Kindle Worlds: Amazon mainstreams fanfic

Kindle Worlds: Amazon mainstreams fanfic

Characters live in our heads.

Not just characters we create, but ones we encounter when we read (or watch TV or a movie, play a game, and so on).

Imaginative people have always thought about what those characters do outside the story they’ve seen.

Some of those “shared dreamers” have written the stories down and made them available to other readers…even though the stories aren’t authorized by the rightsholders.

That’s part of what has made fanfic (“fan fiction”) complicated.

You do not have the legal right to publicly distribute stories about characters that someone else owns (especially if those characters are trademarked, but that’s not required).

However, people do it anyway.

Some rightsholders have tolerated it, even practically encouraged it within certain guidelines.

J.K. Rowling of Harry Potter fame has done that…no explicit sexual relations between the characters, but fanfic has been okayed by the author.

One of the biggest sites is

http://www.fanfiction.net/

It covers many, many properties, but a search for Harry Potter gave me 65,678 results just now.

Some fanfic authors put a lot of time and energy into it…for no pecuniary compensation. While not charging for something doesn’t exempt you from copyright (as some people seem to think), you are clearly more likely to draw the wrath of a rightsholder if you do get paid for it.

So, there have been a few conflicts here. One is rightsholders wanting to protect the characters. Another has been fanfic authors who may be really good, but aren’t able to financially benefit from that…which might be reducing their output.

Getting permission from a rightsholder to do an authorized work has been very complex.

Amazon, demonstrating their remarkable innovativeness, is about to change that.

I was sent a press release about it, which is now available at the official:

Kindle Worlds site

Here’s how Amazon has changed the game.

The “fanfic” here will be licensed, approved by the rightsholder.

The rightsholder will get paid by Amazon…and so will the fanfic author.

This could be extraordinarily significant.

Why does it matter so much?

Exclusive content.

Part of the information for authors reads

“When you submit your story in a World, you are granting Amazon Publishing an exclusive license to the story and all the original elements you include in that story.”

Let’s lay this out a bit more.

There is a creative work (TV show, book) that has an intense fan following. The fans want more than what they can get officially.

A fan writes a new story. That fan follows the guidelines provided by the rightsholder.

The fan publishes the story through Kindle Worlds.

Other fans buy the story. The author gets a royalty…and so does the rightsholder.

The only place you can get that story is from Amazon.

Typically, Amazon’s independent publishing platforms have not involved Amazon having the exclusive license for the content*: this does.

Tie-in novels, which are authorized by a rightsholder, have been big business (think Star Trek, Star Wars, Monk, and many more).

There could definitely be a market for this. Part of that is going to depend on the licenses Amazon can negotiate. They are starting out with Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, and the Vampire Diaries (all held by Warner Brothers). I think that will rapidly expand. Other e-tailers might try and set up similar programs…but very few will have the clout and willingness to spend the money on this to make it happen.

One neat thing Amazon has done is gotten established authors to write in Kindle Worlds. Barbara Freethy, a #1 New York Times bestselling author, has written a Pretty Little Liars piece, for example.

Of course, not everybody submitting stories will be that quality. That’s going to be a risk: if the stories are bad, does it damage the brand? I think not…it’s so clever that Amazon will label these as to show that they are non-canonical (not part of the official oeuvre), so I think the main universe is protected. Think of it like “plausible deniability”.

Another question will be if authors will embrace it. I think they will. You can earn royalties, even on very short works. That’s a new piece of this as well: a separate (lower) royalty rate for short shorts (5,000 to 10,000 words). Authors are fans, too…they’ll want to do this without the complication of getting their agents involved (although they agents might not like that part). Sure, some people will continue to do fanfic outside this system for free…partially because they like that community feeling, and partially so they don’t have to follow the guidelines. They’ll risk legal action doing so, as they do now…and that prosecutorial attitude may increase, since there is a legal way to do it now that benefits the rightsholder.

Oh, and Amazon is going to pay the royalties monthly! That’s another attraction for writers.

Would I do this personally?

Quite possibly. As regular readers know, I have written parodies here. You don’t need permission to do that (in the USA…interestingly, that’s different in Canada, which I hypothesize is one reason we get a lot of Canadian comedians here). However, that requires that you are using your piece to point out flaws in the original, and, well, it would be nice to write something where that wasn’t the case.

I have started scripts for shows I liked at times, intending to submit them through the proper channels…but the shows always got canceled before I finished, so I started to worry if I was the cause. I had a nice one started for the Planet of the Apes TV series, for example.

I’ve also written in the style of public domain (not under copyright) works…and was really pleased when a site that matches your style to famous authors’ styles did say I wrote like those authors.

This may also be a great launch platform. Somebody who writes a terrific Kindle Worlds piece may be contracted by rightsholders to write something in the actual world…contribute a novel or a script to the official series. It’s happened before (at least that a fanfic author has added to the canon), and this makes sure the work would get noticed.

This sort of thing is why you can have faith in Amazon’s future (knock virtual wood). Their future isn’t tied up in having the next best hardware…it’s in having the next best idea.

Will there be pushback? Absolutely…”Amazon is turning a labor of love into sell-out commercial hackwork”…”Why do I get paid less for 10,000 word than for 100,000 words?”…”Why do they consider what I wrote pornography?”…”Why did they do that to that character?”

However, I think for the vast majority of authors, rightsholders, and readers, this is going to be a wonderful opportunity.

What do you think? Feel free to tell me and my readers by commenting on this post.

* The exception to indepedently published exclusivity with Amazon is when a book is part of the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library (KOLL). Amazon also makes exclusive deals with some tradpubs (traditional publishers)

Update: I just want to say, I’ve been thinking about this and talking with people about it. I think that, if I was the rightsholder for some older properties, I would jump on this. For example, people would want to write Dark Shadows or Man from U.N.C.L.E. fanfic. Thundarr the Barbarian and Thundercats also come to mind. Yes, there are or have been updates to those, but I don’t think any of them are literary revenue streams to any great extent right now. Putting them in KW (Kindle Worlds) would generate both income and interest…which might lead to more opportunities.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.

Round up #168: Kindle 3D phone, geeky Moms

Round up #168: Kindle 3D phone, geeky Moms

The ILMK Round ups are short pieces which may or may not be expanded later.

Interesting mix at KDD for Mothers’ Day

I’m sure (or at least I strongly hope) that Amazon chooses the Kindle Daily Deals with promotional tie-in value in mind.

That’s why I was impressed with today’s Kindle Daily Deals.

Okay, sure…the featured (and Gold Box) deal is on any one of a number of highly-rated romances.

However, the science fiction & fantasy deal is

2001: A Space Odyssey (Arthur C. Clarke Collection: The Odyssey)

for $1.99.

That’s really making a solid choice for those geeky Moms.

It has an interesting developmental history. Essentially, Stanly Kubrick bought the rights to some short stories from Arthur C. Clarke…and they jointly wrote the screenplay. However, at the same time, Clarke (with Kubrick’s knowledge, and, I think, encouragement) wrote the novel.

The novel took elements from a few Clarke stories, as did the movie. It isn’t that the movie was written without Clarke and then Clarke adapted the movie.

The Teens daily choice is also one I could see being a sharing between mother and child…but it isn’t one I would think would be read aloud:

The Dark Is Rising (Dark Is Rising Sequence, The)

That’s a Newberry and Carnegie Medal honored book. It is, however, what I call a “Discovered Destiny” book: the protagonist finds out that they aren’t really who they always thought they were, or that they have some secret mission to perform (that they didn’t know about previously). While in some cases that can be “anti-parent”, I could certainly see how a mother and child could have some very interesting discussions if the mother had read the book when young and then gave it to her own child. That’s certainly possible in this case…the book originally came out in the mid 1960s.

Smashwords: “How Data-Driven Decisions *Might* Help Indie Ebook Authors Reach More Readers”

This

presentation

by Mark Coker of Smashwords is the result of some really heavy lifting in data analysis, and has some great insights for e-book authors and publishers.

While this is a single source of data, I’d suggest that it is one of the most significant analyses you’ll read this year, and I highly recommend it.

They do say we can share it with our friends, but I don’t want to take too much away from it. Let me note a few highlights:

• Longer books sell better (60% of the bestsellers were more than 100,000 words)
• Free books are most downloaded, but low-priced ($0.99 and $1.99) are not downloaded as much as somewhat higher priced books…some publishers are underpricing their books
• Sales are not distributed evenly…in other words, just like with print books, some bestsellers really dominate the market. That might be a surprise for e-books for some, who want to see them as more “democratic”

Note that I’m really summarizing: there are 71 slides in the presentation. Yes, the presenter has an agenda, but I did find the data valuable (even if collection of data across all outlets could not be done evenly).

James Patterson explains why his books sell

This is a really insightful

The Guardian article

from mega-successful author James Patterson.

It talks about how the author’s background in advertising made the first big book a success, and about collaborating and producing around ten books a year.

This is one of those stories about “finding a better way”, and worth reading.

CBC: “Writers’ Union of Canada to vote on admitting self-published authors”

CBC article

Sometimes, it feels like the USA is really good at making stuff (like the Kindle), but slower than some other countries at changing behavior (which, as a trainer, is what I do for a living).

The Writers Union of Canada is scheduled to vote at the end of May as to whether or not to allow independently publishing authors into the group.

Generally, traditionally published authors have balked at that. They wanted to recognize the hurdles that were passed to become tradpubbed…it was certainly different from paying a “vanity press” to publish something.

That idea has really changed, though, and will continue to change.

People shrink at the term “self-published”, although that’s often what is happening…the preferred term is now “independently published”…even though that’s a bit mushy to me.

The simple fact is that there are now many “hybrid authors”. They are both traditionally published and independently published. Many very successful tradpubbed authors are now going their own way, and that’s likely to increase.

It then challenges you: why do we accept this author when they do things one way, and we would reject the same author when they do things a different way?

I think it’s possible to set a certain level of success as the barrier to entry. Having a single title on a “recognized” bestseller list (you can create a modifiable list) for at least three weeks (an arbitrary number…I don’t want it to be just one appearance on the list at a retailer, because those can be manipulated by buying a bunch of copies yourself…even at particular times of the day when competition is lower.).

I suspect it will be a while before the Authors Guild in the USA seriously considers the same question, but I could be wrong…and would be happy to be wrong.

WSJ:”Amazon Is Developing Smartphone With 3-D Screen”

This
Wall Street Journal article

talks about an array of possible gadgets from Amazon this year, including a phone with a 3D holographic display…no glasses needed.

Others mentioned include a cheap audio-only streamer, and a set-top box (like a Roku).

I’ve suggested that this will be a year without huge technological breakthroughs in the EBR (E-Book Reader) market, and a 10-inch Kindle Fire doesn’t count.

It’s interesting that EBRs aren’t mentioned.

Here’s the thing. Amazon can be a hardware manufacturer that doesn’t make money on hardware. That works if they use your loyalty to the hardware to get you to buy other profitable items (we are back to my “diapers and windshield wipers” line).

It’s hard for anybody to compete with that.

For me, though, I’d love to see all of this as one device eventually. Why give me a set-top box if my Kindle Fire could easily wirelessly transmit to a TV? Of course, that’s what the set top box could be…just seen as an “accessory” for a Kindle Fire.

How much cheaper could an audio streamer be than a tablet? Sure, you could probably make something for $10…but can’t you just make the Fire do the same thing?

I’ve said before that, if it’s a choice between carrying a tablet that makes decent phone calls and a phone with a relatively small screen that shows movies decently, I think people will go with the tablet. Tablets are small enough to carry reasonably easily, but the bigger screen makes a difference in a lot of functions. Until we get morphable devices (which can change shape), I think the tablet will win.

That said, Amazon can make a lot of money (er…sales, not profit…they aren’t that good at profit) with an array of devices. Those devices have to get people to sign up for Prime, and Prime has to get people to buy physical items.

I think that’s the winning strategy.

I have to admit, I’d be a little afraid to get a “Kindle phone”. My Samsung is very reliable, even it’s a bit outdated now perhaps. It’s a real workhorse. I can’t say that about my Kindle Fire: like an early model PC, it does “crash” a lot, but not so it’s really irritating. Flipboard may stop responding, for example. I wouldn’t want that to happen with my phone…

What do you think? Should authors’ groups accept independently published authors? How do you determine for yourself who is “an author”? Would you buy a Kindle phone? Do you have a geeky Mom? Are you more likely to buy a book for $2.99 than for $1.99? Feel free to let me and my readers know what you think by commenting on this post.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.

Author Profile: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Author Profile: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

This is one in a series of posts where I focus on a particular author.

Sherlock Holmes would have sneered at Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

It’s ironic, really…almost like Daddy issues.

There are few clearer illustrations of an author’s ability to create a character who is in many ways superior, but certainly different, than themselves.

Can you imagine how Holmes would have approached a case where two young girls claimed to have taken photographs of fairies? It certainly wouldn’t have been with the generosity with which Conan Doyle championed it…even writing a book supporting it.

No, the detective and the author are two very different people.

No question, Holmes is one of the most popular literary characters of all time, and is repeatedly adapted into other media (not just the Basil Rathbone movies, but several TV series).

I would guess, though, that that is all that most people know of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It would certainly be enough, but it’s just the beginning.

This

Kindle store search for Arthur Conan Doyle

has 1,408 results at the time of writing. Certainly many of them are duplicates…since most of the work is in the public domain, it can be adapted, and reworked without obtaining permission (although that is arguably not true of all of it…that gets into a bit of a tricky situation).

You can find all of the Holmes books individually for free…or save yourself some trouble and for ninety-nine cents get this one:

THE COMPLETE SHERLOCK HOLMES and THE COMPLETE TALES OF TERROR AND MYSTERY (All Sherlock Holmes Stories and All 12 Tales of Mystery in a Single Volume!) … Conan Doyle | The Complete Works Collection)

It says its authorized by the estate, and it has enough reviews that I would guess it would have been pulled down by now if that wasn’t true. The estate does defend the copyright.

I’d say the next series to go to after Holmes is Professor Challenger. Bombastic and egotistical, most people know the adventuring Prof from The Lost World, but there are actually three novels in that series. Again, you can get them individually for free, or buy a one volume set:

Complete Professor Challenger Lost World Series (Pulp Lost Worlds)

In particular, The Poison Belt has somewhat of the feel for me of a Doctor Who episode…although Professor Challenger is certainly very little like Matt Smith’s Doctor Who! It’s more the reaction to an epic scale event.

As to the other works, this is a good collection:

Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated)

For $2.99 at the time of writing, you get a wide selection of works, including Holmes and Challenger, but also plays, poetry, military history, and Spiritualism.

That last one is something that many Holmes readers may find incongruous about Doyle. That’s due in part, I think, to a misunderstanding of Spiritualism. At the time, many saw it as a scientific attempt to prove life after death (and/or communication with other non-corporeal entities). People did experiments (some of the quite bizarre): it wasn’t just a matter of “believing in ghosts”.

Now, certainly, this wasn’t anything accepted by the mainstream, and there was fraud involved in some of it.

That’s a place where Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini, who had a personal relationship, disagreed.

Houdini was an adamant anti-Spiritualist, on a campaign to expose what the escape artist saw as fakes exploiting the bereaved.

Conan Doyle was a supporter of the existence of the  supernatural.

There has been more than one book about this odd clash of celebrities, each with a larger than life mythos. Here is a recent and well-reviewed one:

Masters of Mystery: The Strange Friendship of Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini

While many people nowadays would laugh it all off, thanks to Holmes, Conan Doyle was an influential figure. When test footage of the 1925 version of The Lost World was shown to The Society of American Magicians, the New York Times reported it as uncertain as to whether it was merely a fictional movie (with amazing effects) or real pictures of real dinosaurs (perhaps obtained through psychic influence…they linked them to the Cottingley Fairies):

NYT article pdf

“Whether these pictures were intended by the famous author and champion of spiritism as a joke on the magicians or as a genuine picture like his photographs of fairies was not revealed. Sir Arthurs said they were ‘psychic’ and also that they were ‘imaginative,’ and announced in a firm tone, before they were shown, that he would submit to no questions on the subject of their origin.”

That certainly says something about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Was he just being a merry prankster (the author clearly knew that these were special effects)? Was the point to prove the fallibility of  the magicians, and thereby call into doubt their criticism of Spiritualism? Was all of Conan Doyle’s advocacy of Spiritualism perhaps done in a similar tone?

That’s a mystery…and the game’s afoot!

Update: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle reading list

I wanted to give you a few more specific recommendations…

Sherlock Holmes novel: Sign of Four

I normally like to start at the beginning of a series and go straight through, but honestly, the first Holmes book (A Study in Scarlet) has such a quirky story structure that some people think the copy they got is in error. There’s a long flashback that people think is a different story. I’d skip it and start with the second. The Hound of the Baskervilles may be the most famous, but until you know Holmes, it doesn’t work as well.

Sherlock Holmes short story collection: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

I’d say that this really cemented the idea of Holmes, and there are some great stories in this one. A Scandal in Bohemia is important in understanding Holmes, and The Adventure of the Red-Headed League and The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb will stick with you.

Professor Challenger novel: The Lost World

This is just flat-out a rollicking adventure novel. It’s one of the most universally enjoyable of Conan Doyle’s works.

Standalone novel: The Maracot Deep

This one is philosophical…more fantasy than science fiction in feel. Holmes would hate it.

History: The Great Boer War

This was non-fiction revised repeatedly…it was actually published before the war was over. You can sort of think of it as investigative journalism, with Conan Doyle actually interviewing people involved in this conflict between colonial powers in Africa.

Paranormal: The Coming of the Fairies

How could you not? Sir Arthur Conan Doyle arguing for the reality of pictures that little kids took of dancing “fairies in their garden”.

Of special interest to readers: Through the Magic Door

Conan Doyle writes about the books in his library. That can be a bit like having somebody tell you their dreams, because they never mean the same to you that they mean to someone else. Here’s the opening:

“I care not how humble your bookshelf may be, nor how lowly the room which it adorns. Close the door of that room behind you, shut off with it all the cares of the outer world, plunge back into the soothing company of the great dead, and then you are through the magic portal into that fair land whither worry and  vexation  can follow you no more.”

Autobiography: Dangerous Work: Diary of an Arctic Adventure

I haven’t read this one, but Conan Doyle served as the “surgeon” (which didn’t have quite the meaning it does today) on a whaling ship.

Special note: I chose Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for today partially because I wanted an author who was also a doctor to tie into my having a minor surgery today. Should be fine…it is done under general  anesthesia, though. I might be a tad less responsive for the next few days.

Update: I’m home from the surgery…everything seems to have gone well, although of course, it’s a bit too soon to be able to tell much. I’m going to be careful writing this…might say something even sillier than usual.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.

Waiting for Turow

Waiting for Turow

Who are the power players in reading?

Clearly, there are the readers…you and me. We can greatly impact things, even if we don’t always do it consciously.

If we don’t buy a book, that influences what other books are published. It can decide the fate of editors and even publishers.

The publishers are another power force. While the decentralization of distribution is sending them scrambling, traditional publishing still has the biggest impact on what is available and what authors make the most money the most regularly.

The retailers also have power…at least, until and unless direct distribution from publishers (who may simply the author of the book) gains a lot more market share.

That brings us to the authors.

Those are the people who actually write the words we read.

Who speaks for them?

For traditional authors, the obvious answer is

The Authors Guild

an advocacy group that is just over a century old.

Who speaks for the Authors Guild?

Scott Turow, their President, is undeniably one of their spokespeople.

The best-selling author recently made quite a statement in The New York Times:

The Slow Death of the American Author

Cheerful, forward-looking title, right?

Just what I would want to read from my leader…”We’re doooooomed!”

We can hold Turow responsible for the statements in this piece. Not only is Turow a writer, but a Harvard educated lawyer. This is not a spur-of-the-moment e-mail, or even a blog post like this (I try, and succeed, to average at least 1,000 words a day for you in this blog, in addition to a full-time job and other interests…that means I can’t always be as careful as I might be if I had a week to write something).

Assuming that Turow is saying exactly what is intended, there are some really quite odd suggestions in this article (which I highly recommend you read).

The opener talks about the Kirtsaeng case, in which the Supreme Court recently decided that even if a book was made outside of US jurisdiction, someone who bought that book could still resell it in the US without the copyright holders’ permission.

Turow, not unreasonably, suggests that the decision could mean that more books are sold used in the USA, which could reduce the royalties authors receive.

It’s easy to see scenarios where that isn’t true (if publishers raise the price of foreign editions to match that of USA editions, this resell model becomes much less likely). It’s also worth noting that this was done with textbooks…and I would venture to guess that many of the contributions to textbooks are done as works for hire, with the author being paid a lump sum rather than a royalty (although I don’t know for sure). The decision isn’t limited to textbooks, but they are high-ticket items. It would be much harder to make a profit by importing novels.

Raising the prices for overseas editions might even result in more money for authors.

However, one of the things that Turow says is that this is…

“…the latest example of how the global electronic marketplace is rapidly depleting authors’ income streams.”

Wait, what?

The student had friends and relatives outside of the country buy the paper textbooks, mail them to Kirtsaeng in the USA, and then sold them on eBay at a profit.

Physical books were snail mailed and resold.

Arguably, eBay is the global market mentioned, but all the electronic part of this happened here.

If eBay didn’t exist, Kirtsaeng could still have sold the physical books here.

It’s just an odd leap to go from what Kirtsaeng did to the “global electronic marketplace”.

Turow next lists groups of people who are “…vying for position at authors’ expense”.

Ready for the roster of evildoers?

• Publishers
• Search engines
• Libraries
• Pirates
• Some scholars

Go back and look at the third one again.

Scott Turow, the President of the Authors Guild, is saying that libraries are hurting authors.

Libraries.

…where many people become readers, and which are an increasingly important source of discovery, with the loss of brick-and-mortar bookstore chains.

Whether libraries actually are a problem or not, is that really where you want to go in an op-ed?

And don’t get Scott Turow started on e-books! Whoops, too late!

The weird thing here is that Turow acts like independent publishing of e-books doesn’t exist. Traditional publishers are ripping off authors of e-books, Turow suggests…as if there is nowhere else to go.

Turow’s tirade goes on…go ahead and read it to see what else is making the future for authors so dark.

Let me say right now: things have never been better for authors in America than they are now.

Many people who want to write and be read now have the opportunity who didn’t have it ten years ago.

Many authors are making money (even if it’s not brand name author kind of money) on their writing.

Authors have more freedom, more choices, more opportunity.

Yes, it’s different for someone who is already established like Scott Turow, and used to things being done a certain way.

Those ways be changing, but that doesn’t mean authorship is dying.

I’ve got to quote one more short excerpt from the piece, for the sake of criticism:

“Authors practice one of the few professions directly protected in the Constitution, which instructs Congress “to promote the progress of Science and the useful Arts by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” The idea is that a diverse literary culture, created by authors whose livelihoods, and thus independence, can’t be threatened, is essential to democracy.”

Remember that Turow is a lawyer.

Was this really about a “diverse literary culture”, or about “Science and the useful Arts”? I don’t think the framers were looking to particularly protect fiction with this…I think they wanted people to take the risk to create something, such as a map, and be able to profit from it to encourage that risk-taking.

Regardless, if this really is about a “diverse literary culture”, e-books are really delivering on that! There are thousands more independent e-books published each month than traditionally published e-books…and by a much, much wider group of authors with different viewpoints.

The Authors Guild should be embracing these changes, trumpeting them…and looking to protect authors’ rights. They should be cutting edge and innovative, not backward-looking and stodgy, as even their name indicates…I mean, “Guild” sounds so much like the Middle Ages, right? It makes it sound like you are hanging out with blacksmiths are arrow fletchers, well, except that the former has an active and welcoming web presence.

Lead, don’t impede.

Tell us about how authors make the world better, and what we as a society can do to help them do that.

We’d all get behind that.

Until then, there’s just this absurdist sort of comedy, and like Vladimir and Estragon, we are waiting for Turow…

What do you think? Is Turow right? If things do look that bad, what can authors and/or the Authors Guild do about it? Want to challenge my statement that things are better for authors now than they have been in the past? Feel free to let me and my readers know what you think by commenting on this post.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.

Author profile: Isaac Asimov

Author profile: Isaac Asimov

This is the first in what I think will be a series of posts where I focus on a particular author.

Isaac Asimov embodied what was best about the human mind. The author was like a walking world-wide web, with one idea leading to another…but also like the 11th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, with in-depth knowledge and explanations, while at the same time being an easily accessible author of science fiction, mysteries, and even limericks.

Prolific doesn’t begin to describe Isaac Asimov. Amazon lists 502 books (which does include different formats) at the

Isaac Asimov page at Amazon

and a search at Goodreads pulls up 1,762 titles (partially because different editions of the same book count as different titles there)

Goodreads search for Isaac Asimov

While Asimov famously has a book in nine out of ten of the Dewey Decimal major categories (although there is some argument about that…some suggest it might be all ten), I think my favorite thing was when Isaac did a commercial years ago (I think it was for tires).  Under the eclectic writer’s name on the screen, it just said, “Expert”.

You can’t write about robotics without Isaac Asimov…in part, because he coined the term (although he later claimed he thought it was an already existing word). Even today, we see many references to his “Three Laws of Robotics”:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

Robby the Robot famously (but unofficially) demonstrates the concept in Forbidden Planet (which is available to Prime members as streaming video at no additional cost). The movie is based loosely on Shakespeare’s The Tempest…and Asimov wrote one of the great popular guides to the Bard.

It is fair to say that Isaac Asimov’s fictional novels and short stories are works of ideas more than of people. An average fan could quickly name ten titles, but might be hard pressed to name ten characters. One notable exception might be Susan Calvin, an industrial robopsychologist, who reappears in several works. Yes, I thought it was cool that her last name was “Calvin”. If you knew my family, she would fit right into it (we do have a Nobel Prize winner in the clan: I grew up with Melvin Calvin as my “Uncle Mel”, although he’s actually my father’s cousin).

So, where to start reading Asimov on the Kindle?

Unfortunately, Random House, publisher of many of the works as e-books, is blocking text-to-speech access on some of the best-known.

I think that

Caves of Steel

might be a good introduction. It’s both science fiction and a mystery, and is the first novel in the Robot series. Although short stories precede it, it can be read without first reading those. It was also published in 1953, so you can read it for its sixtieth anniversary. If you are a fan of the movie Blade Runner, you might see some familiar things, even though that work was based on Philip K. Dick.

From there, range on.

I want to conclude this with a bit observation on Isaac Asimov as a person.

I was at a World Science Fiction Convention (Discon II in 1974), and Asimov was there. I have a hard time thinking of Asimov as less than fifty years old…and I suppose the fact that he was in his early fifties at the time is part of it.

I remember seeing a knot of all female fans (not super common back then), and back to a wall holding court was Asimov.

He was also having a “feud” with Harlan Ellison. That was all in fun, but they were seen as the old school versus the new school. Asimov pretty much didn’t write about sex (in his fiction), and, well, Ellison doesn’t have that inhibition. Their styles were quite different in other ways as well: Ellison was seen as young and hip, and Isaac was, well, “Uncle Isaac”.

As I recall it, they were doing a “lecture” (more like stand up comedy, almost) together. Asimov told a story about going in for surgery, and saying to the doctor just before succumbing to the anesthesia, “Doctor, cut my throat.” He said that later on, the doctor said he was laughing so much, he had to wait to proceed. Ellison responded, “Isaac, do you have to be such a yenta and always talk about your operation?”

I’ve wondered if that line of Asimov’s to the doctor was related to this quotation:

“Observe the universe, young man. If you can’t force amusement out of it, you might as well cut your throat, since there’s damned little good in it.”
–Gillbert Oth Hinriad
The Stars, Like Dust
written by Isaac Asimov
category:literature
decade: 1950s
collected in The Mind Boggles: A Unique Book of Quotations

That’s certainly what Isaac Asimov did: forced amusement out every possible corner of the universe, and shared it with the rest of us.

What about you? What are your favorite Isaac Asimov books? What would you suggest someone read? If you’ve heard of Asimov and never read him, what has held you back? Do you think of him as something other than a science fiction writer? If you are a fan, who do you think writes like him today? Feel free to tell me and my readers what you think by commenting on this post.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.

Round up #142: Stanislaw Lem bargain, college system doomed?

Round up #142: Stanislaw Lem bargain, college system doomed?

The ILMK Round ups are short pieces which may or may not be expanded later.

Cory Doctorow on why authors get paid what they get paid

This

O’Reilly Tools of Change column

by Cory Doctorow is one of the best insights into publishing I have ever read.

Doctorow and I don’t agree on everything, and I know that there are people who follow Cory’s ideas with a passion.

This column explains the pricing pressures that affect how much authors get paid, why mega-mergers in publishing will have a negative impact on that…and the effect of piracy (the last one is one we tend to approach differently).

I strongly recommend it.

Kindle Review: “An Author’s Story of Walking Away from His Publisher”

I’ve written several times about why authors might stay with their traditional publishers. This

guest post in Abhi’s iReaderReview

by Ed Ditto gives a great, personal, detailed, insider story of why an author might leave one.

Not surprisingly, e-books are a large part of the tale: both in the lack of attention paid to them by the publisher, and in the way they provide the author with an alternative, potentially more lucrative, to traditional publishing.

Any tradpub that wants to survive in an evolving world should read this one.

Coincidentally, my rotating column in The Writer’s Guide to E-Publishing this week was

What do tradpubs do…and can you do it?
TechCrunch: “How California’s Online Education Pilot Will End College As We Know It”

Gregory Ferenstein has an interesting opinion piece in this

TechCrunch article

California, which you may remember mandating e-textbooks for some high school classes years ago, is a piloting an online college class program which the article author says will change college (and the story offers a timeline of how).

I don’t think anybody thinks college education has been a model of consumer efficiency (and we could debate about whether or not it should be).

This is, in my opinion, a brave line:

“As someone who has taught large courses at a University of California, I can assure readers that my job could have easily been automated.”

I love the interaction I have with my students, but my situation is very different. I don’t have two hundred people in a lecture hall. Most often, I have fewer than ten. I’ve taught in situations where there were more, certainly, but the feel of a class is very different if Waldo could be hidden in the crowd.

It’s an intriguing perspective, although I think many of you will find it a tad hyperbolic.

By the way, the picture used to illustrate it is of John Belushi in Animal House, and I don’t think I’ve ever told this story here.

Many, many years ago, I had a director who was a big fan of Belushi’s (I wasn’t really a Saturday Night Live watcher, didn’t know much about the show). There was a “Stars of Saturday Night Live” tour coming to town, and the director wanted somebody to go and give John Belushi a gift.

Well, I went, and the show was terrible. It was Belushi and a couple of the writers, as I recall. People expected Chevy Chase and Gilda Radner, but there were some clips and such and Belushi. The star was aggressive with the college audience, and it wasn’t going well. In fact, the college later would offer anyone who wanted it their money back.

One of Belushi’s taunts was to say, “Do you want to come up here?”

I had informed a Security Guard about this gift (it was a gag thing…not important to the story). When Belushi ended up saying to me connected to the giving of the gift, “Do you want to come up here?” (remember, that was a putdown, the way it was delivered), I said, “Sure,” and hopped up on the stage.

I spoke for a minute, and Belushi was making funny faces or something behind me.

Belushi said, “You’re a real professional, you know?”

I replied, “Well, one of us has to be.”

There was a big “oohing” sound up through the first several rows of the audience.

Belushi went backstage, got a chainsaw, and chopped up the lectern (which may have been designed to do that). A piece of the lectern, though, stuck in the giant screen they had been using for projection…that had to have been expensive!

My little ad ib actually got into the local newspaper, where I was described as “one nervy spectator”.

After that, I wouldn’t watch anything with Belushi in it, because I didn’t want the actor/comic to benefit from it.

Of course, after Belushi’s death, I realized there might have been a lot of factors in the nasty, unfunny performance. Nowadays, I would have been more forgiving (although I might have still said the line…it was funny), but I think you can learn more tolerance for “bad behavior” over time: I have.

GigaOm: “Google Books and the librarian backlash”

GigaOm has an

excerpt

from Jeff John Roberts’

The Battle for the Books: Inside Google’s Gambit to Create the World’s Biggest Library

which is only $2.99 (the print length is listed at 55 pages).

I’ve sent myself a sample, and will probably listen to it driving to work today.

I’m sure many libraries saw it (and perhaps still see it) as a great thing when Google used their (literally) patented technology to scan books in their collections.

I’d love it if somebody could do that with my books, without damaging them, of course.

Well, it created a big hullabaloo of a legal situation (which still isn’t over).

Today’s Kindle Daily Deal: Lem and Block

There are a couple of well-known authors in today’s

Kindle Daily Deal

Remember to always check the price before you click that Buy button: this deal may not apply in your country, for example.

Stanislaw Lem was a Polish science fiction writer, but the works were much more concerned with communication than technology. I think that’s made them particularly difficult to translate well: Lem played with specific language, and you can’t always translate a pun on an idiom very effectively. However, these are books that can make you think about yourself (and humanity generally). When you read a book about FTL (Faster Than Light) travel, well, you just aren’t likely to experience that. If the point of the book is in how you exchange feelings and ideas with someone (or something) else, if it’s about understanding another perspective, that’s something you do every day.

Eden (Helen & Kurt Wolff Book)

is not Lem’s best known book (that would arguably be Solaris), and I haven’t read it…but I did buy it at $1.99.

The other one that stood out to me today was Lawrence Block’s

A Drop of the Hard Stuff (Matthew Scudder)

I’m going to venture that this might be a bit less complex than Lem’s Eden but it’s a well-reviewed book in the series, and I understand that you could start with this one. I always like to go from the beginning, but not all series require that.

One interesting thing: lately, the ad on my Kindle Fire has sometimes been for the book of the day, and it’s produced like a fine print ad. You actually see the book in the ad, meaning they are at least customized for this one-day deal (if not constructed from scratch for them each time). That’s nice…I like that the ads are often for books. They also use ads for current media (not available on the Fire) quite a bit…I was getting a bit tired of that House of Lies ad with Dan Cheadle’s pants on fire.

KHOU.com: “‘BiblioTech’ paperless library will be first of its kind in S.A. and nation”

Thanks to Chris Baker who tweeted me about this

KHOU.com article

It’s about, yes, San Antonio, Texas, opening a paperless public library later this year.

I wrote about the idea of public libraries going paperless back in 2010, and I’m curious to see how this works out for them.

Update: longer article on the library:

NPR article

By the way, seeing this tweet this way reinforced for me my decision not to be on Facebook. I see my Twitter feed in my morning Flipboard read, but I rarely go to the site. I wouldn’t have seen this question if it hadn’t been in Flipboard. I feel a bit bad about that: I know some people expect Twitter to be an active two-way communication tool, but I just don’t have the social capital to use it that way. I’d be terrible at maintaining a Facebook page with everything else I do, so I think it’s better that I just don’t do it.

What do you think? Will people taking classes online affect brick-and-mortar college viability? What could tradpubs (even small ones) do to keep their authors from leaving and publishing independently? Is piracy good for authors? Feel free to let me and my readers know what you think by commenting on this post.

Thanks to my reader Riva for helping to make this post more accurate.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.

Tweading in the bookstream

Tweading in the bookstream

It’s rare that a new feature blows me away, but Amazon has just introduced something in the latest Kindle Fire update that has me reeling with the possibilities.

Like a lot of game changers (Twitter, perforated toilet paper), it’s a simple concept.

You are reading a book.

You tap the top of the screen, and then tap a little word balloon at the bottom of the screen.

You are seeing a stream of comments from other readers…and, maybe, from the author! You can add your own comment and if the book is popular enough, get a response in seconds. Of course, with the kinds of books I read sometimes, it might be hours…or days…or never.

That’s it.

Social interaction based on books…not TV shows, not pop music, not videogames.

While I would certainly like to see some added features, it’s brilliant in its simplicity.

For me, this is the killer social app that the Kindle has always suggested it could do.

I’ve written about it a couple of times already (here and in The Writers Guide to E-Publishing. I’m seeing some very interesting reactions.

One is authors saying that they’ll now need to buy a Kindle Fire…because they see the potential of being part of it.

Another one was somebody being sad about the concept. For that person, reading is a contemplative activity, and chatting seemed to be interrupting that “quiet zone”.

I do get that (even though it’s not the way my mind works).

However, there is no need for it to affect you, if you don’t want it to do that. You have to choose to be involved.

I’d never do it with a novel which I haven’t finished and haven’t read before. I wouldn’t want the spoilers: you aren’t commenting about a specific point in the book (although you can include a passage, if you want), but about the book generally. I’d be too worried about spoilers.

However, with a novel I have read?

Absolutely!

I first went to The Hunger Games, figuring if anything would be live with social media, it would be.

I’ve gone back several times already, and it’s very active! I’ve seen seven posts in a single minute.

A lot of the conversation is simple social, and not even about the book. However, I’m surprised that people identifying themselves as in fourth and fifth  grade are reading that book.

I’ve also seen good questions about the book, and added a couple of answers.

Similarly, there is a lot of activity in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, but it is much more serious.

I’ve added my own comment to Love Your Kindle Fire…and mine is the only one so far. Not surprisingly, I may also be the first person to run into the 300 character posting limit.

While I see tremendous opportunities here, particularly with nonfiction and academic uses, I did have some questions about exactly how it worked.

For example, my comments have my name…but a lot of them said, “Unknown”. I wasn’t sure why that it is. I suspected it may be because the posters are under age, and I’m still not quite sure about that.

What I did, though, was ask Amazon some questions…and I got an answer back within a day! That’s not because I’m a blogger…it’s just how good they typically are at Customer Service, at least in my experience.

Let me give you my questions and their answers;

===

I think that the new sharing feature in 6.3 is a real game changer in connecting authors and readers. However, I do have some questions:

1. Are there guidelines about what can be posted? Could an author, for example, promote another book in a “twead” (that’s what I’m calling these public notes…from “tweet” and “read”)?

2. Why are some people shown with their names (as I am) and some people just shown as “unknown”?

3. Is there any connection with Amazon Friends (the old version or the Facebook version)?

4. Why are some tweads from months ago? Does this include any public notes?

5. How does this relate to being followed at kindle.amazon.com?

6. How long do the tweads stay visible in the book?

I’d love to see:

1. A way to limit the note’s visibility to a specific group of people…I could see teachers using that for a class

2. A notification of a new twead

3. An ability to search the tweads in a book

4. An ability to connect with people (if they allow it) by long-pressing on their twead…or perhaps, to follow them that way

Thanks!
—

The answer I got:

===

Hello, Thanks for contacting us with your inquiry. I’d love to help you and explain the situation. I see that you’ve written to us about several issues. I’ll do my best to provide a thorough answer to each of your inquiries in this message.

I checked and see that there guidelines about what can be posted using share feature on Kindle Fire.

I see that an author can promote another book in a “twead”. Amazon is pleased to provide this forum for you to share your opinions on books.

I see that the same rules for that apply for reviewing books listed below apply for sharing your thoughts using this feature. http://www.amazon.com/gp/community-help/customer-reviews-guidelines

I see that some people are shown with their names if they are logged into their account and submitted their name for the shared content. Otherwise it will be listed as unknown.

I also see that the sharing feature is enhanced in Kindle Fire. It is still connected to the older version. To share your favorite passages from your Kindle books and your thoughts about them, tap and hold on a word or phrase while reading. Tap “Share.” Tap within the text field that says “Share your thoughts with the Kindle community” to enter any thoughts about the text you selected, then tap the Share button.

Your entry will be added to your Amazon Kindle profile at http://kindle.amazon.com/your_reading.

If you also check the boxes next to the Twitter or Facebook symbol, your entry can be shared through your Twitter and Facebook accounts. Follow the onscreen instructions to set up sharing features and follow your Twitter or Facebook friends on kindle.amazon.com.

I see that shared content also includes public notes and it will be listed along with the date it was created and some are older notes. Public Notes lets Kindle users choose to make their book notes and highlights available for others to see. You can review and turn on Public Notes in your own books, follow people to get their Public Notes and reading activities, as well as check out Popular Highlights, your annotations, and your full library of books at https://kindle.amazon.com

If someone you follow has highlighted a passage in a book and has turned on Public Notes for the book, you’ll see that passage highlighted along with the name of the person who highlighted it. You’ll see the “@” symbol displayed in the text where any notes were made.

You are unable to restrict who can see your Public Notes once you turn them on in a book. Public Notes is a feature that allows Kindle users choose to make their book notes and highlights available for others to see. You have to turn on Public Notes for a book through our website before anyone else can see your highlights and notes in that book. Go to https://kindle.amazon.com/your_reading to make your highlights and notes visible through Public Notes. With this feature turned on for a book, all your notes and marks for that book become public.

If you’ve any further queries or need additional information, please let us know so we can assist you further.

—

That doesn’t tell me everything I want to know, but it’s a big help.

Again, I realize that some of you will never dip your minds into the bookstream, and certainly may not ever “twead”.

However, if Stephen King was going to appear in a book at a given time and answer your questions, wouldn’t that intrigue you? Anne Rice?  How about a scientist…or a celebrity or political figure?

This could be the new book signing, a new way to connect authors with readers.

By the way, this has also finally gotten me to start doing public notes. I’ve always wanted to provide notes for people on books I’ve read, but it was too hard to write the notes on an RSK (Reflective Screen Kindle…anything but a Kindle Fire). If you’d like to follow me, or see my notes, you can do that from here:

https://kindle.amazon.com/profile/Bufo-Calvin/827

I’ll have to edit those more…I highlight errors to send to publishers, and I don’t think you want to see those. You’ll only see public notes if I turned them on for specific books, by the way. I’ll take a look at that for the ones I’ve done in the past.

What do you think? Am I blowing this tweading thing all out of proportion? Is it just going to be taken over by recess talk? Is it just too different from your reading experience? Could you see it being used by book clubs? Is the ability to limit it to a circle essential before you will use it? Feel free to tell me what you think.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.

KDP Select: authors, add your books to the Kindle Owners Lending Library

KDP Select: authors, add your books to the Kindle Owners Lending Library

When I went to check the sales this morning on Love Your Kindle Fire: The ILMK Guide to Amazon’s Entertablet (it’s going better than expected, by the way…thanks to everybody who has purchased it, reviewed it, and/or told other people about it!), it wouldn’t refresh at first. It told me it didn’t have the right number of columns.

So, I basically logged out and back in.

There were two new columns:

• KDP Select (all of the values were “N”, which I presumed was for “No”, and would have the option of being “Y” for Yes)
• Units Borrowed (which were all zeroes)

I already allow lending through the old style lending (person to person not on the same account, once only for fourteen days), so I knew that wasn’t it.

I did a little quick research and found this:

https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/KDPSelect?tag=topsy0f-20

Publishers (which are often one-person operations…an author) who use Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing can now allow those books to be included in the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library (which is one of the new benefits of being a paid Prime member).

That’s interesting, and has some implications both for authors and for readers.

Readers are going to probably get a lot more choices through Prime lending. However, the choices before weren’t self-selected. This may change the nature of a book you borrow. What happens if you borrow one…and you don’t like it, because it isn’t up to your editing/formatting standards? You can only borrow up to a book a month: you may feel it wasn’t “borrow-worthy”.  I don’t think you can return the borrowed book and borrow a different one, like you can return a purchased Kindle store book within seven days for a refund.

For authors, the payment makes this a gamble. It could be a bonanza, but it might take away from royalties for you also.

Why do I say gamble?

You’ll have no idea how much you’ll make until after the fact.

Someone who sells a book for $2.99 and meets the other parameters for the 70% royalty plan (not blocking text-to-speech, enabling peer-to-peer lending, and a few others) gets about $2.08 (depending on delivery charge…a large file costs more, but that’s around a penny).

How much do they get when people borrow the book through the KOLL?

This KSP Select intro page explains it:

https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/KDPSelect?tag=topsy0f-20

Amazon is setting a pool of $500,000 for KDP authors for the KOLL for December 2011 (and will do at least half a mil like that each month in 2012…they say there will be six million dollars up for grabs).

You get paid based on what your share of the “borrows” is. They explain it this way:

“How is my share of the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library fund calculated?

Your share of the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library Fund is calculated based on a share of the total number of qualified borrows of all participating KDP titles. For example, if the monthly fund amount is $500,000 and the total qualified borrows of all participating KDP titles is 100,000 in December and if your book was borrowed 1,500 times, you will earn 1.5% (1,500/100,000 = 1.5%), or $7,500 in December.”

So, the fewer other books get borrowed, the more your books get.

I always want to root for everybody’s books to do well. We do benefit if there are more borrows (as Amazon puts it) altogether, but it does seem a bit odder to want the bigger pie. What an author would get paid isn’t based on the absolute value of your book to the borrower, but on the relative value.

Note that this is only a “competition” among KDP publishers: you aren’t competing with non-KDP titles in the KOLL.

I haven’t decided yet if I want to participate (I’ll think about it through the day).

It’s far more complex than it might seem at first, and there is going to be a tendency to rush into it, I think.

Positives:

• Discovery. That’s probably a very big one. People will be looking at what books are available in the KOLL, and see your book. If they decide not to borrow yours (remember, that’s a big threshold…only one book can be borrowed per paid Prime membership a month), they might decide to buy it instead. I’d probably have to hope for that with my Kindle Fire book…someone can consume it in a month, certainly. They might want to have it in their archives for reference (and I do plan to add to it), but that’s a tough call. Do I count on them seeing my book, but choosing to borrow The Hunger Games instead? This, by the way, is one way Overdrive sells public library participation to publishers. They tell the publishers that your book may not be available to borrow anyway…so people will see it there, but not be able to get it (http://www.overdrive.com/files/PubWhitePaper.pdf)
• “Word of mouse” (that’s what I call “word of mouth” using a computer): this could add to reviews of the books and people mentioning it to other people in tweets, on Facebook, in e-mail, and so on
• Money: You might get borrow when you wouldn’t get sales. If not very many other people get borrows, you could get a good chunk of change you wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. That’s definitely something to think about: will people borrow your book who wouldn’t have bought it?

Negatives

• I think people may hold borrowed books to a higher standard than they hold purchased books. You can buy as many books as you can afford: you can only borrow one a month. I think that may surprise people…vicious reviews when they wouldn’t have bothered if they’d purchased it and returned it. They can’t get back the “borrow”…they can get back the purchase price within seven days. I have titles in the Kindle store I’ve been thinking about pulling, because they are outdated. I still have to think about that. If someone borrowed one, they might never get something from me again
• Loss of sales versus borrows. That’s going to vary a lot. It could be that once your book is borrowed, there is no reason to buy it. It’s going to depend on the nature of your book. This also only matters if the borrower would otherwise have bought it.
• No control over the amount of money you get it. Let’s say that someone puts a tremendously popular book in to KDP Select. That hurts your share of the pot. Let’s say there are 500 borrows of your book. If there are 100,000 borrows altogether, you get more money than if there are 200,000 borrows. That makes it hard to predict, and your compensation is based on relative value.
• Exclusivity: this is a big requirement. You can not sell the book except through the KDP. You can not directly sell it through your website, or through Smashwords or Barnes & Noble. I don’t do any of those things, but that will matter to some people. There is a ninety-day timeframe on this, but still….

Well, I’m going to contemplate this before I do it. That makes me a little itchy, since every day you aren’t in the program cuts back on your share, hypothetically. We are already at December 8.

I’m not a fan of doing well because others do poorly. I love competition, but only if it drives all the competitors to better performance.

Hmm…

I’ll be interested in hearing what you think about this, both as authors and readers.

Update: here is the

press release

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.

Author Douglas Preston on e-books

 Douglas Preston is a New York Times bestselling author.  While he is probably best known for his thrillers written with frequent collaborator Lincoln Child (including Relic, which is not yet available as a Kindle edition), I first became familiar with him for his non-fiction book on the Smithsonian, Dinosaurs in the Attic (which has also not yet been Kindleized).  However, Preston is well-represented in the Kindle store, with more than ten books:

Douglas Preston’s Kindle books 

I recently contacted him, to see if he would like to make a statement to the readers of I Love My Kindle.  E-books are changing publishing, in a way as rapid as the genetic manipulation about which Preston has written.  Authors, publishers, retailers, and, yes, readers are all talking about the changes this new medium will bring to the way books are created, distributed, and how we read them.  Since people truly love books, emotions can run high about them.  Looking at comments on public forums, people will swear to “never do this” or “never do that” because of a decision someone has made with which they disagree.

It’s a good thing that people care this much about the topic, in my opinion.  While I wish that everyone would always express themselves in a respectful manner, the depth of passion speaks to how important books still are in today’s world, and in the future of our culture.

Mr. Preston’s most recent book, Impact, has been the subject of  postings in the Kindle community.  Published in hardcover by Forge on January 5 of this year, the Kindle edition is scheduled for a May 4th release. 

I appreciate the author taking the time and making the effort to respond to my e-mail, and giving me permission to share it with you.  I think you will find his comments thoughtful, insightful, and heartfelt.  Outside of that assessment and this brief introduction, I will let his words stand for themselves in this post.  I may comment on it later, and you are certainly welcome to comment on this post as well.

—

Hi Bufo, 
 
Please feel free to use my email in your blog. To answer your questions, I have always deferred to my publisher when it comes to decisions involving business, pricing, and marketing. I am a writer, not a businessman. I could second guess their decisions and raise a stink about something and probably get my way, but I have always shied away from playing the difficult and demanding author. That’s not my way. 
 
My publisher, my agent, and all the book sellers I have spoken to say the $9.99 ebook will destroy the publishing industry as we know it, since it doesn’t cover the creative content of a book. So I do agree with my publisher’s decision to delay the ebook release. 
 
I have been discussing this issue almost constantly since the ebook release, with my agent, publisher, with Lincoln Child, and others. I wish I could see a clear answer but the bottom line is this: the $9.99 Amazon ebook price, if introduced at the same time as the hardcover, will essentially end the local independent bookstore the same way Wal-Mart ended local businesses. It may bankrupt my publisher. It will make it almost impossible for beginning writers to get published, no matter how good their work is. It will end the careers of many midlist authors. So I would ask these outraged Kindle owners if they are willing to trade all this for their “right” to have a cheap edition of a best-selling book on the day of publication. 
 
As for the public comments, they can be sorted into two categories: the angry shouters (a minority to be sure) and more thoughtful Kindle owners (the vast majority) who naturally would like to be able to acquire the ebook on the day of publication and wonder why the ebook release has been delayed. 
 
I would never bypass my publisher to publish an ebook with Amazon directly, and I’ll explain why. First of all, my contract would not allow it. But even if it did, I would not consider this. Yes, I would certainly make more money. But what about all the work my publisher has put into the book? What about all the support I’ve received these many long years from my publisher, who sent me on tour when I was an unknown author, who advanced me money when I had none to give me time to write, who labored over the manuscript and helped me make it right, who edited it and designed a beautiful cover for it? Would it be fair for me to then take this book, which is as much a product of their good work as my own, and contract with Amazon to publish the ebook, bypassing them and stealing all their value-added efforts for myself? Amazon seems to think that a book just appears, fully formed and ready to read. Not so. Every writer needs an editor and publisher. 
 
Clearly, the future of the ebook is very promising for the manufacturer of the ebook device and the retail seller of the ebook edition. It seems to me that denying consumers what they want (which is a cheap edition on the day of publication) may be a losing strategy. What is the answer? To ask the American consumer to pay the real value for something, as opposed to the cheap Wal-Mart discount value? Frankly, I don’t have an answer, except to say that the sense of entitlement of the American consumer is something that, in my opinion, is damaging our country. From the price of energy to fast food to cheap Chinese goods to home mortgages and on down, it seems that many Americans have come to feel they have God-given “rights” about getting what they want, when they want it, at a price so cheap it doesn’t actually cover the real cost. From an economic point of view, this attitude contributes to our vast trade deficits, our dependency on China and Saudi Arabia, our oversized contribution to global warming, and the decline of our family farms and our industrial sector. I believe this is a serious problem, of which the demand for the cheap ebook is only a small, but telling, symptom. 
 
Regards, 
Doug

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When told that I would be publishing the above statement in the next couple of days, Mr. Preston added this comment:

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I will look forward to it. There are a few other points I’d like to make. First, I have no publicist as some are speculating on the threads. If I sound rude, it’s because I’ve been rude, and if I sound reasonable, it’s also because I’ve been reasonable. I would never allow a publicist to go out there and pretend to be me. I like interacting with readers directly and honestly. And if I’ve responded rudely, for which I am sorry, you can be sure I was responding to an an even ruder email or comment. I’m a mild person and my mother tells me I’m quite nice, actually…

Best,

Doug

 

—

I’d like to thank Amazon Kindle community member magznyc for starting this thread, which led to me contacting Douglas Preston for this article.  Mr. Preston said that I could include excerpts from the e-mail that was reproduced there, but I would rather that it stands as a piece.  He did want to emphasize one point: he and Lincoln Child are both Kindle owners, and he described it to me as a “marvelous device”.    He said specifically, “We are not at all against the ebook — on the contrary.”

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog

Anne Rice asks: should major authors consider going straight to Kindle?

Well, I got some points with my offspring (and probably with my offspring’s friends) when I could say I’d been chatting with Anne Rice!  Well, not really chatting…the author posted on the Amazon Kindle community, and I responded. 

The author, one of the bestselling of all time (with something in the neighborhood of 100 million copies sold), took the bold step of posting her question in what is putatively a commercial forum for a company’s product…but what has been so much more to so many people.

This in itself is extraordinary…like Johnny Depp dropping into your local Starbucks to ask the crowd what movie he should do next.  While that might produce a largely ”mouth agape” response, the Kindle community has responded with some very thoughtful comments.

You can read (and contribute to) the thread here.

Anne graciously granted me permission to quote her here, so I’m going to give you her first post:

What do you think? If regular publishing is having a very hard time marketing and distributing books effectively, should major authors think about making Kindle (if possible) their primary publisher? Kindle would then be the one to introduce and advertise the book, and Kindle could license limited hard cover editions for those addicted to the “real book.” Would this be good for authors? Would it be good for readers? Would Kindle do it?

This is a complicated and important set of questions.

Let’s start out with the main idea:

Should a major author publish a book first as an e-book?

While readers of this blog are likely to shout “Sure!” there are issues. 

• Would doing this hurt the author’s relationship with publishers of paperbooks?
• How does the author get the services a paper publisher traditionally provides (editing, proof-reading, publicity)?
• E-books are still a small slice of overall publishing…would publishing as an e-book first reduce the market for the book?
• How does the author deal with the different formats?  If a book is published for the Kindle store, a nook or Sony reader can’t buy it there and use it on her or his own device
• Would it affect the readers perception of the author?

Respect

I’m going to take the last question first, because, well, to me that’s the most interesting one. 

Are e-books seen as being as legitimate as  p-books (paperbooks)?   That’s the heart of this question.  It feels a bit like whether or not movie stars should appear on TV…when that issue was raised in the 1950s.  Movies were seen as “the real thing”, in the same way as p-books may be seen as the real thing.  A movie star could be seen as “slumming” by being on television back then.  You didn’t see the biggest box office draws (except maybe on a show like the  Ed Sullivan show).  They might appear on television, but they didn’t act on television.

That’s changed now.  When Glenn Close chose to do Damages, people didn’t assume her career was on a downward spiral or she needed the money.   Other stars who could have done big movies have chosen the small screen.

The parallel seems to be there for me.  There is the concern that e-books are seen as not “real books”.  Since self-publishing is a significant part of the business, almost anybody can have a title in the Kindle store (or on Smashwords).   There is no editing barrier to it, no selection process.  You want to publish your grocery lists for the past twenty-five years?  No one is going to stop you.  You could have the worst possible mish-mash of a confused plot and horrid writing, and it could be up on the Amazon website.

Would James Cameron make a video for YouTube?

That last one isn’t really accurate, because people don’t pay for YouTube videos.

I think, though, just like television has become legitimized, that’s going to be the case with e-books as well.   I don’t think most readers have a lesser opinion of something because it is an e-book…I think that’s something publishers, reviewers, and the “literary establishment” may think.  I’m still waiting for Entertainment Weekly and the New York Times to regularly review e-books exclusives. 

It’s going to happen.  I don’t think it will be too long before e-books are really the mainstream of popular publishing, and p-books are the niche, luxury market.

People expressed the same concerns when paperbacks became popular…and initially, penny dreadfuls and dime novels were disrespected and “genre ghettos”.  That is, to some extent, where independently published e-books are now.

I don’t think it’s going to take a decade for it to shift.  I think the next year is crucial in e-book publishing.  Now is the time to make the move.  People are going to realign their loyalties about books in the next year or two.  Recognizing the future, respecting the readers’ choice to go digital…I think people will embrace that.

What do you think about that issue?

I posted in Anne’s thread that I could do a poll, so here it is:

Incompatible store formats

The Kindle store sells books in the azw and Topaz formats.  Other e-book readers (like Barnes and Noble’s nook (sic) and the Sony Reader Daily Edition) can not display those books (within the system). 

Similarly, Barnes and Noble sells books in their eReader format, PDFs, and EPUB.  If you published directly to Barnes and Noble, that file could not be legitimately displayed on the Kindle.

You don’t want to cut out and/or alienate a segment of your readers

However, you don’t have to exclusively publish in one or the other.  When I publish in the Digital Text Platform, that’s a non-exclusive agreement: I could also put it on Smashwords, which would get me in the Sony store.  I haven’t done it, but I could. 

A well-established author could also easily sell a couple of different formats (mobi and PDF, for example) through a website.  Those two files could have DRM (Digital Rights Management) to influence copying, and would cover the main e-readers.  Independent authors with a smaller readership do that now.

Would going exclusive to one store or another make sense?

Stephen R. Covey just signed exclusively with Amazon for e-book versions of some of his books.  Amazon sent out a press release about it, and he got quite a bit of buzz.  That’s worth something…but other EBRs (e-book readers) are likely to get a larger market share in the future…not necessarily larger than Amazon, but larger than they have now. 

That’s a marketing call…some people are really angry about not being able to read a book on any device at any time…my guess is that it would be better to not be exclusive, but I don’t want to underestimate the buzz factor. 

There’s also no reason that the author’s book would have to be exclusively e-book, even if it is independently published.  Amazon has a “Print on Demand” option (POD), so they will print a book you are selling…when somebody asks for it.  That takes some set up, but for readers who prefer paper, that’s an option. 

A book might also start as an e-book and then the rights for paper publishing could be sold to a traditional publisher (tradpub). 

Would that hurt the sales, though?  If a book first came out an e-book, and then was published as a hardback, would consumers have less of that “first edition” passion for it?  That’s a tough call for me.  When a book was first a website or a blog, I don’t think that hurts the paper sales.  Are the majority of people who buy a book in a brick and mortar store the same people who are likely to read a blog online?   Maybe…but my intuition (and I’m a former bookstore manager, although it was some years ago now) is that not that many shoppers say, “Oh, I could just read that online…I’m not buying it” if they regularly buy paper books.

As the market shifts, the people who buy paperbooks are going to be more oriented towards paper and not digital, I think.  They will want a “real book” because it is a gift, or because they think they will have it forever or it will look good on a shelf…or because they aren’t comfortable reading on a screen.  I don’t think you’ll discourage them because it was digital first.

Production services

One of the concerns that people have with independently published books in the Kindle store is that they can seem…sloppy.  There may be proof-reading problems (“conscious” for “conscience”), and editing problems (a big tangential section in the middle that could have been eliminated.  There may be formatting concerns.

Independent authors may simply not be able or willing to pay for professionals during the production process.  Not everybody who publishes a book is trying to make money or expects to make money.  They might not be able to pay someone a thousand dollars to edit a book that is only going to make ten. 

It’s a bit different with a major author.  An editor might do it for “points”.  If you got two percent of the royalties to edit Anne Rice’s next vampire book, would you do it?  If it took six months?

I think a lot of professionals would.   They might have money saved on which to live, the author might be able to pay an advance, just like a publisher would, or they could be doing it along with working on other books.

That’s kind of a different model, I think, for an editor. 

Anne had asked if the “Kindle” would publish it.  During the conversation, the topic of Amazon becoming more of a publisher has been raised.

I could see that.  They do already publish a few things, but they could set up a “production services” division.  That could include editing, proof-reading, and formatting.  This would be in addition to the Digital Text Platform, which is really more of a distributor than a publisher.

Seem too far afield from their retailing activities?  They are doing proof-reading now.  One of my books was removed from (and then restored to) the Kindle store because of a formatting issue, as I reported earlier.

That was a shift for them.  I could completely see Amazon offering that as a professional service.

Contracts and contacts

Would going to e-book hurt an author’s connections in the publishing industry?  Would you be seen as a traitor?

Well, if you’ve had a long time relationship with a publisher, it would make sense (in my opinion) to give them an option to put out an e-book version first.  You could set the rules under which you would agree.  For example, an author could insist on text-to-speech and simultaneous release (with the hardback, if any).  A publisher might certainly say no…they are the marketing experts, hypothetically, and they might not agree to a release schedule determined by the “talent” side of the equation.

If that’s the case, you have a few options:

• Shop it to other tradpubs
• Don’t publish it
• Publish it yourself

I’m not saying this would be an easy call.  If you insist on text-to-speech, because you feel it disproportionately disadvantages one population (which is how I feel), you would lose some really major players.  If your hardback was released by a smaller publisher, you might not sell as many copies.

However, you might sell more copies of the e-book…and remember that e-books don’t have to ever go “out of print”.  They aren’t going to have to make a major call as to whether or not to do another print run every year or so (sooner, if it is selling well). 

It might be a short term loss and a long term gain.

As Jeff Bezos might put it, now is the time to “buy market share”. 

Now, that sounds crassly commercial.  My own feeling is that e-books can reach so many more people than p-books.  There are people with all kinds of print challenges (even if they don’t rise to the legal level of a disability), and that is, unfortunately, likely to increase.  The workarounds (large print, Chafee Amendment audiobooks) are simply not the same as sharing the book with members of your family. 

You can tell what my answer to Anne’s question is.  Should major authors consider going straight to e-book?  Yes, absolutely, and sooner is better.  When everybody is doing it, you won’t get the same effect.  Do it now, and people will see you as someone who gets it.  Readers like reading e-books, and that’s going to be more and more true in the near future.  You will be seen as wanting to give the largest number of people the option to read the book how they want (I’m not saying to not do p-books as well). 

You will be seen as part of the future.

That’s just how I feel about it, of course.  How do you feel about it?  Feel free to let me know. 

 This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.