A Feast of Fiction

For anyone who treasures looking at beautiful, thoughtfully crafted books which would age gracefully on any bookshelf, check out Bespoke Editions.  They publish custom-made editions of classic titles, printed and handmade to order, and judging from the photos on their website these books are works of art in their own right. It looks like they're only selling to "selected customers" for the time being, but this is one spot worth watching.

We're Not in Kansas Anymore

Though I had a lovely time running the marathon in Dublin last weekend, the sad consequence was a minor injury to my right foot.  Small price to pay, of course, but it makes the issue of getting to and from class a little difficult. Luckily, living in Oxford means there's an easy solution: the trusty bicycle.

I was really excited when I got back from India and noticed that Boston had installed new bike lanes.  Oxford is streets ahead on this one.  Not only are bike lanes present and accounted for on almost every road, they are put to heavy use by cyclists making the appropriate turn signals, obeying traffic lights, and generally sharing the road in a safe and efficient manner.  With the cost of owning a car (and parking!) so extraordinarily high, the bicycle--specifically, the "sit up and beg" model, as used above by the Wicked Witch of the West--is the preferred mode of transportation here in the Thames Valley.

This produces some strange results.  At 6 pm it's not uncommon to see women in dress skirts and men in suits happily pedalling away alongside students in clubwear.  It's also not uncommon for a Yankee on wheels to have heart palpitations as she navigates down what feels like the wrong side of the road.  What's a girl to do?  In this case, it's to take a lesson from my Indian friends.  If I'm not sure whether someone knows I'm coming . . .

. . . they will once they've heard my bell.  Tingalingalingalingalingalingaling...

The Kids Are Alright

Much is being made of this new survey conducted by Publisher's Weekly, which reveals that 74% of students surveyed prefer print textbooks over ebooks.  Even with flashy iPad apps like Theodore Gray's The Elements at their fingertips, good old pulp and binding is still the most comfortable way to learn.

I have to say I'm not surprised.  Even though my own library gives us the option of accessing our materials as ebooks from anywhere on- or off-campus, I found my own exploitation of this feature short-lived.  Last week I broke down and paid real pounds for a heap of books, knowing the money was better spent in the long run on hard copies rather than the antacids I would need when I discovered none of my hours of reading had sunk in.  There's only so many times you can switch between your textbook and facebook before your studies start to suffer.

Now, I do realize that this slightly contradicts what I said earlier about the iPad.  Funny what being a student will do.  I will, say, however, that publishers seem a lot more comfortable producing a hybrid model, where materials are available both online and in print form.  Some people are going to learn better from the computer -- think of all those young kids who grew up reading from a screen -- and some people will want paper.  There really is no reason not to service them both.  If done correctly, the result will be a bottom line of more readers, and how can a publisher argue with that?

But It's Good For You!

Fact:  when you complete the Dublin Marathon, they do not give you a free pint of Guinness at the finish line.

If I had known that, I wouldn't have been in such a hurry.

We had to find our own

It's Bad Enough We're Getting Rid of Paper

Now there's a blog post on The Bookseller's website (written by an agent) suggesting we get rid of editors.

Next month:  "Reading - should we even teach our kids?  A debate."

OK, so that might be an exaggeration.  I would be curious to see which publishing house would actually succeed by telling a brand-new author, "We'd love to publish your book.  Our marketing team really liked it.  We'll send it out to a few freelancers to see if it reads OK and then will get in touch once we need you for book tours.

"Wait, is there a problem?  Don't worry.  Your agent will call you as soon as he can."

And then they'll wonder why Lulu.com is suddenly doing so well.

One for the Authors

Phew!  That was two technical blog entries in a row.  I've clearly been studying too hard.  Time for a pleasant reminder of the real reason we edit:



I'd publish you, Sir Paul. . . . even if I may renegotiate that "thousand pages" part . . .

Get What You Pay For

The market for ebooks in the US is far more mature than the market for ebooks in the UK, so it's interesting to hear that just as I've gotten myself a gadget the pricing wars are suddenly erupting at Amazon.

Basically, the big players in the UK publishing industry--Penguin, Hachette, HarperCollins, MacMillan, and Simon & Schuster--have all decided that they will no longer allow Amazon to set the prices for their ebooks.  Previously, pricing had been set at a uniform $9.99 for all ebooks, which actually makes each ebook sale a loss-leader.  Though ebook sales are starting to outstrip sales of some versions of the printed book (i.e. hardbacks), Amazon was losing money on every purchase.

What do they gain from this?  More importantly, what does that say about books?  Let's say your technical handbook on book publishing retails at a brick-and-mortar for $34.99.  The ebook (should you make it available) is $9.99.  The paperback guide to getting your first job as an editor is probably only $12.99 in stores.  The ebook?  $9.99. That makes it slightly more difficult for Suzy College and Professor Pompous to discern which book is meant for whom.  They could go on the website and read the blurbs, or read the first chapter, but that's much more time and investment than the usual consumer will take when deciding to make a purchase.  Make no mistake: how publishers price books is very important to how publishers sell books.  Take away that lever, and you're removing a very powerful tool.

So, publishers understandably want to have a little bit more say on their own marketing mix.  Fine.  Amazon, of course, is unhappy, and sent UK Kindle owners a letter to prove it.  Their own lever has been removed--uniform, cheap pricing across the board.  With the iPad looming over the punchbowl with its own publisher-set price model, it seems Amazon would rather set their own terms and keep their loss-leader rather than cede marketing power.

This article from the Idea Logical Blog makes a great point, though.  Smaller publishers, or publishers who already focus on the ebook model, still stand to benefit from Amazon's one-size-fits-all pricing.  These publishers can't pay Barnes and Noble or Borders the same huge sums to get their books featured at the front of every store (if they can get their book into the store at all).  I especially like the point this writer makes that big publishers should be doing everything they can to keep brick-and-mortar booksellers in business, given Amazon's flattening of the marketplace.  Through customers may buy more books thanks to lowered prices, they also take away a lot of intangibles which bias the big powerhouses.  Amazon, after all, doesn't hold Harry Potter parties.

End of the Debate

It's been decided.  Thanks to a thoughtful choice of birthday gift from my significant other, I own a Kindle.

Welcome to the future!

It got me thinking.  If you want some background on international publishing rights and how my little Kindle will deal with them (tying in with my earlier visit to Frankfurt), look after the jump.  If you'd rather not, here's a pretty video from Nepal.

Pardon the silence.  My Google account was hacked last weekend, so for a short time I wasn't able to log on from my home computer.  The problem's been resolved now, thanks to my French computer-genius housemate, so with luck more posts should be up over the weekend.

One unintended consequence of the hack was the occasion to discover the odd things that happen when you move your crappy netbook from time zone to time zone.  For instance, in the corner of my Blogger text field, I have a little icon that looks like this:

It's a Hindi letter.  (Anyone know which one?)  That's what you get when you set up Blogger in India.

Meanwhile, whilst rummaging through the inner workings of my Google Chrome browser, I tried to navigate to the "Under the Hood" section to adjust my cookie-setting preferences.  I didn't find any such screen.  When I had deleted and reinstalled the program, I'd been given a new version containing this button instead:

Aww.  Now my browser speaks British.  It's like the United Nations on my hard drive.

Scenes from the Largest International Book Fair in the World

Guten tag!  It's been a pretty hectic few days, but your correspondent is back in Blighty nursing a pair of achy feet after touring the Frankfurter Buchmesse for two days.  The Buchmesse lived up to the hype about being a giant forum for the trading of international publishing rights - details of which I'll elaborate on in a further post.  In relation to publishing in general, I learned a few things which help to put some perspective on the industry.

The first hopeful statistic: there are 214 publishing companies in a 20-mile radius of Oxford, UK alone. This is 214 publishers in a town so small I'm liable to walk myself into a cow field if I miss a turn. Sure, some of these "publishers" are one woman and a dog, but that doesn't mean they aren't providing an important and crucial service for authors with something important to say.


At the same time, the large publishing conglomerates weren't above a little muscle-flexing. Look at the display booth for Cengage, a major educational publisher. It actually has two levels for conducting meetings.

Meetings seemed to be the order of the day. The more formidable the booth, the less likely an uninvited visitor was going to be able to walk in and browse. Every inch of space was dedicated to the international rights staff, who conducted back to back to back meetings with clients around the world, selling translation rights, co-publishing rights, territory rights, digital rights, you name it. It sounds boring until you realize, this is how the author writing from Skokie, Illinois, gets his words spread to audiences in Sweden, China, Kenya, and everywhere else in the world.


I was grateful that several publishers were kind enough to lend a rights manager or two to meet directly with small groups of students. I was also happy to see representatives from some of the smaller presses back home, traveling to Germany from as far as Sudbury, Massachusetts and Champaign, Illinois. As a rights manager from Oxford University Press reminded us,"Our most important mission is to spread knowledge".  By definition, publishing is a social enterprise, and it's the people - particularly, their variety and diversity - that make it important.

Gone Buchmesse-ing

No posts for a few days, as I'll be traveling to this year's Frankfurt Book Fair . . . or, as it's delightfully called in German: Buchmesse.  Photos of schnitzel, lager, and rights-trading to come when I return.

We All Scream For . . .

That is such a temptation, I thought when I noticed the pints of ice cream staring out of the freezer in the university-run Student Union shop.  If you're depressed about a class you can eat a whole Ben & Jerry's at the break.

It wasn't until I was up to the counter when I noticed what else loomed behind the till.  I guess if you're really depressed, you can buy handles of vodka or a liter of Strongbow cider.  In school.

Oh the differences of living in a country where the legal drinking age encompasses all university students, not just the senior class.

Out Of Sorts

In the madness of making life coherent these past few weeks, a delightful word has been coming to your correspondent's ears more often than usual: "sorted".  To sort is generally meant by Britons in loosely the same sense as Americans use to solve --- as in, "I'm glad I finally have this international wire transfer sorted because for a while my entire life savings disappeared into the ether."

Britons use sorted in a much stronger sense, as well.  Americans sort their mail (which usually means they haven't even opened it yet).  Britons sort global warming.

The result is almost a mistranslation, which to this American looks like it could be an insult. ("'Get sorted!' he screamed at his cheating ex-girlfriend.  'Sort this!' she howled in reply.")  Airing this confusion would probably do no good, however, though it's up for debate whether I could then be told to Sort Off.

The Most Frantic Corrigenda Ever

I just spent my last few days of summer finishing Jonathan Franzen's terrific novel The Corrections.  It seemed appropriate to walk into my neighborhood coffeeshop the next day and spot a Guardian headline announcing his latest, Freedom, needed some corrections of its own. [Link: Jonathan Franzen's 'book of the century' pulped over error.]

Luckily for Jonathan, the press keeps his book in the limelight just a little bit longer, something which will make chick-lit authors like Jennifer Weiner gnash their teeth in envy.  Just look at the headline, there.  Did you know he'd written the 'book of the century' when it first came out in August?  No?  Because here it's October, and you're aware now.  I smell a sales spike.

Not so lucky for the poor production assistant or manufacturing buyer who pulled the wrong book files and caused this mess.  At first, I clucked my tongue at the mistake, only guessing how much it costs to pulp and reprint 80,000 books.  But I can see exactly how the error could have happened, and I know I've seen this problem before.  As much as this correspondent hates to admit it . . . We've all been there.