Rant– No Unsolicited Manuscripts, No Exceptions

I am now qualified to glorify the old days and cast aspersions on the new ones. My first statement is both. At the drugstore soda fountain at 21^st and Drexel on Indianapolis’ East side, they served an ice cream flavor called raspberry salad. Raspberry ice cream and nuts. No doubt, the nuts made it a salad. It was delicious. It doesn’t exist today and Wikipedia has no listing for it as an ice cream flavor like chocolate or orange sherbet. A few silly salads with raspberries in it is all.

Now I was victim of old folks like me when I was a kid.  You could go to a movie for a nickel, they said a penny would actually buy something.  And I have my own memories from my childhood.  You could buy a pack of cigarettes, or a loaf of bread or a gallon of gas and have change back from a quarter. None of that really means anything, except for the raspberry salad, of course. 

But what I’m really angry about is that someone could write a book and send it to a publisher.  If you were unknown, your manuscript would be tossed in a slush pile and might not be read right away if you were an unknown.  But there was a good chance your book would get a look at some point; and if they didn't want it, you’d get a letter of rejection.  I have many such letters.  I even have one from The New Yorker rejecting a poem I submitted.  I am grateful they sent a letter, but perhaps more appreciative that they decided not to embarrass me by printing the poem.

The writing community had a name for sending an unsolicited manuscript to a publisher. It was an “over-the-transom” submission.   And it was usually done without an agent. None of that happens anymore now that publishing is in the hands of half a dozen big corporations.

I’ve been dealing with that for the last couple of years. On the other hand, let me start my rant with what really upset me. I’ll get back to the big five publishers and their mimics among the so-called independents.

A few months back, I had a germ of an idea for a story. It seemed to write itself. Oddly though, it came out as a stage play. That’s not entirely silly because that’s how I started writing (and acting)— skits in grade school and plays in high school and college as well as community theatre.  All that happened before I started writing mysteries or helped start an alternative newspaper.

So when I finished my play I decided to send it to a major non-profit theatre company in San Francisco where I had lived for 25 years.  I knew no one at the theatre company, only that it was highly regarded. So I sent a note to the artistic director asking for the appropriate contact.

“We are not allowed to accept unsolicited material,” the director replied, suggesting that they only accept material from those professionally represented (an agent). The phrase “we are not allowed” is bogus from the start. At best, “unwilling” is the word. It also bothered me that a non-profit organization would shut down a member of the community, forcing a writer to go through a for-profit entity to even have a chance for consideration. As many in the book world know, finding an agent is more difficult than finding a publisher.

I replied:

I'm sure this is policy and not necessarily of your making, but the agent requirement is counter-creative and counter community interest.  I'm 71…and have represented myself with Penguin, St. Martin's Press as well as Canadian and London publishers.  It's a bit late for me to find an agent who will take on someone who hasn't a promising future because there's not much of a future left. I think that forced representation (or anyone) is deeply unfair. Again, I'm sure this isn't your doing, so I'm harboring no ill feelings toward you; but policy makers should be reminded how soulfully barren that policy is. It really has no place in the arts.

The theatre company is not alone. I have two novels I’d like to send out, but after the big five closed submissions to non-agented writers, the emerging independents, some of them showing a tremendous spirit and supporting new and old voices embodied a bit of hope that the publishing world was more than James Patterson and the William Morris Agency. However, even many of enterprising newcomers seem to be closing the gates.

“No unsolicited manuscripts.  No exceptions.”

Don’t get me wrong. Over the last 30 or so years, in addition to seeing 18 of my novels published, I’ve accumulated a number of rejection slips. Some, though certainly not all, are variations of form letters.  But the likelihood is that my query, synopsis or a paragraph or two of the submitted manuscript were read or skimmed before the decision was made to reject it. And even if the rejection contained an observation I disagreed with, I did not resent the publisher’s decision, or comments for that matter. That truly is the publisher’s business. What happened was that someone gave it a few minutes and then responded. That’s all any of us are entitled to.

 In the case of the theater company mentioned above it’s a little worse. We have a community–based, nonprofit (tax and grant supported) organization acting like a Monsanto or G.E.   Regarding the book publishers, sadly, the highly spirited folks who set up new, vibrant publishing companies aren’t any different from the big five conglomerate publishers. They are, in too many cases, following in the big guys’ icy footsteps.

“No unsolicited manuscripts.  No exceptions.”

Now it’s true:  I am getting old and grumpy.  It might also be true that my skills, such as they were, are slipping. My days may be numbered, or over.  Then again the play, which prompted this rant, is about getting old and grumpy and irrelevant. And one’s advanced age and history should suggest some level of competence, at least enough for the work to warrant a quick glance.

Opinion — Amazon, Apple, Authors And Traditional Publishers

Leaving the high moral ground issues and marketing matters aside for a moment, the book battle between Amazon and several major publishers is initially about the use of different business models, especially as it relates to the burgeoning e-book phenomenon.  Amazon embraces what we have come to know as a wholesale model.  That is, the bookseller pays so much for each book and they may sell it for whatever they want — even use it as a loss leader if they choose.  Most major publishing houses wanted what’s called the agency model — that is they set the cost to the bookseller and also set the price for the purchase.  In other words if the publisher wants the book sold at $12.99, booksellers must do that.  Of course, in both cases, the publishers and booksellers would make a profit, but in the agency model, there wouldn’t be any pricing flexibility for the retailers. No special sales or discounts, unless the publisher approves it.

Legally, the publishing houses might very well have won the day when the dispute went to the court because, while it may not afford the public or in some cases the writer the best possible deal, agency pricing is not illegal. Many companies in many businesses that have strong brand recognition and customer loyalty can and do demand that of their retailers.  But there was something else that the judge didn’t like about the situation.  The publishers, it is alleged, got together with each other and with Apple to set prices and policies.  If it's true, it is collusion and that is illegal.

As of today, three of the world’s largest publishers have settled with the U.S. District Judge, agreeing to end their current agency agreements — for the time being.  MacMillan and Penguin plan to fight the suit with the continued support of the highly respected Authors Guild, an association of published writers, and the American Booksellers Association, whose noble cause it is to support independent bookstores.   They have a counter accusation. They believe that Amazon is guilty of predatory pricing.  And certainly a case may be made for that. Nonetheless most folks, whether they liked the judge’s decision or not, seem to think Amazon won this round big time.

This is generally regarded as a win for readers who will likely benefit from lower prices on reading material.  But there is an argument that it will hurt the quality of the work in the long run because publishers won’t nurture and support their writers if they can’t ask for higher prices on e-books.  And there is also an argument that if Amazon (and perhaps Barnes & Noble) has this advantage, the result will further damage independent bookstores because of these lower prices.

As a writer, surviving as such by the skin of his teeth, I have divided loyalties.  As an older human, a veteran of the print media in many of its forms, a devoted library fan and a more than frequent visitor to bookstores, where I buy books on paper, I want very much to see the sacredness of the book in its traditional form be eternal.

Amazon CEO and Founder Jeff Bezo

As a midlist writer, likely approaching the end of his career, there is a flicker of hope that e-books and booksellers like Amazon will be entirely more friendly to my aspirations than traditional publishers have been.  Publishers, despite arguments to the contrary, are and probably must be dismissive of writers who haven’t achieved a brand name level of recognition. Unless a writer is a big name or can become one quickly, you are not a product that publishers can promote or big booksellers can sell, save Amazon or-late-to-the-game Barnes & Noble. I say this as a member of the Guild, as a writer recently published by Penguin and, again, as a person who buys his books from independent bookstores.  And I say that as someone who has never read a complete book — other than my own during the editing process — on anything battery operated.

However, I like to think of myself as a realist.  While the specific direction of publishing and all its possibilities cannot be foretold, the general direction is clear.  What we are witnessing is an adjustment in keeping with all the adjustments we humans are making in all areas in an increasingly inter-connected world.  Just as third world countries jumped from having no telephones to suddenly having smart ones, just as we are now downloading movies on Wi-Fi, getting our news on i-pads, covering wars with twitter and getting our maps without unfolding that giant piece of paper over the steering wheel, we will eventually get most of our books on a device or on multiple devices.   The transition may not be absolutely total, but it is inevitable.

The battle that we are witnessing has nothing to do with serving you the reader or, frankly me, the writer.  The battle is about who owns the business.  It’s a battle waged by CEOs and boards of directors, shareholders and public relations firms.  It was truly difficult to feel the pain of Borders as a corporation in a capitalist society when they ran aground, when only a short time earlier they cleverly and coldly defeated their competition. They were responsible for shuttering the doors of who knows how many small book businesses, just as Starbucks brought an end to a zillion mom and pop corner coffee shops. 

But consumers embraced the huge bookstores for awhile.  Read a book, have a scone, pick up a date.  Some writers thrived, especially the best selling ones.  On the other hand, many of us, writers with a modest but loyal following, suffered from brand-name dominance the big box bookstores provided. Many of us, successful in the previous book world populated by independent bookstores and libraries, where we could get some attention, were tossed out of our comfy nest by the success of Borders and its big box cousins who lusted after the best selling brands.*

Scott Turow, President, Authors Guild

Then Amazon happened. Live by the sword, die by it.  The big stores were victims of changing times, new technology and, apparently, smarter competition. When the e-book revolution began, Amazon led it.  Now Amazon is threatening to blow the lid off the publishing establishment, not just in the pricing of e-books, but as publishers themselves.  What we are witnessing with these lawsuits is the ugly grappling among corporations, all of them — Apple, Amazon, and half a dozen conglomerate publishers not to mention other vested interests — all larger than you and I — as they play king of the hill.  

As an old-fashioned consumer and a writer in need of occasional inspiration, I am not happy about this.  I love walking into bookstores.  It’s inspiring in a way that searching the pages on Amazon’s web site isn’t.  But as a writer, who likes to write and wants to be read, I have to either give up the idea of being published — or adapt.  And there are some advantages to the average writer when some of the old-fashioned limitations are lifted.  One of them is that we don’t have to sell 100,000 copies to succeed.

In the end, I think, we all have to understand, there are fewer and fewer video stores, very few public telephones, almost no yellow pages and fewer and fewer watches.  The time, like everything else, is on the smart phone.  When travelers pack for a long trip, they don’t have to have an extra bag for their books.  When they drive, they can have their device read to them.  If they are in a strange place with nothing to read and no place to buy a book, they can download one, instantly and for less.  What do we think is going to happen?

I repeat, the battle isn’t about you and me.  It’s about who owns the business.  There is the old guard and the new one.  And as it is in any other business, there might very well be some bright exceptions to the trends — maybe some exciting niche publishers.  Maybe there will be new ways writers can (successfully) get into the marketplace on their own — and it is far more difficult that some would lead you to believe.  But I’m not sure the future of publishing is in the court system or in trying to circumvent the future.  It will come through smart ideas, through innovation.

The times, someone once said, they are a changin’.

  

*Post script:  Nothing wrong with best selling authors.  I am a fan and regular reader of several of them.  My point is only that when big box bookstores ruled, many midlist writers were dropped because of economies of purchase and difficulties of distribution.  The rise of Amazon, while it doesn’t diminish the sales of the great brand names, allows greater potential for writers with smaller followings to publish as well and continue to gain notice if the work warrants it.

On Writing — View From the Bottom and Outside, Part II

On Monday, Amazon was highlighted here for the revolution it started in the book business. Barnes & Noble saw the threat, quite late in the game it seems. Nonetheless it developed its own on-line bookstore where you could pick a book and have it in your mailbox in 48 hours without leaving your home.  We asked what else could the book lover want?

It turns out, a whole lot more.  The best, in terms of options, was yet to come.  Amazon, who might have done a few victory laps as they rose to the top of the international bookseller business, was doing nothing of the kind.  They were busy developing a little device about the size of an early cellphone. Readers could pick out a book from the vast array Amazon offered from their on-line bookshop and have it instantaneously on their Kindle. They found a book, pushed a button and in seconds, the product was in the customer’s hands.  Literally.  They didn’t have to have a café in their bookstore, they could have the bookstore in their café.  And in many cases, the cost of the e-book was significantly less than the discounts the Big Boxes and Amazon’s hard copy bookshelves offered.  While hardback fiction bestsellers were going for just under $30 and would take two days to receive, you could have the just released bestseller for $12.99 or less instantaneously through the Internet.  What’s more, while the bookstores had to worry about space and the shelf life of the book, Amazon had no such worries with electronic data.  Many, including the major players in the publishing and bookselling business, pooh-poohed the notion of the electronic book and, I suspect, saw it in the same way they saw audio books — something for a small, specialized market — supplemental but not mainstream. They couldn’t have been more wrong

No one, except Amazon apparently, saw it coming.  Where were the high-paid executives at Borders?  Did the board of directors of the huge publishing houses think their business wouldn’t be affected by the digital revolution?  Maybe they thought they had more time.  Even Apple’s stylishly clever folks, who harnessed the music business, couldn’t and still, to some extent, can’t figure out what’s going on when it comes to books.  What we do know is that all these businesses who depend on books or want a piece of the book publishing market, however, they might be configured, are scrambling to catch up.

The results so far have lawsuits and injunctions flying around. Apple, a company that should have been at the forefront of the e-book wave, is playing catch up. What it has done is attempt to partner with the largest book publishers to work out some sort of an arrangement that would put them back in the game.  Unfortunately, the Feds think there’s something a little funny about that. A couple of publishers have paid fines based on this kind of business practice.  Apple and a couple of the major publishers are willing to have their day in court.  Win or lose, Apple’s emersion in the book publishing business has to be like swimming through mud.

While Borders crumpled, Barnes & Noble did two things that kept them afloat.  They too were playing catch-up; but they did two very smart things.  One is they developed their own on-line purchasing system and two, they created the “Nook,” an e-reader, a better-late-than-never alternative to the Kindle. Even so, B&N closed many of its stores and has now has a new best friend, Microsoft, in an effort to compete with the mystical and perhaps mythical strength of Apple and the vast head start the pioneer, Amazon, had in the book business.

But so far, none of Amazon’s competitors have shown they understand publishing from all the essential angles. Barnes & Noble, Apple and Amazon all have e-book platforms.  Barnes & Noble had made it pretty easy for anyone to publish and order from their platform.  Apple has done the same, but absolutely counter to their reputation, could not or would not make it user friendly.  Nor do they have as much product directly available through their respective devices.  The advantage that Apple still has is that the i-Pad and i-Phone are multi-taskers and infinitely more popular. Even so, the clear winner here is Amazon.  Even Apple product users are downloading a Kindle app.

Another reason for Amazon’s dominance in this particular product line is, I believe, that Amazon has decided to be all things to all readers — and writers, for that matter.  That’s not always a winning strategy, but it seems to be working for Amazon. If you are a writer, Amazon, for a remarkably low fee can publish your next novel for you.  If you want more control over your product, they can support that approach as well. (I’ve reissued my own early books in the Shanahan series as Life Death and Fog Books, essentially using Amazon).

Just as Amazon did to compete with brick-and-mortar bookstores, it makes small business publishing possible by taking out much of the backroom expense.  If you are just publishing e-books, there’s very little cost and little to do.  If you want to offer a book on paper, print on demand (POD) is doing nicely these days and the process is in line with the trend away from hard backs and mass paperbacks toward quality trade paperbacks. The print quality of POD has improved dramatically.  In addition to Amazon eliminating the need to have a distributor, they simplify the accounting.  They handle the charges, returns and provide detailed reports along with a check or a direct deposit for your royalties.  Their take is pretty low.  I found Barnes & Noble easy to work with as well, making it easy to make e-books available on their site with equal back-room capability.  Apple, not so much.

But Amazon is never done innovating.  Not only do they have appeal for the self-publishing writer and the small publisher, they have become a major publisher themselves.  While talented editors at the big publishing houses are trying to determine whether or not they are on the Titanic, Amazon is offering a life raft.  Come work for them.  Amazon’s new publishing imprints are courting popular and talented writers themselves. Amazon has its own imprints for various categories, including crime fiction.  

Tomorrow’s news could turn all of this on its head (I would never count Apple out), but to me, Amazon appears to be several strides ahead and while their competitors are still trying to figure out who or what they are and how they will adjust, Amazon is still innovating.  They have recently announced they will publish Kindle Singles, short works of fiction and non-fiction.  These are inexpensive e-books that are longer than short stories or magazine articles, but far shorter (less than 30,000 words) than the 600,000-word thriller.  Amazon, I think correctly, is looking at fiction or nonfiction that can be devoured while aboard a commuter train coming into the city or a jet ride from LAX to O’Hare.  Good news for those of us who are most comfortable writing and reading novellas, a form most major publishers ignore.  It is Amazon’s willingness to be unconventional that might keep it ahead of the others.

Then there is Google. They are doing something with books that is making a whole bunch of people nervous. I can’t figure out exactly what that is. I suspect that they are secretly scanning the DNA of every human on the planet and will announce a new marketing plan that will produce completely personalized books for its customers that you will read on the inside of your skull. I may be kidding; but seriously, is that inconceivable?

Now all of that is exciting, but where is publishing going?  Which of these teams has the right mix?  Amazon?  Apple plus traditional publishers? Barnes & Noble plus Microsoft?  Google and its Android OS?  As writers, we are trying to figure it all out not because we have tons of money to invest in stock, but because our royalties, reputation, artistic control, quality control and exposure in the marketplace are all mixed up in this mess.   

How important is the traditional publisher to the writer?  The support system — of distribution, marketing, reviews etc. — is still tied to the old world. If we publish ourselves and can we get beyond the vanity press stigma, how do we get our work noticed without becoming full-time promoters?  (Personally, I love the idea of working with artists and designers; but I hate the technological interface to get books in the appropriate format. And I am extremely uncomfortable promoting my own work.) How does an individual writer or a small publisher get noticed?  And for that matter, will a competitive company like Amazon continue to serve its writers and small publishers once they become big-time publishers themselves? Will they still be concerned with a writer who sells 3,000 copies when they can focus on books that sell in the millions?

Thinking about what’s happening, wonderful old words like topsy-turvy, willy-nilly and tizzy come to mind.  And worse, if there is intelligent advice on how to proceed in this environment, you can bet something has occurred or soon will that makes or will make this advice obsolete.

Here are three other views on the subject:  The Financial Times, The New York Times and, by way of Ed Gorman, author Libby Fischer Hellmann’s blog, Say The Word.

On Publishing & Writing — A View From The Bottom And From The Outside, Part I

Someone in an office in Kansas can now put a hit on someone leaving a restaurant in Islamabad. Drones.  It is possible for someone in Switzerland to halt all electronic currency transactions in Iran to crush their economy or for someone in Israel to send a digital disease to rogue governments to disable their nuclear programs.

People — police, your boss, criminals, your spouse, your political opponent — might know where you are now and could look at your email, Twitter and Face Book.  Corporations can and do track your purchases and set up a profile of your interests for marketing purposes.  They will know if you have a special weakness for Prada or Hagen Daz Pistachio. And if your prescriptions suggest the onslaught of dementia, you might be receiving a phone call saying that you inherited a considerable sum of money.  “All you have to do is provide me with your credit card number.”

I mentioned in an earlier post that there are companies that will reduce your credit standing, no matter how good it is, simply by noting that you have shopped where, statistically speaking, people with bad credit ratings shop. Nothing personal. Just crunching the numbers. Could some authority (Homeland Security, Patriot Act) commit an error in surveillance that could result in you being plucked from the world as you know it, face indefinite imprisonment and possibly torture?

No this isn’t Chicken Little talking.  I carry no signs saying we are approaching the end of the world.  But I might carry one that says technology is changing at a speed never before experienced. Of course I’d try to make it a little catchier. But we are rushing into technology faster than we can develop the ethics to manage it, faster than the average human can comprehend its impact.

There has always been change. But how long did it take us to get from the quill to the Selectric?  Now, how quickly have we come from sending a report by mail with a quick 24 to 48-hour turnaround to bouncing information off satellites in nanoseconds?  These changes not only alter the way we work, find information, but how we deal with time. Smart phones enable us to connect with everything instantly.  The Yellow Pages are nearly nonexistent.  Maps? No need to unfold that mile-wide map while you’re looking up a street address.  A voice will give us step-by-step instructions.  We can announce anything at anytime to those in our circle of friends or acquaintances. We have games to play if we’re stuck in a traffic jam, even movies to watch. There’s an app for everything you consider important in your life and some you would never have imagined had they not become available.

Among the most interesting aspects of the change that technology is bringing about is that something as absolutely trivial as Twitter can be absolutely earth shaking.  Oppressive governments are being brought down by the sudden emergence of the cell phone and a 140-word tweet — that silly, little app that allows you to keep track of what Lady Gaga had for lunch. 

These changes are affecting every aspect of our lives.  How much longer will there be movie theatres?  With 46-inch HDTV screens largely affordable to a good portion of the world, why would we pay $20 for a ticket and $15 for a box of popcorn? How do we get our news?  How do we do our banking? How do we stay in touch with friends and relatives?  How do we buy a house? There is a map of all the homes in any given city with its estimated market value just a click away. What’s happening in medicine? A scan of my body can reveal serious problems long before they might become apparent, before I can feel pain or discomfort, or a doctor can figure it out in a standard physical.  This is incredible. Security?  Face recognition. The technology is there for more invasive tactics that can keep you safe or prevent you from dropping out. You cannot leave.  You cannot escape.  Ever.

 

In that sense, it is surprising that books are still important. Let's go from a wide-angle lens to one that focuses on the details of merely one, relatively benign aspect of our culture — books.  I suspect everyone involved in it is confused.  We are confused because technology not only changes the way books are produced and sold, but for the first time how they are read.

For many years, even centuries, the book business remained essentially the same. There were bookstores. For the most part, people who wanted a book went to the bookstore. If you were in a big city you went to a big bookstore.  I you lived in a small town, you went to a smaller one, or perhaps an area of the local department store that sold books and magazines.

Things began to change some during the malling of America.  Urban flight happened.  People fled downtowns and near-downtown neighborhoods to live in the suburbs and malls grew up overnight to serve them. Lots of light and parking and security. Being able to buy books in substantial quantities, often these mall stores did more aggressive marketing and offered a steeper discount on cost to the customer.  Little bookstores began to feel the pinch of well-branded chain bookstores like B. Dalton and Walden Books. These new chains did fine along side other chain stores offering other mass-produced products.  It was the way the majority of consumers consumed.

After only a few years, the population shifted again. While the suburbs aged, recently graduated young professionals returned to work and or live in an urban environment.  Young singles and young marrieds not only wanted a place to buy a book, but they wanted a place to pick up a cup of coffee, a bagel and possibly a date.  They wanted the biggest possible choice of reading material (and music). The birth of the book superstore emerged.  The breadth of selection, the comfort, the coffee shop and the steep discounts, as developed by Borders and Barnes & Noble, not only continued the onslaught of big business over independent bookstores, they devoured the mall model as well.  Walden Books and B. Daltons, already owned by Borders and Barnes & Noble, went away.  Only the most spirited or most innovative independent stores stayed afloat during this speedy evolutionary process.

With Walden Books and B. Daltons dead or dying, and many of the independent bookstores, large and small, fading fast, the Super Bookstore reigned. But even that reign turned out to be minor and short-lived. Previously the book business saw movement in bookstore size and in book size — packaging. Essentially, the business process remained the same. 

As the big bookstore box chains found out, the Internet introduced capabilities none had apparently imagined and those capabilities would expand exponentially.  First it was fairly simple.  On-line book sales were merely a variation on the mail-order model.  However, there were other business trends happening.  Just-in-time inventories were becoming popular among retailers. 

Amazon, taking advantage of what the Internet offered as well as such business innovations as just-in-time inventories — that is not having more inventory on hand than you need on a day to day basis — decided to set warehouses around the country, where a single, low-cost building on cheap land could supply a big chunk of geography.  When a single Borders store ordered 200 copies of the latest Stephen King book, some of which they’d keep in the back room, and some they might have to return, the store was using expensive space and far more intensive labor. There would have to be physical inventories, shipping and receiving and sometimes shipping again, as well as complex accounting at each store.  Amazon, on the other hand, could order books as they needed them. As they sold them they could ship direct to the customer, a task that can be handled in assembly-line fashion.  Shipping labels, shipping fees, accounting were done by computers.

Because they didn’t have the overhead of the big-boxes, Amazon could offer even steeper discounts on books.  The customer didn’t even have to leave home. They could browse the stacks (so to speak) on the computer and validate their choices by seeing how the book was reviewed not just by The New York Times, but also by readers like them.  Book lovers could communicate with each other on the Amazon site, find lists, participate in book discussions, while Amazon passed along reading recommendations based on each reader’s very particular reading interests. What else could the book lover want?

Part II On Wednesday