I’ve gathered some links of interest and thought I’d share. But the catch is, I’d like you guys to share your own publishing links of interest in the comments section. Of course, I’d also like to hear what you think about my links — sorry, no coffee yet and about to head out to get my car worked on. So I’m hoping this makes sense. Have I said I don’t like mornings?
Amazon is apparently the leading contender in the race to acquire Dorchester Publishing. The auction for the publisher’s assets will take place in August and Amazon has already expressed its interest. Depending on what source you read, it’s either a done deal already or Amazon is only one of any number of companies/persons looking to bid on the publishing house. I’m waiting for the howls of outrage to begin if Amazon does buy Dorchester. Will it make the brand an active publisher again — which will be direct competition to other publishers — or will it simply bring out Dorchester’s backlist? Either way, it will be another change in the publishing landscape and will begin another round of outraged cries against Amazon. I’m reserving judgment until I see exactly what happens with the auction and what Amazon does if it does place the winning bid.
I’ve been asked several times by a certain “dragon” if there is any intelligence or common sense in publishing. There is and it is on display in this discussion about what publishers need to do in the face of the Department of Justice price fixing law suit and other changes in the industry. In my opinion, Don Lin hits the nail squarely on the head and I hope there are others in the industry listening to what he has to say.
Dean Wesley Smith has a great post up on pricing. Read it. Think about it. Read it again.
Also go read Kris Rusch’s latest post. Please, read it and think about it — especially if you are a writer and have been worrying about what to do about what you see are bad reviews of your latest work — and then think about it some more.
So, what are your thoughts about these posts? Do you have other links you think would be of interest?
Mad Genius Club 
21 responses to “Saturday Links”
On a topic somewhat related to Ms. Rusch’s post on perfection in that the thought was inspired by the commenter who wanted to view self-pubbed works as programs with continual updates: What if sometimes authors chose to imitate the movie industry? Especially for backlist books that were sold to traditional publishers and changed significantly, would any authors be willing to “release” (epub or print) both the “original motion picture” (traditional published text) and the “director’s cut” (a different version a bit longer that the author liked better)?
Here are other links for your consideration:
(1) From Courtney Milan, romance author with a day job as an attorney, comments on B&N hiring lawyer superstar David Boies for the DOJ case –
http://www.courtneymilan.com/ramblings/
(2) From Patricia C. Wrede, young adult author, comments on managing the backlist and long-range thinking as a writer: http://pcwrede.com/blog/long-range-thinking/
Good luck on the car maintenance, Amanda. I have to take my car in sometime in the next week for an oil change and hopefully nothing more. I know, I know, I could do it myself but the guys down the street make it quick and easy and I am happy to pay them to do it for me when I can afford it.
I’ll reply in detail when I get home, JP, but I wanted to thank you for the links and the well wishes on the car maintenance. Hopefully, all I’m having to do is the inspection. However, so far I am at my second location and the wireless is spotty here. The first, the local garage I usually use for inspections — and nothing else — couldn’t do it today because their machine is broken. Now I’m waiting in line at the next place down the road and it is already too hot to walk home. Le sigh.
There have been books re-release as the “author’s perfered version” where the originally published book was better than the “author’s prefered version”.
Isn’t better entirely at the discretion of the reader? When movies inspire groups of superfans, don’t those consumers get both version and get a lot of enjoyment out of debating which one is better and why?
I imagine the question from the author’s side for all this can be summarized as: Is there a sufficient business case to justify the time and expense for producing two versions instead of one?
JP, I’ve heard plenty of readers say that Stephen King’s _The Stand_ was better in the original form. It was a case where the editorial “cuts” made it a better read than what King had turned in. For that matter, plenty of readers have said that King’s early works were better reads than his later works.
As for the author’s side, publishing “updated versions” of his books should be his decision not the publisher’s decision.
As a reader, I wonder if “updated versions” are a good idea.
I have read one book where I prefer the “updated version” but (as I said) I’ve also heard the other side concerning “updated versions”.
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Paul,
I have problems with the so-called “classics” are updated. If they are classics, they don’t need to be updated. I don’t fall into that camp who feels Heinlein, for example, should be updated because tech has changed so much since he wrote his books or because he might not meet our sensitive standards anymore. (Rolling eyes so hard they clatter in my head). But that’s just me.
Agree, I can understand the author wanting to “add parts” that editors wanted him to cut but nobody else (after his death) should be allowed to “update” his books.
There in another question that has to be asked: is the author willing to run the risk of having the readers see what their pre-edits version looks like, especially if that author is also self-publishing? My gut says most authors probably shouldn’t go this route, at least not until they have a well-entrenched reputation. You don’t want your readers, or potential readers, getting their hands on just one manuscript that shows how it needed heavy edits to become readable. Why? Because they will assume all your work is like that and will shy away from buying anything that is “self-published”. It won’t matter if you had it professionally edited. Why? Because they won’t know it was.
Now, there are exceptions. If you already have a following. If you have made the choice to tell legacy publishing to take a flying leap. If you are confident enough in your own work to know the original was better.
That said, I know there are some books that are better before editors get hold of them. But it is a difficult call to make as to whether you want to bring those out are not. And remember, you won’t be able to do so until the rights to the original revert back to you.
As for a publisher actually publishing both versions, they might for a Stephen King or Nora Roberts, etc. But they will do it as an “enhanced” e-book and charge more for it.
Hey, I’m writing on stage. Are you telling me I should stop?
Nope. You have a following to start with and, for another, your rough drafts are better than a lot of authors’ final, polished products. So…thp. Quit being silly 😉
Yep.
I read that Rick Locke’s Temporary Duty has an alternate ending he wrote that’s a lot less up-beat. This would be a good candidate for a “director’s cut” edition.
We’ve long seen “abridged” editions of classics, like Robinson Crusoe where passages contemporary editors disapprove of are expurgated. This is the opposite where passages are added by the author.
I’ve thought that a broad spectrum of editions should be offered for sale ranging from bare-text ebooks to fully illustrated, bound in leather, numbered and signed, limited collector’s editions.
Steve, I guess I’m skeptical right now because e-books are still in the formative stage and we are still finding the market share. Yes, that market share is growing, but we are still fighting for legitimacy within the publishing industry, much less with a large portion of the reading public. Before we start trying to figure out all the bells and whistles that could/should be added, we need to figure out things like formats — will MOBI go the way of betamax or will Amazon continue to support it, or will they start selling in both MOBI and EPUB formats — price points that are realistic, DRM, etc.
The main thing really holding back a lot of the bells and whistles are the limitations of e-books readers. E-ink readers simply won’t handle those add-ons and not everyone has a tablet or smartphone or wants to read on their computers.
Alternate endings, though, are realistic add-ons. It isn’t difficult to code in the html that would link the reader to ending one or ending two. It could even be used as a promotional means. Here are two endings. Voting on the ending you like best will end on X-date and will impact where the next book in the series goes. One entrant will be selected to receive. . . .
Hmm, may have to consider that.
I try to hit Courtney Milan’s blog every week or so. Here I have to give a hat-tip to Taylor L. for aiming me in that direction. But thanks for this link because I had read it and it got lost in the morass of my pre-coffee brain.
As for Wrede’s blog, I’ll have to check in on it more often. And Wrede is right in this post. You can’t just sit there and hold onto things in the hopes that a better offer will come along, at least not if you aren’t making an informed decision to do so.
Thanks for the links!
Something that’s pretty much under the radar: who is chasing the .book top level domain? Dot Book Top Level Domain. That could seem insignificant except… as anyone who’s tried for a new domain name lately has figured out there aren’t that many easily remembered combinations.
Thanks, Kate. I had read that Amazon and Bowker were after it, but hadn’t read about the others.
/unlurk/ Another link of interest may be the WSJ’s article yesterday
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304870304577490950051438304.html
about companies tracking how people read e-books, and reporting back to authors things like: people stop reading here. Fix it.
Seems to be pointing to a possibility from the big publishers of even more standard cookie cutter crap, but what do I know? I’m ‘just a reader.’
Elaine T.
That sounds horribly like something I heard a former acquisitions editor saying yesterday and today: publishers want fast, snappy books that go easy on description and do not have many quiet moments. So apparently I’m not really seeing Guy Gavriel Kay’s books on the shelves, even his early ones, and apparently I’m the only person who does not always enjoy a fast, flashy read. Oh, and we’re supposed to strip out any Latinate verbiage from the books, too, because readers in their 20s don’t know the meaning of words like “prologue.” Unless we are writing literary fiction, that is.
Sigh. That is just one of many things wrong with the industry. As an editor, I want a story that holds my attention, has a good plot, characters I care about and where the world makes sense — and that is whether it is sf/f, mystery, romance or whatever. I want to be immersed in the book or short story. The last thing I want is a pale imitation of whatever the latest trend is. If you send me a vampire novel, those vamps had better not sparkle and they’d better have a damned good reason for being in high school. A werewolf story had better be more than a few fight scenes around sex that makes no sense whatsoever. Your mystery had better be one that makes sense and doesn’t make me want to throw my Kindle against the wall. Your romance had better have a plot, no sex just to have sex and a heroine/hero who doesn’t turn out to be a Mary Sue.
But then, I’ve never said I’m “normal”.
Elaine, thanks for the link. Part of me is appalled by the fact they can track what we are reading, how far we are reading, etc. But another part is telling the appalled part that it really isn’t any different from how our viewing on our DVRs is tracked or how our grocery buying trends are tracked by those loyalty cards so many of us use.
The problem I can see with it is that the publishers will still only look at their own data and not look at full market trends, much less trends that include small press and indie published e-books. And they will twist the data to still fit their own business models — after all, that’s what they’ve been doing with hard copy books forever.
I think the browser ate my comment – trying again.
/unlurk/
Another article of interest is the WSJ’s from yesterday about e-book readers sending data back to publishers about reader habits. The publishers are apparently thinking of mining the data for info such as : readers bog down here and telling the writers to fix it. As presented it all looks like a way to get even more bland fiction, but what do I know? I’m just a reader.
Article here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304870304577490950051438304.html