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By David Rothman

runnerXdjioCreativeCommons Doubt that book publishing is a dysfunctional industry?

Then why must writers often wait a year or more for major houses to publish their books? No, edits aren’t and shouldn’t be instantaneous. But after they happen, publishers and contractors should be able to whip out files for P and E versions in weeks and get the books on the racks. Why isn’t this the case?

A big bottleneck is p-distribution, along with the need to create “buzz” and get the sales reps and retailers excited.

So here’s my inevitable suggestion—made after I read Rachel Donadio’s essay in the New York Times Book Review. Why not release an e-edition in advance and use it to create the buzz and help the books reach readers faster?

The noise factor

Yes, I know. It’s harder and harder to cut through the noise, the reason why some houses might actually be spending more time these days on advanced PR buildups, especially in an era when many newspapers have dropped or scaled back their book sections.

But this marketing-related delay may happen at the expense of a book’s timeliness or the freshness and even accuracy of facts in it. E could help resolve such issues and make it easier to peg book promo to news stories. No PR people would lose their jobs: they would simply care more about the electronic news outlets on which more and more readers rely these days, as shown by declining newspaper circulations. What’s more, their houses could use the speed of E to time the release dates more precisely to obtain maximum PR exposure. The actual release of an unauthorized biography about a newsworthy VIP, for example, could wait until the subject next made the headlines, while meanwhile the publicists buzzed away with hints of its contents.

Timing isn’t the only plus here. The size of the audience that a book drew in E could be at least a partial sign of how big the actual printing should be. Certainly the E audience isn’t the same as the P audience. But if a book were enough of a surprise hit in E, a big press run might happen while the public was still excited about the title or at least closer to this optimal time.

One more argument for annotations standards

Granted, I recognize everything is connected—the time spent on buzz-building can be used for additional editing. But the beauty of e-books is that publishers can refine them with much less fuss than with P. Imagine the chance for readers to give feedback and perhaps influence the final results between hard covers. Depends. It’s a title-by-time situations. I’m hardly suggesting that reader polls determine the contents of literary novels that come from the authors’ hearts.

Interactive e-books, however, with forums and blogs happening within them, could help speed up the feedback and improve the quality of appropriate books. This is one more reason for the IDPF to care about details such as annotations standards for .epub.

Keeping B&N and the rest happy

Yet another issue is the reliance of most publishers on the goodwill of the major chains. A problem? Of course. My response would be, “Fix it with money.” Just make new business arrangements with Barnes & Noble and the rest; give them a cut from the E sales, if need be, for example. Remind them, too, of the financial advantages, at the retailer end, of having a better, earlier handle on the reception that the paper edition will receive. For years to come, paper books will still be the real center of the action. So if I were B&N, I wouldn’t sweat the existence of a preview in E. Let the entire book industry work together to use the predictive capabilities of the new technology to help deal with the question of returns.

If nothing else, consider the present and future opportunities for print on demand at retailers of all sizes. POD wouldn’t offer the same interactivity wrinkles that E can, in terms of reader feedback; but it would be one more way to get the books out faster and gauge the potential market for traditional printings.

If the usual suspects don’t act…

While change is always scary, I’d remind the big p-publishers with huge stakes in the existing system that technology won’t stand still. Hungry e-oriented houses—with improved offerings and new platforms to try, such as the Kindle—are eager to step in with Internet-optimized PR and instant distribution.

Photo: CC-licensed and shot by Xdjio.

Related: Novelist using Kindle Store to test his wares for P edition.

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