Latest News

Getting Someone to Buy a Book Is Only a Writer’s First Hurdle

This survey over at Book Riot is not at all scientific, but it does match what I’ve been hearing from lots of people.  In the digital age, our “to be read” piles are growing at an exponential rate:

In our latest TBR poll, we got nosy and asked you to reveal how many books are on your TBR. The first thing that became clear is that everyone has their own definition of TBR. We didn’t want to lock you down or limit you, so we just asked for your number and where you keep your TBR, whatever TBR happens to mean to you. As usual, we’ve broken down the numbers, and we’ll leave most of the interpretation up to you.

[Read the rest at BookRiot.com.]

Which raises the additional point:  Getting someone to buy your book is only a writer’s first hurdle, especially today, with an explosion of available books.  Getting them to actually read the book — that’s the next challenge.  My own Kindle has at least a hundred books on it waiting to be read, and that’s to say nothing of the print books weighing down my nightstand or my desk. I doubt I’ll ever get to all of them. It’s also why the initial sales results that writers get using promotional tools like Bookbub.com, while nice if they fatten your bank account, aren’t as significant as the sales that follow in the days, weeks, and months to come — at least if you’re interested in gaining readers, not just buyers.  And that is more about the writing itself then your snappy cover or your catchy blurb, which, while difficult to do right all by themselves, and necessary now just to get a book to the starting line, are very easy when compared to offering your reader a story so engaging they not only read the book immediately, they come back for more.  

It’s something I’ve been thinking quite a bit about lately. Why do I buy a book and read it now when I’ve already bought books that are gathering dust on my bookshelf (with ebooks, metaphorically speaking)?  What makes me read this book but not that one?  Certainly if I pay more for a book, I’m more likely to read it, but not always. I’ve bought books for 99 cents that I read right away. I’ve paid full price for books at Barnes and Noble that are still waiting to be read, years later.

How to Take All The Fun Out of Writing and End Up With Something Soulless and Soul-Crushing

Here’s an article over on The Book Designer that had me shaking my head today:

When you decide to write and publish a book, you want to be confident you will bring a book to market that has never before been written—or read—and that your target readers want and need.

To write that book, tell that tale or fill that hole, do some work before you start your manuscript. As part of your initial planning process, study other previously published books and use this research to help you develop the confidence to write and publish a singular book …

[Read the rest of “How to Fill a ‘Hole’ on the Bookstore Shelf’ at the TheBookDesigner.com]

A singular book? I don’t often link to articles on publishing that don’t resonate with me, simply because there’s too much stuff that does resonate for me to share with you those things that don’t (and there’s little objective truth in this business), but this one, wow . . . It so goes against what I’ve learned about the actual creative process that I can’t believe that people really write this way.  Does anyone?  

When I was at the Oregon Book Awards a couple weeks ago, a young writer asked me what I would tell her if I had only one piece of advice to give.  Essentially, I said this: “Write for you. Don’t worry about everybody else.  Write what makes you happy, or angry, or sad. Make yourself laugh or cry or cheer. If you can do that, there’s a good chance your manuscript will do the same for other people, because we’re all made from the same basic stuff. And at the end of the day, at least you’ll have that.”

And that’s what I believe.  I wouldn’t worry too much about being original.  I’d focus on being authentic.  If you’re authentic, as any kind of artist, whether you’re penning a song, writing a novel, or painting a water color, if what you’re writing comes from deep within you, then you won’t need to “fill a hole” on the bookstore shelf.  You’ll create your own space.  

That’s how art works.  There’s always room for another authentic voice.

The Public Library as Publisher

As you’ve probably noticed, libraries becoming publishers is one of the developments I’m watching closely.  Here’s  Jennifer Koerber writing about “The Public Library as Publisher” at Library Journal:

Unlike previous library publishing efforts, Provincetown chose to follow a curated model, using a selection jury made up of staff from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center and the Provincetown Art Association Museum, and local artists and authors. Provincetown Public Press will publish a small number of quality ebooks each year, primarily due to cost—the Library serves a population of 3,000 with a $300,000 budget —but also because the Press is “striving to become a respected outlet with the ability to provide exposure to up-and-coming writers and artists,” said Clark.

Well worth reading the whole article, which cover a number of libraries flirting with publishing.

Here’s the thing about publishing.  It’s taken on an almost mystical quality in the past fifty years or so, but at its Latin core, all that the word publish means is to make public.  The real game changer wasn’t print-on-demand or ebook publishing.  The real game changer was the Internet, which, as it has evolved today, allows anyone to make a blog, a website, a podcast, a YouTube video, and, yes, a print-on-demand book or ebook public with little or no middlemen in between.  That’s all publishing. The only difference is the format.

Now, as the article so nicely demonstrates, the labor doesn’t change, and whether you should publish something yourself is a different question than  can you publish something yourself, but as libraries move away from being purely information repositories, and instead information portals, then it makes sense that they become a place where that information can flow in both directions.

Indie Bookstores on the Rise

My friend Dean Wesley Smith has a great post up about how small publishers — even one person operations — can get their books into bookstores.  Definitely recommend you read his post, even if you’re coming at this from the angle of a reader rather than a writer.  Dean is right that this is just history repeating itself, but the big change is how little cost it takes to compete as a publisher these days.  With POD (print-on-demand), you don’t need to have inventory on hand.  You don’t even need a physical location at all, except perhaps a PO box.  You can literally create a publishing empire from a laptop.

And he touches on a persistent myth that just won’t die.  Yes, one big bookstore chain (Borders) went away and the other (B&N) is struggling to find itself, but there are hundreds of little independent bookstores popping up to take their place:

The American Booksellers Association, which represents independent bookstores, says its membership — it hit a low of 1,600 in 2008 — has grown 6.4 percent in 2013, to 2,022. Sales were up 8 percent in 2012, and those gains have held this year.  [From  http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/independent-bookstores-turn-a-new-page-on-brick-and-mortar-retailing/2013/12/15/2ed615d8-636a-11e3-aa81-e1dab1360323_story.html]

And this:

The American Booksellers Association announced this week in Bookselling This Week that it added 44 new bookstore members last year, including six branches of existing stores. California gained the most new stores, 10; followed by Michigan and New York, which each had four. In addition, 12 established stores were purchased by new owners, including Penguin Bookshop in Sewickley, Pa.; Inkwood Books in Tampa, Fl.; and Moby Dickens Bookshop in Taos, N.M.

In 2014, ABA already seems on track to continue expanding membership. Four stores have opened to date, including The Purple Chair in New Braunfels, Tex., and Blue Frog Books in Howell, Mich. Two stores have new owners. [From  http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/61136-aba-adds-44-stores-in-2013.html]

It’s true that a lot of these are gift stores and coffee shops who sell books among other things, but that’s a good thing.  Rather than have a huge chunk of the retail shelf space dedicated to books controlled by a handful of buyers at a couple of superstores, we now have hundreds of small buyers who can cater to their local niches. Yes, we might not see the heyday of 5500 ABA members and 7000 stores that existed in 1995, especially with ebooks and online retailing taking a huge chunk of the book business, but bookstores have their place. If that weren’t true, their numbers wouldn’t be growing.