-book as well.

Here's what we wrote about it.

Greg Bear didn't invent the word "Nanotechnology". But he did produce what is arguably the finest novel ever written incorporating the principle. E-Reads is proud to announce the rerelease in paperback of Blood Music.

In Blood Music, a rogue genetic engineer named Vergil Ulam has been freelancing work on a formula he discovered on his job at a research firm. When his employers discover his activities and order him to destroy the formula, he injects himself with it and walks off the job, having no idea of just how the concoction will affect him. What is far more ominous, he has no idea that his formula will have a profound effect on the world. Bear’s tale of scientific hubris takes you far beyond the boundaries of science fiction stories about the evils of uncontrolled science. Indeed, few authors could project their imaginations into the fantastic and exquisitely limned realm where Bear takes his readers.

E-Reads is the leading publisher of Greg Bear's backlist. Check his author page for his novels and story collections. Some formats are still in production, so keep your eye peeled on our home page for updates.

RC

An Amazon Mole Uncovers a Grinch

London's Sunday Times carries a story asserting that Amazon's UK management is making its staff work seven days a week or else. How do they know? It seems they planted an undercover reporter with co.uk after a temp ratted the employer out.

According to the story,

The reporter spent seven working days at Amazon’s warehouse in Bedfordshire as a packer after signing up with Quest Employment, an agency based in Northampton that supplies it with temporary staff. The reporter found that the company refuses to allow sick leave, even if the worker has a legitimate doctor’s note; sets quotas for the number of items to be picked or packed in an hour that even a manager described as “ridiculous”; allows only one break of 15 minutes and another of 20 minutes per eight-hour shift, with permission needed to go to the toilet.

Why employees need to go to the toilet was not made clear by the Times.

RC

Japanese Cellfic Site - 3.5 Billion Monthly Visits

Dana Goodyear's "Letter from Japan" in The New Yorker's end-of-year issue analyzes the Japanese craze for cellphone fiction. The stats make our own e-book business look positively anemic; one publisher alone carries one million "keitai shoshetsu" titles and receives 3.5 billion visits in a single month. Sales of one or two million hardcover reprints of cellphone novels are far from uncommon. "A government survey conducted last year concluded that eighty-two per cent of those between the ages of ten and twenty-nine use cell phones, and it is hard to overstate the utter absorption of the populace in the intimate portable worlds that these phones represent," writes Goodyear, who points out just how far the nation has come from "Tales of the Genji," the earliest known novel written one thousand years ago.

We commented on this phenomenon a while ago (Cell Phone Fiction - Can 20 Million Japanese Be Wrong?) But this seems more than a mere craze. Reading Goodyear's account, one feels as if one is watching the birth of a new form of communication or the violent formation of a volcanic island. One psychologist interprets it as an outburst of empowerment among long suppressed Japanese women, but concludes that "it just reinforces norms that are popular in male-dominated culture." Whether it will carry to America's shores will be interesting to find out.

(Tut-tut of the month to Goodyear for this solecism: "The Japanese publishing industry, which shrunk by more than twenty per cent over the past eleven years, has embraced cell-phone books." Shrunk? I seldom nitpick grammar, for he who lives by the nitpick perishes by the nitpick. But this is The New Yorker, folks! Someone should have looked the usage up in - er - Shrunk and White.)

In any event, Goodyear's article is a must-read for all seeking to know the shape of things to come.

RC

At Least There'll Be Plenty of Kids' Books Under the Tree

News from Macmillan, the large publishers group that embraces such houses as St. Martins Press, Holt, Farrar Straus & Giroux, Blooomsbury, Tor, plus college publishers and magazines, is that in response to a very bad last quarter and prospects for at least another six hard months, it has not only eliminated 64 positions from all imprints but is consolidating various children's imprints into a single division under Holt's Dan Farley. Says John Sargent, head of Macmillan, "when you roll up our children's business now, it's a lot bigger than it was operating as disparate individual companies."

Sargent's commitment to children's books is reflected at other trade publishers that have suffered losses in every area except young readers. It seems that the Harry Potter effect is still dominating an otherwise sluggish marketplace: books for kids are going strong and in some cases carrying the adult list. It's hard to say exactly why.

It would seem, though, that however tightly parents pull in their own belts, they will not suffer their children to go without. Like the benign grownups in a children's story, a mother or father will sacrifice luxuries so that their kids won't go wanting. In the big bad world on the other side of the door, wolves prowl and snarl and greedy wicked villains prey on the innocent, but as long as mommy or daddy is reading a book to a child, it's going to be okay. It's going to be okay.

RC

Borders To Try Nonreturnable - Possibility World Will Not End

A combination of fresh thinking by a publisher and hardship at a book chain have produced a breach in the facade of a tradition that at least one observer asserts is at the heart of trade publishing's woes. According to the Wall Street Journal, Borders has agreed to buy books from the Harper Studio imprint, recently founded by Robert Miller, at a deep discount of 58 percent to 63 percent off, on a nonreturnable basis. A typical hardcover discount runs 50% to 56% depending on quantity purchased.

When Miller launched HarperStudio he expressed determination to find a way to break the vicious cycle by which bookstores may return unsold inventory for full credit, a practice that has proven ruinous for many a publisher. Skeptics, familiar with previous efforts including deep discounting, ironically wished him "Lots of luck". But desperate times call for desperate measures. Rob Gruen, a Borders executive, stated, "The idea of taking inventory and then shipping it back isn't a good idea for anybody. We're open to all publishers to discuss alternatives to the traditional return model."

We wish Miller and Borders lots of luck too, but without a trace of smirk on our faces.

Richard Curtis

Publishing Spoken Here

One of the critical roles literary agents play is that of translator. We perform the task on several levels. The most obvious and fundamental is explaining the nomenclature of publishing to the uninitiated author. Writers who sell their first book to a publisher and read their first contract are plunged into a sea of words that may be totally unfamiliar to them, or that are used in a totally unfamiliar way. "Force majeure," "net proceeds," "matching option," "warranty," "discount" - these need to be defined for the novice author. There are many difficult concepts to be grasped, such as "advance sale," "midlist," "fair use," "reserve against returns," "pass-through," and "hard-soft deals." The language has its own slang, too, and our initiate hears bewildering references to who handles the "sub rights," what is the tentative "pub date," and what happens when the book is "o.p.'d."

Agents patiently try to demystify these terms, but it may take many years of experience before our clients are completely at ease with them. Click here for details.

President Obama -- Put America's Writers to Work!

Among the few special interest groups not petitioning the government for a bailout these days are writers. Paul Greenberg, in the New York Sunday Times Book Review, speculates on what such a rescue package would look like. The bulge of his tongue in cheek is apparent, but underlying his geniality is an important reminder that although the official (according to National Endowment for the Arts) ranks of professional writers are modest at 185,000, their combined voice represents a significant influence on American culture and needs to be heard.

Unlike the crybabies in the financial and automotive sectors of our economy pleading with Congress to compensate them for their own greed and stupidity, writers are a proud and independent lot, and though they're not above pocketing the occasional windfall - an unexpected movie option or foreign sale - I don't know of many who would go hat in hand to their legislature to lobby for a bailout just because their agent can't find a publisher for their latest novel.

No, writers don't want a bailout. What writers want is work, and Greenberg reminds us that in 1935 at the height of the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt acknowledged the value of their profession by creating the Federal Writers' Project. Over 6,500 writers were put to work writing guidebooks, local and regional histories, photographic essays, oral memoirs and the like. (A film about this era, Soul of a People, is currently in development.) "The most well-known of these publications," Wikipedia tells us, "were the 48 state guides to America (plus Alaska Territory, Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C.) known as the American Guide Series."

President Elect Obama has established, at the heart of his economic recovery program, a plan to rebuild our nation's long-neglected infrastructure of rutted roads, crumbling dams, rusting bridges and leaking sewers. A student of American history and in particular of President Roosevelt's New Deal, Obama sees parallels between Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration and Obama's own determination to put Americans back to work on meaningful projects that will restore pride to its wounded citizens.

I'm relatively certain that the crumbling infrastructure of the publishing business will not be found on the list of federal projects requiring urgent attention. But as our community of writers, journalists and poets surveys the landscape, we see newspaper, magazine and book publishers on a precipitously downward slope. Some of their decline is self-inflicted, through failure to envision, understand, and take advantage of the revolutionary power of digital delivery of information. And some of it is their unavoidable blindsiding by market and technological forces. But whether writers are witting or unwitting victims of upheaval, we find our profession upheaved, and we lift our eyes to our new leader for help.

Luckily for us, our new leader is a writer (and a damned good one, too). He's one of us. So, perhaps, as he and his cultured and literate brain-trust set out to repair America's physical plant, they will recognize that there's a lot of writing to be done to support and celebrate our nation's reconstruction and to give it a voice and intellectual underpinning. We'll need artists, too, and musicians, just as we did when President Roosevelt launched his program to haul his country's citizens up by their own bootstraps.

President Obama, when you open up those envelopes from your publishers and shake out the handsome royalty checks rewarding you for your inspiring words, remember your fellow writers. They are a priceless resource. Put them to work. They will cost a fraction of what the government is paying to bail out banks and insurance companies and automobile manufacturers (the secret is out - writers will do it for love), and they will reward you and the American people a thousandfold.

Richard Curtis

Greg Bear's Blood Music Back in Print

Greg Bear didn't invent the word "Nanotechnology". But he did produce what is arguably the finest novel ever written incorporating the principle. E-Reads is proud to announce the rerelease in paperback of Blood Music.

In Blood Music, a rogue genetic engineer named Vergil Ulam has been freelancing work on a formula he discovered on his job at a research firm. When his employers discover his activities and order him to destroy the formula, he injects himself with it and walks off the job, having no idea of just how the concoction will affect him. What is far more ominous, he has no idea that his formula will have a profound effect on the world. Bear’s tale of scientific hubris takes you far beyond the boundaries of science fiction stories about the evils of uncontrolled science. Indeed, few authors could project their imaginations into the fantastic and exquisitely limned realm where Bear takes his readers.

The paperback is available now. The e-book is in production; watch this page for announcement of its release.

E-Reads is the leading publisher of Greg Bear's backlist. Check his author page for his novels and story collections. Some formats are still in production, so keep your eye peeled on our home page for updates.

RC

Economy Tanks, Print Sales Sink, E-Books Soar

October 2008 e-book sales at $5,200,000 showed an increase of 73% over the same month in 2007, according to the Association of American Publishers and the International Digital Publishing Forum. Calendar Year to Date Revenue is up 57.7%.

The true numbers may be even better than the charts indicate. The IDPF reminds us that:

* This data represents United States revenues only
* This data represents only trade eBook sales via wholesale channels. Retail numbers may be as much as double the above figures due to industry wholesale discounts.
* This data represents only data submitted from approx. 12 to 15 trade publishers
* This data does not include library, educational or professional electronic sales
* The numbers reflect the wholesale revenues of publishers
* The definition used for reporting electronic book sales is "All books delivered electronically over the Internet OR to hand-held reading devices"
* The IDPF and AAP began collecting data together starting in Q1 2006

While e-books were going through the roof, print books were going through the floor. The AAP confirmed that October's sales fell more than 20% and overall sales for the first 10 months of 2008 were down 3.4% compared to the same period last year. Anecdotal reports for November are inexpressibly depressing.

RC

YouTube Videos - From This You Can Make a Living?

Brian Stelter of the New York Times reports that a number of enterprising individuals are earning thousands of dollars a month as YouTube partners. Their videos attract enough traffic - millions and even tens of millions of hits - to generate serious Google advertising revenue. These one-person studios are members of the same exclusive club as BMG and Warner Brothers.

Though video-making is as low-overhead an investment as it gets - a camera and some lighting, mostly - it's harder than it looks, and weekend Ingmar Bergmans need not apply. Great YouTube videos are inspired in concept and professional in execution. Their producers are plugged into the zeitgeist, triggering tsunamis of googlers forwarding links to their friends accompanied by You-HAVE-To-See-This messages.

It also helps to be familiar with copyright law. "The program is a partial solution to a nagging problem for YouTube," Stelter writes.

"The site records 10 times the video views as any other video-sharing Web site in the United States, yet it has proven to be hard for Google to profit from, because a vast majority of the videos are posted by anonymous users who may or may not own the copyrights to the content they upload. While YouTube has halted much of the illegal video sharing on the site, it remains wary of placing advertisements against content without explicit permission from the owners. As a result, only about 3 percent of the videos on the site are supported by advertising."

In other words, don't quit your day job to make YouTube videos. But if you're one of the unfortunate men and women whose day job has quit you, go for it - you have nothing to lose. Maybe you'll turn out to be the next Sony, or at least the next Cory Williams. Williams made The Mean Kitty Song, which has been seen more than 15 million times, according to the Times's account, and now, between sponsorships, ads and product placements, he brings in a six figure income.

Read YouTube Videos Pull In Real Money, then pick up your camera, point and shoot. But don't bother filming your wife washing her hair. Some seven hundred people have done that one already.

RC

Going to the Mall? First Read While She Was Out and See the Kim Basinger Film

On a casual errand to a mall, a woman attacked by a relentless pack of strangers is forced to fight for her life. That core concept in Nebula Award-winning Ed Bryant's gripping short story While She Was Out is the basis for the Kim Basinger mile-a-minute thriller film, just opened. Check out the video trailer.

E-Reads has released the story in Mobipocket (Kindle compatible) and in e-book multiformat on Fictionwise.

As if you didn't have enough reasons to avoid the local mall over the holidays, While She Was Out will definitely give you another excuse.

RC

Screw Rubber Ducky, I Want My Rhinobook

The time has come for book lovers to drop the argument that traditional books are superior to electronic book readers because you can't take take the latter into a bathtub for fear of dropping them in the drink. For one thing, unless you are exponentially more careful than the average bather (such as yours truly), the odds are that sooner or later you will drop your book into the bathwater, or at least splash it, inadvertently grip it with wet fingers, or warp and curl it in your steamy bathroom. The printed book remains one of civilization's most precious artifacts, but certainly not because it is designed to protect your coif in a cloudburst.

The other reason that the reading-books-in-the-bathtub argument no longer - um, holds water is that you now can in fact drop a laptop or e-book reader into water without damaging it. A new species of rugged laptops challenges customers to drench, drop, shake, club, scorch, freeze, bend, roll, fold and spindle them with impunity. Among these are the Panasonic Toughbook, General Technics Rhinobook, and the Dell Latitude. Those who might find these brutes useful are the military, police and fire departments, and emergency medical service personnel. And of course college students, who tend to use their laptops as coasters for beer glasses and to hammer picture hooks into dormitory walls. The price for toughbooks is very steep, making them a luxury. But if you're willing to shell out as much as $5500, then by all means be our guest and submerge your Latitude in the tub and play solitaire to your heart's content.

What about cell phones and PDAs? The good news is that there is now a way to waterproof them and laptops, too, thanks to a product called Golden Shellback. The coating seems to work, as you will see in the demo. What doesn't yet seem to work, however, are humans, whose capacity to conduct extended conversations on cellphones while submerged remains severely limited. Neverthless, you will enjoy this demonstration of a water resistant coating for your computer. The price is steep too -- over $1000 to coat a computer preparatory to dropping it into a toilet.

Who would do such a thing? That brings us back to college students...

RC

Books Don't Get More Encrypted Than This

We know of some novels that were buried by critics. But here's one that was buried by its author.

A San Francisco area author named Mary Kavanaugh actually held held a funeral for her rejected novel, Family Plots. After sixteen submissions she decided not to slip quietly into Author Oblivion. Instead, she invited friends to "view" the book, as well as rejection letters and other relevant documents, in a virtual open coffin. She invited guests to "bury their dead dreams, too."

Honest, guys, I don't have the imagination to make this stuff up.

Here's an excerpt from the obituary:

Family Plots, the first novel of Bay Area writer Mary Patrick Kavanaugh, died uneventfully on July 22, 2008, upon receipt of its final rejection letter. According to the coroner, the cause of death was "lack of interest from the mainstream publishing industry."

The novel was born in 2001 at the University of San Francisco’s graduate creative writing program. Despite beginning its life babbling and confused, early caretakers said it demonstrated great potential to entertain. With the assistance of professors, writing students, editors, book agents, and a snappy blurb from one of the author’s famous writer friends, the novel made its debut in the offices of sixteen New York publishers, all of who flat out rejected it. The rejecters have each been invited to serve as pallbearers at the open casket service, giving them a bonus opportunity to kill this project, while simultaneously enjoying a holiday in the Bay Area.

Family Plots is survived by the author, Mary Patrick Kavanaugh, its agents, Judith Ehrlich and Sophia Seidner, two writing groups, three editors, seventeen proofreaders, and the harsh realities of a cruel publishing industry that drove it to this untimely death.

Funeral services were held on December 6, 2008, at 4 p.m. at Lifemark Chapel of the Chimes in Oakland. Those unable to attend may pay their respects via the webcast.

In lieu of flowers, the author is inviting friends and strangers to bury their own dead dreams and dashed hopes in virtual cemetery plots.

Click on her website and visit the cemetery (the flock of ravens is a particularly macabre touch). It's all great fun.

Maybe her stunt will inspire a publisher to exhume the deceased or even resurrect it.

RC

BN.Com Climbing Back on the Digital Books Horse?

Publishers Lunch, the book industry's leading online trade report, speculates that Barnes & Noble may be contemplating a move back into digibooks. No smoking gun to speak of, but transfer of B&N's Mike Ferrari from one executive position to "director, digital content" was enough to send some tongues wagging about a second assault on the ramparts of the e-book industry.

B&N jumped into e-books with both feet at the turn of the new century, but both feet got cold by 2003 and the company abruptly discontinued its involvement. It can be argued (by me at any rate) that their abandonment of e-books set the industry's progress back by a couple of years. In any event, Lunch's ruminations sent me back down memory lane to the genesis of the e-book industry early in the new century, and I found an article on PC World which I've excerpted below:

Electronic books are about to get a serious boost from Barnes & Noble.com.

The company has launched a new electronic publishing division, aimed at encouraging writers to write eBooks and at encouraging readers to buy them. Barnes & Noble Digital will offer writers editorial support, online sales monitoring, and publicity while linking them with readers.

The company will develop original eBook titles from well-known authors, such as best-selling novelist Koontz. He has been tapped as the first author to create an original eBook, The Book of Counted Sorrows, for Barnes & Noble Digital. The first eBook titles are expected out in the first half of this year...

Using eBook devices, readers can take notes while reading, bookmark a page, highlight text, search for particular words and phrases, create drawings, and use a dictionary to look up meanings of words as they read. They also have the option of downloading eBooks onto portable devices. Barnes & Noble Digital hopes to create eBooks that include images and audio, as well as links to other sites...

Barnes & Noble Digital will also give authors a larger share of income from their work, and sell eBooks at lower retail prices. Authors will receive a 35 percent royalty of the retail price of books sold either directly through Barnes & Noble.com's eBookStore or any one of its affiliate network of more than 400,000 Web sites...

EBooks will be available in all existing formats, including Microsoft Reader, the RCA REB 1100 portable device, and Glassbook Reader from Glassbook.

The Glassbook Reader - that's the answer to an e-book trivia question. Give up? Click here.

RC

Take This Job and Shove It

Most writers dream of leaving their day jobs (some have night jobs as well) and launching careers as full-time freelancers. In their eagerness to realize that goal, many of them quit as soon as they've made a few sales. This decision invariably turns out to be ill-advised if not catastrophic after the author discovers that he did not properly reckon the cost of independence, project the size and flow of earnings, or prepare himself psychologically. Even an author lucky enough to strike it rich on his first book should use the utmost restraint before quitting his job to become a writer. By the time he realizes he doesn't know what to write for an encore, he may have raised his lifestyle to an unsupportably high plateau.

The questions of whether and when writers should go full-time are among the most common and vexing that agents have to deal with, and if an agent ever had a notion to play God, here is his opportunity. The responsibility for this decision is awesome and demands ten times the prudence required to advise authors about such matters as selecting the right publisher for their books. The number of factors is large and their complexity intimidating. It's the kind of decision that should be reviewed with a great many people to collect as much input as possible.

Click here to read more.

God Must Love Dumb Billionaires, He Made So Many of Them.

Richard Perez-Peña of the New York Times reports that the Tribune Company, the mighty media giant that boasts among its holdings The Chicago Tribune and The Los Angeles Tribune, has filed for bankruptcy protection. Owner Samuel Zell had assumed $13 billion in debt to finance his acquisition of the chain, but put up just $315 million of his own money to gain control. Then the gods started tearing his wings off.

Zell describes it as "a perfect storm." Perez-Peña explains it this way:

"The recession and the shift of advertising to the Internet have hit newspapers with the sharpest drop in advertising revenue since the Depression — Tribune’s papers were down 19 percent in the third quarter — and some major newspapers have defaulted on debt or been put up for sale, with no takers. But Tribune’s problems were made significantly worse by the unusual $8.2 billion deal put together last year by Mr. Zell, which took the company private and nearly tripled its debt load, driving the company deeper into debt than any other major newspaper publisher."

When Zell saw $900 million in interest due in the next year, plus more than half a billion dollar principal due in June, he realized it was time to throw in the towel.

"The unusually heavy debt burden means Tribune’s bankruptcy is not a harbinger for the newspaper industry," the Times quoted one media analyst. “[Zell] took on a huge amount of debt at just the wrong time."

This is just the latest story in a few weeks of a highly leveraged billion dollar media operation in trouble (I haven't even mentioned speculation about Sumner Redstone's Viacom, owner of Paramount Pictures and Simon & Schuster.) So, I'm sorry, everybody, but I do take this as a harbinger. In fact, the daily business news has harbingers coming out the giggy, and one of the things they harbinge is more overweening tycoons steering corporate supertankers onto lee shores, blowing billions of dollars through ghastly misjudgments and tragically damaging innocent people. (Read all about the screwing of the Tribune Company's employees in Perez-Pena's article.)

Most major American publishing companies are components of immense and highly complex corporate enterprises, and though we like to think that the parent companies are not as terrifingly leveraged as Houghton Mifflin Harcourt or The Tribune Company, who can say for sure that it can't happen here? Where you work.

RC

An Open Letter to Jeff Bezos

Dear Jeff (if I may):

I congratulate you on the honor that Publishers Weekly has bestowed on you. It is completely well deserved if not long overdue. Amazon.com is a brilliantly conceived and managed company that introduced a revolutionary paradigm, one that has both exalted the value of a tangible product, the book, and at the same time exposed the vulnerabilities of an industry built on that product. We who work in that industry are keenly aware that we are denizens of an old world that is rapidly giving way to the virtual one represented by the efficient electronic delivery of information and merchandise. Despite its flaws and problems, however, this aging book culture represents the very best values of human civilization. I know you know this. In statements you have made you have displayed a love of books for their own sake, sensitivity to those who write and produce them, and respect for those who buy and read them.

Because, like any revolutionary paradigm, Amazon.com crosses borders that for so long have been considered rigid and inviolable, it has sometimes stepped on the toes of authors, publishers, and booksellers. Your justification for doing so is that some collateral damage is unavoidable in the creation of a new world. I don't entirely disagree with that.

But it is my hope that as you build on your success you remain aware that you possess a privilege given to very few people in any given era and hold many destinies in your hands.

I urge you to use this responsibility wisely.

Richard Curtis

Jeff Bezos "Person of the Year"? How About Person of the Last Fourteen?

Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com, a company publishers and booksellers love to hate and hate to love, has been named Publishers Weekly's Person of the Year. The announcement comes with a profile by PW's Jim Milliot.

The past week has been a kind of High Holy Days for the trade publishing industry, offering all who work in it, from writers to agents to publishers to booksellers, an opportunity to reflect on how the industry has gone wrong, atone for our complacency, and resolve to create a better world than the one lying in shambles at our feet. If you don't know where to begin, read Bezos's pithy quotes and realize that the answers to these questions have all been under our noses for the fourteen years of Amazon.com's existence. No one is saying Amazon is THE answer, but its business model so far superior to the existing one that a visitor from another world would consider pre-Amazon and post-Amazon two entirely different species.

Jeff Bezos deserves every honor accorded to him, and in a separate post I have addressed an open letter to him. Meanwhile, below are a few excerpts from Milliot's article:

Despite, or perhaps because of, Amazon’s success, many publishers have a love-hate relationship with the company. They love the units that Amazon can move, but hate its monopolistic position. There is also some fear among publishers that Amazon’s dominance as a bookseller, together with its growing ability to publish original content, will turn one of their biggest customers into their biggest competitor.But Bezos says any such worries are unfounded. “I’m not sure we have any skills per se to be a content originator,” he says. “What would we do differently [than publishers]? Why would we be better at it? It’s a well-served industry."

Among some of Amazon’s other controversial tactics are the selling of used books on the Amazon site and the launch of the Kindle. While many publishers and authors contend that used books hurt sales of new titles, Bezos insists that making used books available through Amazon simply makes the sale of used books, which Bezos surmises has been around forever, more efficient. “Every time you make something easier to buy, you are going to [sell] more of it,” Bezos says.

Still, Bezos is convinced that the digital future will be better for the book industry. What digital publishing will ultimately mean, Bezos says, is that “you are never out of stock, don’t have to guess at print runs, and there will be no returns.” In that utopia, publishers will sell books at lower prices, but move more units, resulting in higher revenue, Bezos predicts. But equally important for Bezos, the evolution to digital publishing will allow the book to compete with other “attractive media forms.” One digital approach that Bezos is not enamored of is reading book-length narrative accompanied by advertising, a strategy that Google could follow. “I’m very skeptical of advertising as a good [business] model for long-form narrative,” Bezos says.

RC

If You Think 21st Century Publishing Is Scary, Wait 'til the 22nd!

In this past week great chunks of the trade book publishing business calved like a warm glacier into the sea with a fearful thunderous splash, and everyone is trying to make sense of it. That's hard to do, because most of us are so involved in the daily hurly-burly of pitching and submitting, negotiating and collecting (or trying to collect) money that it's hard to step outside the bubble and objectively understand the process. We can see as far back as yesterday and as far ahead as tomorrow. Beyond that, quién sabe?

Well, possibly Mike Shatzkin sabe.

Mike Shatzkin is a successful publishing consultant and son of the legendary Leonard Shatzkin, himself author of several books including the very influential In Cold Type.

The son obviously got from his father the DNA strand for vision, because Mike Shatzkin can see over horizons. Early in the 1990s, when e-books were a mere gleam in the wild eyes of a handful futurists and geeks, he was organizing conferences on e-rights and chairing a think tank about the future of publishing. In articles, books and speeches he has projected a paradigm that even the most imaginative of us has only glimpsed.

Among the most Nostradamic was a speech given at the 2007 Book Expo America in New York City with the provocative title The End of General Trade Publishing Houses. And provoke it did. A lot of publishing people staggered out of the room that day like the victims of a concussion grenade. It behooves you to study it and other speeches of his, as they offer a credible template for the future of our business.

The essence of Shatzkin's view is that the current format-specific publishing model must give way to an audience-specific one. Thanks to digitization of the media, to our ability to target very specific niche audiences, and to our ability to aggregate content and information for those niche audiences, trade publishers that continue to publish for wide general audiences may well be doomed. "To succeed in the future." he says, "you will have to make commitments to communities: commitments to publish a critical mass of content and commitments to be a presence in the communities' conversations. This will require choices that were never contemplated when the interested parties were Publishers Weekly, The New York Times, and the buyers at major trade customers."

Here are a few other observations and conclusions.

* The general trade publishing model - by which we mean publishing across subjects on very much a title-by-title basis and with the organizing principle being that books are produced for general audiences - will, mostly, not survive the changes of the next 15 or 20 years.

* Every general trade publisher of 2007 must have a plan to change over the next decade or two if they want to survive.

* The lines between author and editor and aggregator and audience are blurring, with people shifting roles as they like or as is convenient or useful in any particular conversation. All sorts of formerly free-standing intellectual creations are now being wikied, sliced and diced, and mashed up with IP that came from somewhere else.

* Every obsession, no matter what it is, will be ultimately indulged. All of the books and movies and songs and more - many articles from periodicals and journals and people's private notes and amateur and professional commentary on all of the above - will have been sorted through...by the community. It will be gathered, rated, graded and hyperlinked. And it will all exist in such a way that your own observations and insights can become part of the wealth of knowledge anytime you want them to be.

* There will be vast amounts of content available to everybody. It will be highly organized - tagged and rated - by communities that will form around it. The communities will self-create and mix and merge and re-form as people participate. And the mass media that has been competing with them that has been advertising-supported and mass-audience-supported will become progressively less competitive as its economic base erodes. And, while we feel intuitively that there is still a place for books in all of this - printed or screen-delivered - we know that place is changing, and very likely getting smaller.

It pretty much goes without saying that there is probably not a future for Barnes & Noble and other bookstore chains in a world where the market for pre-printed books has declined. But the surprising thing, Shatzkin suggests, is that there may not be a future for Amazon.com either, because "search and referral" capabilities within every person's control may obviate the need for a central depot for printed books.

RC

Publishing Industry Purges Make Amazon Look Good

I'm not sure that even publishing professionals let alone lay people have a clear idea of how Amazon.com's book rankings work. There is no arcane formula. In essence Amazon rankings reflect the sale velocity of copies of any given title purchased on the website. If overall Amazon sales are slow, even a handful of copies of one book sold in a compressed period of time can radically alter the numbers. A story is told that a Penguin author prevailed on friends and colleagues to buy his book on Amazon during their lunch hour. The ploy succeeded in driving the ranking from 680,281 to 368 by late that afternoon.

What is of far greater significance is the fluctuations in the rankings of books that have not yet been published. Indeed, their importance cannot be overstated.

About four months before publication, publishers list their forthcoming titles on Amazon, including cover image, jacket blurbs, and "metadata" - the book's ISBN (unique identifier) number, its genre, price, etc. The display of the listings makes it possible for interested customers to order the book in advance. They do this by placing it in their shopping carts and paying for it with a credit card.

Before publication date Amazon tallies up the orders and buys that number from the book's publisher, plus, undoubtedly, some extras for the warehouse to meet demand over and above the initial buy. Depending on the sale velocity of such pre-orders, the ranking will fluctuate even though the book has not yet been printed. An eagerly anticipated book may post a strong ranking. On publication day, copies are shipped to the customers.

Why should we be excited about this process?

It's pretty clear that Amazon's business model of prepayment for books is infinitely superior to the traditional bookselling model in which publishers make educated guesses about how many copies they think they can sell, and bookstores order copies on consignment. If a book fails to sell well it will be returned to the publisher for full credit. Returns in trade (general interest) books today are running on the average of 50%. Nobody has ever figured out how to sustain a profitable business by producing two units of any product and selling just one. If that fact is hard to grasp when times are flush, it is all too vivid when the economy turns sour. The current economic recession has exposed the rotten underpinning of the old business model. It's hard to believe there is any way for the publishing industry to go other than Amazonwards - that is, a business model based on guaranteed pre-orders.

And we are not talking about twosies and threeesies - for a major new book by a popular author, the pre-orders can run into the hundreds of thousands of copies. All prepaid. The return rate - 0%.

There is however a monopolistic danger in some of Amazon's distribution practices, and publishers are caught between the Amazon rock and the Barnes & Noble hard place. There may be only one course that trade publishers can take to avoid being crushed, and that is to begin selling books directly to the public. So far, publishers have done little more than timidly dip a toe in those waters. But the pressure is growing on them to plunge in if they are to survive.

The events of the past week make that conclusion all too clear: when it comes to getting books efficiently from publisher to consumer, Amazon's ranking is indisputably #1.

Richard Curtis

Copyright (c) 2008 by Richard Curtis

Digi-Newspaper Scoreboard: Kindle 28, Kindle Killer 800

It's a good time to be alive if you're a tree. Digitally delivered news is gaining momentum and as we turn the corner to 2009 it's gotten a rocket boost from the Dutch firm iRex Technologies, which announced it has made a deal with NewspaperDirect to deliver 800 newspapers on iRex's Digital Reader 1000. As an added Christmas gift you'll get one month's subscription free if you're an existing or new customer from the launch date of Thursday 11th December 2008, according to Loeki van der Lee, Office Manager for the iRex. Ms. van der Lee points out that it's also a Christmas present for trees:

"With the world consuming over 300 million tonnes of paper annually, the potential implications of receiving and reading newspaper electronically are huge, but until now devices such as the Amazon Kindle have only offered around 30 titles and the restrictions of their small screen size have caused headaches for publishers wishing to replicate the newspaper experience for the digital consumer. The iRex DR1000 developed with the business market in mind offers the world’s largest display allowing full page pdf files and now e?newspapers to retain their original look and feel and layout thereby offering the reader an unparalleled digital reading experience."

The iRex/NewspaperDirect partnership will undoubtedly cause some headaches for Amazon.com, too. A visit to Amazon's Kindle newspaper web page shows 28 listings. The 800 titles to be carried on the iRex 1000, dubbed "Kindle Killer" by some, will obviously dwarf Kindle's offering. Of course, many of them are foreign language papers like Le Figaro and Die Welt. But 800 is 800 and that's good news for the environment. According to one stat it takes 12 mature trees to make one tonne of newsprint, which makes 14,000 copies of your daily tabloid. A "tonne" is a little over a US "ton" of 2000 pounds.

Now, do a tree a favor: forward this blog, but don't print it out.

RC

Will Steve Jobs Eat His Words with Ketchup, Mustard or Mayo?

Perhaps Apple boss Steven Jobs' declaration that "People don't read anymore" does not rank with Neville Chamberlain's "Peace for our time" speech in 1938, just before Germany invaded Czechoslovakia. But it is not out of line to mention both in the same breath to exemplify how colossally wrong smart people can be.

Jobs made his scornful comment in response to a question about the Kindle. “It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is; the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year.” Aside from offending every literate person in the United States, including those who read one book or less every year, Jobs appalled everybody in the e-book business. They had looked to him to do for reading books what he had done for listening to music. By implying he was not entertaining a book-reading platform for the iPhone, he slapped the collective face of the e-book business. Thwarted by his hostility to an iPhone reader, customers turned to the Kindle to fill the e-book vacuum. Jobs could not have boosted the Kindle any more effectively if he had bought a controlling share of Amazon.com.

Fortunately, a number of determined and enterprising programmers took it upon themselves to spec - or hack - a reader application for the iPhone. And even more fortunately, Jobs did not discourage them. One hopes he realized he had spoken recklessly.

Which brings us to the Stanza, Lexcycle's free e-book reader now in use on the iPhone and iPod Touch. Charlie Sorrel writes in Wired, "Stanza has been downloaded almost 600,000 times, and users are in turn downloading 50-60,000 books a day." The key to this breakthrough is a partnership between Lexcycle and the online e-book seller Fictionwise.

Aside from the satisfaction of seeing Steve Jobs proven wrong, it's also inspiring to see Fictionwise taking this initiative. We at E-Reads are big fans of Fictionwise. It is our principal e-book distributor and a major reason why this industry is beginning to thrive.

To paraphrase Neville Chamberlain, "There will be e-books for our time." No thanks to Steve Jobs.

RC

Behind Publishing's Wednesday of the Long Knives

As the publishing industry reels the day after announcements of layoffs by major publishers, you can expect lots of ink to be spilled about the underlying reasons. I doubt if they will drill down to what's really at the heart of these upheavals.

I'm going to ask you to read my comments twice. When you get to the end you'll understand why.

Richard Curtis
********************
The American trade book industry is undergoing the most serious recession in its history, and though it has rebounded from other down cycles in the past, anyone who thinks it will return to boom times is living in a fool's paradise.

Trade book publishing has been in decline since the end of World War II. Industry boosters cite increased sales volume over that period to support the view that all is well, but much of the growth can be attributed to normal population increases and inflation. For the real story, one has but to look at the long roll call of publishers that have been forced to sell themselves to conglomerates, merge with larger publishing houses, or go out of business entirely. I am not speaking about mom-and-pop publishers operating on a shoestring; I'm referring to giants like Simon and Schuster, Doubleday, Bantam, Putnam, Macmillan, Scribner, Penguin, St. Martin's Press, and Harper and Row. Today, we are left with only seven or eight major trade book combines. Presumably, in this publisher-eat-publisher jungle, these survivors are the fittest. But are they any healthier than the weaklings they acquired?

From the viewpoint of literary agents, whose jobs include monitoring the fiscal well-being of publishers, the answer is a resounding no. Most of the agents I have spoken to confirm my observation: The current economic downturn has revealed that just about every major American publisher is hurting. And what they're hurting for is cash.

There's not enough cash in publishing. There never has been, and there never will be. Why? Because the consignment system of selling books is bleeding the publishing industry to death. Try as they might, the smartest people in our field have failed to find a way to make money under an arrangement that makes books returnable to publishers.

Publishing is one of the few industries that sell merchandise on a fully returnable basis. The custom was initiated to overcome booksellers' wariness toward the work of authors who were unfamiliar to them. If the customers didn't buy those books, booksellers had the right to return the merchandise for credit. The practice was eventually extended to all books, whether by new authors or old, and it really took off with the paperback revolution. Paperback publishers discovered that the easiest way to ship their books was through magazine distributors. As most periodicals are monthly, the distributors simply collected unsold books along with unsold magazines at the end of every month.

Perhaps this setup worked a decade or two ago when returns were more modest, but with returns of 50 percent or more as the norm today, it is virtually impossible for a publisher to earn profits in trade books, or at least earn them on a sustained basis. Despite decades of ruinous experience, it still doesn't seem to have sunk into the minds of many publishers that returns are a form of currency. Like any other kind of currency, returns can be manipulated. All bookstore people understand this concept perfectly: When times get tough, stores that don't have cash "spend" their returns, buying new titles with credits on books that aren't moving fast enough in order to keep cash flowing. Publishers, like anybody else, can only live so long on credit—then they start to bleed.

Large houses can afford to hemorrhage longer than small ones because they seem to have more cash. But that's only an illusion: their losses are obscured on the balance sheets of their conglomerate owners. How long will those owners be willing to go on infusing their ailing publishing divisions with cash? As a rule, sick companies get dumped by healthy ones, and in a recession, sick companies get dumped faster. What never fails to amaze me, though, is why anyone would want to buy into an industry founded on such lousy economics. Though statistics are hard to come by because accountants for conglomerates don't always separate the profits of their publishing divisions from those of their other divisions, the average return on investment in trade books seems to be 2 or 3 percent.

I have spent years advocating the abandonment of the consignment system. For one thing, it is a horrifying waste of paper and other resources. For another, it has forced all of us into negative, defensive, and ofttimes bizarre ways of speaking and thinking about books. Nobody talks about how many copies of a book were sold, but rather how many did not get returned. Royalty statements are designed to deceive by the omission of critical information. Returns data are buried in a column called "Cumulative Net Sales," and the concept of holding back royalties against returns is so inflammatory to authors that publishers have built their royalty statements around hiding that information.

Worst of all, the consignment system is the principal cause of hostility between bookstore and publisher, and between publisher and author. Publishers condemn bookstores and chains for their profligate ordering. But why should bookstores restrain themselves? They have, after all, nothing to lose, as they can always invoke the privilege of sending back what they can't sell. To meet the demand of these bloated orders, publishers have no choice but to overprint. Then, when the books fail to move out of the stores, the publishers are compelled to eat huge returns. The only people who prosper from this insane process are the remainder jobbers or the shady characters who illegally sell stripped paperbacks. In their frenzy to keep stores from returning books, publishers are compelled to offer incentives, politely referred to as "slotting allowances," "display fees," and "co-op contributions,'' that border on institutionalized bribery.

Most of the resentment or suspicion that authors and agents feel toward publishers stems from royalty accounting based on returns. Authors, outraged that creative bookkeeping permits publishers to hold excessive royalties in the name of reserves against returns, consider the system fraudulent. Their viewpoint is easy to understand when you remember that returns are a manipulable form of currency. The temptation to manipulate them intensifies in recessionary or inflationary times when publishers seize upon royalty reserves as the most obvious source of cash to relieve their liquidity problems or earn some extra interest. Publishers cannot with impunity stop paying their printers, their landlords, their paper suppliers, or their employees. But by a stroke of the pen, raising the holdback on royalties from, say, 50 percent to 75 percent, a publisher can liberate enough cash to meet the urgent demands of all those other creditors - at the expense of authors. How, then, could authors, suffering liquidity problems of their own, not feel bitter? Nor is their mood improved to see their remaindered books, on which they receive little or no royalties, selling briskly in used-book stores.

Are there solutions to this dilemma? There are, but they all call for radical changes in the way we think about books, sell them, and account to each other for them. For any plan to succeed, it must: (1) allow publishers to print only as many copies as are necessary to fill orders, (2) put distribution on a nonreturnable basis, (3) enable publishers to make a profit, (4) encourage bookshops and chain stores to make money remaindering books on their own premises, and (5) provide authors with honest, easy-to-understand accounting. That's a tall order. Some gratifying attempts have been essayed, but they all failed because they were not radical enough, nor were they adopted on an industry-wide basis.

As a student of publishing history, I'm aware of all the "death-of-publishing" prophecies that have proven false in our time. But I don't think I'm risking much by stating that the publishing industry cannot endure much longer the way it is being run. The need to change our ways is particularly acute in light of revolutionary developments in electronic publishing.

In the coming era of "demand" publishing, we will see direct electronic delivery of text to reader-users without dependence on distributors, or even on paper. The technology for producing portable electronic books containing or accessing whole libraries is now at hand. By the start of the twenty-first century, thanks to computers, Nintendos, and Gameboys, a generation of children completely at ease with electronically delivered literature will make handheld electronic books the device of choice for reading. The awesome memory capacity of CDs, storing scores of volumes on miniature discs, may make bookstores and libraries obsolete. Thanks to the multimedia and interactive features of the new breed of computers, tomorrow's electronic books will entertain readers with audio and video displays that will make traditional books look as crude as cuneiform writing on stone tablets. Gone will be the disgustingly wasteful system of merchandising books, along with the creative bookkeeping that permits publishers to hold authors' money for years. Authors will be credited a royalty for each use of their property, and the purchase of books will be transacted by electronic debiting of consumers' charge accounts.

Until that day comes, we still have an industry to save.

*******************************
The above essay was written around 1992, and it was drawn from a guest editorial I wrote for Publishers Weekly. If it sounds as if it could have been composed today instead of sixteen years ago, what conclusion can we draw except that publishers have not heeded the call to reform the unworkable business model that occasioned my editorial?

The difference between then and now, however, is Amazon.com, a company structured on a business model in which book purchases are prepaid and scarcely returnable at all (and when they're returned, Amazon makes money on used books as well). Amazon is the incarnation of all that I projected in 1992 and now it is crushing a system that has been cruising for a crushing for decades. Reread my essay again and ponder.

It gives me no pleasure to say I told you so.

Richard Curtis

Copyright (c) 2008 by Richard Curtis

Cyber Monday Sales Dent Retail Doors But Don't Bust Them

Claire Cain Miller reports in the New York Times that Cyber Monday, the Monday after Thanksgiving and a barometer of the health of the retail business, was the second-heaviest online spending day on record. It capped a weekend of strong online sales that topped last year's post-Thanksgiving Day weekend numbers by 13%.

It will come as no surprise that a lot of turnover was in "big-box" items. "Online, the virtual big-box stores, which had some of the steepest discounts, got the most visits. On Monday, eBay, Amazon, Wal-Mart, Target and Best Buy were the top e-commerce sites," Miller writes, citing Nielsen Online as a source for the info. The hottest seller? Nintendo's Wii game console. (See our blog about the marketing of the Wii.)

Even though the gross for the three-day period was close to $1 billion, it's by no means a sign that e-commerce is singlehandedly going to pull the economy out of its current doldrums. The reason why, according to an analyst at ComScore, is very aggressive discounting. What was gained in volume was countered by lower margins, in other words. Overall, for the current season compared to last, online sales are down 2%.

Nevertheless, given the slump in some other sectors of the economy like the auto biz, we take comfort that things could be worse

RC

Huge Shakeup at Random

Markus Dohle, who in May succeeded Peter Olson as Chairman of Random House's worldwide operations, stunned the publishing industry with the announcement that two collossi who bestrode the company's editorial hierarchy, Irwin Applebaum and Steve Rubin of the Bantam Dell Publishing Group and Doubleday divisions respectively, were departing. Moving up in a major reorganization are Gina Centrello of Random House, Sonny Mehta of Knopf, and Jenny Frost of Crown.

Dohle's letter to agents is quoted in its entirety below. You'll also find links to the press releases at the bottom of this blog.

Stay tuned for further commentary. This one's huge!

Dear colleagues and agents,

I would like to share with you the attached announcements I made today
regarding a reorganization within Random House and the departure of two
colleagues, Irwyn Applebaum and Steve Rubin, with whom you've worked over the
years.

I want to emphasize that within this new structure our publishing groups
retain their autonomy and our publishing programs and efforts will continue
unabated. We are committed to the values of a vibrant marketplace and to
supporting the passions of our individual editors and publishers to pursue
the projects they desire. For that reason we will continue the Random House
policy of permitting imprints to bid against each other in auctions up to the
moment that there are no out-of-house participants.

My intention is that Random House should always lead the market, even in
difficult times, and we can do that only by forging stronger relationships
with our authors, you, their agents, our retail customers and readers
everywhere. These changes will make each individual imprint stronger and
make us better able to accomplish that goal collectively.

Please don't hesitate to share your thoughts.

Regards,
Markus

Additional Press REleases (PDF format): M Dohle_12_03_08.pdf, M Dohle_Rubin.pdf, M Dohle_Applebaum.pdf

For His Next Stunt, Super Mario Will Read The Mill on The Floss

The moment I held a Nintendo in my hand (at least, as soon as I could wrest it out of my son's), I flashed the future of publishing: cartridges carrying books would be loaded into a Nintendoid device and the Golden Age of E-Books would commence.

I'm glad I didn't invest.

It wasn't long before the Internet swept away the notion of cartridges as a text delivery system, and that's pretty much where things have rested until I came across this item in Publisher's Lunch, the online publishing industry newsletter: "Some of us have wondered for the better part of a decade when Nintendo would take its huge platform of game-devices and use them as electronic readers." Frankly, I had not given it a thought in about fifteen years. Those of you who had done so will now have the satisfaction of reading The Last of the Mohicans, Robinson Crusoe, Martin Chuzzlewit and 97 other titles on your Nintendo DS Lite.

You use the DS Lite like an e-book and, like a Palm Pilot, you tap your stylus to turn pages. There's a search function and you can bookmark and change font size. The package will go on sale, at least in the UK, on December 26th. That's the day after our Christmas, but it's their Boxing Day, the day Brits give each other presents. The price is 19.99 pounds, or a bit under 30 bucks at today's exchange rate.

Allow me to voice a note or two of skepticism here. We're being asked to shell out thirty dollars to purchase 100 titles that are in the public domain, available to us free of charge on the Project Gutenberg or dozens of other websites. And then there's the question of screen size: "Will you really read a whole book on the DS Lite’s teensy screens?" asks Publishers Lunch.

RC

The Wii and the Kindle: Holiday Shortages By Design?

For the last year, the Kindle has been quickly selling out of its limited production runs, thanks in no small part to endorsements from Oprah (NYTimes: "Will Kindle get an Oprah Bump?") and countless excellent reviews in magazines and online. The Kindle is as much a status gift to adults this year as the iPod was 6 years ago to teenagers.

Jeff Bezos and Amazon's Heather Huntoon have claimed that the Kindle manufacturing end is doing their best to keep up with demand, while at the same time no firm numbers are being released to the media for us to see just how many units comprise a production run or how many Kindles there are in the wild (NYPost: "Amazon Hope to Re-Kindle Sales After Supplies Run Out"). We have to believe their nebulous shortages are the result of a happy accident: they underestimated the popularity of a hit product. And right now, 3 weeks before Christmas, the Kindle is back-ordered at Amazon until February (E-Reads: "Panic in Kindle Park"). In a season where most companies want to stock as many of their popular units as possible into their retail channels, Amazon is proudly claiming to have completely sold out of their season's stock a whole month early. We read this and believe it must be a hot item, right? And so the status buzz gets perpetuated even more. However, I have my suspicions that this is orchestrated for a crescendo sales effect, similar to the old Broadway adage "keep 'em wanting more." Aka. Supply and Demand. Not that I blame Amazon for manipulative tactics, because these moves just happen to be part of a de rigueur consumer technology marketing technique perfected by successful companies like Nintendo and Apple. I call it "the shortage."

For example, in 2006 Nintendo released their Wii gaming system in the U.S. in such short supply it sold out instantly at retailers lucky enough to get any units around Christmas time. The very same thing happened to the Wii a year later for Christmas 2007, even though by then, after 12 months of sales, Nintendo was surely aware from its metrics that the limited availability had actually increased consumer awareness and fueled the desire for plenty of consumers who wanted to get their hands on a hit product. Nintendo CEO Reggie Fils-Aime even held a press conference (Gamespot: "Nintendo, GameStop address Wii shortage") to let the media know that they were doing everything they could to produce enough Wii units to meet demand, but that it was not going to be enough: "There was no ability for us to stockpile systems in the summer for the holiday rush." Nintendo has always been adamant they've always manufactured the Wii at peak possible volumes, and that they'd never strategically limit supply to increase demand. The best they can do is make 1.8 million units a month, with a 5 month lead up time (Brandcurve: "Wii Shortage: Manufactured or Real?"), which are the kind of numbers that CEO's don't usually get embarrassed about. Christmas 2008 promises to be the same story (Forevergeek: "Wii shortage this holiday season faced by US shoppers").

The Wii stands out as an underdog gaming console in a very competitive arena. In 2006, the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 were new systems with more features than the Wii, but the Wii's advantage was that it had a lower price and an innovative, wireless motion sensitive joystick (the Wiimote, pictured above) which attracted families and gamers looking for new experiences. It was never expected to be a sales leader, but Nintendo played their cards conservatively and the Wii became the little console that could, because word of mouth created consumer demand that couldn't be satiated quickly. By the summer of 2007, Apple was ready to try a similar conservative move with the release of the iPhone, and they hoped word of mouth about shortages would create magic, too.

Apple announced the iPhone in January of 2007, six months before it would be available in the sales channel. The pre-sale buzz on blogs created a nickname for the iPhone: the Jesus phone (CNet "Can the iPhone live up to the hype?"). When the iPhone finally hit AT&T and Apple stores in late June '07, there were line ups like no one had ever seen before for a handheld gadget. It was a blockbuster event. People camped out a whole week in advance at some Apple stores to secure a place in line to be among the first with an iPhone. As fast as Apple could manufacture and ship them to the U.S., the iPhone's demand outpaced the delivery and all throughout the summer and into the fall, the status of the iPhone was secured for those lucky few who managed to find one. Again, like Nintendo, Apple quickly waved its hands to get attention and tell everyone that the limited availability was the byproduct of a slow manufacturing process that takes months and months to ramp up. With the iPhone 3G, a year later, Apple experienced the same availability problems (Techcrunch: "Foxconn Building 800,000 iPhones A Week"), which in turn spiked demand again (Engadget: "iPhone Lines Form at Apple Flagships" - pictured above).

How can we not be skeptical about a company's claim that they are making as many units as possible when manufacturing is still lagging behind long after a product demonstrates its demand in the marketplace, sometimes for well over a year or two? Why does it continue to take so long? Clearly, someone is making the choice to conservatively manufacture units so that the life-cycle of the product can be maintained over a longer period, which means more sales overall.

The shortage gambit is that you don't flood the market too soon and that the sales you lose due to lack of availability get picked up down the road because the product maintains its caché longer in the marketplace. A product can have two years or more of great sales (like the Wii) instead of just one hot season followed by backlash. The shortage requires a delicate balance of just enough available units so that once demand rises, sales don't drop precipitously once units are easier to come by. Every parent shopping for the Christmas toy of the year knows that by March stores are practically giving them away. Sellers of limited editions also know this to be true: the value drops when it's too easy to come by.

So, is the Kindle just a lucky tech product that won the sales jackpot because of word of mouth/buzz and its limited availability cult status? That definitely has something to do with it. But I'll bet the Kindle is a long term product that Amazon doesn't want to jump the shark too early and they're plotting this very carefully. The whole publishing world benefits from Amazon taking this long-term status object approach, because e-book sales are the growth area of the book industry, and we should all support any marketing that whets readers' appetites for digital content, even if it's an artificial shortage. The long haul is what counts.

- Michael Gaudet

How to Make $10 Billion and Pay Almost No Taxes: Nice Work If You Can Get it, and Marc Rich Got It

Trader Marc Rich is front page news in the New York Times, and the story of how he pulled off one of the most breathtaking scams in the history of finance is described in A. Craig Copetas's Metal Men: Marc Rich and the 10-Billion Dollar Scam. E-Reads is publisher of the e-book edition.

Copetas infiltrated the inner circle of the commodities market and Rich’s associates to show not only how Rich pulled off the scam, becoming one of America’s most wanted criminals, but also how other traders have used the same model to evade taxes as well. Rich was wanted for evading almost 90 million dollars in taxes and if caught, would have potentially served a jail term of over 300 years. Metal Men is the story of international intrigue spanning the globe from the inside of the White House to the Kremlin. Copetas has written a brilliantly researched work that exposes the inner workings of one of country’s largest scams.

“A fast-paced story of business, politics, crime and how the three easily become one.”
-–Peter Gianotti, Newsday

“The greed and corruption...are the stuff of high drama!”
–-Diana Fong, N.Y. Times Book Review

“Mr. Copetas has done an outstanding research job in assembling his lurid saga.... The story itself is astonishing-—and appalling.”
–-John Train, Wall Street Journal

RC

Books into Movies

It's often said that they're not making movies the way they used to. That's a matter of opinion (it happens to be mine), but if it's true, the decline can be attributed to the fact that they're not adapting books the way they used to. Since the golden age of filmmaking in the 1930s, the ratio of theatrical films based on books to those made from original screenplays has been steadily shifting to the latter. Today the odds that your novel will be made into a movie are distressingly low, even if your novel becomes a bestseller. But a writer can dream, right? Click here to see if the lopsided odds can be gamed a bit in your favor.

The Googlification of Books - James Gleick Puts Things in Perspective

Author James Gleick never fails to illuminate whatever he turns his attention to, and he's done it again in an article in the New York Times's Sunday Opinion page for November 30, 2008. His launch pad is the recent settlement of a publishing industry lawsuit against Google, which takes most of the brakes off Google's initiative to digitize every book it can get its tentacles on. Though it's good news for all visionaries who have dreamed of universal access to world literature, it does raise some practical questions for authors and publishing people, such as how to put food on their plates.

"For some kinds of books," Gleick says, "the writing is on the wall." Encyclopedias, dictionaries, phone books, and some other kinds of reference books will be swept away by the digital tsunami that has already eroded the coastline of music, movies, magazines and newspapers and other media.

But Gleick clings to the tangible book like a lifesaver in a stormy sea. The printed book has no rival as a conveyance of ideas, literary forms, and artistic beauty. And as a utilitarian object it simply has no peer. Anyone who gets high on the smell of printer's ink and grooves on the crack of the spine of a newly opened book will understand exactly where he's coming from. "Go back," he beseeches publishers, "to an old-fashioned idea: that a book, printed in ink on durable paper, acid-free for longevity, is a thing of beauty. Make it as well as you can. People want to cherish it."

RC

Panic in Kindle Park!

Two little words may screw up Christmas for a lot of shoppers who thought they knew just what to buy for the person who has everything:

SOLD OUT!

But those are the two little words on the Kindle page of amazon.com's website. The announcement in full:

Due to heavy customer demand, Kindle is sold out. Please ORDER KINDLE NOW to reserve your place in line. We prioritize orders on a first come, first served basis. This item will arrive after December 24. Note that Kindles cannot currently be sold or shipped to customers living outside of the U.S.

Amazon expects a new batch in eleven to thirteen weeks, meaning end of February or sometime in March, and gift wrapping is an option. Just in time to give a Kindle for Foot Health Month. Go on Amazon, take a number and get in line.

If you think you will absolutely die if you can't have your Kindle fix before then, Gizmodo reports that you can get a refurbished one.

This shortage plays up speculation that Amazon may be letting inventory run out in anticipation of the release of the long-awaited Kindle 2.0, which Kindlistas have pegged at Q-1 of the coming year. Common sense suggests that no sensible business would deliberately plan a shortfall of a hot seller in time for the biggest buying month of the year. So let's be generous and say that Amazon simply underestimated demand. Probably the only manufacturer that did in this Season of Surpluses.

RC

Next Step in Outsourcing - Your Editor's Job?

Maureen Dowd, the trenchant Op-Ed columnist for the New York Times, is unsettled if not freaked out by the lengths that a Pasadena newsman has gone to combat the erosion of the newspaper and magazine industries by the Internet.

James Macpherson, publisher of an onliner, Pasadena Now, let go of seven staff reporters making $600 to $800 a week and turned their tasks over to service providers in India. He now pays $7.50 per thousand words, Dowd reports. Some of their reportage is a a little clunky, for there are simply some subtleties of American culture that a foreigner can't grasp. But that doesn't outweigh the savings. “The newspaper industry is coming to a General Motors moment — except there’s no one to bail them out,” says Macpherson.

Dowd quotes Dean Singleton, chairman of The Associated Press and head of a newspaper group, as saying that preproduction work on his papers is already "offshored" to India. What about writing and editorial? “In today’s world, whether your desk is down the hall or around the world, from a computer standpoint, it doesn’t matter.”

Everyone involved with book writing, editing, publishing, and agenting recognizes the truth of Singleton's statement, but that doesn't prevent us from experiencing a frisson of fear at its implications. Our next question is, can your editor at Random House or Penguin also be replaced by an "Offshori?"

Some of your book publisher's tasks are probably performed by people overseas now. Production of many illustrated books, for instance, has for many years been turned over to cheap (by US standards) but superb printing craftsmen in Germany, Japan, Holland, China, Italy and elsewhere abroad. And today, almost all scanning and digitization of book texts is farmed out to foreigners.

But editorial? I'm dubious, but not because foreign people don't speak and write English as well as US natives -- many speak the King's English.

No, it's because of the water cooler. By which I mean that the culture in which editorial processes ferment can't be reproduced by remote control, not even by teleconferencing. Editors gathered around the common cause of your manuscript produce a synergy that simply can't be farmed out or piped in. They all speak the same language, and I'm not talking about English. (And by the way, these days it's not a water cooler but a kitchenette with a state of the art coffee machine.)

The prospects for newspapers and magazines are scary and getting scarier, but the question of whether the book business as we know it will go the same way is still to be answered. It hasn't exactly gone digital but is more digital than ever, and in a great many ways that's good news. But conversion of books into e-books has not generated big profits any more than conversion of newspapers has. We have yet to figure out how to monetize e-books on the same scale as print editions. E-book sales per title haven't remotely achieved the same numbers, nor has online advertising made up the gap. It's hoped that programs like Google search may help the publishing industry to produce advertising revenue that will make e-books viable. That way, e-books can take their rightful place as partners with, not rivals to, print version.

Maureen Dowd's column give us a lot to worry about, but the outsourcing of your editor's job is, for now, not on the radar screen.

RC