Scott Turow: The Slow Death of the American Author (NYTimes)

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by taustin

Even that is hopeless. People can't buy books they've never heard of. The more diversity there is in the market - the more different books people can find - the less they'll read what publishers want to sell and the more they'll read what they want. The most popular shows on TV today get ratings that are a pale reflection of the ratings that shows that were canceled after six episodes for poor ratings, 30 years ago.

I suspect the total number of books being read right now is increasing, because there's something for everyone out there now. But even if it's the same, the money generated it going to be spread out over a lot more authors. The big names aren't going to be anywhere near as big in the future.

I agree 100%. I also don't see it as a bad thing. The casual book-or-two-a-year readers and the handful of big-ticket, franchise authors may suffer a bit, but I suspect everyone else will wonder what the big deal was in the first place--when all is said and done.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

That particular one, yes.
The BPHs' sins are bigger in scope and get more press so I didn't think it was necessary to beat those horses some more.
I was trying to point out it isn't just the big boys (Harlequin, Penguin, et al) that run roughshod over authors.
(We had the Hydra mess a couple weeks ago and there's the ongoing "Julie of the wolves" fight as recent examples.)

In the KKR piece she points out one (nameless) operation that went from tolerable terms to intolerably bad overnight without any changes in personnel. Which means the issues are industry-wide and likely to bite anybody at any time; there are no inherently good guys in an industry in turmoil.

It all comes down to the existing infrastructures and processes being geared to a different era and people trying to preserve them past their shelf life.

Among the things she was complaining about were lack of communication, abysmal editing, failure to pay on time, failure to sell on Amazon--do you want to point out the proof that the major publishers are guilty of these supposed sins?

She's talking about her experience with one unnamed small press, and that anecdotal evidence should not automatically indict the major publishing houses.

If one wants to be fair, that is.

[gweeks]

Originally Posted by Catlady

If one wants to be fair, that is.

The indiereader link is talking about a small press, but Kristine Kathryn Rusch is not. She's talking about the BIG number publishers. That's the link a little further up. http://kriswrites.com/2013/04/10/the...nti-published/

Greg

[BeccaPrice]

So, I've never read anything by Turow - since he's consistently a best seller, I assume his books are competently written? if I were to check out one of his books at the library (oh, the irony!), which would be a good one to try?

[GoSharks]

Originally Posted by BeccaPrice

So, I've never read anything by Turow - since he's consistently a best seller, I assume his books are competently written? if I were to check out one of his books at the library (oh, the irony!), which would be a good one to try?

Presumed Innocent was his first major work and I personally think his best. For me, everything after that has been a formula....My wife (and likely many others in this thread) would heartily disagree with the formula comment. I would recommend reading PI first, if you're not impressed then I wouldn't bother with any others.
I'm now going to duck and cover...

[taustin]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I agree 100%. I also don't see it as a bad thing.

Bad is a subjective term. Bad for whom? Overall, no, it's not a bad thing.

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

The casual book-or-two-a-year readers and the handful of big-ticket, franchise authors may suffer a bit, but I suspect everyone else will wonder what the big deal was in the first place--when all is said and done.

In a hundred years, big publishing houses will be referred to in the same way as buggy whip makers are today.

[avantman42]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

B&N and the department stores may not (yet) carry indie pbooks

I got a bit of a shock today when I realised that B&N list both of my indie-published paper books on their website. I assume they're not in any of their shops, though

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by gweeks

The indiereader link is talking about a small press, but Kristine Kathryn Rusch is not. She's talking about the BIG number publishers. That's the link a little further up. http://kriswrites.com/2013/04/10/the...nti-published/

Greg

Yes. Lawrence Block, for one, was published by a Unit of Hachette, not a dinky outfit. Barry Eisler used to be published by Penguin. Most of the others she has quoted from time to time are also talking about BPHs rather than small publishers..

The BPH horror stories at Teleread, KKR, and other publishing sites are recurring and long-standing; typically they are about late/missing payments, failure to return contacts (from author or agent), dodgy accounting (lots and lots of those), rights grabs, attempts to sneak contract mods by bypassing the agent, orphaned books, etc.

For most authors, life in the grasp of a BPH may be somewhat different that under a fading small publisher but the pain is no less.

It takes a lot for an established bestselling author to issue such a sweeping statement as Blocks, but things really are *that* bad for the 99% of authors ot named Turow or Patterson or Snooki. The BPHs are simply set up to handle blockbuster-volume sellers and most anything else is becoming beneath their dignity...except when it comes time to claim a 1972 contract entitles them to ebook rights.

Last I heard, about two years ago, most BPHs were dropping authors who were still racking up 30K units worth of sales because apparently their overhead doesn't let them make a profit at those volumes. (On the other hand, that same author, by going indie can rake in over $100K net off those same unit sales at half the BPH price.)

Its simple economics: BPHs grew big to be able to afford the big advances needed to capture high-volume, highprofile titles in an environment of 200-300K new titles per year. Now that we are seeing ten times that much because of the backlist and indies, the volume of sales is going down and so is the *number* of new releases supporting the corporate overhead, so the new normal doesn't support the typical BPH overhead unless your name is Patterson or Turow.

As Naughton pointed out, her books were selling fine, volume-wise, but now real income was filtering through the BPH filter into her pocketbook. Once she removed the clogged filter she was able to capture real value from her work.

All indications are the BPHs need to streamline their business and reduce their overhead to be able to operate at lower print run levels--but what they seem to be doing is doubling down on gigantism through mergers and focusing more than ever on high volume titles.
(shrug)
Interesting experiment, that.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by avantman42

I got a bit of a shock today when I realised that B&N list both of my indie-published paper books on their website. I assume they're not in any of their shops, though

That is going to have to change if Indies do indeed make up a big fraction of the Nook catalog.

[taustin]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

That is going to have to change if Indies do indeed make up a big fraction of the Nook catalog.

What seems to be changing at B&N is that they're stocking fewer books in their stores, and filling the space with other stuff, mostly toys. Mabye they should try groceries and dry goods next. (And my local B&N is one of the good ones.)

[BeccaPrice]

Granted I live in a small town, but considering that Scott Turow is supposed to be such a Big Name Author, our library (which has a very good mystery selection) doesn't have any of his books, either in paper or eformat.

[Andrew H.]

[QUOTE=fjtorres;2480057]Heh, it looks like Turow inspired a *lot* of folks.
As always, Ms Rusch does it in detail and style:

The problem with Turow in particular, and a handful of others in the same circumstance, is that they were bestsellers from their first novel. Which makes them rather like that Coach Barry Switzer quote: “Some people were born on third base and thought they hit a triple.”

I disagree with Turow's Author's Guild rants, but Rusch is being stupid and dishonest with this quote. To the extent that Turow is on third base, he's there because he hit a triple. He's not there because he was born there; he's there because he wrote a very good, very successful book (his second; 1L was the first). The fact that he espouses silly opinions concerning publishing is no reason to retroactively attempt to deny him credit for having written some excellent books, and it's unprofessional of Rusch to attempt to do so.

[fjtorres]

*My* take on the "triple" metaphor (and the reason *I* cited it) is that just because Turow got lucky from the start in finding a willing sponsor for his work and because he was successful from day one, he has never personally experienced the travails and mistreatment of other "lesser" writers. So, to him, the BPHs are great partners and facilitators. He never had to work the count, take one for the team, or try to steal a base. He was already standing on third with zero outs at the start of *his* game. Instead of hitting a triple, he got a walk and moved to third on a wild pitch.

To bring up another baseball metaphor; he never spent time riding buses in the minors, but instead went straight to the big leagues. When you travel first class all the way, you can't exactly appreciate what riding in steerage is like. Life is very different from where he sits than it is for a writer whose book brings in a couple hundred bucks a month and he's happy because that is his car payment. (Or meal money.)

Which is why he sees the tech and market changes the industry is experiencing as negatives instead of positives for authors because in his whole point of view anything that is bad for publishers is by definition bad for authors.

[Sregener]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

*My* take on the "triple" metaphor (and the reason *I* cited it) is that just because Turow got lucky from the start...

In one sense, I thought your metaphor was right on. But this, I think, is just plain wrong. It isn't luck that he wrote a great novel that caught the attention of the gatekeepers.

The Author's Guild is a union, and unions always seek to protect the interests of their members, over-and-against the general public. Anything that makes it easier to compete with their Guild is a bad thing. Might as well call it the Author's Cartel.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Sregener

In one sense, I thought your metaphor was right on. But this, I think, is just plain wrong. It isn't luck that he wrote a great novel that caught the attention of the gatekeepers.

The Author's Guild is a union, and unions always seek to protect the interests of their members, over-and-against the general public. Anything that makes it easier to compete with their Guild is a bad thing. Might as well call it the Author's Cartel.

Notice I said he got lucky in "getting a sponsor".
I didn't say the book (PRESUMED INNOCENT) wasn't good.
Just that he was lucky to find a gatekeeper that liked his book right off the bat.

The luck comes in because at any point in time there have been dozens (hundreds?) of very good books bouncing around that don't get lucky in finding a sponsor willing to take them to market. (DUNE, Harry Potter, we all know a few, don't we? And those are the ones that eventually found a home...)

Writing a good book and trusting the universe to take care of you is a good prescription for obscurity.
The traditional road to publishing is a lottery system based on a fallacy: that agents and publishers can identify quality with something approaching accuracy.
History has shown that for every good book that has made it through the gantlet of trad-publishing, another gets bounced for no good reason and a whole bunch of mediocrities and outright poor efforts made it through.

At least with the new economics the odds of a good book finding its natural audience aren't constrained by the arbitrary tastes of gatekeepers or wave after wave of publishing fads.

Anyway, one thing Turow has achieved in riling up as many folks as he has is that the pushback has brought out a lot of different counters. One very interesting one I ran into a couple days back came with this quote:

Traditional publishing set a benchmark for generations, and I along with many others believe that was not a good thing. “Classic authors” who defined the industry long ago, who became the foundation for fiction, were lucky they were born into the age that accepted them. They would be considered irrelevant today. Industry professionals now openly admit these celebrated authors would never be published in today’s market. Breaking in has become nearly impossible, breaking through holds the same odds as winning the lottery, and Breaking Dawn happened because of one fact - as the following industry professional will attest:

Embracing Marketability - Nothing has ever shaken my editorial self as much as this comment did. It came from an influential editor from a successful publishing company who was telling me about what to look at when considering a book. The advice had little to do with the uniqueness of the work, the style, the quality; instead it was all trends, what was in season. And then I was told to consider the appeal of the authors themselves—including their appearance.

Nina Hoeschele
Embracing Marketability
June 17, 2011
The Editing Company

http://theromancetroupe.blogspot.com...etability.html

Because I learned how the industry worked, I was rather pleased with myself in learning how to so artfully avoid the slush-pile, by submitting a query first and having the editor ask for my manuscript, I proudly stamped REQUESTED MATERIAL all over that huge envelope.

What I did not see then, I was in the slush-pile the entire time.

Why?

It wasn’t because my story was terrible, it wasn’t because I lacked talent. It was because my work didn’t fit their mold of marketability. Marketability, at that time, was that stereotype of the leads hating each other. The publisher knew it would sell as it had done before. My story - didn't have that, the publisher couldn't determine if my work would sell.

Traditional publishing has a formula and being a “good story” isn't a part of the equation. Stories don't have to be written well, they have to fit into the “proven” formula for marketing.

Traditional publshing bandies about the whole "curators of culture" thing so often that, like most big lies, it has succeeded in obscuring the truth: book publishing is a commercial venture. And in all commercial ventures marketability is job one. Quality is *always* secondary.

And that is one thing that the ebook evolution is not changing; marketability (in the form of visibility, now) still rules. But the biggest change is that the marketability gate is now positioned *after* publishing not before.

Before, the gatekeepers could and did keep quality books from the market ("It's a good book but it doesn't fit our typical reader/profile/product line. Good luck finding a home for it elsewhere.") whereas now nothing can keep the story from the market. The new struggle isn't to get published but to get noticed. And the odds of that, if you have a good story with something meaningful to say, are much better. (In the sense that a small chance is better than zero chance. )

Traditional publishing is built around the (increasingly dated) concept of a publisher believing in a project enough to risk their money. They will only do that if they see a lot more money coming back in return. It should not be a surprise that big multinationals looking for tens and hundreds of millions of dollars in returns should be turning up their noses at authors and books that only generate revenue in the hundreds of thousands or that they prefer to look for books that might bring in millions instead.

Marketability, not quality, is the key to the kind of money their paymasters need to keep the beast fed. That is not necessarily evil, but their pretense that their intentions are no driven by a need for lucre are disingenuous and annoying.

And that kind of disingenuousness applies to the misnamed "AUTHORS GUILD" which is neither a guild nor a union nor is it concerned about protecting authors, these days--if it ever was. The AG is just a publishing industry Lobby Group.
And one of the curious aspects of their operation that is coming to light in the wake of the Turow pushback crap-storm is that the AG spends more to keep their doors open than they take in from their author "dues":

http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/2...nt-care-about/

It has been suggested that a good chunk of their funding actually comes from the BPHs. Last I heard this was still being explored...

It is starting to look like the Turow op-ed may turn out to be a watershed event by drawing attention to things many would rather remain unexplored.