Books aren’t dead yet

                               Self-publishing fans and the tech-obsessed keep getting it wrong: Big authors want to be in print -- and bookstores

By Laura Miller - Salon

EnlargeStephen King (Credit: Reuters/Mike Segar)

Without a doubt, book publishing is an industry in a state of flux, but even the nature of the flux is up for grabs. Take a recent example of the traditional tech-journalism take on the situation, an article by Evan Hughes for Wired magazine, titled “Book Publishers Scramble to Rewrite Their Future.” The facts in the story are indisputable, but the interpretation? Not so much.

The news peg is the success of a self-published series of post-apocalyptic science fiction novels, “Wool,” by Hugh Howie. Available as e-books and print books from Amazon, the series became a hit, and Howie recently sold print-only rights to a New York publisher, Simon & Schuster. Print-only because Howie and his agent determined that they were making plenty of money selling the e-books on their own.
Wired characterizes this as a “huge concession” on the part of Simon & Schuster, and in one sense it is: The publisher won’t receive any e-book revenue, and it is in e-book format that “Wool” has seen its success so far. On the other hand, “Wool” is not only already very popular among the genre fans who made it an e-book bestseller, it’s also an object of curiosity for the many otherwise-uninterested people captivated by Howie rags-to-riches story in the Wall Street Journal. (By far the best-selling e-book by self-publishing exemplar John Locke is not one of his thrillers, but “How I Sold One Million E-Books.”)

Yes, it’s notable that Simon & Schuster shelled out a six-figure advance for this deal, but publishers have been known to offer similar advances for books that they only hope will find a large audience. “Wool” is that rare thing in book publishing, a known quantity, and a series on top of that, so there are multiple titles to sell. There is surely a sizable untapped market for print editions of “Wool” because e-books remain only 25 percent of the book market.

If print could talk, it would surely be telling the world, Mark Twain-style, that reports of its demise have been greatly exaggerated. The market for e-books grew exponentially after Amazon introduced the Kindle, and it’s still one of the most fascinating and unpredictable sectors of a once hidebound industry. But the early-adapter boom is showing signs of flagging and the growth of the e-book market appears to be leveling out. E-books are definitely here to stay, but it seems that many, many readers — a threefold majority, in fact — still prefer print.

That’s not, however, an angle the Wired piece pursues. Granted, Wired, like tech pundits in general, pushes a party line of impending, technology-driven, cataclysmic change; it’s an excellent way to sell your services as a guru to business communities after you’ve freaked them out with your predictions. There’s also a strong presence on the Internet of writers who are pissed off at publishers for rejecting their books or, having published them, failed to make a success of them. According to this faction, publishers are (or should be) terrified at the prospect of the recent boom in self-publishing.

On both parts — Wired and the pissed-off authors — this strikes me as wishful thinking. New self-publishing enterprises are a godsend for traditional publishers because they can take much of the uncertainty out of signing a new author. By the time a self-published author has made a success of his or her book, all the hard stuff is done, not just writing the manuscript but editing and the all-important marketing. Instead of investing their money in unknown authors, then collaborating to make their books better and find them an audience, publishers can swoop in and pluck the juiciest fruits at the moment of maximum ripeness. As Hughes points out, that’s exactly what happened with erotica blockbuster E.L. James.

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