Publishing

“Up Against Amazon”

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There is an article in the August 2014 issue of Independent, the journal of the Independent Book Publishers Association that I’d like to share with you.   It is written by Karen Christensen, who is a publisher, author, journalist and blogger.  She wrote:

“Amazon doesn’t just take orders.  It is used to barking orders at publishers and getting us to salute.  But bullying only goes so far, and I’m thankful that a single large publisher, Hachette, stood up to it and that the New York Times ran an editorial about its strong arm tactics.

“I’ve been sitting on my own Amazon story for a while after receiving a threatening phone call from its legal department when I refused to agree to a unilateral change of terms.  But with all the publicity and debate about Hachette, I thought other publishers, as well as Berkshire Publishing’s (the author’s publishing company) friends, colleagues and customers might like to know about our experiences and why I believe that Amazon is destroying healthy competition in the publishing world.

“I am and academic publisher as well as an environmental author (with one book publisher by Hachette, in fact).  My company is very small. Amazon has a market cap of $US 141 billion.  “They have infinite resources,” said a friend when I told him that I had received an angry phone call from Amazon.com’s legal department.  The telephone call wasn’t to discuss terms, but to threaten me for “telling lies about Amazon”.  What I had written was that if we had to stop supplying Amazon I would have to write to all my customers, authors and colleagues to tell them why.

“My fight with Amazon began when it decided to go after traditional “short discount” publishers (academic presses as well as presses like Berkshire Publishing) with a unilaterally imposed change in business terms announced only in a “case note” within their order processing platform.  This platform is normally used to inquire about the availability of certain books and is used by customer service staff.

“A colleague of mine whose staff was puzzled enough to pass the “case note” along to him asked Amazon to contact him directly by telephone or email, saying that business terms were a matter for our company’s executive team.  Amazon refused to talk – communication would take place through the “case”.

“Berkshire Publishing had sold print through Amazon since 2006.  Although it originally demanded a 40% discount – four times our standard – I decided we should make books available through any major platform that individual readers and libraries use. Out authors like knowing that their books are readily available worldwide.  And we reach some people who wold never otherwise know about our titles.  In fact, I was recently at a meeting in Beijing and showed a copy of our book This is China: The first 5000 Years.  Two of the people there started whispering and giggling, and finally one spoke up, “I have that book.  I ordered it from Amazon!”

“Amazon’s demand in 2012 was for a an additional 5% bringing the discount to 45% (some academic presses had been at 25%, so the change to 45% meant a reduction of 80% in their net income from Amazon sales).  Bookstores generally get a discount of 30-40%.  Amazon has been getting 50-55% from big trade presses, and the current battles are part over further discounts that Amazon is demanding to increase its marginal profits.

“It is not only publishers who are affected (who, after all, really feels sorry for publishers?); independent bookstores cannot compete with this kind of pricing.  Amazon discounting also affects authors, because may book contracts specify a lower royalty percentage if the discount is 50% or higher.

“In the end it is readers – students, professionals and those who read for pleasure – who will suffer because innovative writers won’t get the chance they deserve and hard-working midlist authors won’t be able to afford the time they need to write.

“And who says cut-rate pricing will continue after Amazon’s market dominance is assured?  Publishers, including self-publishers love the 70% Amazon pays them on e-books now, but the split was 70% for Amazon until after agency pricing, and the contract allows Amazon to change it at any time.  There is no reason to think that the company won’t impose changes on any group of suppliers (which is what we authors and publishers are).

“Amazon, by the way, does not necessarily pass those discounts on to the customer.  Most Berkshire books are educational reference works that sell for hundreds of dollars; Amazon has generally sold them at full price, keeping that substantial “discount” as its profit, which is far greater than our profit on our own books.

“Amazon is destroying competition and innovation because it is not letting the market determine winners and losers, but is instead making the selection itself, deciding arbitrarily where to take its pound of flesh and shore up its feeble margins.  Publishers (and authors) would be fine if they were actually competing with one another for sales without Amazon sucking the life out of every transaction.

“Finally, what happened?  Are Berkshire Publishing  titles available through Amazon?  Dear reader, I capitulated after four months.  It wasn’t fair; it wasn’t good for anyone but Amazon, but I was losing sales that I needed and I gave in.  Amazon made one change, too: it hired its first small-press liaison, and I met her at BookExpo last year.  I didn’t her from her this year and have no idea if that department of one still exists, but I hope that in the future we will be able too discuss and agree on terms that make sense.  “Hurray” for Hachette and for everyone else who is now standing up to Amazon.”

 

I’ll cover the Hachette – Amazon dispute in a later blog, but I have some comments on Ms Christensen’s article.  Certainly, as a small publisher one has to have some real sympathy for her: she has a very tough business.  It is unconscionable that a giant purchaser like Amazon tried to slip in a major change in its terms of business without proper notice or discussion.  That is the worst kind of arrogance.   She is also correct that Amazon’s pressure for large discounts affects authors.  In my particular case, for every additional increment of discount which Amazon takes, I lose half of that increment in royalties. Who consults me about that?  No one.

It seems to me that the Amazon business model is designed to weaken, if not to destroy, independent bookstores.  Their discounting structure makes it difficult for small bookstores to compete.  I’m sure that Amazon would deny that their discounting is predatory.  They would say that they have the title that the buyer wants in stock, so that the buyer can have a copy as quickly as the following day, instead of having to wait a week, or more.  They would also point out that they don’t have the option of returning unsold books to the publisher for full credit, as bookstores do.  And, they would point to a number of value added features on their website, including descriptions, reviews, and copious author information.

Still, it’s Amazon’s apparent ‘might makes right’ attitude which is troubling.  From Ozymandias to his modern day counterparts, arrogance invariably destroys its owner.

Noah

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My wife and I went to see the film Noah on Saturday.  I’m sure we were both a bit sceptical about it, having seen some of the reviews beforehand.  Most of the reviews seemed to focus on whether or not the film was faithful to the Bible story, and whether of not this faithfulness (or lack of it) mattered.

Since both of us tend to view the Bible story of Noah as a rather charming fairy tale (which does not add to or subtract from our religious beliefs), we weren’t particularly concerned about the faithfulness issue.

Certainly, the cinematography in the film is spectacular: thousands of animals, thousands of sinful people, an absolutely gigantic ark, a colossal storming of the ark, a horrendous flood, etc.  And the acting seemed credible enough.

Neither of us particularly liked the Watchers: giants assembled from what looked like huge pieces of cold lava, who were apparently sent by the Creator to see what the human race was up to.  For me, the Watchers seemed to clash with the rest of the characters and scenery in the film, all of which seemed quite natural.  In fact, I thought: why include them at all?  The Creator could certainly see for himself what the human race was up to: mostly no good.

The other point that didn’t work for me was that Noah believed his mission from the Creator was to save only the animals: that he and his family would die, too.  I suppose, ingrained in my mind, is the notion that the point of the fairy tale is that God destroyed the wicked people, but He started again with Noah’s family.  In the film, only the oldest of Noah’s sons, Shem, has a wife.  Ham tries to take a wife, but Noah prevents it, and Japheth is too young.  The film character of Noah believes that he must kill the child of Shem’s pregnant wife in order that mankind will eventually die out (as he believes the Creator wishes).  Certainly, this adds some excitement to the plot.  The other bit of excitement is that the king of the evil-doers manages to get onto the ark and avoid the flood. This leads to some arguments, soul-searching and fighting.

I found myself thinking about the evolution of the art of film-making as compared to the art of writing novels.  Noah, it seems to me, is representative of modern films in two respects: the use of technology in cinematography to produce visual effects that were beyond the comprehension of film makers thirty years ago; and, the exposure of raw and profound human emotion.  By way of comparison, I’m watching Sea Devils, a mediocre-at-best, 1953 film starring Rock Hudson and Yvonne De Carlo, set in the Napoleonic era.  There are no special effects and, by today’s standards, the acting is pretty wooden.  Even the feelings of betrayal of a lover are expressed with only a few words and a pout.  In a film today, feelings of betrayal would be compounded with other issues and expressed with violence and shouting.

As to the art of writing (and publishing) novels, the technological changes have been in the evolution of the e-book and in print-on-demand publishing.  Neither of these technologies existed thirty years ago.  And, it seems to me, writers are mining more complex human emotions, and are presenting them more graphically than ever before.

Sable Shadow and The Presence

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My fifth novel, Sable Shadow & The Presence, has just been published.

 Photo

The publisher’s press release says the following:

“Is the Voice You Hear Your Conscience, Or Is It Something Else? 
From an early age, Henry Lawson hears voices. He attributes one to the Sable Shadow, a confidant of the devil, and the other to The Presence, a representative of God.  He believes his life becomes a “board game” between these two powerful influences. 
Sable Shadow & The Presence is the fictional autobiography of a bright, but introverted and slightly insecure young man, one who studies the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre.  He begins to see life in existential terms, although this does not infringe on his rudimentary Christian beliefs. Upon Henry’s entry into the business world, he receives vital guidance from Sable Shadow, and advances to a high corporate level. With his career nearly at its peak, Henry suffers a series of devastating tragedies and attempts suicide. With the help of his wife and a psychiatrist, with whom he engages in philosophical dialogue, he constructs a completely new identity to overcome his past.  But will this identity escape the influence of Sable Shadow? 
This thought-provoking, psychological novel is rich in triumph and tragedy, success and failure, good and evil. It is a modern day look at Paradise Lost.”

I would recommend it, if:

  • you like biography (this is a fictional autobiography)
  • you are interested in philosophy (layman’s level, not academic level)
  • you’ve wondered what existentialism is all about
  • you are interested in what it takes to get ahead (and fail) in the corporate world
  • you have a layman’s interest in theology
  • you think you might be interested in Henry Lawson’s theory of how to succeed in life

or

  • if you’re just interested in a good story

 

Pupils Who Turn to E-books are Weaker Readers

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This was the headline of an article in The Daily Telegraph – May 16.

The article reported the results of  a survey of 34,910 eight to sixteen-year-olds which was undertaken by the charity, the National Literary Trust.  It found that nearly all children had access to a computer at home and 40% owned a tablet or smart phone.  It reported that the number of children reading from a screen every day had, for the first time, exceeded those who read printed material.

The study reported that children had been slower to make use of digital devices than adults, but that the number of young digital readers has doubled in the last two years.  Publishers and retailers have understood this and are offering a larger range of children’s books and comics available in digital form.

The study found that pupils who read only electronic books every day were considerably less likely to be strong readers than those who read in print, and they enjoy reading much less.  Fewer electronic readers have a favourite book.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, boys are more likely than girls to read from digital devices.

One interesting (and not unfavourable statistic) from the study is regarding the reading of news by pupils.  While the proportion of students reading newspapers has fallen from 46.8% in 2005 to 32.2% in 2012, more than 40% of children and young people were reading the news on their computer, smart phone or tablet. This suggests to me that the number of students who are taking an interest in the news is growing.

One socio-economic statistic is that children who receive free meals at school are less likely to read traditional books than their counterparts who do not receive free meals.

Jonathan Douglas, director of the National Literary Trust said: “While we welcome the positive impact which technology has on bringing further reading opportunities to young people, it’s crucial that reading in print is not cast aside.  We are concerned by our finding that children who only read on-screen are significantly less likely to enjoy reading and less likely to be strong readers.  Good reading skills and reading for pleasure are closely linked to children’s success at school and beyond.  We need to encourage children to become avid readers, whatever format they choose.”

Are Women Writers Disadvantaged?

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There’s an article in today’s The Daily Telegraph headed “It’s the same old story of women writers, claims novelist“.  The article, written by Rosa Silverman, is as follows:

Women writers remain disadvantaged by a male dominated literary world in which men do not want them to succeed, a female novelist has claimed.  Elizabeth Jane Howard, who wrote the Cazalet tetralogy, said that female authors suffered “a hard time politically and sexually”, suggesting little had changed since the 19th century.  Jane Austin was “respectfully received” but others such as George Eliot had to disguise their names for “a better chance of being taken seriously,” she noted.  Almost two centuries on, writers such as JK Rowling and AS Byatt did the same, possibly for similar reasons, she said.  Howard, 90, who was married to the author Kingsley Amis, said that instead of allowing women to succeed on their merits, the world of male critics and editors “scratch each other’s backs.  I think men are more sympathetic to the work of men,” she said.  “They find domestic, emotional matters more difficult.”  The writer VS Naipaul was among those who have expressed the views to which she  was referring, Howard said.  In a 2011 interview, he dismissed women writers as “unequal” to him and criticised their sentimentality.  Howard, whose fans include Hilary Mantel, who has won the Man Booker Prize twice, added: “I think at higher levels, a talented male writer would have an easier journey than a talented female writer, who might very well get bad reviews.”  Although there are signs that men’s perceptions are changing for the better, the general position of women around the world “is showing no signs of improving”, she added.  Howard, who won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for her first novel, The Beautiful Visit in 1951, said: “Women are not starting from an equal position.  People say that because they have got the vote, the problem is over.”

I would be very interested in what my readers think of Ms. Howard’s views.

I think that she almost certainly has a point, but that she overstated her case.  I think it is wrong to imply that women writers are as ill-received now as they were two hundred years ago.  It’s also not clear to me that Rowling and Byatt used their initials rather than their first names to prevent discrimination.  After all, it is very difficult to hide one’s gender in today’s world (behind initials, or almost anything else).  As I may have said elsewhere, I think that women are definitely better at expressing emotion than men (part of the DNA?).  If one accepts that this is true, would it be fair to say that women tend to choose themes which allow them the liberty to display their superiority?  And would it also be fair to say that men find this superiority uncomfortable?  If so, this may account for Ms. Howard’s perception that male critics and editors discriminate against women.

I don’t think it’s accurate to say that women writers suffer “a hard time politically and sexually”.  They don’t seem to be suffering sexually.  What male author can match the success of E L James Fifty Shades of Grey?  And what do politics have to do with writing?  I would have said that “women writers may suffer discrimination professionally and socially.”

It seems to me it is an exaggeration to say that the general position of women around the world “is showing no signs of improving”.  I would argue that women writers are winning more recognition in the West, where there is a greater appreciation of the expressive skills of women.  In the Middle East and in Asia, progress may be slower, but I have the impression that women are finding greater professional recognition in many fields.

What do you think?

Promotion

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How does one promote a book which is not carried by book stores and which is not advertised?  For me, this has been the question, since my publisher does not wish to sell to bookstores and does not advertise books for its authors.  Selling to bookstores is a problem, because the large chains demand big discounts and all bookstores insist on full refunds for copies which go unsold.  (The online booksellers demand big discounts, but they buy their stock outright.)  Some publishers (the large, famous ones) work on a ‘push strategy’ where they advertise heavily and insist that the bookstores carry stock.  Other publishers (like mine) operate on a ‘pull strategy’, which means that they depend on the author to create demand.

How can an author create demand?  I have offered to do book signings on the basis that one can at least sell the autographed copies.  But, it’s not easy to find bookstores that are interested in arranging signings for authors that aren’t yet famous.  At one  time, my publisher was arranging book signings for its authors, and I asked for half a dozen bookstores in strategic cities.  None was interested, but there was one bookstore in Bangor, Maine (somewhat out of my way) that volunteered to take me.  I declined: the travel expenses would have dwarfed my royalties.

Then, I tried to persuade small, independent bookstores to carry my books on the basis that I would own the books until they were sold and would replenish them on demand.  None was interested.  They are very protective of their shelf space.

My publisher is now emphasizing the sale of foreign rights at big trade shows around the world.  They take their portfolio of  authors to book shows, and sell distribution rights (usually of ebook copies) within the various countries.  I’m going to give this a try next year.  My publisher also recommends that its authors have a blog (like this) and a website (I have one), as well as postings on social media.  I’m not convinced that Twitter and Facebook add value above and beyond a blog and a website.

Of course, I let all my friends and business contacts know about a new book when it is published, and, in the case of Efraim’s Eye, I have sent copies to the literary editors of the major UK newspapers.  They should be interested.  The central plot involves an attack on the London Eye, and much of the setting is in England.  We shall see.

One can hope that a novel one has written will go ‘viral’ like Fifty Shades of Gray or Thursdays in the Park, the new ‘Granny Sex’ novel.  My wife has read both these novels; she says they are badly written.  But in each case they have a secret appeal.  In the case of Fifty Shades of Gray, the appeal is sado-masochistic love, and in the case of Thursdays in the Park, it’s about a woman in her sixties falling in love again and having sex.  Neither book was strongly promoted by its publisher, but Fifty Shades of Gray has sold something like 50,000,000 copies, and Thursdays in the Park probably won’t be far behind.  For someone who tries to write quality literature, these examples are (mildly) frustrating, but I’m not about to seek a kinky theme for the sake of sales volume.

It is interesting to note that Pippa Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge’s sister and sister-in-law of Prince William, has obtained an enormous amount of publicity lately.  In addition to the photographs of her (she is a very attractive young woman), she is quoted as offering tips from her recently published book, Celebrate: A Year of Festivities with Family and Friends.  The book, unfortunately, has been panned by the critics and is reportedly not selling well.  Pippa’s publisher must be gnashing his teeth, having paid Pippa (it is rumoured) an advance of £400.000 and now having to shell out for publicity shoots.  Moral of the story: promotion isn’t enough; one has to offer something that the public wants.

Book Cover

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“You can’t judge a book by its cover”, it is said, and this is true in the ultimate sense that after one reads a book, one likes it more or less than one expected at first glance.  But in practice, when one is browsing in a bookstore or on the Internet, one may think, “this looks interesting” (meaning: I like the feeling that I get about this book from the cover, and having read, on the back cover, what it’s about.)

I’ve agreed three cover illustrations for my novels.  Two of the covers I’m quite pleased with, and one less so.  Starting with my first novel, Fishing in Foreign Seas, I thought I wanted an illustration of a woman fishing in a rather strange place.  I felt this would be appropriate, given that the Sicilian heroine is accused by her mother of “fishing in foreign seas” by falling in love with an American man, instead of an Italian.  I didn’t like the first design the publisher proposed, and I commissioned a freelance illustrator to produce an illustration.  That illustration was what I asked for in terms of subject matter, but it wasn’t appropriate for a book cover: it looked too much like a cartoon.  The publisher produced a second design, which I liked a lot better.  Here it is:

Cover: Fishing in Foreign Seas

What I like about this cover is the drama and mystery implied by it.  But the fisherlady seems rather lonely.  Moreover, she doesn’t seem to be catching very much.  But it’s a love story – not about loneliness – and Caterina catches a pretty good fish.  Moral of the story, I  didn’t think carefully enough about what I wanted to say with the illustration.

My second novel, Sin & Contrition, is, as the title suggests, about human frailty and regret.  I suggested, vaguely, to the publisher that maybe the cover illustration should involve a stylised angel and a devil.  They came back with the photograph of a statue of a fallen angel in shades of green:

Cover: Sin & Contrition

 I thought this was quite eye-catching, and it conveys in one image what the book is about.

Efraim’s Eye is a thriller about a lone terrorist’s attempt to destroy the London Eye, killing all 800 passengers.  His financing for the special explosives he needs is supplied by his half-brother, who is the corrupt chief executive of a Moroccan charity.  The  charity is investigated by a British financial consultant and the operations director of the Moroccan charity’s British parent.  The ops director, a  young, multi-lingual, Israeli female and the consultant begin to untangle the web of deceit, and they discover the terrorist’s plan.  But how can they stop the attack?  Here is the cover of Efraim’s Eye:

 

Cover: Efraim’s Eye

This cover with the title, I think, conveys come of what the book is about.  But there is still the mystery: who is Efraim and why is it his eye?

My fourth novel, The Iranian Scorpion, has now been published.  It is a thriller about Robert Dawson of the Drug Enforcement Agency who is sent to Afghanistan to find ways of reducing the flow of heroin – produced from opium – to the US.  With the help of Kate Conway, a freelance journalist and Vizier Ashraf , a shadowy Taliban leader, Rob is disguised as a field hand.  He learns opium poppy cultivation and  the conversion of opium to heroin.  With his farmer ‘boss’, Azizullah, he enters Iran with 25 kg of heroin which is sold to The Scorpion, a drugs baron and governor of a remote Iranian province.  Rob traces the heroin to New York City, where a bust is made.  Furious, The Scorpion orders Rob to be captured and executed.  Meanwhile Rob’s father, US general David Dawson is in Tehran with the UN agency investigating Iran’s use of nuclear energy.  General Dawson learns of his son’s capture and threatened execution and decides to take action.  (You’ll have to read the book to discover the conclusion.)

 

The Iranian Scorpion

 
The cover is unusual in being largely white.  It identifies the setting of the novel and a major character in the story.  Those who have seen the cover say that it is quite striking.

Printing

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My third novel, Efraim’s Eye, has finally been released for printing.  (The editing process took entirely too long, and too much effort from the ‘independent professional’ but not very competent, editor, the publisher and me.)

(As of 24 September 2012, Efraim’s Eye has been published.)

The printing stage involves the preparation of front and back covers, the assignment of an ISBN number, the pricing of the book, and the final layout of the manuscript for printing.

My publisher will provide two cover designs for me to choose between.  With my first novel, Fishing in Foreign Seas, I knew exactly what I wanted for a cover design: a girl fishing in a somewhat mysterious sea.  Since I wasn’t particularly happy with the first design, I had an artist prepare scene to my specifications, and while the design was OK, the style of it wasn’t right for a book cover.  I selected the publisher’s second design, which you can see on my website www.williampeace.net.  For the second novel, Sin & Contrition, I asked the publisher’s graphic designer to prepare a graphic suggestive of the title.  The result was the statue of a fallen angel, and most people find it rather striking.  (You can see for yourself on my website.)  For Efraim’s Eye, I’ll probably propose a graphic based on the London Eye.  (Efraim’s Eye is a thriller about a lone terrorist with a plan to destroy the London Eye, killing all 800 riders.)

The back cover is easier.  There is a photograph of a portrait of the author, a brief bio (that can be repeated) and a short synopsis.  There is also the ISBN number which is assigned by the publisher, and which includes some encoded data.  Since 2007, the ISBN has been 13 digits long.  The first three digits identify the industry (987 denotes the book publishing industry), the next two digits identify the language, the following four digits identify the publisher, the next three are assigned to the book’s title, and the last digit is a check sum.  I’ll be talking about the pricing of the book in a later blog.

Before it is printed, the manuscript has to be laid out in separate pages.  A table of contents is added.  Foot notes, if any must be paginated or grouped at the end of the book.  Illustrations, if any, must be inserted.  References, glossaries and appendices, etc, – if any – must be paginated.  For me, a key task at this stage is to check that the right fonts are being used.  In the editing process, the entire manuscript is converted to Times New Roman, while I use Lucida Calligraphy where the language is not English – Arabic – in the case of Efraim’s Eye.

Finally, the book is released for actual printing and binding.  My publisher uses printing on demand, which depends on the use of digital technology, and in which a book can be printed at a fixed cost per copy, regardless of the size of the order.  The cost per copy will be higher than with traditional offset printing, but printing on demand has several advantages over offset printing:

  • for small runs, it is more cost effective than offset printing
  • set up time is shorter
  • inventories can be lower and less costly
  • waste is greatly reduced

The publisher will send me a single copy of the book for final sign off.  That is always an exciting, landmark event!

E-books

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In May of last year, Amazon announced that it sold more e-books than printed books.  Specifically, it said that it was selling 105 e-books for every 100 printed versions.  Moreover, Amazon sold 8 million Kindles last year.  That amounted to 5% of its book sales.  Amazon is estimated to have a 58% share of the US e-book market.  (Barnes & Noble has 27%; Apple 9% and others 6%.)

Interestingly, in the UK, 92 our of every 100 books is a printed version.

But, clearly, the e-book is becoming very important indeed.

From an author’s perspective, one has to publish in e-book format as well as in the  printed version.  If only a printed version is available, one can lose out on sales.  When Fishing in Foreign Seas was first published in a hard back, printed version in 2009, I didn’t see the need for an e-book version.  E-books were available then, but not such a big chunk of the market.  So, earlier this month, I’ve changed my mind and the e-book version of Fishing in Foreign Seas is available.  Sin & Contrition (published last year) is available in electronic and printed versions, and I expect my future novels will be available in both versions.

The royalties for an author on an e-book are typically in the range of $1 -$2 per copy.  For a printed version royalties can be about 3 – 4 times as much.  When one looks at it that way, e-books are not so attractive for an author.  But international sales of e-book titles are considerably higher than printed titles: shipping is next to nothing for an e-book sold overseas.  I also wonder whether it isn’t easier to make the decision to buy an e-book than to buy a printed copy.  Generally, a printed book will cost about twice as much as an e-book, when shipping is  included.  So, I’m inclined to think that when a serious reader is shopping, s/he will buy 2-3 e-books instead of 1-2 printed books.  And if s/he decides s/he doesn’t like the e-book, s/he’ll just delete it.  (Instantaneous recycling!)

Some of the advantages of e-books are:

  • they take up a negligible amount of space
  • they are readable in low light or even total darkness
  • text-to-speech software will mean that the book can be read aloud
  • there is the possibility of translation, via software, into another language
  • printing of e-books does not consume paper and ink
  • additional software permits searching the text, and looking up definitions

Some of the advantages of printed books are:

  • they have the traditional, comforting feel of a real book
  • they are tangible and easy to give as a present
  • books with large pictures (such as childrens’ books) are more suitable in a printed version
  • because of data rights management it may not be legal to sell or lend an e-book to a third party
  • the content of a printed book may be taken more seriously, while there may be a temptation to skim an e-book or to use it for reference material

A few days ago, it was reported in the British press that Waterstones (the UK equivalent of Barnes & Noble) had signed an “e-book deal with ‘devil’ Amazon”!  The deal is that Waterstones will sell Amazon Kindles in their shops, and permit their customers to purchase e-books in their stores via WIFI.  This made news because, unlike Barnes & Noble, Waterstones had no ability to sell e-books.  2000 bookstores in the UK have closed in the past 6 years, but that trend has nothing to do with e-books.  It’s to do with the Internet being the perfect place to shop for books.

Editing

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Professional editing of the completed manuscript is a process that most published authors have to endure.  I say ‘endure’ because it involves work on the author’s part and because it involves at least some implied criticism of the author’s work.  However, when it is completed, the process should have added value to the work, making it a better experience for the reader.

I am presently ‘enduring’ the editing of my third novel, and it has been a bit painful.  More on that later.  My first novel, Fishing in Foreign Seas,was edited by a professional, freelance editor to whom I was referred by a company I contacted on the internet.  She returned my manuscript to me via e-mail with the proposed changes tracked in red.  Ninety-nine percent of her proposed changes were perfectly fine.  They included a few spelling errors (where the spell checker let me down), punctuation changes, and some grammatical changes (I have a tendency to use ‘which’ instead of  ‘that’), and a few syntax changes.   She also inserted questions or comments for me to consider in order to improve the clarity for the reader.  Most of her proposed changes were eliminating the second space I like to put at the end of a sentence.  (I think it makes the text easier to read, but editors and publishers don’t like a second space.)  Going through her proposed changes was actually an enjoyable piece of work.  I felt that she had improved what I had written.  So, I accepted 99% of the changes and sent the revised manuscript to my publisher.  The publisher (bless his heart) sent the revised manuscript to another professional editor, who produced about fifty new changes.  Many of these new changes were incorrect, and most of the rest were inappropriate.  So, having conceded on a handful of additional changes, I reminded the publisher that the manuscript had already been edited and that enough was enough.

In the case of my second novel, Sin & Contrition, I decided to use the editor which the publisher recommended in order to avoid the double editing.  The way this process worked was different in the sense that I was expected to make a list of the proposed changes with which I disagreed, but I was advised not to alter the marked up manuscript.  So, I sent the publisher a list of well over one hundred items I didn’t agree with.  A few weeks later I got the manuscript back with all but about ten of my items suitably addressed.  A few weeks after that, the last items were addressed.

The moral I take away from this story is that publishers (or at least my publisher) likes to be in control of the editing process.  It would be a lot simpler if the publisher could bring himself to trust an editor and the author to work together to produce a final manuscript.  After all, the author and the publisher have a common objective: producing a novel which is well and correctly written, and in this process, the editor is a kind of technical adviser.

My third experience with Efraim’s Eye is much more frustrating.  The original manuscript was written mostly in Arial font, but I changed to Lucinda Calligraphy whenever a character is speaking or thinking in Arabic.  The reason for this is to remind the reader not only of the change in language, but to remind him/her of differences in culture and values.  I also like to put characters’  thoughts in italics to distinguish them from the spoke words.  This serves to highlight the dichotomy when a character’s thoughts and his words are in conflict.  It’s also useful to see a character’s reaction to a situation immediately without the need to include “She thought . . .”

Well, the publisher likes to see their books in Times New Roman, which is prefectly OK with me, except to get there, the entire manuscript was converted to Times New Roman before it  went out for editing.  So, at a later stage, I’ll have to go back and check, page-by-page, where Lucinda Calligraphy should be inserted.  Moreover, the editor didn’t like my use of italics in thoughts, so all of that has been put back to plain text.  More page-by-page work to re-instate the italics.

But what I find most frustrating is interference in the author’s creative perogative – as well as lack of professional competence.  For example:

  • making arbitrary changes to a word or phrase which has nothing to do with spelling, grammar, punctuation, or logic, but which the editor happens to prefer.  I tend to write very deliberately; arbitrary changes are seldom improvements
  • deleting descriptive passages which the editor thought were extraneous
  • putting what was intentionally broken English into correct English.  Some of my characters don’t speak good English
  • not listening to the voice of a character: e.g. adding “pm” to a sentence which reads: He said, “I’ll see you at about four.”
  • editorial errors: for example: substituting “where” for “which”, using the plural of a verb when the singular is called for, punctuation errors, failing to capitalise titles and proper nouns
  • inconsistency

There!  I’ve had my rant.  I’ll get over my frustration, and the good side of the editing experience is that the author can learn quite a lot about his craft, his novel and himself.