“Libraries make no sense in the future,” publishing consultant and futurist Mike Shatzkin recently said. “There is no need for a building.”

The building in which he made this pronouncement happened, unfortunately, to be a library. Obviously he was joking, but given the state of terror in which today’s librarians live, he didn’t exactly leave ‘em rolling in the aisles.

He subsequently felt compelled to amplify in all seriousness in a blog entitled It Will Be Hard to Find a Public Library 15 Years from Now, which I urge everyone connected to libraries – that means everyone, period – to read.

Poor librarians. They seem to be the victims of ham-fisted wisecrackers. I know because I made the same feeble attempt at wit several years ago at the dawn of the digital era. It was in the New York Public Library, and, like Shatzkin, there was a serious message beneath the kidding. Here’s what I wrote about that occasion.

Richard Curtis

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I take pride in my sense of humor, but sometimes it can get rather heavy-handed. That was demonstrated about ten years ago when I was invited to the New York Public Library to give a talk to librarians about the future of books.

The venue was the Map Room, an exquisite gilded salon that epitomized an age that revered the printed book. The attendees, solemn acolytes of the Dewey Decimal System, fit perfectly into the decor. My subject, you will not be surprised to hear, was the digital revolution, and to illustrate it I brought with me some CD-ROM discs. On the podium I had piled a large number of impressively thick tomes. I then produced the discs and declared that all the content of those books and more could fit onto a few of the slim shiny objects I held before them. I declared that a day would come when brick and mortar institutions known as libraries might become irrelevant. Whereupon I gestured broadly at the magnificent building and said, “I’ll bet this joint would make a great condo.”

One hundred librarians volubly sucked in their breath and gaped at me as I had torn a page out of Audobon’s Birds of America and blown my nose in it.

“Just kidding, folks,” I said sheepishly.

Actually, I wasn’t. As print media – newspapers and magazines and books – enter the endangered lists, so do the brick and mortar venues that service them: magazine stores, book shops – and libraries. The contents and catalogues of most libraries are accessible online from practically anywhere in the civilized world. The only reason patrons must go them is to check out and return their physical books. But as libraries acquire e-books, even that function becomes irrelevant. As I recently wrote, E-libraries don’t have a locus. Their patrons have no loyalty to a specific branch; they can traverse cyberspace to locate and download the e-book they wish to “borrow”. Yes, libraries (like bookstores) have managed to remain relevant in the digital age by offering a warm and vibrant social center for scholars, students and book lovers. And many provide computers for patrons to search the Worldwide Web even though they could do as much from their home, office, or a café in Paris.

These ruminations are reinforced in Millions of Books, but No Card Catalog, a New York Times article by Noam Cohen describing the recent legal settlement of the lawsuit brought by the Authors Guild and a publishers group against Google, which since 2002 has been scanning millions of books into its colossal digital archive. Cohen suggest that “digitization of books is ending the distinction between circulating libraries, meant for public readers, and research libraries, meant for scholars.”

Cohen’s article ends on a hopeful note: “The digital-rights class-action agreement has the potential to make physical libraries newly relevant. Each public library will have one computer with complete access to Google Book Search, a service that normally would come as part of a paid subscription.” He cites an NYU professor, Thomas Augst, as asserting that Google is “creating a new reason to go to public libraries, which I think is fantastic. Public libraries have a communal function, a symbolic function that can only happen if people are there.”

Okay, you can hold up on the wrecking ball for now. But I have dibs on that 44th floor penthouse on the corner of 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue.

RC

Mr. Curtis said he expects to eventually see product placement in digital books that will generate ads for e-books. “If you see a link in a novel to a product being advertised, you’re generating synergy between the content and the advertiser. It will be the same principle as product placement in movies and television,” he said.
(Richard Curtis, New York literary agent and digital book publisher, commenting in the Wall Street Journal on Amazon’s introduction of a Kindle carrying advertising.)

Product placement in novels? Hmm, just how would that work….?

Donna applied one last dab of lipstick and critically appraised her makeup in the magnifying mirror on her vanity table.  She frowned as the  image revealed the merest hint of a wrinkle on her brow. Tonight she had to be perfect: she’d been casually dating Todd for three weeks but she knew that tonight he was going to make his move. For the third time in five minutes she peered out of her bedroom window searching the street for his familiar car with the dented right fender. From the moment she’s set eyes on his face she’d wondered what it would be like to kiss that sensuous mouth…

Richard Curtis

Buy one, get one free.  Buy three for the price of two. Buy two and get the third for half price. These marketing ploys are designed to overcome your resistance to buying more than one item at a time. They come under the rubric called bundling, a common sales technique in which two or more products are packaged and sold at a single price.

The tactic has commonly been used in merchandising every product under the sun including books. Now, accordingly to Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg of the Wall Street Journal, it is being used more and more to move e-books too.  “Publishers are increasingly offering bundles of digital titles in a bid to generate buzz and to wring higher sales from the fast-growing base of e-reader owners,” writes Trachtenberg.

It is well known that the first book of a series outsells – often by a wide margin – the second and subsequent books.  Bundling helps to bring sales of those books up to par with the first.  Though you might be disinclined to buy all three titles in a trilogy for $8.99 each, totaling a bit under $27.00, you might spring for them if the combined price were $20.00. “By bundling titles at a discount we’re raising their visibility and making them more price-attractive,” Rosetta’s Arthur Klebanoff told Trachtenberg.

Not every publisher sees the benefit of bundle discounting. If a publisher knows that fans will buy every book in a series, it will not see any point in creating a bargain price for the bundle.

For e-book publishers bundling is trickier than it looks to the customer.  Each title in the package has its own ISBN identifying number. However. in order to sell, say, a trilogy at a special price, the publisher has to assign an ISBN number specifically to the bundle. As different retail formats may require their own ISBN number, the bundle may have as many as half a dozen.

Bundling e-books with other e-books is a lot easier than bundling e-books with their print edition. Though some publishers do it, the technological challenges have thus far proven daunting. (See Bundling: Publishing’s Next Battleground)

Richard Curtis

Patricia McLinn of Novelists Inc (Ninc) has proposed a corporate Hall of Shame.

There’s enough of it to fill a thick directory. All the more reason why, if a corporation responds responsibly to a complaint that it is inadvertently enabling unauthorized publication, it deserves special commendation.

McLinn writes: “After having it pointed out that AT&T ads were appearing on a website that offered downloads of copyrighted material that had not been authorized by the copyright holder, AT&T said Monday that it is pulling its advertising from [name of website deleted].

“That is worth celebrating.”

McLinn provides precious hints for frustrated authors, such as this one: You can find corporate headquarters phone number and address for publicly traded companies on financial websites, such as Yahoo!Finance, under “company profile.” The sites also list executives, and you might find the person you want to contact listed right there for medium or small companies.

How she then doggedly pursued AT&T until she got satisfaction is worth reading in detail here. Follow her hints and you too may be able to stop a corporate behemoth in its tracks.

Richard Curtis

For sixteen years, Amy Grady has been married to a man who slaps, punches and kicks her. His anger is unpredictable and violence can explode at any moment. Except for the love of her son Danny, Amy’s life is lonely and cold.

Walter Loveless, who has just moved in next door to Amy, is lonely, too. He has been living a life of isolation. When they meet, electricity crackles between them and the attraction is instant and powerful. They find in each other the love and affection they have craved for so long.

But Loveless has secrets and a past that haunts him. Someone from that past is still pursuing him. Someone deadly. When Amy decides to escape her own past she runs headlong into Loveless’s.

Loveless – A dark love story.

What was Ray Garton thinking when he wrote this book? You can read it in his own words here.

Can’t get enough Ray Garton? Visit his author page for lots more.

The New York Times reports a flourishing black market for meteorites. But perhaps the dealers or their customers would think twice if they thought the artifacts might bear a deadly parasite that inhabits their bodies and drives them to madness and explosive self-destruction.

That happens to be the premise of Ejecta, the terrifying science thriller by William C. Dietz.

In Ejecta, an infected university professor commits suicide in order to leave a message for an ex-student named Sara Devlin. She returns home to discover that her old friend had been host to an alien parasite. Her attempts to expose the danger take her down a path that leads to a computer called the Crop Circle, research suggesting that human heads have been exploding for thousands of years, and an on-again off-again affair with a professional meteorite hunter who has secrets of his own. Together they battle the government and the alien menace while the future of the human race hangs in the balance.

Regarding other William C. Dietz books Publisher’s Weekly says, “A genuine adrenaline rush.”

Booklist says, “Breakneck pacing, strong characterization, alien-invasion buffs should enjoy, enjoy!”

And Romantictimes.com says, Mr. Dietz’s “… portrayal of ordinary people fighting for their lives and freedom is a touching tribute to the human spirit, demonstrating that life goes on and love doesn’t die.”

If you enjoy Ejecta you can choose among many other Dietz science fiction adventures published on E-Reads.

RC

Open Letter to Librarians

Over the last few days we at HarperCollins have been listening to the discussion about changes to our e-book policy. HarperCollins is committed to libraries and recognizes that they are a crucial part of our local communities. We count on librarians reading our books and spreading the word about our authors’ good works. Our goal is to continue to sell e-books to libraries, while balancing the challenges and opportunities that the growth of e-books presents to all who are actively engaged in buying, selling, lending, promoting, writing and publishing books.

We are striving to find the best model for all parties. Guiding our decisions is our goal to make sure that all of our sales channels, in both print and digital formats, remain viable, not just today but in the future. Ensuring broad distribution through booksellers and libraries provides the greatest choice for readers and the greatest opportunity for authors’ books to be discovered.

Our prior e-book policy for libraries dates back almost 10 years to a time when the number of e-readers was too small to measure. It is projected that the installed base of e-reading devices domestically will reach nearly 40 million this year. We have serious concerns that our previous e-book policy, selling e-books to libraries in perpetuity, if left unchanged, would undermine the emerging e-book eco-system, hurt the growing e-book channel, place additional pressure on physical bookstores, and in the end lead to a decrease in book sales and royalties paid to authors. We are looking to balance the mission and needs of libraries and their patrons with those of authors and booksellers, so that the library channel can thrive alongside the growing e-book retail channel.

We spent many months examining the issues before making this change. We talked to agents and distributors, had discussions with librarians, and participated in the Library Journal e-book Summit and other conferences. Twenty-six circulations can provide a year of availability for titles with the highest demand, and much longer for other titles and core backlist. If a library decides to repurchase an e-book later in the book’s life, the price will be significantly lower as it will be pegged to a paperback price point. Our hope is to make the cost per circulation for e-books less than that of the corresponding physical book. In fact, the digital list price is generally 20% lower than the print version, and sold to distributors at a discount.

We invite libraries and library distributors to partner with us as we move forward with these new policies. We look forward to ongoing discussions about changes in this space and will continue to look to collaborate on mutually beneficial opportunities.

No matter how high and thick we build them and assiduously we police them, the barriers against content theft are crumbling as unscrupulous marauders find new and daring ways to rob authors. As overwhelmed carriers and retailers lose the struggle to screen their sites, an army of “content farmers” pours through the breaches, packaging and selling copyrighted works on a gigantic scale.

That’s the essence of a report posted on Publishing Trends on the great “Kindle Swindle”. It describes research by Impact Media’s Mike Essex.

“The Kindle Store allows anybody to upload identical content under multiple user names. Many ebook vendors don’t check copyright on works that are submitted, and Essex noticed that people are stealing content from the web, quickly creating ebooks about the same topics from multiple angles in order to target different keyword variants, and publishing them—some Kindle authors have ‘written’ thousands of books in a single year. The Amazon.com domain name gives these books an added boost in search results; royalty payouts are high even when a book is priced at $0.99, and reviews aren’t a surefire solution to combating the problem.”

Essex says that readers don’t know if the e-books they buy and read are legit or stolen.  But because the stuff is so cheap they’re not inclined to look too hard at whether it was written by the true author or someone who just slaps his name on the true author’s work. Screening content should really be the job of the carrier or retailer, but few of them bother. “If content holders like Apple and Amazon spent even one hour a day searching,” says Publishing Trends,”they would save customers a lot of money by removing bad content.”

Read Essex’s complete article  here.

Richard Curtis

“I’ll publish my book with Amazon as long as I can retain the print rights.”

“Original e-book publication is fine, but I don’t consider my book legitimate unless it’s printed on paper and sold in bookstores.”

“I don’t care if Amazon pays 70% royalty, I’m not interested in straight royalty, no advance deals.”

Those are typical explanations given by authors reluctant to see their books released as Amazon originals.  But thanks to a shrewd partnership between Amazon and Houghton Harcourt, a traditional print publisher, authors and their agents may no longer have reason to say no when Amazon offers a contract.  According to Publishers Lunch, Houghton Harcourt will distribute selected Amazon titles in bookstores.

This arrangement could be win-win-win for Amazon, Houghton and of course for authors. By teaming up with Amazon Houghton gets titles that have been pre-selected, pre-edited, pre-formatted and pre-promoted. They just have to add water to make money.  And does Houghton ever need money. For years its parent company has flirted with ruin thanks to ill-conceived fiscal maneuvers that left it up to the chin in debt.  (See Parent Company Leveraged up the Giggy)

Amazon benefits from having a big foot inside bookstores. And it can now bid for properties against conventional publishers like Simon & Schuster, Penguin and Macmillan because the bookstore playing field is now level.

And of course authors benefit from having their e-book cake and print cake and eating both.

We don’t know the details, but speculation is that Amazon would license the print rights to Houghton the same way a traditional publisher would license book club or paperback reprint rights to a third party.  Houghton would underwrite or at least contribute toward the advance.

One concern is how comprehensive Houghton’s acquisitions will be. If they pick and choose, as the report seems to confirm, authors and agents could hold out for guaranteed print publication.

Says book industry consultant Mike Shatzkin:

“From one standpoint, this makes a lot of sense. Amazon can sell the hell out of a book online, and they have long made print available through their CreateSpace program. But they can’t merchandise books in stores. Even paying extremely high print and ebook royalties, as they do, they can’t maximize an author’s revenues if they can’t deliver store sales of print in today’s world.”

What’s that you say? Does this mean that Amazon is now going into competition with its own suppliers, bidding against the very houses that supply Amazon with books?  Short answer is yes.  But that should come as no surprise, as Amazon has never been shy about competing with publishers. The chance to get its titles into bookstores may simply be too tempting to let a little thing like scruples get in the way.

Read It’s official: putting books in stores is a subsidiary right

Richard Curtis

Are you an author? Are you shy? The answer is that you can be either an author or shy but you can’t be both.

With publishers shifting the responsibility for promotion onto the shoulders of authors, those who don’t have a flair for hype or a face that breaks hearts are not going to make it.

Salon‘s Laura Miller picks up on this theme in a recent piece entitled Author, Sell Thyself. “It has become a mantra that today’s author — whether self- or conventionally published — must learn to promote his or her books,” she writes. “Some, like [Barry] Eisler and [Amanda] Hocking, happen to be good at it, but many aren’t. People often become writers because they’re introverted or awkward in personal encounters and have poured everything they want to say to the world into their work. What usually gets lost in the perpetual refrain about authors becoming their own marketers is that there’s no particular connection between writing talent and a gift for self-promotion.”

Miller cites Thomas Pynchon, Emily Dickinson, J.D. Salinger and Harper Lee as reclusive writers who probably would not cut it in an age when we demand that authors be media stars.

Miller also cites self-published superstar Hocking, who recently created a sensation by crossing the avenue against the red light and signing a multimillion dollar deal with a traditional publisher.  Her motive for the move was simple: “Being me is a full-time corporation.” Meaning that self-publishing has drained the time she needs to write.  “The amount of time and energy I put into marketing is exhausting. I am continuously overwhelmed by the amount of work I have to do that isn’t writing a book. I hardly have time to write anymore, which sucks and terrifies me.”

A few months ago we wondered Do Authors Make Good Publishers? Read Miller’s Author, Sell Thyself and you’ll see why the jury is still out on that question. And while you ponder it, here’s another: Will a day come when we pick up a book and ask “Is that all there is?  Just words on a page?”

Richard Curtis