1999
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Somebody is playing by obsolete rules. And it's the book publishers. Let's see how this works. First, you work yourself sick writing a book. Months (or years). You believe in it. You like it. You send it to your agent - if you have one. And they read it and suggest changes to make it saleable. By whose rules? And then? Then they shop it to the publishers - a dwindling number in fact, countable on one hand because bigger is better for a business. Not for books! And maybe, an editor will read it and suggest changes to make it saleable. If you are lucky, these "changes" you've been given are acceptable to you and your story. Otherwise, you fight and argue and, if you want them to buy your book, you make them. (In high-tech, the author has the last word because the editors don't know tech!) Painful. Then, you get published. Eventually. 18 months? Two years? You don't design your cover - somebody on the publishing marketing team does that. And they have several rules. Put a half-naked woman on the cover - so the male dominated distributors will put your book on the shelves in the stores. Someplace other than the shelf on the floor level where people have to crawl on their hands and knees in a mad hunt for it - if they know it exists. Why so many of us shop in jeans. Put a half-naked man on the front to attract women shoppers. Put a large weapon or a spacecraft on the front to attract teenager boys, and men. Put a half-naked woman with a big gun on the front - I guess you get them all. You may go to a signing - if somebody arranges it. There might be a press release and it might get picked up - if you are a million seller. You probably go to writer's conferences and try to sell copies of your gem. You may invest in bookmarks and posters and have them sent out as promotional items to booksellers to announce your book. Your publisher - if you are a star - may run some advertising - if you are not, they don't. But wait, you are not a "million seller" so you don't get advertised. So nobody knows who you are. And nobody knows about your book. And the bookstores and distributors give it a shelf life of three weeks? Four? If at all. And then it's dead. And, if nobody knew where or when to find it, then it didn't sell well. Hardly surprising. It now has "remainders" - they tear off the covers and send them back. They subtract these from any royalty you would have earned. You eat it. And because you didn't sell a lot this time, you have trouble selling the next one. Wait just a damn minute. First, who decided that a book is dead because the bookstores aren't carrying it? Here come the dot.coms. Did you fail to notice? Try Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, Borders.com, Mandalay.com, and the list is long. On-line stores. Shelf space = web space. Cheap. Long-lived. Second, the printers have been hit below the belt! All those millions of user manuals the high-tech industry used to print? Long gone. All on-line now. All in PDF. So the printers changed. Change or die off! POD - print on demand - and fulfillment services. I am getting quotes now. Third, who came up with the bright idea that we destroy someone's product instead of simply returning it? When it could be sold elsewhere - like on-line? Time to stop the waste of paper and resources! Is there any other industry that does this to a product? I think not! Why do we allow this to be done to books? Can we say landfill? Where is Greenpeace? Sierra Club? Environmentalists when you need them? Where's the protest over this desecration? I've been warned - don't give many copies at a time to any store - Amazon included - and make them pay for those before they get more. To cut down remaindering. Because they still don't get it! Time for independent booksellers to be on-line. Time for a storefront for independent booksellers. Time to do it yourself. Hmmmmm. I just thought up my next web venture. Venture Capital - here I come. Sometime soon. Maybe. First I am doing a dry run. My book. My site. My printer. My fulfillment. My marketing. This works - and we have a new model. We have new rules. No shelf life. No need to cater to publishers. Let them court us! (They do on the high tech book side of the business.) You get a cover that fits the story and distributors be damned! Suit the cover to your market! The reader! What a concept! Booksellers - want it? Buy it wholesale right from the author! And don't tear off the cover 'cause we won't take it back if it's damaged! Control your own advertising. Promotion. Change the rules. It's the Millennium. And I can still write COBOL. |
Copyright 1999 Donnamaie E. White. email to dewhite@NOSPAN_best.com