We at JABberwocky put up our first e-book this week, for Simon Green's Beyond the Blue Moon, which is now available for the Kindle. Why when I knock the Kindle early and often is this first? Well, Amazon has had a one-time NYC editor Dan Slater working in their digital department for many years, Dan has always been available to us and pushing and prodding on getting content for Amazon, first for their Amazon shorts program and then later for Kindle. He's there to meet with us, he's there to put us in touch with people if we need help, or even if we really don't need the help but it's nice to have the person there at the other end (kind of like the security of having the music in front of you even when you know the song by heart). Barnes & Noble, emails vanish into the mists and there's nobody to talk to without writing a certified letter to the head of the company to get some attention. Some other places even worse. We'll have more books up soon in more formats/stores, including for Nook, iPad, probably Kobo, and we'll have to start digging through into Google's new e-book store. Five other Simon R. Green books, and Hot Blood anthologies and other titles from Jeff Gelb and/or Michael Garrett. Want to have as many in as many places come Christmas as we can, but also do see Beyond the Blue Moon as a kind of cold launch where we can see if the files have been well-converted and figure out the process. I felt a little bit the dummy not to realize until we were partway through the upload process for this that we'd need cover copy, as an example, and that's something to spend more time on earlier in for the next book.
In general, as we got closer and closer to having the first book up, the process seemed to become bigger as we found all the little things beyond just sending a book to a conversion house that needed to be done. And the process as a whole was a goal for 2010 that I envisioned reaching fruition earlier than the last month of 2010. Some of the things we've looked at: where to go for file conversions; where to go for cover art; whether to have an exclusive release somewhere in exchange for promo support; how to share costs of the conversions with the clients; what price we'd put on the books; which books to start with; and oh -- yeah, you need cover copy you idiot.
Simon was the obvious lead choice for the program. because books like this have been unavailable and have people wanting to buy and tie in to other books that are in print, in this case the obvious being Blue Moon Rising. Alas, that isn't available in e-book right now because the contract is so old it didn't talk much about e-books. So we're reaching out to the publisher to address that, but it will be several months before both books are available as e-book.
We're pricing Beyond the Blue Moon at $9.95. A physical copy of Blue Moon Rising costs $16, and Amazon sells that for $10.88, so we are charging less than physical for a fairly similar book. With the cheapest used copies around $7.50+ after the S&H charge, it's not like any other copy can be had for much less. We're charging more than the $6.99 cost on Kindle for his mass market backlist titles that Penguin has in print. My initital thought had been to charge $9.95 across the board, but I might go down a bit for some of Simon's shorter books like Down Among the Dead Men, or might go down after we've generated sufficient sales to have fixed costs (conversion & cover being the bulk) covered.
Covers, we wanted to have things that were a distinct upgrade from a lot of the other small house POD/e-book covers that you can find out there, while also recognizing that we can't go around paying thousands of dollars or even many thousands of dollars to have Michael Whelan or Chris McGrath. For the Simon R Green books we ended up reaching out to Isaac Stewart, an illustrator and cartographer who's done interior art and maps for Brandon Sanderson and others. For other titles, we secured John Fisk, a friend of Eddie's, who has a great sensibility.
In general, we feel the e-book business is now mature enough where it's important for any literary agent to be invested in it. We see this as a service that we can and should offer to our clients. In part, this is because I do believe e-book royalty rates offered by the major publishers need to increase from their current 25% of net, or at least to escalate at some point in a book's life from that, and offering some e-books of our own might help to accomplish that over time. In a nutshell, when authors have more options they have more leverage in a negotiation. That being said, our goal in the e-book program isn't to be directly competing with or stepping on toes of our publishing partners. These aren't books where the rights situation is vague. These are books that we've tried to get Simon's publisher to do at various points. I'd argue that Simon might sell more e-books for his books with Penguin when there are no longer availability holes in his backlist, where people can buy a Blue Moon Rising somewhere but not a Beyond the Blue Moon.
There are conflict issues. We don't intend to be the originating publishers for things, at least as we're thinking of it right now, but we are still now the publisher for this book as well as just the literary agent for it. We don't intend to become an eReads, the e-publisher that agent Richard Curtis started many years ago, doing books for a wide swath of authors. I think the business of actually being an agent selling all kinds of rights throughout the world is still too critical and important to want to have an entire huge side business. For most books moving forward, we will only be able to get the rights reverted from the publishers if the books are failing to meet certain sales or royalty earning thresholds, and I'm not sure even as the e-book business matures that there's a lot to be gained investing in books that are having trouble selling 350 copies a year. I'm not sure it makes sense for us to reach out to former clients with a book or series we liked just for the sake of having more product, but I've been very tempted by that idea nonetheless.
The big next thing is to gear up promotional efforts. Minimally, that means having a page on our web site either for Beyond the Blue Moon specifically or for Simon Green as a whole where we can put up more information on our ebooks and have robust links to the various places to buy them. Do we take out banner ads or key words somewhere? For the Hot Blood books, we've reserved an entire domain name to promote but aren't sure yet what we're actually going to do with that domain.
We've purposely chosen to keep these efforts in-house, but I think the question of the day is whether that will always be so. It's only with the experience of what we're doing now that we can see what the trade-offs are. Obviously we and the author make more money per copy doing e-books ourselves. But will we sell fewer copies because we aren't a destination like an eReads? Will our e-book efforts divert us from other agently things to where we're making more money on e-books but losing bigger sums elsewhere? Maybe tomorrow we'll end up looking for an actual e-book publishing partner, maybe not.
The JABberwocky Digital Rights Manager Jessie Cammack has been on the front lines of our efforts and deserves a lot of credit for this, and she and Eddie and I have batted around a lot of stuff together in the office.
Maybe this approach makes me the literary equivalent of the dude who gets loster because he won't stop for directions or floods the kitchen because he wants to fix the sink before calling the plumber. I hope not. My instinct for a while has been to put an investment in this ourselves when the time seemed right. But we'll see. Feel free to put in your two cents in the comments here, or to contact us in the office.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Friday, December 10, 2010
coulda woulda shoulda
I'll let the Washington Post business columnist Steven Pearlstein have the last word on the deal President Obama cut with Republican leaders on taxes. His column explains much better than I what Obama maybe shoulda done, why the Democrats in Congress have to take a big hit on blame themselves, and why maybe though I'd wish it weren't so the deal isn't as bad as we professional lefties would like to think.
And in his subsequent column which you can find here, Pearlstein goes after one of my favorite targets, the Democratic Senator from Montana Max Baucus. He was one of the only Democrats to support the Bush tax legislation in 2001 (believe you me, I don't need Steven Pearlstein to remind me of that!), and helped stall the health care bill this year with months of pointless negotiations. Now, somebody should have reined him in during that time (Reid, Obama, someone), but he's a poster child for the kind of off-rez stupid behavior that Democrats seem to put up with way too often and much more so than their counterparts on the Republican side of the aisle.
And in his subsequent column which you can find here, Pearlstein goes after one of my favorite targets, the Democratic Senator from Montana Max Baucus. He was one of the only Democrats to support the Bush tax legislation in 2001 (believe you me, I don't need Steven Pearlstein to remind me of that!), and helped stall the health care bill this year with months of pointless negotiations. Now, somebody should have reined him in during that time (Reid, Obama, someone), but he's a poster child for the kind of off-rez stupid behavior that Democrats seem to put up with way too often and much more so than their counterparts on the Republican side of the aisle.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Ralph
Ralph Vicinanza was one of the leading agents in sf/fantasy/horror and a leading agent for foreign rights. Like me -- and like many other leading agents in the genre -- he was an alumnus of the Scott Meredith Literary Agency. He passed away quite unexpectedly of a brain aneurysm in late September. I did not have time to properly salute him at that time. A memorial service was held in New York this past week to celebrate his life and accomplishments, and this is a second chance I will take.
If you want to know who Ralph was...
Stephen King came down from Maine for the occasion and spoke. Ralph handled King's foreign rights for some thirty years and credited Ralph for the idea of serializing The Green Mile.
John Crowley spoke. The author of the wonderful Little Big, a dear fantasy novel to me and a novel whose closing lines have long comforted me when I think of loss. John was grateful to Ralph, because he always felt that he was, in Ralph's eyes, every bit the important author that Stephen King was.
Malcolm Edwards, the head of the UK's Orion Publishing Group, came over to speak.
Robert Silverberg worked with Ralph longer than just about anyone, from Ralph's earliest days on the Scott Meredith foreign desk, and was out from Oakland and his usual eloquent self.
Other speakers included: clients Steve Baxter and Diana Finch; Ralph's longtime colleagues Chris Lotts and Chris Schelling, who was one of the first editors to buy a book from me; longtime publisher of Ace, Susan Allison; and a couple who met while working for Ralph. And Connie Willis sent remarks.
It's quite humbling, really.
The stars weren't all on stage. George RR Martin was in the front row a few seats over from Ellen Datlow. People from Orbit, Del Rey/Spectra, Tor were in the crowd. Ralph's Hollywood partner Vince Gerardis with the writer Christopher Lofting. Peter Fritz, whose German agency has represented my clients for my entire near 25-year career. Many agents, including John Silbersack, Ellen Levine, Matt Bialer and Eleanor Wood, fellow SMLA alums Russ Galen and Richard Curtis. Several of Ralph's proteges. I shouldn't name names because I haven't the space to name them all. Current Asimov's editor Sheila Williams and former Asimov's editor (& current Realms of Fantasy editor) Shawna McCarthy. Longtime SF Book Club editor Ellen Asher. Around 120 people in all.
Very, very humbling.
We found out over the course of the evening that Ralph entered publishing after deciding that he wasn't going to make a good Jesuit priest. He worked handling foreign rights at Scott Meredith for several years, and after realizing his efforts were insufficiently appreciated, he left to become the head of foreign rights at Blassingame, McCauley and Wood. [An old agenting hand Lurton Blassingame was the agency's patriarch. Kirby McCauley and his sister Kay were the second part, Eleanor Wood the third.] That broke up when Kirby had some problems; everyone at the memorial knew the problems were drug-related, nobody actually stated the "d" word or the "c" word; Silverberg described a dinner with he, Ralph and the McCauleys where Ralph decided he would break off on his own. Silverberg's support of the move was important to getting the new agency started. Ralph further developed his prowess in foreign rights, thriving on the Frankfurt Book Fair stage and letting the London Book Fair come to him at Clairidges, his hotel of choice. Many of his closest acquaintanceships were formed over Scrabble, in person and online. The impact he had in the field personally and professionally is seen in the people who spoke and all who came Tuesday night.
Things not said: Scott Meredith was not at all happy when Ralph left, and at least talked about suing him. I have some correspondence between Scott and his attorney on the subject, as well as of a letter Robert Silverberg wrote resigning the Meredith agency. In the late 1980s Ralph got a boost when another agent, Patrick Delahunt, left the field and ceded a client list which included Kim Stanley Robinson and Connie Willis to Ralph. I confess, I was jealous. But the thing of it was that Ralph was able to close the deal and keep the talent. For several years Ralph and Eleanor Wood shared office space in the Port Authority Building at 111 8th Ave., which Google is now buying. He was wise. He might have left Scott Meredith, but he continued for his entire career to work with the best of the cooperating agents overseas that Scott worked with, like Peter Fritz in Germany and the Lencluds in France. The Icelandic ash cloud hovered over the final months of his life. I know it was an unpleasant experience for me, there in London with two thirds of the appointments cancelled and no idea when or how I would get home until the 6th night of a weeklong trip, but I was sharing the experience at the Fair. The disadvantage of having the Fair come to him at Clairidges was that it made for a lonelier experience, and I was told after the Memorial that a man who was described by multiple speakers as thriving in Book Fair settings came to question them during and after the ashy strangeness of this year's London Book Fair.
When Scott Meredith passed, hardly anyone made it to the funeral. Norman Mailer made the journey from Brooklyn to Great Neck. I would have skipped Scott's funeral if not for the fact that the VPs would have looked askance. 15 people, maybe, a third of those there for motives similar to mine. People traveled on short notice for Ralph's in September, and came from LA, the UK, Germany for this memorial.
Scott never learned, never adjusted. Ten years after Ralph left, Scott still hated to pay for people to go to WorldCon lest they use it as a venue to plot their departures with Scott's clients. And the agency's foreign rights were still being undersold when I left the agency fifteen years and an owner or two later, and like Ralph I have had this vision of doing better, way way better, out of Scott's nest than could have been done in.
Humbling. We hope we can leave a mark like Ralph's in our trade, we fear we will be Scott.
It was less humbling to have Ralph alive and competing with me, than not and looking down on me.
If you want to know who Ralph was...
Stephen King came down from Maine for the occasion and spoke. Ralph handled King's foreign rights for some thirty years and credited Ralph for the idea of serializing The Green Mile.
John Crowley spoke. The author of the wonderful Little Big, a dear fantasy novel to me and a novel whose closing lines have long comforted me when I think of loss. John was grateful to Ralph, because he always felt that he was, in Ralph's eyes, every bit the important author that Stephen King was.
Malcolm Edwards, the head of the UK's Orion Publishing Group, came over to speak.
Robert Silverberg worked with Ralph longer than just about anyone, from Ralph's earliest days on the Scott Meredith foreign desk, and was out from Oakland and his usual eloquent self.
Other speakers included: clients Steve Baxter and Diana Finch; Ralph's longtime colleagues Chris Lotts and Chris Schelling, who was one of the first editors to buy a book from me; longtime publisher of Ace, Susan Allison; and a couple who met while working for Ralph. And Connie Willis sent remarks.
It's quite humbling, really.
The stars weren't all on stage. George RR Martin was in the front row a few seats over from Ellen Datlow. People from Orbit, Del Rey/Spectra, Tor were in the crowd. Ralph's Hollywood partner Vince Gerardis with the writer Christopher Lofting. Peter Fritz, whose German agency has represented my clients for my entire near 25-year career. Many agents, including John Silbersack, Ellen Levine, Matt Bialer and Eleanor Wood, fellow SMLA alums Russ Galen and Richard Curtis. Several of Ralph's proteges. I shouldn't name names because I haven't the space to name them all. Current Asimov's editor Sheila Williams and former Asimov's editor (& current Realms of Fantasy editor) Shawna McCarthy. Longtime SF Book Club editor Ellen Asher. Around 120 people in all.
Very, very humbling.
We found out over the course of the evening that Ralph entered publishing after deciding that he wasn't going to make a good Jesuit priest. He worked handling foreign rights at Scott Meredith for several years, and after realizing his efforts were insufficiently appreciated, he left to become the head of foreign rights at Blassingame, McCauley and Wood. [An old agenting hand Lurton Blassingame was the agency's patriarch. Kirby McCauley and his sister Kay were the second part, Eleanor Wood the third.] That broke up when Kirby had some problems; everyone at the memorial knew the problems were drug-related, nobody actually stated the "d" word or the "c" word; Silverberg described a dinner with he, Ralph and the McCauleys where Ralph decided he would break off on his own. Silverberg's support of the move was important to getting the new agency started. Ralph further developed his prowess in foreign rights, thriving on the Frankfurt Book Fair stage and letting the London Book Fair come to him at Clairidges, his hotel of choice. Many of his closest acquaintanceships were formed over Scrabble, in person and online. The impact he had in the field personally and professionally is seen in the people who spoke and all who came Tuesday night.
Things not said: Scott Meredith was not at all happy when Ralph left, and at least talked about suing him. I have some correspondence between Scott and his attorney on the subject, as well as of a letter Robert Silverberg wrote resigning the Meredith agency. In the late 1980s Ralph got a boost when another agent, Patrick Delahunt, left the field and ceded a client list which included Kim Stanley Robinson and Connie Willis to Ralph. I confess, I was jealous. But the thing of it was that Ralph was able to close the deal and keep the talent. For several years Ralph and Eleanor Wood shared office space in the Port Authority Building at 111 8th Ave., which Google is now buying. He was wise. He might have left Scott Meredith, but he continued for his entire career to work with the best of the cooperating agents overseas that Scott worked with, like Peter Fritz in Germany and the Lencluds in France. The Icelandic ash cloud hovered over the final months of his life. I know it was an unpleasant experience for me, there in London with two thirds of the appointments cancelled and no idea when or how I would get home until the 6th night of a weeklong trip, but I was sharing the experience at the Fair. The disadvantage of having the Fair come to him at Clairidges was that it made for a lonelier experience, and I was told after the Memorial that a man who was described by multiple speakers as thriving in Book Fair settings came to question them during and after the ashy strangeness of this year's London Book Fair.
When Scott Meredith passed, hardly anyone made it to the funeral. Norman Mailer made the journey from Brooklyn to Great Neck. I would have skipped Scott's funeral if not for the fact that the VPs would have looked askance. 15 people, maybe, a third of those there for motives similar to mine. People traveled on short notice for Ralph's in September, and came from LA, the UK, Germany for this memorial.
Scott never learned, never adjusted. Ten years after Ralph left, Scott still hated to pay for people to go to WorldCon lest they use it as a venue to plot their departures with Scott's clients. And the agency's foreign rights were still being undersold when I left the agency fifteen years and an owner or two later, and like Ralph I have had this vision of doing better, way way better, out of Scott's nest than could have been done in.
Humbling. We hope we can leave a mark like Ralph's in our trade, we fear we will be Scott.
It was less humbling to have Ralph alive and competing with me, than not and looking down on me.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
It Isn't Just Me
Somebody with a cold weather Kindle casualty clearly doing the Google thing, as this comment was just added to my post from two years ago...
I can sympathize with you on this topic. I left my 12 day old Kindle in the pocket of my car door for a few hours while the temperatures here were between 5 and 23. I thought about it at the end of the day and brought it inside. The next day when I turned it on, I had a screen similar to what you describe - top 2/3rds is wallpaper and the bottom 3rd is barcode-like. Amazon is being kind to replace it, but considering that I haven't even had this one 2 weeks, it shouldn't be having this problem.
By LDZPLN1 on Death of a Kindle on 12/7/10
...which makes me wonder again on whether or not to look into a class action suit that might force Amazon and other marketers of eInk devices to be more upfront about their limitations. In a day and age when everything we buy comes buried with warnings on things that are so very obvious, why don't these warn against the rather not so obvious?
I can sympathize with you on this topic. I left my 12 day old Kindle in the pocket of my car door for a few hours while the temperatures here were between 5 and 23. I thought about it at the end of the day and brought it inside. The next day when I turned it on, I had a screen similar to what you describe - top 2/3rds is wallpaper and the bottom 3rd is barcode-like. Amazon is being kind to replace it, but considering that I haven't even had this one 2 weeks, it shouldn't be having this problem.
By LDZPLN1 on Death of a Kindle on 12/7/10
...which makes me wonder again on whether or not to look into a class action suit that might force Amazon and other marketers of eInk devices to be more upfront about their limitations. In a day and age when everything we buy comes buried with warnings on things that are so very obvious, why don't these warn against the rather not so obvious?
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Books Down Under
Lots and lots and lots of bookstores visited during my trip to Australia in September. Finally getting around to sharing some thoughts about the book market Down Under...
For better or worse and probably both, the retail scene in Australia is a few decades behind ours. For one, and for what I'm used to not a plus, it's one of those places that still believes shopping should only be done during the day. Stores open from 9-5, 10-6, Thursday is the one day when places open late, at least they're as generous with their shopping hours on Sunday as they are the other days of the week. This also effects restaurants, most of which close by 10PM. And in Sydney, enforced; one of those Bald Guy chocolate places I walked by on a fancy boutique street full of shops shuttering 6ish had a sign in window that the local council was forcing them to close early because they weren't in a part of town suitable for a later closing.
But as far as the book business goes, there are some pluses to having a country that's stuck three or four decades behind. For one, they still have mall stores. The big mall in Cheltenham had two Angus & Robertson outlets besides the Dymocks where Peter V. Brett was was signing my first full day in country. Downtown Sydney had Dymocks outlets of kind of like the way NYC used to be dotted with little Barnes & Noble stores and little Waldenbooks and a Dalton or two. The shopping strip at Glenelg, the beach suburb of Adelaide, has one of each. Even more surprising than the presence of all of these mall stores is the fact that the two major department stores, Myer and David Jones, all have book departments, the Myer a bit bigger than the David Jones. So there are more books closer to more people.
There are some retail names like Woolworth, Target and KMart that are familiar to people from the US, but not owned by the US companies. So in the US, Target has a solid book department, in Australia the Target book departments were rather small. K-Mart had a big book department, as did Big W, which is owned by the Australian Woolworths. And then there are smaller news agents throughout the country that have smatterings of books.
Borders started to open superstores in the late 1990s, on my last trip to Melbourne in 1999 their store at the Jam Factory in Melbourne was new and fresh and very exciting to them. A couple of years ago the outlets in the Southern Hemisphere were sold off to the company that also owns Angus & Robertson. Like the Borders here at home in Westwood, the Jam Factory Borders seemed old and faded, a dowager. Too big for today, designed at a time when people purchased music and videos. The newer stores seemed a little peppier. In the UK, one mistake of Borders ownership was to make their Books Etc. mall stores too much like the superstores, here there's still some distinction in merchandising between an Angus & Robertson and a Borders.
And as to be expected in a behind-the-times place, there are still some specialty bookshops. Melbourne has a big place called Minotaur that's like the larger Titan-owned Forbidden Planets in the UK and a smaller but decently stocked Of Science & Swords up the streets. There was a romance specialty store on a quiet block in Melbourne. And Sydney has the wonderful Galaxy Books, which has pretty much any sf/f book you might possibly want to find.
What did all this mean for JABberwocky? Well, a small mall store in Australia might have the "selection" that a small Waldenbooks had for JABberwocky books ten years ago, which is to say hardly anything at all. I mean, there was lots of Charlaine Harris everywhere. She's one of the top-selling authors in Australia, the little news agents might have a book or two in their little sections. Target had the most recent book in their small sections. The stores that sold lots of books would have dozens of copies, even hundreds of copies, of Charlaine's books. But after that, there would be some Peter V. Brett at most of even the smaller stores, some Brandon Sanderson, some Elizabeth Moon, maybe not all three of those, and maybe not a full set. The Desert Spear but not The Warded Man, a Deed of Paksenarrion omnibus or an Oath of Fealty but not both, one or two Mistborn books but not all three. The best selection in an Australian Borders was maybe 40-50 of our non-Charlaine titles, while here in the US the worst B&N or Borders has a few more than that and the better-stocked stores may carry 80-100 titles. Here or there, in part depending on the size of the paranormal section or the size of the store, maybe some UK editions of Kat Richardson, Tanya Huff or Simon Green.
Brandon Sanderson's Way of Kings had just gone on sale in Australia, and that was carried pretty much everywhere and in decent quantity. Front table at KMart, Fathers Day promos (in Australia, it's in early September) at the chains. That being said, the positioning of Brent Weeks vs. Brandon Sanderson is the opposite there of what it is here, and as happy as I was to see lots of Brandon, I was very jealous of Brent Weeks, not a client, for his Black Prism was out there in quantities twice that or more of Brandon's Way of Kings.
Dymocks are franchised locations with considerably more buying discretion than most other chain stores, so those selections could be much more variable even adjusting for store space. The Cheltenham store isn't teeny-tiny but not particularly big either but had lots more JABberwocky books because the owner and staff wish it to. The Dymocks in downtown Adelaide is much smaller than the flagship Dymocks in downtown Sydney, but much more aggressive about looking for appropriate US imports. So the smaller store in Adelaide had the largest chain store selection of JABberwocky titles, while the flagship outlet might have 38 copies of a big book from an Australian publisher but didn't put much effort or energy into stocking imports and overall had a disappointing selection.
And then there was Galaxy Books. They took British editions where they could get British editions, American editions where they could get those, Australian where they could get them. They had everything. In the neighborhood of 120 JABberwocky titles, three times the selection of the best of any of the other stores I could have visited.
I should also mention the Sydney outlet of Kinokinuya. I'd never heard of them before, but they were recommended to me by my hosts in Adelaide. These stores stock books in Japanese, Chinese, English, and of course generous assortments of manga. Their selection of English language books was excellent, about equal to what I'd found at the Dymocks in Adelaide, but then they also had all of those other books. I somehow managed to find Taiwanese editions of some Brandon Sanderson in that section of the store and if I knew what I was looking for could no doubt have found more exotic foreign editions. I will have to remember to visit some of their US locations to see now they compare with Sydney.
Buying books in Australia is an expensive habit. A lot of the books sold in Australia are printed in and imported from the UK or the US, and the freight can add to what a book has to cost. And then books are subject to the Australian GST, and that is embedded in the price as well. Add all of that together, and a US mass market can easily sell for $20+ Australian, trade paperbacks for $30AU, and then don't ask about hardcovers. Which is why for a lot of the books I've sold in the UK, there's an Australian trade paperback done simultaneous with the British hardcover, because there's just no way to put out a book that has to carry a $50 cover price and expect anyone to buy it. No joking, check out Booktopia and see the official list price for some of the books on the home page. The cheapest price I could find on books in Australia were at Dirt Cheap Books. Their warehouse location in Collingwood was depressing and cheery. Upstairs you'll find cartons and cartons and cartons of remainder books for "only" $5AU, I purchased a Richard Morgan in case I needed more reading for the trip home, but when it's your client and you're seeing scores and scores of copies of Blood Lines by Tanya Huff, you kind of wish you were someplace else.
And the price of the import editions establishes the market price for books. There's no particular reason for a copy of Peter Brett's Desert Spear that is printed in Australia at the Griffin Press to cost the same as a similarly sized book by Simon Green that is printed in and imported from the UK, except that there's no reason to charge $22 because you can, when you know that people will happily pay $28 for the same book. So even though the market does include little used book shops on many neighborhood main streets just like once upon a time was the case here in the United States (John Berlyne and I stumbled across a wonderful one in Carlton one night) I couldn't bring myself to support these quaint little neighborhood shops by actually buying even the used books because they were so godawful expensive considering that in a week or two I'd be back in the US where you can easily find a $3 book at Barnes & Noble or a $1 book at the Strand.
Some lessons learned:
My store visits reinforced the importance of having a British or Australian publisher in order to actually have books widely available for sale in the Australian market. Even Borders was inconsistent in carrying even the more popular JABberwocky books, the Lost Fleet series let's say, that weren't available from UK publishers. I can talk about this topic at much more length since it ties into the entire question of whether you have a US (or UK) publisher with World English rights to your book instead of just their own market, but for now I'll just leave at saying if you want to maximize US visibility you need a US publisher, UK or Australia you need publishers active in those markets. [Side note, under Australian copyright law the British publisher can't claim Australia as an exclusive market from the POV of the Australian government if it doesn't release its edition in Australia within a month or two of US release.]
British publishers do not play nice when it comes to paying bestselling authors for copies sold in Australia. If you're a run of the mill author with a British publisher, they will do one print run and ship cartons to Australia. This gives them some wiggle room for royalty purposes on how much money the British arm charges the Australian arm for the books, which allows them to move money from one subsidiary to another and to reduce author royalty by charging a smaller price. On balance, it looks like these copies are sold at a nicer discount than a US publisher will charge for its sales to Canada. But the real gamesmanship comes on the major authors, for me a Peter Brett or Charlaine Harris or Brandon Sanderson, whose books are being printed in Australia. Those are "sold" to the Australian publisher by the British publisher on similar terms to the books that are being printed in the UK and shipped Down Under. Hence, the author's royalty rate, which is based on that "sale" price to the Australian publisher, is much less than it would be if the book were treated as being the Australian book sold by an Australian publisher that it actually is. For our bestselling authors, can we find a way to get those Australian books printed in Australia reported at full royalty rates based on the extremely high Australian cover price instead of as British export sales based on the easily manipulated price for selling a physical book from the British subsidiary of the publishing conglomerate to the Australian subsidiary?
For better or worse and probably both, the retail scene in Australia is a few decades behind ours. For one, and for what I'm used to not a plus, it's one of those places that still believes shopping should only be done during the day. Stores open from 9-5, 10-6, Thursday is the one day when places open late, at least they're as generous with their shopping hours on Sunday as they are the other days of the week. This also effects restaurants, most of which close by 10PM. And in Sydney, enforced; one of those Bald Guy chocolate places I walked by on a fancy boutique street full of shops shuttering 6ish had a sign in window that the local council was forcing them to close early because they weren't in a part of town suitable for a later closing.
But as far as the book business goes, there are some pluses to having a country that's stuck three or four decades behind. For one, they still have mall stores. The big mall in Cheltenham had two Angus & Robertson outlets besides the Dymocks where Peter V. Brett was was signing my first full day in country. Downtown Sydney had Dymocks outlets of kind of like the way NYC used to be dotted with little Barnes & Noble stores and little Waldenbooks and a Dalton or two. The shopping strip at Glenelg, the beach suburb of Adelaide, has one of each. Even more surprising than the presence of all of these mall stores is the fact that the two major department stores, Myer and David Jones, all have book departments, the Myer a bit bigger than the David Jones. So there are more books closer to more people.
There are some retail names like Woolworth, Target and KMart that are familiar to people from the US, but not owned by the US companies. So in the US, Target has a solid book department, in Australia the Target book departments were rather small. K-Mart had a big book department, as did Big W, which is owned by the Australian Woolworths. And then there are smaller news agents throughout the country that have smatterings of books.
Borders started to open superstores in the late 1990s, on my last trip to Melbourne in 1999 their store at the Jam Factory in Melbourne was new and fresh and very exciting to them. A couple of years ago the outlets in the Southern Hemisphere were sold off to the company that also owns Angus & Robertson. Like the Borders here at home in Westwood, the Jam Factory Borders seemed old and faded, a dowager. Too big for today, designed at a time when people purchased music and videos. The newer stores seemed a little peppier. In the UK, one mistake of Borders ownership was to make their Books Etc. mall stores too much like the superstores, here there's still some distinction in merchandising between an Angus & Robertson and a Borders.
And as to be expected in a behind-the-times place, there are still some specialty bookshops. Melbourne has a big place called Minotaur that's like the larger Titan-owned Forbidden Planets in the UK and a smaller but decently stocked Of Science & Swords up the streets. There was a romance specialty store on a quiet block in Melbourne. And Sydney has the wonderful Galaxy Books, which has pretty much any sf/f book you might possibly want to find.
What did all this mean for JABberwocky? Well, a small mall store in Australia might have the "selection" that a small Waldenbooks had for JABberwocky books ten years ago, which is to say hardly anything at all. I mean, there was lots of Charlaine Harris everywhere. She's one of the top-selling authors in Australia, the little news agents might have a book or two in their little sections. Target had the most recent book in their small sections. The stores that sold lots of books would have dozens of copies, even hundreds of copies, of Charlaine's books. But after that, there would be some Peter V. Brett at most of even the smaller stores, some Brandon Sanderson, some Elizabeth Moon, maybe not all three of those, and maybe not a full set. The Desert Spear but not The Warded Man, a Deed of Paksenarrion omnibus or an Oath of Fealty but not both, one or two Mistborn books but not all three. The best selection in an Australian Borders was maybe 40-50 of our non-Charlaine titles, while here in the US the worst B&N or Borders has a few more than that and the better-stocked stores may carry 80-100 titles. Here or there, in part depending on the size of the paranormal section or the size of the store, maybe some UK editions of Kat Richardson, Tanya Huff or Simon Green.
Brandon Sanderson's Way of Kings had just gone on sale in Australia, and that was carried pretty much everywhere and in decent quantity. Front table at KMart, Fathers Day promos (in Australia, it's in early September) at the chains. That being said, the positioning of Brent Weeks vs. Brandon Sanderson is the opposite there of what it is here, and as happy as I was to see lots of Brandon, I was very jealous of Brent Weeks, not a client, for his Black Prism was out there in quantities twice that or more of Brandon's Way of Kings.
Dymocks are franchised locations with considerably more buying discretion than most other chain stores, so those selections could be much more variable even adjusting for store space. The Cheltenham store isn't teeny-tiny but not particularly big either but had lots more JABberwocky books because the owner and staff wish it to. The Dymocks in downtown Adelaide is much smaller than the flagship Dymocks in downtown Sydney, but much more aggressive about looking for appropriate US imports. So the smaller store in Adelaide had the largest chain store selection of JABberwocky titles, while the flagship outlet might have 38 copies of a big book from an Australian publisher but didn't put much effort or energy into stocking imports and overall had a disappointing selection.
And then there was Galaxy Books. They took British editions where they could get British editions, American editions where they could get those, Australian where they could get them. They had everything. In the neighborhood of 120 JABberwocky titles, three times the selection of the best of any of the other stores I could have visited.
I should also mention the Sydney outlet of Kinokinuya. I'd never heard of them before, but they were recommended to me by my hosts in Adelaide. These stores stock books in Japanese, Chinese, English, and of course generous assortments of manga. Their selection of English language books was excellent, about equal to what I'd found at the Dymocks in Adelaide, but then they also had all of those other books. I somehow managed to find Taiwanese editions of some Brandon Sanderson in that section of the store and if I knew what I was looking for could no doubt have found more exotic foreign editions. I will have to remember to visit some of their US locations to see now they compare with Sydney.
Buying books in Australia is an expensive habit. A lot of the books sold in Australia are printed in and imported from the UK or the US, and the freight can add to what a book has to cost. And then books are subject to the Australian GST, and that is embedded in the price as well. Add all of that together, and a US mass market can easily sell for $20+ Australian, trade paperbacks for $30AU, and then don't ask about hardcovers. Which is why for a lot of the books I've sold in the UK, there's an Australian trade paperback done simultaneous with the British hardcover, because there's just no way to put out a book that has to carry a $50 cover price and expect anyone to buy it. No joking, check out Booktopia and see the official list price for some of the books on the home page. The cheapest price I could find on books in Australia were at Dirt Cheap Books. Their warehouse location in Collingwood was depressing and cheery. Upstairs you'll find cartons and cartons and cartons of remainder books for "only" $5AU, I purchased a Richard Morgan in case I needed more reading for the trip home, but when it's your client and you're seeing scores and scores of copies of Blood Lines by Tanya Huff, you kind of wish you were someplace else.
And the price of the import editions establishes the market price for books. There's no particular reason for a copy of Peter Brett's Desert Spear that is printed in Australia at the Griffin Press to cost the same as a similarly sized book by Simon Green that is printed in and imported from the UK, except that there's no reason to charge $22 because you can, when you know that people will happily pay $28 for the same book. So even though the market does include little used book shops on many neighborhood main streets just like once upon a time was the case here in the United States (John Berlyne and I stumbled across a wonderful one in Carlton one night) I couldn't bring myself to support these quaint little neighborhood shops by actually buying even the used books because they were so godawful expensive considering that in a week or two I'd be back in the US where you can easily find a $3 book at Barnes & Noble or a $1 book at the Strand.
Some lessons learned:
My store visits reinforced the importance of having a British or Australian publisher in order to actually have books widely available for sale in the Australian market. Even Borders was inconsistent in carrying even the more popular JABberwocky books, the Lost Fleet series let's say, that weren't available from UK publishers. I can talk about this topic at much more length since it ties into the entire question of whether you have a US (or UK) publisher with World English rights to your book instead of just their own market, but for now I'll just leave at saying if you want to maximize US visibility you need a US publisher, UK or Australia you need publishers active in those markets. [Side note, under Australian copyright law the British publisher can't claim Australia as an exclusive market from the POV of the Australian government if it doesn't release its edition in Australia within a month or two of US release.]
British publishers do not play nice when it comes to paying bestselling authors for copies sold in Australia. If you're a run of the mill author with a British publisher, they will do one print run and ship cartons to Australia. This gives them some wiggle room for royalty purposes on how much money the British arm charges the Australian arm for the books, which allows them to move money from one subsidiary to another and to reduce author royalty by charging a smaller price. On balance, it looks like these copies are sold at a nicer discount than a US publisher will charge for its sales to Canada. But the real gamesmanship comes on the major authors, for me a Peter Brett or Charlaine Harris or Brandon Sanderson, whose books are being printed in Australia. Those are "sold" to the Australian publisher by the British publisher on similar terms to the books that are being printed in the UK and shipped Down Under. Hence, the author's royalty rate, which is based on that "sale" price to the Australian publisher, is much less than it would be if the book were treated as being the Australian book sold by an Australian publisher that it actually is. For our bestselling authors, can we find a way to get those Australian books printed in Australia reported at full royalty rates based on the extremely high Australian cover price instead of as British export sales based on the easily manipulated price for selling a physical book from the British subsidiary of the publishing conglomerate to the Australian subsidiary?
Monday, December 6, 2010
Hostage Negotiation
"And I’m confident that as we make tough choices about bringing our deficit down, as I engage in a conversation with the American people about the hard choices we’re going to have to make to secure our future and our children’s future and our grandchildren’s future, it will become apparent that we cannot afford to extend those tax cuts any longer."
That's a quote from President Obama's statement on Dec. 6 about his deal with Republican legislative leaders to undo The Great Republican Tax Increase of 2011.
Wow!
And then in his press conference on Dec. 7 to defend the deal, he says (and I'm paraphrasing, but I don't think misquoting) "no I don't think extending tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, the American people think it's a bad idea, but since I haven't been able to persuade Mitch McConnell and John Boehner that it's a bad idea, I have to deal with that reality."
Wow, wow wow.
The Great Republican Tax Increase of 2011 was agreed to in 2001. Barack Obama has had his entire two year term to prepare the American people for it, or to eliminate the possibility of this Increase on his terms. Is there anyone in the world other than Barack Obama who believes he's going to start educating the American people on the benefits and drawbacks of the The Great Republican Tax Increase of 2011, when he hasn't done anything to do so in his first two years? If you need to prepare people for making difficult decisions, like let's say if I think I have a client who may be in need of a pseudonym, or even a good hard decision like needing to be sure a client has spine for getting a really great deal that can be theirs if they'll let it, I try my best to prepare for those things in advance.
"The hostage here was the American people, and I wasn't prepared to see them be harmed."
"The polls are on our side of this, the problem is the Republicans think this is the single most important thing that they have to fight for as a party."
So after the President has already caved, he has this nice news conference to finally start to educate people.
Maybe there is a big picture here, a longer view. Maybe by presenting himself as the voice of moderation now he can get the good will of the American people on other battles that will need to be fought. He did get some good things for everyone in the deal, including the extension of unemployment benefits and the payroll tax holiday. He did push through health care. But there as here, he tends to wait too long to show leadership, too long to frame the debate, too long to set a bottom line. And that's just not the way you negotiate. You need to be ahead of the curve and proactive and educating on a constant ongoing basis. I often disagreed with President Bush 2, but you had to respect his adamant ongoing refusal to negotiate with himself when it came to negotiating with congress.
So having the President actively defend today the tax policies that he's been AWOL defending for two years after he's caved on it -- it's not an inspiration. Lot's of things he could have done over those two years. Tried to do an Estate Tax deal more on his terms, tried to suggest his opposition was willing to take the American people as hostages. I'm sure people can find video here or there where he mentioned these things, but can anyone say he was in front of this parade? Can anyone really say that?
That's a quote from President Obama's statement on Dec. 6 about his deal with Republican legislative leaders to undo The Great Republican Tax Increase of 2011.
Wow!
And then in his press conference on Dec. 7 to defend the deal, he says (and I'm paraphrasing, but I don't think misquoting) "no I don't think extending tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, the American people think it's a bad idea, but since I haven't been able to persuade Mitch McConnell and John Boehner that it's a bad idea, I have to deal with that reality."
Wow, wow wow.
The Great Republican Tax Increase of 2011 was agreed to in 2001. Barack Obama has had his entire two year term to prepare the American people for it, or to eliminate the possibility of this Increase on his terms. Is there anyone in the world other than Barack Obama who believes he's going to start educating the American people on the benefits and drawbacks of the The Great Republican Tax Increase of 2011, when he hasn't done anything to do so in his first two years? If you need to prepare people for making difficult decisions, like let's say if I think I have a client who may be in need of a pseudonym, or even a good hard decision like needing to be sure a client has spine for getting a really great deal that can be theirs if they'll let it, I try my best to prepare for those things in advance.
"The hostage here was the American people, and I wasn't prepared to see them be harmed."
"The polls are on our side of this, the problem is the Republicans think this is the single most important thing that they have to fight for as a party."
So after the President has already caved, he has this nice news conference to finally start to educate people.
Maybe there is a big picture here, a longer view. Maybe by presenting himself as the voice of moderation now he can get the good will of the American people on other battles that will need to be fought. He did get some good things for everyone in the deal, including the extension of unemployment benefits and the payroll tax holiday. He did push through health care. But there as here, he tends to wait too long to show leadership, too long to frame the debate, too long to set a bottom line. And that's just not the way you negotiate. You need to be ahead of the curve and proactive and educating on a constant ongoing basis. I often disagreed with President Bush 2, but you had to respect his adamant ongoing refusal to negotiate with himself when it came to negotiating with congress.
So having the President actively defend today the tax policies that he's been AWOL defending for two years after he's caved on it -- it's not an inspiration. Lot's of things he could have done over those two years. Tried to do an Estate Tax deal more on his terms, tried to suggest his opposition was willing to take the American people as hostages. I'm sure people can find video here or there where he mentioned these things, but can anyone say he was in front of this parade? Can anyone really say that?
Evolution in Funny Book Action
Following up on the last Funny Book Roundup, I purchased only four comic books the past two weeks.
One I didn't purchase: I noticed there was no Firestorm to be found in the latest issue of Brightest Day, and I didn't keep buying it because some of the issues have had Firestorm in an important role. The amazing adaptivity of the human mind!
The most delightful way to spend $2.99 was with Futurama #52. Bender decides he needs plastic surgery, becomes addicted, and it's just funny and adorable and true to the characters. I've said many times before and will again that I've gotten more consistent enjoyment from this comic book than I ever did from the TV show. And this issue continues their series of black light posters being included free, so what are you waiting for, go, by. Eric Rogers wrote this pleasing script with art by Mike Kazaleh and Andrew Pepoy. There's also a decent enough back-up story where Zapp Brannigan gets a medal he doesn't deserve.
Also from Bongo is a Simpsons Winter Wingding #5. Not as good as Futurama but pleasant enough. Learn about how flu germs spread, find out how a paper airplane can save the world, or what happens when Homer and Moe find a secret prototype for the new Krustyburger sauce. Needless to say, Seymour Skinner's plans to do away with snow days do not end up as he had hoped. Rogers (lead story), two scripts by Patrick Verrone, one Pat McGreal. The artists are all doing the Simpsons.
DMZ #59 concludes the Collective Punishment arc. Another fill-in job on the art, as all five in the arc have been. But this one is more directly on target, serving as a prologue to the final two or three arcs of the series as it heads into its finale with issue #72. I am really anticipating this final year or so of issues, and just hoping this arc of different artists means we'll have Wood & Burchielli closing out the run. We'll see... David Lapham did the illos to Wood's script.
And I continue to be pleased with the new team on the Teen Titans. I haven't been reading much of the new Batman books, but the script does enough within itself that I was able to get the gist of what's happened with the new Robin. Not always easily done, means I'm not bailing out after just two issues because I'm already feeling lost in the continuity soup. The new Robin is kind of annoying, but it becomes relevant and proves to be a set-up that skirts with but isn't quite annoying. The bad guy has gotten some kind of amazing powers from his brief sojourn on the operating table in the middle of the last issue, and I almost feel there's too much of a leap from the here to there. Part of me says "chrissakes, Joshua, it's a comic book, the villain has powers and you accept them and shut up about the whole thing," and then part of me says "but chrissakes, Joshua, it's a comic book, and even if the explanation makes no sense at all the tradition of it all is that there should be some mumbo jumbo about the lightning chemical bath or the radioactive spider and we should have a panel where the guy who did the operation gives some mumbo jumbo on what he did." But isn't it nice that I'm involved enough with the comic to at least have an internal dialogue? Script by J. T. Krul, art by Nicola Scott and Doug Hazlewood. Will be back for more!
One I didn't purchase: I noticed there was no Firestorm to be found in the latest issue of Brightest Day, and I didn't keep buying it because some of the issues have had Firestorm in an important role. The amazing adaptivity of the human mind!
The most delightful way to spend $2.99 was with Futurama #52. Bender decides he needs plastic surgery, becomes addicted, and it's just funny and adorable and true to the characters. I've said many times before and will again that I've gotten more consistent enjoyment from this comic book than I ever did from the TV show. And this issue continues their series of black light posters being included free, so what are you waiting for, go, by. Eric Rogers wrote this pleasing script with art by Mike Kazaleh and Andrew Pepoy. There's also a decent enough back-up story where Zapp Brannigan gets a medal he doesn't deserve.
Also from Bongo is a Simpsons Winter Wingding #5. Not as good as Futurama but pleasant enough. Learn about how flu germs spread, find out how a paper airplane can save the world, or what happens when Homer and Moe find a secret prototype for the new Krustyburger sauce. Needless to say, Seymour Skinner's plans to do away with snow days do not end up as he had hoped. Rogers (lead story), two scripts by Patrick Verrone, one Pat McGreal. The artists are all doing the Simpsons.
DMZ #59 concludes the Collective Punishment arc. Another fill-in job on the art, as all five in the arc have been. But this one is more directly on target, serving as a prologue to the final two or three arcs of the series as it heads into its finale with issue #72. I am really anticipating this final year or so of issues, and just hoping this arc of different artists means we'll have Wood & Burchielli closing out the run. We'll see... David Lapham did the illos to Wood's script.
And I continue to be pleased with the new team on the Teen Titans. I haven't been reading much of the new Batman books, but the script does enough within itself that I was able to get the gist of what's happened with the new Robin. Not always easily done, means I'm not bailing out after just two issues because I'm already feeling lost in the continuity soup. The new Robin is kind of annoying, but it becomes relevant and proves to be a set-up that skirts with but isn't quite annoying. The bad guy has gotten some kind of amazing powers from his brief sojourn on the operating table in the middle of the last issue, and I almost feel there's too much of a leap from the here to there. Part of me says "chrissakes, Joshua, it's a comic book, the villain has powers and you accept them and shut up about the whole thing," and then part of me says "but chrissakes, Joshua, it's a comic book, and even if the explanation makes no sense at all the tradition of it all is that there should be some mumbo jumbo about the lightning chemical bath or the radioactive spider and we should have a panel where the guy who did the operation gives some mumbo jumbo on what he did." But isn't it nice that I'm involved enough with the comic to at least have an internal dialogue? Script by J. T. Krul, art by Nicola Scott and Doug Hazlewood. Will be back for more!
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