Who is to Blame? Part Two

by

Another voice weighs in on the death throes of the mass market paperback. Agent Richard Curtis, in a fascinating series of articles at Backspace (and excerpted this month in the Authors Guild newsletter), lays the blame at the "implosion of the wholesale book distribution business" in 1996, which:

…transformed the way business was done throughout the industry. It was a traum from which the book industry never recovered.

…although a growing number of traditional bookstores stocked mass-market paperbacks, it was the wholesale distribution network that fueled the huge growth of the book business in the last quarter of the twentieth century, spawning a thriving industry and a generation of bestselling authors. Even when those authors graduated to hardbacks, paperback reprints of their books drove sales overall. In the late 1980s
mass-market paperback revenue made the difference between feast and famine for hardcover publishers. Income from romance fiction alone contributed 25% of the cash flowing into the trade book industry..

He says the rise of bookstore chains like Barnes & Noble and Borders (as well as the power of Amazon) took business away from wholesalers. Computerized sales info allowed publishers, retailers and wholesalers to better track what was selling.

Assessing these patterns, paperback distributors began asking themselves why they needed to employ human labor when they could more efficiently and economically service bookstores and other outlets by shipping books directly to the retailers. Yes, it would mean that the human element — the guy in the station wagon who knew which towns loved historical romances and which preferred contemporary ones, which adored westerns and which were big on science fiction – would be removed from the equation. But — well, that was progress!

The big agencies pulled the plug in that summer of 1996 when whole fleets of drivers were discharged, and in the following years the wholesale distribution workforce was reduced to a fraction of what it had been in its heyday.

In fact, the consequences were nothing short of calamitous. The impact was felt in every sector of the publishing business, from what got written to what got published to what got read. It wasn’t
long before customers in west Texas or Nebraska or South Carolina discovered that many books by their favorite authors were no longer being stocked in their local stores.

As paperback publishers awoke to the new buying patterns, they were forced to choose between star authors and those whose sales performance fell below a minimum level. At first the triaging was restricted to marginal genres like westerns, but as the last decade of the twentieth century progressed the definition of “marginal” broadened to embrace every category of book that fell below an ever-stricter definition of commerciality, a process akin to the lowering of the bar in a limbo dance. Limbo indeed: authors who had made a living for years from sales of ten or fifteen thousand copies of their paperbacks were now being dropped by their publishers as the minimum sales quota increased to twenty or thirty thousand copies or more.

As much as authors would dearly love to bring back the robust mass-market paperback erak, it’s no likelier than a return to steam locomotives.

In his view, the future lies with print-on-demand and e-books, though neither format has yet reached its potential.
Richard S. Wheeler blames writers. Richard Curtis blames distrubtion. What do you think?

Too Much Whining?

by

There’s an interesting discussion going on over a Buzz Balls & Hype, which ran a list last month of author gripes about the publishing biz.  Nothing new there. What’s new is author Melanie Hauser’s  reaction.  Hauser, who’s first novel is coming out in the fall, is tired of  authors whining about the state of the business.

My biggest problem with a lot of blogs out there, a lot of the posts on
various forums, articles that are written – is the unrelenting
negativity about the business, with no discussion about the good part
of being published. It seems to me that people approach publishing with
a stunning sense of naivete. Then they complain about it, big time –
and sometimes anonymously – when it turns out to be just a business.

Her comment reminded me of a recent experience. I was one of many novelists invited to speak at a conference attended mostly by aspiring writers. I watched dumbfounded as a panel of successful novelists did nothing but complain about the business and what a raw deal they were getting. The novelists were so wrapped up in their whining, they didn’t see how badly they were flopping with their  audience, who came for tips, laughs, and encouragement.  Any one of the paying attendees would have gladly traded places with the novelists and assumed their woes (or as my agent calls them, "champagne problems.")  I think, at times, we published authors forget just how lucky we are to be living our dreams, even if those dreams aren’t quite as perfect as we imagined.

How One Survivor Survives

by

Somehow I missed this news item in the holiday rush. It turns out that Jenna Lewis, the 27-year-old single  mother of handicapped twins and one of the original SURVIVOR castmembers, tried to X-tend her 15 minutes of fame.Jennalewis_survivorallstars_240_002

Back in May, Jenna and her new male-model husband made a hard-core video tape of their  "honeymoon
adventures" for "personal use" — only to be stunned when it "disappeared."

"I ran around the house crying, screaming, so angry and upset that
day," she told reporters at the time. 

And she was "fighting mad" and out-raged when the tape showed up for sale at $40-a-copy on a website. Her biggest concern, she said in a press release, was the impact the tape might have on her 8-year-old daughters. The people who did this were despicable scum.

Well, surprise surprise… it turns out she is the despicable scum.  The New York Daily News discovered in December that Jenna Lewis and her manager own the website that’s selling the tape… and they have made $100,000 in sales so far.

It’s a shame. Lewis came across as so genuine and grounded on the original SURVIVOR. Seeing what fame has turned her into is truly sad…and sickening.

(For more details, check out Steve Rogers’ article at RealityTVWorld)

Who Needs Religion If You Have Tivo?

by

The multitalented Mark Evanier is a man who loves his Tivo.

It’s odd — and yes, I know it’s probably not healthy — to have an
emotional connection to a product. I think TiVo is the best thing to
happen to television since Chuck Barris retired. If nothing else, I
find it so liberating that I never have to fret about being home on
time to watch a certain show or to hassle with setting the VCR. I can
go about my life, comfortable in the knowledge that the latest
broadcast of The Daily Show will always be there to watch when
I’m ready to watch it…and I can pause it or rewind it or watch part
and then stop and go get lunch and watch the rest tomorrow. It makes
you feel like you own your TV instead of the other way around.

He offers users this link to get in line for the priority software upgrade that will allow you to  record a show on your TiVo and then transfer it to your PC. 

I look forward to this upgrade but a tiny part of me resents having to
wait in line. I owned one of the first TiVos made, and have continually
upgraded and purchased new models, and I think they should cater to
"charter subscribers" before they service Johnny-come-latelys to the
wondrous world of TiVo.

I’ve got my first-generation Tivo hooked up to a GoVideo DVD burner/VCR combo, so I can easily off-load whatever I record to DVD or video.  For the time being, that’s enough for me.

How I Write

by

My next DIAGNOSIS MURDER is due in March. I have the broad strokes of the story…. but that’s it. The broad strokes. The equivalent of  book jacket copy. I’ve still got to come up with the actual story.  I’ve
been able to procrastinate by doing research on the period, which has given me some plot ideas, but I’ve still got to figure out the  murders, the clues, the characters and, oh yes, the story.

This  is the hardest part of writing… the sitting around, staring into space, and thinking. This is writing, even if you aren’t physically writing.  A lot of non-writers have a hard time understanding this. Yes, just
sitting in a chair doing nothing is writing. A crucial part, in fact.
It can be hell,  especially when you are on as short a deadline as I am.  Everyone has their own method… this is mine:

Want to find out more? Check out my article at The Mystery Morgue.

How Not To Sell A Series

by

I received the following email this morning.  I’ve deleted the name and phone numbers, but otherwise I haven’t changed a thing…

My name is X, im am 16.
I have an idea of a drama tv show and I was want to sell it, so I was wondering
if you want it, or if you know a producer that will. My phone number is XYZ.  Thank you so much.

If this was written by a 16-year-0ld, it doesn’t say much for the quality of education in our country…

Who Is To Blame?

by

Western novelist Richard Wheeler starts off his new blog by tackling the demise of the mid-list and the declining paperback market, hot-button issues that have been discussed a lot in the publishing biz. But Wheeler points the finger of blame where it has never been pointed before. Not at publishers. Not at distributors. Not at bookstores…

Is it possible that authors are largely to blame for the sharp decline in
fiction? Most authors would vehemently say no. Most would argue that fiction is
better than ever, well done, vivid, rich and compelling. It’s not the fault of
authors. Not the fault of all those mid-list people who have been bumped and can
no longer get contracts.

And yet, I wonder. The decline in readership of
novels has been going on for years, and began long before the upheavals that
affected the mass market distribution system. There was a time when this country
had literary lions. A time when an author was a celebrity. A time when a
best-selling novel sold in the millions. A time when even genre fiction sold in
the hundreds of thousands. Are we, who create the stories, who fashion the
product, ready to say that it’s not our fault that we sell in the tens of
thousands if we sell at all?

He believes that, by and large, books aren’t as well-written these days, that they are "technically elegant" but lack any real character.

I think ever since the 1970s fiction has been in
trouble, and that if we authors are aware of what factors are making us less and
less readable and compelling, we can, in our own unique ways, write more
compelling literature and win back some of our lost readers.

He promises to discuss these ideas in more depth in later postings. I, for one, will be eager to see what he has to say…

Ghosting

by

Veteran novelist & ghost-writer James Reasoner weighs in on the Michael Gruber debate and, as it happens, has a point-of-view that I share…

I don’t know the details of the
contract(s) between Gruber and Tanenbaum, but if Gruber agreed that he
wouldn’t reveal he was writing the books, then he shouldn’t have
revealed it. I understand the frustration he must have felt — I once
ghosted a book that got glowing blurbs from big-name folks who never
would have blurbed a book with my name on it — but a deal’s a deal.

He also talks about the unspoken rules about writing series novels under the publisher’s "house names."

Of course there are varying
degrees of secrecy on these things. Some of my house-name Western
contracts say that I can’t publicly claim authorship but that I can use
the books as professional credits within the industry.

I’m sure it’s common knowledge in publishing circles that folks like Margaret Truman and William Shatner, for example, don’t write their own books and that editors are well aware of who really does do the work… but I doubt most readers know when, or if, they are reading ghosted books. I’m sure there are readers out there who think Don Pendleton writes all those EXECUTIONER novels…

Speaking of James Reasoner, mystery fan Aldo Calcagno raves aboutthe author today on Ed Gorman’s blog.

Reasoner may be one of the most underrated writers
around today. TEXAS WIND is a classic, but how many people have had the
opportunity to read it (Thankfully PointBlank has republished the book).