Flash forward

Jetse de Vries has established a picofiction anthology on Twitter to showcase optimistic science fiction.

Submission guidelines here.

OUTSHINE, the resulting weekly Twitterzine, to be published here!

The rights and responsibilities of authors

Having taken a day to think about some of Martyn Daniels’ predictions for publishing in 2009, I want to explore some of his specific comments for authors.

 

1. Whose job is online marketing?

Authors should come to the front with podcasts, videos, blogs and web sites to promote them and their titles and the interesting question is whether they will do it themselves, be aided by their agents, leave it to the publisher, or look to others?

My own thought is that nobody can promote an author’s books better than the author. Writers should be the most proactive when it comes to blogs, podcasts and any other digital initiative. It’s important to work with your publisher and agent to maximise effort and avoid confusion, and in the current climate, not to expect a squillion dollars to be spent on the promotion of your book. But my experience, in Australia at least, is that some publishers are only equally (and possibly less) informed about digitial marketing than many authors. Given that cheap tools exist for authors to be proactive, creative and fast with their online activities, there is no excuse to leave this solely to the publisher. I don’t know of any agents that have the time and resources to perform this function for their clients either. More importantly, an author’s online presence is a constant thing. It requires maintenance and attention, it requires effort to engage in multi-threaded conversation and authors are best placed to do this on an ongoing basis, whereas publisher attention may only be sporadic with each new book release. This is a critical part of your business now, authors, whether you like it or not, and whether you feel you have the time or not.

2. Stand up for your rights

The whole spectrum of rights will continue to be questioned as POD is used to grab more orphans and retain rights in perpetuity. Permission rights will start to become more visible and an issue as ‘chunking’ will become more common together with the sale of digital fragments.

I think this is an area authors have critically overlooked in the last few years, especially those without agents and there are plenty of unagented authors in Australia. The issue isn’t about a land grab for rights and that authors should withold as many rights as possible. After all, the bundle of rights that comprise copyright can only generate revenue for an author when able to be exploited in the marketplace. But if they’re not informed about digital applications of their work, authors will contrinue to sign publishing contracts that rob them of future revenue streams. I think the area where authors can exercise better control is in term limits on subsidiary rights, rather than contracts that sign over permissions in perpetuity. Authors can also look at splitting up digital rights into finer categories. Copyright is infinitely divisible and, really, the concept of “digital rights” to a book is ludicrous in the current environment when a digital application of a book could many any one of a dozen different things. It wouldn’t hurt to have separate treatments for ebooks and other applications, such as Alternative Reality Games or mixed media products. Authors and their agents should also consider distribution networks and whether signing over ebook rights should include distribution to mobiles. If your publisher’s ebook ambitions are limited, you are also going to be limited and so are the number of potential income streams.

If authors and agents are on their game, we should start to see fewer “standard” contracts from publishing houses and more bespoke agreements based on the digital expertise and reach of the publishers, and the individual desires and commercial opportunities of the authors. After all, the ability to exploit digital rights doesn’t only rest with book publishers. Some would say publishers are least equipped to do it right now. They face competition from nimble media companies not burdened with the same expectations and organisational cultures that some book publishers are.

The changes taking place in the publishing industry are not limited to publishers. Authors stand to realise wonderful opportunities in the new landscape. But in order to do that, they need to be in control of their own creative businesses.

Alphabet Soup 02-Jan-09

A round up of some interesting links that escaped my attention in the feeds the last few weeks…

 

2009 – the year the physical bookstore lays down and dies?
Over at Futurismic, Paul Raven looks at a NYT article sounding the death knell of bricks and mortar bookstores. Seriously, NYT, you really think booksellers are going out of business because people are swapping books with friends? You sure it’s not because of structural economic change in the supply chain?

Brave New World’s 2009 Predictions
Martyn Daniels hangs nails his colours to the mast for the year ahead in publishing.

iPhone Apps for the Bottom Line
HarperStudio’s 26th Story looks at publishing-related apps for iPhones. Personally, I’m pretty impatient for publishers to get in the game with this.

The economics of video games
Dan Visel at if:book points picks up on an interesting point in an essay by John Lanchester about the artistic merit of video games. Are games bucking the trend of cheaper production and democratisation of media?

Unseen Hands Turn These Pages
New Matilda is running a marvelous series on Australian culture over the summer. One of the essays is by John Hunter, General Manager of SPUNC (Small Press Underground Collective) about the vital economy of Australian independent and small press publishing. [P.S. Spiffy new website, SPUNC, congrats!]

Book Designs of the Year, 2008
There are some seriously funky, creative people at the Penguin Art Department, if one judges their books by the covers. Check out their favourite book designs for the year just past. I look forward to more in 2009.

New Year’s Resolution… Blog!

Electric Alphabet has been silent the last two months, and it’s time to fix that.

So, one of my new year’s resolutions is to blog every day. I thought I would have blogged more over the Christmas break, but there’s something about summer that switches off my critical brain. I get sleepy and lazy, like a koala. All I want to do is watch cricket and read books. I’m absolutely certain this resolution will be broken, but it’s great to set the bar high. Now that I’ve finally gotten around to putting WordPress and Twitter on my iPhone I think it will be a lot easier to blog little and often, although I still intend to post longer, more thoughtful pieces as often as possible.

There are a heap of other new year’s resolutions, of course, mostly the usual feeble nods to better diet and exercise, but as far as this blog is concerned, there’s exciting discussion happening all over the interwebs about publishing futures and I’m keen to participate.

To start with, here are some fantastic events I’ll be attending over the next few months:

• January: Clarion South Writers Workshop, Brisbane Australia
• February: O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing, New York, USA
• March: The Ideas Festival, Brisbane, Australia

Maybe I’ll see you there!

Link Love 02-06-08

I am in Darwin for the annual get-together of state writers centre directors. Here it is warm and humid (which means my hair is annoyingly frizzy) and the ocean is blue. Not wussy sea green-blue, but Gold Coast motel artwork aquamarine blue. Since I’m spending more time looking around than reading feeds, I’m trusting youse all to be satisfied with a few nifty links:

• Guys Lit Wire: Fabbo new blog aimed at hooking teenage boys on great reads (and, frankly, I’m hooked as well)
• YA Mansion: Where all young adult writers live together in a mansion in New York City… apparently! But for those who are just visiting, you’ll find YA reviews, news, interviews and (and other things that rhyme with ewes)
• The Living: A ‘wovel’ (web-based novel) where you get to vote on the storyline. Thanks to the talented and extremely lovely Gary Kemble at articulate for the heads up!

 

Comments de-spammed

Gary Kemble alerted me to the fact that a few comments haven’t been coming through. I’ve just checked and there were a bunch trapped in the spam-catcher which I have now released. Apologies if you’ve commented in the last week or so and your message didn’t come through! Thanks Gary.

Feed me

This is something of a test. I just installed a Facebook application that will hopefully update my blog feed to my FB profile automatically. There are a few of these apps around but none of them seem to enjoy a very bug-free state. I guess we’ll see if this works. If so, hooray for Web 2.0 me!

Book trailers might be overkill

Over at Quillo:Torque, the talented Jeremy Gordon is hosting a discussion about the merits of book trailers for authors.

Creators of book trailers need to be careful to evoke the mood and themes of the literary work, without hamstringing the reader’s visual associations by defining the look of each character. Who needs imagination when the word-image connections have already been set?

It’s an interesting topic and one I’ve pondered as a tool for author promotion. Jeremy’s right to point out the high costs of production. Not only that, but in the rather crowded channel of online videos how does one stand out or attract page views? If you attract views will it boost sales of the book or, like quirky tv ads, will it become more notable for the popularity of the trailer than the product it’s promoting?

For my mind, it’s about finding interesting ways to tell a story. (That’s what is most likely to make an impression and create that sought-after viral distribution.) This might be achieved through a short video, but it might just as easily be achieved through cheaper and ultimately more effective means. For example, check out Miranda July’s clever HTML presentation to promote her short story collection No one belongs here more than you. This little site was linked to all over the blogosphere and helped July achieve real momentum behind her book. She has even been able to update it, presumably for as little investment as she made to create the first one. One wonders if she’d spent $3000 on a book trailer if she would have achieved a similar result?

Next stop: Borges

Via Maud Newton, I’ve just discovered Literature Map, a digital ‘tourist map’ of authors based on a self-adapting artificial intelligence engine that learns from the behaviour and preferences of users of the system. Type in an author name and it will display a map of other author names, spaced relative to your original selection. The closer two names are (graphically) the higher the likelihood that you’ll enjoy reading both authors. For instance, I typed in “Jeffrey Ford” and the two nearest authors displayed on the map were Jorge Luis Borges and Jonathan Safran Foer, a pretty fine trio of writers. Try it out, it’s fun!

What’s the difference between a competition and a slush pile?

Text Publishing has just announced The Text Young Adult Prize, which according to their website “aims to discover more wonderful new books for Young Adult readers, by Australian and New Zealand writers.” The winner will receive $10,000 and a publishing contract with Text.

First let me say hooray! I love young adult fiction. I’m an avid reader of it, sometime writer of it and am excited by any mechanism which might lead to more of it from Australian authors.

However, this brings up something of a puzzle, one which I’ve been pondering for a little while now. Text is just the latest in a growing list of publishers who are using competitions to find publishable manuscripts. Last month Penguin launched their Penguin Most Wanted Crime Writing Competition, also with a publishing contract for the winner (although I note there’s no mention of any prize money or advance). Last year New Holland Publishers and the NSW Writers Centre teamed up to offer the Genre Fiction Award with, you guessed it, a contract for the winner (I find it odd that there’s no mention of this award on New Holland’s website). ABC Books have been running the ABC Fiction Award for two years now. Of course, the Vogel has been running for nearly 30 years but there’s still a marked acceleration of this kind of publisher-driven initiative.

I’m not against writing competitions with publishing contracts as prizes. Provided the terms are fair and don’t disadvantage entrants, they can be fabulous opportunities for emerging writers. But, really, what’s going on here? What’s the difference between running a competition and simply opening up for unsolicited submissions?

In the case of Text, I suspect this is a confident move to build a new list of YA titles. Since Text also are happy to accept unsolicited submissions the competition is an add on, a way for them to attract the kind of manuscripts they may not have been attracting until now (although, I if they simply asked for such submissions they’d be fairly swamped within a short time of doing so)

But there may be other reasons that are not such good news for writers. Firstly, running a competition may be a way of capping the advance or not paying an advance at all. The terms and conditions of the Penguin competition don’t mention anything about an advance. Neither does the New Holland Award and in both cases there’s no prize money offered. Are they expecting to negotiate an advance via the usual methods once a winner has been chosen, or are they hoping not to pay one at all? Of those competitions that do offer prize money, the publishers can factor in a finite advance up front and if the books goes on to be very successful they’ve got a higher likelihood of earning back their investment and going on to make a profit. It takes a lot of the risk out of the equation for the publisher. It’s true that first novel advances are paltry anyway, so a fixed prize money may be to a writer’s benefit, especially where the prize seems to be quite generous (or at least adequate) such as the $10,000 offered by Text and ABC. But if the winning author has a literary agent, what are the chances they’d have been able to negotiate something better?

Secondly, a competition may be a way of insisting upon a “standard” contract. Will competition winners have the opportunity to negotiate terms of the publishing contract or will they have to accept the only contract offered? This is critical whether authors are receiving prize money or not. For the competition to be fair, it’s important for authors to be able to negotiate on any contract terms, but particularly those relating to copyright, subsidiary rights and royalties, and also any options on future manuscripts. If the publishing contract is not negotiable as part of the competition, will authors have an opportunity to read them before deciding whether its in their interest to enter?

But apart from these considerations, I’m still puzzled as to why publishers would prefer to run a competition than accept unsolicited manuscripts. What’s the difference? Do they perceive a difference in the workload and administrative resources required? I note that Text has only allowed one month between the Young Adult Award closing date and the announcement of the winner at the Melbourne Writers Festival. Surely the publishers will not give entries any greater reading time or consideration than they would to manuscripts from the slush pile? Do they believe they’ll receive more targeted, relevant or higher quality submissions through awards and competitions?

And how should authors respond? On the one hand, it’s great news, particularly when publishers accept submissions (in whatever context) when previously they had been closed to them. On the other hand, is this a gradual erosion of (the very little) power authors have to control their publishing contracts? Not that I ascribe any sinister intent to publishers running competitions, but I question the collective impact it may have on the industry. On that score, only time will tell.

Generally, when new writing awards are announced there is much celebration and back-slapping about the creation of new opportunities for writers to become published. But it’s important to delve into the detail to make sure we’re not murdering our darlings.