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.

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“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

“I’ve been robbed!” is a cry heard with growing frequency as authors discover that their books are being sold or given away on any one of countless pirate websites. To make things worse, these pirates work in the open, flagrantly touting their wares and thumbing their nose at legitimate copyright owners and their legal representatives.

Many of the perpetrators operate far beyond the reach of any laws and understand too well that few copyright owners are willing to spend time or money to bring them to justice. Stephen King stated it as well as anyone: “The question is, how much time and energy do I want to spend chasing these guys,” he said in an email reported on Teleread. “And to what end? My sense is that most of them live in basements floored with carpeting remnants, living on Funions and discount beer.” (It’s a wonderful image but not necessarily an accurate one, as we recently reported).

Although piracy is rampant, victims are not completely without recourse. Every major legitimate Internet service provider has a procedure for reporting incidents of piracy perpetrated on their sites and redressing offenses. Reputable ISPs fear liability if they enable infringements. Using threats of terminating service, they will pressure culprits to take down illegal material – at least, when they know about it. All too often, however, they do not know they are hosting an infringement until the infringee brings it to their attention.

You would think that as soon as that happens the ISP would hasten to yank the pirated material off its website. But, as those who have complained to their carriers have discovered, it’s not that easy, because the service provider has no way of knowing whether or not the complaint is valid. You have to prove that you are the true copyright owner and have a valid claim of infringement. The victim, in other words, has to demonstrate that he or she is in truth the victim. Here is where injury is compounded by insult.

Anyone who’s ever been abused and then told that he or she was “asking for it” will appreciate how offensive it is for an author to be asked to provide proof of authorship. But if we put our lawyer hat on we will realize that it’s necessary. Those who review claims have no way of distinguishing the robber from the robbed without some ID and documentation. Thus, when you click on a website’s “takedown” link to request removal of your stolen book, try to keep your cool when you are informed that “Under Section 512(f) of the DMCA, any person who knowingly materially misrepresents that material or activity is infringing may be subject to liability.”

We recently had reason to ask Scribd to remove a work by our client that had been posted on its site by a third party. We were furnished with a link to its takedown procedure such as this one. It took us only a few minutes to fill out and within 24 hours our request was heeded and the file removed. I am told that Scribd has been cooperative about such complaints. Once it receives and investigates one and confirms that an infringement has occurred, Scribd creates a file documenting the true copyright owner so that future attempts at illegal uploads will be flagged if not summarily rejected.

That’s one win for the good guys. Unfortunately, the score is Bad Guys 1000- Good Guys 1. What it will take to level the playing field?

Richard Curtis

“All is vanity.”
Ecclesiastes
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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

Do you know how to pronounce Scribd? Does it rhyme with “scribed”? Or “fibbed”? I’ve even heard it called “Scrib-dee”.

How about Que, Plastic Logic’s forthcoming e-book reader? Is it pronounced “Kay”? or “Cue”?

Next is the Flepia, Fujitsu’s e-book reader. Is it Fleh-pia or Flee-pia?

Or the UK e-book reader called the Cool-er. As we recently wondered (see Another E-Book Reader with a Dumb Name), is that pronounced “color” (the device screen is black and white by the way)? Or do you pronounce it like the refrigerated water dispenser commonly found in business offices, suggesting it’s cooler than the Kindle? Or maybe you come to a full glottal stop, thus: Cool. Er.

If I were a technology company investing millions of dollars to develop a device or service or product, it would make sense for me to ask a focus group to review it. And to make sure that focus group is stocked with people with dirty minds. Like Charles Curtis’s.

Charles Curtis believes there is money to be made helping corporations avoid selecting embarrassing names for their products. He would call his service “Double Entendre Consulting”. “The concept,” he explains, “is this: say you’re a startup with a company name, logo, slogan but you’re nervous that there’s something hidden in it that will make you a laughingstock. So you pay my company a fee and I, along with my fellow gross-minded colleagues, will review your selections and tell you if they’re clean or if they will become fodder for viral hilarity on the Internet.”

For example? “If Kids Exchange had hired us, we would have informed them that their URL, kidsexchange.net, spelled out something very different from what they intended. Same goes for an outfit called Who Represents? Their URL is Whorepresents.com.

“This idea came up in college when I used to frequent a fast food joint that prided itself on making great salads. Unfortunately, their slogan was, ‘The Original Salad Tossers’. If you don’t understand why that’s so hilarious, click here. When I went back there years later, the slogan on their napkins had changed, so perhaps someone had informed them that sickos such as myself were rolling on the floor every time we mentioned their slogan. And teabagging? The Republicans, should have consulted me before they began advocating that practice. Click here to learn why.”

Full disclosure Number 1: I sired this person. Full disclosure #2: if he does go into the double entendre business I intend to become a serious investor, because I think there’s a fortune to be made in exposing dumb names.

And that brings us to The Nook.

Charles does not mention what he would have said to Barnes & Noble had they consulted with him about The Nook, BN.Com’s newly minted and named e-book reader. But he might consider employing a blogger named Charissa, who wrote the following Open Letter to Barnes & Noble:

Dear Barnes & Noble,

What were you thinking?

Who on earth thought it would be a good idea to name you new E-Reader device the nook? I mean, really? Do you know anything about pop culture and slang from the last few decades? I would love to know what kind of focus groups you used to demo the name and marketing, or did you use focus groups at all? Because I don’t know who wouldn’t have told you this is a bad idea.

And did you even give a thought to what your booksellers are going to have to endure, answering questions about the nook(ie)? Not to mention all the jokes they’re going to be subject to. Trust me, there is an endless supply of nook jokes out there, from the innocent “nook, nook” jokes to more suggestive humor.

Not to mention the fact that within less than 24 hours of the nook’s announcement, some anonymous B&N employees have already begun re-writing Limp Bizkit’s “Nookie” in honor of the nook. Do you realize how obnoxious it is to have the words, “And you can take you Kindle and stick it up your…” stuck in your head all day long?

And it’s really bad that the device itself doesn’t even come out until the end of November and I’m already having trouble using the name in a sentence with a straight face. We still have more than a month of nook jokes to go.

I realize it’s too late to change the name now, but I really hope next time you’re a little more careful when selecting the name of something as monumental to the company as this device apparently is.

Sincerely,
A Concerned Citizen

PS – If you were to, say, give out free nooks to all your employees in an effort to encourage them to familiarize themselves with the device for customer questions, then I would be more than willing to forgive you for this minor naming indiscretion.

We wish the best of success to the makers of the Flepia, Que, Cool-er and Nook. They should be aware, though, that had they hired Double Entendre Consulting they might have avoided becoming, in the words of W. S. Gilbert, “a source of innocent merriment.”

Richard Curtis, President of E-Reads (which is pronounced “Ee-Reeds”, not “Eh-Reds”)

An editor told me this story and swore it was true:

Years ago he was hired by a rich and successful publisher. When he walked for the first time into the president’s office he observed a teetering pile of royalty statements and checks addressed to authors. Some of the checks were dated several years earlier.

The publisher followed his gaze. “You’re wondering about these?”

“Yes. It looks as if they’ve never been mailed out.

“That’s right. And would you like to know why?”

“Sure.”

“I’m waiting for the authors to sue me. When they sue me, I’ll mail them out.”

I was reminded of this story when I read today that an author had launched a lawsuit against Scribd, the startup document-sharing website that claims 50 million monthly users. After coming under fire for its failure to screen submissions, it made an effort to clean up its act and began turning away content of suspicious origins. Some publishers like Simon & Schuster have expressed sufficient trust to upload some of its books or excerpts.

According to cnet News, the author, Elaine Scott, “found on Scribd in July an unauthorized copy of one of her titles, ‘Stocks and Bonds: Profits and Losses, A Quick Look at Financial Markets.’” Describing Scribd as “the YouTube for documents,”her attorneys claimed that the book had been downloaded more than 100 times from Scribd.” They went on to say that Scribd seems to believe that “any business may misappropriate and then publish intellectual property, as long as it ceases to use a stolen work when an author complains.”

There is some resonance with the current Google Settlement dispute in that Google wants to digitize books that have been “orphaned” – that is, have not been claimed by the legimate copyright owners.

Read details here
For the complete court filing, click here.

Richard Curtis

One way to conquer pirates is to co-opt their territory. To chase would-be pirates off Scribd.com, Simon & Schuster has announced it will deploy some 5,000 e-book editions on the website, reports Brad Stone in the New York Times. Though still in startup, Scribd has mushroomed into a hugely popular locus for writers to upload documents, including books.

Unfortunately, despite heroic efforts, Scribd has not been able to bar its doors to those passing off as their own the work of others. But, like a policeman giving a sample garment to a dog to sniff, once the website’s filtering software recognizes a legitimate copyrighted text it will instantly identify and reject imposters. Call it pre-emptive piracy management.

But there’s a far less subtle motivation for publishers to cast their lot with Scribd: its irresistibly low commission on sales. In the first decade of the E-Book Revolution, retailers charged the same 50% discount for the sale of digital content that brick and mortar bookstores charged for print. Foremost among the fifty percenters is Amazon and its Kindle. But of late publishers have begun to question the 50%-off shiboleth. Guru Mike Shatzkin gave sharp voice to this restive group. Pronouncing high discounts “daft,” he declared “There is no comparison between the retailers’ costs and risks associated with physical books and those associated with ebooks. There is no economic justification to providing the same level of discounts.”

“Now,” said Shatzkin, “is the time to change this.” You can read about it in detail here.

Picking up on these populist sentiments, Scribd came out of the chute charging 20% off the list price to its content provider customers, and that includes publishers. Stone quotes Scribd chief executive Trip Adler as declaring that S&S “is the first public endorsement by a major force in publishing that the social Web will play a major role in the future of book sales.”

Other standard bearers of Big Publishing may well join the rush to Scribd. The anti-piracy features are certainly attractive, but the telling factor may well be a desperate need to push Amazon and other etailers back to a commission structure that is, well, not quite so daft.

RC

Joe Quirk is a bestselling novelist and bestselling science writer. Rather than go the conventional route with his latest novel Exult, he turned to Scribd, where you can download Exult and his first novel, The Ultimate Rush, for $2.00 each.

Exult is the story of a thrilling sport that, in the author’s experts hands, becomes a metaphor for all that is ecstatic and tragic in life. “Is a full life worth an early death?” asks Quirk. “Jack Ostruck loves hang gliding, but when someone he loves dies in a crash, the grieving mother demands that Jack come to the funeral and explain why flying is worth her child’s death.” The novel has moved the likes of Khaled Hosseini, bestselling author of The Kite Runner, to sing its praises.

Because Scribd is a new venture and a controversial work in progress (read what Kill Zone had to say about it), we asked Joe to blog about his experience and that of two author friends of his who similarly cast their lot with him. You can watch a video of the three on YouTube, read a guest editorial in Publishers Weekly by one of the three, Kemble Scott, and read Joe’s own comments below.

RC
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I’ve fantasized about Scribd.com since 1996, well before its founders reached puberty, when I wrote an essay about the coming “Revolution in Publishing” that no publisher would publish. I had to wait to publish my first novel, which gave me the opportunity to provoke an argument with my publisher during my first book tour. I held up my hardcover book and declared to my horrorstruck editor, publicist, and assistants that soon we won’t need this hunk of tree pulp any more. I announced that the substance of a novel is not in the book but the words, which were easily digitized, and the next generation will be about about as sentimental about the smells and textures of books as we were about the smells and textures of LPs.

Read Joe Quirk’s statement in its entirety.

Hachette Book Group, tormented by pirated and other unauthorized use of its copyrighted books, has taken aggressive measures to curb these practices, including a face to face meeting with Scribd, the peer to peer file sharing website. Though Scribd has pledged cooperation, its prophylactic protection remains porous enough to alarm many authors, agents and publishers. HBG is pressuring another site, Wattpad, and enlisting the publisher community to join the action.

Hachette has circulated a statement via email to the publishing industry. Below is the text in full.

RC
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As Hachette Book Group’s CEO, David Young, noted in a recent New York Times article, online piracy is “exponentially up.” The rapid growth in e-books has resulted in a dramatic increase in pirated or unauthorized editions on peer-to-peer file sharing websites that allow users to upload, share and download content of all kinds, free of charge. Two such websites, Scribd and Wattpad, are particularly active. While some of the content appearing on these sites is lawful and user-created, an alarming number of unauthorized book titles are uploaded by people without authorization and shared for free on both sites.

HBG is firmly committed to combating this type of blatant online piracy, and our Legal Department reviews those sites on a periodic basis for unlawful copies of a sampling of HBG titles. The Legal Department sends various document sharing sites, including Scribd and Wattpad, numerous copyright infringement take-down notices each month. In addition to the checks being made by our legal department and our editors, we hope that authors and agents will check frequently for infringements and report them to us. The most efficient method of reporting piracy is to complete the Online Piracy Report Form attached and email it to HBG’s Legal Department at piracy@hbgusa.com. We will then pursue the take-down process. If an author or agent is unable to complete the form for any reason, they should notify their editor.

HBG has sent stern legal letters to some of the sites, alerting them to the potential legal recourse for permitting or hosting repeated infringements. HBG is also a member of the AAP’s Online Piracy Working Group (“OPWG”), which coordinates anti-piracy efforts among member publishers. Despite these efforts, we recognize the daunting challenge we all face in combating online copyright infringement. Even when we succeed in getting an author’s titles removed from a site, the same titles can easily pop up again, uploaded by new users.

In an attempt to address the problem head on, HBG recently initiated a face-to-face meeting with Scribd to discuss its antipiracy efforts. Scribd described to us its newly implemented text-matching copyright protection system, which Scribd claims been highly effective at detecting and removing hundreds of unauthorized uploads every day (although it admits that its system is not perfect). Scribd also committed to us that it disables, without notice, the accounts of repeat infringers on a “three-strikes” basis, and that all documents previously posted by that infringer are automatically withdrawn. Scribd pledged that it has a zero tolerance policy for users who post advertisements offering to send pirated e-books to personal email addresses. We discussed ways to strengthen Scribd’s text matching filter and Scribd has recently published a more complete set of antipiracy policies. Scribd recently met with the AAP’s OPWG to discuss its procedures in detail and agreed to follow-up on a number of questions and issues raised by the OPWG.

HBG hopes to persuade Wattpad to implement more robust procedures. Wattpad confirmed recently that they have begun implementing their own text matching filter. We hope that pressure from HBG, other publishers, and the OPWG will cause document sharing sites, such as Scribd and Wattpad, to address this problem proactively.

Thank you for your attention to this urgent issue. Should you have questions about online piracy, please email us at piracy@hbgusa.com.

This may contain confidential material. If you are not an intended recipient, please notify the sender, delete immediately, and understand that no disclosure or reliance on the information herein is permitted. Hachette Book Group, Inc. may monitor email to and from our network.

Click here for Hachette’s Online Piracy Report Form.