Publishing

A little less than three years ago, Jeff Bezos of Amazon became the human face of the much-anticipated e-book revolution with the launch of the Kindle. The Kindle's launch was big news, but big sales did not follow, and the book industry gradually realized that software, not hardware, was the key to popular acceptance of digital reading. A complex equation of factors -- format, presentation, compatibility, pricing, DRM, rights and royalties -- would have to fall into place before the book publishing industry could revolutionize itself. Last week a well-known literary agent named Andrew Wylie made a big move to slash through the confusion and establish a new approach to e-book publishing. The reaction from industry insiders was swift and severe. Andrew Wylie is now the human face of the e-book revolution.

Many of the articles linked above vilify Wylie, for one big reason: his partnership with Amazon cuts traditional book publishers completely out of the equation. Wylie's company is a literary agency -- they represent writers directly, for a standard (usually 15%) agency fee. In the new arrangement, Wylie's own newly formed company Odyssey Editions will publish books directly with Amazon, using the Kindle format (which can be read not only on a Kindle device but also on computers, iPhones, Droid phones, etc.). There are exactly two parties in this venture: the literary agent (Wylie) and the bookseller (Amazon). The publisher has no place. No Random House, no Penguin, no Macmillan, no Simon & Schuster. Just an author, a store ... and, hopefully, a reader with money to spend. That's how the new system works.

Worst of all was Jens Von Bretzel, a slim, unkempt guy with an army jacket, a luxuriant chabon of black hair, and a "to hell with this crap" demeanor that he barely concealed as he read from 'The Counter Life', his debut novel about a barista with a girlfriend who was too good for him, a future that was drifting towards oblivion, and a lousy attitude that kept getting him into trouble. The novel was based on the decade Von Bretzel had spent working at a Starbucks in Williamsburg. Von Bretzel's work was so much like the stories I was writing that I half suspected he had hacked into my computer and plagiarized my life. Except that Von Bretzel's work was more confident than mine, as if he considered his life worthy of committing to print, while to me, just about every aspect of my own existence seemed wholly unliterary -- how often had agents told me that my protagonists never did anything, that they always waited for things to happen to them?

Almost every character in Adam Langer's very funny, very expert satire The Thieves of Manhattan is either a frustrated writer or a successful one. The book's likable hero writes sensitive short stories that nobody cares to publish. He's bursting with jealousy over the success of a ridiculously popular memoirist who resembles James Frey, and he's so accustomed to defeat that he's barely surprised when his own girlfriend hits it big with a debut novel and leaves him for the memoirist. But literary striving is a complete, inescapable way of life to this character; even his vocabulary is riddled with references to the pantheon of popular and classic authors he yearns to join. A "chabon" (as in the quote above) is a wavy haircut, a "gogol" is an overcoat, and "franzens" and "eckleburgs" describe two different varieties of eyeglasses.

There was a lot of excitement in the e-book world this week after both Barnes and Noble's Nook and Amazon's Kindle slashed their prices to help them compete against the iPad, and against each other. For some reason, this has also led a few book industry pundits to suddenly declare that the Kindle is the big winner in the e-book technology face-off.

Oh, how I wish I could short the Kindle's stock. (Yes, I know I could short-sell Amazon's stock, but that's not the same thing). In fact, I'd short any e-reader's stock. I've lived through this kind of technology/money hype before, and I know how hollow the hype can be. Like the famous dot-com boom of the 1990s, the current explosion of interest in e-book technology is not based on actual consumer interest, but rather on the hope for a financial bonanza. How can you tell when a great new trend is a bunch of hype? When more people write articles about a new product than actually use or buy the product, that's a pretty big sign.

According to the research, which examines eBook reading and purchase behavior from print book readers who recently purchased either an eBook reader or an eBook, eBook sales went from 1.5% of all book sales in Q1 2009 to 5% in Q1 2010, with 33% of eBook buyers entering the market in the last six months. "We are expecting exponential growth," said Gallagher.
-- EBookNewser

I'm just throwing this out there, because I'm at Book Expo where everybody's buzzing about e-books and the impact they'll have on the always turbulent publishing industry. I'm going to do a full #BEA10 wrap-up later, and tell you about the all fun I'm having (and some new novelists I've enjoyed meeting) at this crazy annual convention. But for now I just want to repeat something I said to a friend on Tuesday, because I think this is an important point about the future of print and electronic book publishing.

I want e-books to succeed. I have always been an e-book advocate. But there's a big problem with the product model, and I don't understand why the book publishing industry is now twisting itself up into a state of hysteria about e-book pricing and piracy and distribution without addressing this big problem with the product model. The problem is this: consumers don't like e-books.