Kindle 3 by kodomut, via Flickr

“Problem is, this is too little, too late and will have almost no effect on Amazon and Apple. These companies are far too popular (and, by the majority of customers, well loved) for the removal of DRM to make a difference. Did Apple’s removal of DRM from songs on iTunes have much of an impact on either Apple or the competition? No. Did the fact that Amazon came into the MP3 market with DRM-free music right from the start torpedo iTunes? No.”

–Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, ZDNet

Repeat after me: DRM will not save publishers; neither using it, nor dropping it.

Based on the steady increase in ebook sales over the past few years, it’s reasonable to conclude that the average reader doesn’t really care too much about DRM. They’re apparently bigger fans of the platforms Amazon, B&N, and to a lesser degree, Apple, have built to purchase and read ebooks, and the ebooks themselves don’t have the same emotional connection as those they buy in print to keep on bookshelves. As such, legitimately or not, from the consumers’ perspective, “lock-in” isn’t the factor many think it is, or desire it to be.

More importantly, though, beyond the shiny gadgets and apps, readers are fans of authors and genres (and, sometimes, even publishers), and while selection varies amongst the major e-tailers (especially Apple), there’s an interesting comparison to video games that I’ve been mulling over for a while now. It’s an imperfect but workable analogy, where the big hits are almost always cross-platform (including PC and, increasingly, mobile), while the exclusives tend to align with each platform’s respective strengths and core audiences (especially mobile).

In console gaming, exclusive first-party titles are often among the perennial best-sellers (especially on Nintendo’s platforms),  while third-party games fight it out for gamers’ limited time, attention, and disposable income. The biggest sellers often spawn successful franchises and spin-offs, but even more frequently, a ton of copycat, rip-off shovelware, similar to the mobile space where, pre-KDP, Apple successfully leveled the playing field for independent game developers and the app store has been flooded with me-too apps.

In PC gaming there’s a bit of a twist, where Valve’s Steam platform is effectively the Kindle, DRM included, though, as I understand it, lacking Amazon’s strongarm tactics, perhaps because Valve was first a successful “traditional” game publisher, including some extremely popular franchises like Half-Life and Portal.

I think that you either embrace the new approaches or you go away. I mean Sega and Atari and lots of other, you know, Vectrex, Commodore, you either figure out how to move forward or you get left behind and I don’t think it’s any different. As soon as Valve stops doing interesting, innovative work we’re gonna be left behind and we’ve all been around long enough in the game industry to know that and you have to be pretty myopic not to realize that just because something used to work a certain way there’s absolutely no reason for them to expect that that’s going to be the tickets to being successful in subsequent iterations.

–Gabe Newell, co-founder and managing director, Valve

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: AMAZON WINS?

In publishing, Amazon’s Kindle is the only “platform” currently in a position to challenge its “third party developers” (aka, traditional publishers) for content in any significant way, adding their own imprints to the flood of “independent” self-publishers who arguably helped drive the Kindle platform to its current dominant position. B&N doesn’t have the resources to compete on that front, and Apple clearly lacks the interest.

It’s not a huge stretch to posit Amazon as the reverse-Valve of the ebook world, constantly pushing the envelope in unexpected ways, aggressively experimenting with pricing, developing a core of popular franchises, while staying focused on delivering and optimizing the best consumer experience.

[NOTE: All of those links go to examples of what Valve is doing, and each one has an Amazon equivalent, to varying degrees, as well as offering lessons to traditional publishers on how to compete. I'll leave the "What Publishers Can Learn From Valve..." post to someone else.]

Amazon has a potent mix in its diversified arsenal that presents an unenviable challenge to traditional publishers who don’t have their own platform to compete with them (a la Steam), and who have yet to figure out how to balance the digital needs of their brick-and-mortar partners (independent booksellers and libraries) with the powerful demands Amazon feels entitled to put forward.

At least three major publishers seem to be banking on the still-delayed launch of Bookish, but if it doesn’t include a robust inventory of content, competitively priced, with a user-friendly, cross-platform distribution strategy AT LAUNCH, it’s likely as DOA as I predicted last summer.

Now, the $100,000 question is: If Amazon has truly won this round (and I think they have), does that automatically mean traditional publishers have lost the fight? I don’t think so, but how they choose to get off the mat this time can’t be related to DRM, pricing schemes, or rope-a-doping the “traditional” business model.

Bookish might ultimately be a wild roundhouse that misses and leaves them open for a body blow, but I believe the underlying desire to connect directly with readers and provide them with a valuable service is the right strategy. Finding the combination that works, though, is going to be the tricky part, and the recent charges of collusion, legitimate or not, are only going to make the need to move towards aggressive co-opetition even harder to pull off.

No Public Access by fuzzcaminski, via Flickr

From HarperCollins to Penguin to Random House, libraries have been caught in the ebook crossfire and the collateral damage hasn’t been pretty. While I understand publishers’ concerns about the impact library lending of ebooks might have on sales, what I don’t understand is putting the onus for disproving that speculative notion on libraries’ plates.

“We are requesting data that libraries can share about their patrons’ borrowing patterns that over time will better enable us to establish mutually workable pricing levels that will best serve the overall e-book ecosystem.”

–Stuart Applebaum, Random House

Translation: Prove to us that lending doesn’t negatively impact sales. (Because, honestly, we don’t have a clue.)

Two years after “standing up” to Amazon by handing Apple instant market share in the ebook space, and jumping through hoops to supply every other harebrained ebook startup with shoddily formatted content, with nary a thought given to device interoperability nor optimal user experiences, and in the wake of the #2 domestic book retailer finally going bankrupt, libraries have seemingly become the one kid on the playground publishers think they can bully into submission.

In an age where physical retail shelf space is shrinking everyday, and virtual shelf space is growing exponentially, like a black hole, why would you go out of your way to alienate arguably the most loyal and dependable partners you have?

These organizations, wildly irrational in economic terms and massively underwritten by public resources, acquire the world’s literature and then make it continually available, without discrimination, through free circulation. Through libraries, we optimistically assert that knowledge uplifts us all, and that our culture becomes richer when it is shared. The famous inscription on the main branch of the Boston Public Library, “FREE TO ALL,” is true in the instance, but only because we all make contributions towards its realization.

–Defining “Library,” Peter Brantley

Restricting libraries’ access to ebooks, either outright or via licensing and pricing schemes, is effectively spitting on the idea that spreading knowledge is a good thing (also called “marketing” in some circles), and less surprisingly, it’s putting short-term tactics ahead of long-term strategy. Of course, that’s a philosophical argument that’s not worth having when library budgets are being slashed left and right, and school librarians have to do petition drives to demonstrate their value to the powers that be. Publishers aren’t operating in a vacuum.

PULL THE PLUG?

Since publishers are so concerned with the “perpetuity of lending and simultaneity of availability” of their ebooks, I have to wonder if libraries shouldn’t just help them out and hit the STOP button themselves?

Stop buying ebooks across the board, at any price, under any terms. Let publishers fight it out with Amazon, and when the dust finally settles (it will) and a viable business model appears (maybe), begin negotiating anew, on solid ground, with whomever’s left standing.

In the meantime, libraries can redirect those precious resources and finances being flagged for ebooks towards more tangible initiatives in their respective communities.

Surely every library has a service gap or three to fill that’s more valuable than overpaying for temporary licenses to files and platforms they don’t own, that may or may not work on their patrons’ devices of choice, and whose pricing can fluctuate more wildly than that of crude oil and Netflix stock.

Is it the belief that without ebooks, libraries will seem irrelevant and antiquated? Should every library be expected to offer the same range of services as, say, NYPL?

My little local library doesn’t currently offer ebooks, but they have a decent children’s library and a variety of useful services that I’d argue are far more valuable to our community, and improving any of those things would rank much higher on my list than ebooks.

NJ librarian (and 2010 Library Journal Mover & Shaker) Andy Woodworth has some great suggestions for “Alternative Uses for the Pesky eBook Budget,” including my favorite:

Build Something Cool! Like a Digital Media Lab. Or a recording studio. Perhaps not those things specifically, but something that reflects the needs of the community on a larger scale. These two examples represent something that people generally don’t have in their own homes but are useful for their interests or hobbies. It doesn’t have to be elaborate; it just has to serve a need that currently isn’t being met.

As publishers and libraries seek to reinvent themselves for the digital age, the opportunities are so much bigger than ebooks, and it kills me to see the energy, passion, and resources that are being spent focusing on such a narrow piece of the big picture.

With all that’s possible, is this really the best we can do?

Book^2 Camp: NYC 2012

The latest edition of Book^2 Camp, a publishing and technology “unconference,”  took place yesterday, and while it lacked the star power of last year’s Margaret Atwood appearance, it was another worthwhile Sunday afternoon full of thoughtful conversations about the future of publishing.

Three quick takeaways.

1) STOP IT WITH THE NEW SHINY!!!!

#book2 Social reading, marketing = two very diff things. Former needs to be enabled but not feel obligatory; latter can't be intrusive.

February 12, 2012 1:50 pm via HootSuiteReplyRetweetFavorite

@glecharles

Guy L. Gonzalez

Seriously, people; stop the madness. Stop trying to recreate the wheel; stop trying to build things for which there is no demand; and please stop trying to force “social” into the reading experience!

Someone noted that there were few references to platforms like Copia, Small Demons and Pinterest throughout the day, and there’s a good reason for that: none have proven themselves to be more than technological curiosities for which there is little to no consumer demand. Meanwhile, Goodreads is approaching 7 million members — READERS OF BOOKS!!!! — and people are still wondering how publishers can build conversations around their books and connect with their readers?!?! #cmonson

2) THINK BEYOND THE BOOK

I pitched and facilitated a session on (re)Building the Perfect Business Model, starting with the premise that it has to allow for relationships with booksellers, libraries, and direct engagement with readers, and account for a royalty-based system, not just work-for-hire. (Few were comfortable with the idea of turning authors into straight freelancers.) Beyond that, it was a free-for-all discussion that offered a few directional signals if not one solid model we could all agree on. Among the key pieces that seemed to have consensus was the need to publish fewer books, a point perfectly highlighted by a Big Six VP whose group publishes ~10 books/month but offered a “no comment” on what kind of marketing support that 10th book gets.

Another critical though controversial piece was thinking beyond the book, creating ancillary products and related experiences, like webinars, tours, events, etc. Someone made the great point that, instead of complaining about B&N’s devoting more shelf space to toys & games, a savvy publisher should be mining their list for opportunities to launch (not license, LAUNCH) a related toy and/or merchandise line. These ideas were surprisingly (or not) met with some resistance along the lines of “that’s not our skill set,” to which the quick answer was hire someone with those skills!

Plenty of publishers have figured out business models that extend beyond selling books in bookstores, physical and virtual, and Harlequin, Osprey, TOR, and F+W Media were all referenced as examples. Of course, I threw in The Atlantic, partly to illustrate that it’s not just an opportunity for genre publishers, and also to demonstrate that the skill sets DO exist in publishing.

3) REMEMBER THE FUNDAMENTALS

Publishing in the digital age isn’t a zero-sum game. For some books, the traditional marketing toolkit of print ads, “professional” reviews and co-op promotions can still move the needle on sales. For others, a more targeted approach is needed, something that digital channels excel at. One marketer noted how five years ago she would dismiss book bloggers, and now they represent a key channel for reviews that can have greater impact than the NY Times, DEPENDING ON THE BOOK.

Of course, the best takeaways were the various conversations I had with people, especially outside of specific sessions. Book^2 Camp offers a unique experience that the big conferences can’t really match due to their size and structure: the ability to engage with a variety of smart people within the main program (as opposed to the “sage on the stage” model and hallway conversations), and the opportunity to speak openly and honestly about business challenges simply can’t be overstated.

At the end of the day, an unconference is what you make of it, and as far as I’m concerned, yesterday was time well spent.

Other #Book2 Posts:

• Dan Blank has a good post that breaks down the “what,” complete with pictures.
• Mt. Vernon librarian Nishan Stepak shares his thoughts.
• Delabarre Publishing’s Jeff Rutherford covered three sessions I didn’t attend.
• Patti Henderson offers up a Canadian perspective.
• Babette Ross has words and pictures, too.
• JJ Madden picked up on the question of authors’ rights.

I’ll add others as I find them. If you attended, let me know your takeaways in the comments.

PUSH By Steve Snodgrass via Flickr

Transition, transformation, disruption, disintermediation… whichever word you prefer, the publishing industry is undergoing a massive shift that’s being driven by the Internet, with the news and magazine sides arguably a bit further ahead of the curve than the book side, for better or worse, though few major players among them are seeing any light at the end of the tunnel.

The Atlantic is one of my favorite examples that I’ve cited often, and 2011 was the second great year in a row for the “legacy” brand that went all-in on a digital-first strategy in 2007 and are now reaping the rewards that include growth on the print side of the business.

“We decided to prioritize digital over everything else. We were no longer going to be ‘The Atlantic, which happens to do digital.’ We were going to be a digital media company that also published The Atlantic magazine.”

That must have been a frightening prospect for a number of people, I suggested in a conversation with [Justin Smith, president of Atlantic Consumer Media] at The Atlantic‘s offices last month.

“It’s easier to be ‘digital first’ when your legacy business is not strong, when you have nothing to defend,” Smith explained. “At the time, all we had to defend was red ink.”

Many publishers are in a similar situation, perhaps not quite as dire as defending red ink, yet, but with each passing year the turning radius to make the shift to digital-first becomes tighter and tighter, and even more so for staff. There’s no value in being the last man standing at a publisher unable (or worse, unwilling) to make the shift, and there are few job opportunities for those “good soliders” who can’t clearly demonstrate that they have at least tried to stay ahead of the curve.

We’re in the early stages of such a shift at the day job, and having just completed annual performance reviews and reporting on our analytics from last year, I started noticing a few things that were common to the people who really GET IT.

1) Shift, don’t Drift

Stop being a passive consumer and jump in the deep end of the pool. Try everything until you’re savvy and connected enough to figure out what to ignore at a quick glance. Even if a particular medium or platform doesn’t appeal to you personally, try to understand where it fits in the big picture and who the primary and secondary audiences are. (For me, Tumblr and Pinterest fall in that category.) Launch your own website on WordPress; get on Twitter and Facebook and Google+ and LinkedIn and Goodreads. Set up a Google Analytics account and learn how to make the most of it; experiment with Google AdWords and Facebook ads. Sign up for Constant Contact or MailChimp and learn about email marketing. Get access to a smartphone, an ereader and tablet, download a few ebooks and apps, and understand what’s really happening in mobile. Don’t just rely on publishing industry rags and pundits; bookmark MarketingProfs, eMarketer, and ReadWriteWeb and understand what other industries are doing, many of which are way of ahead of the digital curve compared to publishing.

2) HTML 101

This Internet thing isn’t a fad, and it disrupts every industry it touches, no matter how mainstream or niche it might be. Don’t be that person who leaves HTML to the “digital guy,” or a junior editor or marketer; I’ve worked with too many people who did that over the years and have watched almost all of them eventually lose their jobs because their skills weren’t up-to-date. Learn the basics yourself and understand what it takes to build and manage different types of websites. Make liberal use of “Right click > View Page Source” and take a look at the guts of your favorite websites. Befriend web designers and ebook and app developers, in person or online, and learn from them. Sign up for Code Year.

3) Data is Your High-Maintenance Best Friend

“Crisitunity: Real-time data; it’s what we asked for.”
–Lou Paskalis, VP of Global Media, Content Development and Mobile Marketing, American Express

At the end of the day, the Internet is all about connections — people-to-people, people-to-information, information-to-people — and one of its byproducts is data. Metric tons of data! So much of it that we often don’t know where to start other than to place astronomical values on the companies that successfully acquire and curate it, or worse, cower in fear of them. In the digital age, there’s no need to rely solely on instinct and intuition, though both remain invaluable tools when they’re not ego-driven. Remember Einstein’s words: “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” First step, determine what’s most important to your business’ success and measure it on a regular basis. Second step, don’t just report the data, analyze it thoroughly and translate the story it’s telling you into something actionable. Third step, TAKE ACTION!

4) Develop Personal Learning Networks

You don’t know everything and you never will. Thankfully, no matter where you live or work, you are not alone. The Internet is huge and has few borders, and in every nook and cranny you’ll find a community of people with similar interests and passions and varying levels of experience. Most of those people are willing to share their insights and hard-won experiences, especially with others willing to reciprocate. No matter how experienced you are, or aren’t, be a giver not just a taker and you’ll become a valued member of your community and ultimately get more value from it.

5) Impatience is a Virtue

Stop waiting for someone else to figure it out, whatever IT might be! If you’re facing an unexplored path, attack it with vigor and dare yourself to push past your comfort level. I’m a firm believer in “it’s better to seek forgiveness than permission,” as long as your approach is informed and well conceived. Embrace mistakes, but don’t set yourself up to make dumb ones. If you’re on to something, others will take notice and eventually follow. If you’re on the wrong track, you’ll learn from it and be able to teach others from the lessons you learn. And if you work somewhere where this approach isn’t valued, focus on the first four points, update your resume accordingly, and find a better employer.

Vertical Speed Indicator by Barnaby K via Flickr

It’s a brand new year, and that means the publishing conference calendar is about to hit overload for the next several months, as pundits o’plenty will mount their soapboxes to advocate for their business models du jour, usually delivered with a not-so-subtle undertone of condescension for anything that doesn’t align with their murky view of the future… and what an incredibly myopic and uninformed view it usually is!

One of the perennial memes that will surely be flogged again and again is that of community, variously referred to as niche, genre, branding (um, no) and/or, the worst buzzword of them all, “verticalization.” I’ve been entertained over the past few years as trade publishers (and those who seek to “advise” them on how to navigate the digital shift despite having little experience outside of traditional publishing) fumble with the idea of verticals, rarely looking to their magazine counterparts who’ve been doing it for a long time and could teach them a thing or five, or the comics and gaming industries that know all about audience engagement, collaborative world building and participatory storytelling.

As anyone who’s actually worked within a “vertical” knows, whether from a niche consumer or business-to-business angle (or, heaven help them, for a non-profit organization or political campaign), just because a subset of people share a common passion doesn’t mean they’re a single-minded group that can be engaged in one templated way. Every vertical that presents a viable business opportunity is going to have its own sub-communities and overlapping layers, with some often in direct opposition to others.

Case in point, this fascinating post from 10 years ago, “When Cards Go Bad,” wherein Mark Rosewater, Head Designer of Magic: The Gathering, explains to an angry player/customer the reasoning behind the existence of “bad” cards:

To recap (or to fill in for those unwilling to read the long version):

1. By definition, some bad cards have to exist. (The most important reason.)
2. Some cards are “bad” because they aren’t meant for you.
3. Some cards are “bad” because they’re designed for a less advanced player.
4. Some cards are “bad” because the right deck for them doesn’t exist yet.
5. “Bad” cards reward the more skilled player.
6. Some players enjoy discovering good “bad” cards.
7. Some “bad” cards are simply R&D goofing up.

The entire post is a worthwhile read whether you’re into gaming* or not, but his explanation of the second point is of particular interest for those looking to ride the vertical-niche-community-branded bus:

The problem is players tend to define “bad cards” as cards that they personally see no reason to play. But certain cards aren’t meant for them in the first place. A good example would be Goblin Game from Planeshift. This card was designed as a fun, kooky card for social players who enjoy things like Unglued. (As a quick aside I should point out that despite rumors Goblin Game was not from Unglued II.) It upset a number of serious players. Because, to them, it was a waste of cardboard…

One of Magic’s strengths is that it is many things to many people. Its adaptability allows each gamer to shift the game to his or her liking. The downside to this cool aspect of the game is that players have to realize that they will open up cards designed for other types of players.

Magic: The Gathering is about as niche it gets, and even within that niche, they have to grapple with the fact that “it is many things to many people,” and they recognize that as a strength, not a weakness. Especially interesting is that, despite celebrating its 20th anniversary next year, MtG has 12 million players and is growing:

That growth has come in two ways: the player base has grown by over 80% during that period [2008-2011], and per player spending has grown by 16%…

“For the more than 12 million players around the world, Magic is more than just a product and more than just a game, it’s a lifestyle,” he said.  “The average tenure of the Magic consumer is over eight years.  And the more engaged the Magic consumer becomes in brand the more value they are to us as a business, as we migrate them toward successively deeper levels of engagement with complementary analog and digital experiences.”

Stop.

Read those two paragraphs again, and ask yourself how many “traditional” OR “new media” publishers you can name that can make a similar statement?

A 20-year-old “legacy” trading card game that reaches 12 million people (16 to 35-year-olds, predominantly male high school or college students; aka, those guys who supposedly don’t read books), has successfully managed the digital transition and is growing, and whose head designer has been writing a weekly online column and engaging directly with fans for ten years?!?

When’s the last time you saw Mark Rosewater speak at a publishing conference? Or anyone from Wizards of the Coast for that matter? And don’t get it twisted, Wizards of the Coast is just as much a “publisher” as Random House, Macmillan, et al., and far more diversified than most.

“Verticalization” isn’t a panacea; it’s just a silly buzzword for another way of doing business, one that’s neither better than its alternatives nor a guarantor of success. In fact, one could easily argue that “going vertical” is actually much more challenging than going horizontal, as the latter is often more amenable to appealing to the lowest common denominator.

Kind of like most general consumer magazines and publishing pundits.

/meh

*On gaming: I’m not an MtG player, though I have recently become obsessed with PoxNora, a collectible, turn-based, tactical, online fantasy game that, besides being fun to play, has totally flipped the script on my ownership vs. access bias. I found Rosewater’s post via PoxNora’s forums, in the midst of an interesting debate over its mix of good and “bad” runes (cards). You want to see what a passionate community looks like in action, spend some time poking around in there and then ask yourself if you’re ready to “go vertical.”

Seth Godin Rides A Unicorn by zoomar via Flickr

Digital goods and manifestos in book form make it easier to spread complex ideas. It’s long frustrated me that a blog post can reach 100 times as many people as a book, but can’t deliver the nuance a book can. The Domino Project is organized around a fundamentally different model of virality, one that allows authors to directly reach people who can use the ideas we’re writing about.

–Seth Godin, December 8, 2010

Was it really just twelve months ago that Seth Godin boldly launched The Domino Project, his purportedly innovative publishing partnership with Amazon that was going to ride the coattails of the Internet and the Kindle, eliminate the middleman (O RLY?!!), and “remap” the “foundational principles” upon which trade publishing was built?

Has it really been only nine months since The Domino Project’s first release, Poke the Box, a disappointing retread of his traditionally published and far superior Tribes?

Did any of the 12 books he published offer truly complex ideas, go viral in any demonstrable way, or introduce a viable new business model for trade publishing?

And yet, not quite one year to the day it was announced, Godin is shutting The Domino Project down, offering the awkward explanation that “it was a project, not a lifelong commitment to being a publisher of books,” instead of, perhaps, admitting that publishing is harder than it looks if you want to swim at the deep end of the trade pool in the middle of a dramatic transition, as he obliquely acknowledges in many of his noteworthy takeaways, especially this one:

The ebook marketing platform is in its technical infancy. There are so many components that need to be built, that will. Ebooks are way too hard to give as gifts and to share. Too hard to integrate into social media. And the ebook reader is a lousy platform for discovery and promotion of new titles (what a missed chance). All that will happen, the road map is there, but it’s going to take commitment from Apple, B&N and Amazon.

–Seth Godin, November 29, 2011

Ironically, most of his takeaways are things that weren’t unknown to anyone paying attention a year ago, including the value of an email list; the importance of an author’s platform; the increasingly out-of-whack signal:noise ratio in the market; print as premium product; the power of free promotions combined with targeted marketing; and, perhaps the most obvious, ebooks have a long way to go before they replace print.

Credit where due, though, while not nearly as humble as Richard Nash’s candid take on Cursor’s shortcomings, Godin does a nice job of offering highlights, and lowlights, of each of The Domino Project’s books at Squidoo, including the interesting explanation of his disappointment in We Are All Weird: ”This one hit the bestseller list the first day (I think it went to #9 overall) but it ultimately disappointed me. The problem, I think, was our lack of aggressive outbound promotion. We alerted my blog readers and readers of the Domino blog, but I didn’t hit the road, didn’t do a lot of virtual promotion, didn’t push.”

Ebooks aren’t magic; having a platform doesn’t mean you don’t have to do the work; and, most importantly, in the digital era, distribution is the easy part. It’s also a part that Godin took a calculated gamble on by limiting himself to Amazon and the Kindle platform, and it will be very interesting to see where he goes for his next book after so boldly proclaiming he was done with traditional publishing last summer.

For the second time.

I should note that I generally like and respect Godin, mostly when he sticks to his knitting and focuses on permission marketing, but I think we can safely add The Domino Project to the ever-growing list of wannabe disruptors who get tons of hype only to fade away into bit players or complete irrelevance.

“We are not anywhere near the digital future yet with comics. There is so much exciting ground to be staked out!”

Alex de Campi

For someone known for pushing boundaries, Alex de Campi‘s bio is rather understated, simply noting that she has “written creator-owned graphic novels for IDW, Tokyopop, and Humanoïdes (in France), plus stories for Dark Horse and an issue of Batman that DC has yet to publish. Her music videos for acts as diverse as Amanda Palmer, Black Francis, Los Campesinos!, Art Brut and the Puppini Sisters have been shown everywhere from SXSW to onedotzero.”

What I’ve always appreciated about de Campi is that she unapologetically embodies the “Make the F***ing Comics” spirit, and her latest graphic novel, ASHES, has garnered some industry attention for her innovative use of Kickstarter, where she is not simply looking to fund the graphic novel to help “support [co-creator and artist] Jimmy while he draws it, and pay the printers to make the nice hardbound edition,” but also offering a unique deal specifically for retailers, and (until Kickstarter asked her to not do so) soliciting the trade and film rights for the project, too.

I’d been hearing a lot about Kickstarter over the past year, but it wasn’t until two months ago that I took the plunge, backing two projects by creators whose work I’d previously enjoyed — Eddie Wright’s Tyranny of the Muse and Tobias Buckell’s The Apocalypse Ocean. The former is a graphic novel adaptation of a great self-published novel, Broken Bulbs; the latter, the self-published sequel to the excellent, traditionally published Xenowealth series; both were successfully funded.

ASHES is the next Kickstarter project I plan to back, and to help promote it, I asked Alex if she’d do a short interview, and not surprisingly, her answers were insightful and provocative.

GLG: How has the comics industry changed, for better or worse, since the publication of SMOKE in 2005, and how have your feelings about it changed?

AdC: The comics industry hasn’t changed that much. The economy’s changed, so the appetite for risk from publishers has hit rock bottom and begun to dig. Otherwise, mainstream comics are a buck more expensive and have two pages less content; there are still (riddle me this, Batman!) a majority of female editors but almost no women writers or artists on mainstream books. The writing of female, LGBTQ and minority characters is still kinda cringemaking as they’re still mainly penned by straight white guys…. but… but… now there’s Kickstarter. And now there’s digital self-publishing, without having to front up a crapload of money to pay a printer. See, lots of people love comics. Lots of people make comics. Most of us aren’t included in the mainstream. Now with our own books, we can reach a far broader audience than capes comics or art/autobiographical comics can.

The economy stuff has meant there is even more of a gap in comics publishing for what I do, and for what people like Dan Goldman and, hell, Alan Moore do: intelligent hybrids of genre and literary. The genre publishers want licenced properties or proven hits, and the literary publishers get *extremely* sniffy about “genre”, like it would give them the clap or something to touch a book that is in colour and doesn’t feature a straight white hipster’s relationship troubles (or: orientalised versions of this subject). So, as they say on the tube platform, “mind the gap”. There are a lot of us who are very good at what we do in that gap, and we are all on Kickstarter raising a shit-ton of money to make our books. When you raise money on Kickstarter, it is because people believe in your book so much they are willing to buy it before it is finished. Doesn’t that suggest to you there is a market for our books? Golly, I dunno.

GLG: You have a couple of notable digital comics projects under your belt already with SMOKE and VALENTINE, the latter of which was “born digital” and made the longlist last year for the inaugural Publishing Innovation Awards. What are some of the key differences in your creative process when working print-first vs. digital-first? Do you have a preference?

AdC: You know, that’s like saying, do you prefer playing the blues, or do you like new wave. I like playing both. Both are fun. Certain books feel like they should be in certain formats. Valentine was really episodic and suspenseful, and was a no-brainer as a serialised digital-first book. But then it’s nice to go back to the page, and organise panel numbers and page turns to speed up the reader and slow her down again. Ashes has stuff that involves actual physical mediums, like paint, and collage, so it would never really be right for digital-first… but we are making it smaller, so it reads really well on digital.

I never feel like I reached my full potential on digital-first, though, because Valentine was self-funded and, of course, being one of the first to be out there, we really didn’t get stampeded with offers of support and help. We only got download numbers in the hundred thousands, which I guess wasn’t enough. [Editor's Note: That's insane!] There was so much further we wanted to take Valentine — clickthroughs to sketch art; to more information on historic background/influences/notes; maybe looped, videogame-style music; some simple looped animation (snow, smoke, fire); better sharing capabilities, etc.

But I’m a writer, not a coder. We are not anywhere near the digital future yet with comics. There is so much exciting ground to be staked out! We just need a new publisher, or a collective of coders, comic writers, and artists. I think the latter is more likely than the former.

GLG: Why Kickstarter for ASHES? Why not publish it via Image Comics or Dark Horse, or go digital-first like VALENTINE?

AdC: Ah, here you are conflating two things: PUBLISHING a book, and GETTING A BOOK MADE. Two separate worlds that, strangely, do not intersect in the Bizarroverse of indie comix. We can publish the book, sure. Four different publishers queued up for it. But none of them pay an advance, and 3 out of 4 wanted 50% of the rights (non-negotiable!) for the privilege of calling up the printer. Publishing schmublishing.

What I need (and hence the Kickstarter) is to support my wonderful artist for the 300-odd days it’s going to take him to draw, ink, colour (in some cases paint) and letter the book. No publisher does that, in comics. They used to… that’s how things like Watchmen got made. Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons ALSO needed to eat and pay rent and stuff. We don’t just magic this out of thin air. (Well, Alan might.)

On Ashes, Jimmy and I are splitting ownership 50/50, but you can’t eat ownership, or pay rent with it. It’s entirely possible to write a novel on evenings and weekends. Heck, I wrote the Ashes script in just such a way and theoretically I am writing the Margaret the Damned (my next book) script that way too (but in reality I am spending 4-6 hours a day marketing the Kickstarter campaign). But! It is NOT possible to DRAW a book like that. Well, it is, if you want to get to know the concept of “eternity”.

Comics are an extremely costly and labour intensive entertainment form to produce — and that’s why most prose genre publishers steer clear of them. OMG so spendy! Yes, we know. Tony Harris raised $60k for his Roundeye For Love graphic novel on Kickstarter so he could devote a year or two to it. We are raising $27k to pay for nearly a year of Jimmy’s time ($15k) and printer fees/kickstarter fees ($12k). Jimmy’s wage is $60 a page, about 10% of what this would cost to produce at DC or Marvel. But still, he needs that to eat. No publishers give that money. So we raise it ourselves. And then somebody comes along and wants 50% of the rights to “publish” us? Seriously, eat me.

Unscientific analysis from Ashes: people who want digital-only: 7. People who will pay 2x as much for digital and print bundle: 155.

November 3, 2011 5:43 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@alexdecampi

alexdecampi

GLG: You noted on Twitter yesterday the disparity between those funding ASHES at the digital-only level ($15) vs. the more expensive limited edition hardcover ($30). Why do you think that is, and does it surprise you?

AdC: I think there’s a variety of reasons. People want to support, of course. And it’s nice to have an object, especially a numbered, limited-edition object. Mass trades, meh. I think they can be replaced by the digital experience. But a really lovely exclusive object, that’s nice to have as well as the digital experience. I actually learned that from lots of bands, who have long ago pioneered the “exclusive numbered coloured vinyl release plus digital download” road.

There is also the fact that a lot of comics people aren’t on digital yet. They still like reading books without a screen. And $30 isn’t that much for a 250-page hardback graphic novel. I think there are about six major reasons why people are skewing towards the $30 and $60 purchases that include a printed book, rather than the $15 digital-only pledge. I also think that bundles may be a real future trend — Marvel has been offering free digital copies of one of their Spider-Man titles (apologies, I can’t remember which one, there are so many) with hard-copy purchase, and they’ve sold in the hundred thousands. [Editor's Note: I think you're referring to Avenging Spider-Man?]

What if a print publisher gave an ePub download code with purchase of the same hardback? And the EULA was nothing more than as the child sang to St Augustine — “tolle, legge” — “take, read”? You have your hardback at home, and you can pop back in and read more chapters on the bus or while at work. Wouldn’t that be awesome? Please tell me this is already happening. I bet someone is doing it. It makes sense.

GLG: You were initially offering trade rights and film rights as reward levels but Kickstarter asked you not to do that and you’ve since removed them. Have you gotten any nibbles, before or after, and why did you opt to include them in the first place rather than go through an agent?

AdC: We have gotten nibbles! And actually an agent is involved: my wonderful and incredibly patient literary agent, Ethan Ellenberg, who normally deals with far larger fry than me. If people nibble, we then pass them to The Man With the Plan, and Ethan sorts it out. We hope to have a few announcements in the coming month about rights deals.

The thing is, there are no comics agents. Creators go direct to publishers. Ethan is a SF/F agent, and is interested in me because I push the boundaries of publishing, and what I do has a big genre SF/F element. There are a TON of comics-to-film agents. I’ve been represented by several of them. You know, just because you say you’re an agent, doesn’t mean you’re good at your job. And sadly I’m not a big enough cheese to attract the attention of the three or so *great* comics-to-film agents.

We do have a really innovative retailer plan, and are one of the first (if not the first) to specifically work with comics retail shops via Kickstarter. Comic shops are not sale or return — it’s just straight sale — so they’re actually MUCH more up for this sort of thing than, say, an indie bookstore, which will just bitch about not being able to return unsold books. Don’t get in my face about indie bookstores now, a friend is actually trying this with some amazing authors, and that is what indie bookstores are saying. Whinge, whinge, discount. Whinge, whinge, returning. Fiddle, fiddle, Roman burning.

GLG: Besides hitting your funding goal, how will you define success for ASHES?

AdC: Honestly, at this point, I feel like I’m a broken record. Once we hit our funding goal and I can stop hassling everybody all the time to buy our book — and I can just go back to being a writer, which is all I ever wanted to be — then that will be success. The critical reception when the book comes out, well, it is what it is. Comic books take so long to come out after they are written, it’s like people are commenting on last year’s dress anyway.

GLG: Bonus Q! What can you tell us about the issue of Batman you wrote that DC has yet to publish?

AdC: Oh, lordy. That was so long ago… 2007? I was emailed by a junior editor at DC tasked with bringing in new talent, and asked if I would write an issue of Batman: Confidential — a series which I am not sure still exists [Ed: Nope.], meant to illuminate “firsts” in Batman’s crimefighting career. Mine was called Batman: Daylight, and was all about his first time fighting crime in, well, daylight. Also the first time he met Vicki Vale, and, the first time he met Clayface. I posted a PDF of it ages ago. It was fun. Quite pretty. Some nice formalist touches. Shame it never saw the light of day, but the alumni of the Batman flat file at DC are both exalted and legion.

BIO (via Twitter): Alex de Campi makes films; writes books; starves.

ASHES: Ashes is a bullet ride through the brain of a dystopian Britain into the dark heart of the American psyche. As soldier Rupert Cain and journalist Katie Shah are reunited five years after they brought down a government, punishment — from an unexpected source — looms for that good deed. Chased from London’s CCTV-bristling streets to the Home Counties, they are finally brought to ground by an acquaintance’s betrayal and dragged off to an army base in a high-sierra American wasteland. Their only way out is through the mind of a twisted teenager… providing they can also escape his father.

“It was just too damn premature. We basically spent all our time trying to explain to everybody what the problem was, leaving no time to explain how we were the solution.”

–Richard Nash at Books in Browsers 2011

Richard Nash’s presentation at Books in Browsers last week garnered a lot of attention for his candid look at what did and didn’t work with his highly touted startup, Cursor, and having just watched the video, I give him credit for not simply sneaking out the back door and moving on to his next project, like so many others have already done.

While the first 15 minutes of the presentation offers some interesting tidbits — Red Lemonade effectively ends up being a mash-up of Subterranean Press and, to a lesser degree, Writer’s Digest (with a more literary slant) — you can see his body language change as he gets to the tougher part of the presentation, actually seeming to become more comfortable as he goes along, finally acknowledging his boast of launching 50,000 independent publishers was a bit too, let’s charitably call it… ambitious: “Yeah, I know; I fucked up.”

I like Nash a lot (in ODB’s words, we go back like babies and pacifiers, from our overlapping days at Soft Skull to my early critiques of Cursor), and have always thought if anyone was going to make a go of something like Cursor, he had the best shot because he was coming at it from the right place, even if the angle was ultimately flawed. Ironically, what I thought was his main advantage just might have been his downfall: he simply wasn’t mercenary enough to attract the kind of funding needed to scale Cursor beyond the literary niche experiment it arguably always was fated to be.

That said, he took an honest shot at something he believed in and, more importantly, maintained his integrity throughout the process. While neither Cursor nor Red Lemonade ended up being the “game changers” some thought they might be, one could argue (and so I will) that the publishing industry overall is stronger for the attempt, and what *did* work shouldn’t be lost in the discussion.

Kudos to Richard and his partner Mark Warholak, for their passion and hard work at a time when so many prefer to play armchair quarterback from their keyboards.

Wheel of Fortune by iwinatcookie, via Flickr

Even with the challenges that traditional publishers face, it can’t be denied that this ever-changing landscape can also be embraced as a time of opportunity to connect directly with readers, cut out middlemen, and disrupt norms that are no longer relevant, so that this illustrious and important industry, which I still love wholeheartedly, can take its rightful position at the forefront of connecting great stories with readers.

–“The Book Publishing Industry of the Future: It’s All About Content,” Felicia Pride

Truth: Disruptors are overrated. Most are made of smoke and mirrors, and the rare “Black Swan” is exactly that, rare and unpredictable.

For every Google, there’s ten Cuils.  For every Facebook, there’s twenty Pings. For every iPad, there’s fifty Skiffs. In publishing, every day it seems there’s a new upstart or three that’s going to disintermediate (or even better, KILL!) traditional publishers, but with the exceptions of Open Road Integrated Media and, possibly, Ruckus Media Group — both run by major publishing veterans, and have partnerships with a variety of “traditional” publishers — you’d be hard-pressed to name too many others that have had any truly notable impact to match the hype surrounding them at any given moment.

Beast Books? BLIO? Copia? Cursor? Push Pop Press? Scribd? Smashwords? Zinio?

Not a game-changer in the bunch, despite all kinds of hype that proclaimed otherwise.

Last week, in preparation for a video interview with Jane Friedman (my former Writer’s Digest colleague, not the Open Road founder), she referred me to an older post by Michael Nielsen, Is scientific publishing about to be disrupted?, wherein he made a number of interesting points, including this one:

The money and power that come from commitment to an existing organizational architecture actually place incumbents at a disadvantage, locking them in. It’s easier and more effective to start over, from scratch.

It’s a longish read, and the tl:dr takeaway is basically summed up in, “It’s easier and more effective to start over, from scratch.” While that’s certainly arguable, as someone who’s worked on both sides of that equation, “easy” is often exaggerated and/or misrepresented (everything’s a bit easier when there’s millions of dollars in funding and no short-term obligations or expectations), and I’d argue that the ideal angle is building from a solid foundation with room to experiment, test, and strategically fail forward.

(eg: The NY Times, or The Atlantic.)

For some, that means funding new projects via mature projects before things fall apart; what Sourcebooks’ Dominique Raccah frequently refers to as running two companies at once, and what Google is currently in the process of doing with its latest initiative, or Macmillan has done with its publisher-agnostic, community-centric online properties, Tor.com, Heroes and Heartbreakers, and Criminal Element.

In reality, most so-called disruptors are effectively just industry research & development units that end up folding, fading into the background as minor players, or, if they’re lucky, being acquired by bigger fish, which, if we’re being honest, is often the primary objective.

As the publishing industry evolves beyond the fascimile stage of ebooks, and there proves to be actual gold in those distant mountains, most of the Big Six publishers will make the necessary pivots, either via acquisitions, like Random House acquiring Smashing Ideas earlier this year, to develop their own mobile and interactive online products and services; via internal startups, like Macmillan launching Macmillan Films last year to develop original properties; or, via strategic partnerships, like Scholastic and the aforementioned Ruckus, and a slew of smaller publishers for whom Open Road handles marketing efforts.

A SIDE NOTE ON TECHNOLOGY AND THE FUTURE OF MEDIA

Amazon is making a big investment in books and writers, and that’s exciting. They are putting together an interesting team, and I’m eager to work with them and see what they can do. But it’s not white-hat/black-hat. There is something much more interesting and complex going on than the one-dimensional article in the Times would indicate. It’s unfortunate that people outside our industry got such an incomplete and misleading view of things.

–Really, New York Times??, by Brian DeFiore

I’m a big fan of Brooke Gladstone’s recent book, The Influencing Machine, wherein she states, “We get the media we deserve,” and think about it often when reading muddle-headed coverage of the publishing industry that’s filtered through the prism of technology.

Truth: Consumers control the future of media, and right now, Amazon, Google and Apple have their fingers on our collective pulse and are developing the new distribution channels via which we will consume increasing amounts of a variety of content, but they are neither infallible, nor immune to being “disrupted” themselves. The fanciest devices, apps, and websites are useless without good content, and I’d argue that’s why we’re seeing Amazon and Google move into publishing directly rather than solely as distribution channels. Same with Netflix, though their self-inflicted wounds may have already disrupted their long-term viability.

It’s also worth noting that Barnes & Noble, which has been a publisher for years now via Sterling and should not be mentioned in the same breath as Borders, is in no way ready to concede the digital playing field to Amazon:

Sales of digital content through BN.com quadrupled in the quarter, and B&N estimated it has a 26%–27% market share of e-book sales and a 30% share of the digital magazine market. The majority of e-book sales are made through the agency model and B&N’s self-publishing platform, PubIt! By the end of fiscal 2012, B&N projected that digital/Nook sales will represent about 24% of total revenue compared to 12% in fiscal 2011 (and 2% in fiscal 2010).

I’ll repeat what I said in the Spring of 2010: don’t sleep on Barnes & Noble. The value of a brick-and-mortar presence is grossly underrated these days, but there’s a reason Apple started opening retail stores 10 years ago, five months after launching iTunes; and there’s a reason Amazon made deals to sell the Kindle at Target, Staples and other brick-and-mortar locations. Even Google is experimenting with brick-and-mortar to help their Chromebooks gain traction in the marketplace.

The future isn’t a zero-sum game, and while further “disruption” is inevitable, there’s arguably a lot more opportunity than DOOM! on the horizon for most publishers, whether they be fledgling upstarts or savvy established players. In the end, the Big Six might become the Big Five or the Big Ten, and there will surely be shifts in market share and a few new players in the mix, Amazon being the most obvious.

My optimistic hope is that, unlike the music industry, we’re going to see the publishing industry actually grow as the evolution (and definition) of the “book” takes us beyond short-sighted debates over formats into far more interesting experiments with content, subject matter, and experiences, not to mention new audiences who were previously under-served due to limited physical shelf space.

If you work in the publishing industry and are expecting any less, it begs the question: Why not go work somewhere else?

a wolf in sheep's clothing by Annsy Chan, via Flickr

“There is a better counterargument that the eBook license does not allow for the establishment of the material in question to be library material in any form; basically, it is and never will be library material.”

-“Amazon, Overdrive, and Other Reasons to Be Pissed,” Andy Woodworth

There’s been a bit of a dustup in Libraryland as it seems many (most? all?) librarians were unaware of the details involved in finally getting Kindle compatibility via Overdrive — the leading ebook distributor to public libraries (for now, at least) — as Amazon pulled off a not-at-all-surprising move that gives them at least two opportunities to make a sales pitch directly to library patrons every time they borrow an ebook from them.

But, wait a minute…

Woodworth, who has one of the more level-headed takes on the situation, steps back to look at the bigger picture and asks the most important question: who actually owns those ebooks?

When the detail-light announcement of the Overdrive/Amazon deal was first made back in the Spring, Josh Hadro, my colleague at Library Journal, read the tea leaves and did a bit of foreshadowing that ultimately proved to be right on the money:

As others have pointed out, it is perhaps telling that the Amazon release refers only to Kindle customers, not patrons: the new feature will “allow Kindle customers to borrow Kindle books from over 11,000 libraries” [emphasis added]. So all the folks doing the lending, they’re Kindle customers from the start, taking only a brief detour into patron territory, and hopefully back into customer mode “if you check out the book again, or subsequently buy it.”

The ebooks being borrowed by Amazon customers aren’t the same ePUB files being licensed to libraries via Overdrive, they’re Amazon’s files that they’re allowing their customers to access via a marketing partnership with local libraries.

Basically, Amazon one-upped Barnes & Noble’s Read In-Store feature that allows Nook customers to “read NOOK Books FREE for up to one hour per day” in any of their 700+ stores, and put the exact same feature in every Kindle customer’s living room via 11,000+ public libraries, without the physical and timing limitations. Notably, it seems they’ve also side-stepped Overdrive’s new WIN (Want It Now) Catalog that allows library patrons to purchase books (and audiobooks) directly, via links to retailers.

While I understand the ambivalence, frustration and/or outright anger some librarians must feel over the situation — it kind of goes hand-in-hand working with Amazon — there’s an unfortunate combination at play here that seems to be an underlying truth of the digital age: “Be careful what you wish for,” and, “If you get in bed with the devil, sooner or later…”

Ebooks are disrupting business models left and right (even Amazon took it on the chin when Macmillan dared to stand up to them way back in January 2010), and no matter how much everyone loves (or claims to love) libraries, they’re not immune. Hell, in some cases, they’re being eyed warily or left out of the ebook game altogether!

As “licensing” increasingly becomes the norm for various forms of media, knowingly or not, libraries are finding themselves on the front lines of a battle that most consumers arguably don’t even realize is being fought: the question of ownership in the digital age.

It’s a question that doesn’t offer any easy answers, and is so much bigger than the symptomatic issue of who knows which Kindle ebooks you’re borrowing. On the bright side, if anyone’s up to the challenge of fighting for answers to these questions, it’s librarians!

Be careful what you ask for, indeed.