The Death of Publishing and Ruination of Our Children, Part a Billion

This morning, my Twitter feed is full of links to an NYT story titled “Picture Books No Longer a Staple for Children,” alongside lots of sad and outraged commentary about it. I suppose I would be sad and outraged, too, if I actually believed picture books were endangered, but I see absolutely nothing in this article that suggests I need to worry.

In fact, here is what this article tells me:

1) There’s, like, a recession on or something?

2) A lot of books that get published don’t sell. Not exactly breaking news, folks. (And that alarming opening about books languishing on shelves and being returned to publishers unsold? That’s just how it works. Stores take books on consignment, and ship ‘em back to the publishers if they don’t move. There are plenty of reasons to deplore this practice, particularly if you are a publisher or an author [see Awlbiste's comment; it sucks all around], but it is in no way new or unusual. If it’s happening more often these days, well, see point 1. And point 3, actually.)

3) “[M]any publishers have gradually reduced the number of picture books they produce for a market that had seen a glut of them…” That line is pretty well buried in the middle of the article, but I strongly suspect it’s the most accurate summary of the situation. Too many similar products at one time flooded the market, after which the people manufacturing those similar products decided to release fewer of them. “Gradually.” During a recession. WHOA.

4) If at least three upper middle class parents in the New York area have been observed behaving ridiculously, it’s national news. Of course, that in itself is not news: stories about entitled, blinkered parents trying to prime their children for Harvard from the womb forward are just as common as ones about the death of publishing (/reading for pleasure/literacy/coherent English/proper spelling/western civilization).

Look, as a writer, an avid reader and a former editor, I am always bummed to hear about books not selling — whether it’s because of a recession, or a realization that the market is saturated with XYZ type of book, or the fact that most books never sell especially well, relative to the money and labor that go into them (which is why someone writes an article predicting the death of the entire industry about every fifteen minutes). I am also bummed out about the economy, and totally bummed out by the idea of hyper-competitive parents forcing chapter books on their pre-schoolers to better prepare them for the real world where NO ONE’S GONNA DRAW YOU A PICTURE JUST BECAUSE YOUR TINY BRAIN IS STILL DEVELOPING, MAGGOT or something. But I remain utterly unconvinced that that last one is a real trend, much less that it’s eventually going to make picture books go the way of Jarts.

And if you remove that threat from the article, all you’re really left with is, “[M]any publishers have gradually reduced the number of picture books they produce for a market that had seen a glut of them…” During a recession.

I think it’s going to be OK, you guys. I really do.

ETA: You should also check out this perspective from an indie bookseller.

Kindle love

fatospherecover1Man, I wish I had more time to update this blog — I had plans for this to be the fun one where I ramble about writing and publishing, instead of fat politics and feminist outrage. I hate that I have become the kind of person who Does Not Have the Time to Update Her Blog(s) almost as much as I hated becoming one of those “we appreciate every letter but cannot respond to each one personally” people. But I am both.

At least I can ramble about writing and reading a bit on the Powell’s bookstore website, where I’m guest-blogging this week. My first post, about the book’s title, went up today. Two more are coming (and Marianne is taking Tuesday and Thursday).

But what I’m thinking about now is inappropriate for Powell’s, for reasons that should be obvious from the post title: It’s about why I love my Kindle so damn much. And that reason is very simple: instant gratification. By which I mean instant gratification. I bought a Sony Reader a couple of years ago and loved the concept — 80 books in my purse at once! — but quit using it as soon as the novelty wore off, which was about 2 weeks later. Why? It was linked to the very limited Sony store, and I needed a PC to download books. Not a computer, a PC — the fucking thing wasn’t even Mac compatible, so I had to use one of Al’s computers. The Sony store has “tens of thousands of books”; the Kindle store has a few hundred thousand and counting. (And when I can’t get a book I want there, I can at least get the satisfaction of clicking the “request a Kindle edition” button.) I can get a book delivered to the Kindle with 1-click ordering from any computer, or wirelessly via the Kindle itself, if I’m sitting at an airport, for instance. (Last time I flew, I went into the airport bookstore as usual, but ended up writing down titles to download instead of buying books to lug with me.)

The truth is, I don’t give a shit about the design of my e-book reader or any bells and whistles. And I certainly don’t give a shit who makes it — if Sony or another competitor linked up with B&N or Borders or Powell’s or any other online bookseller, and offered the same purchasing options, my loyalty to Amazon would dissipate, if not disappear, instantly. But as it is, Amazon’s getting a huge portion of my book-buying dollars these days, because the Kindle is so damned convenient, especially when I’m traveling so much. The device is nice, but they didn’t do anything with the hardware that knocked my socks off. What they did was make it really, really easy to buy books and start reading them immediately, in as few steps as possible.

And given that I spend most of my life online, that’s exactly what I’ve come to expect. If I want information these days, I should be able to find it with a few search words and a couple of clicks. Buying a book for the Kindle is just an extension of that — yeah, I’m paying for it, but it doesn’t involve extra clicking or filling in my credit card info and billing address every time, and the books don’t take any longer to download than a PDF. It’s as seamless as web-surfing. And man, that makes a huge difference in my continued interest in using the product and spending more money on it.

I still love real books, of course. My house is full of them, and when I go to a bookstore, I rarely leave empty-handed. But the Kindle did exactly what technology is supposed to do — it improved upon the original experience, offering desirable extras I couldn’t get from the old version. Sony just didn’t go far enough with that — if I had to go wire up the Reader to Al’s computer, only to find they didn’t have the book I wanted anyway, what was the point? (If I’m going to be disappointed that they don’t have what I want, I might as well get out of the house and go to a bookstore.) Amazon gave me a reason to want and use an e-book reader, despite my abiding love for real books and real bookstores. Whatever issues I may have with them, they did what it took to change the way I read and make me a loyal customer. I’m happy to reward that kind of innovation and market savvy, even if I also wish they had some real competition for me to check out.

How Did You Find an Agent?

If you’re looking for tips on finding your own agent rather than just the story of how I found mine (which may or may not be useful, and will definitely be long), you should go read the following:

10 Basic Steps to Finding a Literary Agent

Miss Snark’s Archives

Jeff Herman’s Guide to Book Publishers, Editors, and Literary Agents, which provides loads of 101 stuff.

Reading all that will probably take you at least a couple weeks. It’s okay, I’ll wait for you to come back. Because that advice leads us to my number one tip for writers looking to get published: Take the time to learn about the fucking industry. And that leads us to the story of how I got an agent.

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Giving It Away

Galleycat wonders what people think about Chris Anderson’s assertion (in a Wired article and upcoming book) that, as the internet makes so many things — from video hosting to software to terrific writing — available for free, everyone’s just going to have to suck it up and start giving shit away. Including the publishing industry.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Galleycat points to the recent success of Suze Orman’s book Women & Money, even after a million e-copies were given away: it just kept selling anyway, which came as a shock to many. Of course, Suze Orman has Oprah behind her. There’s that.

Here’s what I think: there is a time for free, and a time for charging out the wazoo. The challenge is figuring out which is which.

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