Tenebris

Bad blogger lives

No, I am not dead, despite having more or less abandoned my blog. For anyone still following the RSS feed, you can listen to me jabber about self-publishing on the XM Radio show 'into tomorrow with Dave Graveline' on Sunday, or download the podcast later. Bob Young will be calling in during the show. I will be curious to see if the show has anything like the listenership of TWIT, a podcast Bob appeared on some time back and which generated a huge flurry of blog links and web traffic to Lulu.

There's also a q & a about Lulu.com up at Creative Commons this week.

Apologies for the relative quiet.

Blooker Shortlist Is Announced!

The shortlist for winners of the first Lulu Blooker Prize have just been announced.

Don't ask

A more or less random list of things
to look for and catch up on over the holidays

Public Domain Audiobooks [from Wired via Publishers Lunch]
LibriVox is a "site where amateur readers have created downloadable audiobooks of a couple of dozen public domain classics. The organization uses volunteers from all over to split up the work." See: LibriVox

NC Storyblogging, another great project being put together by Anton Zuiker (with a Lulu publishing element included, if all goes according to plan).

10 Gift Ideas for the Person Who Has (Read) Everything

A podcast of me talking about Lulu on a The Rude Awakening Show on Irie Radio (FM 98.1 in Ocean City, Maryland).

Computer model predicts bestseller titles (Inquirer, UK - Dec 15, 2005). Come up with a novel title that scores higher than Agatha Christie's Sleeping Murder (83%) and I will mail you a Lulu book of your choice (under $20). Post results in the comments on this post, please.

Prospecting in the mines of public domain books (AP via Publishers Marketplace). Interesting to note that there is lots of small scale activity of this sort going on among the ranks of Lulu entrepreneurs. My favorite, of course, is ERBville Press.

The Wall Street Journal's series from last week on DIY (Do-It-Yourself) Media (subscription required). Apart from neglecting the on-demand publishing juggernaut that is Lulu.com, the series is quite good. You can get a bit of an overview for free from a blog post on Corante. See also: "Marketers' New Idea: Get the Consumer To Design the Ads," "Vlogger (noun): Blogger With Video Camera."

Raising a pint to Pinter

Well, I must say it's a relief to have a Nobel Prize winner in literature I actually like to read. Harold Pinter, described by the UK Telegraph as "our grandest and grouchiest playwright," is a writer that has the virtue not only of having been read by a fair number of people, but of being liked by at least some of them. From the Indian Express:

... Pinter is renowned for turning silence into an art form with brooding dramas packed with enigmatic characters who never said what they meant or meant what they said. The dramas exuded menace and were spiced with erotic fantasies and obsession, jealousy and hatred. Critics dubbed Pinter’s chilling masterpieces “the theatre of insecurity”.

While the BBC implies  (see "Pinter's Politics") that Pinter's (leftist) politics may have had a role in his selection, nevertheless the choice must be greeted with relief by those of us who love books that are actually capable of giving pleasure. It's a far cry from other recent choices for the prize. [Not that I rate myself as a notably well-read individual (the most well-read individual I know is Sanders of the River). The best that can be said of me at this point is that I'm reasonably Internet-literate, whatever that's worth.]

NPR's Fresh Air Profiles Blook Author

Jason Christopher Hartley, the blogger behind Just Another Soldier--one of the blogs the military did not want you to read--appeared today on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross to talk about his new blook: Just Another Soldier: A Year on the Ground in Iraq. [See Wired's article "The Blogs of War" from August.] You cannot tell me that the blook's time has not come.

Blook city

Apart from the nice BBC piece today on the Blooker Prize, more and more blooks are coming to light as the blogosphere lights up on the topic. One post from the blog Paved.ca pointed me to several new blogs (with blooks), one of which Kim is certainly going to enjoy: You Grow Girl.

The number of blooks is greater than has been estimated up until now, and the reason is that so many of them are independently published. Many may be sold only via the authors' blogs, which means that they have remained below the radar of the likes of R.R. Bowker.

Interesting blook titles recently brought to my attention include:

• 52 Projects
• You Grow Girl
• San Francisco Stories
• Simon of Space
• Golden Boy
• Danger Quicksand Have a Nice Day
• Digital Dish
• The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect
  

The Booker Goes to Banville

The news is official: the illustrious Man Booker Prize goes to John Banville's novel, The Sea, described in the official press release as "a novel of loss, identity and remembrance. It is written in beautifully crafted prose and has led to Banville being heralded as ‘a master at the top of his game’ and ‘one of the great fictional stylists of our time.’" Lit blogger Mark Sarvas, of The Elegant Variation, is beside himself. Also noted in the blog of the (soon-to-be-illustrious) Blooker Prize.

The Lulu Blooker Prize

So, here's the big news: Today Lulu is announcing the the creation of a new, independent literary prize specifically for blooks, or books based on blogs (or similar web sites). The categories will be fiction, nonfiction, and web comics.

The annual competition will be called The Lulu Blooker Prize. The chair of the judges the first year will be Cory Doctorow who among many other things is the author of  Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (first published independently on the web) as well as the recent Someone Comes to Town. Someone Leaves Town.

The prize is open to books from ALL quarters, whether published independently (through Lulu or iUniverse or whoever) or published conventionally (Random House, Tor, etc.). The books have to have been written in English, have had their origins in material posted on a web site (see my previous post on blooks), and each entrant will have to send three hard copies, along with the entry form, to the contest address. Prizes? $2,000 to the overall winner, and $1,000 to the winner in each of the other two categories.

Oh yes, and there will also be a Blooker blog. Full details of the announcement appear below. Should be lots of fun.

Announcing “The Blooker Prize,” the World’s First Literary Prize for “Blooks,” alias Books Based On Blogs or Websites

October 10, 2005 (London, UK and Raleigh, NC) – The world’s first literary prize for books based on blogs or websites – known for short as “blooks” – is announced Monday by its sponsor, Lulu (www.lulu.com), a website that enables anyone to publish and sell their own books.

The Lulu Blooker Prize (www.LuluBlookerPrize.com) will be a global competition honoring the hybrid literary form of blooks, a new form of an old media and one of the hottest new publishing and online trends.

The prize will honor blooks in three categories: fiction, non-fiction, and web-comics. The overall winner will receive $2,000, and winners in the other two categories $1,000 each, in addition to a small piece of literary immortality and something approaching glory in the expanding realm known as the blogosphere.

The contest, which is open to books published by conventional publishing houses as well as independent (self) publishers, will be judged by a panel of figures prominent in both the online and offline publishing worlds, chaired by Cory Doctorow (www.craphound.com), the noted, London-based science-fiction author, blogger co-editor of BoingBoing (www.boingboing.net) the world’s most linked-to blog.

Doctorow, who develops his own books from notes and ideas posted on his weblog, believes that blooks are distinct from traditional books:

“Blogs encourage their authors to publish in small, partially formed chunks,” says Doctorow. “Previously, they might have been kept in the author’s notebook, but something amazing happens when you post them online: readers help you connect them, flesh them out and grow them into fully-fledged books or blooks.”

Other judges include Robin “Roblimo” Miller (www.roblimo.com) of Slashdot (www.slashdot.org) and Paul Jones (www.ibiblio.org/pjones/wordpress/), founder of iBiblio.org. All judging will be independent of the contest sponsor and no favor will be shown to blooks published on Lulu.

The Lulu Blooker Prize, whose title is an affectionate nod to another important literary prize, will take place annually. Winners will be announced April 3, 2006. Details for submitting blooks for consideration appear at www.LuluBlookerPrize.com.

About Lulu (www.lulu.com): Lulu is the world's fastest growing source of print-on-demand book publishing. Founded by Bob Young, who previously co-founded Red Hat, the open source software company, Lulu provides independent publishers with free access to on-demand publishing tools for books, e-books, music, DVDs, images and calendars.

More blooks in the news

More blooks in the news:

"Secret blogger wants readers to free him from mortal toil" (Times Online), about a blook by anti-corporate French blogger Max. [who interestingly, on a search of French Google, still comes up below Tucker Max.]

"Knit-wits" (Christian Science Monitor), a story about the Yarn Harlot, her new book, and the gangs of knitters who roam cyberspace. [I wonder if she knows Lulu author The Crochet Dude?]

Lots of stories about the blook "Julie & Julia," from the blogger who tried to cook every recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. A sample:

'Julie and Julia': The Servantless American Cook
New York Times, United States - Oct 1, 2005
... To Powell's surprise, her blog, which she called the Julie/Julia Project, struck a chord with legions of readers who followed her triumphs and travails as she ...

Books: Jeff Salamon Austin American-Statesman (subscription), TX - 6 hours ago ... What was surprising was that "The Julie/Julia Project" became something of a phenomenon: Powell developed a devoted readership and was profiled on "The CBS ...

Julie & Julia 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen
San Francisco Chronicle, United States - Sep 24, 2005
At the beginning of the memoir "Julie & Julia," we find Julie Powell on the verge of an emotional meltdown. ... Did "Julie & Julia" need to be written? No. ...

Look for more on blooks tomorrow.

Blooks!

What's a blook? A blook is defined as a book based on material and/or ideas first published in a blog.*

A blook is the marriage of the best features of web publishing -- feedback from readers, speed, serialization, freedom from the influence of sponsors -- with the staid virtues of the traditional book -- thoughtfulness, depth, dramatic arc and reader-friendly design -- delivered on deliciously permanent, portable paper leaves.

The word may be new, but the phenomenon is real. Pundits write about Generation C, young people who have grown up with the Internet at hand as a publishing tool of first resort, not only for writing, but for art, music, film, and POD-casts. Publishing independently--a practice previously referred to derisively as self-publishing--has become the standard rather than the exception, especially for new writers. Even some established writers and journalists, people like Andrew Sullivan, have set  out to become their own publishers.

And the publishing business itself has taken notice. Editors and agents whose lips first curled at the notion of lone bloggers tapping away in the Internet wilderness now regularly mine the search engines for writers with voice, with audiences, whose content has value.

The Friday Project, a publishing house in England recently launched with the backing of Random House, has its first three titles scheduled for release this fall--all developed from blogs. The Washingtonienne, Jessica Cutler's scandalous account of a call girl in the nation's capital, began as a blog. In fact, in recent times we have seen more and more authors that straddle the worlds of web and print publishing:

Small Pieces Loosely Joined, David Weinberger
Just A Geek - Wil Wheaton
Salam Pax: The Clandestine Diary of an Ordinary Iraqi - Salam Pax
Baghdad Burning: Girl Blog from Iraq - Riverbend
Dog Days - Ana Marie Cox
Belle de Jour: The Intimate Adventures Of A London Call Girl, by Anonymous

And Lulu, not surprisingly, finds itself host to an increasing number of books based on blogs, or blooks. It's worth noting, while we're on the subject, that since a blog is really just an easily updated web site, a large number of the best-selling books on Lulu qualify as blooks, from web comics like Boy on a Stick and Slither - Vol. One, to The Hardball Times Baseball Annual.  

All of which is to say, what with this being the season for literary prizes and all, that it may be time for a new literary prize to celebrate the newest incarnation of one of the oldest forms of media. Stay tuned for an announcement on Monday, October 11!
___________________________

* It's the literary equivalent of the collision in the famous Reese's candy commercial, where one person shouts, "Hey! You got your chocolate in my peanut butter," and the other, "You got your peanut butter in my chocolate." After a moment, they both look up--"Hey, this tastes great!"

And an update: Hard to tell the exact moment the term blooks came into being, but I suspect it is here to stay.

A novel, one sentence at a time

Discovered via the always interesting Robert Nagle, of IdiotProgrammer, I look forward to following an experiment by blogger Tao Lin (reader of depressing books), who is writing a novel online at a rate of one sentence a day. The entries are iterative, as you can see from her first posts:

8/24/2005
People got impatient that year. They wanted things now. They wanted to learn Japanese without having to do any work—and without any accent at all.    
posted by reader of depressing books at 8/24/2005 0 comments

8/23/2005
People got impatient that year.  They wanted things now.             
posted by reader of depressing books at 8/23/2005 0 comments

8/22/2005
People got impatient that year.
posted by reader of depressing books at 8/22/2005 2 comments

 

Writing a novel one sentence at a time strikes me as a more practical undertaking, at least for someone like me, than National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)--which commences in November--in which thousands of people take a run at writing an entire novel in the space of a month. As always, I hope to see the products of these labors available on Lulu at some point.

Instant publishing as a force for good

As many pundits observed with some wonder in the wake of the recent spate of hurricanes, the web offers an astonishingly fast means of responding to current events. Within days and hours of the hurricane, in addition to the amazing blog reporting of events on the ground, sites like CraigsList and KatrinaFinder organized essential information even as the agencies in charge were still reeling.

Powerful fund raising  for hurricane relief efforts on the Internet arose overnight, as they had after the tsunami in December, and as they had the year before during the upstart candidacy of Howard Dean. But just as musicians rushed to assemble concerts to raise money for hurricane victims, so too were the scribblers of the Internet hard at work considering the contributions they might make to the collective effort both to help -- and to help process -- the tragedies.

With a speed to press that conventional publishers could never hope to match, bloggers, Internet journalists, RPG gamers, and assorted online types used Lulu to publish three books that act as  fundraisers and, in one case, also as a meditative response to the events.

         

Katrina and the Lost City of New Orleans was written in less than ten days by Rod Amis, a former resident. Written in a swaggering gonzo neo-noir, the reader can literally smell,feel, and taste the real city. From the intro:

There were two New Orleans, Louisiana's before Hurricane Katrina. The was the real Nawlins, where most of us who lived there spent our days. And there was the fantasy New Orleans the only included the high rise hotels on Canal Street, whose heart was Bourbon Street and whose soul peeked out for the tourists from between the souvenir shops in the rest of the French Quarter.

That New Orleans, the New Orleans I mean to tell you about, that will never, ever, exist again; that city of love, lust, death and sex, will never exist again.

New Orleans, by my own avowal and that of many, was the American Haiti.

Being a former Nawlins bartender, Amis is donating a portion of his proceeds to the New Orleans Hospitality Relief Fund--which benefits displaced service industry workers.

       

The Webcomic Hurricane Relief Telethon Book is the result of a 2-day webcomic telethon sponsored by Blank Label Comics--which raised nearly $30k. You can continue to support relief aid by purchasing this compilation. All proceeds to benefit the American Red Cross.

       

"Beyond the Storm: Shadows of the Big Easy" is a diverse collection of stories, essays and art submitted from around the world and capture the essence of the city that was. All proceeds benefit the American Red Cross. From the intro:

What will you find inside? I asked the contributors to take us to their vision of the Big Easy, and that's what they've done. Th ey've provided role-playing game settings and scenarios, mini-rpgs, short stories, essays and a poem inspired by the city, its environs and its culture. We start out in the swamps outside of the city. Traveling through them, we meet beings that might have been.

We spend most of our time in the city itself. We explore the worlds of magic and horror, meet superheroes from NOLA, travel to the future, and end where any good traveler eventually ends up—in a restaurant and, ultimately, a hotel. I hope you enjoyed this journey as much as we enjoyed mapping it out for you.
 
  And remember—we have traveled beyond the storm together—and together we can re-build Big Easy so it can continue to cast its bright light on future generations.

Wiping away the sting of rejection

Chalk up another one for the headline writers of the world: "Special TP wipes away sting of rejection" from the Des Moines Register. On the same topic, I'll be talking about author rejection on Canberra's talk radio station 2CC am Wednesday afternoon (here--Thursday morning in Australia).
[There are some who have suggested that this is simply a smear job against conventional publishing, but that's simply not true.]

Putting rejection behind you

Well, in case you missed it Lulu launched a new product this week, sort of: "Jilted Authors Put Rejection Letters Behind Them - By Printing Them On Toilet Paper."

What writer has not tasted the bitter wafer of rejection? While the idea of print-on-demand toilet paper (at $90 for a set of four) may seem, at best, frivolous, it does get at an important truth, which is that there will always be more content than the publishing industry can, or wants, to make available. And while in the majority of cases the haughty editor may serve us well--separating the wheat from the chaff--there are also plenty of cases where he just gets it wrong. Writers from ee cummings to Stephen King and J.K. Rowling  all sampled their fair share of rejection before achieving reknown. How is a writer to drown that bitter taste? Perhaps something sweet... revenge.

In order to demonstrate the obsolescence of the editor-as-gatekeeper idea in an Internet-enabled world, Lulu decided to offer D. Judson Hindes, the Florida-based author of the as-yet underappreciated "HALTIA AND THE THIRD PLANET: a science fiction/fantasy adventure," the chance to earn a modest spot in literary history by becoming the first author to print his old rejection letters on toilet paper (two-ply but not, as they say in the trade, facial quality). I have a roll of Jud's toilet paper in front of me, in fact. 

Dear Writer:
Thank you for letting us see the proposal for your book. We have considered the project carefully, but regret to say that it does not seem right for . . . . the best of luck in placing this elsewhere.

Shiver.

A warm reception to the Lulu announcement has trickled through the blogosphere, showing up most notably in Strange New Products, OhGizmo, and the blog of journalist Jeremy Wagstaff, LooseWire (who seems to have a serious interest in POD, even though he ignored a recent email I sent him about the role of print-on-demand in enabling the long tail for books). The Des Moines Register also showed an interest in the story (yet-to-appear). And yours truly appeared earlier today on a couple of radio stations (KFNC FM-News in Houston, and Spin 103.8 in Dublin) to try to sound witty on the topic of author rejection. Probably unsuccessfully.

You know you've been wondering  what could restore your wounded pride. Go ahead, buy a roll or four for yourself.

Podcasting your book and Amazon's play for independent publishers

In recent news, The Book Standard ran a short piece on podcasting audio books called, "A Novel Approach to Podcasting." It features tech-savvy author Mark Jeffrey, of The Pocket and the Pendant.

In older news (still playing catch-up), Amazon.com continues to try to develop its image as a vehicle for independent publishers. They have announced Amazon Shorts, a line of short fiction that readers can purchase for 49 cents a download. See "Amazon does an iTunes for Literature" (Earth Times).

I post this as a follow-up to an AP story from a couple of weeks ago (that I suspect I may also have forgotten to blog): "Big doors opened by Amazon.com: Authors and small publishers benefit from global reach." I think the AP story probably reflects the Amazon PR department's first attempt at making the case that independent publishers should work directly through them. This is the first bit of corporate strategy to follow upon the company's purchase of Booksurge last April.

Amazon keeps track of sales and inventory for its Advantage publishers, and automatically reorders books when stocks are running low. Members pay a $29.95 fee, and Amazon takes a 55 percent cut of sales -- about what most wholesalers charge.

The story manages to glide right over it, but that 55% tells you about all you need to know about this strategy, methinks. When  you take out the middleman-distributor, who benefits? In this case, Amazon.com. Why not the publisher? Why not the author?

[Added: There is a fairly lengthy discussion of the pros and cons of the Amazon Shorts program on the blog Whatever. Worth a read.]

The niche publishing meme continues

The AuthorHouse PR team successfully pitches the long tail angle of POD publishing to the Dallas Morning News in:

Target audience? POD is for you
Self-publishers can find technical niche or fill out a family tree
12:00 AM CDT on Saturday, August 20, 2005
By JEROME WEEKS / The Dallas Morning News

The New Writer's Thesaurus

A friend (and fellow Magnetic Fields fan) brought this to my attention today:

           

The Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus Compiled by Christine Lindberg ISBN 0195170768, hardback, 1128 pages, Oct 2004

From the description:     In addition to the more than 300,000 synonyms and 10,000 antonyms found in the thesaurus, each of our distinguished editorial board members (including David Auburn, Michael Dirda, David Lehman, Stephin Merritt, Francine Prose, Zadie Smith, Jean Strouse, David Foster Wallace, and Simon Winchester) has contributed frank, funny, thoughtful, and, most of all, word-wise mini-essays on words that they particularly love, hate, admire, or are just plain puzzled by.

So that's on my Christmas list.

The Sunday Telegraph on Lulu

Yet another important UK paper, The Sunday Telegraph, offers its take on Lulu, this one predictably skeptical: "They haven't sold because they're not very good. But at least the readers decide," by Roya Nikkhah.

It's funny, really, that so few members of the conventional media seem to be able to let go of the good vs. bad distinction. This is also why the subject of blogs remains touchy among journalists. It is hard for established media voices to grasp the truly libertarian nature of the Internet itself.

[Updates added on 9/9]

The e-publishing alternative, Belfast Telegraph

Web authors slip rejection
Sydney Morning Herald (subscription) - Sydney,New South Wales,Australia
... as How to Cook a Peacock and Ten Crochet Dude Dishcloths have, against all the odds, been published, and read, via an American website, www.lulu.com, which was ...
See all stories on this topic

Bad books are welcome here
Washington Times - Washington,DC,USA
... How to Cook a Peacock" and "Ten Crochet Dude Dishcloths" have, against all the odds, been published, and read, via an American Web site, www.Lulu.com, which ...
See all stories on this topic

And damned if I can get this link to work, but it shows up in Google News:

 Bloggers can now benefit advertisers
Media Week, UK - 7 hours ago
... But, as the recent UK launch of the personal publishing site Lulu.com indicates, the phenomenon of personal publishing is of major interest to the media sector ...

BBC Radio

Hmm. I made a brief appearance today on BBC's Radio Ulster talking about Lulu.  I believe you can link to the stream by clicking here:
Arts Extra - Catch up with the latest news in the world of the arts.

If I came across as an idiot, please feel free not to mention it.

Remaindered books (or Bob gets a new desk)

           

Bob Young of Lulu

BBC News offers a fairly clear take on what Lulu is all about in "Rewriting the rules of publishing," a piece notable in part because of its generous use of graphics, including Jennie Breeden's drawing of a comic book artist banging her head on her drawing board and Bob's new chair and desk, which is made entirely of remaindered copies of his book How Red Hat Changed the Software Business--and Took Microsoft by Surprise. That memorable title is now available on Amazon for forty-five cents, which makes it cheaper than buying artificial logs this winter, no?

[and this update from the Edinburgh Evening News, which apparently makes a practice of simply rewriting BBC stories without getting any new information. Like a game of telegraph (in which one person whispers a story to another going around a room), the details subtly shift in this retelling: "Writers in with a shout thanks to Lulu." See also: "Lulu rivoluziona il sistema editoriale," in  the Italian paper Corriere della Sera.]

Don't do it for the money - Seth Godin on book publishing

Seth Godin of all people offers a useful reality check to would-be book publishers in a recent post: "Advice for Authors" (discovered via Publishers Lunch).

His tips for those considering writing a book for publication include 'not doing it for the money,' and a cautionary note that 'there is no such thing as effective book promotion by a publisher.' He adds this:

Printing your own book is very very easy and not particularly expensive. You can hire professional copyeditors and designers and end up with a book that looks just like one from Random House. That's easy stuff.

What Random House and others do is invest. They invest cash in an advance. They invest time in creating the book itself and selling it in and they invest more cash in printing books. Like all VCs, they want a big return.

He is right of course. And, as if these words of wisdom were not daunting enough, keep in mind that he is writing about non-fiction books. If you want to write a book of fiction, you had better be in it for love of the game.

The Digitization of Books

In an enviable example of lucid academic writing, Jenny Lee, a lecturer at the University of Melbourne, offers an essay on the mystique of the printed book and its demise in the face of digitization called "Beyond Gatekeeping: Publishing in an Era of Information Overload."

The essay was published a few months ago on the site The Book & The Computer, but came to my attention only today thanks to a colleague. The author touches on several topics near and dear to me, most aptly the bias against the more accessible publishing culture made possible by technologies like desktop publishing and the Internet:

The passion invested in the defense of "the book" against the forces of consumer capitalism -- or, as an older discourse would have it, the defense of "culture" against "commerce" -- suggests that more is at stake than the fate of a mere collection of pages printed on both sides and bound inside a cover. Often it seems the defenders of the book are invoking its mystique to mask a more self-interested crusade: a battle to protect a peculiarly rarefied conception of the public sphere.

It is as if they hanker for the time when books and their authors, with publishers as their gatekeepers, could set the terms of public debate, often pursuing sectional interests in the guise of promoting universal (or at least national) goals. This is neither a worthy cause nor, ultimately, a winnable one. Books today are only part of a vast, deep and diverse matrix of cultural products. They are an important part of that matrix, but their centrality can no longer be taken for granted.

The essay deserves a more thoughtful response than I am probably capable of delivering, but one of the elements I admire in this piece is its sketch of the tension between the idea of the book and the physical reality, the "book-like objects" as she describes them. In examining the 'value proposition' of the book as a medium, she notes two qualities:

• "the amount of human thought, skill and sheer hard work invested in each title"
• "the fact that the production of books operates on a slower rhythm and a longer time-scale than the jump-cut, day-to-day busyness of the electronic media"

As someone who has had to summarize the value proposition of Lulu in a long line of PowerPoint presentations, pamphlets, and sets of talking points, I had to laugh when I saw this because, while   true, these virtues stand in direct opposition to those offered by our mad little corner of the publishing world, where the current Lulu tagline boasts publishing that is "fast, free, and easy."

Lee's real topic, of course, is the mystique of the book, the contrived nature of which she is well aware. She goes on to note some of the conditions that made the labor intensive process of publishing books possible in the first place, as well as the radical changes to that process brought about by the disintegration of formal editing and typesetting training (another of my favorite topics) and the economic pressures brought to bear by the current publishing system. "At present," Lee  notes wryly,  "editing books is one of the lowest-paid forms of intellectual labor around, perhaps exceeded only by the work of writing them."

If you take a moment to poke around The Book & The Computer site, be sure to read the piece by Gabriel Zaid (author of So Many Books) as well, titled "Organized Not to Read."

It came from the slush pile...

Though it may sound like a third rate horror movie, in fact the Telegraph UK offers this encouraging story about the increasing credibility of independent publishers as the potential purveyors of quality books: "Slush pile superstars" (Filed: 27/07/2005).

Publishing has always had a tradition of working informally, with a fair few gentlemen's deals forged down the years over boozy lunches. But there has been a feeling in the air of late that more and more editors, while they continue to rely on agents a great deal, are no longer completely dependent on them for all their material. At the same time, small and independent publishers are succeeding where bigger players might fear to tread."

The journalist uses the narrow, rather than the broad, definition of independent publishing, but gives a reluctant nod to the folks who do it on their own as well as those that rely on the services of small publishing companies. Good piece.

Women (writers) on top

Women rewrite gender balance of bestseller lists
Guardian Unlimited, UK - 13 hours ago
The Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown bestrides today's international book bestseller lists like a colossus - but he and other giant-selling male authors are ...

Bestsellers Are a Woman's World, Baby Book Standard, NY - Jul 19, 2005 Male writers may soon become obsolete, according to a new study by POD publisher lulu.com. After conducting a study of the bestselling ...

Word is, women writers are killing off the top men Sydney Morning Herald (subscription), Australia - 2 hours ago By John Ezard. The Da Vinci Code's Dan Brown, bestrides today's bestseller lists like a colossus, but he and other best-selling male ...

 People love statistics, don't they?

More flattering, however, are the brief Lulu mentions earned on two of the most esteemed bookblogs, Beatrice and The Elegant Variation.

[And these late additions: a mention in Book Buzz from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and a sardonic treatment from the folks at MediaBistro's GalleyCat.]

[Late, late additions include a mention in the Times of London and, although there is no link available, an interview with Bob Young on CNN International:

A write-on website for authors
The Sunday Times, UK - Jul 23, 2005
Lulu is the latest venture of Bob Young, the Canadian entrepreneur who founded Red Hat, the Linux software company that has mounted a serious challenge to ...

DIY publishing puts authors in control
Freelance UK, UK - Jul 26, 2005
... The idea behind the online publishing website is the brainchild of Red Hat founder, Bob Young, the Canadian entrepreneur who set up the Linux software company ...

WHAT’S IN A DAME : The hand that rocks best-seller lists rules
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (subscription), AR - Jul 26, 2005
... take such similar disguise measures in the future if buying trends continue and female authors begin outselling their male colleagues, says Bob Young, Lulu’s ...

Women Writers Double Their Share Of Bestsellers Managing Information, UK - Jul 26, 2005 ... “Once”, says Bob Young, CEO of Lulu, “women writers took on male pen names, like George Eliot, whose real name was Mary Ann Evans. ...]

Worst beach reads

Businessweek (via the Associated Press) has picked up the nichebusters story:

Lists of hot books are all the rage for many newspapers and trade publications. But have you ever considered tomes destined to be read by only a few, the anti-Harry Potter, if you will?

And, on a related note, I failed to blog recent remarks by POD-dy Mouth on Lulu's marketing strategy:

Perhaps the most appealing thing about Lulu (besides the ability to make your book available to the public at no cost (no ISBN, no distribution)) is the fact that you feel like you are dealing more with the guys who started Napster than a bunch of executive types.

I can tell you that Henry couldn't have been more thrilled to be compared, as he put it, "to the old Napster." High praise, from our point of view.

Publishing news round-up

A recent Tenebris post got a nice mention from Robert Nagle of the blog Idiotprogrammer, as well as a nod from David Rothman at Teleread, who is one of the web's leading authorities on e-book standards. As usual, I am behind in posting the latest news from the independent publishing front.

Don't Publish and Be Doomed, by Paul Carr, appeared recently in the UK Guardian advocating the digitization of books by authors who would then charge Google for the privilege  of offering their books through print-on-demand. [excerpt: "The horrible truth is that, with a few exceptions, publishers are some of the most backward people in the world."] He claims, erroneously, that Google has already purchased a print-on-demand service. He meant Amazon.com.

Publisher Web sales not clicking with traditional booksellers, proclaims a recent headline from Canada's Globe & Mail. This is not new news, exactly, but the story details publishers' upcoming plans to sell directly to consumers, a move that could provide one more variable in the shifting world of publishing. [excerpt: "'In the end, it's better for the consumer because it will give them access to more products at a lower price,' Pearson's Mr. June says. 'The lines between supplier and merchant are increasingly becoming blurred, he says.'] The story does not mention if the 50% difference in price between selling through a bookstore and selling direct will be passed along to authors.

Amazon.com, Ebooks and  "Chump Change," by Robert Nagle (see first paragraph), appeared recently on Kuro5hin.org, the brainy sibling of Slashdot. This is the only essential reading of this batch of stories. [excerpt: "By acquiring a Print-on-Demand (POD) company and an ebook software company, Amazon.com is retooling itself to offer a complete publishing solution to authors disenchanted with the current state of publishing."]

Book Keppers editing

Looking for an editor who can help you develop your own unique voice?  Head on over to Book Keppers Editing ... "so sign up today and it will be great."

Interview with iUniverse CEO

It's been blogged pretty much everywhere already, but in the better-late-than-never category, anyone interested in POD and independent publishing really should read the POD-dy Mouth interview with Susan Driscoll, the CEO of iUniverse. Even as a Lulu partisan, I like iUniverse for its professionalism and integrity and often recommend their services to less technically adept authors. I continue to feel iUniverse is bound too tightly to the publishing-industry-as-it-has-always-been to really play the role of revolutionaries. That said, Susan Driscoll comes across as both intelligent and refreshingly candid in this conversation:

The POD-dy Mouth Susan Driscoll Interview

Authorgeddon: The End of Publishing

Lots of ink has been spilled over the proliferation of books and the (allegedly) shrinking number of readers, most recently on the occassion of R.R. Bowker's annual release of book publishing statistics, which show that in 2004 over 195,000 titles were published in the U.S. alone. Just to add to the fun (and to take the wind out of the handwringers) Lulu put together a study predicting the date of authorgeddon, or the year in which the number of people who publish a book will actually exceed the number who read one. That story was picked up nicely by the Atlanta Journal Constitution today in an article titled "Volumes chase elusive readers" (registration required) in its coverage of BookExpo:

That grim prediction hasn't slowed the publishing juggernaut. At the recent industry trade show BookExpo in New York, some 2,000 publishers and other exhibitors rolled out their wares in hopes of attracting the attention of booksellers and librarians who are looking beyond this summer's Harry Potter for the best sellers of autumn.

Authorgeddon also popped up in an article on Publish.com (Booksellers Assess the Future of Publishing) and again today in an exchange on BookExpo on The Book Standard.  [A skeptical, but accurate, mention also appeared on Dr. Joe's Printing Industry Blog.] My personal favorite display of navel-gazing on this topic in general is the slim 2003 tome by Mexican poet Gabriel Zaid called So Many Books: Reading and Publishing in an Age of Abundance (you can read a sample of the work in an old blog entry on makeoutcity).

What's really the case, of course, is that while the number of books is certainly growing, the number of readers is not really shrinking. Reading continues to be an integral part of daily life, as is, for many people, writing--albeit often writing in impoverished forms like email and instant messaging. I would argue that the Internet can be credited with having undone some of the havoc that two or three generations of television wrecked on the practice of reading.

Yes, anyone can publish something--blog or book, podcast or independent film. But by virtue of the same technology people are also reading and hearing and viewing a greater variety of viewpoints than ever before, a fact unsurprisingly lost on  San Francisco Chronicle books reviewer, David Kipen, who explained airily on NPR yesterday that the evil forces of capitalism are making sure that we aren't exposed to a variety of books.

Readers aren't just buying fewer books total, they're buying fewer different books. As conglomerates like WalMart come to dominate a larger and larger slice of the book market, the much smaller selection in stores like theirs has real consequences for the biodiversity of American thought.

Hah. Mr. Kipen thinks we are losing diverisity of thought? Send him over to Lulu, which if anything suffers from a distressing level of diversity.

The business case for print-on-demand book publishing

As BookExpo America rages on in NYC, the front page of the Wall Street Journal today features a story that puts a spotlight directly on the gross inefficiencies of the bookselling system as we know it and, without saying so directly, makes a terrific business case for: a) print-on-demand as a manufacturing technology, and b) selling books via the Internet.

The article, titled "Shelf Life: Quest for Best Seller Creates a Pileup of Returned Books" (subscription required) centers on the economic dependence of the bookselling industry on the  singularly anachronistic practice of returns. Bookstores, unlike other retailers, expect to be able to return their unsold inventory. The publisher has to then either destroy the unsold books or sell them at an enormous discount.

The inefficiencies begin, of course, with publishers ordering initial print runs of titles based on projected sales, which is always a gamble. In addition to warehousing these books and physically distributing them to retailers, additional print runs for titles that take off have to be ordered well in advance of the actual demand--a second round of gambling that is at least as likely as the first to produce great heaps of unsold books. These unsold books once again have to be shuffled across the nation's highways from warehouse to warehouse where eventually they are, as often as not, destroyed. What a waste.

Two elements of a solution:

Print-on-demand (POD) as a manufacturing technology (not to be confused with self-publishing, which is a business model) addresses the inefficiencies inherent in large print runs for titles with uncertain markets. POD manufacturing technology has developed very recently to the point where producing books on demand generates products that are sufficiently cheap and of sufficiently good quality to compete with conventionally produced books (which are manufactured through a process known as offset printing).

Internet distribution--which is the only really effective means of distributing print on demand titles--offers an answer to the inefficiencies of shipping books from one place to another. It also offers added advantages such as unlimited shelf space (see Chris Anderson's original Long Tail essay) and the ability to steer consumers to a greater variety of titles.

Need I point out that Lulu offers both of these? Which is why you'll see Lulu trying to push its services out to publishers more in the coming year. [Although I'm somewhat dubious about pursuing this business because Lulu's most compelling value is as a creator-to-consumer marketplace. But we'll see.]

And what about bookstores? What about the precious refuge of readers everywhere, a refuge that has already endured an almost unbearable siege from corporations bent on turning all of America into an unbroken, homogenous chain of retailers?  I loved bookstores growing up. I relied on the recommendations of booksellers as a teenage reader. I worked in a bookstore in college--that's where I first met the woman who eventually (long story) became my spouse. Without reservation, I love bookstores. But there's no doubt that they are wedded to an inefficient way of moving products. 

Perhaps the salvation of the bricks & mortar store is actually in its smallness rather than its largeness. BusinessWeek carries a story in the most recent issue on the survival of the independent bookstore as a haven for material on niche topics, "Indie Bookstores' Survival Stories." I like that idea, but I'm not entirely sure I buy it. The Internet's greatest strength, after all, is the ability it offers people to create communities of interest as opposed to geography. Your book club, in other words, used to be composed of other people within driving distance of your house. But now it can consist of the two hundred other people in the world who share your fetish for Havanese dogs. It's hard for a retailer to compete with that.

On the other hand, people still need places to go--to browse and shop and check one another out, or what essayists refer to as the "third space." That need will never leave us, but who will be able to make money from it --besides Starbucks--is anyone's guess.

NY Press on POD

Ok, so I have a lot of catching up to do. Having a new baby has decreased my productivity somewhat, but it has also hurt my concentration, which was never good to begin with. As a result, many independent publishing-related stories have gone unheralded and uncommented on here as of late. My planned blog redesign (if "redesign" is an appropriate term for a blog that never got any design attention to begin with) has also fallen by the wayside for the time being. But on the other hand, I've been taking tons of cute baby pictures.

The New York Press ran a typically shrill story yesterday on a stealth move by megapublisher Macmillan to cut off companies like Lulu, Publish and Be Damned, and CafePress at the POD pass, titled "INVASION OF THE POD PEOPLE," by Joshua Cohen:

With I-Universe, X-Libris and others of their ilk, a writer pays around $500 and gets a few hundred books expertly edited and marketed; most importantly, the writer retains the copyright. In not a few instances, these POD books attract the attention of a larger publisher, who then buys the rights to the book, directly from the author.

This is, of course, not entirely up-to-date in terms of a description of self-publishing business models. Susan Driscoll, of iUniverse, is quoted in the story, as is someone from XLibris (a company that is dwindling by the day if the desperate spam marketing they are doing is any indication). And truthfully iUniverse is probably the company most threatened by this move; they are the POD company most closely tied to the conventional publishing model. The new generation of print on demand companies consists of innovators--they are more technology companies than publishers--and no Macmillan or Random House, companies hopelessly bound to the middleman publishing model,  can come along and suddenly transform themselves into innovators.

And while I'm at it, several weeks ago the NYT ran an in-depth story on self-publishing and its ongoing surge in popularity called "How To Be Your Own Publisher." I was so incensed at the lack of research on the part of the article's author, Sarah Glazer, that I sputtered and stuttered and composed a scathing post in my mind--about journalists who take the road of laziness, quote only the sources quoted in stories from five years ago, and who fail to see the big picture-- but never actually wrote anything. I draw your attention to it now, belatedly, with apologies and little-to-no editorial commentary. I'm glad they ran a long piece on the topic, but sorry it wasn't better.

Along those lines (and while I'm wrapping up loose ends), an author named Mike Vogel is chronicling the ups and downs of independently publishing a novel on his   blog Isn't That Bigamy, which is also the name of his book, described as a "crime-comedy about a man who witnesses a murder and ends up in a polygamous town in rural Utah." Looking forward to following his story. Thanks to Mr. Vogel I am astonished to run across this: POD-dy Mouth, a blog he says is written by Michiko Kakutuni (yes, the Michiko Kakutuni), that appears to have been set up to wade through POD titles for the purposes of reviewing some of them... this definitely warrants a closer examination and longer post later.

It's never too late to write a novel

The BBC reports (and if it's on the BBC then it must be true) that the average age of the author of a bestseller is just over 50:  "The age of 50 marks authors' peak."

A friend points out that this is old news: we have long known that (lyric) poets do their best work before 30, while novelists do theirs after 40. But the people behind this study may be in the process of developing a statistical profile of the perfect author. It's been a fun day so far here at Lulu.

One author's adventures in self-publishing

A writer named David St. Lawrence is in the process of publishing his own book and the record of his adventures seems to have stirred up the blogosphere a bit on the subject of self-publishing. You can read his remarks on marketing a self-published books, among other things, on Lawrence's blog, Ripples, as part of his series on self-publishing.

I cringed when I read that he was waiting for the printer to get copies of his new book (and taking pre-orders in the meantime). People sometimes ask me why they should go through Lulu to publish a book rather than doing the whole thing on their own. There is more than one reason, of course, but I am often tempted first to ask them if they've ever dealt with a printer on their own. Printers are not set up for business-to-consumer work, which is why there is still a big demand for Kinkos-esque copyshops. Lulu, if nothing else, offers the easiest front end for a commercial printer ever developed.

O'Reilly: a self-publisher who grew up?

There's an interesting thread going on over at the blog Signal vs. Noise in which the authors have solicited comments on the pros and cons of publishing their new book independently: "What do you think about self published books? "

As you would expect, there is the usual mixture of smart interspersed with clueless observations. Falling notably into the 'smart' category are a couple of comments by Tim O'Reilly, founder of O'Reilly Press, who describes himself as a "a self publisher who grew up into a real publisher." A real publisher, eh? Ouch. He's obviously gunning for some new business and, as he lays it out, the only two options consist of variations on setting up your own publishing/distribution company or surrendering control to a conventional publisher. I chime in towards the end of the thread with a modest, 'Au Contraire!'

Let's hope they know about Lulu. Perhaps they should talk to the guys at Spiderworks, who continue to make excellent progress down the independent publishing road.

Get Published

Lots of people, not surprisingly, want to get published. The community web site 43 Things offers a way to find them.

NYT on Amazon's foray into POD publishing

Bob Tedeschi of the New York Times offers a bit more analysis of Amazon.com's acquisition of the print on demand company BookSurge in today's Business section: "Amazon Expands Into Book Printing."

According to Robert Holt, BookSurge's managing director, the company has created proprietary software programs that automate the printing process to the point where even single-copy print orders are profitable, even though the book's final price is comparable to that of books produced through traditional means.

"For a print run of 10,000 or 50,000 books, the manual costs can be spread out," Mr. Holt said. But for smaller print runs, he said, labor costs kill the economics of the operation.

While lean manufacturing technology has existed for years at companies like BookSurge and Lightning Source, a division of the book distributor Ingram Industries, other elements have helped bring these services more squarely into the cross hairs of publishers and authors.

Print quality has improved considerably, said Lorraine Shanley, a principal at Market Partners International, a publishing industry consulting firm. "You can now use color in a book, and produce hardcovers as easily as paperbacks," she said.

And perceptions about on-demand publishing have also changed. Previously, many writers rejected the notion of so-called vanity publishing - the province of aspiring authors who spend tens of thousands of dollars to see their name on books collecting dust in the basement.

With costs down and quality up, though, self-publishing has become more acceptable.

This is a disappointing article void of any real insight into Amazon's move, although to the journalist's credit he at least demonstrates some curiousity. Tedeschi chose to quote only the usual suspects, the moribund iUniverse and the hucksters at AuthorHouse, neither of which are exactly on top of this trend. The point made in the article about improved print quality is right on the money.

Like many journalists, Tedeschi seems skeptical and a bit bewildered by the idea that self-publishing could be taken seriously, digressing into an anecdote about some misguided authors who paid BookSurge to do a run of 500 books and who have yet to make back the money. Sigh. I wish he had called me. I would have sent him to talk to a Lulu author who paid $0 to publish her book and who made $26,000 last year, or to a small group publishing ebooks that earned the same amount on half a dozen titles in the space of a month. The examples in articles like Tedeschi's tend to miss the point by trying to use conventional publishing terms to describe the efforts of independent publishers who are, by and large, a much more diverse lot.

The NYT of all institutions should keep in mind the lesson offered by blogging as a phenomenon. POD is a technology that is changing book publishing by making it accessible and affordable, and new technologies that solve problems and eliminate bottlenecks always warrant serious consideration. A company like Lulu makes it as easy to publish a book as the original Blogger technology made it to publish a web site. And what followed was a shift in the media landscape, nevermind the trivial nature of most blogs. Present company excluded, of course.

There are journalists who feel that the "on-demand book market" is too insignificant to pay attention to, but that perspective has now been undermined by the fact that Amazon is apparently willing to put money on the table to venture into it. What skeptics are missing is that the arena of conflict from Amazon's point of view is not the on-demand books market alone, but something much broader--the long tail market. In this arena Amazon continues to compete with Google and eBay and Yahoo. Google's most recent foray into this particular aspect of the fight is Google Print. Amazon counters with on-demand media production that will soon include