Deborah Cooke: Author

Today, we’ll talk about the implications of all of these changes for authors.

• Visibility

I could maybe have called this “accountability” but that seems a bit extreme. The change here is that what authors do, and what they say, can have greater implications than was once the case. Part of this is because what authors do and say is more visible to more people – thanks to blogs and online interviews, etc. – and part of it is that what authors do and say is considered to be more capable of shaping the buying decisions of readers. Since we’re talking about book distribution, let’s talk about that facet of it – that turns up in “buy it now” hotlinks from author websites.

Last summer, there was a kerfuffle in which Barnes and Noble allegedly (I say “allegedly” because I saw this post when it had been forwarded a bunch of times, through legitimate sources, but the version I saw actually originated at a publisher) declared that they would no longer stock the titles of authors who linked their own websites only to Amazon (and not to Barnes and Noble.) This is almost certainly about the Amazon affiliate program – because many authors linked only to Amazon, through the affiliate system – but was an interesting situation. Of course, authors pay the hosting fee and the maintenance (and design) costs of their own sites, so theoretically, the content should be determined by the author, but the reality is that publishing has become sufficiently small in terms of numbers of players, that it is clear we all need each other. Protocol has evolved and increasingly, authors link to all online bookstores from their own websites. There was a time when an author could link to no stores, but “none” increasingly is an unsatisfactory choice.

This is, of course, a no-win situation for authors. No matter how many sources of books are listed, there will always be one missing, and that might be the store that is troubled by the omission. I avoided these links until recently for exactly this reason – also it seemed logical to me to assume that anyone wanting to buy a book was sufficiently literate to type the title into the search engine of an online bookstore, or to ask at a bricks and mortar bookstore for a copy, but the expectation for “buy it now” links on author websites keeps getting more insistent.

It is interesting how industry people will discuss the content of author websites. It makes one realize how many people are reading the content that is out there, without necessarily commenting or leaving indications of their presence. Sometimes the internet feels like the great information highway – sometimes it feels more like an endless company Christmas party.

• More Author Names

Author names are used as branding, more and more all the time. They’re used to indicate different kinds of work to the reader (usually in conjunction with graphic branding) and they’re used for work done at different publishing houses, often to satisfy terms of option clauses. But one way to evade the legacy of disappointing sales numbers is to take a new name and make a fresh start with that name.

Remember that “disappointing” is relative when you’re talking about sales numbers – it’s more about expectations being met (or not) than raw numbers. For example, sales numbers of 30,000 copies for a mass market paperback is terrific if expectations were 15,000 copies, but that same number is a disaster if expectations were 100,000 copies. That’s because the expectation shaped the advance paid – a publisher can always pay the author more money, but if the book doesn’t perform, whatever they’ve paid in excess in advance is unlikely to be regained.

Remember also that sales performance of a book isn’t always about the book. Sales are affected by the package, by the strength of the house’s sales presentation and the amount of promotional support offered by the house, by the competition of what else is available in that sales month, and by events in the world at large. Recessions can adversely affect book sales. When big news happens, people often forget to buy books. They’re busy, watching the news. So, it’s not always because of the author or the book itself that a book “underperforms” – increasingly, it’s due to other factors, factors beyond the author’s control.

But one way to escape the legacy of disappointing numbers is to take a new author name or brand. We’re already seeing a lot more authors writing under a number of names – it used to be common for authors to use one or two names but I’m seeing a lot more authors with four or five “brands”.

• More House Loyalty(?)

This is about that computerized sales tracking as well. One way for a book to be published without enthusiasm is for the author to leave the house. If, for example, an author is working with Publisher A and has sold that house 3 books, when the third book is delivered (let’s say in January 2010) author and house will discuss the option and whether or not to continue their relationship. If they choose to not continue, for whatever reason, the author’s agent will pitch the author’s work to other houses and, in an ideal universe, the author will find another publishing home at Publisher B, maybe by June. By National in July 2010, if not before, Publisher A will know that the author will be published subsequently by Publisher B.

But that last book, book #3 on the first deal, won’t be published probably until January 2011. The production cycle on print books is about a year. Traditionally what has happened in this kind of situation is that Publisher A would pull all promotional support for book #3. It might not even have the same kind of cover, if the covers were expensive. The idea presumably is that they don’t want to help Publisher B make money. But this kind of sales tracking – and the way it shapes orders – means that the (inevitably) lower sales of book #3 will shape the orders for the author’s first book at Publisher B. That might affect how well it sells according to expectations.

So, it might not turn out to be smart to change houses very often. I’ll guess that authors will still move between houses, but that the stakes will have to be higher to merit taking the potential sales hit. That puts authors and their publishers into a closer relationship, and one that potentially could last very long – let’s hope it’s to mutual benefit.

• Provision of Free Content

This is a comparatively new author job and it is uncompensated. Once upon a time, you might write a reader letter for each release, or you might write a related article for your RWA chapter newsletter, one that would be published to coincide with your release. The provision of free content has always been there, but it has never been in such high demand.

Why is that? Many of these bookseller sites, and the many blogs focussed on books, and the many reader forums and reader sites, like to have free content to post. The content is what keeps readers coming back, and keeps the traffic flowing to the site. Content from authors is in high demand, because it gives some insight to the author and his/her process, or simply that personal touch. It’s not uncommon to spend at least a week – if not the entire month – of a new title’s release, doing guest blogs and interviews to promote that book. That’s a lot of free content.

It takes a lot of time to create free content, time that is not being spent writing books. While writing free content, you cannot write books. There’s a balance to be struck between promotional activities and actually generating more books, and I’m wondering whether the demand for free content has reached a tipping point. What happens in any economic model is that when a resource becomes scarce, it becomes more valuable. This free content is the basis of much of the traffic these sites see: it indirectly governs their revenue, by – for example – ensuring more hits and thus higher advertising prices for banners on that page. I’m wondering whether  some players will begin to want exclusive content, and want it enough to pay for it. Several bookselling sites already are open to out-takes (scenes that didn’t make the final cut for the book) to be posted as free content for the reader. As demand increases, and writers are forced to choose between writing promotional free content and writing more books, the balance of power is likely to shift.

• Focus on Pre-Orders

There’s another factor that may facilitate that shift – pre-orders. There has traditionally been a belief – which is probably true – that to land on a bestseller list (especially the NYT) is a kind of self-perpetuating mechanism. Once a book is on the list, it tends to stay there, because people who hadn’t heard of it otherwise, hear about it because of the list and buy a copy out of curiosity. The higher the book debuts on the list, so the thinking goes, the longer this pattern will work. Bestseller lists are compiled on the basis of point of sales data, once collected rigorously with surveys and phone calls, now collected digitally with point of sales computers and tracking systems like Bookscan. (Not every bookseller participates in Bookscan, but it’s still considered to be a pretty accurate snapshot of the week’s sales of books in the U.S.)

The interesting mechanism here is pre-orders – you have probably noticed that you can order a book on an online bookseller’s site, up to six months in advance. You essentially buy the book, but your order isn’t processed (and your credit card isn’t charged) until the bookseller has the books to ship and can fill the order. This is usually the on-sale date for the title. And if you think about it, the first thing that happens on the on-sale date is that all of the pre-orders for that title are processed as occurring on that day, so all the sales of all the pre-orders are reported to Bookscan as if they all happened simultaneously and 12:01 on that day. If that’s a lot of books, that cumulative customer traffic – all processed at once – can drive the book on to the lists.

Publishers have realized this and have worked in the past year to increase pre-order sales of books. This also is useful for publishers, because it diminishes the risk of the initial print run – some percentage of those books are effectively sold, even when they’re being printed and shipped. There was a massive publicity campaign to persuade consumers to order the new Dan Brown book, for example, with a contest here at Chapters/Indigo. Prices are often drastically discounted on pre-orders, in order to try to drive quantity. These discounts, btw, come out of either the distribution percentages or the publicity budget for the book – the author will get the same amount of royalty payment, independent of what price you pay for the book.

But pre-order if you intend to buy the book anyway. It’s good for everyone. That’s why you’ll see authors promoting the pre-order for their books.

I’m expecting to see more of a link between free content and pre-orders, as authors begin to promote the pre-order even more heavily than the release date of the book. Maybe you’ll be able to read the out-take scene from so-and-so’s new book today, if you pre-order that book before midnight. Or maybe pre-ordering the book gives you an electronic key into a whole games room of content from that author. Promotions like that. I think they would be exclusive and (I would like to think that) they would be paid.

• Author Visibility, Again

Another benefit of the internet and of author websites is that it’s easier for booksellers and other third parties to find and contact authors than was once the case. Once upon a time, I had no idea who the buyers were at the bookstore chains and the distributors, and likewise, they had no idea how to get in touch with me. Now, they can just Google me up and send an email through my website.

There has been an increase in contact from third parties in recent years – for anthology contributions, for example, or for guest blogging opportunities – so it’s reasonable to expect these new kinds of offers for content to manifest in this kind of way. They might also come through the publicity department at the publisher, if such efforts were to be coordinated closely with the house.

• Focus on Promoting to Readers

There has been a change in the courtship of buyers and the focus of promotional efforts. Once upon a time, the publishing houses focussed on the buyers – their actual customers – and authors promoted to regional specialists in their genre or individual bookstore managers (and section managers). That’s changed with the consolidation of distributors and booksellers. Although it still occurs, the big bookstore chains provide information to their stores and section managers from a central location. Now, the publishing house tends to focus on the buyers for the big chains, while authors are bending their attention upon the ultimate consumer, individual readers. Marketing to readers was long considered to be less than cost effective, but the fact that many many readers have blogs of their own, or post their book reviews on the sites of the online booksellers, and the proliferation of book clubs means that the individual reader has the power to influence more sales than one book.

We’ve seen an increase in reader oriented conferences, sometimes hosted by authors, and Borders will launch their own next summer – it’s called RomConInc and will be in Denver. There have also been more readers, more librarians and more booksellers in attendance at conferences like RWA National, which used to be attended almost exclusively by writers, editors and agents. We’re going to see a lot more “direct to reader” promotion and communication, building on the links established by author websites and blogs. Will there be virtual conferences? More conferences focussed on specific individual authors? On specific sub genres? Special editions for readers registered with the official fan group? Technology allows lots of possibilities for making connections with these readers and fans.

• A Shift in Perceived Value of Vanity Publishing

This is really interesting. Once upon a time, vanity publishing was perceived to be of no real value, an option for a writer whose work was not of sufficient quality to be published but which the author believed in – and had enough financial resource – to put in print by him or herself. It is now the perception in some circles that it is dumb to publish a book through traditional publishing means. That’s a big change. I’m not sure what fueled it, because there have always been people discontent with traditional publishing (that hasn’t changed) but there’s a real difference in perception of those vanity published books. The stigma that once existed is evaporating.

Maybe it’s because many of the functions done by traditional publishers are becoming more easy for individuals to accomplish on their own. A big problem with vanity publishing has always been distribution – you can sell books, one at a time, out of the trunk of your car or your garage, but selling enough to make money is going to be a time-consuming process. Now, if you can get Amazon to stock your book, you instantly have worldwide distribution. Release the book in a Kindle edition and you’ve solved the issue of print and production and storage and shipping. Magic!

Selling those books remains an issue, because they don’t have visibility. I was interested in the comments made by Steve Axelrod at the Emerald City Writer’s Conference last October – I’ll have to paraphrase him because I didn’t record his comments at the time – but he said something to the effect that the visibility of book covers displayed in bookstores, especially independent bookstores, drove awareness of each book’s existence in the market and affected its sales in every media. Without that display of covers, consumers may not be aware that a given book exists, and this lack of visibility is what hampers the sales of books that exist only in electronic editions. People aren’t even aware of them.

I think that makes a lot of sense – it’s consistent with my observations of the sales of my Dragonfire titles in digital versions and the sales of authors I know who work in similar subgenres but whose work is only available digitally. With visibility, digital or print becomes a choice of format, not a decision whether to buy the book or not. Without visibility, there may not ever be a decision to buy.

So, there’s still a visibility problem with vanity publishing, even with so many variables coming together. I bet it’ll get solved.

• E-Readers

The final change for authors is not just the emergence but the growing acceptability of e-readers. This could have huge implications for authors, although the future is still murky. Will they become the go-to format for free content in excess of the book itself? (What better way for a bookseller to control the content-free-to-readers that they’ve paid to acquire from the author on an exclusive basis than to make it available only in the format for their proprietary reader?) Will e-readers become the go-to format for vanity press? For backlist titles of established authors? What kind of options will authors have in the near future? And what will traditional publishers change or do to ensure that their central role in the business of book distribution remains?

I’m interested to see how this all shakes out, and where these changes take us.

Phew! Have I expounded enough? Any comments or questions?