ELEPHANT IN ROOM: WHAT’S THE FUTURE OF BOOKS?

~WILL ANY BOOKS BE MADE OUT OF PAPER FIVE OR TEN YEARS OR IS THAT JUST WISHFUL THINKING? 

~WILL QUALITY SUFFER NOW THAT EVERYBODY ON THE PLANET CAN PUBLISH UN-VETTED EBOOKS AND OTHER CONTENT ONLINE? 

~GIVEN THE LURE OF CHEAP EBOOKS, CHEAP APPS, AND FREEBIES, WILL IT BE POSSIBLE TO MAKE A LIVING AS AN AUTHOR? 

~HOW CAN ANYBODY FIND OUR BOOKS AMIDST THE DELUGE? 

~DO KIDS LEARN MORE FROM EBOOKS OR LESS?

  

~WILL OUR SACRED LIBRARIES WHISK THEMSELVES AWAY FROM PRINT? 

 

Can’t help but wonder about such things seeing as it’s our livelihood and all, so I just did some gleaning to see where things stand. With that in mind, here are three comments typical of last year’s attitudes, plus a synopsis of seven new comments that were published just yesterday.

OLD (well, sorta)

Jeremy Greenfield, editorial director of Digital Book World – In January 2012, he noted a study that produced the following results: “Given the choice between reading e-books or print books, children prefer e-books... Children who read e-books also retain and comprehend just as much as when they read print books.”  But he did notice that kids reading books with lots of bells and whistles tended to get distracted.

WIRED - In April, they said that publishers were convinced they had to evolve and were hustling to make e-books more immersive.  They hoped that multi-media experiences would be the coming thing.

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center in New York - By June, their own study partially backed up Greenfield, showing that kids who read enhanced ebooks "recalled significantly fewer narrative details than children who read the print version of the same story.” It seems that that all those extra features really were distracting.

 

NEW (From the Washington Post)

Multiple award winning novelist Jennifer Miller says that her latest book took 7 years to write, but awards and great reviews alone weren’t enough to get noticed.  Competing with the 60,000 titles published each year is so hard lately that if your book doesn’t sell right away you’re a goner.  So she has become a marketing strategist, an entrepreneur, and a publicist rolled into one.

Publisher David Miller says the roles of various media—books, newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, and journals used to be distinct and didn’t compete with each other, which was great for their bottom lines.  But now the roles are blurred, anything can morph into a book, and everyone is competing against everyone else.

Indie Bookseller Marc LaFramboise says although it’s cheap and easy to produce e-books online, hardly any of them make a dent in the market. Promos via social media play a big role, but it’s impossible to tell why some books fall flat while others soar. One good thing? It’s cheap to put once-popular OP books and backlist titles online. Another good thing? He sells those titles on his website.

Writing teacher Richard Peabody says tons of people still want to become authors, but most of them are introverts and the necessity of marketing cries out for extroverts.

 

Book reviewer Mark Athetakis prefers books made the old fashioned way.  He likes to write notes in the margins and quickly thumb through the pages to find parts of the story he missed, and you can’t do that with a Kindle.

 

Librarian Ginnie Cooper says people are using the library more than ever to get hold of genuine books, to see programs for kids, to access ebooks online, and to take out audio books and DVD’s.

Literary Agent Raphael Sagalyn thinks books from the big publishers still drive “national conversation.”  He is deluged with submissions but says the barriers to entry are higher than ever, so ebooks are a great option (though million dollar successes are very few).  He also says that with publishers it’s all about the money and the entire thrust is “Will it sell?”

Until the cloud rolled in, the publishing world had stayed pretty much the same forever. But these days we’re rushing into unknown territory at breakneck speed, never knowing for sure what’s next. Now that everyone wants open access to content for free and science is making all things possible, can we still plan ahead intelligently?  The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.

Agents--Agents of Change?

I’m in the market for a new agent, a slightly bizarre experience for so many reasons. It feels a bit like picking your marriage partner from one of those speed dating sessions where you talk to someone for eight minutes and then shift to the left. Of course, if you hook up with an agent and it doesn’t work out, breaking up isn’t as bad as a real divorce. You do end up sharing custody, though. At least until your joint children go out of print.

So I called friends for suggestions and reviews of agents they know. Then began studying up online. I’d read through an agent’s client list, past triumphs, future wants. I’ve found several candidates I want to pursue, but a surprising number of times, a disturbing number of times, I came upon one of the following phrases:

--Submit middle-grade or YA fiction only
--Submissions of picture books are not welcome at this time
--Our current policy on picturebooks is that we do not solicit either texts or illustrators, but do represent picturebooks by authors whom we have already taken on for their older, longer work. Additionally, we are not looking for non-fiction.
--No nonfiction or poetry collections.

I don’t want to hyperbolic -- but I’m reminded of signs saying “Jews and Irish need not apply” and “Colored waiting room around back.”

I’m not entirely surprised. We all know that the books are a strange alliance of art and commerce and, lately, commerce rules the day. We also have a bit of a population trough in the picture book age group, schools and libraries are budget poor, picture books are expensive to produce in paper form and the technology to sell them as E-books is just enough behind their novel format cousins that it further suppresses the market. Nonfiction books, many of them picture books, can have the same problems. And don’t get me started about the backward notion some parents have about starting their kids on chapter books asap so they can get into Harvard.

I’m not really blaming these agents either. Some of them may have never had any interest in these genres. Fair enough. YA fiction is hot and everyone needs to make a living, and wants a good one at that. Also fair. But here’s my two cents to anyone listening.

*Trends change, populations ebb and flow. It pays to stay flexible.

*There will always be younger kids in greater and fewer numbers. There will always be schools and libraries. There will always be the need to learn about the world and everything in it. It pays to stay flexible. Furthermore, for agents and publishers who can attract quality voices to nonfiction to turn their backs upon it is a disservice not only to children but to our society as a whole.

*When technology changes, its costs tumble, then it will be our turn to shine. Affordable picture e-books will be widely seen in their full double-page spread glory. Nonfiction changes will be stratospheric with books about butterflies clicking onto caterpillars timelapsing quickly into monarchs and a bio of Martin Luther King building up to the “I Have a Dream” speech. Ah, the cyber-sidebars and back matter. And the possibility of a 39 Clues-type book with mysteries that teach kids who are reading/playing them everything from history to forensic science. Hence, it pays to stay flexible

*Many agents wrote on their wish list that they were looking for someone who will reinvent their genre. Well, that doesn’t just happen in dystopian fiction. Vision and innovation can be anywhere—and, when it happens, the market responds. Look at Shaun Tan or ABC3D by Marion Bataille. And so, it pays to stay flexible.

*The market also responds when anyone talented has a great take on a great idea—in any genre.

Guess what? It pays to stay flexible.