For those who might not know, in the United States, Black History Month is celebrated for the entire month of February. The point of dedicating an entire month is so we can bring focus to the works, art, history, and voices of a specific community within our vast and diverse nation.

We can learn, grow, heal hurts, right wrongs, increase understanding and create and deepen friendships that will (ideally) endure far into the future.

Like most other authors, I’m a huge advocate of literacy. Books, stories open up new worlds, and place us in perspectives we have no other way to experience.

Reading is Crucial for Understanding

Stories allow us to be another gender, race, or even species (Um, Trekkies?).

It is a level of empathy we can experience no other way, which is why it’s so vital.

Which is why for the LIFE of me I cannot understand what the HELL Barnes & Noble was thinking with their Black History Month initiative…which apparently to only THEIR shock was canceled midday Wednesday after massive online backlash (which I hope to fuel).

*pours out gasoline* *strikes match*

I know I’m going off my usual script here, but it’s been a long time since something made me this angry.

When I first saw the Barnes & Noble ‘diversity initiative’ I thought the same exact thing as Frederick Joseph, the black author of the upcoming book The Black Friend: On Being a Better White Person.

“Instead of platforming black writers during Black History Month, they’re basically doing blackface. They’re using our imagery, our likeness, to still sell white narratives.”

Frederick Joseph

AMEN! I could not agree more. Who was smoking what when they approved of something as insulting as to put white literary characters in blackface to honor Black History Month?

No, I am NOT making this up.

New covers on classics only illustrated with multiethnic characters. They PAID good money to be this insulting.

Penguin Random House, I literally frigging give up on you. We are DONE. Barnes & Noble I will never spend another cent in your stores EVER.

*throws furniture*

And Barnes & Noble is being run by a British C.E.O.? I thought y’all were supposed to be teaching us rube Yanks something about sensitivity.

Pound sand.

Black History Month: Literature Goes Blackface

Barnes & Noble has screwed up so catastrophically that I am embarrassed I ever envisioned my books gracing their shelves.

So the bright idea Barnes & Noble had to honor African Americans this month? Redo covers from classic books like—I kid you not—Moby Dick, The Wizard of Oz, Alice and Wonderland—but make the characters on the covers dark-skinned.

Oh-kay, so classic books written by white authors, for white audiences chronicling white problems are appropriate for Black History Month…if we just change the color of the characters on the covers? Just put them in blackface?

NO ONE THOUGHT THIS WOULD BE OFFENSIVE? Yes I am posting the pic again because *screams*…..

What About Actual African American Authors?

Last I checked, there are actual living breathing African American authors that Barnes & Noble could have used its remaining power and influence to highlight and promote.

In an age where discoverability is a nightmare for ALL authors who aren’t Stephen King (no hating on King, just we’re down to a handful of mega brands commanding most of the name-recognition), why not help authors of color?

Why NOT? There is a DEDICATED MONTH TO DO THIS!

Readers are wanting something new and fresh to read. We’re in a unique time in history where readers are WANTING to read authors of color. Race relations are a hot topic right now, and this was a huge window of opportunity.

And you missed it. You could have used this moment in time to take a primed audience and introduce them to authors of color, but instead, you squandered it on titles that anyone over the age of six knows exists and has seen a movie version.

Barnes and Noble, do you really think we’ve NOT yet heard of Alice and Wonderland? That we somehow missed The Wizard of Oz?

Who in your marketing department thought that we wanted to spend our very limited free time reading Moby-Frigging-Dick?

Oh, but the book is somehow better and less mind-numbingly boring because Morgan Freeman posed for the cover?

Bite me, Barnes & Noble. Just…bite me.

What I find fascinating is I’ve been on the hobby horse of exposure-dollar bullsprinkles, and how this industry will do everything it can to screw over authors and avoid paying them.

You Know What I Think?

Some beancounter crunched numbers and it was cheaper to redo some covers of white people books with dark-skinned characters than it was to risk that some authors of color might break out and sell big.

Don’t have to pay Lewis Carroll or Shakespeare royalties. I never thought I’d be mentioning Lewis Carroll in Black History Month. Wonders never cease.

I really have fallen down a rabbit hole.

Barnes & Noble has lamely offered what I will call The J.K. Rowling Defense, how Rowling claimed she never expressly described Hermione Granger as any race. Publishing and B&N then used that lamely to go back through the classics where race was never expressly described and **POOF** make the characters ethnic. And THERE is some diversity!

No one is going to imagine Alice in Alice in Wonderland as anything other than a wealthy white girl of a privileged time. The entire POINT of Black History Month is to highlight black people and their works, their art, their history, their voices and THEIR STORIES.

It is the entire frigging reason for the month. There is SO much to learn about. An incredible richness of language, custom, culture, history, myth that too many people–READERS–are missing out on. That you—YOU—Barnes & Noble, that YOU publishing industry could have done something REAL about.

Instead, you offer people of color this petty token? When y’all could have offered something real? As in tables or giant glorious displays of books by black authors in the flagship store in NYC on 5th Avenue? But you didn’t. You could have. But you didn’t.

SHAME ON YOU!

This is…

Is there a stronger word for atrocity? To do this is essentially saying that people of color are incapable of having their own art or their own stories…so let’s lend them some white stories and help them out.

God, I just can’t! I am so, so, so sorry that the publishing industry has done this to you. It’s appalling.

White People Get Offended Too

I get it. I know that I’m whiter than a paper plate of Minute Rice trapped in a blizzard. But I’m a human and also a female, which comes with a bag of worms there. I can also empathize and WANT to empathize.

It’s why I want to know about books from authors with perspectives I NEED to see from, and I don’t believe that perspective includes a half-mad sea captain hunting an albino whale.

God even the WHALE is white! Did they make the whale black, too?

*sobs into laptop*

Granted, I can never truly know what it’s like to be a person of color. The closest I can get is pretty much STORY.

Which is why saying the publishing industry and Barnes & Noble dropped the ball does not BEGIN to cover cataclysmic proportions of how they’ve insulted a) people of color b) authors of color c) authors d) readers e) anyone with a brain f) anyone with half a brain g) anyone with a moral compass…

AHHHHHHHHH!

*breathes into paper bag*

This is why I strive to read many different genres from a wide array of authors, time-periods, opinions, and backgrounds. I WANT to be uncomfortable, to be challenged. This is how we form bonds, common ground, understanding.

Black History Month and Focus Time

Time can get away from me, which is why it’s good for me to be deliberate about what I’m choosing to read.

One day tends to blend into the next and the next into the next until a year has passed. So Black History Month or Women’s History Month or Asian/Pacific History Month is helpful for me.

These months are earmarks. Reminders. Black History Month is where I discovered novels like Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. Most of my favorite African American authors are non-fiction, so I rely a lot on Black History Month to discover the novels.

I’ve read fiction, non-fiction, memoirs and more, and I count on booksellers to help me.

Booksellers Should Be There to Help

I generally can count on Audible to offer up suggestions, books I might never have found on my own, stories that I may have never discovered. Librarians will do their magic and curate wonderful tables highlighting authors other than the megas we see donning every airport bookstore.

Historically, Barnes & Noble would do the same. But this? This is why the aliens don’t land.

Seriously Publisher’s Weekly, Random Penguin, Barnes & Noble? Y’all need to go sit in the corner and really think hard about what you’ve done. More importantly about what you’ve not done.

Shame on you.

For Authors of Color

My goal with this blog has been to help ALL authors. I’ve spent over ten years and millions of words going to the mattresses for creatives—traditionally published, self-published, indie published. I’ve stood behind all forms of publishing namely BECAUSE so many voices are being ignored by traditional publishing.

Or y’all get this…I don’t even know what to call this. I’d meant to blog on something else when I saw this headline and I was so angry I couldn’t see straight.

This is sickening. Just know it did NOT go unnoticed. We see you. We see the charade and we will not tolerate this behavior and will not let this pass. You deserve the best.

Go create because the world needs more stories. We need YOUR stories!

The post Barnes & Noble Puts Literary Classics in Blackface for Black History Month appeared first on Kristen Lamb.

The winning edge is what all humans crave, whether it’s at work, love, life, or even just for that spot at the front of the line in Starbuck’s. People go to CRAZY lengths to gain that winning edge, especially when margins are razor-thin and stakes are sky high.

A long list of ‘doping’ scandals’ shook professional sports not too long ago, reducing rock solid reputations to dust. Corporate giants have fallen, their leaders thrown in jail because they chose shortcuts over creativity and ingenuity.

Insider trading. Backroom deals. Brokering in secrets.

Writing and publishing, sadly, aren’t much different. There are folks out there who sell packages that guarantee to make you (or me) or anyone with the cash or the card that clears a New York Times Best-Selling Author.

Wish I were kidding.

Ever since our profession has gone digital, it’s been far easier to game the system. Now, make no mistake. It was certainly NO meritocracy before. I merely said digitization has made it easier to game.

Though why anyone would feel proud of a ‘trophy’ they’d bought is beyond me. This said, just because some people are engaging in algorithmic alchemy doesn’t mean everyone is.

Plenty of room to earn our titles the good old-fashioned way.

We Are What We SAY We Are

I pull this trick on every conference I speak at. It’s a whole lot more fun (for me) if the audience isn’t filled with longtime followers of my blog.

The single largest hurdle many writers have to overcome—serious writer, not entrepreneurs using my professions as some scratch-off ticket to fame and fortune—is to actually CALL themselves writers.

I will ask for all the aspiring writers in the room to raise their hands. Then, once they do, I tell them to use that hand and slap themselves HARD and never call themselves that again.

Feel free to use the term ‘pre-published’ or if you’re an overachiever like me? ‘Pre-legend’ will work too. But for the love of all that is chocolate, ditch the aspiring.

This is a brutal profession and apologists will get eaten for breakfast. I’ve seen writers who’ve penned tens of thousands of words who still refuse to call themselves writers.

To be perfectly blunt, I am seeing a lot less of this than I used to with self-publishing as an option. But, that cloying insecurity is still there.

So long as we cling to the aspiring then we don’t have to write every day. Investing in training and classes is an option not a mandate. Reading books is a frivolity, not business training.

Aspiring writers will always be just that…aspiring. There is not implied action in that word. Pre-published presupposes a promise.

Additionally, we are what we do.

If I told you I was a doctor, but then you found out I never went to med school, didn’t have an office, had never treated a patient, you’d think I was a lunatic.

Writers WRITE.

Winning Edge: Preparation

Also, the day you decide you maybe want to make money doing this writing thing professionally, you need to invest in YOU and your business.

This means you need a website, to start building a brand, cultivating a platform (which is code for just keep talking to people and make friends on social media).

Yes, I hear the protest. But I haven’t even finished a book! All right. So you DO finish a book. Say you run into an agent who LOVES it. Do you REALLY want to try and pull a website/platform out of the ether?

Look in my eyes. The answer is no.

You’ll thank me later.

If you query traditional or a good indie and don’t have a website and platform, I can tell you right now that’s almost always an automatic trip to the slush pile. Also, if you publish yourself, where are you going to sell your book(s)? And to whom?

Trust me. I have done all the dumb stuff so you don’t have to.

Branding and building a platform is a) something only YOU can do b) you cannot buy one or outsource this task, either c) it can be fun d) it’s way easier and a lot less stressful when you don’t yet have anything for sale.

My book, Rise of the Machines: Human Authors in a Digital World was written to be evergreen (meaning the content never gets old).

It works on any platform in any time period because my approach focuses on PEOPLE. Technology changes. People don’t. Don’t believe me? Look up your ex on Faceook.

You’re welcome.

I teach how to locate your future fans. Why do they like what they like? WHY? How can you find them, connect and cultivate a relationship that will endure?

If you want a winning edge, then building a strong cadre of people who care about YOU, your book and success will launch you light years ahead of those who believe they can simply throw money at a bunch of ads and buy email lists.

Winning Edge: The ‘Competition’

Here’s where I’ll probably sound like a jerk but I have no figs to give. Barnes & Noble is on life-support. It might survive, but will likely never again be a baller. Big Publishing hasn’t had a breakout novel in nearly EIGHT years now.

The glut in the market has become unmanageable. In the early days of self-publishing and indie publishing readers could discover the gems, but now it’s too much. As I’ve mentioned more than a few times, there are now over a million self-published books launched per year.

It doesn’t take a mathlete or an economist to appreciate that, if only 3-5% of the population considers reading to be a favorite past-time, that they simply cannot make it through over a million books a year to discover the gems.

But, good entrepreneurs are problem solvers. How can WE solve this problem of over a million books added to the market per year?

Well, the entities that allow self-publishing won’t likely do anything because even if a really dreadful book sells ten copies they’re still making a lot of money.

That, and I loathe handing power over to other people. I’m a tad of a control freak. Yes, I see your shocked faces.

The winning edge we have here is that most of those million plus books are unreadable GARBAGE.

Winning Edge: Quality Beats Price

Yes, in the beginning of the e-reader, we wanted cheap books because they were novel (*bada bump snare*). We still do, to a degree. I still believe that a digital book shouldn’t cost the same as a hard cover.

A hard cover costs in paper, shipping, it can be damaged and is perishable. This said, I am happy to pay a reasonable price for a digital book, just not $27.00.

Back to cheap books. We were enamored with .99 cent books and FREE books largely because NY was staffed with Luddites who didn’t realize the Titanic was sinking.

Instead of changing business plans…the band played on.

Amazon was more than happy to accommodate. But, after a while, the novelty wore off. Especially once we realized that so many of these books were unreadable junk—unedited, first-draft, digitized offal.

Much of what’s out there still is. And, traditional publishing, in trying to up their speed, has compromised a lot of quality as well. I’ve found myself reading a lot of older books (pre-digital era) because I can’t stand modern books.

If readers discover we put out QUALITY books, we will automatically be at the leading edge of the pack. The reason is readers don’t have time to sift through Hell’s Slush Pile.

Value the Readers’ TIME

Publishing has ALWAYS complained people didn’t read enough.

Those stupid radio programs are stealing readers.

That silly new television is taking readers.

Twenty-four hour news and cable! Stealing our readers!

Publishers have griped and groused that people didn’t read books and that was back when there sure as Shineola wasn’t over a MILLION friggin’ books hitting the market per year…most UNEDITED.

Most of the books for sale today? Forget passing a gatekeeper. Most couldn’t pass fifth grade English. But here’s the thing.

People are BUSY.

We are wanting them to READ. If we want them to read, the we need to make sure we’re valuing their limited time by offering them an escape…not a migraine.

I hate saying this, and honestly never believed I ever would. But if writers would do these three things, you would outpace probably 95% of what is for sale.

First, read A LOT of books. This would give you a vast vocabulary and you’d be able to study how masters of what we do use words to create emotions, atmosphere, effect, tension, etc.

Secondly, invest in training, conferences and/or read and study the top craft blogs and books. I gave a GIANT list on this post.

Thirdly, write A LOT. I was going to end the Plot Boss ON DEMAND tomorrow night, but since I am mentioning it here, I’ll go ahead and end it MONDAY. Because if you don’t take any other craft class take this one.

***If we don’t understand the structure of stories we’re DOOMED. This is a $55 class I’m offering for $25. You can get it HERE.

After years writing myself in corners, I dedicated to learning EVERYTHING about plotting because it confused the bejeezus out of me. Once I reverse engineered what I’d been doing all wrong, I devised a way to teach it where even me—a plotting dimwit—could understand.

You guys having seventy-six half-finished ideas in your computer doesn’t make you a stronger author. It makes you want to cry into a tub of ice cream and buy crap you don’t want or need on Amazon Prime.

Finishing books makes you better (and improves your confidence). Finishing sucky books leads to finishing good books and that leads to finishing incredible books…and THAT is the winning edge.

Remember QUALITY

A caveat of finishing. I’m going to reiterate the importance of study. Reading is vastly important. I cannot tell you how many ‘writers’ tell me they want to be a ‘New York Times Best-Selling Author’ but then in the same sentence claim they don’t have the time to read.

*primal screams*

If you don’t have time to read, then you don’t have time to be an author. Initially, I wasn’t keen on audio books. I had to train my brain.

I’m a writer, blogger, teacher, and a mom who homeschools. That, and, judging from the piles of laundry in my house, there might be people living here I don’t know about.

Sure, I had to get used to it. The books I particularly love, I buy again in paper. But, I can do laundry, dishes, clean, or stand in lines and listen to books.

I just want to be very clear on the finishing thing. There are plenty of writers churning out finished ‘books.’ But they aren’t books, they are 50,000-110,000 words with a cover.

What we practice is what improves.

If we don’t read great books and take classes from those who can improve our skills, what we are doing is practicing bad writing. We’re getting better and being terrible writers.

***Btw, it doesn’t have to be me. Look to that link and the GIANT LIST I gave y’all of incredible teachers and blogs.

And I am not picking on anyone. Every artist who desires mastery brings in an expert. I played clarinet from grade school into high school. Starting in 6th grade, I met with a top clarinetist from the Dallas Symphony once a week and she ran me through grueling drills.

No matter the art—painting, dance, music, sculpting, etc.—even if a person is self-taught most seek out masters to help them improve in some area (at least the ones who want to be the BEST do).

Winning Edge and Finding Your Pace

Some books are like fine wine, and need time. They require a certain climate, fine weather, nurturing and an aging process. Michael Crichton, Larry McMurtry, Ken Follet, Amy Tan, etc. didn’t churn out books every two months and no one expected them to so.

Granted, some of the greatest works of literature were actually written VERY quickly (as I pointed out in my tongue-in-cheek post ‘Real Writers Don’t Self-Publish). Not all writers have the same pace. Not all stories require the same operational tempo.

Stephen King has written works that took eighteen months and others that took only a few days.

Publishing isn’t One-Size-Fits-All, or at least it shouldn’t be. But we are still enduring the birthing pains.

This said. With this drive for writers to push out content faster than a cartel meth lab, quality has taken a major hit. It’s also deluding a lot of people into believing they can take shortcuts.

That what we writers do is not an art, an artisan craft, a skill that requires YEARS and DECADES of training, learning, practice, classes, reading, and training to refine.

I believe we’ve gone far enough down this digital highway to come to a crossroad where we’ll need to choose.

When I began my journey years ago, the greatest hurdle I had was to get authors to understand we were in the entertainment business and that half of that word was business.

Now that has flipped.

We are still in the entertainment business, entertainment being half of that word. And I am actually excited about that, because I LOVE teaching craft.

*throws glitter*

Granted I love teaching branding and social media but my methods are beyond unorthodox and actually use your creativity.

Others might want to lobotomize your imagination, whereas I want you to let your muse out of the classroom and so she/he can have Field Day every day. Lord, all this algorithm, dashboard, metrics…

Is it me, or does it feel like our poor muses have been trapped in a standardized test since 2012?

*gagging sounds*

Summing Up the Winning Edge

We can look at this bloated, dreadful market and see doom, or opportunity. For those ready to seize advantage, it’s pretty simple.

• Own being an author. You’re an artist and an artisan.

• Start building your space. Plan for success. For discounted web-hosting with white-glove treatment, go HERE and tell them I sent you for a special author rate. TechSurgeons caters to a lot of authors. The big web hosts won’t necessarily care if your site gets hacked at three in the morning, six hours before before your book launch, but TechSurgeons WILL. If you’re already with a different host, they can move you over easy-peasy.

• Get a copy of Rise of the Machines or take the On Demand Branding Class. You can also go through my archives for free to learn all you need to know. What I teach is very simple and VERY effective…oh and FUN.

• Read, A LOT. Watch a lot of movies, television, series. Take notes. Study dialogue, characterization, vocabulary, subtext.

• Go to that list I provided and treat yourself to some of those resources. Read those blogs and take their classes, too.

• Take some Bad Lamb Academy Classes. They’re designed to give you the winning edge. I have a couple of SWEET specials listed below (and ALL our classes come with recordings). It’s going to take more than one or two classes to train y’all into any semblance of mastery, which is why we work hard to make these affordable. Recordings allow you to go back over material.

• Once you’ve read the books and blogs and taken the classes, write A LOT. Practice is a whetstone that sharpens the winning edge.

• And finish. Then repeat. Be a FINISHER.

What Are Your Thoughts?

I believe the pendulum is swinging back the other way. The glut of everyone wanting to market and advertise their way into best-selling author status just isn’t panning out like it used to.

I feel we are getting back to the basics of ‘Can you tell a GOOD story?’

Does that make you excited? What are some of the areas you find yourself neglecting? Do you struggle claiming that you are a ‘real’ writer and so you put everyone and everything ahead of writing and honing your craft?

I love hearing from you!

And to prove it and show my love, for the month of NOVEMBER, everyone who leaves a comment I will put your name in a hat. If you comment and link back to my blog on your blog, you get your name in the hat twice. What do you win? The unvarnished truth from yours truly.

I will pick a winner once a month and it will be a critique of the first 20 pages of your novel, or your query letter, or your synopsis (5 pages or less). Will announce October’s soon. Finally back to feeling ‘normal-ish’ from the bronchitis.

In the meantime, PLEASE treat yourself to a class!

So the BIG SPECIALS

On Demand: Beyond Bulletproof HOLIDAY Barbie

Usually $55 and now only $30. This is a THREE-HOUR class on guns, knives, weapons, fighting, law enforcement (from local cops to international espionage) and more. Everything you need to build a bad@$$—male OR female—and get the details CORRECT.

On Demand Plot Boss: Writing Books Readers Want to BUY

Sale on this class ENDS Monday.

New Classes

Why Are We HERE? Scenes that HOOK

THIS FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 22nd, 2019. Use New20 for $20 off.

Tick Tock: How to Plot Mystery Suspense Series

Tuesday, November 26th  7:00-9:00 p.m. EST (NYC TIME). Use New20 for $20 off.

NEW ON DEMAND CLASSES

On Demand Dark Arts: Building Your Villain

Use New20 for $20 off. Discount good until November 28th.

On Demand Bite-Sized Fiction: How to Plot the Novella

Popular On Demand Classes

The Art of Character: Writing Characters for a SERIES ON DEMAND

Use Binge10 for $10 off.

How do we create characters that readers will fall in love with, characters strong enough to go the distance? Find out in this THREE-HOUR class that also comes with detailed notes and a character-building template. 

This class dovetails with my previous class:

Bring on the Binge: How to Plot and Write a Series (ON DEMAND). Use Binge10 for $10 off.

Need some help with platform and branding?

Branding: WHEN YOUR NAME ALONE Can Sell (ON DEMAND)

Use brand10 for $10 off.

For the complete list, go to the OnDemand Section.

The post The Winning Edge: In a Glutted Market, How Can Authors Stand Apart? appeared first on Kristen Lamb.

Pay the bookseller. Novel idea. Sort of like my whole idea that we should pay the writer. Alas, every time I study the book industry, no one in charge seems to understand why paying those pivotal to your business is kind of a big deal.

I was going to blog on something else, but this morning I awoke to the New York Times article:

Can Britain’s Top Bookseller Save Barnes & Noble? James Daunt fought Amazon and rescued the country’s biggest bookstore chain. Now comes Chapter 2.

For me? This is not CHAPTER 2, it is a steaming pile of Number Two.

Call of Doody: Battle of the Books

First of all, this NYT title is grossly inaccurate and misleading. Daunt might have rescued the UK chain Waterstones, but his rescue plan had very little to do with directly combatting Amazon.

In fact, it was precisely because Daunt didn’t engage with Amazon that Waterstones managed to regain financial footing.

One of the single largest business decisions that killed Borders—as well as Barnes & Noble—had to do with crap tactics. Both giants engaged the competition (Amazon) on terrain where their adversary held almost total dominance.

*throws history book at screen*

The Internet reminds me of Russia. Only those born to it prosper and only fools believe they can win a war against the harsh elements they’ve never studied let alone mastered.

Bezos was only too happy to let Borders try to invade. Amazon hunkered down, and Borders ended up eating all their metaphorical horses before they finally starved.

Did B&N learn? Nope. And the oil froze in their Nooks.

Maybe y’all think I’m being melodramatic, but…

In my recent blog post Amazon Publishing: The Road to Conquest & How Bezos Razed New York, I mentioned how Borders was struggling but doing okay, until they broke the deal they’d made with the devil Amazon and got the bright idea to go it alone on-line.

Can anyone say, ‘Waterloo?’

Similarly, Barnes & Noble—apparently visited by the same ‘Bright Idea Fairy’—launched the Nook, and hemorrhaged over a billion dollars.

Why? Because they didn’t learn from Borders and believed they could win a land war in Asia book war on-line.

*pictures Amazon sitting inside near roaring fire drinking vodka and playing checkers*

What Daunt Did Well

So let’s just get some facts straight. C.E.O. James Daunt didn’t rescue Waterstones because he took on the big, bad Amazon. Amazon wasn’t why the Waterstones stores were bleeding out.

Daunt went head to head with traditional publishers. Publishers were killing the bookstores.

Daunt forswore the $38 million in ‘co-op fees’ which gave the publishers the power to display the selection of books they liked and wanted to sell. Problem was that what the publishers wanted to sell rarely coincided with what customers wanted to BUY/READ.

The co-op fees, enticing as they might have been, were undermining sales overall. Daunt was savvy enough to appreciate that bookstores wouldn’t survive if they kept putting the publishers’ desires ahead the customers’.

Daunt also gave Waterstones a heavy makeover. They didn’t all look alike. Some were big, some small, some didn’t have the name Waterstones at all.

***Went a little Dr. Seuss there.

Cutting the Co-Op

The co-op system was an albatross. Publishers were smitten with their Buy Two Get the Third Free but, according to Daunt, customers rarely found the third book they wanted (FREE or not).

Waterstones, at one point, was returning TWENTY PERCENT of their inventory for remaindering.

For those who don’t know how traditional publishing operates, the physical bookstore system is consignment-based.

Publishers send books they believe will sell. Booksellers, however, eventually return unsold books to publishers at the publishers’ expense.

But also at the booksellers’ expense because failing to sell TWENTY PERCENT of your inventory is—to use a fancy business term—bad juju.

Bookstores lose money, too, because they have to pay their staff to rip off covers and box them to ship back to the publishers. Time that could be better used selling books.

With Waterstones shipping back roughly a FIFTH of all inventory, this translated into millions of dollars in losses (for both parties) every year.

To continue was madness. Got it. Yay James Daunt.

Daunt vs. Traditional Publishing

Daunt finally convinced the publishers to work with him and offer a discount on all the books, not just those hand-selected for specialness.

He then started changing up all the stores, making them resemble the smaller independent stores of yesteryear.

Each location had unprecedented control over which books they stocked and where.

“He’s (Daunt) essentially created a series of independent bookstores with the buying power of a chain.”

Tom Weldon, Penguin Random House U.K.

After untangling the co-op albatross from around Waterstones’ neck, the chain dropped from TWENTY PERCENT of inventory shipped back to publishers down to FOUR PERCENT.

***Currently, according to the NYT article I’m referring to today, Barnes & Noble averages TWENTY to TWENTY-FIVE PERCENT of inventory is returned to the publishers.

#OUCH

The Oblique Attack: Atmosphere

Daunt ditched the co-op payout, empowered the individual stores to curate their own inventory, thus making each location highly unique and individualized. For the most part, each bookstore’s inventory currently reflects the community it serves.

Waterstones also made a big deal out of making their bookstores a place people wanted to go and maybe even stay awhile.

This is probably the only area I’d grudgingly concede Daunt ‘fought’ Amazon.

Because for me, the fight really hasn’t ever been with Amazon. Bezos, from the beginning, wanted to create a system that catered to readers. That a book would become popular because readers enjoyed it.

This idea that a small group of of intellectually isolated elites could choose what the rest of the country wanted to read was absurd.

For those isolated elites to then insist the books they enjoyed should comprise most of a bookstore’s inventory, despite regional, cultural and linguistic differences? Height of hubris.

And we’re somehow shocked that B&N returns an average of 25% of its stock?

So, with everything thus far, I agree a thousand percent that Daunt did an excellent job.

But here is where we begin to part ways.

Who is Achilles James Daunt?

When you open the NYT article, there’s this smart picture of James Daunt next to a fairly misleading title (as we’ve already discussed).

The only direct jab at Amazon is in reference to creating stores with atmosphere as opposed to a quick on-line transaction.

Whatever. They DO know Amazon is opening stores that are catering to local tastes, preferences and offering all sorts of cozy feel-goods and extras, right?

Right?

Anyway.

The first third of the article is inspiring, and refreshing. After ten years ranting on my blogs, it’s nice to see someone making sound business decisions for a change.

I was impressed that Daunt had no problem going head-to-head with the major publishers. I liked that his new approach lowered waste, increased profit, and that he’d streamlined staff to allow time for the stores to recover.

Then we get to the second part of the article….

*heavy sigh*

The article gushes on and on about Daunt, how he’s the son of an ambassador, how ‘he joined the corporate finance department of J.P. Morgan in Manhattan, shortly after graduating from Cambridge University in 1984.’

Um, all right. Interesting stuff.

How though he loved the money, but ‘his wife, Katy Steward, recoiled at the prospect of 40 years of dinnertime stories about stock swaps and high-yield bonds.’

Ok. Yeah, sounds like a total drag.

We learn that the very wealthy Daunt has an unusual approach to his globe-trotting family vacations that he takes with his wife and two children.

How they’ve backpacked through Romania, Ethiopia, and Cuba blah blah blah.

All well and good. I found it interesting and the article would have been fine had it ended here.

But it didn’t.

For those who kept reading, this pseudo-personal profile gave the last third of the article a…’Let them eat cake’ vibe.

Same $#!&, Different C.E.O

Borders died because they got greedy. Barnes & Noble imploded because of greed. Traditional publishing (namely the multi-media conglomerates that own them) are dying off out because of…y’all guessed it, GREED.

What all these folks have in common, was they believed they could prosper while shivving those who mattered the most.

Namely, the writers and the small bookstore chains, the indie and mom-and-pop bookstores…and finally the actual book sellers (the retail people).

The Big Six didn’t want to wait on golden eggs, so they let Borders and Barnes & Noble talk them into gutting the goose that eventually cooked all their geese.

That is a serious gaggle of @$$hattery right there.

***For those who don’t know what I’m referring to, go HERE.

Granted, Daunt’s plan is doing a ‘better’ job of getting lesser known authors in front of readers. The writers are doing ‘better’ under this new model.

Better being a relative term.

But, what I simply cannot understand is how NO ONE in charge gives a rip about the second most important person when it comes to selling books.

The retail folks on the floor and in the trenches! What is WRONG with you people?

Pay the bookseller!

When the people who work for you have to launch/sign a petition to ask for a living wage? Call me pissy, but I don’t want to hear about bougie trips to some place called…Jura.

And I don’t give a single fig about how you argued with an Italian showroom designer—at a posh London restaurant—about how the perfect angle of a book on display should be three degrees not four.

Let’s circle the wagons back to what really matters.

You Can’t Afford to Raise Their Pay?

Can anyone in this industry MATH?

By Daunt’s own admission, the percentage of remaindering has dropped sixteen percent. Sales are up, waste is down. Employees are selling books instead of boxing them.

So…why not reward them?

Daunt also agrees the starting pay is ‘rubbish,’ but then he loses me. To increase pay would cost $6.2 million the company doesn’t have.

Even though, according to the April 2nd, 2019 article, James Daunt says pay row obscures ‘decent progress’ at Waterstones via The Bookseller:

Under Daunt, Waterstones has returned to profit, reporting a pretax profit of £20m on sales of £386m in the year to end April 2018, and Daunt said the current fiscal year would see continuing improvement. But he said the business remained fragile.

Philp Jones

If I am understanding correctly, Waterstones went from dangling over the precipice of imminent bankruptcy…to now boasting $16.4 million in pretax profit on $317million in total sales.

That massive improvement can’t be leveraged to raise a paltry $6.2 million to keep the workers who made this gain happen from walking out the door?

Y’all can’t, I dunno, offer profit-sharing?

All righty.

Better Pay is Possible if a PRIORITY

Daunt, to my dismay, takes a hardline stance with the employees. His idea is that employee pay will increase incrementally over time, once someone proves they are loyal or some crap.

According to the New York Times article, Daunt claims that, “…the point is to provide an incentive to stick around, even if that means stinting on those who will not.”

Who will not.

All right, so they can’t make a living wage to eat and have a roof over their heads, but if they leave for a job that pays them better…they just weren’t committed enough?

What I dislike immensely about the Daunt Payment Plan is it’s directly related to time served. And I quote:

“We pay people more if they are committed to us than if they are only staying for a year.”

C.E.O. James Daunt

But maybe they’re only staying a year because they can’t afford to remain in a job with such low pay. A thought?

Also, let me get this straight.

If a brand new bookseller is always on time, never absent, hustles hard and sells a ton of books for only a year, he/she is still paid crap because they’ve not been there ‘long enough.’

Yet, another employee who maybe still lives at home and has no dependents, who has the means to stick around for the pay boost is rewarded…even if that person does the bare minimum to remain employed.

Ok.

Time alone is a terrible metric for measuring the value of an employee. But that’s my POV.

The Benefits of Higher Pay

Galen Emanuele’s article, Why You Should Pay Your Employees as Much as You Can articulates this beautifully. But, this is basic common sense.

First of all, better pay attracts and keeps exceptional employees. This drastically lowers turnover and the cost of hiring and retraining a continual stream short-term of replacements.

Treat your employees better…and they do a better job.

*shock face*

Don’t take it from me. Check out Fortune’s Top 100 Places to Work.

This article in Business Insider uses Costco as a prime example. Costco employees cite pay, benefits, and job security as the main reasons they love what they do.

On top of this, Costco actively creates ways for employees to grow and move so they CAN envision Costco being their career.

I can personally attest to how successful Costco is at employee retention. I’ve been shopping at three-four different Costco locations over the past fifteen years. I know the names of most of the employees…because they’ve been there for YEARS.

Costco offers premium pay and benefits from DAY ONE.

Not, ‘Hey if you’ll endure an undeclared number of years of crap pay, maybe there will be a little something shiny in it for you at a later, undisclosed date.’

How can staff be productive if they’re busy looking for a better job or worrying how to pay the food bill?

Daunt would do well to think about his priorities.

Oh, James Daunt is mad about how certain Waterstones locations have installed additional power outlets for university students ‘who consume more power than coffee.’

He has no problem with Waterstones providing free electricity to a bunch of students who are there for the free power and free wi-fi and who aren’t buying books.

“We’re playing the long game…When those students are rich and famous, they’ll buy books from us and the cost of the electricity will be paid back in spades.”

James Daunt

But taking the hit to pay employees better? Rewarding them for how far Waterstones has already come?

Trusting that better pay will make them feel valued and thus will inspire employees to be more passionate, enthusiastic and evangelical ISN’T a worthy long-game investment?

So letting students sponge off the light-bill totes doable, because they might buy books ONE DAY when they’re rich and famous (because books are like Porsches and polo ponies).

Enabling users and takers is a super smart plan, but paying employees who’ve already created value and who are only adding MORE value is a horrible business decision.

Want to Save B&N? Pay Matters

Daunt would be wise to remember that Barnes & Noble isn’t out of the weeds yet. Far from it.

If leadership continues this trend of paying/rewarding workers as little as possible—then bragging in the New York Times about exotic family trips around the world—Amazon will poach Barnes & Noble’s best talent.

How do I know this? It’s what they’ve been doing for a DECADE.

The Big Six, Borders & Barnes & Noble didn’t value the mid-list author, and Amazon happily picked up those authors and offered them better pay. As of a month ago, Amazon’s Thomas & Mercer poached Penguin Random House’s biggest author, Dean Koontz. How?

Hint: Better pay.

***Koontz is only the largest of a number of big-name authors who’ve already defected because they want to continue having a career.

Amazon is already opening physical bookstores that are smart-stocked, and offer a cozy feel and bells and whistles. Sorry, Mr. Daunt but you don’t have an edge there.

Besides, does Daunt actually believe Amazon won’t happily poach the best of B&N’s employees the same exact way?

By PAYING them more?

And this all seemed so promising.

Daunt has already demonstrated creativity and tenacity in other areas.

I believe he can use the same imagination and fire that rescued Waterstones from tanking, and use his mad skills to figure out some way to properly compensate those who grind daily in the bookselling trenches (quickly…NOT in a decade).

For what it’s worth, we writers value our bookseller advocates and cannot thank you enough. We appreciate your passion and all you sacrifice to promote reading and our books.

As for the big bosses…

No One Home

The article closes with Daunt bemoaning how Waterstones’ employees never pick up the phone. He notes that a sign of progress is when he can call a location and someone answers.

Fewer than half of the Waterstones’ locations passed this metric.

And the band played on the phone rang on…

Announcements

TOMORROW, I will be teaching Bring on the BINGE: How to Plot & Write Series. Series are a fabulous way to build a fan following AND make really excellent money (when done well). This class is 2.5 to 3 hours long (and YES, all classes come with a FREE recording).

We’re going to cover all aspects of how to write a series, the different types of series, and so much more.

As I mentioned last post, Maria Grace will be teaching Taking the Plunge: How to Write Deep POV on FRIDAY. This is TWO HOURS of professional instruction about how to ROCK Deep POV.

Treat yourself! Feel free to wear this to class .

The post Pay the Bookseller! Why C.E.O. James Daunt Won’t Save Barnes & Noble appeared first on Kristen Lamb.

Amazon Publishing might be the new normal of the 21st century book business. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing remains to be seen.

I’ve always wanted NY Publishing to survive and thrive. Sure, I had nostalgic reasons. NY was (is) a cultural institution, with pedigree and history.

Amazon didn’t seem to possess the love for the written word. They sold camping equipment, soldering irons, plastic dog poo and massage chairs. How could they care about books? About literature?

Simply calling themselves Amazon Publishing did little to sway my opinion.

Change is Scary

I’ve been blogging on these business changes since 2005 (my first blogs were on one of the very first what-we-would-recognize-as-a-social-media-site, Gather).

I wrote post after post until I started feeling like that crazy guy downtown. You know the one I’m talking about? Guy wearing an ad board with THE END IS NEAR spelled out in duct tape or glitter.

Alas, the digital revolution has taught a lot of painful lessons. One of the hardest? We’re either architects or artifacts. True for publishers as well as authors.

If we hope to thrive in the next evolution of change, it’s critical to understand the larger picture. Without context, there’s no way to be strategic.

The 411 on Amazon Publishing

For the past twelve years or so, Amazon Publishing has been playing to win, as opposed to NY, who was playing to ‘not lose.’

Huge difference.

Instead of being on the offense, sticking and moving and learning how to play the new game or even invent their OWN newer game (and make Amazon hustle for a change)…the powerhouse publishers ran down to Blockbuster and rented You’ve Got Mail for the six-hundredth time.

Change at the Speed of Wi-Fi

By all indications, NY Publishing didn’t grasp that they only had a very small window to act if they wanted to survive (forget thrive).

Instead of redoing their business plan, they wasted precious time trying to rekindle ‘The Good Old Days’ and protect their besties Borders and Barnes & Noble…at all costs. 

The Big Six (namely the multi-national media conglomerates in charge) couldn’t fathom a world where they weren’t the ballers. Anyone who claimed differently was deemed a lunatic, a hack, a poseur, delusional, etc.

Fast-forward to today (no VCR required because only my mother still uses one).

Borders is a ghost, and Barnes & Noble is now at the mercy of Elliot Management—the hedge fund that purchased them this past June.

Elliot Management, should they stick to their playbook, will shut down most of the large stores and part them out into smaller stores more reminiscent of the mom-and-pops Barnes & Noble pulverized on their way to power.

#Irony #Comeuppance

Good news is B&N shouldn’t go away completely. Bad news is those massive multi-million-dollar orders and preorders that financed the large NY houses just went bye bye.

So how did we all get here in such a short time? To answer this question, I’m going to cite the original personal coach/self-help guru…Sun Tzu.

Amazon Publishing & The Art of War

Jeff Bezos dreamed Amazon would one day replace The Big Six publishers and that he could completely reinvent the book business. He wanted the system to be more egalitarian.

Bezos believed consumers needed more say in what books they liked instead of relying on gatekeepers, AP reviewers, and (pre-negotiated) book displays to tell them what they should like.

Bezos had a plan to take out traditional publishing, and this plan is one I’ve done a fair job of predicting.

***gets cramp patting self on back***

I’d like to claim it’s because I’m super smart, but I had help. Anyone who’s read Sun Tzu’s The Art of War—and paid even MILD attention—could see the proverbial ‘writing on the wall.’

Every move Amazon has made over the past two decades or so might have appeared random, but to the trained eye? There has been NOTHING random about Amazon’s strategy.

But, Amazon couldn’t have secured the Iron Throne book market domination if traditional publishing had taken them seriously from the get-go and believed Amazon to be an actual threat.

Had the multi-national media conglomerates been paying attention, this might have ended very differently. Alas…

Pretend to be weak, that he (your enemy) may grow arrogant.
~Sun Tzu

Or, if you’re Amazon taking on publishing: Pretend to be a nut who believes that everyone will one day shop on the Internet…so that your competition will remain arrogant.

While NY argued over their favorite stock paper and mocked Facebook as a ‘passing fad,’ Amazon prepared for conquest.

They first dedicated massive resources to salvage the remains of Web 1.0 after the dot.com debacle. In 2002, Amazon launched AWS (Amazon Web Services), one of the first cloud-based systems able to track web site popularity and patterns and aggregate this information for marketers and developers.

In simple terms—who clicked what site when and why and how many times? Kind of an awesome thing to know if you want to sell stuff.

Then, in 2006, Amazon expanded AWS. My POV? Bezos (among other visionaries) wanted to ensure the infant Web 2.0 would have all it needed to grow into the leviathan it is now.

AWS added EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) and S3 (Simple Storage Surface) in order to expand their cloud storage and virtual computer capacities exponentially. Several years later (in 2012), Amazon purchased Kiva Systems (now Amazon Robotics) to streamline order fulfillment.

***More proof Amazon IS actually SkyNet. Alas, at least I know when the machines come for me, I get free shipping…because (DUH) I have Prime.

Anyway, improved search capabilities and data aggregation (better algorithms to predict and guide purchase habits), stronger safeguards against fraud, and increasingly faster shipping (using ROBOTS) all formed the foundation for Amazon’s future conquest.

On-line shopping had work efficiently and seamlessly or nothing else mattered.

The easier, safer, and more convenient Bezos could make it to buy from Amazon, the more the everyday consumer would trust them with their business. Bezos understood knowledge was power…literally. Whoever held the purchasing data from the web, held the keys to the kingdom (publishing kingdom included).

What I find uniquely interesting is this. Bezos built the early Amazon infrastructure offering products that weren’t culturally sentimental.

Consumers didn’t have the same emotional attachment when it came to electronics and sports equipment. Bezos appreciated that books would hit us in the feels.

Going there too soon would’ve been bad strategy. He waited to hit fast and hard.

Speed is the essence of war. Take advantage of the enemy’s unpreparedness; travel by unexpected routes and strike him where he has taken no precautions. ~Sun Tzu

Trust me, NO ONE in traditional publishing anticipated the Internet sucker punch. Traditional publishing didn’t even believe on-line shopping or ebooks would ever be viable, let alone a threat. They made no plans, took no real precautions.

Instead, they held onto their mantras:

Readers will always want paper.

Only techies and early adopters want audio and digital books. These formats will always be a fringe market and not worth the effort.

Readers don’t want to order on-line. They want a BROWSING experience with a latte.

Amazon Publishing might as well have been a campfire ghost story or urban legend in 2006. But, when Amazon released (unleashed) the Kindle?

$#!t got real.

If he is taking his ease, give him no rest. ~Sun Tzu

Amazon launched the Kindle and, with that, offered deep discounts on digital books (all books, actually). When some of the NY houses refused to lower prices on digital titles, the ‘BUY’ buttons on all their titles mysteriously disappeared.

It was a glitch.

Suuuure.

Glitch or not, it doesn’t take a business expert to realize that losing even a DAY of on-line sales probably hurt…a LOT.

Since NY had only recently started learning how to use email, one can imagine that algorithms, cloud computing and analytics weren’t exactly part of their wheelhouse.

Treat your men as you would your own beloved sons. And they will follow you into the deepest valley. ~Sun Tzu

Before Amazon launched the Kindle, though, they made sure to capitalize on a massive tectonic shift that had already split the book world years earlier.

Amazon Publishing understood the deal NY had made with the devils (Borders & Barnes & Noble). The big-box giants promised unprecedented wealth and success…which they delivered.

All NY had to do was to sacrifice their mid-list authors.

There was no ‘room’ for these authors. The big-box bookstore model relied on the selling power of household names (literary blue bloods).

With limited shelf-space, the plan worked better to shelve mostly author royalty, then pepper in new authors to give the appearance the big chains actually cared about the written word.

Ah, but a lot of authors had made The Big Six into the giant it had become (not just the blue bloods).

The author middle class had dedicated years, even decades to their ‘masters.’ Yet, NY unceremoniously cut them loose without so much as a ‘thank you for your service.’

…and Amazon was more than eager to publish these authors’ vast (and vetted) backlists and offer absurdly generous royalty rates. Not only that, but these authors could publish as many books as they pleased. Heck, they could write in any genre they wanted.

Be free!

What the big-box model tossed into the dirt, Amazon picked up, polished and sharpened to a razor edge.

If his forces are united, separate them. ~Sun Tzu

First, Amazon cleaved the body of authors into passionately divided camps—pro-indie versus diehard traditional. But then, Amazon Publishing also took advantage of the rivalry between Borders and Barnes & Noble.

These two big-box chains, in an act of unrepentant greed, had almost single-handedly destroyed the indie and mom-and-pop bookstore model. Once those ‘competitors’ fell away, they set their sights on each other.

#Brilliant

They built more and more giant stores, sometimes even across the STREET from each other. The more they built and battled, the more expensive it became to maintain an edge.

Soon, it devolved into a race to the bottom of who could give away the most stuff/books the cheapest. Which one could add in cards, records, movies, toys, and mani-pedis to gain an advantage.

This plan doesn’t work well with that kind of massive overhead.

Meanwhile, Amazon kept pounding on both of them and Borders fell first, namely because they mistakenly believed they could go it alone in cyberspace.

Back in 2001, Borders Group made a deal with Amazon and agreed that Amazon would co-manage Borders.com. Then, in 2007, Borders thought they’d go it alone with their own online bookstore and yeah…

It didn’t work out.

Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected. ~Sun Tzu

Amazon has spent the past seven or so years testing different models in cyberspace: Amazon Worlds, Amazon Scout, Kindle Unlimited, and Kindle Direct Publishing to name a few.

With the massive influx of indie and self-published authors, Amazon has been using writers and our books to improve ways to connect readers with books THEY love.

Amazon Publishing learned how to better detect and destroy anyone gaming algorithms. They’ve been willing to take risks to see what worked, what failed, and what could be salvaged and reinvented.

But, what Amazon REALLY was doing was perfecting its algorithms so they could take out the critical piece to dropping NY to its knees—Barnes & Noble.

Checkmate

Amazon Publishing has always been the ‘other woman in the red dress,’ but (as I claimed in a 2012 blog) this ‘other woman’ wanted a ring and to be considered legit.

Seven years ago, I posited that Amazon Publishing would soon open brick-and-mortar stores…and got flamed in my post’s comments. Everyone at the time believed Amazon to be perfectly content to remain in cyberspace.

I didn’t agree.

Bezos had ALWAYS wanted to take down publishing. He would not be content to remain an on-line book retailer. He’d want a place to showcase Amazon Kindles, and it could hardly be called a victory if he launched brick-and-mortar Amazon bookstores only to display mostly NY titles.

No, that wouldn’t do. Amazon stores would show off AMAZON authors.

When it came to Amazon Publishing, Bezos wouldn’t settle for anything less than total conquest.

How did I ‘know’ Amazon would open brick-and-mortar stores? Because NO ONE believed/expected they ever would.

Yet, it made sense. Amazon Publishing would have browsing space they could smart-stock using the data collected via their algorithms. They’d have enough information to know what books sold well and where.

This would drastically increase sales while simultaneously reducing waste.

***Remember, Amazon started out dominating the business of gathering and sorting information.

I suspected Amazon Publishing was waiting for Barnes & Noble to close a certain percentage of stores before they pounced.

According to Forbes, between 2008 and 2017, Barnes & Noble was closing an average of 21 stores a year to remain afloat.

Amazon opened its first physical store in 2015.

Dismissed as coincidence…

When Barnes & Noble fell? Checkmate.

Feign disorder, and crush him. ~Sun Tzu

This is where I don my large hoop earrings, polish my crystal ball and speak in a bad gypsy accent.

It was obvious to me (and anyone who could do math) that once Barnes & Noble fell, whatever remained of NY publishing would be in serious danger.

Without those massive preorders to fill shelf-space in oversized stores, NY publishing would be in a real financial pickle.

Recently, I blogged about the chaos in the publishing world. Currently, there are a million plus books self-published every year, and this number is climbing. On top of that? NY hasn’t had a breakout novel in SEVEN years.

To add insult to injury, that last breakout novel was 50 Shades of Grey.

To put it bluntly? Readers are fed up being used as unpaid gatekeepers.

When we buy a novel, our goal is to be entertained, NOT to determine if the writer could pass English 101.

***When reading a novel feels more like grading 8th grade papers? We’ll just watch Netflix, thanks.

There is a part of me, however, that believes Amazon has allowed this chaos to flourish for the simple reason that it serves their original goal—REPLACE NY Publishing.

Deviating a bit from Sun Tzu, the current mayhem in the book world is a scene straight out of Plato’s The Republic.

The Downside of Book Democracy

Democracy is a byproduct created when those disenfranchised in an oligarchy (writers overlooked, snubbed or rejected by NY) finally revolt (go indie or self-publish).

Freedom for the sake of freedom becomes the imperative. Every participant is permitted to live and act as he/she pleases (write whatever they want, even if it makes no sense and readers don’t want it)…because, FREEDOM.

These and other kindred characteristics are proper to democracy, which is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.

Plato’s ‘The Republic’

According to Plato, though initially a pure democracy might seem appealing, the state comes to be ruled by people who are unfit to rule.

In reference to publishing, the market comes to be dominated by those unfit to be published.

Pure democracy—which, letting anyone with a keyboard and internet access to be an ‘author’ surely is a pure democracy if I’ve ever seen one—ultimately devolves into bedlam.

Once this happens, Plato asserts that the population (market) will become SO vexed, they will welcome anyone who promises they can establish some form of order.

The New Era of Amazon Publishing

A few years ago, I speculated Amazon was waiting for the publishing industry to almost completely devolve. Only at that point would Amazon Publishing strike the coups de grace.

Amazon Publishing has already lured in the disgruntled/betrayed mid-list authors. They’ve also attracted most of the bright-eyed newbies who’d never even consider publishing with NY (some can even write).

Ah, but Amazon Publishing’s final move? Seduce the author blue bloods to the winning team.

Check

July 22, 2019 Publisher’s Weekly announced that mega-author Dean Koontz signed a five-book deal with Amazon Publishing’s Thomas & Mercer imprint. 

It was one thing when Amazon seduced the mid-list New York Times and USA Today best-selling authors. Dean Koontz is a whole other creature.

According to the article Koontz Inks Multibook Deal with Amazon Publishing:

The deal follows a string of agreements Amazon Publishing has struck with bestselling authors recently; in 2018 alone, Thomas & Mercer inked multi-book, seven-figure deals with Barry Eisler, T.R. Ragan and Robert Dugoni. Other top authors to come on board include Sylvia Day and Patricia Cornwell…

…Koontz said that Amazon ‘presented a marketing and publicity plan smarter and more ambitious than anything I’d ever seen before.’ He added: ‘The times are changing, and it’s invigorating to be where change is understood and embraced.‘

~Rachel Deahl

Just…ouch.

Dean Koontz has worked with Brilliance Audio (a division of Amazon) as well as Amazon Original Stories for the past few years. Yet, this new deal is certainly a landmark event.

According to Fortune, Koontz is the biggest author to sign with Amazon to date.

Since the late 1990s, Dean Koontz has predominantly published via Penguin Random House’s Bantam (more than 45 releases).

Dean Koontz’s jump to Amazon is a hard, if not mortal, blow to one of the remaining large publishing houses. Not only that, but this changing in alliances can’t help but be a harbinger of things to come.

How long until other mega-authors follow? My guess?

Not long.

Brave New Amazon Publishing

It’s been a long road through dangerous and uncharted digital territory. I know I’ve posted plenty of frightening articles/predictions.

Hey, change is scary. We can’t plan for what we don’t understand.

Yet, I’ve insisted all along to remain calm and just keep writing, learning and improving. Focus on the quality of the PRODUCT. The pendulum always swings back the other way.

Whenever there is innovation, a wild and massive market shift, pandemonium invariably erupts. This happened with the introduction of the Gutenberg Press, the railroad, the automobile, airplanes, radio, television, 24-hour news, cable TV, personal computers, video stores, affordable Spanx…and on and on.

The old goes through denial, digs in and finally whatever industry it happens to be can no longer sustain their outdated ways and they die off. The new emerges until IT becomes the old and the cycle repeats.

Humans LOVE stories. It’s why we—authors—are pretty much always ‘safe’ so long as we focus on being the best at what we do. Sure, we go through changes, too. Lean times, terror, change…and then a new normal arises from the ashes.

Ultimately, I was confident new gatekeeping would emerge.

It HAD to.

There is simply no way to sift through a million-plus books per year for the gems.

Now that Amazon has a system for smart-stocking, has now begun building brick-and mortar stores, and has managed to recruit the ‘one ace in the hole’ NY had left (their household name authors)?

Game Over

I don’t believe what remains of New York publishing will go away for good (at least not soon). Amazon won’t wipe them out completely if, for no other reason than to avoid being called out as a monopoly.

It seems obvious that Amazon Publishing will implement a similar but VASLTY updated publishing model that will (ideally) have the capacity to get good books into the hands of readers.

How this will look, exactly? I don’t know.

Audible followed a suggestion I made in a 2012 blog (whether they got it from me or not, I don’t know but will totally claim credit ).

Audible does have lines of audio books endorsed by a known/trusted brands (e.g. Neil Gaiman). This sort of celebrity approval improves sales and gets new authors in front of avid readers.

I could see Amazon Publishing doing something similar when creating imprints. I’m more than sure they have a plan.

Ultimately, I believe authors will be able to query the old-fashioned way, and sign with an agent who can then broker a deal with Amazon (like Koontz’s agents did with Thomas & Mercer). OR writers can still self-publish, create their own imprints and pioneer on, trusting readers will FIND their books and love them.

This means readers can STILL locate that gem the agents miss, but at the same time, writers can look forward to a more stable business environment.

In the end, readers, writers, agents, editors, etc. now at least have a light at the end of the tunnel. One that looks a lot like an ethernet cable, but whatever works.

Food for Thought

I don’t know if these changes are good or bad for writers. The big-box model certainly didn’t do us any favors.

Back before Amazon Publishing even existed, authors had a staggering failure rate.

According to the stats gathered by Book Expo of America, in 2004 ninety-three percent of all books published sold less than a thousand copies. Almost half of that number failed to sell more than five hundred copies (and this data reflected mostly legacy published authors).

Only one out of ten authors published ever saw a second book in print. Most failed to sell out their print runs and were subsequently dropped. So, it isn’t like authors have ever had a rosy-perfect-time-to-be-published.

The good news is technology changes, but people don’t.

And people will always crave good stories.

What are your thoughts? I LOVE hearing from you!

Sorry I haven’t posted in two weeks. I was going to do a post about gatekeepers, then the news about Koontz hit, and I changed direction.

***This blog required a TON of research…and my brain is melted. Smells like cotton candy. Weird.

We’ll get back to craft next time, but I love hearing what you guys are thinking with all these changes. Kind of hard to say anyone who publishes with Amazon isn’t a real author anymore, LOL.

I know big business is always something we need to watch vigilantly, but I’m somewhat relieved that it seems like we’re getting some stability (stark increase in number of independent bookstores, smart-stocking stores, more publishing options, new gatekeeping, etc).

But what’s your take?

A Quick Announcement

For anyone who wants to meet me in person, I’d LOVE to meet YOU (unless you don’t like me and then don’t you need to clean out those closets? #JustSayin).

Now that my parole officer finally agreed to extend the range of my ankle monitor…I’ll be speaking ALL DAY at these two incredible events!

…yes, they DO know it’s me. RIGHT? Anyway…

Y’all can check out Facebook for more details.

Right after Houston, I’ll be zooming to the other side of Texas to keynote for the Permian Basin Writers’ Conference. Come join the fun! We’ll talk shop, play with duct tape and glitter, and maybe get kicked out of a Walmart.

It’ll be FABULOUS! (Note: Bail money not included in conference fee).

The post Amazon Publishing: The Road to Conquest & How Bezos Razed New York appeared first on Kristen Lamb.

My last post, Barnes & Noble SOLD: Goliath Has Fallen & What This Means for Writers, was a long and detailed journey explicating precisely how we’ve all ended up at this spot in history—writers, readers, bookstores, booksellers, publishers, investors, etc.

The big-box bookstores are dead for good until some @$$hat forgets what a bad idea they were and resurrects them again.

In the meantime…

Now that Borders is a distant memory and Barnes & Noble a recent casualty, many of us find ourselves balancing, terrified, on the precipice of the unknown.

This time of transition possesses a particularly acute terror reserved for pre-published and published authors.

Yet, in light of all this upheaval, I challenge authors to learn from New York Publishing’s—‘The Big Six’s’ mistakes.

One mistake in particular.

Authors are NOT Bookstores

New York failed to remember its identity, and that was the critical node that set off the cascading system failures.

Legacy publishing (namely the multi-national media conglomerates calling the shots) forgot that publishers were in the STORY and INFORMATION business.

As mentioned in my previous blog, legacy publishers were NOT in the ‘protect the paper industry’ or the ‘prop up incompetent book retailer’ business. This mission drift was a fatal one that steered them straight into the metaphorical rocks.

Publishers forgot they existed as edification and entertainment dealers. They had a simple three-part mission:

I. Explore, unearth and expand any and all forms of potentially valuable content.

II. Connect that content to any media distribution channels with potential for profit.

III. Nurture profitable avenues and locate any stagnant business tributaries. If these sluggish channels couldn’t be revived expeditiously, eliminate them before they festered.

PRIME DIRECTIVE: Publishers existed solely as gatekeepers, winnowers, distributors, and cultivators. They were there to PROTECT their RESOURCE (the authors), so as to best SERVE the CONSUMERS (audiences).

That was IT. Yet, they forgot their purpose and it cost them dearly.

Storytellers, Educators & Entertainers, Lend Me Your Ears….

Now, talking to my fellow creatives and content creators. I’ll simply use the term AUTHORS from this point on for the sake of simplicity.

Authors do love bookstores, but we are not in the bookstore business.

Yes, this is actually vastly important to remember.

Bookstores exist because of us and not the other way around. Authors existed long before bookstores and we’ll be here long after bookstores.

To reiterate. Authors are in the content creation business. Distribution is a whole other matter.

I know a lot of commenters expressed feelings of depression, dismay, discouragement after reading my last post. Today, I want to remind you who you are.

Authors, this is not our first rodeo…personal extinction.

My POV? Storytellers are actually the oldest profession. Or how else could the other alleged ‘oldest profession’ get enough business to brag about being the OLDEST profession?

But I digress….

Authors didn’t start out with large publishing houses that possessed a global distribution network to disseminate our work printed in fancy paper books to stores.

We evolved from bards, crones and sages who passed on stories and knowledge orally, namely through song (e.g. Psalms) then later via theatrical performance (e.g. the Greek tragedies).

In other parts of the world, some clever folks invented pictograms and ‘authors’ adapted. We either learned how to draw or made fast friends with someone talented enough to tell our stories using pictures of CATS.

Pyramids? Talk about EXPOSURE.

Later, Western civilization adopted this thing called ‘an alphabet’ from the Phoenicians.

***This alphabet gave authors the unique ability to point out how dismally ironic it is that the word ‘phonetic’ is in NO WAY spelled phonetically.

#HukdOnFonixWurkdForMe

With symbols, authors crafted the epic poems like Beowulf:

Authors have evolved from stories held only in memory to capturing them in pictures, to finally adopting abstract symbols that represent words and concepts.

Yes, it’s witchcraft. Can’t have spelling without a SPELL.

Think of it. To this day, authors create people, places, events, universes, empires, and religions that have never existed before we thought them up.

We do ALL this using various combinations of twenty-six letters.

More like twenty-three letters because Z, X, and Q are next to useless. Q always needing to borrow U to get anything done.

***rolling eyes***

The plain fact is that authors have ALWAYS had to find new ways to sing for their supper. In the beginning? We LITERALLY did this.

As time went on, we learned to attract patrons then publishers and producers who would financially support our art.

Suffice to say, we’ve had our world shift plenty of times and we’re still here and always will be (for those strong enough to survive the transition).

Bookstores & the Death of a Dream

A major reason Barnes & Noble’s fall has hit many so hard it is represents another dead dream. We’re grieving. It’s hard enough to do what we do without also fretting over the business side of the business (especially when they can’t seem to get their act together).

I think it’s fair to claim most authors have been in a perpetual state of terror (peppered with brief windows of hope) for far too long.

If you’re like me, maybe your sparkle’s been dimming and it’s taken everything not to give up.

Was writing even worth it anymore?

The big-box bookstores that were supposed to be so wonderful, only managed to crush our childhood dreams.

We mourned as we bade farewell to the bookstores that kindled our earliest desires to write. After the long good-byes, we moved on to a new normal.

I know I spent hours wandering the aisles of Barnes & Noble reconceptualizing what ‘making it’ looked like. Okay, so I’d never see my books in B. Dalton’s or Taylor’s or any of the small mom-and-pop bookstores from my youth, but that was life.

Fair was a weather condition.

I don’t know about y’all, but I imagined book signings, launch parties, my novels on pretty displays in actual bookstores. Yes, even Borders or Barnes & Noble.

Then Web 2.0 and the digital revolution arrived. NY and the big-box stores had every opportunity to maintain dominance. Instead, they rearranged deck chairs on the Titanic and pretended everything was jolly.

The Band Played On…

Like most pre-published authors, I fantasized about real author events, the ones where I’d read aloud to devoted fans from my latest book. I’d hug, shake hands and answer questions as I signed beautiful copies of my work fresh out of the box.

Those were the dreams that kept me going in my darkest hours when it made no sense to keep on writing. When everyone called me foolish and told me to get ‘a real job.’

I don’t think a single one of us daydreamed about favorable algorithms, a massive email newsletter list with a solid open rate, or a depressing spot for ten copies of our book on a Costco bargain table.

And I sure as hell never dreamed of working like an organ-grinding spider monkey for fractions of KU pennies.

None of us did.

This was why I wanted to point out how LONG ‘authors’ been around. We’ve been through major changes.

We took our lumps, hunkered down and waited it out as we learned how to thrive in a world with new rules. Every time our world has been turned on its ear, we survived and thrived…because we ADAPTED.

***For some eye-opening history of our industry, I recommend my posts ‘Real’ Writers Don’t Self-Publish and ‘Real’ Writers Don’t Self-Publish Part Two.

Change is Scary but Necessary

Publishers have faced similar apocalypses as well. Just think of all those monks who had to start hipster microbreweries once Gutenberg came on the scene.

Thanks a lot, Johannes. Now EVERYONE can be published.

***throws up quill and inkwell***

That, or they had to go to Vatican night school and learn how to type set.

While it’s impossible to wholly ignore the recent thanatoid shroud that’s settled over our industry, keep in mind that endings aren’t always a bad thing. Authors, of all people, should appreciate this.

Without endings, there can be no beginnings.

Any system that grows unchecked is wide open for disease, decline, and death. This is true in nature, in business, and even with bookstores.

Personally, I am GLAD Barnes & Noble finally bit it. They’ve been ‘dying’ for a like a friggin’ decade…so fair to say I’m way past over it.

Yes, it’s the end of an era—blah, blah, blah—but now we can finally move on!

The System is SICK

I’ve already relayed the long list of chronic ‘illnesses’ that plagued NY and spelled the decline if not death of The Big Six.

***Which originally was comprised of Penguin, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, HarperCollins and Hachette and other large traditional publishers, for those who don’t know.

I think the only issue I didn’t explore in any depth was in regards to the negative impact of so much talent pool inbreeding. Sure, being a blue blood has plenty of perks, but plenty more perils to go with them.

By publishers and elite lists propping up The Author Aristocracy decade after decade, there weren’t any new authors being folded in for younger generations to fall in love with.

I believe this is why we saw such an explosion in the Chick Lit and YA (Young Adult) categories that neatly paralleled the overall decline in numbers of readers.

Younger people didn’t want to read the same authors their parents loved. They couldn’t relate to the worlds, characters, and story problems in a Danielle Steele romance or a Clive Cussler techno-thriller the same way previous generations had.

There’s a fascinating article, Bias, She Wrote: The Gender Balance of The New York Times Best Seller List.

Take a look at The New York Times top authors by decade from the 1980s to present day. You’ll see the same names over and over, the list shrinking and almost no new talent and NO young talent making it to the top.

Seriously

Obviously, this puzzled me, so I asked my super smart friend Cindy Dees who’s a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of fifty suspense and thriller novels (and a hybrid author) about J.K. Rowling and why she didn’t appear in these metrics.

Cindy’s answer?

‘J.K. Rowling blew up the NYTBS list so hard in 2001, they created an entirely new category for her to pry her out of the #1 spot.‘

A Tale of Brick-and-Mortar Bookstores & Bias

We already know that the big-box chains pre-negotiated which authors and what books would be allowed in the stores.

Yet, even as they were dying, Barnes & Noble continued to largely discriminate against indie authors and their books…even those that were selling better than their traditionally published counterparts.

My early social media books We Are Not Alone: The Writer’s Guide to Social Media and Are You There, Blog? It’s Me, Writer were top performers.

Yet, I can’t tell you how many times I received frustrated emails from fans who’d gone into their local B&N to order a paper copy and were sent away (even though my books were listed with Ingram and had the appropriate ISBNs).

My perennial branding guide for authors, Rise of the Machines: Human Authors in a Digital World has never graced a B&N shelf even though it’s earned almost a hundred and eighty positive (4 and 5 star) reviews.

I’ve actually keynoted at large events where the on-site B&N bookstores refused to order my books.

…which is kinda weird when you’re the one people have paid to see.

I know I’m not the only successful indie author who’s faced this challenge with brick-and-mortar stores (even ones that weren’t Borders/Barnes & Noble).

Brick-and-mortar stores are going to have to be open to selling good books, and stocking authors readers love and want regardless of pedigree.

First, we need fresh blood in the literary gene pool if people are going to ever get excited about reading again. That and our profession is about to marry a cousin and start playing banjo.

Secondly, consumers are searching for something fresh. What are the really getting? This meme says it best….

Digital Disease

Traditional publishing isn’t the only entity that’s created a mess. Sure, legacy publishers bred a certain kind of author to the point that, while they’re super pretty, they’re also prone to hip-dysplasia, neuroses, and they bite.

JOKING!

…mostly.

In the digital realm?

Amazon and other digital outlets have allowed untrained, unvetted, unteachable wanna-be writers to breed book titles faster than bunnies on fertility drugs.

In permitting this, they’ve dumped ‘History’s Largest Slush Pile’ into the readers’ laps.

The past several years have marked a time of unparalleled fraud where one’s ability to game algorithms and probe for cheats in the system for profit has trumped learning craft.

There are too many ‘writers’ more interested in mastering advertising and marketing instead of buckling down and learning about story-craft. They churn out ‘book’ after ‘book’ and can’t understand why readers aren’t lining up to throw money at unreadable junk.

An author’s job is to inspire, enlighten and entertain. We serve the reader (audience), not the other way around.

Audiences are under zero obligation to financially support poorly written, unedited wish-fulfillment fraudulently packaged as a novel.

The reason most ‘books’ aren’t selling has less to do with any lack in marketing or advertising budget, and a hell of a lot more to do with these so-called ‘books’ being an affront to the English language (and possibly other languages as well).

Spray paint a dog turd gold and all you have is a golden turd. The book industry stinks because we’re all up to our chins in literary turds hiding under fancy covers.

We all long to discover a new book, not step in one and have to scrape it off our Kindles.

Invasion of the Professional Amateur

This is a message for creators as well as publishers and bookstores.

Consumers will not tolerate a marketplace with such poor self-governance much longer.

Not when Netflix exists.

Amazon (and other digital outlets) need to get their act together and put in some sort of EFFECTIVE gatekeeping to restore faith with consumers.

As far as I can tell, the desire to offer some semblance of quality control was (is) a major force behind Amazon’s push to open brick-and-mortar stores.

The objective is to smart-stock stores regionally. Stock local authors and titles that sell well in that region regardless of pedigree.

Even Barnes & Noble 3.0 is looking to employ similar tactics in the near future. Waterfords’ C.E.O. James Daunt managed to resurrect the dying U.K. giant by changing how they did business.

He ditched the cookie-cutter standardization and let the managers of each store run their location almost like the owner of an independent bookstore.

According to a recent article on Inc. Hedge Fund Buys Barnes & Noble. It Could Be Very Good News for Customers by@MindaZetlin:

It (Waterstones) also pays close attention to what customers want in different locations—including a Russian language bookstore within its Piccadilly store, staffed entirely with Russian speakers.

Daunt plans to do the same with Barnes & Noble 3.0.

Wow! Who would have thought? A Barnes & Noble with books translated into Spanish staffed with Spanish-speaking employees in El Paso, TX?

***clutches pearls***

Meanwhile, Control What We Can Control

Yes, the publishing industry is a complete mess, but this mess is temporary.

A lot of the chaos today was the inevitable consequence from decades of bad business decisions (as well as the largest shift in communication since the invention of the Gutenberg press).

For generations, authors didn’t have a voice in the business of our business.

Now, we do.

I’ve been preaching since 2008 that WE ARE THE BRAND. Our brand—comprised of name, reputation and products (books)—is our most valuable asset. When our name alone can sell books, we don’t care who’s in charge because readers will come to US.

Does anyone really believe Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, Nora Roberts, George R.R. Martin or Debbie Macomber will suddenly have their careers capsize because Barnes & Noble isn’t what it used to be?

Of course not.

Fans will simply search out bookstores and sellers who carry their favorite author brands.

Guess What? Writing is a JOB

Authors are in the entertainment business. Note the second half of that word is business. The new bookstores want to stock great stories/books readers want.

Our job?

Write the great stories/books readers want and build an online brand that cultivates a following and makes us easy (for bookstores) to find.

Brands are VITAL, especially in an age of a billion options. A brand is a promise. It guarantees a certain level of quality without the consumer (readers or bookstores) having to do a ton of research or thinking.

A good brand saves TIME.

In a world with limitless choices, we default to who we know and who we like.

Consumers look to Maserati, Honda, Ralph Lauren, Spalding, Harley Davidson, Levis, Hellman’s, MAC, Bulgari, Rolex, Apple, etc, etc. because they trust the name says it all. The name implies a certain level of implicit quality.

Case in point: Bergdorf’s versus Walmart.

Brands allow time-starved consumers to quickly locate what they want/need. Most of us are willing to spend the extra dollar or two on Heinz 57 ketchup instead of trying the cheaper catsup.

We don’t want to risk being disappointed.

The beauty of a brand is that we (authors) no longer have to compete solely on PRICE. Our names become valuable, so we can avoid the race to the bottom of who can give away the most for free or nearly free.

We DO OUR JOB & Help Bookstores Do Theirs

If we want to be a successful (or at least respected) author, it’s incumbent upon us to learn the nuts and bolts of our profession.

I can’t count how many ‘published books’ I’ve seen that wouldn’t pass high school English, let alone a NY gatekeeper.

Serious authors learn grammar and how to spell (or hire those who can correct it for them).

I get there are those who are hopelessly dyslexic or who simply never mastered spelling or grammar. But, professionals are aware these are weaknesses and plan accordingly.

They don’t use ‘I’m a terrible speller’ or ‘I don’t understand grammar’ as a pass to publish books that give readers a brain bleed.

Serious authors embrace education and training.

There’s that old saying, ‘What do you call a writer who never gives up? Author.’

Great quote but VASTLY outdated. It’s from a time there were gatekeepers to pop bad writers on the snoot until they either gave up or got better.

These days, practice is essential but we need training, too. Practice is not enough.

If I go hit ten thousand golf balls without any training on how to swing a club, it doesn’t make me Tiger Woods. It makes me an idiot who likely needs a good back surgeon.

And before anyone shouts me down, if you were accused of murder would you hire a person who never attended law school to represent you?

How about hiring a mechanic who’d never successfully changed oil to repair your transmission?

But he’s seen every single Fast & Furious movie twenty times! Why so judgmental?

And yet, there are writers who brag about never reading fiction (even their own genre) and gloat about how they’ve never read a craft book or taken a class.

Too often these same ‘writers’ are mystified why their books are not selling.

Must be the marketing plan. Not a big enough budget.

Anyway, once we learn how to write, and create a superlative product(s), we then have to cultivate the platform and create the brand.

Though hopefully you’re doing all this simultaneously.

Trust me, you do NOT want to have a book ready for sale and no platform and no brand. What is a brand?

A brand is when a name alone has the power to drive sales.

Tiffany & Co.

Neil Gaiman.

Deepak Chopra.

Again, writing great books is a HUGE part of the job, but the other part involves creating a platform and brand. This is also where I hear the wailing and gnashing of teeth.

But all I want to do is write the books.

Don’t we all?

A properly constructed brand only grows stronger over time. Authors with a solid brand have freedom, flexibility, resilience, and they also have a lot of very lucrative ways to bring in income other than books.

J.K. Rowling became a billionaire because of her brand. She didn’t make over a billion dollars on book sales alone.

Her Harry Potter brand earned (and continues to earn) hundreds of millions from movies, merchandising, and The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios, and more.

There are some amazing changes in the industry, and a solid brand is what makes the difference between missing the train and driving it. Within the next few years, it will be the best time in history to be a trusted author.

I won’t discuss all those avenues here, though I do detail some of them in my classes.

The Bookstores of the Future

Will have the same goal as all bookstores in the past—connect readers to books they’re willing to BUY…then come and BUY MORE.

Suffice to say that bookstores will have to be able to FIND an author before they can decide if they like the author.

Barnes & Noble has already proven that stocking shelves solely with legacy published novels is no panacea. Too many known and beloved authors are not coming from the traditional path.

Bookstores will have to get a good mix of authors from all origins if they hope to be competitive.

This means that those managers in charge of the new Barnes & Noble stores, the upcoming Amazon brick-and-mortar bookstores, as well as the managers of those indie bookstores that have been thriving despite the on-line competition will stock the authors (books) they like and KNOW (code for they have a brand).

This could be any one of you guys, so no long faces anymore.

I truly believe we will see new gatekeepers emerge and the up-and-coming bookstores will do a lot better job. Hard to do a crappier one.

Eventually I believe a spot in bookstores will be part of what separates the professional from the poseur.

This said…

An Insider Tip: Publishers haven’t had a major disruptor (a runaway game-changer) in over FIVE years. 50 Shades of Grey was the last dark horse, and publishers are desperate for that new author who breaks in and turns the world inside out…in a good way.

This disruptor could be you. Why not?

In the meantime, our job is to write excellent books readers will love and cultivate that on-line brand and platform.

Feel free to get a copy of Rise of the Machines: Human Authors in a Digital World if you want a step-by-step book how to build a resilient brand that grows as you grow.

I created the book to be evergreen. It doesn’t rely on technology and is technophobe friendly (and funny). Social media changes, but humans never do.

OR you can scroll down and I have a long list of On Demand craft classes AND social media, sales and branding classes on CLEARANCE. Summer sale!

Everything y’all need to make your mark in this next phase of bookstore history .

What are your thoughts?

I LOVE hearing from you!

Are you tired of the digital revolution and the giant landfill of crap? Weary of all the focus on gaming the system instead of writing good books?

Tired of a system that almost FORCES authors to fixate on gaming strategies instead of solid writing?

Are you excited that the remnant independent bookstores and new, reimagined indie bookstores are on the rise? Does this news help ease the depression/panic you might have felt last post?

While my next post likely will tackle gatekeepers of the future and the reinvention of bookstores (in more depth) what are your ideas?

What are some ways that we can establish some NEW and hopefully IMPROVED system of finding the diamonds buried the literary landfill?

Thanks SO MUCH for all the comments last time. I promise, we’ll get back to shorter posts once the smoke clears.

Just FYI, I will have to free up space on our servers. All my classes come with a free recording. This said, I’ve put selected recordings on CLEARANCE until new classes begin.

This not only is to help y’all get the training you need (affordable summer school), but it will open up room for the new recordings of new classes.

Please take advantage of the sale! I rarely drop prices this low.

After July 17th, these classes will no longer be for sale (and will be slated for deletion).

Some, I will offer again later in the year. Others? I won’t be offering again the same way (will be likely splitting them into two classes because they ran long).

Thanks so much for your support!

ON DEMAND CLEARANCE ON BRANDING & CRAFT CLASSES!

Available until July 17, 2019

CLEARANCE Branding, Social Media & Sales Classes

ON DEMAND T.K.O. BUNDLE: Branding, Blogging & Sales for Authors

$99 (Regularly $165)

ON DEMAND Brand Boss: Branding for Authors

$35 (Regularly $55)

ON DEMAND Sales for Writers: Sell Books Not Your SOUL

$35 (Regularly $55)

ON DEMAND Blogging for Authors

$35 (Regularly $55)

Also Offering:

ON DEMAND Social Schizophrenia: Building a Brand WITHOUT Losing Your Mind

$35 (Regularly $55)

CLEARANCE Craft Classes

Plot Boss: Writing Books Readers Want to BUY!

$35 (Regularly $55)

Fiction Addiction: The ‘Secret’ Ingredient Readers Crave

$35 (Regularly $55)

Story Master: From Dream to DONE

$35 (Regularly $55)

The Art of Character: Creating Dimensional ‘People’ in Fiction

$35 (Regularly $55)

Beyond Bulletproof Barbie: Creating Strong Female Characters for a Modern World

$35 (Regularly $55)

The post The Death of Ye Olden Bookstores & the Author Identity Crisis appeared first on Kristen Lamb.

Goliath has fallen. The leviathan Barnes & Noble, the big-box chain that reinvented retail and defined a generation…is no more.

SOLD!

Reuters announced early last Friday that the hedge fund Elliot Management Corp. would be purchasing the former book giant for roughly the equivalent of Kim Kardashian’s jewelry allowance ($683 million including debt).

This bold move marks an end to the once-dominant book retailer’s status as a publicly traded company.

After almost a decade of abysmally stupid business decisions and plummeting sales—and me blogging and b#@!$ing about it the entire time—this buyout feels like a mercy killing to me.

Someone might finally save Barnes & Noble from itself.

***I secretly suspect this buyout was the only option left after Mary Kay declined to sell cosmetics alongside records, movies, toys, stationary, gifts, knick knacks, coffee, candles, essential oils and everything else NOT BOOKS.

#sarcasm

Now that the former mega-retailer’s fate is in the hands of the Elliot Group, perhaps Barnes & Noble can go back to being a…wait for it…wait for it… *whispers*…a bookstore.

Failure in Leadership

Yes, today I feel ranty. I’m angry. No, I’m past angry and onto livid. I’m not the sort of person who enjoys saying ‘I told you so.’

First, I agree wholeheartedly with the Bloomberg Opinion. I don’t quite know the future of Barnes & Noble, because they can’t keep blaming everything on Amazon.

Yet, before we focus on that bugbear, I’d like to take an opportunity to call out those in publishing leadership. Why?

Because when Barnes & Noble sneezes, we all catch cold.

And that fact just ticks me off.

In order to understand exactly how delicate of a time we’re all in (writers), it’s imperative I paint a full/accurate picture of the colossal mess we’ve been handed.

First, publishing is a business.

Might have been a good start for the powers that be to have remembered that.

This said…

To offer any reasonable projections, it’s critical for us (writers) to properly appreciate the sheer scope of the incompetence that’s led us all to this place.

Here is how leadership should work. Yes, even in publishing.

PLEASE NOTE: Most of the major houses we once referred to as ‘The Big Six’ operated under the directives of multi-national conglomerates and giant media companies. The agents and editors and everyday people in the NY (New York) publishing trenches are NOT the ‘leadership’ folks I’m calling to the carpet.

***Looking at you, CBS***

Back to leadership. First and foremost…

Protect the Resource

The top echelon/leaders in charge of the publishing business had ONE job. Protect the writers. Simple. If there are no writers, then there is no content (no stories or information). No stories or information (books), then publishers and bookstores are irrelevant.

This is NOT rocket science.

Take care of writers (resource) and readers (consumers of said resource).

NEWS FLASH:

Publishers were NOT charged with preserving the paper industry or protecting/rescuing incompetent retail outlets….especially at the expense of their most valuable resource (writers).

About Those Authors

From all indications, the powers that be ‘forgot’ that writers play a fairly important role in the whole publishing process.

They aligned with the big-box chains and, in doing so, brokered deals that lined their coffers while simultaneously decimating the author middle-class.

Authors who’d previously been making a living wage under the B. Dalton (smaller chain and independent bookstore) model suddenly had to polish up the resume.

Why?

The Raw Deal

Under the big-box model, selection and variety ruled. Shelf space was precious and finite, meaning these mega-stores didn’t carry those extensive backlists like the old independents.

Problem was, those backlists had once been the bread-and-butter for the working author.

Under the new big-box model, the stores would only stock the backlists of the top earning authors (because those were guaranteed to sell).

The New York publishers (a.k.a. ‘The Big Six’—Penguin, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, HarperCollins and Hachette) and other large traditional publishers used this business reality to justify mothballing the backlists of virtually all authors who weren’t household names.

It’s Just Business

This meant instead of an author earning royalties off, say, fifteen books, they could only earn royalties off their most recent title.

Many authors witnessed decades of work vanish along with the small bookstores that supported them.

Not only did this change mean a DRASTIC pay cut, but it also meant these authors had no viable backlist to cultivate existing fans into future fans. There was no longer a way to truly earn their way into household name status.

It was a formula to fail.

If fans wanted the mid-list or multi-published author’s earlier books, they had to go find them in secondary markets (used bookstores, garage sales and all places where the author wasn’t paid).

That was bad enough, but, when e-books became a viable option, NY had a second chance. An opportunity to do right by their authors.

They could have resurrected those titles at least in e-book form.

Alternate Ending

When Amazon first came on the scene, Borders was still alive and Barnes & Noble dominated the bookselling industry.

Yet, when Amazon launched the first affordable & user-friendly e-reader (the Kindle), early adopting readers found themselves in a conundrum.

They had a new gizmo where they could read all the books they wanted…but there weren’t all that many books. In fact, far too many of the available e-books were unvetted garbage that wouldn’t pass high school English, let alone a NY gatekeeper.

This didn’t have to be so.

NY possessed a ready arsenal of thousands of mothballed titles, novels that had already been thoroughly edited and market tested.

If The Big Six didn’t want to discount their new titles on Amazon? Fine. But they could have field-tested the efficacy of the digital model using backlists that weren’t doing anything but taking up space.

***Many of these books even had earned the coveted titles of USA Today and/or NY Times Best -Selling Book.

Amazon would have had good books for their customers to load on their new Kindle device and they’d make money.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner.

The mothballed authors would have been happy because they’d be back earning money off books liberated from cold storage.

NY could have not only made money (and happy writers) but they could have also used the backlists to appease Amazon and gather critical data to guide future business decisions.

Did they want to keep offering ebooks on Amazon or maybe create their own publisher sites for e-book distribution?

Was this e-book thing really just a fad?

The E-Book Gold Rush

Alas, instead of creating a Big Six controlled e-book division staffed with eager college grads to format books and flood Amazon with gatekeeper-approved books, NY decided…

E-books were evil.

And that readers would always want paper and a ‘browsing experience’ in an oversized store with ridiculous overhead.

Publishers initially handed backlists back to the authors because they believed these books were worthless. They truly believed e-books were a fool’s pipe dream and a fad (though did nothing to test this opinion).

Ah, but when those spurned authors started converting their cast-off backlists INTO E-BOOKS…and making a boatload of money?

With readers desperate for good e-books, these authors started making far more income than they ever had being traditionally published.

This e-book gold rush ignited a mass exodus of multi-published and mid-list authors…right into Amazon’s welcoming arms.

That’s Gonna Leave a Mark

NY was suddenly in BIG trouble. The next generation of ‘household names’ had historically been cultivated, groomed then promoted from the ranks of the mid-list.

But the mid-list authors, after years of loyalty, got fed up with being treated so poorly…and so #ByeFelicia.

What did the publishers do? Did they see the error of their ways and make an e-book division strictly for backlists?

Maybe even broker a deal that if enough e-book copies sold, a book/series could garner a fresh print run?

Nope.

They Did THIS Instead

Publishers changed all the contracts to make it where authors no longer had rights to their backlist…ever. Those backlists would remain the property of the publisher indefinitely to do with what they wished.

Including nothing.

A once-devoted author pool suddenly turned bitter (for very good reasons). Not content to starve, a large portion of the traditional talent went rogue.

They cut their losses and began self-publishing. More than a few created indie houses of their own that were more efficient and geared toward the digital marketplace.

The authors who’d once made money for NY suddenly became additional competition (with Amazon’s blessing).

Ironically, The Big Six unwittingly financed Amazon’s rise as a publishing powerhouse.

What’s insane is that most of the traditional authors had ZERO desire to leave. They’d been publishing traditionally for years, even decades. Going it alone meant a lot more work and a STEEP and highly technical learning curve.

…from a group that feared e-mail.

Most of these authors simply wanted to just write the books like they always had.

Ah, but when faced with starvation? You serve the master who feeds you.

In a dismal twist of fate, NY helped self-publishing transition from ‘shunned last-ditch of the hack wanna-be writer’ into a viable and respectable publishing alternative.

Genius.

About Those Indie Bookstores

The Big Six didn’t treat the smaller chains/indie bookstores any better. It didn’t matter that small chains, indies, and countless mom-and pop bookstores had been the beating heart of publishing since its inception.

These stores promoted authors, held events and book signings. They pushed literacy, actively sold books and made The Big Six what it was.

Oh, but how short the memory gets with big new friends with deep pockets.

The Big Six participated (obliquely) in the virtual extermination of the small independent bookstores.

Kristen! How can you say that?

Uh. Math. The larger the order, the deeper the discount. Doesn’t take an economist to to do that calculation.

Without the purchasing power, the smaller chains and mom-and-pop indies couldn’t compete. They steadily died off until only a tenacious remnant remained.

***Refer to the movie You’ve Got Mail.

This was all well and good before Web 2.0.

Goliath is a formidable ally until someone bigger, meaner and hungrier comes along.

As I detailed above, NY had countless opportunities to adopt a different business model and didn’t. They ignored all the data, and pretended the marketplace and consumer buying patterns hadn’t changed since the 90s.

Ultimately, NY continued to support the big-box stores at the expense of authors (talent) and smaller bookstores (their former allies).

Goliath versus…Skynet

All of this was utterly unnecessary. It isn’t as if people like me (and those way smarter than me) haven’t been jumping up and down screaming DANGER! for over ten friggin’ years.

I’ve blogged my fingertips bloody begging NY to see reason and turn things around. I even wanted Barnes and Noble to listen and change their ways (for reasons I’ll explain in a moment).

Ugh.

There Were SO Many SIGNS

It wasn’t like the folks in charge didn’t see Amazon’s way of doing business had more red flags than an Ashley Madison dating profile.

The Big Six got sucker-punched as early as January 2010 when Amazon removed the BUY buttons from all the Macmillan titles. The next red flag? When a ‘mysterious’ glitch temporarily removed the BUY buttons off ALL the Big Six titles—Penguin, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, HarperCollins and Hachette.

The NEXT of many red flags? Amazon (allegedly) removed virtually all the discounts on Hachette titles, according to a 2014 article in Forbes. I could go on, but y’all get the point.

Short of a weird rash that wouldn’t go away…

Red Flags EVERYWHERE

To be clear, I am not Amazon-bashing (yet). But just the examples above clearly demonstrate how legacy publishing refused to acknowledge how completely vulnerable they were.

For instance, maybe it really was a glitch that temporarily removed ALL The Big Six’s BUY buttons.

***And maybe I’m a Chinese jet pilot.

But, giving the benefit of the doubt—and assuming Amazon wasn’t flexing digital muscles to make the old dogs sit and stay—any one of these episodes alone should have been a major turning point in how The Big Six did business.

These were the crucial moments, the pinch points.

Publishing leadership should have thrown everything they had into innovating and making darn sure no one ever again had the power to grab them by the tender bits.

Everything is Okay, Nothing to See

After ALL this, did the major publishers innovate? Perhaps listen to analysts and bloggers and update their business plan? Maybe remove its parasol and bustle?

No.

Did they pay attention to the digital tsunami that had already obliterated Kodak, Radio Shack, Blockbuster, Sam Goody and Tower Records?

Nope.

Did they pay attention to why Borders went bankrupt? Hot wash it to make a better plan? No.

Did they pay adequate attention to the fact that Barnes & Noble has had FIVE C.E.O.s in the past FOUR YEARS, each one increasingly more incompetent than the previous?

*screams silently*

Wasn’t anyone in charge concerned that Barnes & Noble was shuttering an average of twenty-one stores a year as of 2017?

That the only way Barnes & Noble stock valuations could have dropped faster would’ve been to strap them to The Titanic?

Short of using sock puppets to act this out, I just…literally can’t even.

There was a time those in charge of big publishing could have learned and retooled.

If they’d cared about their writers—or listened to those agents and editors so loyal they were practically working for slave wages to maintain some sort of quality control—this whole Barnes & Noble situation might not gall me the way it does.

They could have been a contender. Could have changed. Instead?

They doubled down with Barnes & Noble, a company so inept it couldn’t find its own @$$ in the dark with Google maps and a service dog.

The Future of Barnes & Noble

Bloomberg Opinion’s Sarah Halzak said it best in yesterday’s post:

“…perhaps it is inevitable that Barnes & Noble is a smaller, less influential retailing force now than it was at the height of its powers. But it was not preordained that Barnes & Noble has become as irrelevant as it has.”

Barnes & Noble has squandered opportunity after opportunity to change their fate. Clearly the brick-and-mortar bookstore is a valuable concept or Amazon wouldn’t have gone through the trouble it has to open stores of its own.

Alas, the brick-and-mortar model wasn’t the problem…and privatization may or may not be the answer.

The Privatization Pickle

Unfortunately, Barnes and Noble is still in trouble. Privatization is no panacea. Yes, it can be a viable shield to reorganize, rebrand and regroup. More often than not? Privatization is a harbinger of death and for sound reasons.

Too often, the weight of a private equity buyout is simply too much burden to bear.

We’ve seen this sort of debt load crush once-robust brands such as Toys “R” Us, Wet Seal, The Limited, and, most recently, Payless Shoes.

Even the former office supply giant, Staples, faces an uncertain future. The Sycamore Partners, who acquired the struggling leviathan roughly two years ago, had initially planned on rebranding and splitting the giant into three.

Now? Sycamore seems set on simply cashing out.

According to a recent Bloomberg article by Davide Scigliuzzo and Eliza Ronalds-Hannon:

“Sycamore Partners is looking to take most of its cash out of Staples Inc. through a recapitalization that will saddle the company with roughly $1 billion of additional debt…”

Sadly, the most valuable thing about Staples might be its debt.

Now that a hedge fund has acquired Barnes and Noble (and its debt) this is a tenuous time. They wouldn’t be the first giant beheaded under the PE (Private Equity) sword then parted out, the rest left to the scavengers.

Some Good News

Barnes & Noble (and the publishing industry as a whole) can breathe a small sigh of relief, namely because Elliot Advisors (namely C.E.O. James Daunt), possesses a solid reputation for rescuing completely incompetent book chains.

According to a recent (June 7th, 2019) article by Alexandra Alter and Tiffany Hsu in The New York Times:

“The acquisition follows Elliott’s purchase of the British bookstore chain Waterstones in June 2018. James Daunt, the chief executive of Waterstones, will also act as Barnes & Noble’s C.E.O. and will be based in New York.”

Daunt actually has a stellar reputation in publishing and ran his own chain of bookstores—Daunt Books—before he went on to acquire the U.K. version of the bookstore big-box, Waterstones.

James Daunt—using creativity, vision, and common sense—rescued Waterstones from bankruptcy and made the stores profitable again.

He hopes to do the same with Barnes & Noble.

***I highly recommend the The New York Times article detailing all this. I imagine many of Daunt’s solutions will seem eerily familiar for those who’ve followed this blog any length of time.

A Small Celebration

Personally, I’m thrilled Barnes and Noble FINALLY has a) someone who knows the book business in charge and b) a leader with an actual success record.

Seriously.

Because this was me envisioning the old Barnes and Noble hiring process for C.E.O.s…

Have you recently driven a household name into the ground?

Yes.

Have you any experience bankrupting a perfectly salvageable company?

Yes.

Do you know ANYTHING about books or publishing?

No.

You’re HIRED!

Party’s Over & Back to Business

ALL this said, there is a reason I’ve taken y’all the long route from where the book business started fracturing in roughly 2006 to where it sits today.

We (writers) have to hope and pray that C.E.O. James Daunt can deliver or we might all be spelling Amazon, M-O-N-O-P-O-L-Y.

Amazon (or anyone) having total control should be scary for all authors. But, it is a particularly frightening scenario for indie and self-published authors, because many aren’t repped by agents with the legal know-how to fight a large machine. 

Oh, I suppose we could sue, but Amazon has armies of high-powered attorneys to make a lesson out of any of us who tried.

I know this sounds a little Orwellian, but if Barnes & Noble tanks for good and any meaningful competition evaporates? What’s to stop Amazon from having ‘technical errors’ that just happen to lose YOUR books?

Food for Thought

What’s to stop another BUY BUTTON ‘glitch’? What’s to stop them from demanding we all sell our books for $2.99 and if we don’t comply, we suddenly start having ‘technical errors’?

What’s to keep Amazon from demanding we all flash mob and act out King Lear with jazz hands?

Okay, maybe that’s going too far.

This was why I began this post the way I did. Publishing leadership (those powerful media companies) should never have allowed our industry to devolve to such a piteous state.

We are now ALL vulnerable.

Remain Vigilant

I know expectations are riding a fresh high, but remember they were riding high with Staples, too.

If Barnes & Noble doesn’t salvage something out of this mess, it could be catastrophic for legacy publishing.

Remember, to finance operations, the remaining legacy publishers NEED those bulk orders that stock the Barnes and Noble brick-and-mortar stores.

They also *winces* need orders from those mom-and-pop stores they once ‘didn’t need’ and—with help from their besties Borders and Barnes &Noble—damn near killed off.

Wow, that has GOT to be an awkward conversation.

At the end of the day, if the Elliot Advisors hadn’t ridden to the rescue, the entire U.S. legacy book industry could have collapsed. Some other investor or corporate raider could have bought the whole shebang…then promptly held a yard sale.

***Refer to the movie Pretty Woman.

Sure, Amazon sells legacy published books, but they don’t keep a large amount of stock and buy as-needed. They don’t do the large preorders that keep the lights on and employees paid.

This is still a blow because there will be a major contraction. Barnes and Noble will have to consolidate and lose a lot of fat.

Translation?

The remaining stores will likely be consolidated and many closed. Excess inventory will be sold off to reduce the debt load. This is all necessary to get back in the black.

If they fail to adequately reduce overhead and debt, they could very well find themselves in the same pinch as Staples…where their debt is their most valuable asset.

In Conclusion: Put on Our Big Writer Pants

It’s all kinds of fun to play armchair analyst and blame greedy multi-national media conglomerates for our sorry state. Yet, while ‘the suits’ certainly hold a lot of the blame, they don’t have all of it.

Just like Barnes & Noble can’t keep blaming everything on Amazon, writers can’t keep blaming everything on everyone else.

There is no Publishing Sugar Daddy. I know many writers who want to ‘only write books’ and not worry pretty little heads over that icky business stuff. This is a recipe for disaster.

Trust NO ONE.

Becoming a mega-author won’t fix our problem anymore than winning the lottery will replace our retirement fund.

Chuck Palahniuk (author of Fight Club) is close to broke after his literary agency’s accountant embezzled $3.4 million. The famed agency Donadio & Olsen has now declared bankruptcy. Meanwhile, their former accountant is free after posting bail.

Ironically, Palahniuk had suspected something fishy a few years ago but suspected piracy. He never thought (as if anyone would) to grill those who were being paid to handle his affairs.

If we want to thrive in the new publishing paradigm, we have GOT to be educated and know the business of our business, regardless the path we choose.

We also have to write excellent books. The more books we write and the better they are, the more negotiating power we’ll have.

And, finally…y’all knew I was going to end up here.

An author brand/platform is not an option, it is a LIFELINE.

The ONLY way to Amazon-proof ourselves is to create a passionate and vested following who will buy our books no matter where we list them.

Then, if Amazon (or Barnes & Noble, or Joe-Bob’s Book Barn or whoever) ceases to be a good business partner?

We can…leave. Yay!

***falls over***

***brains all over laptop***

I hope you enjoyed and I LOVE hearing from you!

What Are Your Thoughts?

Other than this post is long. Trust me, I KNOW. But, hey, encapsulating fourteen years of the publishing business into one post is no easy feat.

Do you feel a bit less terrified now that you know Barnes and Noble might just pull through?

What are your thoughts, concerns, ideas for what we writers can do differently in the future?

Are you hopeful? Disillusioned? Confused? Frustrated? All of the above?

I hope this post has helped y’all gain fresh (and balanced) perspective of where you sit in the greater scheme of publishing. Yes, it’s a tumultuous time in publishing, but while industries change, humans never do.

Humans will ALWAYS want stories and information.

So long as there are humans, there will be educators, inspirers, and storytellers. Our industry might be a mess, but our jobs are secure.

Long live the dreamers!

JUST ADDED! ON DEMAND CLEARANCE ON BRANDING CLASSES! (Available until 7/17)

CLEARANCE Branding, Social Media & Sales Classes

ON DEMAND T.K.O. BUNDLE: Branding, Blogging & Sales for Authors

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ON DEMAND Brand Boss: Branding for Authors

$35 (Regularly $55)

ON DEMAND Sales for Writers: Sell Books Not Your SOUL

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ON DEMAND Blogging for Authors

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Also Offering:

ON DEMAND Social Schizophrenia: Building a Brand WITHOUT Losing Your Mind

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CLEARANCE Craft Classes

Plot Boss: Writing Books Readers Want to BUY!

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Fiction Addiction: The ‘Secret’ Ingredient Readers Crave

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Story Master: From Dream to DONE

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The Art of Character: Creating Dimensional ‘People’ in Fiction

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The post Barnes & Noble SOLD: Goliath has Fallen & What This Means for Writers appeared first on Kristen Lamb.

Normally my blogs are all about telling y’all you are not a special unique snowflake. But yeah y’all are but don’t get a big head about it . We just need to discern the places we are not special (I.e. we all have to do the work) and figure out the places we are and then USE that, especially when it comes to creating an author brand.

We’re now into the Digital Age, and the ramifications of a connected world are still being revealed daily. But, there’s one trend I’d be hard-pressed to argue with. The 20th Century was all about homogeneity. Madison Avenue flourished by telling us which clothing brands made us cool, which car made us special, what foods were “healthy.”

Information was controlled by gatekeepers and commodities restricted by retailers, thus homogeneity was the goal. Homogeneity was simpler and required less paperwork and thinking.

Generations bought Wonderbread because it was “fortified with vitamins” and “good for your kids.” In 1986? Hope you liked stirrup pants. There was a cultural need to “fit in” and be like everyone else, especially those who were the “cool kids.”

“Pillars of Same” Go Crashing Down

With the advent of the Internet and widespread use of social media, homogeneity is crumbling. Individualism is now revered more than ever in human history (often to the point of being irritating, but that’s another post).

And, no matter how weird, off-beat, or All-American we want to be? There is a subculture to embrace our style. Mega-trends have lost their power.

What this means is that, as consumers are faced with more and more choices, they’re segregating themselves into smaller and smaller subgroups. Love tattoos? Minis? Tattoos of minis?

Can’t get enough of Jackson Galaxy and cat whispering? Are you Stay-at-Home-Mom who kicks butt on a Roller Derby Team each Saturday? It’s all out there, and most of us are a unique mixture that can’t easily be categorized.

Spawn is a part of the gaming, HALO, NERF and “Shoes are for Suckers” subculture.

What all of this means is that 20 years ago, we knew which table to sit at–Jocks, Preps, Nerds, Geeks, Good Kids, Band Kids, Kid Who Smells Like Old Carpet. The lines were clearer, namely because we had only a handful of networks and limited retail outlets to define our identity.

Now? We have the reins of individual freedom and we like it.

What Does This Mean for Publishing?

Big publishing has a number of limitations. First, their size. Second, massive overhead. Third? 20th Century thinking. They have to find the mega-trend to stay in business, but what does this mean in a marketplace that is rapidly shifting to micro-trends?

NY is less able to spot the micro-trends, because in a world of algorithms, numbers and spreadsheets, one relies on the past to predict the future.

Business is always looking backward in order to move forward. It’s like trying to drive our car using the rearview mirror as the main guide. Says a lot about where we’ve been, but gives limited information as to what’s ahead.

Indies Have Revealed the Micro-Trend

We’ve talked about the Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon, yet I will point out that I’ve met agents who turned down the manuscript. It was through E.L. James’ massive volume of independent sales that the micro-trend surfaced and then NY could turn this success into a mega-trend. A genre which received little to no attention has grown exponentially.

This was one of the reasons I recommended NY create e-book divisions as early as 2009 (REAL e-book divisions, not vanity-press retreads). Find a good book, give it a chance and see if the trend emerged. If not? The product cost less to produce and the writer could earn a higher royalty.

Even if the book didn’t sell bazillions of copies, writers didn’t have to sell that many books to make a healthy living and be freed up to write more books. Now instead of NY banking the farm on finding the ONE mega-trend, they could reap the rewards of countless micro-trends.

Which is exactly what Amazon has been doing.

Amazon doesn’t need one author to sell two million copies (not that they are opposed to it), but they can easily have 20 or even a 100 authors sell two million copies. The money spends the same.

This is Why Social Media is Vital for Authors

Social media is vital for keeping our fingers on the pulse of the public (code for “readers”). We can use blogging to define our brand then use content to attract those who share our “subculture” tastes (I teach how to do this in my blogging class ) .

It’s the main reason it’s death to be the All-Writing-All-The-Time-Channel. That’s a one-dimensional subculture that is overfished and quickly grows stagnant.

Also, any writer worth his/her salt is interested in a lot of things. 

The more we feed our subculture, the healthier it becomes, and the more loyal.

We are all seeking our peeps, our tribe, our “friends” in a world that has become explosively larger.

Modern humans are overwhelmed with the sheer volume of choices, and, as a response, we stick to what we know. Sure, in 1999 we LOVED the megastore because it was new and shiny. Almost fifteen years later? Mega stores are going extinct.

In fact, in 2012…2012! I spelled out a plan to save Barnes & Noble. They didn’t listen, but apparently Amazon did. B&Ns are going under simply because they failed to appreciate the power of being small.

THIS was in our local mall.

Boutique is BIG

We’ll pay a bit more to shop at the corner market who appreciates our love for exotic sushi, GF hot dog buns, and foie gras. We can buy Wonderbread at a supermarket or go to the small boutique grocer that sells sprouted grains for those of us in the crowd of Wonder-Why-We-EVER-Ate-Wonderbread.

Everyone wins.

Boutique stores thrive, but so do boutique BRANDS.

But There’s a Catch…

To spot and nourish the micro-trend, we must be present.

This is one of the many, many reasons automation gives me a twitch. Micro-trends can earn us a healthy living. A single writer doesn’t need to sell as many books to keep the lights on as NYC does. Also micro-trends have the potential to grow up to be mega-trends.

Spreadsheets can’t tell us as much as people can. And, trust me, people have a lot to say. Numbers can’t tell us as much about the future as relationships can.

What are your thoughts? Do you love a world where you can define your own style? Create your own genres? Mix in your varied interests? Have you met people on social media with similar hobbies that you’d never have met in person?

I LOVE hearing from you!

To prove it and show my love, for the month of SEPTEMBER, everyone who leaves a comment I will put your name in a hat. If you comment and link back to my blog on your blog, you get your name in the hat twice. What do you win? The unvarnished truth from yours truly. I will pick a winner once a month and it will be a critique of the first 20 pages of your novel, or your query letter, or your synopsis (5 pages or less).

Check out the other NEW classes below! Including How to Write the Dreaded Synopsis/Query Letter! 

All W.A.N.A. classes are on-line and all you need is an internet connection. Recordings are included in the class price.

Upcoming Classes

NEW CLASS!

Pitch Perfect—How to Write a Query Letter & Synopsis that SELLS

You’ve written a novel and now are faced with the two most terrifying challenges all writers face. The query and the synopsis.

Query letters can be daunting. How do you sell yourself? Your work? How can you stand apart without including glitter in your letter?

***NOTE: DO NOT PUT GLITTER IN YOUR QUERY.

Good question. We will cover that and more!

But sometimes the query is not enough.

Most writers would rather cut their wrists with a spork than be forced to write the dreaded…synopsis. Yet, this is a valuable skills all writers should learn.

Sign up early for $10 OFF!!!

Bullies & Baddies—Understanding the Antagonist September 2nd–September 16th

All fiction must have a core antagonist. The antagonist is the reason for the story problem, but the term “antagonist” can be highly confusing. Without a proper grasp of how to use antagonists, the plot can become a wandering nightmare for the author and the reader.

This class will help you understand how to create solid story problems (even those writing literary fiction) and then give you the skills to layer conflict internally and externally.

Bullies & Baddies—Understanding the Antagonist Gold

This is a personal workshop to make sure you have a clear story problem. And, if you don’t? I’ll help you create one and tell the story you want to tell. This is done by phone/virtual classroom and by appointment. Expect to block off at least a couple hours.

Your Story in a Sentence—Crafting Your Log-Line

September 7th

Log-lines are crucial for understanding the most important detail, “WHAT is the story ABOUT?” If we can’t answer this question in a single sentence? Brain surgery with a spork will be easier than writing a synopsis. Pitching? Querying? A nightmare. Revisions will also take far longer and can be grossly ineffective.

As authors, we tend to think that EVERY detail is important or others won’t “get” our story. Not the case.

If we aren’t pitching an agent, the log-line is incredibly beneficial for staying on track with a novel or even diagnosing serious flaws within the story before we’ve written an 80,000 word disaster. Perhaps the protagonist has no goal or a weak goal. Maybe the antagonist needs to be stronger or the story problem clearer.

In this one-hour workshop, I will walk you through how to encapsulate even the most epic of tales into that dreadful “elevator pitch.” We will cover the components of a strong log-line and learn red flags telling us when we need to dig deeper. The last hour of class we will workshop log-lines.

The first ten signups will be used as examples that we will workshop in the second hour of class. So get your log-line fixed for FREE by signing up ASAP.

Blogging for Authors

September 17th

Blogging is one of the most powerful forms of social media. Twitter could flitter and Facebook could fold but the blog will remain so long as we have an Internet. The blog has been going strong since the 90s and it’s one of the best ways to establish a brand and then harness the power of that brand to drive book sales.

The best part is, done properly, a blog plays to a writer’s strengths. Writers write.

The problem is too many writers don’t approach a blog properly and make all kinds of mistakes that eventually lead to blog abandonment. Many authors fail to understand that bloggers and author bloggers are two completely different creatures.

For those who need help building a platform and keeping it SIMPLE, pick up a copy of my latest social media/branding book Rise of the Machines—Human Authors in a Digital World on AMAZON, iBooks, or Nook. 

The post Author Brands & Book Sales—Why Boutique is BIG appeared first on Kristen Lamb.

Original Image via Flickr Creative Commons, courtesy of Anurag Agnihotri

Well, I figure I have one more day to drunkenly torch my platform. Sad thing is I don’t drink. I am apparently this stupid when sober . Actually I am writing this as a follow up for my rant from the day before yesterday, because knowledge is power.

Writers need this. Your friends and families need this. Readers need this. The more people get how this industry works, the more everyone can start working together for everyone’s benefit.

In my book Rise of the Machines—Human Authors in a Digital World, I go into a LOT more detail and I highly recommend you get a copy if you don’t have one. I spend the first chapters of the book explaining how the various forms of publishing work so you can make an educated decision.

All types of publishing have corresponding strengths and weaknesses and this is a decision only the writer can make. Not all writers are suited for self-publishing. Not all books are good for traditional.

And so on.

But today, dear newbies. I am going to take you on a tour behind the curtain. Also for those who are NOT newbies, feel free to pass this to family in a “Take Your Clueless Friends Who Think You Will Make a Million Dollars as Soon as You Publish To WORK Day.”

Nuts and Bolts of Publishing

Publishing is a very old business that has not updated its business model since the biggest traffic snarl in NYC involved a runaway horse carriage colliding with a drunken fish monger. In the early days of publishing in order to encourage bookstores to carry books, publishers invented what was known as the consignment model.

Publishers would guesstimate how many books would sell, send them to the merchant with the promise that, whatever did NOT sell could be returned at no cost. The merchant only had to pay for books that sold.

Hint: NO OTHER BUSINESS TODAY DOES THIS.

Can you imagine a car manufacturer sending out fleets of new cars that customers could test drive all day long. Run up mileage, spill drinks in the console, but then if they didn’t sell the dealership could say, “Nah, we’re good. Can you send us different models from another designer? We really dig that sleek crossover.”

Because often that is what happens with books. People use bookstores like a freaking library. They go into the adjacent Starbucks with a stack of books, read to their heart’s content and then leave a stack of books for the clerk to put away.

Now the spines are cracked, the pages wrinkled and no one is going to buy that book, but the bookstore isn’t out anything because they can rip the covers off and send them back. Ultimately the writer is the one who takes the hit. Kind of the publisher but really the writer as we are about to see.

Because bookstores want to provide a “browsing experience” they don’t want to rely on the new and far more efficient way of doing business, which is POD (print on demand). They like having stock to show off, which of course they do because they are not really out anything.

How Writers Are Paid

Original Image via Wikimedia Commons

Why I kind of derailed into a rant Tuesday was because there are so many things that get presented as “blessings” for writers when in fact, they are benevolently killing us. They are undermining us and making it harder and harder to make a living wage. We can’t criticize these sacred cows lest we look like jerks.

You ever wonder why people just assume that a published author is rich? That is because this used to be a profession that did rather well. Granted it was easier to be elected to congress than write for a living, but these “good ideas to sell more books” have eroded the Author Middle Class and created a Publishing Third World Economy.

You know what a marker of a third world economy is? My degree is in political economy. In a third world country wealth is concentrated at the top. There is little to NO middle class and the vast majority are working poor or poverty level.

If you peruse my blog from the other day, I mentioned the ways we are paid best (digital and new books). We get a royalty. Anything used? We make no money. But let’s explore a bit further…

Compounded Sales

Back in the days before the mega bookstore, there was a very strong Author Middle Class. This author wasn’t a gazillionaire, but he did really well writing for a living. The reason was that a smaller store like B. Dalton often carried an author’s backlist. If you are old enough to remember browsing these small stores, you might even remember that factor coloring your decision.

How I ended up hooked on any number of SERIES was that the bookstores stocked the series. I didn’t want a standalone book. If I fell in love with an author or characters, I wanted to be able to keep reading.

What this meant was that writers weren’t being paid royalties from ONE book, but many books. Even if the author didn’t write series, if the author had multiple titles, odds were pretty good that the store ordered those, so even with single titles, a browsing reader could be assured they could get more than one title from THAT author.

But there was a downside…for the reader. Books were more expensive. The store was not the size of an aircraft hangar and had no place to buy a frappucino and good luck being able to buy a figurine of a chubby cat reading Shakespeare.

The MegaStore is GREAT for READERS…and Writers of COURSE

Good luck getting good placement BABY WRITER.

So then Borders and B&N came on the scene. I still remember how they were lauded. How they were going to improve literacy because books would be so much more affordable! They were “cultural centers” and “bookish hubs”. Writers will get so much more “exposure.” Does any of that sound familiar? Refer to that @$$hat article I was ranting about.

But there was a problem. There is no free lunch. Those “deep discounts” came at a cost…to the writers. In order to discount the books the way they do, the mega stores don’t stock like the old indie bookstores unless an author is a household name guaranteed to sell.

Megastores are in the business of moving high volume. That is how they give the consumer the discount. Books, for the first time in history, had a far shorter shelf life than ever before.

Instead of books remaining in the store and giving the writer time to cultivate a fan base, the covers were ripped off and the books pulped.

As a consequence? The mid-list author (Author Middle Class) was nearly wiped out. Authors who’d made a very good living previously had to return to the regular workforce (I.e. teaching) because they no longer could live off their writing income.

I had a friend of mine who won a Nebula Award in science fiction. She went from making a regular income off ELEVEN titles, to making income off ONE title at a time.

Even though she was a respected and award-winning author, she had to give up writing full time (until Amazon).

***This was all until Amazon, by the way. Many of these authors who were driven to poverty actually now make more money than they ever did traditionally published and they no longer have to be pillaged by megastores. Which is why I get pissy when people act like Amazon is the devil and bookstores are so awesome.

Megastores make money with volume and offering the newest shiny. But the problem is that books often are like fine wine. I said wine, not whine ;). They need time to mature.

But the problem was that the very literary ecosystem that helped launch unknown books like The Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood into legendary status…was destroyed. Traded for beads frappucinos. Borders and Barnes & Noble obliterated the small bookstore and took with it the earning ability of many writers.

The mega-bestsellers did VERY well. Ergo my reference to Publishing Third World. Wealth was redistributed and concentrated at the top and the middle class was eradicated.

Book Placement

If you do not have an on-line platform, then Browsing Roulette is about the best you can hope for. But those spots in a bookstore are all negotiated in a writer’s contract. Those front slots on a table are premium real estate.

Same with displays. Ironically, though, the authors with the most selling power often get the best displays (remember the volume thing). But, George R.R. Martin is probably going to sell books. The writers who need that placement the most are the least likely to get it.

This isn’t personal. It’s business.

If I came out with a novel, I am going to sell a heck of a lot less than George R.R. Martin. Well, at least five or six copies less .

In seriousness, though it makes sense to display your heavy hitters. Problem is then that the newer writer no one knows then better hope her last name falls at the fortuitous eye-level because she will be spine-out on a shelf.

And if the time runs out and no sale? Off with that cover and the book is pulped.

Advances

Before I became a writer I bought books everywhere. Because it was not my profession I guess I really just never put any thought into how that writer was paid. If I bought a book at a used bookstore and it was new, I assumed it was overstock. I had no idea what a remainder was (more on that in a moment).

I’d also watched movies and heard this term “advance” tossed around as if it meant money rained from the sky. In fact, as a new writer, I dreamed of all kinds of ways to spend my million dollar advance.

Advances are not free money. They are essentially a payday loan. It is money loaned to the author against the money eventually earned in royalties.

So if an author is given a $20,000 advance, he is not paid another dime until that book earns over $20,000.

Herein lies the pickle.

If an author doesn’t “earn out” the advance, odds are she will not be given another book deal. So, if you get that $20,000 and the book makes $19,700? No more deals. That’s why BIG advances seem like a good thing, but can actually wreck a career. It’s far easier to earn out a $20,000 advance than a $90,000 one.

Writers don’t have to pay back the advance, but if it doesn’t “earn out” it means the writer is not a wise investment for the publisher so the odds are not good for the author getting another book deal. Depending on the author or the book, they might get another deal. But with newer authors? Probably not. And first-time authors? Forget about an advance. Not happening unless your name is Kardashian.

This was a really big deal before the digital age because traditional publishing WAS the only game in town. So if an author didn’t make her quota? Game over.

These days, advances are pretty much a thing of the past. Any money most writers will make are going to come from US buying books from them.

Print Runs

One can tell how much confidence a publisher has in a book (author) by the print run. Low print runs mean the publisher is being conservative to hedge losses…but low print runs mean the writer doesn’t make as much. A standard print run for a new unknown author is 10,000 books. But traditional tends to limit authors to one book a year so even if an author makes $2 per book, that is $20,000 before taxes.

Yes, J.K. Rowling is a billionaire but she is not the norm.

***Btw, all of this is VERY unscientific and very broad strokes to give y’all the gist.

This isn’t BAD for the new writer because it is way easier to sell out that 10,000 and then she will get a bigger run the next book and the next as her brand grows (if she doesn’t starve in the meantime).

However, higher print runs? We are in the same deal with advances. If you don’t sell out your print run, the remaining copies are remaindered. 

There are ways writers can buy a portion of their remainders to sell by hand and they can get a far lower royalty off remaindered copies that are then sold through wholesale outlets and used bookstores.

Usually if you see a new book at a used bookstore and it looks like this (pic below)? It is a remaindered copy. That’s why yes, I get the Doctrine of First Sale and that used bookstores are not doing anything “illegal.” But don’t assume that a writer was paid a full royalty the first go. That isn’t always the case.

Image courtesy of Angela Quarles

Yes, this is a great fabulous discount for the reader, but when I see this? My heart feels heavy and sad for the author. That is why in my last post I said, YES feel free to buy used but if you can, please see if you can buy new from the author. The reason is that those sales can make the difference in that author earning out the advance, selling out a print run and getting their next book contract.

Because used bookstores do not favor self-published and indie authors. Most of their stock will be traditionally published authors so you (readers) supporting who you like with a new sale becomes far more important to that writer’s future and career.

Royalties

Traditionally published authors are often paid yearly. Sometimes quarterly. That is negotiated. It is why you have an agent. So whatever the author makes, Vinnie the Fish Agent makes sure the publisher pays, then takes 15% (pretty standard). Then the writer is subjected to self-employment taxes, but with all this “exposure” from the megastore the writer might qualify for food stamps.

So writers are paid like farmers. Let your family know that your down payment on the yacht might be delayed.

Reviews

I get that a lot of people buy used because they are on a budget. Been there so *fist bump*. You can still support writers in meaningful ways.

Even if you buy new, there is another way you can support writers you love. Write a REVIEW. A GOOD ONE.

As a writer I have a personal policy. If I can’t say something good, I shut up. Mainly because I AM far more picky about story being a writer and an editor but also this business is brutal. If we are not supporting each other? Who will? Because our families don’t get us. Our significant others might. Our kids think we are nuts. So I only leave glowing reviews. But that is me. Writers shouldn’t eat their young.

For READERS. Reviews are more important now than ever before, especially for the indie and self-published author. The reason is that with the change in the publishing paradigm, the slush pile (unfortunately) has been dumped into the reader’s lap. There are a lot of bad books out there. But even then, that really isn’t all that big of a problem.

Want to know the bigger problem?

There are a lot of good books out there.

With the Internet and social media and the explosion of books there is SO MUCH content. This means consumers are overwhelmed with choices. Reviews help writers sell books because if readers see a book with no reviews or five reviews versus a similar title with thirty reviews? Who will they choose? Additionally writers gain access to promotional tools like Bookbub, but can ONLY do this with a minimum number of reviews.

Instead of sending me an e-mail about how much my book changed your life? Put it on Amazon and change MINE! 

Readers are essential to our success beyond just the sale. If you love our books, your promotion means a thousand times more than any ad I could pay for. Ads and marketing don’t sell books. Never did and never will. Only thing that sells books is word of mouth.

Beloved reader? You would be shocked how much regular people will pay attention to you. That review is worth your weight in gold to me for a number of reasons. Humans don’t like being first. So unless a couple of you are brave and review? My book can sit with NO reviews and it is then unlikely to sell.

Think about a shelf with ONE item. It freaks us out. There is only ONE. Is it poison? O_o

Secondly, when you review us, Amazon favors our books in the algorithms meaning more people SEE our book. More people SEE it, odds are I will sell more copies. In the on-line world YOU have the power to get US that awesome front of the store book placement. The more reviews the better the algorithm. Better algorithm, more views. More views, more sales, more sales—>we make a best-seller LIST!

<3 <3 <3

You can also use your social media because it means more than ours.

Tweet a picture of our book. Put it on Facebook. People in your network ARE noticing. Peer review and approval is paramount in the digital age. And don’t support your favorite author on Goodreads as a first choice (AMAZON reviews are better). The only people hanging out on Goodreads for the most part are other writers and book trolls.

Support us on your regular Facebook page or Instagram or Twitter. Because when you post a great new book you LOVED your regular friends see that. When they get stranded in an Urgent Care or an airport? What will they remember? THAT BOOK. They won’t be on Goodreads. Trust me.

So there is your year’s end peek behind the curtain. Sorry (again) it was so long but this is meant as a reference/guide. Readers, we love you. Honest. It is why we are so stupid to work for free so much. This is a labor of love in many ways. Writers, I hope this helps you understand your profession better and maybe even “get” why I was so ticked off the other day.

Happy New Year! I love all of you very much. So NO, your writer friend is NOT YET a millionaire, but you can help MAKE HER ONE :D.

I love hearing from you!

What are your thoughts? Feelings? Are your eyes wide open? Would you like to add anything?

I love hearing from you!

Make SURE you sign up for my upcoming classes! This is part of how I fund my plans for global domination. Purchase a class! Buy a book! OR ignore all that follows but DAMN sure buy all your books NEW or I WILL FIND YOU O_o ….

Remember to check out the new classes listed at W.A.N.A International. Your friends and family can get you something you need for Christmas. Social Media for Writers, Blogging for Writers, and Branding for Authors. 

Also, I have one craft class listed. Your Story in a Sentence—Crafting Your Log-Line. Our stories should be simple enough to tell someone what the book is about in ONE sentence. If we can’t do this, often there is a plot problem. This class is great for teaching you how to be master plotters and the first TEN SIGNUPS get their log-line shredded for free, so you will be agent ready for the coming year.

Enough of that…

I love hearing from you!

To prove it and show my love, for the month of DECEMBER, everyone who leaves a comment I will put your name in a hat. If you comment and link back to my blog on your blog, you get your name in the hat twice. What do you win? The unvarnished truth from yours truly. I will pick a winner once a month and it will be a critique of the first 20 pages of your novel, or your query letter, or your synopsis (5 pages or less).

For those who need help building a platform and keeping it SIMPLE, pick up a copy of my latest social media/branding book Rise of the Machines—Human Authors in a Digital World on AMAZON, iBooks, or Nook. 

The post The Ugly Truth of Publishing & How BEST to Support Writers appeared first on Kristen Lamb.

In the spirit of the upcoming holidays, today we are going to talk about something touchy and complicated. No, I am not going to tell you where babies come from.

Okay, fine.

Amazon. With Prime, you get free shipping.

Moving on…

The whole publishing paradigm makes me kinda twitch and we writers are often at the center of a lot of silly complaining. So I’d like to debunk some pretty myths we writers love to perpetuate.

It’s like that ex who we run into on Facebook and we get all nostalgic and remember all the loooove. But, if we took more than 30 seconds to think. Really THINK? We’d remember why we were combing Craig’s List for a hit man willing to be paid in unredeemed Starbucks gift cards to take that person OUT…O_o

Same situation. Let’s unpack this, shall we?

Fallacy #1—Old Books Are Awesome & We Should GO BACK

I just love the smell of old books. The feel of old paper. The nostalgia. I just miss browsing dusty shelves looking for a hidden treasure…

I can completely 1000% get on board with this. Books are foundational for any thriving society and the bedrock of any enduring culture. But this commentary does not belong in a business discussion about the publishing industry.

Why?

Because we (writers) are not being PAID off old dusty copies of our manuscripts unless we happen to be traveling the country selling them out of steamer trunks.

It’s a non sequitur.

In fact, and this is just ME. I will not buy books at secondhand stores or garage sales. And, if I do happen to buy a book this way and I like the title and I find out the book is still in print and the author who worked really, really hard to write that book can still be paid?

I buy a copy.

Often a digital copy to make sure that the writer got PAID for doing her job. It’s a professional courtesy.

Thing is, we have to be really, really careful that as artists we are not perpetuating the very behavior that pisses us off.

We like getting paid for our work. We work really really hard and expect (rightfully) that we should be rewarded for doing so.

Doctors work hard and they expect to get paid. No one gripes when the doctor gets paid. Heck, no one gripes when the UPS driver gets paid or the barista who makes the triple-shot espresso pumpkin soy cappuccino with half foam and vanilla sprinkles and does not commit MURDER gets paid.

Oh, but it is artsy and bohemian to rip writers off because old books are cool?

No. And again, let’s keep the debate clear here because I can already hear the blogs now, “Kristen Lamb hates old books!” No. Pay attention.

I love old books. Have stacks of them. Want to buy old copies of Moby Dick? Be my guest. I doubt Melville is counting on that Amazon royalty check to pay to upgrade his Scrivner or, I dunno, eat.

Want to support civilization? Buy old books. Want to support a writer and his/her family? Buy new ones or e-books.

I also get that paper is not going away, but what makes me a little cray-cray is why authors seem so resistant to e-books at all. I love e-books. First of all because I seriously DIG that giant old lady font.

How Kristen reads ALL her books…

Also, because that is another way readers can buy and consume my work. Want it on paper? Here. Audio? HERE. E-book? Here!

Heck, as writers, I think we should stand behind any kind of R&D that gets more stories into the hands of readers. I am 1000% behind Carrier Pigeon Technology, Smoke Signal Fiction, Books by Morse Code.

Granted, morally, I am on the fence about downloading my book directly into my readers’ brains, but hell the sci-fi folks can just run with that! If the royalties are fat enough? I’m game.

Heck, if there was good money behind me acting out my stories in interpretive dance?

I would so be there.

*JAZZ HANDS*

Who cares how readers get our books so long as we are being paid?

In case anyone was unclear? WE are the oldest profession .

And this “How Readers Get Our Books” dovetails into my next point…

Fallacy #2 Barnes & Noble Supports All Authors

The whole B&N drama? I am verklempt. Calm down and hear me out. I don’t think Barnes & Noble is as good or even as bad as we believe.

Do I believe B& N is the devil? Of course not. I love B&N. In fact, there was a time I had a loan shark who met me in the hardbacks to front me some Benjamins to keep pace with my habit.

I think competition is GOOD. It is necessary and vital and it keeps everyone playing nice-nice. I even wrote a long piece about the dangers of Amazon becoming a monopoly in case you are worried I am being too biased.

But, here is the deal. The second I write anything about how Amazon is doing something really brilliant, people love to jump all over Bezos for being predatory and helllooo?

Can we just go back about 15-20 years?

Barnes and Noble (and Borders) are almost singlehandedly responsible for wiping out the indie bookstore ecosystem. They deliberately placed megastores on every corner and willfully drove small bookstores out of business so I guess I am the only one who finds Borders extinction karmic and B&Ns current plight ironic.

Thing is, B&N reinvented the book industry and were rewarded for doing so. They got people really excited about bookstores again and it was bloody and brutal for the indies.

But now that another business has come along that is finally mean and lean enough to hit back comes along? I am not all, “Poor B&N.”

I have popcorn and Red Vines.

Genuine competition is good for them. They can either lay there and take it or they can use the pushback to reinvent the bookstore again. Markets aren’t supposed to remain static. And last I checked, their top officers get paid pretty well to figure this stuff out .

Barnes & Noble is not good for most authors, lest we forget how they were able to get those rock-bottom prices that drove most of the indies out of business. They thrive off selling in volume and the only authors who are fairly guaranteed to sell in volume are already household names.

Nothing personal. It’s business.

So when Amazon comes along and its business is not driven by a scattergun approach and instead is driven off authentic interest as reflected in genuine buying habits?

We writers might want to take notice.

Yes, as I predicted, Amazon would need a brick-and-mortar store to sell its own imprints, but this is also good news for traditionally published authors who are new with lower print runs or whose last name doesn’t rhyme with Patterson.

Fallacy #3 Social Media is a Dismal Failure

I’ve had a few comments regarding how so many authors ran to social media and they simply aren’t seeing any of that social media activity translate into sales. Thing is? Yep. Social media is not direct marketing, though the two are often confused.

See, in direct marketing, we can measure. We can put out an ad, measure click rates and see how many clicks led to a purchase. We can send out so many fliers and then measure quantitatively how many of those later translated into sales.

We can measure how many morons individuals were sent an e-mail telling them they had inherited $100,000,000 from some relative they never knew they had in Guana against how many deposits we get of $5000 to spring that “inheritance” from customs.

This gives us our ROI (return on investment). How many e-mails sent in comparison to how much cash is sent via Western Union.

Why it has been so vexing for marketers is they try to treat social media the same way as mass marketing…and they can’t. Because if we do social media correctly (keeping it social) there is no way to quantify it.

It becomes too obvious we are mixing social and market norms and that creeps people the hell out.

Example:

Market Norms are when a prostitute expects money in return for *wink wink nod nod* “favors.”

Social Norms are when a wife does those same “favors” for her beloved husband out of love because getting paid for it would be seriously strange.

That seems obvious, right?

But what if wife has a wonderful and romantic evening with her husband, but then before he leaves for work, asks him to fill out an on-line survey rating how he enjoyed his night and tells him that when he completes his survey, he will be texted a code that he can then redeem for free pancakes?

Yes, I just took that to a WHOLE NEW LEVEL of weird.

But y’all see what I mean when I say that you just can’t sneak that stuff in there! We SEE it. We can tell when we are being manipulated on social media and that is why this stuff cannot be directly measured and quantified.

Word of Mouth is Vital…But Can’t Be Measured

Zuckerberg didn’t invent social media. Social media has always been around. It was just called “word of mouth.” It was also the only thing next to a good book that ever sold books.

The only difference, was that until Web 2.0, it was almost impossible to ignite word of mouth on any level of magnitude. But to think we can measure and control it? Not happening.

As far as authors not seeing any “direct translation into sales”? I can tell you why. They are the same people we likely had to run off #MyWANA with digital pitchforks for book spam.

There are no shortcuts. Period.

Write good books. Work really hard. Make friends and enjoy yourself and hopefully it will pay off. It may not, but think of it this way?

Twenty years ago we could have all gone to our graves without ever getting to hold a copy of our own work in our hands. At least today we get a shot, and that is a heck of a lot more than countless writers in the past ever got.

E-books might take away from that nice quaint little shop on the corner (the ones not razed by B&N), but that little shop on the corner only had room for a handful of authors.

And, Amazon IS looking to reinvent that little shop on the corner. Algorithms, love them or hate them, will make it possible for independent bookstores to thrive since they can stock smartly, and less waste means more profit.

E-books have made it possible for countless writers to finally be paid to do what they love. My opinion? Every digital copy downloaded, should come with the sound of a link of iron breaking…one more link from the day job. You are setting a WRITER FREE!

B&N is great, but again, only helping so many of our brothers and sisters in the inky trenches. I want to help MORE!

Social media. Do it. Don’t do it. If you do it, please at least do it well. Don’t feed us spam and then b$#@ when we don’t want to consume it & reward laziness.

We are NOT stupid. It is STILL SPAM!

I hope you all will embrace that we live in a great time and we get to make the future better for ourselves and writers to come. Ditch the old and embrace the new.

Do you love that you at least get to HOLD your book? Would you be willing to act out your novel in interpretive dance if the pay was right? Are you for more ways to get stories into hands of readers? Carrier hamsters? Nah, plague always a concern. Hmmm. I’ll give the ideas over to you guys.

I LOVE hearing from you!

To prove it and show my love, for the month of NOVEMBER, everyone who leaves a comment I will put your name in a hat. If you comment and link back to my blog on your blog, you get your name in the hat twice. What do you win? The unvarnished truth from yours truly. I will pick a winner once a month and it will be a critique of the first 20 pages of your novel.

For those who need help building a platform and keeping it SIMPLE, pick up a copy of my latest social media/branding book Rise of the Machines—Human Authors in a Digital World on AMAZON, iBooks, or Nook. 

The post 3 Myths Writers Need to Ditch Like a Bad Ex appeared first on Kristen Lamb.

The big news in publishing this week is Barnes & Noble’s plan to ax the Nook. After losing over a billion dollars trying to make the Nook a contender, it seems B&N’s new CEO is ready to just cut bait. According to Michael Kozlowski over at Good E Reader:

The NOOK segment (including digital content, devices and accessories) had revenues of $52 million for the 4th quarter and $264 million for the full year, decreasing 39.8% for the quarter and 47.8% for the year. Device and accessories sales were $13 million for the quarter and $86 million for the full year, declining 48.2% and 66.7%, respectively, due to lower unit selling volume. Digital content sales were $40 million for the quarter and $177 million for the full year, declining 36.5% and 27.8%, respectively, due primarily to lower device unit sales.

All I have to say is…OUCH.

I’d like to say I find this news shocking, but I don’t. Of course the question will be, what happens next? As an expert, often others ask us to offer up some predictions. Back in 2009 the Nook was new and doing fairly well, so I gave Barnes & Noble ten years before it would be gone.

If B&N did survive, it was going to be through the Nook which I figured would probably just be bought out by Kobo or Sony or some bored Saudi American prince. I adjusted my prediction in 2012 to five years or less and with the recent news, sadly, I might be correct.

So why is B&N still hemorrhaging?

Understand Your Consumer

#PARTY

One reason many major brands have become casualties in the Digital Age is that they failed to understand that customers now expect business (products and services) to come to them, not the other way around. Consumers liked downloading a song instead of traipsing to a music store. Consumers preferred digital photos over dropping off film. Instead of Tower Records and Kodak leading the way to a new model of service, they became casualties.

We are either architects of the future or artifacts in the future.

Now books…

Before e-books, if we wanted to read a book, we made a trip to the bookstore (or library) because that’s where we could buy books.

Complicated stuff, right?

B&N was very predatory in the 90s until about 2007. They made sure to build fancy mega-structures on every corner complete with coffee shops and discounts as deep as their chairs and they didn’t lose sleep over the independents they drove into bankruptcy.

Yet, this was smart. Consumers of the time were fascinated with megastores and this was a good plan that worked for a while. But, business is organic. It grows and contracts and changes and shifts and anyone in business is wise to remember this.

Bigger is better…until it isn’t.

Image via Flickr Creative Commons, courtesy of Keith Nerdin…

What is REALLY an Advantage?

Malcolm Gladwell has a really cool book called David & Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants where he explores how elements we perceive as advantages are often serious disadvantages.

The bible story David and Goliath is the ultimate underdog story. Back in the day armies, in order to avoid suffering major casualties, would agree to simply pit their best fighters and winner took all.

Most of you know the story. Goliath the Philistine was highly trained, heavily armored and the size of a TRUCK, who also happened to be armed with a javelin, spear and sword. Yet, he was beaten by a shepherd boy with a slingshot. At first glance, this seems nothing short of miraculous, but if we dive a bit deeper?

Not so much.

If David had taken King Saul’s armor and sword and fought conventionally we likely would never heard this story. David would have been toast…or more like the jelly smeared across the toast. BUT, David refused to fight in a conventional way. A slingshot might not seem like that big of a deal but slingers were the precursors to our modern concept of an “artillery.”

In the Old Testament Book of Judges, slingers are described as being accurate within a “hair’s breadth”. An experienced slinger could kill or seriously injure a target at a distance of up to two hundred yards. ~Malcolm Gladwell, David & Goliath

This is a long way of saying that sure, Goliath was heavy infantry, but David’s sling and stone had the equivalent effect of Goliath being shot in the face with a fair-sized handgun. David refused to play by conventional rules and he won. Goliath’s fatal mistake was in assuming the conventional rules of engagement would apply.

In a marketplace governed by being leaner, meaner, faster and more convenient, propping up Goliath-sized stores was just a bad plan. Sure, Nook had the potential to rescue B&N out of their predicament, but it didn’t. Why?

Because the Nook was still acting like a Goliath.

B&N…HELLOOOOO?

The company had an identity crisis and failed to make the full transition away from being BIG. Instead of leading the charge to being small and lithe, they tried to use Nook only to prop up the same old way of doing business.

In my opinion, this is like a partial heart transplant. Either be fully committed or forget about it.

They remained married to Big Publishing and bloated price models, were less than supportive of indies (even though those were SALES), and they were still scope-locked on brick-and-mortar.

And before anyone laughs, I think it is pretty safe to bet that Blockbuster Video would still be among the land of the living had they introduced the Redbox technology first. But, instead they kept doing the same old same old and tried to use on-line video only to buttress the lackluster stores that were growing weaker by the day.

And now?

Brave in a Brave New World

We live in amazing times where branding happens at the speed of light. We cannot afford to be idle. A lot of the big brands are feeling this in a major way. This is not limited to publishing. I know this because I work with a branding firm and most of our major accounts have been reinventing what one would think of as firmly established brands.

Sure, in a consumer market where there are only a handful of beer companies, it is safe to use the same kind of marketing. But what happens when the marketplace is deluged with microbreweries and boutique brands? When the young people prefer to enjoy an Ugly Pug Lager or a Buffalo Butt Amber instead of a Miller Lite? How do you not only remain relevant, but convert the youth into being the next generation of loyal consumers?

We have to be brave. We have to fight like a David.

Writers are the ultimate Davids. The indies are responsible for altering the publishing landscape. Writers have unimaginable creativity and resilience. Writers understood the business was about stories, not paper. We didn’t care how readers partook of our books (paper, digital, smoke signals, carrier pigeons), we only cared that they DID. Writers embraced the power of social media and a lot of folks in publishing are now eating the words, “You don’t need social media. All you need is a good book.”

When all the smoke has cleared and B&N either reignites or fizzles out, it won’t matter. Writers will still remain. It just seems funny to me that the very people the Book Goliaths so recently wrote off (writers) probably could have taught them a thing or two .

And what we can take away from all of this is that we writers have to stay frosty. Books are not about us, they are about the reader (code for consumer). We can look at what might appear to be a disadvantage and look at it in a new way. In the end, it takes grit to do what we do. So stay BRAVE.

What are your thoughts? You think B&N is just buying time until the end? Do you think they could rally back? How could B&N reinvent in a way to gain your loyalty?

Quick Announcement: Due to popular demand, I am rerunning my Hooking the Reader—Your First Five Pages at the end of the month and I am doing something different. Gold Level includes me looking (and shredding your first five) but I have added in some higher levels and will look at up to 20 pages. This can be really useful if you’re stuck. I can help you diagnose the problems. It’s also a great deal if you have to submit to an agent and want to make your work the best it can be.

I LOVE hearing from you!

To prove it and show my love, for the month of JULY, everyone who leaves a comment I will put your name in a hat. If you comment and link back to my blog on your blog, you get your name in the hat twice. What do you win? The unvarnished truth from yours truly. I will pick a winner once a month and it will be a critique of the first 20 pages of your novel, or your query letter, or your synopsis (5 pages or less). 

For those who need help building a platform and keeping it SIMPLE, pick up a copy of my latest social media/branding book Rise of the Machines—Human Authors in a Digital World on AMAZON, iBooks, or Nook. 

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