It’s interesting just how much emphasis experts are placing on taking advantage of social media to reach a wider audience. Of course, you’d expect it in this case from someone with a vested interest in social media distribution, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad advice. Yet at the same time, publishers get upset about social media “ripping off” their content, as seen with Pulse, Flipboard, Zite, and now Pinterest.

I suppose it’s the same as the old dichotomy of cable carrying broadcast television, in which an argument raged for years about whether the cable networks benefited more from being able to offer broadcast stations to their subscribers, or the broadcast stations benefited more by reaching the cable-subscribing audience. Are social media making a profit from other people’s work, or helping more people find that work? Looks like both from here.

What strikes me most about indie writers, however, is not what they write, but how they publish it. Konrath may be a ‘downmarket’ writer for some, but he is a first-rate publisher for many, as was Hocking: they wrote regularly, priced to the market, and promoted like hell. Heinze and Wilkinson may be looking for publishing deals: they just can’t be bothered waiting for traditional publishers to "discover them".

Traditional publishers need to learn from these successes, if they are to throw off the irritating "legacy" tag some self-published writers hang around their necks.

He suggests publishers should be trying models similar to that floated by Macmillan New Writing (which is unfortunately closed for new submissions right now when it should be scooping up all the fresh “indie” talent it can). They should be building communities and courting the more successful self-published authors (as with Amanda Hocking).

All that makes sense, but the article’s close in which Jones suggests that badly-edited and poorly-presented self-published e-books will put readers off over time, and traditional publishers could improve their appearance, is actually rather amusing. I find myself wondering just where Jones has been over the last few years if he thinks that “professional” e-books are uniformly well-edited or presented. I’ve seen plenty of self-published works that were better than some pro-published for typos.

It happened with Larry Kirshbaum, the long-time publishing-industry exec and agent who Amazon tapped to run its publishing subsidiary, who Mike Shatzkin says “has gone from one of the most well-liked people in publishing to the one of the most reviled.” And PaidContent’s Laura Hazard Owen reports it seems to be happening to respected librarian Nancy Pearl, who has partnered with Amazon to republish some of her favorite out-of-print books.

“By aligning herself with Amazon, she’s turning her back on independents,” Seattle Mystery Bookshop owner J.B. Dickey told the Seattle Times. “Amazon is absolutely antithetical to independent bookselling, and, to many of us, truth, justice and the American way.”

But before approaching Amazon, Pearl’s agent shopped the reprints to the 20 top publishers in New York, and not one of them was interested. She says she stands to earn only “a couple of hundred” dollars per book. David Streitfield writes in The New York Times:

Ms. Pearl still seems a little shaken by the intensity of the response. “I knew the minute I signed the contract that there would be people who would not be happy, but the vehemence surprised me,” she said. To protect herself, she did not read Facebook or Twitter or any of the social media sites.

Pearl says that she is not sure at this point whether she would do it again, but she “would still want those books back in print.”

Perhaps the interesting thing is how polarizing the issue is. The PaidContent piece seems to me to be a little unnecessarily snide, harping on some (admittedly silly) comments Pearl or the Times made and suggesting that six books per year is few enough to clear rights on that Pearl should just have self-published them instead. (Of course, even if she had self-published them, guess what on-line bookstore would still be selling the majority of them?)

Meanwhile, the New York Times piece calls out the Nazi iconography in the burning-book Bloomberg Business Week cover of the issue that profiled Larry Kirshbaum, and suggests the most remarkable thing about it is not that it used that iconography, but rather that nobody complained about it. “In the struggle over the future of intellectual commerce in the United States, apparently even evocations of Joseph Goebbels and the Brown Shirts are considered fair game.”

From the description on the British App Store:

The draft score of Handel’s oratorio “Messiah” is one of the greatest musical treasures in the British Library.  Handel established and developed the English oratorio as a musical genre, and “Messiah” is its best known and best loved example.  As only fragmentary sketches survive, this manuscript is the source for Handel’s first known ideas for the work; it also includes many of his alterations for later performances.  It illuminates his working methods and includes performance directions.  It’s detailed dating reveals the composer’s characteristic speed of composition: the work was begun on 22 Augurst and completed just 24 days later on 14 September, 1741. …

This is an eBook Treasures facsimile editon, containing additional interpretative text and selected recordings from “Messiah”.

The article suggests that the strategy of talking to law professors, as opposed to tech experts (or, possibly, average students) will not result in anything useful:

“I don’t understand why, if they truly wanted to engage consumers, they would approach law professors, especially those at the most elite schools,” Mr. Goldman wrote in an e-mail interview. “There are at least a half-dozen ways that Paramount could get better marketplace feedback than eliciting the perspectives of law students, which reinforces why I think they intended to do more talking than listening.”

The strategy suggests to me that Paramount seeks to find new ways to bend the law to their favor: Publishers as well as movie studios have all taken to similar reactions to the public’s fervent resistance against any laws that would control or restrict the presentation or use of media, citing even the slightest new law or regulation as a violation of fair use and basic freedoms; the media moguls, having decided the public is unrealistic and unreasonable in their demands, have turned unilaterally to the government to protect their property.

However, government laws have proven so far ineffective in exerting any real control or providing protection against media piracy, prompting the moguls to seek new and inventive ideas that will work within the system… therefore, the consulting with the fresh young minds of future lawmakers and their teachers.

It’s truly a shame that both sides of the media consumption market continue to fight each other, instead of working together to find a mutually-equitable “trust, with verification” position that will eventually result in a marketplace that makes sense… hopefully, before the Sun goes nova or the Moon falls out of orbit, rendering the issue moot.

From The Bookseller:

Nearly a quarter of all books sold on Hive since October have been digital, Gardners has revealed.

The book wholesaler launched the consumer-facing site in June, linking with 350 independent booksellers and giving them the much called-for ability to compete with larger, chain retailers in selling e-books.

In September, the company announced it would be the first UK platform with the capability to sell Google e-books and now Hive says nearly 25% of all sales through Hive have been digital. However, the company would not give exact sales figures and Google declined to give an update on its digital book sales in the UK.

Targeted customers emails focussing on e-books as people were downloading digital books onto their new gifted e-readers just after Christmas helped to achieve Hive’s e-book sales, the company said, which remained strong into January.

More in the article.

IndieCommerce director Matt Supko wrote in an email announcement that the move was in response to Amazon’s policy of “locking in e-book exclusives which other retailers are not allowed to sell.” IndieCommerce has adopted a new policy of listing only “titles that are made available to retailers for sale in all available formats”. Individual bookstores can still choose to carry Amazon titles as custom products.

The odd thing is, the titles Amazon is publishing will have e-book versions available for sale in all e-book formats by retail channels who wish to carry them, via Amazon’s distribution deal with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Even publishing-industry observer Mike Shatzkin noted that in the article I covered last night. But IndieCommerce and the ABA seem to be acting as if this is not the case. Wonder why that is?

(Found via The Bookseller.)

Shatzkin recapitulates the recent history between Amazon, the Big Six publishers, and the bookstore chains. Amazon is in the process of inspiring much fear and loathing in the publishing industry by luring away the big celebrity writers whose megahits subsidize less popular works. Meanwhile, it continues to be able to undercut physical bookstores like Barnes & Noble on price, gradually stealing away their business.

B&N’s decision seems to me like the right move for them. Most very regular bookstore customers aren’t really surprised if any particular store doesn’t have any particular book. Indeed, the impossibility of stocking everything anybody might ask for in a store is part of the reason that online bookselling is such a useful service. In this day and age, most people who want a particular book don’t go to a bookstore to buy it; they just order it online. They go to bookstores to browse and shop and choose from what is within the store. So, yes, there may be some disappointed customers if B&N doesn’t have a high-profile Amazon title, but I don’t think that disappointment will be widespread.

On the other hand, authors and agents who might have considered an Amazon publishing deal will have to think twice if they know very few bookstores will carry it. Amazon can do some remarkable things to sell books to their mammoth online customer base and that won’t change. But there is both a practical and a vanity aspect to getting store display that will still be seen as indispensible by many authors and agents who otherwise might have taken the leap to sign with the newest big checkbook in town.

He draws a parallel to Random House’s original decision not to join the agency pricing cartel—puzzling industry observers at the time. Shatzkin said then, as now, that Random House was essentially taking advantage of Amazon’s largesse to turn a short-term profit, while its competitors raised their prices and cut their royalties.

Whether the move was sensible or not, I expect Amazon will probably not be hurt too badly in the long term—especially if it decides to open a chain of boutique stores where it can hand-sell the books itself. Will more authors think twice about signing with Amazon, or will they figure that the giant e-tailer’s marketing clout will make up for the lack of physical store placement? We’ll just have to wait and see.

A fundamental legal question involved in construing a contract is what the parties intended at the time the contract was made. The intent must be manifest in some form in the written agreement. A secret intent by one party that the word tomato also includes avocado won’t bring avocados into the contract.

The classic formulation is that there must be a “meeting of the minds” of the contracting parties or else there isn’t a contract or the contract is limited to only those subjects for which the minds met.

A big problem HC has with its case is even showing an intent by both parties to include what we recognize as ebooks today into the 1971 contract in the absence of any language that points to an ebook.

Passive Guy points out that later contracts still have the same problem. Some try to future-proof themselves by adding a “whether now known or hereafter discovered” clause, but the problem PG finds is that implies a meeting of the minds about something neither party knew anything about at the time they signed the contract.

And even though the Julie one wasn’t, a lot of these contracts were drafted after e-books or similar information-retrieval systems were known to exist. One such system, Lexis, was very big in the legal world in the mid to late 1970s, finding its way into law schools in the 1980s and eventually every lawyer’s office—the same lawyers who wrote contracts for the publishing industry. Yet none of the publishing contracts from this era bother to mention it or anything like it.

Absent any contractual mention of ebooks or electronic books or a reasonably detailed description of an ebook reading and distribution system resembling one the lawyers knew intimately, the only reasonable conclusion is there was no intent to include ebooks in publishing agreements of that era.

Just sayin’

I look forward to finding out how the Julie case unfolds. It will be interesting to see if the judge’s preliminary ruling bears any resemblance to that from the RosettaBooks case so long ago—and whether HC similarly drops the case if it appears not to be going its way. I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see.

Last week’s issue of Bloomberg’s Businessweek included an article titled Amazon’s Hitman. If you haven’t read it, you should. It is enlightening.

The gist of the article is that Amazon is gearing up to challenge the publishing world on its own turf: the signing of and creation of big-name authors who sell hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of books. And this assault worries the Big 6 publishers — Hachette, Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, Penguin, Random House, and Harper-Collins – with good reason: Amazon has more market value and disposable cash than they do combined.

The article discusses the history of the relationship between the Amazon and the publishers, along with what Businessweek thinks is Amazon’s thinking. But with all of their crying the blues, the Big 6 currently are in the driver’s seat; all they have to do is be willing to drive.

There is no reason why the Big 6 can’t offer exclusive deals to Kobo and B&N. Give them a 3-month exclusive selling period for expected ebook best-sellers and do away with the agency pricing during that period. After 3 months, make the ebooks available to everyone and reinstate agency pricing. This would boost competition and play against Amazon’s exclusivity program.

I suspect that this scenario won’t occur because the Big 6 simply do not have the spine. I don’t see any antitrust violation — if Amazon can do it each of the Big 6 can do it, too — but even if there were a possibility of antitrust violation, do it anyway and keep the program going while you hash out with the government the antitrust issues. That hashing out could take years, which would give Amazon’s competitors an opportunity to become real competitors. More importantly, it might well be an effective weapon in the crusade to keep competition in publishing alive.

Instead of wringing their hands and acting as if there is little to nothing they can do, publishers need to creatively fight Amazon’s onslaught while they are in a position to do so. Right now Amazon has no Stephen King-level authors in its stable. Amazon still needs the resources of the Big 6 to fill out its ebookstore. Remember that it was Amazon that caved in the dispute with Macmillan and brought agency pricing to ebooks. But the day isn’t far off when the advantage will shift to Amazon and the Big 6 will be able to spend their days writing their own obituaries.

The difference between Amazon and the publishers is that Amazon is willing to continue to lose money on its book operations for as long as it takes to control the field, relying on its other business to shore up its balance sheet. In contrast, the Big 6 are unwilling to lose money even for one day, even if it means their ultimate survival. Jeff Bezos is capable of thinking years ahead, like a great chess player who can think dozens of moves ahead; in contrast, the Big 6 CEOs are like the starting chess player, unable to think strategically even one move ahead, let alone several. Bezos has the spine to tell shareholders no payout this quarter or next; the Big 6 CEOs do not.

Yet the Big 6 have an opportunity to shakeup the ebook market and turn it, at least temporarily, until Bezos’ next countermove, in their favor while simultaneously shoring up Amazon’s biggest competitors, Barnes & Noble and Kobo.

Right now exclusivity is working a one-way street. Although the Big 6 declined to participate in Amazon’s current experiment, it is worth noting that Bezos had no compunction about asking them to do so. If the Big 6 won’t offer exclusivity to B&N and Kobo, perhaps B&N and Kobo should approach the Big 6. This is the one area in which Amazon is vulnerable. It is one thing to have exclusive rights to a self-published author’s books, but quite another to have them to a Stephen King’s writings.

The ball is now in the court of the Big 6. What will they do to counter Amazon? If I were a gambler, I’d say the odds were that all they will do is complain but do nothing substantive. There wasn’t much at stake in the agency pricing showdown on either side. An exclusivity arrangement with B&N and Kobo, however, puts a lot at stake. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

(Via An American Editor.)

From the press release:

Copia, the interactive eBookstore, announced that music critic Will Hermes will answer reader questions inside his book, the acclaimed Love Goes to Buildings on Fire.

Starting today, anyone who purchases a copy of Hermes’s much-lauded book from Copia can use the site’s free eReader app to post questions to the author in the margins of the eBook. Hermes will respond to the questions through Feb. 21, 2012.

While users have always been able to create and share notes on any eBook purchased from Copia, thanks to the platform’s app, this promotion marks the first time readers can converse with an author in the margins of their eBook.

“We are thrilled to have Will Hermes debut this promotion with us and showcase the interactive possibilities of our app,” said Seth Kaufman, VP of Merchandising and Marketing. “Will’s book is great conversation starter, not only because it breaks new ground in music history, but because it dishes on so many musicians like Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith, and David Bryne.”

Hermes, a senior critic at Rolling Stone and a frequent contributor to NPR and the New York Times, has earned rave reviews for his examination of the New York music scene from 1973 to 1977, a vital five-year period that gave birth to punk rock, disco, and rap while also jump starting innovative minimalism, salsa and jazz scenes.

“I love talking about the book, and music in general, and this platform seems like a really interesting way to do that,” said Hermes. “Love Goes to Buildings on Fire is about artists pushing into new territories of communication; this sort of virtual book club definitely fits the spirit.”

“We look forward to other authors following Will’s lead and using our app to create special experiences for their readers,” added Kaufman. “In a retail environment where so many books are priced exactly the same, it’s nice to offer readers some truly special added value.”

To learn more about reading and talking to Will Hermes, visit www.thecopia.com/willhermes.

From The Bookseller:

Self-published crime writer Kerry Wilkinson claimed the top spot in the UK Kindle bestseller chart for the last quarter of 2011, Amazon has revealed, as speculation mounts that the online retailer is planning to open its own physical store to push its exclusive book sales.

Wilkinson, from Lancashire, published his novel Locked In, one of a series featuring detective Jessica Daniel, using Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing tool, and sold “hundred of thousands of copies” of it in the three months before Christmas, according to Amazon. The e-book is currently selling for 98p and the paperback, published by KAW Publishing, for £8.53 on the Amazon site.

A second self-published author, Katie Stephens, saw her novel Candles on the Sand rank as the fifth bestselling Kindle book in the third quarter of 2011, according to the company.

From Inside Higher Ed:

Cost-conscious students can of course save money with used or online books and recoup some of their cash come buyback time. Still, it’s a steep price for most 18-year-olds.

But soon, introductory physics texts will have a new competitor, developed at Rice University. A free online physics book, peer-reviewed and designed to compete with major publishers’ offerings, will debut next month through the non-profit publisher OpenStax College.

Using Rice’s Connexions platform, OpenStax will offer free course materials for five common introductory classes. The textbooks are open to classes anywhere and organizers believe the programs could save students $90 million in the next five years if the books capture 10 percent of the national market. OpenStax is funded by grants from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the 20 Million Minds Foundation and the Maxfield Foundation.

A lot more in the article. Thanks to Michael von Glahn for the link.

That’s the title of an article in KQED Mind/Shift.  It contains a lot of information and links. Here’s a snippet:

Apple’s announcement last week about its new iBooks2 and authoring app created big waves in education circles. But smart educators don’t necessarily need Apple’s slick devices and software to create their own books. How educators think of content curation in the classroom is enough to change their reliance on print textbooks.

As the open education movement continues to grow and become an even more rich trove of resources, teachers can use the content to make their own interactive textbooks. It might seem daunting, but the availability of quality materials online and the power of tapping into personal learning networks should make it easier.

Here’s how to create a digital textbook and strategies for involving the students in its development in three steps.

1. AGGREGATION. Gather all your sources of information. The best way to aggregate content is through social bookmarking with great online tools like Delicious and Diigo, which allow you to bookmark sites that can be seen and shared online. As Diigo’s web site explains it, the site “allows teachers to highlight critical features within text and images and write comments directly on the web pages, to collect and organize series of web pages and web sites into coherent and thematic sets, and to facilitate online conversations within the context of the materials themselves. (Watch this video to see how to do this step-by-step.)

Teachers can work with colleagues within their subject area departments and beyond the walls of the classroom to aggregate resources through social bookmarking. Invaluable sources of information for professional learning come through Personal Learning Networks (PLN) in Twitter and from RSS feeds.

Also try Paper.li or The Twitted Times, which will sift through your connections’ resources and organize them.

More in the article.

How are you doing as a self-publisher? It’s a hard question to answer isn’t it? What are you measuring against?

We’re taking a professional snapshot of the self-publishing industry

There are self-publishing authors like JA Konrath, Amanda Hocking,  John Locke and (on a smaller but perfectly formed scale) Joanna Penn who are generous with their figures but they’re selling books from the tens of thousands to the millions. So does that mean you’re a failure if your figures are more modest? Or are you actually doing better than most? What is the average royalty earning for self-publishing authors? How long does it take for a self-published book to reach peak sales?

What are the most successful authors doing to market their books?

The Taleist 2012 Self-Publishing Survey will have the answers

I have partnered with Dave Cornford, an experienced consumer researcher and himself a self-publishing author. We’ve designed a survey that asks:

• Who is self-publishing? (age, sex, background, experience)
• How are we doing it? (full time, part time, on what platforms)
• Why are we doing it? (can’t find a publisher, had a publisher but preferred to go indie, indie all the way!)
• What’s working for us? (having more books for sale, marketing like a fiend, giving books away)
• How are we doing? (sales and revenue)

Drawing on Dave’s experience we’re asking these questions in a way that we can follow all sorts of interesting threads, like looking for what successfully self-publishing authors have in common.

We need your help

There are 61 questions in the survey so it will take you a little time to complete it but just imagine how useful it will be to have a professional snapshot of what our “industry” looks like and whether you’re on the right path.

Our target is to reach 1,000 self-published authors to have a truly meaningful amount of data to work from. To do that we need your help.

We’re asking the self-publishing community to:

1. Fill in the survey now!
2. Share a link with your networks on Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, word-of-mouth (e.g. by using the friendly icons below to link back to this post)