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"The Three 'Rs': Authoring in
the Digital Age'
Presentation at Writer’s Conference, Swanwick, Derbyshire,
2009
I have learnt much more about today’s publishing marketplace
from my wife and the likes of Fred Bass at Strand Books, than I
have probably learnt from any publishing boardroom. However, we
all now have to recognise that the publishing market is changing
and much is being driven by the new digital age; of global
connectivity, high bandwidth and technology itself. No one can
predict far into the future, but we can all get a better
understanding of the changes that are happening and in doing so,
potentially prepare ourselves for this Brave New World.
The digital world presents many challenges and many
opportunities. What is clear is there are no silver bullets and
much uncertainty. I hear much doom mongering and negativity, but
personally although I am not a supporter of everything digital,
I can agree whole heartily with Annie, that this glass is most
definitely half full.
A couple of weeks ago I was on Litopia After Dark, the weekly
live digital broadcast for writers which run by agent and
entrepreneur Peter Cox. I was asked to bring a topic of news
which we thought would be of interest for discussion and raised
the issue of Random House’s reported moves to reduce digital
royalty rates. With reducing or vanishing advances, today’s
discount high street madness and inconsistent or no real ebook
pricing, we discussed how authors will be rewarded in the
future. All I would say is that there was a consensus that an
author wasn’t going to be rewarded in the same way in the future
and things were already changing.
So today I want to give you my views on authoring in the
Digital Age, or what I would summarise as learning the new
digital three ‘Rs’.
However, before I talk about the three Rs, we must define
digital and digitisation.
I would suggest to you that digitisation is not about ebooks,
online, podcasts, widgets, Google books search, Amazon Kindles,
Sony Readers, Mp3 players. These are merely the delivery
platforms, the outputs, the final link in the chain that
stretches from the author to the reader.
Today digital is still often an afterthought, with many
publishers still literally taking the physical print copy, a
print ready PDF, or even hard copy and converting it to a
digital book .I would suggest that this is a somewhat
questionable way to develop and manage digital assets and
rights. When the majority of files are created, developed and
stored digitally, why create the digital book as an
afterthought. There are many excuses, but few reasons.
Many people ask me why there aren’t more digital books, the
reasons are many; cost, lack of rights, effort, an immature
market and some just don’t want to do it. Some reasons are
genuine and complex, some aren’t. The reality however is that we
are trying to create a digital market in a vacuum, with a dearth
of range and availability of the digital books people want to
read. Forget the schoolyard bragging on the size of their
repositories that we hear from many today, the reality is you
can’t create a market and demand in a vacuum. Barnes and Noble
recently launched their ebook site with 700,000 titles but
500,000 of these were public domain works - in other words pre
1923.
It is worth noting that digitisation can also impact how we
write as well as what we write. It also can impact the editorial
and production processes, how content is marketed, promoted, how
bibliographic information is created, managed and distributed,
how sales are supported and of course royalties are generated.
Digitisation as with all publishing is about; content, rights
and channels.
Today we have to consider many aspects and recognise that
digital publishing and physical publishing are no longer
separate worlds. Digital isn’t going to cannibalise the physical
book today, or tomorrow, but it is going to impact what we all
do and how we do it.
Digital publishing is publishing. This genie is not going
back in the bottle.
There are only two people that matter in any publishing life
cycle; the author who creates and the consumer who pays and
everyone in between has to earn the place by adding value.
Players who had a role in the physical world do not necessarily
have a role in the digital world.
So what does digitisation mean to authors, journalists,
illustrators and creators of content? Time doesn’t allow me to
cover every aspect of what is a complex, challenging and ever
changing environment so I want to focus on three perspectives,
the three Rs, that I believe matter to you - the author:
Relationships
What is the most import relationship you have today?
The agent, the editor, the production department, the
marketing team, the PR department, the sales force, the
warehouse, the wholesaler, the book chain, the independent, the
bookclub, the supermarket, Amazon, Google, Apple, the library,
the school, the teacher, the student the consumer?
I would suggest that the most important relationship
yesterday was that or those closest to you, the agent, the
editor and the development process. Readers always are
important, but if the amount of effort expended related to the
importance, the answer was clear.
Many of the relationships I listed were outsourced to others
and mainly the publisher. It wasn’t the time that dictated this,
but often it was the effort and inability to do it effectively.
What is the most important one tomorrow?
The digital world potentially turns much yesterday’s
relationships on their head.
If we look at your Readers:
What do you know about them?
How do you get closer to them?
You may want to write and nothing more. Shun your readers and
delegate the task to someone else, or neglect it altogether.
However, remember what Ray Hammond said about it being your
business. Some of the most successful media creators today have
joined those digital dots that connect them to their audience.
They may be musicians, writers, artists, cartoonists, TV media
personalities, whatever. They have learnt how to use today’s
digital tools; websites, blogs, twitter, podcasts, social
network sites etc. They have learnt which works for them and
they are making it happen.
How do connect to the readers you don’t know?
Writing is the second R in the digital age for authors
It is the most controversial perspective and questions the
work itself.
For the last couple of hundred years Books have been
‘straight jacketed’ between two pieces of card. The reason was
simple and down to economics. The most economic format was what
we see all around us today, 250 to 300 pages or around 75,000
words. But a digital age doesn’t have the same economics or
constraints. The digital age has the potential to explode the
spine and free writing from its current economic straightjacket.
Will it happen tomorrow? Will all books change?
It is already happening albeit slowly.
What do these authors have in common?
First we have the Keitai novel which is huge in Japan. This
is a new bread of authors who are write books for your keitia,
or mobile phone. These are written in instalments and in 5 years
have jumped from zero to a $82 million and growing business.
Yoshi who wrote the very successful keitai novel ‘ Deep Love’
was turned into a book, which sold 2.7 million copies. Mieko
Kawakami, who is pictured, is a blogger who has been heralded as
Japan’s biggest literary star. He blog enjoys a staggering
200,000 readers every day and her third book won the prestigious
Akutagawa literary award.
Next is Kate Pullinger, an established writer who I
interviewed, who is now fully engaged in creating multi media
stories that often evolve in instalments. It can be a shock to
first see her work and you may not like it, but she recognises
that stories are not exclusive to text, sound or visual and can
be multi media.
Next author Stephen King, who in 1999 published his book
‘Riding the Bullet’. He did so over the internet and produced
and sold one chapter at a time as he wrote it. Many derided the
experiment and said it was a failure but the reality was he sold
hundreds of thousands of chapters, broke new ground. Today he
continues to experiment with digital and is to write an
exclusive Kindle novel.
Next is our good friend Duke Redbird who is an Ojibway Shaman
and who wrote a poem ‘I am Canadian’ which he read to the Queen
in 1977 to celebrate her jubilee. Scholastic have now published
a book with just that one poem in it which is now going into all
Canadian schools. If one poem can be a book it can easily be a
rendered into many digital formats. Poetry is no longer straight
jacketed into economic collections and each poem can digital
stand in its own.
Next is Kurt Vonnegut who died in 2007. His estate has just
announced that 14 of his unpublished short stories are to be
published as individual ebooks and then secondly as a printed
collection. Apparently Mr. Vonnegut is claimed to have told an
interviewer in 1995 that he would “welcome” being called a
Luddite. I think his estate has clearly taken a different
stance.
Finally, let’s remember Charles Dickens. I borrow the
following extract from his Wikipedia entry.
Much of his work first appeared in periodicals and magazines
in serialised form, a favoured way of publishing fiction at the
time. Dickens, unlike others who would complete entire novels
before serial publication commenced, often wrote his in parts,
in the order in which they were meant to appear. The practice
lent his stories a particular rhythm, punctuated by one
cliffhanger after another to keep the public eager for the next
instalment.
But it not just about how or what you write but also how you
publish and promote it.
Today you need to be familiar with online content sites such
as Scribd and Wattpad. These are the new generation of self
publishing; they are not based on print on demand, but are
online and attract huge audiences. Publishers, are also now
experimenting with sites to let aspiring authors post their work
on, in a hope to get noticed. I recognise that to many, this may
be today’s slush pile, but we must also acknowledge that to
others, it may be tomorrow’s reading platform. Keep your minds
open and decide on the basis of knowledge not ignorance. Digital
writing is and will be different, will it replace tradition
requests for 75,000 words and it it may suit you and your
readers.
Rights and reward share the final R
It brings me back to that Litopia discussion and the issue of
how authors get rewarded in this digital age. Let’s try and park
the physical book world to one side and look purely at digital
rights and reward. Today author advances are disappearing or
shrinking. Digital rights are effectively being talked of as a
single subsidiary right but we must recognise that these are
different from the rights we are familiar with today but can
also affect them.
What happens to the rights reversal in a digital age where
print on demand and an ebook can mean a book is never out of
print? Why should a work be effectively tethered to a publisher
in perpetuity? Always make sure that you can revert your rights
and when the conditions for reversal are reached get them back.
You can with little effort, sell as many digital individual
copies of an out of print work as a publisher and enjoy more
return.
Guess what the price of an ebook is today? I can’t tell you
the answer only that some publishers tie it to the current
renditions RRP, others to the hardback, and others to whatever.
The price has to include tax which changes from state to state,
country to country and even within the EU is not standardised.
The consumer is however now seeing Amazon, Barnes and Noble,
Borders US, Indigo in Canada and others trying to create a $9.99
price point. Remember that iTunes moment everyone talks about?
They did it by creating a .99 cent price point. I would predict
that ebook prices can only go one way and it isn’t up. Many are
using the ebook as the promotional lost leader to capture the
physical sale. Others are saying that they will not release the
ebook until after the hardback has had its day so avoiding the
cannibalising of hardback sales.
What I am trying to covey is that’s like the wild west out
there today. But remember the contract you sign today will not
deliver royalties for some time and can you predict what the
market will look like in 2 years or 3 years?
Should there be a separate digital rights contract which is
not based on the physical rendition but on a fixed term licence?
With physical sales came returns and so royalties took time
to be paid. However with digital sales there are no returns so
why does the author have to wait? Why not transfer the money
when it hits the till or at least not long after?
Should digital royalties’ be based on a % of RRP, which is often
meaningless in the digital rendition?
Should digital royalties be based on a % of net receipts, which
if the current trends continue could be a % of little or
nothing?
Should digital royalties be fixed amount?
Should you negotiate different rates based on the different
channels as Google, Amazon, Apple are all different in their
models?
Then there is the Google Book Settlement in the US. My
thoughts on this debacle are well documented but what I would
say it has raised it the whole issue on copyright. I find it
amazing that an industry that is all about copyright and rights
failed to create a rights registry to control them and waited
for a handout from Google to even start the process.
I like Annie see a fantastic opportunity for writing talent
in the digital world. Tomorrow you may not have the same
dependency on some relationships that you believe pivotal today.
I believe that there will always be publishers and retailers but
they may not be the same number, or that they will provide the
same services they do today.
The one thing that is certain is that tomorrow will be
different and you are in the best position to benefit.
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