From time to time we bring back some of the more popular articles and blogs posted on E-Reads.  This one is from November 2009.

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

“All is vanity.”
Ecclesiastes

The uproar over Harlequin Enterprises’ launch of a self-publishing venture reminded me of something my father used to say. He was an honest businessman, but every once in a while, when he saw an unscrupulous competitor getting stinking rich, he would shake his head and say, “I’m in the wrong racket.”

I sometimes wonder if I’m in the wrong racket too. Maybe I should have gone into vanity publishing. I’m sure I’d have made a fortune. Everyone who’s gone into it has made one, so I can’t blame anyone for succumbing to its allure.

And now mainstream publishing has jumped on the bandwagon, with respectable firms like religious publisher Thomas Nelson and, most recently, Harlequin Enterprises picking up the banner. The line that once sharply separated traditional publishing (“We pay you”) and vanity publishing (“You pay us”) has all but dissolved in this corrosive environment of fabulous riches.

My early exposure to the power of vanity occurred when I joined Scott Meredith’s literary agency after graduating college. Meredith had a fee-reading operation that ran like a turbine engine. Using his agency’s track record as bait – his brochure was a collage of six- and seven-digit checks paid to professional clients – Meredith attracted countless would-be authors prepared to shell out hundreds of dollars for a manuscript reading they hoped might lead to acceptance for representation and an eventual professional career. I don’t believe I ever saw a book accepted for representation out of the fee-reading program in all the years I worked there. Meredith’s operation made tons of money and he died a wealthy man.

Around 2000 a number of enterprising business people recognized the profit potential in self-published books utilizing digital media. (For purposes of this piece I draw no distinction between self-publication, subsidized publication and vanity publication.) Until then the most famous name in subsidy publishing was Vantage Press (which, significantly, is still going strong). But companies like iUniverse, Xlibris and an outfit called Fatbrain offered a variety of self-publication services. How well did they do?

Well, Fatbrain with its subsidiary Mighty-Words, which published technical and professional material online (someone described it as Amazon for geeks), was sold to Barnes & Noble for $64 million. Xlibris? Acquired by Random House for an undisclosed sum, then sold to Author Solutions, the vast self-publishing empire which embraces iUniverse, Author House, Wordclay, Inkubook and Canadian vanity publisher Trafford Press. Kevin Weiss, CEO of Author Solutions, projects $100 million in revenue in 2009. Last year, Author Solutions released more than 21,000 new titles, according to Mediabistro, “including one out of every 20 new titles put into distribution in the U.S. Overall, ASI’s catalog now includes more than 120,000 titles from more than 85,000 authors.” Author Solutions is partnering with Harlequin in its soon-to-be-renamed Horizons self-publication program.

But there’s more. Publishers Marketplace publisher Michael Cader recently reported that “Ebook distributor and online self-publishing platform Smashwords announced late Friday that BarnesandNoble.com will sell titles from the company as part of its new ‘premium feed.’ Smashwords, which says they publish about 2,600 titles electronically, will sell to BN.com at a traditional discount… Founder Mark Coker says that ‘additional distribution relationships are forthcoming.’ He says that ‘until today, it was difficult if not impossible for independent authors and publishers to gain such mainstream digital distibution.’”

Yet another company, Scribd, calls itself “the largest social publishing company in the world, the website where tens of millions of people each month publish and discover original writings and documents.” Scribd boasts “10 million documents published” and “5 million Scribd document reader embeds.” Last spring it was reported that Scribd was partnering “with a number of major publishers, including Random House, Simon & Schuster, Workman Publishing Co., Berrett-Koehler, Thomas Nelson, and Manning Publications, to legally offer some of their content to Scribd’s community free of charge. Publishers have begun to add an array of content to Scribd’s library, including full-length novels as well as briefer teaser excerpts.”

With so much money being thrown at subsidy publishers, and with the blessing of mainstream publishing, the evolution of vanity from the margins to the center of the publishing universe is complete. The erosion of traditional gatekeepers like reviewers, critics, newspaper book editors, and other refined literary tastemakers makes it clear why even a conservative publisher might lose its head over the prospect of all that money – and be tempted to go into another racket.

Richard Curtis

Lynn Andriani of Publishers Weekly reports that Harlequin self-publication imprint formerly known as Horizons has been renamed DellArte Press. “In the wake of widespread criticism over its self-publishing imprint,” Andriani writes “Harlequin has changed the imprint’s name from Harlequin Horizons to DellArte Press. As Harlequin publisher and CEO Donna Hayes said it would, the company renamed the imprint to a designation ‘that [does] not refer to Harlequin in any way.’ There is no mention of Harlequin on DellArte’s Web site.”

Andriani adds: “Harlequin did not respond to a request for comment this morning on the name change or if it was back in the good graces of the RWA. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers have called for Harlequin to completely cut ties to the self-pub program.”

Read Harlequin responds to criticism of its self-publishing arm with a new name

RC

We conclude Vanity Week with a blog that futurist Mike Shatzkin recently posted, publicly asking Thomas Nelson, the Christian book publishing giant, to explain its new self-publishing program, WestBow Press. WestBow is partnering with Author Solutions, the biggest player in author-subsidized publishing and a partner with Harlequin in its controversial self-publishing venture.

Here are the questions posed by Shatzkin. We are not aware that they have been answered:

1. How many such titles will they do per season or per year?

2. How will access to Nelson’s (always limited, as is any publisher’s) sales and marketing bandwidth be allocated to this imprint?

3. Will the books be vetted as suitable for Nelson’s Christian mission? And, if so, how and by whom?

4. Will the books be vetted at all for quality? Or will an author just choose the WestBow option and, if that’s the case, how much extra will be they paying and what will they be told they’re getting for their money?

5. The story says that Nelson editors won’t touch the books but will “monitor sales to identify potential big sellers.” What’s the pre-monitoring launch plan? What’s the plan if Nelson editors actually identify a “potential big” book?

Hyatt discusses the initiative on his blog and says he sees real revenue in it. But he doesn’t answer any of the questions above.

I am not alone in anticipating that publishers may change things around in the future with big authors, sharing more risk (less or no advance in this case, not cash for services) for more reward. But it is a more radical step than I would have imagined for a publisher with an industry brand for quality to allow authors to buy their way onto the list. Their must be some controls here, one would think. But we certainly don’t know what they are yet.

Read The new Thomas Nelson self-publishing initiative; more questions than answers.

RC

Robert S. Miller, President and Publisher of HarperStudio, has been following the recent Harlequin/RWA controversy and, in a statement offered to E-Reads, suggests the author and publishing communities should keep their minds and options open on the matter of self-publication. “Just because a writer is paid an advance in a traditional way doesn’t make a book ‘good’, and just because they may be sharing the risk with their publisher to some degree doesn’t make a book ‘bad’.”

Here’s his statement in full:
RC
*************************************
“I was surprised to read here about how antagonistic the various writers’ associations (SFWA, RWA, MWA) have been toward the announcements by several large publishers that they are launching “self-publishing” divisions. While it seems fair to ask those publishers to make a clear distinction between those imprints and the others that they operate, and to make the differences clear to prospective writers, I don’t see what’s wrong with publishers offering a continuum of various services to writers. There are so many forms of publishing proliferating now; does it really threaten the writers in these associations that these publishing houses would have different publishing models under the same corporate roof? Just because a writer is paid an advance in a traditional way doesn’t make a book “good,” and just because they may be sharing the risk with their publisher to some degree doesn’t make a book “bad.” I say, let many flowers bloom.”

Eva Ullian, who describes herself as an impressionist painter, translator, historical researcher and retired teacher, has left an interesting comment on our blog about vanity publishing, You Got That Right, Ecclesiastes!

We thought her viewpoint was worth reprinting in full.
RC
**************************************************
I am not going to defend Harlequin or Thomas Nelson but just describe what these new imprints are about. They are not Vanity Publishers because such would mean they send you thousands of unwanted books to your garage and you sell them even though they keep 50% or so of royalty. They are not Self-Publishers because that would mean you do everything, and I mean everything yourself but you get to keep, obviously, 100% of the royalty. People have tagged them as Self-Pub for convenience. But they are ASSISTED publishing, which means you ask them, in the basic package, to publish your book, exactly the way you want it, or seek advice if you want a second opinion. They then have a distribution system in which you as the author like in traditional publishing, if you have any sense, will aid to sponsor your own book since putting a book on a shelf doesn’t mean it sells. You get 20% of the royalty for soft copies. With traditional publishers you get more or less 5% of which 15% is given to your agent- who has done what? Given you access to a publisher, changed your book round so much because obviously you are not the expert that an ASSISTED publishing author is otherwise you would take the responsibility of investing in your book with real money.

The way I see it is that such publishers cannot publish in the traditional manner, give out advances that are not earned out and survive. The problem is indeed that traditional authors expect to have their book published, get a big advance, and if it doesn’t earn out hard luck for the publisher- they have to take risks. Well not anymore- you pay, and it’s only a partial amount, for the cost involved so your book is published and what replaces your advance is the increased royalty percentage, so no one loses out. I don’t see any unfairness in that at all, it’s what they have been doing in most countries, except the UK, for decades.

You pay, only a partial amount, for the cost involved for publication in Assisted Publishing. The Agent Rachelle Gardner has given a detailed breakdown of cost involved in the publication of a book in Trade Paper which comes to $58,000 and Hard Back is $90,000. See her blog here: http://cba-ramblings.blogspot.com/2009/11/is-your-book-worth-it.html As you probably know, Harlequin asks for $600 and CrossBow $1,000 for a basic package. So, perhaps now you can appreciate why I don’t think it is possible that Assisted Publishing is there to make money off writers. They are there to give an unprecedented, excellent opportunity to writers who have no access to publishers because agents have denied them that access as judging such authors not fit for publication. Finally, publishing houses are opening up the doors to us, as most agents define us, SECOND CLASS authors. And I for one, thank them.

“All is vanity.”
Ecclesiastes
**********************
The uproar over Harlequin Enterprises’ launch of a self-publishing venture reminded me of something my father used to say. He was an honest businessman, but every once in a while, when he saw an unscrupulous competitor getting stinking rich, he would shake his head and say, “I’m in the wrong racket.”

I sometimes wonder if I’m in the wrong racket too. Maybe I should have gone into vanity publishing. I’m sure I’d have made a fortune. Everyone who’s gone into it has made one, so I can’t blame anyone for succumbing to its allure.

And now mainstream publishing has jumped on the bandwagon, with respectable firms like religious publisher Thomas Nelson and, most recently, Harlequin Enterprises picking up the banner. The line that once sharply separated traditional publishing (“We pay you”) and vanity publishing (“You pay us”) has all but dissolved in this corrosive environment of fabulous riches.

My early exposure to the power of vanity occurred when I joined Scott Meredith’s literary agency after graduating college. Meredith had a fee-reading operation that ran like a turbine engine. Using his agency’s track record as bait – his brochure was a collage of six- and seven-digit checks paid to professional clients – Meredith attracted countless would-be authors prepared to shell out hundreds of dollars for a manuscript reading they hoped might lead to acceptance for representation and an eventual professional career. I don’t believe I ever saw a book accepted for representation out of the fee-reading program in all the years I worked there. Meredith’s operation made tons of money and he died a wealthy man.

Around 2000 a number of enterprising business people recognized the profit potential in self-published books utilizing digital media. (For purposes of this piece I draw no distinction between self-publication, subsidized publication and vanity publication.) Until then the most famous name in subsidy publishing was Vantage Press (which, significantly, is still going strong). But companies like iUniverse, Xlibris and an outfit called Fatbrain offered a variety of self-publication services. How well did they do?

Well, Fatbrain with its subsidiary Mighty-Words, which published technical and professional material online (someone described it as Amazon for geeks), was sold to Barnes & Noble for $64 million. Xlibris? Acquired by Random House for an undisclosed sum, then sold to Author Solutions, the vast self-publishing empire which embraces iUniverse, Author House, Wordclay, Inkubook and Canadian vanity publisher Trafford Press. Kevin Weiss, CEO of Author Solutions, projects $100 million in revenue in 2009. Last year, Author Solutions released more than 21,000 new titles, according to Mediabistro, “including one out of every 20 new titles put into distribution in the U.S. Overall, ASI’s catalog now includes more than 120,000 titles from more than 85,000 authors.” Author Solutions is partnering with Harlequin in its soon-to-be-renamed Horizons self-publication program.

But there’s more. Publishers Marketplace publisher Michael Cader recently reported that “Ebook distributor and online self-publishing platform Smashwords announced late Friday that BarnesandNoble.com will sell titles from the company as part of its new ‘premium feed.’ Smashwords, which says they publish about 2,600 titles electronically, will sell to BN.com at a traditional discount… Founder Mark Coker says that ‘additional distribution relationships are forthcoming.’ He says that ‘until today, it was difficult if not impossible for independent authors and publishers to gain such mainstream digital distibution.’”

Yet another company, Scribd, calls itself “the largest social publishing company in the world, the website where tens of millions of people each month publish and discover original writings and documents.” Scribd boasts “10 million documents published” and “5 million Scribd document reader embeds.” Last spring it was reported that Scribd was partnering “with a number of major publishers, including Random House, Simon & Schuster, Workman Publishing Co., Berrett-Koehler, Thomas Nelson, and Manning Publications, to legally offer some of their content to Scribd’s community free of charge. Publishers have begun to add an array of content to Scribd’s library, including full-length novels as well as briefer teaser excerpts.”

With so much money being thrown at subsidy publishers, and with the blessing of mainstream publishing, the evolution of vanity from the margins to the center of the publishing universe is complete. The erosion of traditional gatekeepers like reviewers, critics, newspaper book editors, and other refined literary tastemakers makes it clear why even a conservative publisher might lose its head over the prospect of all that money – and be tempted to go into another racket.

Richard Curtis