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By Paul Biba

DSCF1079Margaret Atwood

Don’t usually speak to tech conferences. Not a tech person, am an author and so have a different perspective. Publishing pie is the entire business that surrounds books and are all part of that. Is the industry dying? if it dies will authors die too? who is going to pay authors if everything on the internet is free? Only 10% of authors make their living writing full time. To do it have to work hard a lot. First message is don’t panic if you are an author. Publishing is really “making something public” . It is just the mode of transmission of stock from one brain to another brain. Doesn’t necessarily have to be a book. Yelling is a publishing tool, as is singing, clay tablets, scrolls, codex books, films and tv, graffiti, texting, letters, rude notes and the internet. Publishing tools are changing. Change is not always good. Not always good for everyone. Every tool, including technology, has three sides. The up side, the down side and the stupid side – the side you didn’t anticipate or intend. Stupid side of paper books include: make good insulation or kindling, get wet, heavy. The stupid side of technology is that one big solar flare and it’s gone. If the tech changes can’t read it any more. Floppy disk experience. One good thing about paper is that when lights go out can still read the paper book with a candle. Authors make less on the sale price of ebooks than do on paper books. As ebooks increase that means that author’s slice of the pie is shrinking. Helpful industry hint: never eliminate your primary source. A dead moose maintains the food chain for at least thirty other life forms. A dead can be very lucrative and so maintain many other life forms as well. However, no author, no book. Think about it. How do authors buy the time to write: patrons, day jobs, inheriting money, marrying someone rich, through copyrights – sold for a flat fee or licensing for a royalty. Suggested to her that maybe authors should go the way of rock bands – authors aren’t very photogenic. Many authors began by self publishing – my own comic book when I was 6. I printed my own book when I was young. I then designed by own covers, got photos taken by pals and sewed our own felt hats. In early days did children’s books with hand lettered text. When mass printing struck the world were only two pie pieces, by the 19 and 20 centuries became 5 pie pieces and more. Authors under more pressure to do their own publicity – tour, sign, tweet, facebook, and more. The great modernists would never have done this. Is the old model still viable for authors? If they are expected to do all this work shouldn’t they get more of the pie. Maybe they will get into self publishing. The new model is looking like its backwards from the old. If just want to write am I doomed? With infinite choice for readers and the internet filled to bursting how to draw attention to a book? Will booksellers and etailers become publishers? Still, in an age of remote and virtual there is still is a craving for real and romantic. The images that are part of the presentation are worth nothing online, but what about the original drawings and what if they are signed? United Artists were founded to by well known artists to form their own production company and this has been proposed by authors who feel that publishers are being intransigent around ebook share of royalties. Authors are restless about this. What a good editor can do for an author: encouragement, give an imprimatur if from a publisher with a reputable name, give guidance and catch mistakes (readers will catch every mistake, it’s amazing), market the book (but not doing this as much as used to do). People forget that the quality of literary output has always been questionable – pulp magazines, penny dreadfuls, etc. – so is not a real issue with self-publishing. The main issue is getting a self-published book noticed. It’s delusional to think you can self-publish a book and get it noticed. Authors must tell the publisher NO if don’t feel comfortable marketing their book. Publishers should be doing the publicity but either don’t have the resources or don’t know how. Have two ebook readers and read ebooks on planes and hotel rooms. Am about in the middle of the bell curve on ebook reading. Want to have both choices. E devices are increasing are reading but not increasing what authors are making per sale.

 
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