Disqus - Latest Comments for softskull

Re: Apps Are The Future Of Content Distribution - mediabistro.com: MobileAppsToday

Richard Nash — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 10:55:29 -0000

Sadly, book publishers don't seem to spend much time checking out blogs like this, but yes, it should also be the case that apps could be downloading, gasp, books. Though it is a low priority for Apple, and also for Google, who seems to prefer the books up in the cloud...

Re: Soft Skull/Counterpoint Press Reports Best Year Ever - mediabistro.com: GalleyCat

Richard Nash — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 12:35:55 -0000

Oh just to be clear, the numbers refer solely to the Soft Skull imprint—since the Counterpoint operation overall just had its first full year of business, there wouldn't be anyway for it to meaningfully have its best year ever!

Re: Harvard Biz Prof: Publishing Can't Change - mediabistro.com: GalleyCat

Richard Nash — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 19:23:28 -0000

Absolutely. Elberse has done precisely what she believes Anderson has done, which is form a thesis, take a pile of complex data, shape it to suit thesis, and illustrate it with some examples. However her piece is far more problematic because she understands the culture she describes so poorly. (Whereas Anderson has stronger intuitions about the culture he analyzes.) Your agent example is one instance of her poor grasp, the fact that every publisher will have a good year in this model, or even two, as has the Grand Central/Little Brown nexus, but they'll all have bad years too, is a second instance. Just like mutual funds. The publisher that thinks she can win through a string of blockbusters is just like the stock picker who claims she can beat the market. Over the long run, it has never happened and never will. But the salary and the bonuses are nice while they last...

Re: How To Bring Your Book To Book Clubs - mediabistro.com: GalleyCat

Richard Nash — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 18:14:31 -0000

One can also use the Good Reads discussion feature to create online discussion groups, eg the one my author created for his book All About Lulu: http://www.goodreads.com/gr...

Re: Publishers Look to Obama to Save Their Jobs - mediabistro.com: GalleyCat

Richard Nash — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 16:49:41 -0000

I cannot think of any industry in the country, other than liberal college professors in the social sciences looking for Administration jobs, who think their industry will be healthier if Barack wins. Believe me, I want him to win, but his victory will not make book buyers out of non-book buyers. Anyone for whom Barack is their primary tool for increasing book sales (other than his editors) should find another industry to be operating in... He will be a magnificent president, bu the is not our new bicycle.

Re: mediabistro.com: GalleyCat

Richard Nash — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 13:13:25 -0000

Well, now I'm on a roll, let me add that I agree with your commenter in terms of book-as-file for the vast majority of readers, but parallel to that will be book as fetish object, to be revered, displayed, fawned over, collected etc. The $40, $75, $100, $300 limited edition. One of the biggest hassles with books is that the price points $13-$27 really are not good price points if you look at retail capitalism. Books need to be both much cheaper and much more expensive, and the cheap books need to be easy to acquire, and the expensive ones need to be hard. Exclusive.

Both formats incidentally lend themselves to a subscrip0tion model—Powell's has already syarted that with Indiespensible limited edition subscription, where they sold 250 copies of Lydia Millet's How the Dead Dream in 6 hours, and 350 of Hilary Jordan's Mudbound in even less than that.

As regards the advance...well, as digitally-derived revenue increases, publishing will become much less capital intensive—less capital needed to find economies of scale in physical printing and distribution and to absorb the cash flow hits from returns. Perhaps that will just take publishers completely out of the game of being the primary provider of capital in the book business?

One last thought—one could imagine, in these evolving scenarios, large agencies in fact taking on the role of provider of capital in relation to established authors. They could raise money a la Bowie bonds against the backlist revenue and then pay the author a lump sum, likely for a broad deal akin to that Madonna did with LiveNation, where the agent would manage the speaker's bureau, the magazine articles, the book deals, the film and audio deals, etc...

Re: mediabistro.com: GalleyCat

Richard Nash — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 01:11:54 -0000

It really wouldn't be very hard since they're already doing it in children's books, they're already doing it providing client distribution services and they're already doing it in sales. The corporate publishers have to convert themselves into distributors akin to PGW except that they also provide editorial, design and production services, and they provide office space and human resources support. But editorial and and marketing/publicity gets disaggregated into multiple imprints. Each has a budget, anyone can get fired for not staying within budget or not have a plausible explanation as to why budget will be made and then some in the subsequent fiscal year.

To make this work there would be one critical adjustment to make, which is to ignore those agents who play publisher egos off one another and convince them when they've overpaid for yet another debut novel that they've "won," that they "beat" the other house. However, I believe that having the smaller imprints will render more transparent those who know how to reach an audience, and be profitable, compared to those who just know how to "win" auctions. As a result, kudos will go to those folks who are reaching their audiences, rather than to the editor whose strengths lie in talking the suits into writing big checks.

Corporate publishers have the talent, the sales force, the publicists, the management information systems, they just need to realize that while things are not yet fucked in the publishing business and while it might seem for each senior management person that they've more to lose by rocking the boat than by holding tight, you don't want to be trying to turn the aircraft carrier into the flotilla of destroyers while sales are down 10% like in the music business and you're getting strafed from above, forgive the militaristic metaphor.