No writer should ever have to complain that there’s nowhere to go to get published. There are a million places, and Barnes & Noble just made it a million and one with announcement of a platform called PubIt!™ “PubIt! Enables Independent Publishers and Self-Published Authors Access to Sell eBooks and Content to Millions of Readers on Barnes & Noble’s Online and Digital Platforms,” says the announcement.

Here’s the press release…

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New York, New York – May 19, 2010 – Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the world’s largest bookseller, is extending its deep and longstanding tradition of supporting authors and publishers with PubIt! by Barnes & Noble, an easy and lucrative way for independent publishers and self-publishing writers to distribute their works digitally through Barnes & Noble.com and the Barnes & Noble eBookstore. The easy-to-use publishing and distribution platform offers qualified independent publishers and authors of self-published works expanded distribution, visibility and protection that only Barnes & Noble can offer.

The announcement marks Barnes & Noble’s latest move to continue to build one of the world’s largest digital catalogs, spanning eBooks, journals, periodicals and other types of reading material. PubIt! titles will be distributed through BN.COM and Barnes & Noble’s eBookstore, which currently offers more than one million digital titles to millions of dedicated customers in-store and online.

Independent publishers and writers will appreciate PubIt!’s simple and competitive royalty model and compensation process, the details of which will be available in the coming weeks. Content owners’ intellectual property will be well-protected with Barnes & Noble’s best-in-class digital rights management technology and offered in the industry standard ePub format that allows publishers’ works to be enjoyed by millions of Barnes & Noble customers on hundreds of the most popular computing, mobile and eBook reading devices.

“As a company that has achieved much of its success by building mutually beneficial relationships with publishers and authors, Barnes & Noble’s new PubIt! service represents an exciting evolution and significant opportunity in the digital content arena,” said Theresa Horner, director, digital products, Barnes & Noble. “Barnes & Noble is uniquely positioned to support writers and publishers and bring their exciting digital works to the broadest audience of readers anywhere.”

Whether online or on-the-go, Barnes & Noble customers will have access to PubIt! titles with the opportunity to browse, sample, buy and download the digital content in seconds to their devices with free BN reader software. Using Barnes & Noble’s breakthrough Read In Store™ technology, NOOK™ customers can also browse the complete contents of PubIt! titles while in Barnes & Noble stores.

PubIt! is a convenient one-stop-shop, allowing publishers to get their content in front of consumers for purchase and reading on the most widely adopted mobile devices and software platforms. By following simple steps to upload their content in an industry standard format for electronic titles, content creators can reach consumers on hundreds of devices including: NOOK by Barnes & Noble, PC, Mac, iPad™, iPhone, BlackBerry and others. For more information on free BN eReader software and apps, please visit www.bn.com/ebooks/download-reader.asp.

More information on PubIt!, which will be available this summer, and the benefits of joining Barnes & Noble’s expansive and trusted digital content catalog can be found at www.bn.com/pubit.

With a mixture of genuine admiration and mean-spirited schadenfreude we’ve been following Cory Doctorow’s monthly journal tracking the progress of his self-published book With a Little Help. Doctorow set out to show publishers he could do what they do as well as they do it but at a fraction of the cost.  We’ve cheered his adept management of challenges that have daunted many a publishing behemoth. And we’ve clucked “I told you so” when he stumbled, smugly rejoicing to see an upstart put in his place.

His latest report mixes failure and triumph, but his unflinching candor in describing both is truly touching and he’s quite winning the cynics over, making it hard to wish him ill. Even the crustiest curmudgeon among us is trudging to the finish line to cheer him on.

First, the bad news. “When I launched this column,” he writes, “the plan was to have copies of With a Little Help into final production by October 2009, and to have it for sale by Christmas. Instead, I find myself in the final throes of production in early May, with a likely pub date of June or July 2010. How’d that happen?”

Here’s how. Doctorow discovered that publishing a book is a complex process that heavily relies on other people. This is a bedrock fact that any tyro who has worked even one day at a publisher understands. The problem is, Cory Doctorow has not worked one day at a publisher, though he has certainly been involved with enough social enterprises that he should not be surprised at how difficult it is to organize tasks efficiently. We hold with the proverb that he travels fastest who travels alone.  Conversely, he travels slowest who travels with companions.  And to publish a book is to travel with companions. Even one companion creates complexities, unpredictability and delays.

“It turns out,” he declares, “that a few tasks were dependent on earlier stages. And Murphy’s Law being what it is, this meant delays. Specifically, as I wrote in March, typesetting delays meant that I couldn’t get into final cover designs and proofing, nor could I get into prototyping for the limited edition hardcovers. The sound editing couldn’t be done until the sound recording was done, and some of my readers had other priorities that took precedence (such as paying work!). In hindsight, I should have taken notice that the two tasks with the largest number of dependencies were also the tasks that required the most work from my collaborators.”

But there’s plenty of good news, too.  For one thing, he’s almost finished the book. It’s a matter of a few months, and we’ll look forward to seeing it in midsummer.

Even better, he’s brought his book in on a budget that would scarcely fill the petty cash box at Simon & Schuster:

• Cover art: $1,000.
• Postage: $200 (for SASEs for people who donated paper ephemera).
• Scanning: $627.30 (paid an assistant to scan the ephemera).
• Recording studio: $250 (one of my readers needed help with studio rental).
• Fonts: $120 (per my typesetter’s recommendation).
• Galleys: $58.90 (four galleys, one for each cover, plus shipping, from Lulu).

Total expense: $2,256.20

But he’s not out of the woods. For in Doctorow’s case even a publishing company of one (himself) can be a problem if the publisher is also an author. “Now there is another snag,” he reports. “I’m on the road for my next book tour, going out with my YA novel For the Win, for Tor. I’ll be hitting Chicago; Austin, Tex.; Boston; Portland, Ore.; Seattle; San Francisco; New York; and Toronto. I’ll be on the road from May 10 to June 6—which means I won’t be able to really get into hardcover prototyping until I return to London, mid-June. The handmade hardcovers are the kind of thing that I have to be in town to oversee. Unlike a real publisher, I don’t have someone who keeps the project moving while I’m preoccupied or on the road.”

Why Doctorow characterizes himself as not “a real publisher” is hard to say. He is every bit a real publisher.  He just happens to have discovered along the way that he can’t do it all himself.

Read the latest installment of our Cory Watch, Closing In.

Richard Curtis

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by Publishers Weekly.

Donna Hayes, Publisher and Chief Executive Officer, Harlequin Enterprises Ltd., has responded to Mystery Writers of America’s removal of Harlequin from MWA’s list of Approved Publishers.

“Harlequin takes its relationship with the Mystery Writers of America very seriously,” Hayes says. “In response to your letters, I would like to share our perspective on the changing book publishing industry and Harlequin’s recent moves to keep pace with and lead innovation in our market. It is our hope that sharing our point of view will demonstrate our respect for the MWA and explain our motivation behind the launch of Dellarte Press.”

Hayes then goes on to explain why publishers cannot and should not ignore the “mega trend” of self-publishing on today’s book landscape.

“Mega trends” affecting the industry include, but are not limited to, the questions raised by Google surrounding ownership of copyright, the rise of eBooks as a viable commercial format, and the swell of user-generated content throughout the Internet. Amazon’s growing influence in nearly all aspects of book publishing – from a book’s conception to its ultimate delivery in a reader’s mailbox – can be interpreted as a source of increasing pressure on traditional publishing models.

In the wake of these changes, self-publishing has emerged as a new force in the publishing industry, providing a forum for thousands of authors who would not secure a contract with traditional publishers. According to Bowker reports, 285,000 new titles and editions were self-published in the US last year, a number that exceeds the 275,000 titles published by traditional houses. Harlequin sees the rapid growth in self-published titles, up 132% since 2007, as validation that writers perceive self-publishing as a viable path to literary fulfillment. In recent weeks, Harlequin has heard from countless writers, either directly or via blogs, that self-publishing played an important, positive role in their writing careers.

You may read Hayes’s statement in full here.

RC

Donna Hayes, Publisher and Chief Executive Officer, Harlequin Enterprises Ltd., responds to Mystery Writers of America’s removal of Harlequin from MWA’s list of Approved Publishers:
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Dear Ms. Bailey,

Thank you for your letter of November 30 and for the opportunity to address your concerns prior to your board meeting.

Harlequin takes its relationship with the Mystery Writers of America very seriously. In response to your letters, I would like to share our perspective on the changing book publishing industry and Harlequin’s recent moves to keep pace with and lead innovation in our market. It is our hope that sharing our point of view will demonstrate our respect for the MWA and explain our motivation behind the launch of Dellarte Press.

Publishing models are changing and Harlequin needs to experiment within those models

We are sure you would agree that today’s book publishing industry is undergoing significant transformation. “Mega trends” affecting the industry include, but are not limited to, the questions raised by Google surrounding ownership of copyright, the rise of eBooks as a viable commercial format, and the swell of user-generated content throughout the Internet. Amazon’s growing influence in nearly all aspects of book publishing – from a book’s conception to its ultimate delivery in a reader’s mailbox – can be interpreted as a source of increasing pressure on traditional publishing models.

In the wake of these changes, self-publishing has emerged as a new force in the publishing industry, providing a forum for thousands of authors who would not secure a contract with traditional publishers. According to Bowker reports, 285,000 new titles and editions were self-published in the US last year, a number that exceeds the 275,000 titles published by traditional houses. Harlequin sees the rapid growth in self-published titles, up 132% since 2007, as validation that writers perceive self-publishing as a viable path to literary fulfillment. In recent weeks, Harlequin has heard from countless writers, either directly or via blogs, that self-publishing played an important, positive role in their writing careers. For example, Naleighna Kai, author of best-selling Every Woman Needs a Wife, posted the following in her November 28 blog entry:

“Self-publishing venues have made it easy for authors to get a book into print and into the hands of avid readers. There are a great deal of authors who started on that path and eventually swept into a lane which put them on the New York Times Best-seller’s list. Case-in-point, the Romancing the Stone series written by Catherine Lanigan writing as Joan Wilder, was on the NY Times for several weeks, then eventually made into a movie. Robert T. Kiyosaki was turned down by several major houses before he published his own book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, then hit it big on the NY Times list. Louise L. Hay’s self-published book, You Can Heal Your Life, was on the NY Times list for thirteen consecutive weeks. She went on to publish other powerhouses such as Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra, Suze Orman, Doreen Virtue, Sandra Brown, Tavis Smiley and many others. And it goes to show that what’s in, what’s popular, what’s perfect to publish with major houses is subjective.”

“Self-publish, learn the industry, set some goals, build a name, then spread your wings. The people mentioned in this article inspired me to follow in their footsteps…I’m happy that I self-published first as it allowed me the opportunity to learn and grow.”

Harlequin views its participation in Dellarte Press as an opportunity to participate in this space, supporting aspiring authors as they test the publishing waters. We feel compelled to respond to new publishing models and ensure that writers continue to see Harlequin as a leading publisher in the formats most relevant to them and their evolving readers.

Other publishers and writers associations are experimenting with self-publishing

Our competitors’ recent moves into self-publishing (e.g., Harper Collins via Authonomy and Random House’s past investment in Xlibris), encouraged us to look beyond our traditional publishing footprint. Given that Harlequin is a very small player relative to others in the Top 6 publisher ranks, doing otherwise would be foolish on our part. Fortunately, a number of writers’ associations have been supportive of these experiments. We are not alone in our acceptance of self-publishing, as evidenced by the following statement from the American Christian Fiction Writers we received on November 22, 2009 with respect to our Steeple Hill imprint.

“So many of the large publishing houses are extending self-publishing imprints that the boards of the ACFW have been forward-thinkers regarding our ever-changing industry. Because of this, I’m happy to say that I’ve been assured that ACFW has rewritten their Book of the Year contest guidelines so that authors of Steeple Hill books will continue to be able to enter the contest. In addition, as ACFW Conference Director, I’m pleased to tell you that we welcome the Steeple Hill editors at our conference, and hope that all of you will be able to attend.”

We are pleased that the International Thriller Writers association has also taken this view, as communicated to its members in the following recent statement:

“Although we don’t plan to make a formal statement at this time, our position is that ITW doesn’t intend to get involved in Harlequin’s business. In addition, our members who are Harlequin/MIRA authors remain honored and valued ITW members with all the privileges and rights of membership. No ITW members are going to be expelled or denied awards because of actions taken by their publisher beyond their control–that would be contrary to our charter.”

Amid the reaction from a small, but vocal, group of authors, it is easy to forget that Dellarte Press represents a small experiment relative to the size of the greater Harlequin organization. It may be worth noting that Ninc has elected to apply its membership criteria to specific publishing programs, not a publishing corporation as a whole. Specifically, Ninc informed us of the following change on November 24, 2009:

“As our Bylaws remain constant, we have amended the more detailed qualifications for membership, listed in the P&PM. These qualifications are now concerned not with the publishing corporation as a whole, but concentrated on the particular program within the corporate for which the current or prospective member writes novel length fiction.”

Harlequin believes that its standing within writers’ associations should reflect the 1,200 titles that we publish under traditional models each year and not a separate and distinct publishing arm that represents a very small portion of our activity.

We believe in informed choice for writers

We believe that writers are best served when they make informed choices. As such, Harlequin’s rejection letter templates will soon be modified to encourage the author to consider the wide range of publishing options now available to aspiring authors including submitting to another house, resubmitting to Harlequin, ePublishing, self-publishing, or working with Dellarte Press.

In her November 18, 2009 article, Maddie James of the Romance Novel Examiner took the view that self-publishing rounds out a writer’s available choices:

“Whether an author chooses traditional print publishing, a digital publishing press, or self-publishing, is totally up to the author. The author knows where they are in their career, how they want to move their career forward, and what steps to take to do so. It would be unwise to omit exploring all of the options.”

Harlequin wishes to help expand this range of options, alternatives about which writers must be well informed before making decisions. We think that your membership would benefit from improved understanding of these options, in large part because they are not going away.

Harlequin has made substantial modifications to our Manuscript Critique Service and self-publishing programs

On November 9, 2009, Lee Goldberg, chair of your Membership Committee, expressed concerns about the Manuscript Critique Service referenced within eHarlequin.com’s writing guidelines content. As of November 30, 2009, our Manuscript Critique Service is no longer available and does not appear alongside the writing guidelines featured on our website.

On the matter of our self-publishing program, we have responded to our authors’ concerns by changing the program name so that it is clearly a separate business from Harlequin’s traditional publishing programs.

Our request of the Mystery Writers of America

When your board meets to discuss Harlequin’s standing with the Mystery Writers of America, we ask that you consider the following:

(a) the inevitable change sweeping through the book publishing industry

(b) the prevalence of self-publishing, a business model already pursued by our competitors, and the growing acceptance of its role on the part of several mainstream writers associations

(c ) the fact that Harlequin publishes 1200 titles per year under our traditional publishing programs, including many writers who are members of your association, and that we do not believe they should be excluded from full status because of a small, separate business line with which we are experimenting

(d) the opportunity for writers to make informed decisions about their publishing options

(e) the modifications that we have made recently to our publishing programs.

With this context in mind, we ask that Harlequin remain on the MWA list of approved publishers. If the MWA decides it cannot recognize Harlequin as an approved publisher at this time, we strongly encourage the MWA to retain Harlequin authors’ eligibility for the 2010 awards while we continue this discussion, particularly because their books were published on a traditional platform before Dellarte Press launched. The Romance Writers of America has taken this position, a source of great relief to our writers. In addition, it may be helpful for you to know that the RWA board will discuss this matter in late January and you may wish to consider similar timing.

Thank you for the opportunity to share our view of the evolving book publishing industry and Harlequin’s place within it. We hope to have provided useful insight into the innovations driving publishing forward and growing the presence of writers in the marketplace. While self-publishing represents a small experiment within Harlequin’s much larger business, we are excited to offer talented writers a range of alternate paths to commercial success and personal fulfillment. I truly believe that we share a common goal of accelerating the careers of mystery writers, today and for many years to come.

Should you wish to hear more from Harlequin on this or any other matter, we would be pleased to cooperate in any way possible. Please let us know if you would find additional information on our publishing activities useful or if you would like me to speak with the Board and/or executive.

Sincerely,

Donna Hayes
Publisher and Chief Executive Officer, Harlequin Enterprises Ltd.

BookSurge is a quiet little outfit that has made a lot of noise – some of it strident – since its modest beginnings as a print on demand press. An article by Jim Milliot in Publishers Weekly indicates that BookSurge’s voice will be absorbed into the roar of a self-publication factory. Both are owned by Amazon.

Amazon’s acquisition of BookSurge a few years ago prompted me to speculate on just what the book retail giant could want with a little POD company. In a guest editorial in Publishers Weekly, I wrote, “It’s hard to say for sure what is behind amazon.com’s acquisition of BookSurge, the on-demand book-printer. But any move the Nine Gazillion Pound Gorilla makes is worthy of serious consideration. Indeed, the implications of the deal, especially combined with amazon’s purchase of e-book company MobiPocket, are profound.”

In time our questions were answered when Amazon began leaning on publishers to shift their print on demand business to BookSurge, occasioning a blog (The Nine Gazillion Pound Gorilla Bares Its Fangs) describing the alarm that many publishers felt at the prospect of being pressured to give up their relationship with BookSurge’s competitors.

The glare of publicity (plus an antitrust lawsuit by a company called BookLocker that remains pending as of October) seems to have checked BookSurge’s conquistadorial ambitions. And now the firm is to be integrated into CreateSpace, an Amazon division providing tools to self-publishers. “The move will make CreateSpace the single platform for all BookSurge and CreateSpace authors and publishers,” writes Milliot, who goes on to cite CreateSpace’s website: “During the coming months we will be transitioning all BookSurge accounts to CreateSpace, after which the BookSurge brand will be retired.”

A lot of e-ink has been spilled of late about self-publication, which some of us prefer to call vanity (see You Got That Right, Ecclesiastes) and we are going to see a lot more as a clash of vanity titans shapes up, with Author Solutions (AuthorHouse, iUniverse, Trafford, Xlibris, Inkubook etc.) in one corner and CreateSpace in the other. And if you cast your eyes on the ringside seat behind CreateSpace you’ll see our quiet little friend BookSurge.

Richard Curtis

Lynn Andriani of Publishers Weekly reports that Harlequin self-publication imprint formerly known as Horizons has been renamed DellArte Press. “In the wake of widespread criticism over its self-publishing imprint,” Andriani writes “Harlequin has changed the imprint’s name from Harlequin Horizons to DellArte Press. As Harlequin publisher and CEO Donna Hayes said it would, the company renamed the imprint to a designation ‘that [does] not refer to Harlequin in any way.’ There is no mention of Harlequin on DellArte’s Web site.”

Andriani adds: “Harlequin did not respond to a request for comment this morning on the name change or if it was back in the good graces of the RWA. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers have called for Harlequin to completely cut ties to the self-pub program.”

Read Harlequin responds to criticism of its self-publishing arm with a new name

RC

Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson (right), brought to my attention that he actually did (and promptly) respond to questions raised by Mike Shatzkin about Nelson’s self-publishing venture, WestBow Press. His response was in the form of a comment on Shatzkin’s blog, and we’re very happy to reproduce it here.

Richard Curtis
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Mike,

Thanks for asking these questions and giving me a chance to respond. I do, by the way, enjoy your blog and your perspective on publishing.

“1. How many such titles will they do per season or per year?”

This question doesn’t apply to the WestBow Press situation in quite the same way it applies to a traditional publisher. The WestBow model is the exact opposite of traditional publishing. In the traditional model, the publisher is the customer because the publisher buys manuscripts from authors. In the WestBow model, the author is the customer because the author buys services from the publisher.

The traditional model is resource-driven. The publisher is constrained by its access to capital and its appetite for risk. At Thomas Nelson, for example, we only do about 500 new titles per year, because we have a finite amount of capital that we can invest in royalty advances, inventory, and accounts receivable.

The WestBow model is demand-driven. The author is putting up the capital and taking the risk, so the publisher—or service provider, if you prefer—is only constrained by its ability to scale its operation up quickly enough to meet the demand.

All that to say, I have no idea how many titles we will do per season or per year. This is completely a function of demand.

“2. How will access to Nelson’s (always limited, as is any publisher’s) sales and marketing bandwidth be allocated to this imprint?”

Other than macro-level advice from time to time, none of Thomas Nelson’s resources will be allocated to sales and marketing. This is entirely ASI’s responsibility in the partnership. This kind of sales and marketing bandwidth is available to WestBow authors as a service from ASI, just like other services. Thomas Nelson’s bandwidth will be 100% focused on Thomas Nelson authors—just like now.

By the way, some of the questions we have received like this imply that traditional booksellers are the primary or only legitimate outlet for distribution. Many authors have their own platforms (e.g., speaking, blog, radio show, etc.) which more than justifies their investment in the WestBow model. They don’t need anyone else’s bandwidth to be successful.

“3. Will the books be vetted as suitable for Nelson’s Christian mission? And, if so, how and by whom?”

Yes, all WestBow Press titles must be congruent with the Thomas Nelson Content Standards. Every manuscript will be reviewed by either a WestBow editor who has been trained by us or a qualified freelancer who has been trained by us. This is precisely how we do it now at Thomas Nelson. In fact, I joked the other day that I think we have given the WestBow editors more training than our own people.

“4. Will the books be vetted at all for quality? Or will an author just choose the WestBow option and, if that’s the case, how much extra will be they paying and what will they be told they’re getting for their money?”

No, they will not be vetted for quality. They will be given a candid assessment of the quality and offered various editorial services that will make the manuscript better. But in the end, we are providing a service to the customer. He or she will be the final judge of quality.

These services are priced differently, depending on how involved they are. For example, substantive editing is more expensive than copy editing. Copy editing is more expensive than proof-reading. This is how it works in the world of traditional publishing, too, when we hire outside editors or proofreaders.

“5. The story says that Nelson editors won’t touch the books but will ‘monitor sales to identify potential big sellers.’ What’s the pre-monitoring launch plan? What’s the plan if Nelson editors actually identify a ‘potential big’ book?”

I’d like to tell you that we have all this figured out. We don’t. Here’s what I can tell you: we will be getting weekly sales reports from ASI. It will show all WestBow Press titles and how they are selling. We currently do this internally for our own titles at Thomas Nelson. We call it our “Movement Report.”

We will obviously pay attention to those WestBow titles that are selling the most or at the highest velocity. At some point, I envision one our editors reviewing the WestBow edition of the book and then calling the author to discuss the possibility of entering into a traditional publishing relationship with Thomas Nelson.

From that point, it will be handled as a typical author-publisher negotiation. We do not require them to publish with us or “lock them in” in via the WestBow contract in any way. They are free to publish with anyone they wish. However, we will have the early visibility and, hopefully, the first-mover advantage.

Someone asked on another forum, why would a WestBow author want to sign with Thomas Nelson if they already had proven they can be successful without us. Good question. The short answer is that they may not want to sign with us. No problem. Every situation is different.

But if they do sign with us, they will then go into our catalog, be represented by our sales team, and have the potential to get their books into other channels and accounts not available to them through WestBow.

I hope this answers some of your questions, Mike. I’m sure that I have created others! Please know that it is my desire to be as transparent and open about this as I can be, subject only to the availability of my time and attention.

Thanks again.

The short answer? Everything.

Doctorow, whose brash and sometimes subversive-sounding publishing strategies have made him a folk hero to his fans and generated intense controversy in the mainstream publishing community, has laid siege to the very ramparts of that community by wagering that he’s at least as good a publisher as they are. Maybe, even, a better one. And he’s thrown down the gauntlet in the industry’s very own trade publication, Publishers Weekly.

Doctorow describes his undertaking as an experiment. The book is a collection consisting almost completely of reprints of previously published stories. It’s called With a Little Help and it’s his third collection. “It will,” he declares, “be available for free on the day it is released.”

“Free” notwithstanding, what he hopes to accomplish is, simply, to make money publishing his book, or at least not lose any. He will achieve this by using the same contrarian (or at least counterintuitive) tactics that have succeeded with previous books, including giving them away.

How will we know if the experiment is a success or failure? Doctorow will chronicle it as it unfolds in a monthly column for PW, the first of which appeared in the October 19th issue. His entertaining article is a canny template for a publishing program that utilizes both print and digital media. Of course, this is something that every traditional publisher is trying to do, but here’s the problem with every traditional publisher: they’re all hobbled by a brick and mortar mindset (and overhead) that makes it impossible to achieve what one determined individual can do – at least, one bold and determined individual named Cory Doctorow. Though he acknowledges lots of help from his friends, he also, obviously, holds with Rudyard Kipling’s observation: “Down to Gehenna, or up to the Throne, He travels fastest who travels alone.”

Doctorow’s template for success includes:

• Low overhead: My capital expenditures have to be as low as possible. In the ideal world, every object I make available will either cost nothing to produce or will be physically instantiated only after it has been ordered and paid for.
• E-book: free, in a wide variety of formats: I have always released my books in three formats (text, HTML and PDF formatted for two-column portrait printout), and my readers have always followed up by converting them to an astonishing long tail of other formats for their preferred readers.
• Audiobook: free, in a wide variety of formats: I’ve always taken great pleasure in reading my works aloud. I’ve done 150-plus installments of a podcast of me doing just that. But I’m no pro. However, many of my friends are pro voice actors, and I’ve called on them to each record one of the stories from the book.
• Donations: whatever happens: I have never solicited donations for my works before, despite the urgings of True Believers who would like to see my publisher cut out of the loop, because I wanted to be sure my publisher was in the loop. This time around, I’m the publisher, so let’s see what people are interested in giving.
• Print-on-Demand trade paperback: $16 (approximately; price TBD) Lulu.com produces beautiful books, objects that look every bit as good as the Lightning Source trade paperbacks that Ingram will sell you, provided you know what you’re doing when you design them. A designer, I am not. But John Berry, who designed my essay collection, Content, for Tachyon, is.
• I’m also offering a custom-cover package for people running events or giveaways: for a setup fee (I’m thinking $300, but that’s not fixed in stone), I’ll sell you as many copies at Lulu’s cost as you’d like with your own cover on it.
• Premium hardcover edition: $250, limited run of 250 copies:My office is in Clerkenwell, in London, close to several artisanal binders and some damned fine printers. My favorite binder is the venerable, family-owned Wyvern Bindery, which has agreed to bind a fine limited edition of With a Little Help for £20 a copy, in quantities of 20.
• Commission a new story: $10,000 (one only):I probably underpriced this, but it’s too late now. The idea was to give my readers the chance to commission a story to be added to the collection at a later date—thus benefiting from an additional burst of publicity and possibly selling a second copy of the “expanded edition” to people who wanted to get the compleat text.
• Advertisements: TBD: Since the paperbacks are print-on-demand, and the electronic files can be trivially modified, I’m going to sell a single ad unit on a time-limited basis: a half-page, or 500 pixels square, or five lines of text (depending on the image), at a price to be determined, in month-long increments.
• Donations of books: TBD: Since the publication of Little Brother in spring 2008, I’ve run a donation program for my books wherein I ask librarians, teachers and people who work in other “worthy” institutions (halfway houses, shelters, hospitals, etc.) to put their names down for free copies. I publish this list online and mention it in the introductions to all the digital copies of the works.

Doctorow sometimes seems to have a chip on his shoulder, and some skeptics will try to knock it off. In fact blogger Michael Stackpole has spilled gallons of e-ink to do that very thing, including calling Doctorow a “snake-oil salesman” and his experiment “rubbish”. Entrenched establishmentarians will also try to take Doctorow down. That would be a mistake. They would be far better off studying his strategies and learning from them, something he makes easy to do with his wit and articulateness. I wish him not only to not lose money but to make a bundle. Maybe that will take the starch out of some publishers that are not just stuck in the last century but are proud of it.

Bravo to Publishers Weekly for offering Doctorow a forum. Read Doctorow’s Project: With a Little Help. I can’t wait to see how it all turns out.

Richard Curtis

Do guys read? Fifty top editors in the publishing business say they don’t. Listen to Tom Matlack, co-founder of The Good Men Project, telling a tale of woe on Huffington Post:

A year ago my VC partner and I (collectively we have been involved in starting Television Food Network, a 15 million subscriber weekly magazine, and 30 other media-related companies) decided we wanted to publish an anthology of first person stories by men about manhood. We collected a Pulitzer Prize winning author (Charlie LeDuff), an NFL Hall of Famer (Andre Tippett), a New York Times war photographer (Michael Kamber), a Sing Sing inmate gone straight (Julio Medina), a fantasy baseball legend (Mark St. Amant), a poet Laureate (Robert Pinsky) along with normal guys (black, white, straight, gay, rich, poor, married and divorced) with stories to tell about being fathers, sons, husbands and providers at this turning point in man-history.

We hired the best agent in the business, wrote a detailed book proposal, and went shopping for a publisher. Fifty (that’s 5-0, including a who’s who list of the literary world) turned us down. They told us guys don’t read, would never read any kind of anthology, and most certainly wouldn’t read an anthology about men. Apparently we are all mindless fools. The publishers also said they were focused exclusively on the “sure-thing” celebrity books in the wake of deteriorating economics. Just about that time we noticed a well-received anthology in the New York Times Review of Books written by women during menstruation.

Matlack decided to go in another direction and his book and documentary film are scheduled for launch in mid-November with a cadre of heavy-hitters and high-profile events. ” We are planning events in boy’s clubs, fire stations, prisons, and army bases — where ever guys want to talk.”

“Who knows if The Good Men Project will work?” Matlack says. “But at the very least our approach demonstrates the wave of the future. The dinosaurs are dead. It’s time for everyone involved in the old book food chain to admit it and develop a holistic approach to something new and exciting.”

RC

Is the book business beginning to feel like the movie business? An article by the New York Times’s Michael Cieply might reinforce the similarities.

Cieply reports that, unlike filmmakers like Steven Soderbergh and Quentin Tarantino who landed huge studio deals at the Sundance Film Festival, today’s aspiring young movie makers have got to finance everything, investing in themselves on the speculation that lightning will strike in the form of financing and distribution by a major studio. As more and more authors throw in the towel in despair of landing a book deal with a big publisher, they are publishing their own books and underwriting every step from editorial to publicity.

Are there other ways to compare Cieply’s description of the film industry with the current state of publishing? Let us count them, and to help you, I’ve taken the liberty of extracting some of Cieply’s descriptions and substituting language that might reinforce the idea that New York is a lot closer to L. A. than a five hour flight on the red-eye.

The glory days of independent film [first novels], when hot young directors [authors] like Steven Soderbergh and Mr. Tarantino had studio [publishing] executives tangled in fierce bidding wars at Sundance [Book Expo, Frankfurt] and other celebrity-studded festivals, are now barely a speck in the rearview mirror. And something new, something much odder, has taken their place.

Here is how it used to work: aspiring filmmakers [authors] playing the cool auteur [literary lion] in hopes of attracting the eye of a Hollywood power broker [major New York literary agent].

Here is the new way: filmmakers [authors] doing it themselves — paying for their own distribution [self-publication], marketing films [books] through social networking sites and Twitter blasts [social networking sites and Twitter blasts], putting their work up free on the Web to build a reputation, cozying up to concierges [maitre d's] at luxury hotels [chic publishing watering spots] in film festival cities [New York] to get them to whisper into the right ears.

The economic slowdown and tight credit have squeezed the entertainment [book] industry along with everybody else, resulting in significantly fewer big-studio [Big Publishing] films [bestsellers] in the pipeline and an even tougher road for smaller-budget independent [midlist books]. Independent distribution [Independent publishing] companies are much less likely to pull out the checkbook while many of the big studios [publishing houses] have all but gotten out of the indie film [midlist book] business.

Had enough? Oh, come on, how about one more for the road! This time, you fill in the right words:

“Everyone still dreams there’s going to be a conventional sale to a major studio,” said Kevin Iwashina, once an independent-film specialist with the Creative Artists Agency and now a partner at IP Advisors, a film sales and finance consulting company. But, he said, smart producers and directors are figuring out how to tap the value in projects on their own.

Richard Curtis

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by the New York Times.