Book Publishers Wake Up! The Future of Reading Is Digital!

In the latest issues of Wired, Clive Thompson writes:

Books are the last bastion of the old business model—the only major medium that still hasn't embraced the digital age. Publishers and author advocates have generally refused to put books online for fear the content will be Napsterized. And you can understand their terror, because the publishing industry is in big financial trouble, rife with layoffs and restructurings. Literary pundits are fretting: Can books survive in this Facebooked, ADD, multichannel universe?

To which I reply: Sure they can. But only if publishers adopt Wark's perspective and provide new ways for people to encounter the written word. We need to stop thinking about the future of publishing and think instead about the future of reading.

Every other form of media that's gone digital has been transformed by its audience. Whenever a newspaper story or TV clip or blog post or white paper goes online, readers and viewers begin commenting about it on blogs, snipping their favorite sections, passing them along. The only reason the same thing doesn't happen to books is that they're locked into ink on paper.

Release them, and you release the crowd.

I hope every publisher in the world reads Thompson’s article and breaks out of the old, archaic ways of publishing and marketing books.

Most publishers still don’t get it. Sure, they’ll publish a chapter or two online. Maybe even make slick trailers to get some hype. But only one publisher that I’m aware of allows the entire content of their books to be published online. Publishing entire novels online and giving people a chance to share that content or hype it on social networking sites is, as far as I know, unheard of.

Yet there’s never been a better way to market books to people then the Internet. Posting an entire book online and providing a way for others to share or highlight portions of that content on Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, GoodReads, Shelfari, and other sites is a great way to build an audience and SELL books.

In an industry that suffering from cutbacks and lagging book sales, publishers worry about losing books sales if they post the content online.

Guess what? They won’t.

They’ll actually sell more books because more people will be exposed to it. I’m willing to bet they’ll even find a market for some of their books that they didn’t know existed before.

Writes Thompson:

You're far more likely to hear about a book if a friend has highlighted a couple brilliant sentences in a Facebook update—and if you hear about it, you're far more likely to buy it in print. Yes, in print: The few authors who have experimented with giving away digital copies (mostly in sci-fi) have found that they end up selling more print copies, because their books are discovered by more people.

Still publishers wring their hands when they think about posting the entire conents of their books online. "What about Napster?” they say. “It almost bankrupted the record industry.”

Here’s the dirty little secret of the free online music days: CD sales actually rose during the heyday of free digital music. That’s right. People bought more music because they had a chance to sample it first. Musicians who would have languished in obscurity suddenly found an audience because more people heard about it.

Instead of embracing the new technology and trying to find a way to share music and make money from it (like creating slick online stores where people could by songs and albums), the record companies sued the hell out of everyone they could think of. Instead Apple came in and filled the gap and turned their company around. Now Apple is raking in billions of dollars that could have gone straight to the record companies and musicians if they had embraced technology instead of fought it.

Right now publishers are in a unique position to develop technology that allows people to read books, share portions of the content on their websites or social networking sites, allow readers comments and feedback, and link to places where their books can be bought. Something akin to Google books, only on steroids.

And for the record, I have no problem taking my just completed novel and working with a publisher to post the entire contents online for people to read. As far as far as I’m concerned, it will not only help me sell more print copies but give me a chance to see who the book really resonates with. My guess is that, like my memoir, Room for Two, I’ll discover a completely underserved market that is hungry for its contents.

The challenge is finding a publisher who’s willing to be the vanguard and embrace the digital revolution that has consumed the rest of the world.

Coming Up for Air

There are many blog posts I’ve wanted to write over the last month but simply haven’t had the time. Fr the last 10 days I’ve been feverishly working on a final rewrite of my novel. Now it’s done and off to an editor for some feedback. Once look over and implement her suggestions, then it’s off to three decision makers at publishing houses expressed interest in reading it. Hopefully I’ll have some good news in regards to my yet-to-be-titled book before the end of the summer. (Maybe I’ll stage some sort of title contest if I’m unable to come up with one on my own.) I’ve been writing so much the last month that today I was thinking about what I was going to do after the kids were in bed and realized that with no novel to write, I have no idea what to do with myself. Okay, that’s not entirely true. There’s a big stack of books on my nightstand I need to read and a past blog post I need to turn into an essay. But before I do any of that, I need to take Marathon Girl out on lots of dates. You know, the kind where we get a babysitter for the kids and we have some time alone. She’s been VERY patient and supportive during the entire novel-writing process and needs to be rewarded with nice dinners, movies she’s wanted to see, a long 10-mile run together, and maybe a night where we drop the kids off with the in-laws or my parents and just have 24 hours to ourselves.

Until then, it feels nice to be able to breathe again.

Even Lee Child Messes Up Occasionally

One of the more difficult things about writing fiction is making sure that the settings you write about seem real to those who’ve been to the places you’re writing about. For example, if your book takes place in Los Angeles and your character lives on the city, you need to make sure readers who are familiar with the city feel like your charter lives in L.A. too. That means he/she needs to know the best way to get around the city and what different places look like. This can be tricky to pull off if you’ve never been to the places you’re writing about.

Over the weekend I was reading Lee Child’s Without Fail. Near the end of the novel the protagonist, Jack Reacher and a colleague Frances Neagley, are on his way to the fictional town of Grace, Wyoming which is a couple hours north of Casper – a town I lived in for two years. Reacher and Neagley take a plane to Denver and decide to drive to Grace.

Child describes the drive as thus:

They entered Wyoming after dark, driving north on I-25. They turned left on Cheyenne and picked up I-80. They rolled west to Laramie and headed north. The town called Grace was still five hours away, well beyond Casper. The map showed it nestled in the middle of nowhere between towering mountains on one side and infinite grasslands on the other.

“We’ll stop in Medicine Bow,” Reacher said. “Sounds like a cool place. We’ll aim to get to Grace at dawn tomorrow.”

Here’s the problem with the above section. I’ve done the drive from Denver to Casper dozens of times. There is no logical reason to take that route. The fastest way to Casper and areas north is to stay on I-25. Any map as well as all freeway signs will bear that out. There are plenty of small towns along I-25 that Reacher could have stopped at if he was too tired to make it to Casper. And the next day Reacher and Neagley drive thought Casper and get back on I-25 anyway. And it wasn’t like the page or two of text about their stay in Medicine Bow was vital to the story. It could have just as easily taken place in Wheatland, Douglas, or any of the other small towns along I-25.

I don’t know what Child was trying to accomplish with this but that above section really ruined the last 60 or so pages what was a very exciting novel. All I could think about was that if he didn’t know the fastest way from Denver to Casper, what else in the book did he not adequately research?

Don't get me wrong. I love Child's books. This error just really bugged me.

Oprah Suckered Again by Phony Memoir

Another memoir has been proven to be largely fabricated.

Herman Rosenblat's “Angel at the Fence: The True Story of a Love that Survived” is a story about his future wife when she threw to him over the barbed wire fence of the concentration camp where he was held as a boy and then meeting her 10 years later in New York, falling in love, and getting married.

The only problem? Rosenblat apparently made it all up. No, not the part about at being at Buchenwald and other concentration camps. Just the part about how his wife tossing food to him over the barbed wire fence and then meeting her on a blind date 10 years later. You know, the whole story of the book.

At least this time they discovered it before the book hit the shelves. But it was too late for Oprah who, according to The Times, "twice invited Mr Rosenblat on to her talk show, hailed the book as “the single greatest love story ... we've ever told on air”.

Granted, you can't necessarily blame Oprah for falling for it. She was probably introduced to the book through a friend in the publishing industry who assured her that the book was legit.

But it makes you wonder what's wrong with the publishing industry. After James Frey's “A Million Little Pieces” was exposed as a hoax, the industry promised to do better job fact checking the memoirs they intend to publish. Yet this book, along with “Love and Consequences,” and “Misha: A Memoir of the Holocaust Years" have all managed to slip through the fact checking cracks.

Maybe the publishing industry should adapt the motto that wise investors use when hit up by people offering miraculous returns on their money: If it's too good to be true, it probably is.

In the meantime, if Oprah or anyone else is looking for an true memoir about finding love -- even in the most difficult of circumstances, might I recommend this book? Unlike other memoirs, I can guarantee this one to be 100% accurate.

Michael Crichton 1942 - 2008

Like a lot of people, I was surprised to learn that Michael Crichton passed away on Tuesday from cancer. The fact that he kept his illness a secret from the press and the public doesn’t surprise me. In numerous interviews he gave, he was always willing to talk about his books or the various social issues his books addressed but always seemed resentful when the interviewer asked him questions about his personal life.

I first read Crichton’s books in, of all places, a college literature class. The class was called “Technology and the Novel” examined different ways different writers wrote about technology in their books from the industrial revolution to the present day. We read Crichton’s Jurassic Park and had many lively discussions whether Crichton was trying to warn people about playing God with technology or championing the technological achievements.

Though I always thought Crichton did a horrible job in creating charters the reader would actually care about, I admired his courage for writing books like Disclosure and State of Fear where he took on the conventional wisdom on the topics of sexual harassment and global warming not because he had an agenda to shove down others’ throats but because he was at heart a scientist and was always questioning human behavior and the way the world worked (see first clip below). Many of the ideas for his novels came from questions he had and the reading and research he did to answer those questions.

I also enjoyed the way Crichton took complex technology and explained it in terms that anyone could understand. His books showed his great imagination and the research he poured into every novel. The result was page-turning stories that were fun to read.

In May 2009 his last novel will be released. If it’s like his other books, it should be worth reading.

Goodbye, Michael. You’ll be missed.

The New Office

The work on our basement is finally finished and I finally have an office to work out of. Now I just need to find a spot for my books.

Book Review: The Santa Letters by Stacy Gooch Anderson

One of the nice things about being a published author is that you get offers to read books before their available in bookstores. Sadly, I have to turn most of the book offers down simply because between working full time and trying to finish my novel, I don’t have as much time to read. Occasionally, a trusted friend recommends a book and I read it. Such is the case with Stacy Gooch Anderson’s The Santa Letters.

To be honest, I’m not much for Christmas-themed books. No, I’m not a Grinch, but I find a lot of Christmas the books to be pretty much the same in terms of message, story, and character. You know, someone finds the true meaning of Christmas and everyone lives happily ever after. However since a friend whose opinion I trust said I should read it, I agreed to review it.

The Santa Letters came and that night while I was writing, Marathon Girl asked if she could read it. I handed her the book and went back to my writing.

“Do you know what this book’s about?” Marathon Girl asked after reading the first two chapters.

“Santa Letters?” I said looking up from my computer.

Marathon Girl rolled her eyes. “No, I mean did you know about the main character? Is that why you agreed to review the book?”

“I don’t know anything about him,” I said.

“The main character’s a woman. Her name’s Emma Jensen.”

“What about Emma?”

“She’s a young widow with four kids.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, her husband was killed in a hit-and-run accident on Christmas Eve. The book takes place a year later. Basically her life’s fallen apart since her husband died and she’s hoping that her four kids will have a happy Christmas.”

I held my hand out and Marathon Girl handed me the book.

“It looks like I’m not going to see this book again until you’re done reading it,” Marathon Girl said picking up another book in her nightstand.

I nodded and started to read the book. Fair or not, I knew that I was going to judge the book by 1) how believable the widow character was and 2) whether or not she was able to get some sort of closure to her husband’s death and move on with her life.

*** Warning: Spoilers Follow ***

After reading the first few chapters, I was worried. Not only has Emma lost her husband and cry herself to sleep every night but just about everything that could go wrong in her life has gone wrong too. Can’t the fact that her husband died be enough? Do we have to put her just about every other imaginable hardship too? The Santa Letters was starting to read like an Upton Sinclair novel. (No, that’s not a good thing.)

Thankfully, the tone of The Santa Letters began to change once a mysterious visitor begins leaving packages on the family doorstep in the days leading up to Christmas. Instead of simply providing things that the family needs, each package contained things designed help Emma and her children heal from their loss and forgive the man responsible causing the death of their husband/father. Yes, each package comes with a letter “signed” Santa Claus but in reality, the directions and thoughts contained in each letter is one that individual family members need to follow in order to find happiness and peace.

The best part about The Santa Letters, however, is Emma. Anderson does a great job creating a realistic young widow character. Emma tries her best to maintain a strong face when she’s with her children but crumbles under the pressure of grief and providing for her family and when she’s alone. The scenes where Emma is forced to confront her anger about being left to raise the kids and wondering if she can last another day are real and poignant. But her true character is revealed when she has to make the decision whether or not she can truly forgive her the man who accidently took her husband’s life and move on.

From a plot perspective, the book doesn’t contain any unexpected turns or twists. It is a Christmas book, after all. But, thankfully, The Santa Letters it’s more than your standard Christmas book. It’s really a book about healing, forgiveness, and finding peace. It was well worth the read several months before Christmas.

Win a Personalized Copy of Room for Two

If you’re interested in winning a free, personalized copy of Room for Two, fellow author and friend Anne Bradshaw is sponsoring a contest for one. You can read the contest details on her blog here. Contest is open through Wednesday, September 4th.

What People Read

Some people blog about what their reading. Others update their GoodReads account.

Will, puts it in the header of his website. :-)

Thanks, Will.

The Last Detective by Robet Crais

While in Arizona, I had a chance to catch up on some reading – something I don’t as much as I’d like since I’m in the middle of writing another book. However, with the laptop at home, I was able to spend an hour or two reading while the kids slept. Back in February, Marathon Girl and I bought his latest book, The Watchman, on a whim and both really enjoyed it so I was glad to have another one of his books to read. Crias is a good writer and one I recommend if you haven’t tried his books already.

So while the kids were sleeping I read The Last Detective by Robert Crais. The Last Detective is a fun, page turner that centers on private investigator Elvis Cole’s attempt to locate his girlfriend’s son who was kidnapped from Cole’s house. Cole, with the aid of his partner Joe Pike, goes on three days of a no-sleep fueled mission to find the boy and return him safely to his mother. With an intriguing set of characters and a well developed and fast-paced plot, it’s a read and one that actually makes you cringe whenever you think the boy’s going to be hurt. Though I thought the “twist” in the book was a little too obvious, Crias shows his skill as a writer by delivering an emotional but realistic ending and that gave the book a satisfying conclusion.

As far as the detective fiction goes, I like Michael Connelly better – but not by much. Crais’s books (the two I’ve read anyway) are more testosterone charged then Connelly’s novels which makes them faster paced and a little more exciting. Connelly, however, does a better job on character development. But, like Connelly, Crais is an excellent writer and manages to keep his the plot moving forward while telling an engaging and fun-filled story.

I’m looking forward to reading more of his books as soon as I’m done with my novel.