The Association of American Publishers in conjunction with the International Digital Publishing Forum have released trade e-book sales for August 2010 and we’re happy to report that after that June dip – dipette, really – the numbers continue their nearly triple digit flight upward. Sales were $39,000,000 for August, a 273% increase over August 2009 ($14,300,000) and the second biggest month in e-book history – the first being July 2010, the previous month.

As we said when we reported July, if there was ever a tremor of doubt (See June E-Sales Soften – If You Call Double “Soft”) it has been well and truly erased by resumption of two record-breaking months. The above chart reflects the brief softening (due to customer resistance to higher e-book prices) in Q2 but we expect to see a spike when Q3 sales are tallied next month.

Meanwhile…

IDPF reminds us that:

* This data represents United States revenues only
* This data represents only trade e-book sales via wholesale channels.  Retail numbers may be as much as double the above figures due to  industry wholesale discounts.
* This data represents only data submitted from approx. 12 to 15 trade publishers
* This data does not include library, educational or professional electronic sales
* The numbers reflect the wholesale revenues of publishers
* The definition used for reporting electronic book sales is “All books  delivered electronically over the Internet or to hand-held reading  devices”

RC

Last spring, to the dismay of countless authors, Amazon announced it was closing its Amazon Shorts program. Today shorts are back but not story length.  Instead, Amazon has introduced a way to publish short books of 10,000 to 30,000 words. It’s called Kindle Singles.

“This medium-length format has traditionally been difficult for writers to sell to publishers as it doesn’t fit into the mold of a printing-press distribution model,” writes Nick Bilton of the New York Times.

“The new storefront isn’t open for business yet as Amazon still needs to recruit writers of shorter texts. But when it gets started you can expect it to disrupt the publishing industry a little bit more.”

Not sure Amazon will need to recruit writers for Kindle Singles.  More likely they’ll need to hire a militia to fight off horde of authors who just happen to have short novels in their trunk that publishers spurned. But Publishing Industry Disruption fans will rejoice.  Do we know any (besides Jeff)?

You can read about it in Amazon Introduces a Format for Shorter E-Books

Richard Curtis

Anthony Damasco, E-Reads’ technical director and intrepid explorer of the e-underworld, has looked under some more rocks today and produced this report on the child’s-play ease with which anyone can pirate a book.  Then look upon his video and despair.

Richard Curtis

*******************************

One of the easiest way to get pirated software, e-books, and music is to simply search for the key word you are looking for while adding the word “wordpress” or “blogspot”.  WordPress and Blogspot are places were people can create blogs hosted online. It’s easy to register for one and if it gets taken down, another can pop right back up in its place.

Anthony? Afraid of pirates? We don't think so.

The same basic formula that I described in my first post applies here. Pirates can create a post with details of the file they are sharing and a non-hyper-linked URL to rapidshare, megaupload or any other file upload service. The motivation for a blogging pirate can be notoriety or generate ad revenue, but it might also be to sneak malicious software on your computer.

So let’s see if we can find an e-book! I’ve been meaning to pick up my guitar again, but I’m a little rusty. Let’s find “Guitar for Dummies”. The video is silent, so there’s nothing wrong with your audio.

Well that was hard! 44 seconds and I’m reading my new e-book. If I were the author of that book, I’d be pretty ticked off. I’d be even more upset when I discovered how hard it to slay the beast once it’s out of its cage.  I could send a takedown notice but the file would be on a different blog in no time, linking to a different upload website. (Look for our postings on takedown notices in the next couple of weeks.)

Let’s try an experiment. If you’re an author, publisher, or agent, search for a book you own. Add the word “blogspot” at the end and see what comes up. WARNING: If you plan to go further than search results, be sure to have some serious protection.

That’s all for this installment, be on the lookout for part 3 coming soon. To see Part 1 click here.

Anthony Damasco

Okay, hotshot, we all know you’re smarter than your agent. At least, that’s what you’re always telling your friends. So let’s see how well you can do at second-guessing him or her in a few hypothetical situations. For every correct answer, you get a free power lunch in the Grill Room of the Four Seasons with any publisher of your choice; for every one you get wrong, same prize but you treat.

* Your client has had twelve genre novels published in paperback. They’ve sold about fifty thousand copies each. She thinks the time has come to be published in hardcover. You tell her:
a) She’s absolutely right and you’re getting on the phone at once.
b) She should write another dozen paperbacks that sell fifty thousand copies each, then you’ll move her.
c) Wait till her paperbacks start selling in the hundreds of thousands of copies each.
d) She’s crazy to want to be published in hardcover.

* Your client has just turned in the manuscript of a book that has good film possibilities. The time to start contacting producers is:
a) When the book is in bound proofs.
b) When finished copies come off the presses.
c) When the book starts getting good reviews.
d) Yesterday.

* You recently sold a client’s first novel to a publisher for $5,000. The client has an idea for a new novel that he thinks has big money potential, and he wants a much bigger advance. The best time to ask for it is:
a) Now.
b) Six months from now.
c) Around the time the first novel is published.
d) A year after the first novel has been published.

In case you haven’t noticed, all the questions in this quiz have to do with timing. Few authors realize it, but one of the most important reasons for hiring agents is that they have a superior sense of timing. “Timing is everything” might almost be called the agent’s motto (“Patience is everything else” might be considered the agent’s second motto). The most successful agents are those who understand that there is a season to push and a season to ease up, a season to fight and a season to turn the back, a season to watch and wait and a season to strike. Sometimes the moment presents itself on a platter; sometimes it has to be worked with brute force like steel on a smithy’s anvil. And there are times when, for all an agent’s scheming, for all his exertions, for all his manipulations, he simply cannot make the thing happen. (That’s usually a signal for me to go shopping.)

Most authors are impatient. It’s a forgivable character trait, for it often goes hand in hand with ambition. But because authors cannot possibly be as objective about the progress of their careers as their agents are, their impatience can make them their own worst enemies. A goodly part of an agent’s day is spent restraining authors.

Although we usually associate timing with the moment when an agent pulls off some million-dollar coup, many of its applications are far more prosaic. A couple of years ago a literary agent wrote a piece for Publishers Weekly complaining about rude editors who do not return agents’ phone calls. Her broadside elicited a chorus of cheers from fellow agents, and from writers who’d had similarly unpleasant experiences.

I had a different reaction, though. Her article made me wonder whether the telephone is not greatly overused by agents, and whether there are many occasions when a note would do instead of a call. This is particularly true in the conduct of routine business such as inquiries about submissions, contracts, and checks. Editors are usually harried with paperwork, urgent business, and other phone calls, and so there is an odds-on probability that a scribbled note taken down during a phone call will presently be buried beneath the day’s alluvial deposit of emails, snail-mail correspondence, internal memos, manuscripts, catalogues, contracts, and junk mail. I’ve noticed, however, that editors seem to place more significance upon written inquiries, and they move on them more promptly. More importantly, underuse of the phone by agents may motivate editors to take their calls when they really need to get through. If an editor doesn’t want to talk to an agent because she thinks the agent is calling about that overdue check, when actually the agent is calling to pitch a hot new property, a vital opportunity will have been missed for both of them.

The preceding is not a particularly glamorous example of timing, but in the last analysis it’s the daily employment of wise timing that makes a good agent effective.

But then there is that dramatic application that makes an agent feel he’s been waiting all his life to yank the ripcord, and the decisive moment has come. Not long ago a fellow agent called me for consultation on a particularly delicate timing problem involving a star author. This author had a very big book scheduled for publication about nine months from that time, but because he was very unhappy with his publisher, he had asked his agent to seek another one. His agent had done so and lined up a terrific deal. In order to get out of his option with his current publisher, the author merely had to submit an outline and reject whatever was offered. When to do that – that was the problem.

The new publisher was pressing the agent to finalize their deal. Publishers get very nervous about leaving big offers open for too long, since agents have been known to use those offers to solicit even higher ones. Despite the possibility that the offer would be withdrawn, the agent was dragging his heels. By breaking with the current publisher too early, the agent could demoralize the sales people and cause the company to pull some of its advertising and promotional money from the upcoming book; a publisher that is losing an author may not work as hard for him as one that looks forward to a long association.

What did I advise my colleague to do? I’ll let you brood about it for a minute or two in the security of your armchair, but remember that in this real-life situation, millions of dollars, the agent’s relationship with his client, the agent’s relationship with two publishers, the fate of a book on which the author had spent a year, the fate of many books to come, and a lot of egos and reputations were on the line. To appreciate the precariousness of such situations, perhaps it would better if you get out of your armchair and read the rest of this chapter while standing on a rickety stool with a hangman’s noose around your neck.

Although I try to demystify the publishing business for authors, I have to confess that the instincts governing the sense of timing are wonderfully and impenetrably mysterious to me. I am fairly certain that they are of a piece with artistic inspiration. Most of the time, if you ask agents to articulate the reasons why they chose a certain moment to demand a dramatic raise in an author’s pay, or to go from a book-by-book arrangement to a multibook package deal, or to move a client out of paperback originals and into hardcover, they can express them fairly coherently. But then there are those inexplicable revelations, blazing across the mind when one least expects it, that illuminate a situation with dazzling clarity and put one in touch with some very profound impulses.

I take pride in handling most business matters expeditiously, but occasionally something will come along that I frankly don’t know what to do about. It will sit on my desk glowering at me, mocking me, demanding attention but eluding solution. I gaze back at it, mutter an oath, but am paralyzed with uncertainty. You might call the condition “agent’s block.” The client and the publisher are pressing for a decision. I offer feeble excuses that sound very much like procrastination or, worse, timidity. In truth, I’m simply waiting for the green light to go on in my brain. Inevitably it switches on, but when I least anticipate it, such as awaking from a nap or glomming a midnight snack. The answer is suddenly printed in bright headlines before me, and what was so difficult suddenly becomes ridiculously easy. The time, at last, has come.

Lest I start to sound as if agenting is a variety of religious experience, allow me to let you in on a little secret. Some of the things agents do that civilians think are brilliantly timed are in truth matters of dumb luck. An author writes a book and I sell it to precisely the right editor and it goes on to become a bestseller. I would love for you to think that I selected that editor the way a handicapper selects a winning horse. And perhaps I did. But sometimes, finding the perfect editor for a book is a matter of who is not out to lunch, in a meeting, or in the bathroom when an agent starts making phone calls.

Now, about that quiz.

* Situation Number 1: The paperback author who wants to be published in hardcover. Despite the evidence that you can make a much better living writing original paperbacks than you can hardcover books, most authors feel an uneasy sense of illegitimacy about paperbacks. And it is true that hardcover books have a better chance of being reviewed (negatively as well as favorably, don’t forget) and selling to the movies. But if an author’s paperbacks are selling in routine numbers, as in this example, the time may not be propitious for the leap into hardcover, for the author hasn’t built an audience prepared to follow her into the more prestigious and expensive format. On many occasions a premature debut in hardcover can be catastrophic and the author may forever lose the opportunity to be published in boards again.

* Situation Number 2: What is the best time to start soliciting movie rights to a book with promising film potential? The answer is, immediately if not sooner. Movie and television people need to feel they are getting in on something hot. By the time a book is published it will have been circulated among all the key studios, networks, and producers owing to Hollywood’s highly efficient system for obtaining early looks at anything that sounds interesting. “A published book,” a film producer once said to me, “is very dead meat.” There are of course exceptions to this rule, and examples of books made into successful movies decades after publication. But if you have a hot movie property, there’s not a moment to lose. And remember, it’s a good idea to prepare a brief synopsis of the book, highlighting its cinematic qualities, to accompany the submission for those in Hollywood who don’t have the time (or the ability) to read.

* Situation Number 3: When is it appropriate to ask for a higher advance? The answer is, it’s always appropriate to ask, but not always appropriate to expect. For new authors, the period of time between the sale of the first novel and publication is an extremely perilous one. Assuming an author is of average productivity, he will have ideas, outlines, or even completed manuscripts of new works long before that first book has been published. Until that first book has been published, however, the publisher will have no basis for calculating the value of the author’s work and will therefore resist offering him more than a token raise in price. Indeed, because publishers don’t formulate a clear picture of a book’s sales for about a year after publication, owing to the time it takes for unsold copies to be returned, it may be two or three years from the time you sell your first book before you are justified in requesting prices bigger than starting pay. So if you answered (d) on the quiz you may have been closest to the truth.

You can’t, of course, afford to sit around for several years waiting for the results on your first book, so there are several strategies for bridging the gap. One is to become more prolific (including writing books under pseudonyms for other publishers if your first publisher can’t absorb your entire output). Another is to write your second, third, and even fourth novel on speculation rather than trying to line up contracts for them on the basis of outlines or portions-and-outlines. (But it might not be a good idea to write sequels to that first book on spec until you see if your publisher wants them.) As I’ve said before, publishers are able to make much faster judgments about finished books than partial ones, and usually pay higher prices.

Finally, we return to the quandary of the agent torn between responsibility for his client’s forthcoming book and eagerness to nail down a deal with another publisher before the first publisher backs out. The situation was, as I pointed out, quite treacherous, but I advised the agent to wait until the very last moment, a few weeks before publication of the book, before informing the current publishers that they weren’t going to get the author’s next book. By that time the advertising was set, the author’s tour locked in, the books were in the stores, and the publishers were committed to doing everything possible to make it a success and recover their investment.

As for the publishers threatening to withdraw their offer if the agent delayed, the agent visited the head of the company and persuaded him to leave his offer on the table. “Look,” said my friend, “you have my word of honor that I will not use your offer to seek other bids. I cannot afford to offend a rich and powerful publisher like you. Please bear in mind that if we announce the author’s decision too soon, the other publisher may pull its advertising and promotion and their book will flop. And that will make it much harder for you to sell the author’s next book.”

Happily, the publisher saw the wisdom of this argument and held his offer open. It all worked out happily, even for the publisher who lost the big-name author. Oh, the publisher was sore for a few weeks, but then the agent phoned him and told him that another client was unhappy with her publisher and wanted to move to another house. “Interested?” he asked. Of course he was interested!

Now, that’s what I call an agent with an exquisite sense of timing.

- Richard Curtis

This article was originally written for Locus, The Newspaper of the Science Fiction Field. It’s reprinted in Mastering the Business of Writing. Copyright © 1990 by Richard Curtis. All Rights Reserved.

If you do something so horrendous as to provoke your agent to declare, “Life is too short,” you’d better start looking for someone else to handle your work. It means you have tried his or her patience beyond its limit. You’re a walking dead author.

We recently described good timing as one of the most important virtues a literary agent can bring to the job. There’s another that most good agents possess, and that’s patience. If timing is the art of “when to,” patience is the art of “when not to.” Unfortunately, that often means when not to knock my head against a wall, wring an author’s throat, or hop in a taxi, race over to a publisher’s office and trash it.

Although some people are born patient, for most of us it’s an acquired quality. We attain it only with experience, and it is arguably the only significant benefit of aging.

If you are constitutionally incapable of practicing patience, you are definitely not cut out to become a literary agent. Despite the appearance of furious activity, and notwithstanding such timesaving innovations as multiple submissions, computers, email, laser printers, cell phones, high-speed printers, overnight mail, instant books, and quickie releases, the truth is that just about anything of importance that happens in our industry happens slowly. Good books are written at a snail’s pace, submissions take ages, negotiations drag on, money flows like cold lard, and the building of an author’s career from first sale to bestselling masterpiece is about as dramatic as watching a lake evaporate. Difficult publishers test our patience, as do difficult authors. If agents seem to have a higher per capita ratio of weekend homes than other professionals, have pity on them: they must have a place to go to chop wood, bay at the moon, and otherwise relieve the strain of holding their natural impulses in check during the other five days a week.

I do not own a weekend home, but I do have a set of molars that have been ground down close to the nerve endings from restraining the desire to commit a variety of felonies in order to make things move faster. Behind a demeanor that one of my clients once described as “judicious” (it was not a compliment) seethes a cauldron of emotions, energy, grievances, and heroic fantasies. I smile, I speak moderately, I behave politely, I move deliberately. I polish my buckler and hone my sword, ear cocked for the call to arms. It may come in the form of a letter, a phone call, an offer, an opportunity, an insult. But I am ready for action.

Meanwhile, I wait.

I wait, for instance, for you to finish your book. Because my agency does a lot of business in paperback original series, I have to wait only a month or two for many books. For most mainstream ones, however, I have to wait nine months, a year, or longer. The potential in these books presses heavily on my consciousness; I’m dying to wheel and deal. But with few exceptions there is little to be done to convert that potential until the manuscript has been turned in, reviewed, critiqued, and revised (once, if I’m lucky). However much I am dying to go into action with that book, I cannot advance the calendar by one day, the clock by one minute. I grind my teeth and wait.

I wait for publishers to make up their minds about my submissions. Decisions on manuscripts can be forced by means of the auction, and when agents have to move fast they can elicit decisions virtually overnight. But most material does not command that kind of attention. The more conventional approach of one submission at a time, or at best two or three simultaneously, is what is usually called for. Like most agencies, we have a reminder calendar and regularly write or phone publishers prodding them to keep the property in question at the top of the pile.

Despite every measure taken to make editors respond to submissions promptly, it is unrealistic to expect decisions in less than six weeks, and quite realistic to expect none in less than three months (at the end of which you discover the manuscript has been lost). If a work isn’t placed on the first or second round of submissions, therefore, a year or more can pass with relatively few responses to show for all one’s investment of time. So we wait.

We wait to make deals. Deals can be struck in a matter of minutes, but many negotiations take days, weeks, or even months to unfold. With the evolution of publishing from an individual entrepreneurial enterprise to a bureaucratized corporate one, seldom do agents end up negotiating with the principals of a publishing company. Instead we discuss terms with editors, who refer them to superior officers or editorial boards. Several weeks may pass if the appropriate executives are not available to formulate offers or counteroffers. Often, figures have to be worked up by a variety of departments to help the company determine its negotiating strategy. During which time we wait.

We wait for contracts. The people who work in the contract departments of most publishing houses are among the most professional in our industry. Nevertheless, it is seldom possible for them to produce contracts for signature in less than six or eight weeks. After the editor reaches agreement with the author or agent, he prepares a deal memo summarizing the terms of the contract for approval by the head of the company. After approval has been rendered the deal memo goes to the contract department where it serves as the basis for the formal agreement. This agreement is reviewed by the acquiring editor and an officer of the company, then returned to the contract department for final issuance to the agent. After signed contracts are returned to the publisher, they are circulated for signature and a voucher is issued directing the accounts payable department to prepare the check. We now wait for the check.

We wait a long time for the check because in many cases the accounts payable department is not in the same building or even the same state as the contracts department. After receiving the voucher from the contracts department, accounts payable prepares a check that must be reviewed and signed by the treasurer or other officer of the company. It is then forwarded to the contracts department to be issued with the contracts, or sent to the payee directly from the accounts payable office.

If form follows function, publishers could not conceive of a better structure for attenuating the time it takes to release money. Even with all hands working at maximum efficiency – not a very desirable state from the publisher’s viewpoint, you must realize, when there is interest to be earned – I figure two to three months is now the industry average for payout from the time check vouchers are issued (add thirty days if it’s an emergency). Agents who have managed to map and penetrate the system can keep things moving with phone calls to various departments along the paperwork routes goading delinquent bookkeepers to press on with their tasks. (I am not afraid to alienate the CEO of a publishing company, but I never, ever speak unkindly to clerks in accounting offices.)

And of course, we wait for books to be published and…well, you get the idea; just about everything concerning publishing is a test of an agent’s patience. I wish that didn’t include authors but why should they be exempted? One of my colleagues in a fit of pique wailed, “Publishing would be great if it weren’t for authors.” And another, with tongue somewhat in cheek I suspect, created an index for rating his clients. He calls it the PITA factor.

PITA stands for “Pain In The Ass.” He assigns his clients a rating from one to ten, depending on such factors as how often they hit him up for loans, how many times they call him at home at six o’clock on Sunday mornings, how many editors they insult, and in general how much maintenance they require beyond routine care and feeding. Their PITA factor is then divided into the commissions earned on their sales. Applying his criteria, an author who earns only $1,000 annually in commissions but is a model client with a PITA factor of 1 is as valuable to his agent as one who earns $10,000 in commissions but, rated at 10, is a raving lunatic. “Life,” says my friend, “is too short to have to deal with 10s.”

Well, I don’t know.As I said at the outset, if you do feel that way, the literary agent’s trade is not for you and you should go into something less aggravating, like sewage management or emergency room administration. When it comes to dealing with artists, irritating behavior comes with the territory. And, far more important, think of what they have to put up with. With the rare exception of the author whose first book stuns the critics, sweeps the public off its feet, and soars to the top of the bestseller list, success for most writers is won only after decades of economic struggle, mental anguish, crushing loneliness and obscurity, and the consumption of murderous doses of pride. They spend a lifetime practicing patience, and if they do not always practice it very well, if conditions are difficult when they start out, difficult when they begin to make it, and difficult even when they finally arrive, a larger degree of tolerance is called for on the part of those who serve them, particularly if they’ve never tried that life themselves. And most agents haven’t.

A PITA scale that does not factor in the emotional satisfactions of midwifing first books, of nurturing authors careers as they gain skill and confidence and stretch to realize their visions, and the joy of attending their graduation ceremonies featuring smashing reviews and sales by the trainload, requires some serious rethinking.

Life is not too short if an agent’s patience is rewarded with such satisfactions as these. And so, when tried, the wise agent will count to ten, then – realizing things could be worse, that we’ve heard horror stories of agent-killers with PITA Factors of 20 or worse – we count another ten, sigh and go back to work.

And if you’re wondering about my clients?

They’re all saints.

- Richard Curtis

This article was originally written for Locus, The Newspaper of the Science Fiction Field. It’s reprinted in Mastering the Business of Writing. Copyright © 1990 by Richard Curtis. All Rights Reserved.If you do something so horrendous as to provoke your agent to declare, “Life is too short,” you’d better start looking for someone else to handle your work. It means you have tried his or her patience beyond its limit. You’re a walking dead author.

We recently described good timing as one of the most important virtues a literary agent can bring to the job. There’s another that most good agents possess, and that’s patience. If timing is the art of “when to,” patience is the art of “when not to.” Unfortunately, that often means when not to knock my head against a wall, wring an author’s throat, or hop in a taxi, race over to a publisher’s office and trash it.

Although some people are born patient, for most of us it’s an acquired quality. We attain it only with experience, and it is arguably the only significant benefit of aging.

If you are constitutionally incapable of practicing patience, you are definitely not cut out to become a literary agent. Despite the appearance of furious activity, and notwithstanding such timesaving innovations as multiple submissions, computers, email, laser printers, cell phones, high-speed printers, overnight mail, instant books, and quickie releases, the truth is that just about anything of importance that happens in our industry happens slowly. Good books are written at a snail’s pace, submissions take ages, negotiations drag on, money flows like cold lard, and the building of an author’s career from first sale to bestselling masterpiece is about as dramatic as watching a lake evaporate. Difficult publishers test our patience, as do difficult authors. If agents seem to have a higher per capita ratio of weekend homes than other professionals, have pity on them: they must have a place to go to chop wood, bay at the moon, and otherwise relieve the strain of holding their natural impulses in check during the other five days a week.

I do not own a weekend home, but I do have a set of molars that have been ground down close to the nerve endings from restraining the desire to commit a variety of felonies in order to make things move faster. Behind a demeanor that one of my clients once described as “judicious” (it was not a compliment) seethes a cauldron of emotions, energy, grievances, and heroic fantasies. I smile, I speak moderately, I behave politely, I move deliberately. I polish my buckler and hone my sword, ear cocked for the call to arms. It may come in the form of a letter, a phone call, an offer, an opportunity, an insult. But I am ready for action.

Meanwhile, I wait.

I wait, for instance, for you to finish your book. Because my agency does a lot of business in paperback original series, I have to wait only a month or two for many books. For most mainstream ones, however, I have to wait nine months, a year, or longer. The potential in these books presses heavily on my consciousness; I’m dying to wheel and deal. But with few exceptions there is little to be done to convert that potential until the manuscript has been turned in, reviewed, critiqued, and revised (once, if I’m lucky). However much I am dying to go into action with that book, I cannot advance the calendar by one day, the clock by one minute. I grind my teeth and wait.

I wait for publishers to make up their minds about my submissions. Decisions on manuscripts can be forced by means of the auction, and when agents have to move fast they can elicit decisions virtually overnight. But most material does not command that kind of attention. The more conventional approach of one submission at a time, or at best two or three simultaneously, is what is usually called for. Like most agencies, we have a reminder calendar and regularly write or phone publishers prodding them to keep the property in question at the top of the pile.

Despite every measure taken to make editors respond to submissions promptly, it is unrealistic to expect decisions in less than six weeks, and quite realistic to expect none in less than three months (at the end of which you discover the manuscript has been lost). If a work isn’t placed on the first or second round of submissions, therefore, a year or more can pass with relatively few responses to show for all one’s investment of time. So we wait.

We wait to make deals. Deals can be struck in a matter of minutes, but many negotiations take days, weeks, or even months to unfold. With the evolution of publishing from an individual entrepreneurial enterprise to a bureaucratized corporate one, seldom do agents end up negotiating with the principals of a publishing company. Instead we discuss terms with editors, who refer them to superior officers or editorial boards. Several weeks may pass if the appropriate executives are not available to formulate offers or counteroffers. Often, figures have to be worked up by a variety of departments to help the company determine its negotiating strategy. During which time we wait.

We wait for contracts. The people who work in the contract departments of most publishing houses are among the most professional in our industry. Nevertheless, it is seldom possible for them to produce contracts for signature in less than six or eight weeks. After the editor reaches agreement with the author or agent, he prepares a deal memo summarizing the terms of the contract for approval by the head of the company. After approval has been rendered the deal memo goes to the contract department where it serves as the basis for the formal agreement. This agreement is reviewed by the acquiring editor and an officer of the company, then returned to the contract department for final issuance to the agent. After signed contracts are returned to the publisher, they are circulated for signature and a voucher is issued directing the accounts payable department to prepare the check. We now wait for the check.

We wait a long time for the check because in many cases the accounts payable department is not in the same building or even the same state as the contracts department. After receiving the voucher from the contracts department, accounts payable prepares a check that must be reviewed and signed by the treasurer or other officer of the company. It is then forwarded to the contracts department to be issued with the contracts, or sent to the payee directly from the accounts payable office.

If form follows function, publishers could not conceive of a better structure for attenuating the time it takes to release money. Even with all hands working at maximum efficiency – not a very desirable state from the publisher’s viewpoint, you must realize, when there is interest to be earned – I figure two to three months is now the industry average for payout from the time check vouchers are issued (add thirty days if it’s an emergency). Agents who have managed to map and penetrate the system can keep things moving with phone calls to various departments along the paperwork routes goading delinquent bookkeepers to press on with their tasks. (I am not afraid to alienate the CEO of a publishing company, but I never, ever speak unkindly to clerks in accounting offices.)

And of course, we wait for books to be published and…well, you get the idea; just about everything concerning publishing is a test of an agent’s patience. I wish that didn’t include authors but why should they be exempted? One of my colleagues in a fit of pique wailed, “Publishing would be great if it weren’t for authors.” And another, with tongue somewhat in cheek I suspect, created an index for rating his clients. He calls it the PITA factor.

PITA stands for “Pain In The Ass.” He assigns his clients a rating from one to ten, depending on such factors as how often they hit him up for loans, how many times they call him at home at six o’clock on Sunday mornings, how many editors they insult, and in general how much maintenance they require beyond routine care and feeding. Their PITA factor is then divided into the commissions earned on their sales. Applying his criteria, an author who earns only $1,000 annually in commissions but is a model client with a PITA factor of 1 is as valuable to his agent as one who earns $10,000 in commissions but, rated at 10, is a raving lunatic. “Life,” says my friend, “is too short to have to deal with 10s.”

Well, I don’t know.As I said at the outset, if you do feel that way, the literary agent’s trade is not for you and you should go into something less aggravating, like sewage management or emergency room administration. When it comes to dealing with artists, irritating behavior comes with the territory. And, far more important, think of what they have to put up with. With the rare exception of the author whose first book stuns the critics, sweeps the public off its feet, and soars to the top of the bestseller list, success for most writers is won only after decades of economic struggle, mental anguish, crushing loneliness and obscurity, and the consumption of murderous doses of pride. They spend a lifetime practicing patience, and if they do not always practice it very well, if conditions are difficult when they start out, difficult when they begin to make it, and difficult even when they finally arrive, a larger degree of tolerance is called for on the part of those who serve them, particularly if they’ve never tried that life themselves. And most agents haven’t.

A PITA scale that does not factor in the emotional satisfactions of midwifing first books, of nurturing authors careers as they gain skill and confidence and stretch to realize their visions, and the joy of attending their graduation ceremonies featuring smashing reviews and sales by the trainload, requires some serious rethinking.

Life is not too short if an agent’s patience is rewarded with such satisfactions as these. And so, when tried, the wise agent will count to ten, then – realizing things could be worse, that we’ve heard horror stories of agent-killers with PITA Factors of 20 or worse – we count another ten, sigh and go back to work.

And if you’re wondering about my clients?

They’re all saints.

- Richard Curtis

This article was originally written for Locus, The Newspaper of the Science Fiction Field. It’s reprinted in Mastering the Business of Writing. Copyright © 1990 by Richard Curtis. All Rights Reserved.

Remember two years ago when we were on a death watch for the New York Times? “The New York Times is approaching the point where it will have to manage its business primarily to conserve cash and avoid defaulting on its debt,” wrote Henry Blodget on businessinsider.com. “This situation will only get worse as advertising revenue continues to fall, and it will be very serious by early next year.” Blodget’s piece was bleakly headlined New York Times Running on Fumes. Things got so desperate the newspaper had to borrow a quarter of a billion from a Mexican mogul at extremely disadvantageous terms – 14% interest.

Last week the Times‘s business section carried this story: “The New York Times Company intends to pay back a $250 million loan from the Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helú in early 2012, three years ahead of its due date.

Que pasó?

For one thing the Times dumped its wholly owned Boston Globe and slashed its debt by one-third, from $1.1 billion to $670 million. For another, the economy began to pick up and advertising revenue, every newspaper’s lifeblood, began to flow again, though not at pre-recession levels.  The paper’s website, though falling short of the paywall created by rival Wall Street Journal, has become dynamic, entertaining and accessible, and ad revenue on the site was up 14% in the third quarter of 2010. The digital version of the paper is available on a growing number of e-devices, generating income more efficiently than the profit-draining paper edition.

Though we don’t want to read too deeply into the Times‘s turnaround, it might presage a reversal of the decline in all paper reading formats – newspapers, magazines and books – as readers return to the pleasures of paper and discover the limitations of digital formats (see Students Give E-Textbooks a Failing Grade).

Read the AP story in full here.

Richard Curtis

Are you ready for The Big Bump?

Those of you who read our posting in September (Copyright Asteroid Hurtling Towards Earth) know that The Big Bump is a major copyright event shaping up for the near future. As copyright attorney Lloyd J. Jassin informed us, thanks to a provision of the US Copyright code authors will be able to terminate contracts negotiated in the late 1970s even if those contracts appear to give the publisher rights forever.

“Starting in 2011,” Jassin writes, “the publishing and entertainment industries will be looking at the possibility of thousands of negotiations with copyright owners seeking to recapture their rights. Some call it ‘contract bumping.’ This powerful ‘re-valuation mechanism’ found in the Copyright Act allows authors (and their heirs) to terminate contracts 35-years after the contract date. The termination right trumps written agreements — even agreements which state they are in perpetuity.” [Italics ours]

Though nobody has panicked, the news has begun to percolate and publishing people and their lawyers are beginning to review their old contracts to determine what books are affected and to institute damage control measures.

For publishers the strategy is to commence negotiations with authors and agents now to extend or renew the old contracts or negotiate brand-new ones.  Because e-books and print on demand, two products essential to extending the life of a contract, did not exist pre-1978 (or pre-1998 for that matter), publishers will insist that renewals provide for them.

The big question however is, once authors know they can recapture their old contracts, will they blithely sign their e-book and POD rights away?

Authors who exercise their “bump” right will realize what a treasure the copyright law has bestowed on them.  Why would they bestow it back on their publisher, especially if their publisher is paying a lower e-book royalty than is being offered down the street by some independent e-book publishers. (Full disclosure. E-Reads is down the street.)

Which means that independent e-book publishers might be in for windfalls starting 2013.

Publishers, authors and agents have a lot to think about between now and 2013, and it isn’t too soon to start thinking about it now.

For the full text of Article 203 of the 1978 Copyright Act, the provision that is causing all this turmoil, click here.

Richard Curtis

Amazon named Ken Follett’s Fall of Giants Amazon Book of the Month for September 2010. Yet, as of this writing, out of 271 reviews posted on Amazon’s website, 191 have awarded only one star out of a possible five. Another book, Don’t blink by James Patterson and Howard Roughan, got a similar treatment: 40 1-stars out of 56 reviews.

Whence the disconnect?

New York Times book industry reporter Julie Bosman explains it in 2 E-Books Cost More Than Amazon Hardcovers: “Customers, unaccustomed to seeing a digital edition more expensive than the hardcover, howled at the price discrepancy, and promptly voiced their outrage with negative comments and one-star reviews on Amazon.” Bosman quotes Kindle exec Ron Grandinetti, who blames the publishers: “Setting a price for a Kindle book that is higher than its print counterpart makes no sense…It’s bad for readers and authors, and is illogical given the cost savings of digital. We’ve seen publishers do this in a few cases, and we’ve been urging them to stop.”

Kindle readers – we call them Kindlach* – rose up in a populist protest with stirring exhortations usually reserved for labor rallies:

“This is the moment. If we boycott this outrageously priced book, its price will come down and publishers will learn a lesson. Buy at $20 and we will be doomed to higher prices forever. Be strong.”

“If Kindle versions become close to, or the same as the hardcover editions, I’ll revert back to hardcover, or better yet, I’ll opt to listen to it on Audible instead.”

“Love my kindle… hate this pricing. Hope this is not a trend. We should all boycott this book at this price.”

“I won’t be buying this book for now. Have enjoyed Follett’s work in the past, but price is an issue for me, especially with my Kindle hardware outlay. There is so much to read that I can afford to wait on this title for the time being.”

You can read all the one star reviews for the Follett here and for the Patterson-Roughan here.

So, Amazon – were these reviews helpful to you?

Incidentally, this is not the first time Kindlach have protested with their clicks.  In January 2008 they rebelled, this time against a publisher for withholding the Kindle edition of a hardcover bestseller, and the one-star reviews poured in.  See I Want My E-Book and I Want It Now – or Else!

Richard Curtis

* “Kinderlach” is an affectionate Yiddish word for children. Thus Kindlach might be translated as Children of the Kindle. The ch is pronounced as in Bach.

Your enemies will do anything to stop you. Your best friend might be dead. And your only hope is your father…a man you’ve never met-until now. Who would you trust? Would you even trust yourself?

That’s the dilemma tormenting Bran Hambric, the eponymous hero of The Specter Key, the second novel in Kaleb Nation’s middle grade epic just published by Sourcebooks.

Bran Hambric believes that the Farfield Curse is over with. But when he discovers a safe-deposit box in his dead mother’s name-in the very bank vault where he was discovered as a boy-Bran’s past comes rushing back. Now he’s on a frightening path that puts everyone he cares about in danger.

When Bran’s best friend, Astara, is kidnapped, Bran will do whatever it takes to save her and prevent the evil mage on his trail from claiming the power of the curse for herself. But will the magic destroy him the way it destroyed his mother?

The Farfield Curse, the launch novel in this remarkable series, is available in paperback or E-Reads e-book.

***************************

Kaleb Nation

On the third night of the third month in 2003, 14-year-old Kaleb Nation suddenly imagined a boy and a banker on a roof waiting for a burglar to come. From that original idea was born the story of Bran Hambric. The novel would take most of Kaleb’s teenage years to complete. Aside from writing, Kaleb is a blogger and former radio host; he is the creator of the wildly popular TwilightGuy.com. His personal website is KalebNation.com.

Duck! Here comes the long tail!

Traditionally, when inventories of a title dwindle, a publisher will do a short print run and store it in a warehouse in order to keep it in print. But the advent of print on demand technology promises to make that process – including warehouses – a thing of the past. (See A World Without Inventory Part 1 and Part 2)

Now, the Macmillan publishing group (St Martins, Farrar Straus & Giroux, Henry Holt among others) has taken a giant step toward that virtual future by turning its inventory management over to Ingram Content Group, owner of POD behemoth LightningSource Inc. Slow-moving titles – the phenomenon Chris Anderson termed “the long tail” -  will go into LSI’s print on demand program. The books will exist only as files on a printing press’s server until a customer orders a copy. No inventory. No warehouses.

Read Jim Milliot’s story in full in Publishers Weekly, Macmillan to Move Some Fulfillment to Ingram

Richard Curtis