Arguments, arguments, arguments!

Well, that post of Rusch's that I linked to earlier has led to an enormous spate on on-line debates about the merits and shortcomings of Amazon's KDP Select exclusivity program. (Am I overly cheery? It's just that my immediate gut reaction to that post was "happy dance!" and other people's reaction was...NOT happy dance. Maybe it's just evidence that you'll be happier if you don't take everything personally.)

Passive Guy noted the discussion on his link to the post, so he made a special post for it. Worth a read if you want proof positive that EVERY BOOK IS DIFFERENT. Yeah, sorry about that--this is why stuff like this can be argued forever and ever. Some people make big sales on other retail sites, so exclusivity with Amazon would be a fiasco, while others do marvelously well with KDP Select. And just to complicate matters, still others have some books of theirs that do really well on other retailers and other books of theirs that do really well on KDP Select, or they had no sales on other retailers for a long time, but now all of a sudden, they're seeing sales. It's insane.

It's also something to keep very much in mind whenever someone offers up an easy-peasy one-size-fits-all process for marketing your book.

Anyway, the Rusch post did generate a lot of thought-provoking comments, as well as some of the other kind. (I'll just say that one of my least-favorite Internet fight tactics is to bluntly insult someone, and then to insist later that you never insulted anyone and that anyone who interprets your blunt insult as an insult is crazy and stupid, but somehow calling such people crazy and stupid isn't an insult, either. All of the troll tactics are low, but trying to gaslight people is really low.)

One comment that's a bit off the topic but still worth talking about was this one by someone worried about their financial situation. Rusch and some others have some really good, realistic advice--I mean, it does all kind of boil down to "get a job," but they are not the least bit douchey about it. I liked Camille LaGuire's metaphor about writing not being a financial life raft--that's what I mean when I talk about protecting your core income and diversifying your sources of income. Writing is great, freelancing is great, running your own small business is great, but secure and predictable? Oh, no, it is not that.

A whole bunch of good links

Definitely a good day at the Passive Voice, and Edward Robertson has a good one, too...

This post (via PV) outlines what a bad deal Author Solutions' services are--the person is trying to be polite about it, but it's pretty damning.

This post (via PV) notes that Nook sales are flatlining, which is not good news for Barnes & Noble.  

This (also via PV) is a really interesting comparison of e-books and the introduction of paperbacks during the Great Depression. What's fascinating to me is the fact that, just like e-books, paperbacks weren't just a new kind of book--they revolutionized the entire industry.

If paperbacks were going to succeed in America, they would need a new model. [Robert] De Graff [founder of Pocket Books], for his part, was well acquainted with the economics of books. He knew that printing costs were high because volumes were low—an average hardcover print run of 10,000 might cost 40 cents per copy. With only 500 bookstores in the U.S., most located in major cities, low demand was baked into the equation.

Fascinating, no? Since the 1990s, we've been moving back to that pre-1940s model of bookselling, with book sales moving back into bookstores and books getting more and more expensive. At Westercon, Greg Bear said that, in his opinion, there had been a Golden Age of publishing that dated from about the 1950s to the 1980s, when the industry really did work and could sell a lot of books. In my opinion, it's not a coincidence that this Golden Age happened at a time when books were inexpensive and widely available in all sorts of places.

This is a pretty neat article (via, of course, PV) about why science fiction can be very cool.

Edward Robertson has a post for new writers. What I really like about it is his realism about initial sales, which will likely be extremely low if you are unknown (so, you know, plan accordingly), and his appreciation of the value of giveaways as a means of gathering feedback about your book's presentation.

Way to screw up, guys

M. Louisa Locke has a devastating post on how freaking impossible it is to get visibility on Barnes & Noble or Kobo. Anyone running or launching an e-book retail site needs to take that post and have it printed everywhere, including their own skin.

It's been said many times, but the devil is in the details: You can't just compete with Amazon by having a "me-too" site up; if you want your retail site to rack up Amazon-style numbers of indie book sales, you need to compete on author service. No one seems to be doing that.

More on B&N's retail setup; making semi-decent advice suck

Edward Robertson is looking at Barnes & Noble now and deciding that it's going to be really hard to build an audience there because it's set up so that people who aren't already looking for your book are unlikely to come across it. Yup. Not that I've had huge sales anywhere, but I've had some sales everywhere except B&N.

And Passive Voice linked to an interview with Sue Grafton, in which she takes a kernel of semi-decent advice (don't publish before something is ready, which--hm, I could debate that one, actually, since as much as I love polish I think that as a practical matter you're better off erring on the side of getting it out there) and buries it in a truckload of horseshit about how self-publishing is lazy and stupid, and how you're better off spending six years being told that your stuff is great but they can't publish it anyway, because that is the sort of useful, high-quality, craft-honing feedback you can only get from traditional publishing.

If you're wondering why writing professionals need to stay on top of their industry, this is why--so you can give advice to young writers that won't harm them. Grafton's advice reminds me of when I was graduating from college and wondering how to start a career, and my mother suggested that I should move back home (to a place with truly epic rates of unemployment) and do charity work (until I got married, of course, at which point all of my problems would be magically solved forever). She gave me this advice in 1992, not 1962, if you're wondering. Anyway, it wasn't just quaint and old-fashioned--it was truly terrible career advice, and had I followed it, I simply would have never had a professional career. Grafton's advice is equally out of date and equally pernicious.

"There’s a chance for authors to charge more"

I'm still dealing with moving to a new computer, but this (via Edward Robertson) is another Forbes interview with Mark Coker that specifically focuses on indie book pricing. (The first two interviews are here and here.)

Of course, it's important to remember that Coker has access only to Smashwords' data, which is not necessarily applicable to anyone else. But Amazon appears to be pushing authors to raise prices.

And I think that's a good thing. I don't think self-published authors should raise e-book prices to $14 a copy or anything, but I think some writers get very hung up on differences in prices that really don't mean much to readers. Trang sells more now than it did when it was 99 cents, Trust didn't sell more at $3 than it does at $5, and people will even pay for a book when I'm trying to give it to them for free.

I once read a post by Dean Wesley Smith where he pegged $5-and-under as "the impulse buy range." And I thought, Oh, there he goes again, Smith always overstates things, how could he possibly know what "the impulse buy range" is?

Of course, a few days later I was in a store and I saw something cute that I didn't really need, and I looked at the price and thought, "Hot damn! That's not even $5!" and I dashed over to the cashier and bought it. Then I realized what I had just done....

So my feeling is that once you get below a certain number--$5, $10--the actual price doesn't matter so much. You might as well charge $3 as charge $1, or $5 as $3. It's kind of all the same to readers.

And there's good reason not to price extremely low. Obviously, with Amazon you make significantly more money above $3. The problem with making 35 cents a copy (aside from the fact that you may be training yourself to devalue your work) is that you're making so little that it's extremely hard to turn a profit on marketing costs.

Another thing to think about is promotions. If your normal price is super-low, you won't be able to afford to run promotions--but that's not all. Retailers routinely inflate the "normal" price of something so that they can post an attractive markdown. (Anchoring!) If you really feel like it's unfair to charge $5 for your book, price it at $5 and constantly offer coupons or put it on sale. People will be even happier to buy it because they're getting a deal.

Plus, you may surprise yourself and sell more at the higher price--it happens. Remember, the market decides what price is "fair." You really have surprisingly little control over it (You'd really rather pay for it? I've got a free coupon right here!), so go with the flow.

Taking the bait

Thinking about yesterday's post, I decided that instead of just making a priori statements about the viability of self-publishing, I should probably try to work out why I, personally, think self-publishing is going to be a significant (if not the dominant) form of publishing in the future.

Readers like it.

If you are a reader, self-published books are two very important things: Cheap and easy! I mean, $2.99 for a book! Excellent! And you don't have to scrounge around a used-book store--you don't even have to wait for someone to ship it to you. You just push a button and it's yours.

Now, I have read things by people saying, "Oh my God--self-published books are so awful! I read one and it was so awful! I swore never to read another! Readers are going to get tired of self-published books and the entire industry is going to collapse because they are so awful!"

I have also read that Tracy Garvis Graves recently sold 360,000 copies of, yes, a self-published book.

I am on record as not much caring for Stephen King or the entire romance genre. That is my opinion. I am but one person. The opinion of one person (or of me and the several of my friends who also do not much care for either Stephen King or the entire romance genre) doesn't matter. There are millions of people who love Stephen King and the romance genre. Both are fantastically successful. Neither is in any danger of collapsing because The Great and Powerful Me doesn't like them. The audience is clearly there.

Writers like it.

No, it ain't easy being a self-published writer. You gots to work and work and work, a-slavin' away at production and marketing and a-writin' the next book.

But you see a book at the end of it, which is a major improvement over most people's experience with traditional publishing.

You have control. If something doesn't work, you can fix it. You can write what you want. You own your work, and nobody can deep-six it because they want to fire your editor.

And the 70% royalty is awfully nice, too.

Traditional publishers are afraid of it, and investors think it is the future.

I've said this before, but you should be deeply wary of any company that looks to the future and sees no place for itself. And all the investor money is going into e-reading, while chain bookstores languish and go under. That's a real problem if your publishing business is utterly dependent on the chain bookstores.

No form of media has managed to un-digitize.

The record industry fought digital music tooth and nail, and what happened? iTunes. (And Weird Al Yankovic's "Don't Download This Song," which is pretty much priceless.)

As for video, people are producing their own shows that they broadcast on YouTube or sell on their Web sites, and even big-budget television is undergoing serious change as people get used to streaming.

Who is going to stop it?

Maybe--maybe--the television companies will get really aggressive, yank all their offerings off streaming services, and sue the crap out of anyone who pirates. And then television might be able to un-digitize. Maybe.

How could that happen with books? The gazillions of producers aren't going to stop writing, and they're not going to stop self-publishing (unless something better than a 70% royalty comes along).

Call me crazy, but I don't think that's going to happen. I also don't think that readers are suddenly going to start clamoring to pay $10-$15 more for a less-convenient book format. (Yeah, I don't care if you beautifully hand-craft your beautiful books out of beauty. Cheaper is better, and believe me, there are plenty of pretty self-published books out there.)

That leaves the retailers to destroy the industry, and what is their motivation again? Are they tired of hitting six-figure jackpots whenever there's a runaway hit? Are they tired of a 20%-65% profit off each sale? Since more companies keep moving into this space, I'm thinking the answer is no. No they are not.

Selling to bookstores

This is a good post by David Gaughran on selling to indie bookstores. Just remember--you're selling, and not just your book. You're selling yourself and your professionalism and reliability as a supplier. Don't just mail them crap 'cuz you're shy--nobody wants a supplier who can't freaking interact with people if there's a problem.

Last day, sticky or not!

Or shall I say, LAST DAY!!! OMFG!!! Yeah, last day to get Trang for free on Smashwords, except that I signed it up for Smashwords Summer/Winter Sale, so starting tomorrow you can get it there free, too. And I'm going to be giving away flyers with a free Smashwords coupon on it at Westercon next weekend (different code, so hopefully I can track the two promotional efforts separately). And I had an idea when I was on vacation--I want to see if it's possible to run test giveaways on sites I'm thinking of advertising on. And eventually it will be free all the time. So, you know, don't get all in a lather about it.

But Trust is going up to $4.99 tomorrow, and I'm presumably going to hold the line on that one.

All these promos on Smashwords really make me wish it was better-designed as a retail site. It's great that you can do coupons on it, but the sales aren't "sticky"--there's nothing to bring the book to the attention of people who haven't already grabbed a freebie. That's what sounds appealing about Kobo, and that's why even with the new, less-freebie-friendly Amazon algorithm I think it's worth trying out KDP Select. (Oh, and Edward Robinson has started bringing his intense algorithmic focus to bear on the iTunes store, which is worth a read. He follows this stuff obsessively so that I don't have to, right?)

You know, what I really need to do is to stop thinking about this stuff and start up on Trials again. (And how many times am I going to write that Trails? Will the cover title say Trails?)

Collectives, cooperatives, and groups

I've been pondering writing collectives/co-ops/groups for a while now--not critique groups, but organizations of writers who work together to promote their work.

I'm interested because I've seen how effective group promotions can be. Offering a Smashwords coupon by myself isn't nearly as effective as taking part in their annual e-book sale. That seems to be a major draw for something like the Indie Book Collective--I think that when I put Trang into KDP Select I will also look into taking part in something like that.

The other thing is that groups can do certain things that individuals aren't really allowed to do. For example, I took part in a Meetup group focused on e-book production and promotion. One of the people there went to a sci-fi con, hoping to pass out promotional material for her books, and felt very overwhelmed. Well, back in my Browncoat days, we'd get tables at sci-fi cons to spread the word about Serenity--if your organization isn't selling anything and you put in your request early enough, you can usually get the table for free. Hanging out at a table full of promotional material is presumably less intimidating for the writers, while said table full o' goodies is presumably more interesting to the readers.

So, using the Meetup group's name, I put in a request for a table at Foolscap, and they gave it to us. Immediately, the group stopped meeting (oops), but I'm hoping that people with books out are still interested in doing it. (In fact, if you write speculative fiction, live in the Puget Sound area, and want to participate, fill out that "Contact Me" form over to the left there. I'm encouraging people to do actual promotions--coupons, links to free fiction, whatevs--rather than just boring ads that say, "Read Me! I'm Awesome!")

We'll see how it goes, but you know, if doing a table works for the readers and works for the writers, it seems silly to not do it. There needs to be an organization, though--the cons would be a lot less willing to offer a free table to an individual writer.

Another thing that might be easier for a group to do is to sell to independent bookstores. Obviously this would not be easy, just easier--you'd have to do the Web site and flyers (which would be an up-front cost). But if it's a question of getting enough paper titles together to have a catalog, that's going to be a lot easier for a group of writers to do than an individual.

People talk about this sort of thing here--it does sound like a lot of these groups are very author-centric, with people just Tweeting about how awesome other group members are, which I don't think would be helpful. (And some of it is really just regular writing-buddy type stuff.)

In some cases they pitch in to buy ads together, which could be helpful. I suppose you and a writing pal in the same genre could decide to split the cost of an ad in Romantic Times or Locus or whatever. On the other hand, if it were an on-line ad, where would the link take you? There would need to be a Web site with links to both writers' e-books--so you're back to an organization....

Space...opera?

Today I was watching my niece, but I took advantage to her tragic addiction to Wild Kratts to do some noodling with Amazon categories. Having realized the hard way that the Trang series is not, in fact, adventure sci-fi, I've been classifying it as general sci-fi. But now that I actually have two books out and it is actually a series, I e-mailed Amazon asking that it be placed as well into the Kindle category "Science Fiction: Series," which still has less than 200 books.

Oddly enough, there is no "Science Fiction: Series" category for paper books. (Why not, I do not know.) That was kind of a bummer because there are freaking 86,419 paper books classified as general science fiction. But in the paper books categories there is a subcategory "Science Fiction: Space Opera," which has over 5,000 books--still a lot, but better than 86K, am I right? (No? That's still too many books for it to matter? Have you tried shutting up?)

And I was like, "Space opera? Didn't some of the people who reviewed Trang call it a space opera?"

The thing is (and according to Wikipedia, this dates me) I never considered calling something a space opera any kind of compliment. Space opera = soap opera in space = histrionics and bad dialogue.

But apparently kids these days (like Brian Aldiss, who should get off my lawn) use space opera to mean "the good old stuff." (Hey, aren't I marketing these books as 1960s retro sci-fi? I believe I am!) And if you're going to define it as "colorful, dramatic, large-scale science fiction adventure, competently and sometimes beautifully written, usually focused on a sympathetic, heroic central character and plot action, and usually set . . . in space or on other worlds, characteristically optimistic in tone" I'll definitely take it!

("Military space opera," though...hm. One of my beta readers thought Trust would appeal to military readers, but my concern is that most of the problems in the series are solved via diplomacy--i.e. talking, not shooting--which is likely to annoy most fans of military SF.)

Most important, if you look again at first page or two of the books categorized as space opera on Amazon: Ender's Game, The Hitchhiker's Guide, The Martian Chronicles, Hyperion, a Vorkosigan saga book--need I mention that these are all books I love?

OK. It's on the to-do list--when I input the latest corrections, I shall re-classify both Trang and Trust as...space opera! I fully expect Opera Man to swoosh through wearing deely boppers when I do.

The power of a book in hand

I linked to this in my previous post, but it's a Wall Street Journal article, which means it probably won't be available to read for long. So I wanted to go into a little more detail on it.

Here's the gist:

Author Michael Ennis submitted a draft of his novel, "The Malice of Fortune," to New York publishing houses but was rejected. He revised, edited and submitted once more but was rejected again.

Then he got a tip from his agent: Try booksellers first.

Mr. Ennis and agent Daniel Lazar of Writers House self-published bound galleys of the novel using Lulu.com and a local print shop, and sent 48 copies to influential booksellers such as Mitchell Kaplan of Books & Books in Miami and Sarah Harvey of Tattered Cover in Denver.

Out of those, 23 booksellers responded enthusiastically, writing strong praise for the book. Using such quotes, Messrs. Ennis and Lazar submitted the manuscript a third time to publishers. Within days, Knopf Doubleday snapped up U.S. rights to the book for a six-figure sum. Doubleday, an imprint of Bertelsmann AG's Random House unit, will release "The Malice of Fortune" on Sept. 11, with a first-print run of 75,000 copies.

This might at first seem different from someone self-publishing, building a up a sales record, and then getting a contract, but really it's not. It's someone using their self-published book to indicate to publishers that it does indeed appeal to a particular audience: Bookstore owners. Doubleday is willing to gamble that a book that appeals to that niche will have big sales.

Once again, actually having a book available is key. There's value in that.

How I would think of traditional publishing

This post about (yet) a(nother) bestselling author who is making more money self-publishing went up on Passive Voice last week. The thing that really piqued my interest was a comment by Edmond saying:

You have to wonder whether the career path of a writer will become.
Self publish => Get attention => sign publishing contract => build following => return to self publishing taking readership with you.

That was interesting to me in light of Amanda Hocking's experience--she's definitely building a new audience, as she had hoped, while at the same time keeping a substantial number of self-published titles available. Instead of following Edmond's cycle, however, she's multitasking--since she has so many titles out, she never had to cycle out of self-publishing. She can advance on all fronts.

It doesn't change my very, very strong opinion that if you are a new writer and you want to get published, you should self-publish. (Like, OMG, you should self-publish. Don't be a fool.) Traditional publishing seems to work best for people who basically don't depend on it--they've got self-published titles to fall back on if things go to hell, and they've got self-published titles poised to gain sales if things go really well. (This necessarily means that they don't sign traditional publishing contracts that restrict their ability to write and publish other books.)

I think the best way to think of traditional publishing is as something akin to a Next Step, like doing an audiobook or creating a store on your Web site. You don't start out by seeking a traditional publishing contract; you start out by self-publishing an e-book. Traditional publishers could help you reach people who you might not be able to reach on your own, like those who insist on buying hardcover books at the airport instead of downloading a Kindle app onto their phone, just like an audiobook could help you to reach a previously-inaccessible niche.

But it's an expansion of your distribution model; it's not your only distribution model. It's not even your first or fundamental distribution model. It's something you bolt on, not something you use as your foundation. And for God's sake, don't put all your eggs into it--the future does not look bright for those people.

Random businessy stuff

The Passive Voice has been having some really good posts lately on the businessy end of publishing.

Today he let the comments run the show by asking people there's any predictable correlation between a book's ranking on Amazon and the number of books actually sold/money the author earns, and he asks about sales patterns. The answer about rankings seems to be a general "not really" (your ranking depends on your genre, and at the lower rankings you can jump way up by selling one book); as for sales pattern, not shockingly, the more books you have out.... Also people link to other sites where people have tried tracking data. I try not to worry about this stuff, because 1. I don't have to, and 2. nonetheless I can easily get really focused on that rather than, you know, focusing on writing books, an activity I actually enjoy. But if you're interested, there it is.

Another thing that has led to several posts is a lot of news about companies expanding in e-book retailing and self-publishing. Kobo is going to allow self-publishing and is trying to be author-friendly. A new social e-book app has been announced. Wattpad (where you give away stories for free) got a bunch of money. And Forbes did a profile on Mark Coker of Smashwords, which includes exciting (at least to me) tidbits like Smashwords recently expanded from three employees to fourteen, and that it expects $12 million in revenue in 2012. (And $1 million in something called "pretax profit." OK, guys, that's bullshit--I know private companies can say whatever, but why even report that number? Unless Coker plans on counting his money while sitting in jail for tax evasion, it's not a profit until after he pays his taxes.)

And Coker financed the company by borrowing $200,000 from his mother. Gotta love those entrepreneurs!

Oh, honestly, Goodreads

So, you know how I was going to do a giveaway on Goodreads as soon as I got that cover problem sorted out?

Well, they're not going to sort it out. They can't possibly do that. I am, however, welcome to do a giveaway on Goodreads using the cover that got me my one and only one-star review. And to promote a giveaway that is sure to get me many more one-star reviews by people who feel mislead about the book's contents, I am very welcome to buy an ad campaign on Goodreads!

Ahem. Customer Service 101: DO NOT ask someone to give you their money in the EXACT SAME E-MAIL in which you tell them you don't intend to help them out. You have to give to get, got it?

Honestly. I see a Web site that has two major potential sources of revenue. #1 Advertising campaigns, which are bought by publishers and self-published authors, and #2 e-books sold on the site. If they can't update my cover (and not for nothing, but some people spend hundreds of dollars on custom art--and Goodreads is saying, No, you can't use that for promotions? You have to use the crappy placeholder art that didn't work, so you changed it?), what are the chances that they are going to effectively address my concerns if I purchase advertising from them or list a book for sale on their site and there's a problem?

So, yeah, long story short--not doing a giveaway on Goodreads. Sorry about that.

Guys, you might want to market that a little better

So, as I was noodling around with my (now delayed) Goodreads giveaway, I realized that...they sell e-books.

Like, they've been selling e-books for a year now--really explains the problems with Amazon, no?

I Googled it, because I was wondering if this was new. No. It's not. It's been around since before I joined Goodreads. I've been listing and rating the books I read there, and I had no idea they sold anything.

Most of the articles Googled turned up were people saying, "Did you know that Goodreads sells e-books? I had no idea!"

Hey, indie bookstores have options!

And since he's always a helpful fellow, Passive Guy also has a link to this neat article about indie bookstores actually (gasp!) working with self-published authors, instead of boycotting their books!

And by golly, it turns out that carrying books by local authors regardless of publisher helps distinguish the store from places like Amazon! The writers' friends and families love you, and you can get a lot of free publicity and even win awards.

Even better, according to Heather Lyon, who owns Lyon Books in Chico, California, "For self-published books, there isn’t the pressure to compete on price, so Amazon isn’t much of an issue."

Lyon goes on to say:

I’m on a soapbox about this, because I know a lot of bookstore owners and managers don’t like to work with self-published authors. I think they’re missing out on the big picture ... and profits. Once you embrace it, it’s really not difficult.

Where do the profits come in? Most of the time these books are sold on consignment, so there's no cost to the bookstore other than staff time. In addition, some of these bookstores are basically selling promotional services to authors--you pay to have an event at the store, or you pay to be included in a large newspaper ad.

There's just so many better ways of dealing with the changes in publishing than trying to slavishly copy Amazon or being some boycotting reactionary.

CreateSpace in Europe!

Passive Guy is being his usual helpful self today: He discovered that CreateSpace is now offering POD books for sale in Europe. This is a free service, not the Expanded Distribution you have to pay $25 for. You check a box and your paperbacks become available on Amazon's UK, German, French, Italian, and Spanish Web sites. Nice!

I did it for both editions of Trang--you can either set the price in pounds and euros or have CreateSpace calculate it from your price in dollars. You do have to price slightly higher in the European market, so with Trang I raised the price in dollars, calculated the pound/euro price from that, and while I was at it I put it back on Expanded Distribution--why not, dropping the price hasn't done anything for it. The large-print edition is already pretty expensive, though, and I would have had to price it above $20 to break even on a pound/euro basis. So with that one I just set the prices independent of each other.

Where's that line?

Naturally the Passive Voice blog has been keeping up on the DOJ's antitrust lawsuit (PG is a lawyer). There's been some new stuff coming out, and it's been interesting to me to see all that is being revealed about Barnes & Noble and its very tight relationship with the larger publishers.

Obviously, they've gotten into trouble for that before. They haven't been named as a defendant this time, but...very tight relationship.

For example, according to the new state lawsuit--PV has the whole document here; there's a summary here--during the whole Macmillan/Amazon kerfuffle, the CEO of B&N told Macmillan he would "go to the mat" for them and moved Macmillan books up in the search result on B&N.com. (Because, you know, people typically buy based on publisher.)

And then when Random House wouldn't join in the little price-fixing conspiracy, B&N played enforcer! Yeah, the complaint states that the Penguin CEO went to B&N and asked them to stop featuring Random House books in their advertisements, and B&N eventually complied, thereby forcing Random House to get with the program!

While you could claim that B&N had to go along to keep publishers happy, apparently it's a two-way street. According to the judge's denial of the defendants' request that the class-action lawsuit be dismissed:

Prior to December 2009, the Publisher Defendants’ standard practice was to release eBook and hardcover versions of titles at the same time.  After a key meeting with an important industry executive, however, this practice changed abruptly.  In late November 2009, representatives from a number of publishing companies met with the Chairman of Barnes & Noble, a major chain of brick-and-mortar retail bookstores.  During the meeting, the Chairman of Barnes & Noble complained about the potential for Amazon’s low prices to hurt hardcover sales.   This meeting spurred a sudden and dramatic change in the business practices of most of the Publisher Defendants. 

Wow.

This is the thing for me: Given how laughably public these guys were with their price-fixing, an activity that is pretty much guaranteed to get you in trouble, I have suspected that there's been a hell of a lot of...shall we say...cooperation going on in the publishing business. You don't cross a line in public unless you've been flirting with it for a long, long time. You see this when shock-jocks like Don Imus finally step in it and genuinely, truly, really, sincerely, deep-down-in-their-hearts do not understand why people are so upset. So Imus insulted African Americans! He does that all the time! He does that and people love it! What's so different about this time? It's baffling!

And again, there's this notion that everybody who deals with books is in the same business. Not the same industry--the same business. Agents are authors and authors are publishing houses and publishing houses are, apparently, retailers. B&N complains about a rival retailer, and publishers jump to fix it! They don't say, Hey, you are in trouble--how can I benefit from that?

I'm guessing that Microsoft is going to bring a very different perspective.

And I'm guessing that there is a lesson here for indie writers. You are not anybody else in this business. Your interests may coincide with, say, Amazon, but they are not identical. Don't make someone else's problems your problems. In fact, if you're really smart, you'll figure out how to make their problems your opportunities.

So, about Books-a-Million

Books-a-Million is probably going to go private. That, if you don't know, is Not A Good Sign. It doesn't necessarily mean impending bankruptcy, but it means that the company isn't of enough interest to the investing public to make it worthwhile to have it listed on a stock market.

I do think that independent bookstores can find a specialized niche (in fact, if they haven't already, they probably went under a long time ago). But the chains...not so much. Their pitch was always low prices and large selection, and Amazon just cleans their clock on that.

And does it matter? Well, watch this video about the Romantic Times conference to the very end. (I know, I'm making you look at scantily-clad male models. That is because I am a sadist!) They talk about one publisher that was making 30% of their sales from Borders when it went under. Everyone despaired, but they wound up making that money back in e-sales in one day.

Barnes & Noble: Back in the game!

If you've been busy having a life or something: Microsoft has agreed to invest $300 million into Barnes & Noble's Nook unit in exchange for a 17.6 percent share. Getting a company with deep pockets as an investor will definitely help B&N with the whole running-out-of-cash problem.

And it's a deal with a lot of interesting strategy implications. It will give Microsoft a boost in its efforts to catch up in tablets. A recent investment in B&N by Jana Partners, which also has a stake in McGraw-Hill, could result in a big push into the college e-textbook market (via PV). Microsoft may focus more on generating a content platform that is device-agnostic.

You notice what's not getting talked about here? Traditional bookstores and traditional publishers. Of course the New York Times article features the CEO of B&N reassuring his good buddies in publishing that his company still really, really committed to brick-and-mortar bookstores (the closing of Borders now represents a big opportunity--funny that it didn't before) and that "Publishers are going to like this deal a lot" (because they'll have a lot of choice in the matter--HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA).

(Oh, and Mr. Prosecutor? "'These publishers are completely aligned with Barnes & Noble,' Mr. Lynch said." Clip 'n' save, clip 'n' save.....)

Anyway, my point is that he who pays the piper, calls the tunes, and the company paying the piper over at B&N is now Microsoft. It's not the publishing industry or "literary culture" or what have you--it's a tech company, one of the many tech companies that have looked at e-books and said, Oh! Digital media! I know how to do that!

It's possible that a lot of publishing people are looking at this news and saying, Whew! B&N is saved! Everything will go back to the way it was! But that's not the least bit true--B&N is going to change a lot. Even if the name is the same, the company and its business strategies are going to change a great deal. Will it matter if traditional publishers get upset? No it will not. To Microsoft, traditional publishers are just suppliers of digital media, like movie companies and even app developers are--they don't have this long, exclusive history. And Microsoft has been through the antitrust grinder before, so I doubt they'll be falling all over themselves to make a bunch of special deals to help one particular segment of their supplier population.