Category Archives: Writing

Mark Coker on the Justice Dept. vs. publishers

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Mark Coker, the founder of Smashwords, is probably the best known advocate of ebooks as an alternative to traditional publishing, yet he doesn’t want those publishers to disappear.  He made this clear in an article on cnn.com on Sunday entitled, “A dark day for the future of books.” http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/15/opinion/coker-book-publishing/

Mark Coker

The Justice Department launched an anti-trust suit against Apple and five large publishing companies for adopting “agency pricing” and allegedly forcing Amazon to comply.  At the time, Amazon was pricing many books below cost, a move the other publishers feared would harm their print book sales. Three of the publishers have settled, while the remaining two, plus Apple, are going to court.

Coker seldom sides with big publishers, but in this case his reasons are clear:  he fears the Justice Department’s intention to protect consumers could actually harm them by harming the publishing industry by “forcing them to comply with onerous conditions…including restrictions on collaboration with fellow publishers and increased federal auditing and reporting requirements — [which] will increase publisher expenses and slow their business decisions at the very time when publishers need to become faster, nimbler competitors.”

Coker says that although agency pricing raises ebook prices, it “prevents deep-pocketed retailers or device makers from engaging in predatory price wars to harm competitors or discourage formation of new competitors. It would enable the marketplace to support more retailers, which would mean more bookstores promoting the joys of reading to more readers. And it would force retailers to compete on customer experience rather than price. Customers are best served when we have a vibrant e-book retailing ecosystem.”

As I understand Coker’s argument, if ebook prices drop too low, print publishing, the staple of brick and mortar stores as well as libraries, will become a money losing proposition.  I think we all know a certain “deep-pocketed retailer or device maker” who isn’t above “predatory price wars.”  Much as I love my kindle, I don’t want Amazon to become the only game in town.

I suggest everyone with an interest in writing, publishing, and ebooks read Coker’s article, the latest installment in a very convoluted drama.

An Era-less Era?

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A critique group friend gives me back issues of The New York Times Book Review.  In the stack she gave me this week, I found a provocative article in the March 11, edition called “Convergences,” by Douglas Coupland.

Coupland noticed something unexpected during TV coverage of the 10th anniversary of 9/11:  nothing appeared very different than it had a decade ago.  The clothes, the cars, the hair, seemed pretty much the same.  This led him to speculate that:  “…we appear to have entered an aura-free universe in which all eras coexist at once – a state of possibly permanent atemporality given to us courtesy of the Internet.  No particular era now dominates.  We live in a post-era era without forms of it’s own powerful enough to brand the times.”

He then says, “The zeitgeist of 2012 is that we have a lot of zeit but not much geist.” (To Coupland’s credit, he does a mea culpa for this sentence).  He goes on to say there is something “psychically sparse” about the present, and writers and artists are creating new strategies to track it.  He then reviews Gods Without Men by Hari Kunzru, and calls it an example of “translit,” a new genre that fractures time and space while telling a single story.  In other words, it isn’t time-travel, or intercut parallel tales, like Pulp Fiction, but a singular narrative that unfolds all over the map.

Yet if Translit is a new genre, Once Upon A Time, a popular TV program, got there before Gods Without Men.   Though it doesn’t have as many sub-stories, structurally it’s the same.  Maybe part of our zeitgeist is a world where highbrow and lowbrow forms are equally likely sources of innovation.  (That sentence, containing the word, “zeitgeist,” was payback).

Once Upon A Time

Besides, who says this decade lacks “forms of its own powerful enough to brand the times?”

OK, when I was in grade school, my nightmares were not of winding up naked in public, but in my pajamas [this is true], so this particular fashion crime draws my attention.  But my reason for this post isn’t cultural artifacts – it’s something I’ve wondered about for a long time, that Coupland’s article brought to mind:  how and when the distinctive feel of a decade is formed?

Sometimes there’s a distinctive moment.  What we know as “the sixties” started the day John F. Kennedy was shot.  The last decade began on September 11.

Some decades don’t start with a single event; at a certain point, everyone simply knows the times have changed.  The eighties began when the good times started to roll.  In our current decade, something is rolling, but not good times.  We sense it, though it doesn’t yet have a name.  Read the paper or turn on the news, and you find a miasma of anger and greed, driven by fear and disillusionment.

This morning, with my coffee, I read details of how the New Orleans Saints bounties for injured opponents especially targeted head shots, even as overwhelming evidence points to concussive injuries as the source of higher than average rates of dementia in retired NFL players.  A little while ago I read of women arguing over a Facebook profile outside a waffle house.  Police arrived after shots were fired.  No external foe can destroy us, but we are doing pretty well on our own.

Lately politicians have been touting “American Exceptionalism.”  I first came across the term in Andrew Bacevich’s book, The Limits of Power:  The End of American Exceptionalism, 2008.  Both the politicians and Bacevich mean economic, political, and military superiority, things no country ever retains indefinitely, though they all believe they will when they have it.

President Obama got in trouble for speaking the truth when he said every nation thinks it’s exceptional.  Every nation has the potential to be, if you think in terms of character.  In those terms, our story might fall in the Translit genre – a narrative told across long reaches of time and place.  This decade would be a chapter set deep in the second act, when things are cascading downhill from bad to worse.  The darkness is pretty thick.  Who knows how the story is going to end?

My 301st Post

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Confession time.  I slipped in post number 300 without saying anything. Double-digit posts, like end-of-decade birthdays, make me a little nervous.  Such events seem to require wisdom, but I don’t do wise-on-demand especially well.  So here are some blogging thoughts, commemorating post 301, which I think we can all agree is a more humble and friendly number than 300.

Blogging as a means of discovery.  I’ve experienced this in other modes of writing, notably fiction.   At times I’ve also kept a journal, not to record my thoughts, but to discover what they are.  Because of its public nature, I wasn’t sure for some time that blogging had that capacity.  I discovered once and for all that it does while working on some recent two-part posts.  Every time I ended with, “I’ll share my conclusions next time,” I wondered what those conclusions were going to be.  Typically all I had was a hunch – nothing as solid as a conclusion.  I found in every case that the act of writing itself generated conclusions.  

It’s immensely satisfying to know that blogging can help me discover where I am in the present moment.  Everything changes, and it’s important not to be bound to outworn habits of thinking, feeling, and acting.  If the public nature of blogging sometimes causes self-consciousness, it also demands a rigor that (hopefully) keeps me from entertaining or posting my silliest notions.

Just Blog.  If you visit writing blogs, read writing magazines, or go to a writer’s conference, you’re likely to hear about using social media to “build your platform.”  I don’t want to put this idea down, just look at it critically.  I’ve met several successful ebook authors who work very hard to promote their fiction and think up inventive ways to do it.  But the reason for their success is compelling fiction.  Promotion works because they have something worth promoting.

I started this blog because I’d been told I should get a platform.  That idea lasted only a week or two.  Curiosity about blogging as a unique medium took over.  There are lots of Zen stories advising us to do what we’re doing with single minded focus.  Just run.  Just cook.  That kind of thing.  My effort here is, “just blog.”  If the day comes when I need a platform, I’ll do what I have to do.  Like I said in a recent post, I’m skeptical of “whisperers.”

What to write about my social and political concerns?  I don’t like blogs that harp, yet I find it hard not to write about these issues.  I’ve never had so much concern about the future of our democracy, or feared that the very word, “democracy,” is an artifact of nostalgia, like a Norman Rockwell painting.  Consider the following definition from Webster’s College Dictionary:  oligarchy:  a form of government in which the ruling power belongs to a few persons.

Back in the ’90’s, my employer, like many others, provided free training in Steven Covey’s 7 Habits of Success.  One of the concepts that stayed with me is “circle of influence vs. circle of concern.”  Covey taught that outcomes I can affect lie within my circle of influence.   My circle of concern, however, includes things I cannot change.  If I spend my time worrying over these, I miss the chance to do what is in my power.

It’s like the serenity prayer:  God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the power to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.  Covey goes a step further.  He says that changing the things I can will grow my circle of influence.  For example, complaining about the government is a useless hobby, but it is within my power to write to elected representatives.  All of them say direct communication carries weight because so few bother.  If I do so, my circle of influence grows a little bit.

Growing one's circle of influence by acting within it

What about blogging? Does this activity alter outcomes?  I believe it can, by carrying information if nothing else.  Have you heard about the “99% Spring,” initiatives starting on April 9?  Here’s a link: http://billmoyers.com.  Elsewhere on the website, Bill Moyers offers these words of hope:

Many of you have asked what you can do to fight back. Here are some thoughts. First, take yourself seriously as an agent of change. The Office of Citizen remains the most important in the country.

Second, remember, there’s strength in numbers. Find others like you in your neighborhood, apartment building, community – and act together. The old African proverb is still true, “If you want to walk fast, walk alone; if you want to walk far, walk together.”

Amen to that!  There is strength in numbers and strength in sharing hope.  As bloggers, that lies within our circle of influence.

Writings.  I appreciate all of your comments; they are one of the main things that keeps me going.  I’ve been especially happy with the response to recent articles on mythology and folklore.  This is like returning to something I lived and breathed 20 years ago.  In one way, it seems like a new emphasis for thefirstgates, but in another, it clarifies what I’ve been reaching for all along.  I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, for it has really become my mission statement:  To discover the reality in our fantasies, and the fantasy in our realities.

Thanks to you all and stay tuned!  Here’s to the next 101 posts.

Imagine by Jonah Lehrer: A Book Review

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Update, July 31, 2012.

On July 30, author Jonah Lehrer admitted fabricating quotes in Imagine. He resigned his position as staff writer for The New Yorker, and Houghton Mifflin suspended sales of the book. You can read my full post on the topic here, which contains a link to the newspaper story. http://wp.me/pYql4-2hg

It is with much sadness that I’ve decided to remove the text of my review. Some of Lehrer’s observations on creativity remain insightful. At the same time, I think it is vital to stand up for ethics wherever we can find it in public life.

Blogging Reflections

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Have you noticed how people use the word “whisperer,” where they once used “guru?”  Both terms imply a super-normal expertise, in some cases justified.  I’d love to have the Dog Whisperer visit our home!  Meanwhile, a quick check revealed you get 13,800,000 hits when you google on “blog whisperer?”

Last year, at a local writer’s conference, a “social media expert” who I think called himself a blog whisperer, offered to critique the blogs of those willing to come for the pre-session and pay $20.  That’s a bargain compared to the first blog whisperer to pop up on google, who charges $900 for a 90 day course on how to speak with “the voice of your soul.”

Think about that.  Though we might balk at the price, we live in a world that accepts the idea of hiring a coach to teach us to speak from our soul.  Afterwards, I guess we can look for a seminar on how to reclaim our power.

We live in a world of specialization and necessarily rely on experts in every phase of our lives.  In many cases, I think it’s a boon.  Those who long for the good old days are not in the throes of a toothache or facing surgery.

I have nothing against experts.  I like to have them around when the car breaks down or I break down.  For the garden, or home repairs, or internet security.

Yet something within us demands room to make our own discoveries and mistakes.  To come to our own conclusions.  To find out where we stand on things, what we really believe, regardless of the experts.

I used to think of writing as such an activity, but no longer.  Google on “writing, how to” and you get 1.9 trillion hits.  That’s a lot of whisperers!

The one little niche that is still free and clear, as far as I can see, is blogging, a medium that is unique because it allows us to think out loud in public.  For me, it is like a journal, a place to explore ideas, but the threat and promise of the “Publish” button forces me to go a step further.  When I pull the weeds from a first draft, I may find the seed of a new idea, or two, or three, or none.  Sometimes a draft lies fallow for weeks, and sometimes I publish within the hour.  More than a few get deleted.  One time I hit “Publish” when I meant to “Save” and got some practice in really fast editing.

I’ve heard some expert advice on blogging, and tend to ignore it all.  Before you say, “I knew it,” let me tell you what I mean – tips like:

  • Don’t write more than 250 words in a post.
  • Do not write about politics or religion.
  • Pick a single theme for your blog and stick to it.

The feedback I really take seriously comes from readers.  First there are simply the stats; people vote with their eyeballs.  Beyond that, is the power of even a single comment.

I’ve recently gotten enthralled, as I have in the past, with looking at old stories and legends.  When Adam, who blogs at Reviews and Ramblings http://blizzerd03.wordpress.com/ said he likes such posts, that was all the confirmation I needed.  “Yeah, this is road I have to follow.”  I value some of your comments more than 1.9 trillion articles on how to write.

As I have quoted more than once, as Joseph Campbell told the legends of the Holy Grail, he said every knight sought their own path into the forest; it would have been shameful to follow another’s trail.

This post is a way of thanking you all and a wish that we may all find our own way through the forest.

Justice Department Goes After eBook Price Fixing

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The Wall Street Journal reports that the Department of Justice warned Apple and five major publishers that it plans to sue them for “allegedly colluding to raise the price of electronic books.” http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203961204577267831767489216.html

The publishers include Simon & Schuster, Hachette Books, Penguin, Macmillan, and HarperCollins.  The suit centers on Apple’s plan to move ebook pricing from the “wholesale model” to the “agency model,” as it prepared to release the first iPad.  Biographer, Walter Isaacson, quotes Steve Jobs:

“We told the publishers, ‘We’ll go to the agency model, where you set the price, and we get our 30%, and yes, the customer pays a little more, but that’s what you want anyway,'”  

The publishers were then able to impose the same model across the industry, Mr. Jobs told Mr. Isaacson. “They went to Amazon and said, ‘You’re going to sign an agency contract or we’re not going to give you the books,'”

William Lynch, CEO of Barnes & Noble, testified in a deposition that abandoning the agency model would effectively transfer even more power to Amazon, since they can afford to sell ebooks below cost to build market share.

Everyone who intuitively knows that an ebook is not “worth” as much as a physical book must wonder why the two are so often priced within a dollar of each other.  If ebooks were “fairly” priced, would traditional publishers fall farther behind?  Would more brick and mortar stores disappear?

I don’t know…

But I do know that everyone who has a stake in the issue, or is just curious about the upheaval in publishing, should read this article to keep up on the latest events in the ongoing drama.

An Author’s Guide to Publishing in 2012 – A Guest Post by Amy Rogers, Part 2

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This is the second part of a guest post outlining ways writers can understand and respond to the rapid changes in the world of publishing.  If you haven’t read Part 1, I suggest you start with that post, which immediately precedes this one.

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An Author’s Guide to Publishing in 2012 – Part Two, by Dr. Amy Rogers

Part 2: Indie Publishing

Take all of the above and add another, less glamorous tech advance: print-on-demand publishing.  What you get is a slew of new publishing options.  Traditional New York-based publishers (now consolidated into six major houses with many imprints) used to be the only game in town.  What was once derisively called vanity publishing has become “indie”, and indie publishing encompasses a wide range of approaches.

Self-publishing:

This is the buzzword on everyone’s lips, but what does it mean?   I find that many people use the term “self-published” to broadly describe any book in any format that does not have the imprimatur of a Big Six publisher.  This fails to account for the various degrees of self-publishing and also the new professional indie publishing options out there.

1.  A truly self-published book is written, edited, designed, formatted, and distributed all by the author.  The main advantages of this approach are total control and minimal financial expense (though the investment of time may be substantial).  Some writers create their own publishing company to do this.  However most self-pubbing authors hire out at least some the non-writing tasks.  In fact, the majority of “self-published” titles were published by a subsidy publisher chosen and paid for by the author.

2.  Subsidy publisher

A subsidy publisher is a company hired by the author to turn his text file into a paper or digital book.  In most cases, the subsidy publisher provides online distribution but NOT to bricks-and-mortar bookstores.

With subsidy publishing, the author pays out of pocket for all expenses.  The cost and services provided vary a lot, so it pays to shop around.  Unlike old “vanity” publishing, print on demand technology frees the author from having to pay in advance for a print run of books that might never sell.  This keeps the costs low relative to the old days.  In this model, the author is the publisher’s customer.

The next step closer to a traditional publishing arrangement is assisted self-publishing where the author does not pay the costs upfront but rather shares future royalties with the service provider.  This means the book has to be good enough that somebody is willing to take a modest financial risk in publishing it.  Several literary agencies are now offering this type of “consulting” service to their existing clients in exchange for a commission.

3.  Not self-pub: Small presses

A small press is any traditionally-structured publisher that is not owned by the Big Six.  University presses, regional presses, niche publishers and others fit in this category.  Such companies may only publish a few titles per year.  The key distinction that makes this “not self-pub” is the publisher, not the author, pays the costs of getting the book out there.  In this model, booksellers and readers are the publisher’s customers.  Unlike self-publishing, the author must provide a manuscript that is deemed commercially viable on at least a small scale.

4.  Digital-only full-service publishers

This category didn’t exist until a few years ago.  Digital-only publishers operate like small presses but release their titles only in e-book formats.  This keeps their costs lower and allows them to take on riskier projects—such as first novels—that may not sell enough copies to catch the attention of a Big Six imprint.  My own publisher, Diversion Books, is a leader in this category.

With Diversion, the author retains the right to self-publish in paper.  This creates an interesting situation: my science thriller Petroplague is currently on sale with two different covers and two different publishers.  One cover is for the professional e-book with Diversion; the other cover is on the paper books I produced at my own expense with the help of a subsidy publisher.

One size does not fit all in publishing these days.  Indie authors can choose to learn a variety of non-writing skills and publish their books themselves, or they can hire others to do it for them.  If the book is marketable and the author is willing to split royalties, a small press or a digital-only publisher may be an alternative to the Big 6.  For the first time in the history of the book, barriers to entry are low and every writer has the power to bypass the gatekeepers and put his or her words in the hands of readers.

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Amy Rogers is a Harvard-educated scientist, educator, and critic who writes science-themed thrillers. Her debut novel Petroplague is about oil-eating bacteria contaminating the fuel supply of Los Angeles and paralyzing the city.  She is a member of International Thrillers Writers Debut Class (2011-2012).  At her website ScienceThrillers.com [there’s a link on thefirstgates blogroll], Amy reviews books that combine real science with entertainment.  You can follow Amy on Twitter @ScienceThriller or on her Facebook fan page http://www.facebook.com/pages/Amy-Rogers/202428959777274

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Please stop by Amy’s blog, ScienceThrillers.com, to leave a comment if you enjoyed this series.  While you are there, take a look at the features, sign up to receive the newsletter, and enjoy the reviews of a number science-related thrillers, ranging from The Hound of the Baskervilles to Jurassic Park.  

An Author’s Guide to Publishing in 2012 – A Guest Post by Amy Rogers

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Last September, I wrote an enthusiastic review of Petroplague by Amy Rogers http://wp.me/pYql4-1ep. With a PHD in microbiology, Dr. Rogers is uniquely qualified to bring her considerable writing skills to bear on a thriller in which an oil-eating bacteria ravages Los Angeles.  Airplanes fall from the sky.  Millions of cars stall on the streets and freeways.  No food deliveries.  No ambulance, police, or fire service as a greedy corporate criminal and deluded eco-terrorists strive to suppress a solution.

On two occasions, New York agents represented Amy Rogers’ work but were unable to sell it.  With a keen understanding of the turmoil in traditional publishing, Amy decided to take matters into her own hands.  After I posted my review, I invited her to write a summary of her experience for us.

Last week I received an email saying she’d finished a “5,000 word treatise” on current publishing options for writers.  This will form the basis for her presentation at the June meeting of the Sacramento California Writer’s Club branch.  She graciously sent a 1500 word, abridged version, for thefirstgates.  I am delighted to be able to share her account, for I think her observations and experiences can serve as as Ariadne’s thread as we work our way through the current publishing maze.

Because of the length, I am going post this article in two parts.  Meanwhile, I invite everyone to visit Amy’s blog, Science Thrillers.com (listed on my blogroll), and to follow her on Twitter at, @ScienceThriller.  Also, check out her Facebook fan page, where you’ll see that she has been invited to participate in the New Author’s Breakfast at the Left Coast Crime 2012 conference in Sacramento at the end of the month. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Amy-Rogers/202428959777274

And now, without further delay…

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An author’s guide to publishing in 2012 by Dr. Amy Rogers

Part 1: What’s going on with publishing today?

Book publishing is undergoing a revolution unlike anything seen since the invention of moveable type, an explosion of diversity in the paths leading to publication.  After centuries in a desert of limited choices, writers now have a rainforest of options to get their work in front of readers.

But the changes are so profound and happening so rapidly, many writers can’t keep up with the business.  We’re writers, so we write, but what then?  The simple formula—write book, sell rights to a print publisher, collect royalties—doesn’t apply to the majority of published books today.  Is this a bad thing?

The big changes in publishing are both challenge and opportunity.  Whether the changes are “good” or “bad” depends on where you stand.  In this series, I’ll first summarize some of the major trends in the book business that are affecting the way books get published and sold.  In the second, I’ll discuss how writers seeking “publication” of their work can navigate the path that’s right for them.

So why does the publishing business feel like a Kansas farmhouse in a tornado?  Simple: technology.  Digital disruption devastated the music industry; now it’s rolling over publishing.  The end results for various stakeholders (authors, publishers, readers, retailers) are far from certain.

1.  Ebooks

Top of the list of disruptive technologies: e-books.  Amazon’s Kindle e-reader is now in its third or fourth generation.  The critical $100 price point has been breached (a Kindle now costs as little as $79).  Barnes & Noble’s Nook e-reader and tremendous numbers of Apple’s iPad plus various smartphones (which can also be used as e-readers) give millions of Americans easy access to e-books.  (Not to mention ubiquitous laptop and desktop computers, which can be used to read e-books, though uncomfortably.)

How rapid is the rise of the e-book?  The Economist reports that in the first five months of 2011, “sales of consumer e-books in America overtook those from adult hardback books” and “amazon now sells more copies of e-books than paper books”. http://www.economist.com/node/21528611 Granted, Amazon’s experience does not represent the entire bookselling business, but it is significant.  In my own genre—thrillers—over half the books sold are now in digital formats.

2.  Distribution

Digital technology is changing the way books are distributed.  Obviously, e-books can be sold online—from anywhere in the world, to anywhere in the world, no neighborhood bookstore required.

But it’s not only e-book sales that are affected by digital tech.  The emergence of amazon as a global book retailer with no physical presence in communities has also changed how paper books are sold.  People are shopping for paper books over the Internet and getting them shipped.  Neighborhood and mall bookstores are struggling.  Browsing is nice, taking your book home with you on the spot is nice too.  But amazon’s price advantage is killing these stores.  The giant online retailer subsidizes much of its bookselling business, has smaller fixed costs, and still dodges sales tax in most states.

3.  Publicity

The best way to get a person to buy a book is word of mouth: a trusted source, whether a friend or a reviewer, mentioned the book.  Digital technology—the Internet and “social networking”—is truly revolutionizing word of “mouth”.  Successful book marketing is increasingly based in this virtual world.  Book bloggers, readers’ collectives like GoodReads and LibraryThing, Facebook, Twitter, book trailers on YouTube—this is what sells books.  Reviews remain critical, but the traditional venue—newspaper sections devoted to in-house book reviews—is vanishing.  Only a few papers still publish their own book reviews, and generally these reviews are few in number.  So authors and publishers must go online to get reviews and build “buzz” around a title.

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Section two of Dr. Amy Rogers, A Writer’s Guide to Publishing in 2012 will be featured in my next post.