George Orwell, always prescient, once wrote, “If booksellers wanted to be millionaires, they’d be in another line of business.”

Few writers count on becoming millionaires, and just the promise of a book advance is enough to keep many motivated.  But in this time of transition, when publishers struggle with uncertain book sales and march towards new digital models, advances have waned.  The bulwark against day jobs and exigent debt, the champion of getting the writing done, the book advance is in retreat.

That is what writer and editor Meghan Ward discovered after she surveyed 105 authors in November 2011. Ward had heard rumors from colleagues and agents about the precipitous fall of advances, and because she is shopping a memoir of her modeling career (titled Paris On Less Than $10,000 Dollars a Day), she wanted to put the rumors to test.

“We hear that advances have plummeted in the last few years,” she said.  “One agent told me that advances are a quarter of what they were a few years ago.  Though I did not do a direct comparison, my survey clearly shows that advances were quite high in 2008 and have steadily declined since then.”

The authors Ward surveyed reported an average advance of $124,000 in 2008, and that number decreased to less than $60,000 in 2011, though the survey was taken shortly before the year ended.

Because of its small sample size, Ward’s survey is not comprehensive, but it does represent a range of authors—an illustrative cut of the market at large.  Authors with and without agents participated.  A third of the authors sold non-fiction books; the rest sold young adult titles, novels, memoirs, short story collections, and other books.  Most advances were given by “big six” publishing firms – that collection of industry captains including Random House, Harper Collins, and Penguin – but independent and medium-sized publishers were also in play.

Except for memoirs and young-adult titles, which garnered average advances that held steady above $100,000, book advances trended downward across all genres, for all authors.

“It’s really, really hard to sell books,” said literary agent Andy Ross. “Publishers are not being irrational. Large multi-media corporations have bought many of them, and they have much higher expectations for the return on their investment. They don’t take many risks. I talked to Random House, and they said if they don’t think they can sell 20,000 copies of a book, they will not buy it.  The bar is very high, and the big publishers are under a huge amount of pressure.”

Daniela Rapp, an acquisitions editor with New York publisher St. Martin’s Press, said that in the current business climate her company has also become risk-averse.

“We are generally even more conservative in evaluating sales potential than we used to be—e-books are eating into our print laydowns,” she said. “That there are fewer opportunities for media exposure in both print and other outlets makes acquisitions of certain projects more difficult.”

What about writers themselves?  Freelance Journalist Steve Kemper, whose book Labyrinth of Kingdoms, about a prominent and forgotten explorer of Africa, will be on bookshelves in June 2012, received a $250,000 advance in 2001 for his first book, Code Name Ginger.

That advance, he said, ”was extraordinary then and would be more so now.” He added that the advance for A Labyrinth of Kingdoms was nowhere near that amount.  “I don’t think it’s anybody’s business what I got,” he said in answer to a point-blank inquiry, “but I got enough to make me feel comfortable to write the book.”

Kemper mentioned that during the writing of Labyrinths he was forced to spend more time then he would have liked on magazine work to make ends meet.  As a result, he needed two months longer than anticipated to finish the book.

Like Kemper, most authors were reluctant to share specific dollar amounts of advances. Some echoed Orwell’s reminder that writing is rarely a lucrative business–tightfisted market or no. And some have clearly made their peace with that reality.

“Even in these difficult times I look to writing itself as a great privilege. I’ve been lucky to make a living doing what I love, and many people—writers, non-writers, furniture salesmen, nurses—aren’t so fortunate,” wrote Peter Orner in an email. His novel Love and Shame and Love was released last year, and he just signed a three-book deal with Little, Brown. “I would write even if I wasn’t able to make a living at it. That’s the nature of this. Anybody who doesn’t write because they know they won’t get rich is a) smart and b) probably not a writer.”

Orner’s recent success suggests that book publishers are hardly calling it quits. But they are in the midst of a harrowing transition, especially in the form of the book itself. According to The Association of American Publishers, between January 2010 and January 2011, e-book net sales leapt 115.8 percent. (See this update on e-books.) But e-book sales still comprise a small percentage of net book sales, and are not necessarily driving book advances.

It’s also a period of transition for book contracts, as publishers have begun to toy with different models. (Read this primer on bucks and book publishing.) Traditionally, authors received half an advance up front, and half upon acceptance. Today, advances are given in ever-growing numbers of installments, and some publishers, like the San Francisco-based McSweeney’s, have offered writers smaller advances in exchange for lucrative profit sharing terms.

But new terms don’t always favor the writer.

“There is an experiment with giving advances in chunks—a third, fourth or even fifth at a time, where the final payment would be after publication,” said Ross, who once owned the defunct Cody’s Books in Berkeley.

“The purpose of an advance is to get writer to sign on and to give them enough money to write the book. Now, essentially you’re getting an advance after the book is written,” Ross continued. “That’s not even an advance, that’s a behind.”

{Gianmaria Franchini writes fiction and non-fiction, and will settle for a five-figure advance.}

Related posts:

1. Constance Hale on Bucks and Book Publishing
2. Sarah Baker on do-it-yourself books
3. Sarah Baker with an E to Z on e-books

With a sidebar on what you need to know to do it yourself.

By Sarah Baker

Go to any panel on book publishing these days, and you’ll hear the hoopla over self-publishing. Easy to do! More control! A bigger cut of the profits! At a time when advances aren’t exactly advancing, editors are often too over-worked, and publicists are spending the house’s dimes on blockbusters, self-publishing sure sounds tempting. Add to this the allure of royalty rates of 70 percent or higher instead of the 15 percent (at most) from traditional publishers, and it’s no wonder all writers aren’t going indie.

But, wait. Self-publishing might be the word on everyone’s lips, but is it right for you?

“You have to decide what your goals are,” said thriller-writer and self-publishing guru Barry Eisler at a lecture in November 2011 at the Park Plaza hotel in Boston. For him, it seemed like a no-brainer. He had already published three books with a traditional, or what he calls “legacy,” publisher. He has a following, developed when he pounded the pavement one summer, visited 500 bookstores, and called on 1,200 bookstores in 40 states. Other things in his favor: His wife is a literary agent, so he has access to publishing professionals.

As if his platform weren’t enough already, the press from his decision to turn down $500,000 from St. Martin’s and go indie practically made him a household name. The mighty-marketing-machine Amazon is his publisher. He likes control. He likes business. He’s clearly very good at it.

But not everyone has built what Eisler has. For first-time authors, like Boston Globe reporter Billy Baker, who is armed with a literary agent and a nonfiction book idea, an advance from a traditional publisher is necessary for him to take time off from work to report and write. “I don’t have 50 grand in the bank,” he said.

Other authors make the point that they want the strong winds of a trusted publisher in their authorial sails. Pagan Kennedy, author of ten books including Spinsters and Black Livingstone, doubts she would ever go indie. “If you can live with 1,000 readers and not making any money, then fine. But, if you want an audience of 20,000 for your book—how do you get that?” she said.

So what should a writer weigh when considering self-publishing?

“Self-publishing had a stigma,” said Eve Bridburg, literary agent and founder of Grub Street, Inc., an independent literary-arts center in Boston.  But she points out some critical new factors: increasingly sophisticated self-publishing tools are available; you can distribute via the Internet (and not just via the back of a station wagon); Twitter and Facebook can help to spread the word. Then there is the payoff: higher royalty rates. So many more serious writers are self-publishing, she added, that Grub is now offering workshops not only in the craft of writing but in marketing and publishing, as well.

Many people are taking the plunge. An article by Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg in the Wall Street Journal cites an estimate by R. R. Bowker, which tracks the publishing business: the number of self-published titles exploded 160 percent from 2006 to 2010 (that is, from 51,237 to 133,036.)

Some recent success stories—Amanda Hocking and John Locke, in addition to Barry Eisler—have helped fuel the movement. And let’s not forget that some historic bestsellers (What Color is Your Parachute and The Elements of Style, for example) started out as do-it-yourselfers (DIY), the old-school name for the self-published. They were acquired by traditional houses after they were already successful.

Sales figures for self-published books are difficult to track, and hard to interpret, since people choose this route for all sorts of reasons. Many are printing 10 copies of a memoir for the family or 100 for the business. Amazon.com doesn’t share overall sales figures of books, according to Brittany Turner of their public relations department. But, in an email she was willing to say that “John Locke and Amanda Hocking have both sold more than 1 million books using Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), 12 KDP authors have sold more than 200,000 books and 30 KDP authors have sold more than 100,000.” Over at Amazon’s self-publishing service site, CreateSpace, she added, former New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin self-published his memoir Katrina’s Secrets, which hit the Top 100 Best Sellers in Books on Amazon the week of its release.

(If you’ve seen anyone report on the other end of the spectrum—that is, the number of self-published authors who never surpass their break-even point—please post links in the comments section! The more solid information we all have, the better.)

Even traditional publishers are capitalizing on the popularity. Book Country is Penguin Books new foray into the do-it-yourself world. It’s a place for genre fiction writers to circulate their work, get feedback, and buy self-publishing services. “Self-publishing is a trend that isn’t going away,” said Book Country president Molly Barton to Calvin Reid of Publishers Weekly.

But all of this takes time and ingenuity. Martha McPhee, author of Dear Money and three other novels, said self-publishing would be like pushing a boulder up a mountain, and she wouldn’t know where to begin. Claire Messud, New York Times-bestselling author of The Emperor’s Children, equates self-publishing with home schooling.

Would you consider home schooling?

SIDEBAR: Should you self-publish?

If you want a professional-looking book with a chance of success you’ll need four things: Time, Money, Connections, and Gumption. Traditional publishers have been in the business for a long time and a book contract, despite that many authors accuse them of everything from neglect to abandonment, guarantees a professional process. You’ll have a well-oiled machine behind you so that you can focus on writing and promotion. If you want to replace them you’ll need to:

1. Hire a load of people if you aren’t a jack-of-all-trades: Editor, copyeditor, jacket designer, interior designer, publicist, marketer, rights salesperson (for foreign and first serial), Web site designer, printer, and distributor (for print books). If you’re publishing nonfiction you might need a lawyer to check for libel and an indexer to create an index. But buyer beware—these people work for you, so make sure they tell you what you need to hear and not what you want to hear.
2. Verify your account balance and uncap your pen—you’ll be writing a lot of checks.
3. Buy a Starbucks Card or a Nespresso machine. With the amount of work this will involve, you’ll need your caffeine. Self-publishing is akin to starting your own business.
4. Do the hustle. Work your friends on Facebook, your followers on Twitter, your old colleagues in the media, your local librarian, and your buddies in the bookstores to spread the word and buy the book.

Good luck.

{Formerly a book editor at Viking/Penguin and Simon & Schuster in New York City, Sarah Baker is now a freelance writer and an independent radio producer. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.}

Related posts:

1. Sarah Baker with an E to Z on e-books
2. Heather Ross with an e-books update
3. Sarah Baker on the Art of Writing Free

But hang on! Adjectives make up an important class of words in our language (unlike, say, prepositions, which hardly inspire awe). Linguists rank adjectives right up there with nouns, verbs, and adverbs as one of the four major word classes in English. Each of these classes plays a different lead role in the drama of a sentence: nouns are the actors, verbs are the actions, adverbs give the actions shape, and adjectives give us a clearer sense of the actors.

Adjectives, used discreetly, make descriptions come alive. Take Jonathan Raban’s “deep episcopal purple,” which describes the color of the sky as the sun sets over a barren landscape in his book Bad Land. What a fresh way to describe such a cliché subject!  “Episcopal” names an exact shade of purple (the color of a bishop’s cassock, or a priest’s vestments on particular holy days). It also subtly spins a thread between the sunset and a religious experience in the reader’s mind.

The most evocative adjectives leave room for the reader’s imagination, allowing different associations and interpretations, without departing from the writer’s overall idea.

The real danger in using an adjective—and really any word—is overusing it until it loses its oomph, until it cannot paint a picture of its subject (or even touch the brush to the canvas). Arthur Plotnik has written an entire book on tantalizing adjectives of praise precisely because of the ones that make his skin crawl: great, fabulous, and terrific, along with their cousins amazing, awesome, and unbelievable. Called Better Than Great: A Plenitudinous Compendium of Wallopingly Fresh Superlatives,  the book lists—starting with “all-bets-off best” and ending with “zhooshy”—the most mind-marmalizing, wit-sharpening, noodle-frying, brains-into-putty astonishing adjectives.

(Here’s a WBUR interview about the book.)

Of course, some situations call for more subtle superlatives. William Carlos Williams’ red wheelbarrow next to the white chickens in his famous poem “The Red Wheelbarrow” gets at an image by appealing to the reader’s senses. Nothing actually happens in the poem; the point is to transport you to this scene. Without the simple adjectives conveying color, the poem wouldn’t be able to take you there.  

Then there are the “angelheaded hipsters” from Allen Ginsberg’s Howl. He crafted an adjective from two nouns to describe denizens of San Francisco, “burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night.”

What adjectives have knocked your socks off? Add a comment. I will send a copy of Better Than Great as a reward for the most zhooshy example.

 {And thanks to poet Ava Sayaka Rosen, who lent her favorite examples to this post.}

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1. Pompous Ass Words

But I’ve been stocking up stuff to share with you as soon as I get out of the Kim Chee. For a taste, I thought I’d turn you on to a Web site I found in my research, called Pompous Ass Words.

Dan Fejes started the site more than nine years ago, out of frustration with reporters who rely on words that made him pick up his dictionary one too many times. The straw that broke his back was “risible,” in a Maureen Dowd column. “When I saw that it was completely synonymous with ‘laughable,’”Fejes writes, “I started mentally shouting at the paper: “I WALKED AWAY FROM MY COFFEE FOR THIS?!?!”

Since when should the current story not be current, spoken to and for the common people? On his Web site, Fejes and others track high-falutin words they come across in news stories and have to look up in the dictionary—only to find that they have put down their reading for a word with absolutely no use except to befuddle them. In each case, the obscure word means little more than what another completely legitimate, common word means—down to its shade and shadow. Fejes calls these “pompous ass words,” or, as he otherwise puts it, “words everyone should know about and never use.”

This journalist gets it that reporters and columnists want to sound authoritative.  But at the same time, a smarter-than-you approach really doesn’t make sense. The message would be more urgent if it didn’t sound like a history book someone wrote with a feather pen in a dusty library.

“While I understand the complaints of those who think it’s anti-intellectual,” Fejes wrote me in e-mail, “I respectfully disagree. Choosing the right words for the right audience is important. There’s a time and a place for ornate language. You can be in favor of the simplest, most functional language in everyday use without it being a call for a descent into monosyllabic grunting or lolspeak. Sometimes the simplest, most functional language is pretty complex.”

Hear, hear—and thanks to my research assistant, Ava Sayaka Rosen, who has been helping me on the pompous ass words front.

Related posts:

1. Wit-sharpening words

Actually, the only things that keep me on a cardio machine are breaking news, baseball, or trash TV, but I love my iPod for long walks. (I’ve also been using it to escape from manuscript hell: I put on sweet slack-key guitar, play with colorful magic markers and easel-sized Post-Its, and draft my chapter outlines. Sort of like fingerpainting for grownups. Slapping a teal-colored outline up on the big white wall in my office is makes me forget how freaked out I am about my deadline.)

Allison continued her rhapsody, turning to the thrilling new life the iPad gives the written word. “Your world can be reshaped, redefined by what other people have accomplished, what they have fantasized, what they have dreamed about and made a reality,” she said. That was once the promise of traditional books; now it’s the promise of e-books.

I confess, I don’t yet have an iPad. (Nor an iPhone, although my husband and I share what we call the “WeTouch”—an iTouch for two.) I’m gonna buy an iPad with the second installment of my advance. (In addition to fingerpainting, promises like this keep me going.)

iPad or not, we all need to stay on top of the fast-and-furious changes in the book biz. Check out these three new essays in the Sin and Syntax Salon:

• In Heather Ross’s e-book update you’ll get answers to questions like “How big is the e-book market?” and “What should I expect in e-book royalties?”
• In another essay, literary agent Michael Larsen shares his thoughts on the Google Books Search court case.
• Finally, in a third salvo, Bill Petrocelli explains why he’s welcoming Google Books at his Bay Area bookstore.

BTW, the Google Books Search case (here’s a collection of New York Times updates) has nothing to do with Google e-books. Many authors like me “opted out” of the company’s $125 million class-action settlement with the Author’s Guild and a collection of publishers.” No way I wanted to cede my copyright to Google! In March 2011, a federal judge in New York agreed with us doubters, saying the deal went too far in granting Google rights to exploit books without permission from copyright owners. We’ll all have to stay tuned on developments in the Grand Google Scan. (Does that last word sound like scam?)

Of course, we all use Google Books to take a peek at pages. But there’s nothing like owning your own copy. Which do you prefer, bound books or digital? Kindle or Nook Cloud or iPad?

Related posts:

1. Sarah Baker with an E to Z on e-books
2. Bastard talk, with Dorothy Allison
3. Bookseller Bill Petrocelli on Google e-books

How large is the e-book market?

According to a press release from the Association of American Publishers, e-book net sales leapt 115.8 percent between January 2010 and January 2011, comprising approximately 9 percent of the consumer book market. American readers spent $263 million on e-books in the first eight months of 2010 alone, and in October 2010, Amazon released a statement boasting that during the previous three months, it had sold 143 Kindle books for every 100 hardcover ones.

Who buys e-books?

In January 2011, Digital Book World—a forum for the digital publishing industry—posted a slideshow detailing the results of a customer survey on e-reading. Results indicated that typical e-book consumers are employed 30- to 44-year-olds in cities and suburbs, followed by 45- to 54-year-olds and then 18- to 29-year-olds. The survey also revealed that sharing the literary love is good marketing strategy: nearly 40 percent of respondents reported purchasing an e-book after receiving a free sample chapter, and almost 30 percent reported buying an e-book after receiving a free one from the same author.

What should I be aware of in my contract?

According to an article by the Author’s Guild, publishers typically request broad grants of electronic rights in their contracts. However, because digital copies of a book can easily be sold long after physical printing has ended, the time limit on e-rights retention by publishers may remain open-ended. “Typically, rights revert to the author when [a book] goes out of print, but everything changed with print-on-demand and e-books,” said Paul Aiken, executive director of the Author’s Guild. Aiken advises authors to modify the out-of-print reversion of rights clauses in their contracts to stipulate that if digital book sales don’t hit a certain number in a 12-month period, e-rights revert to the author.

Literary agent Ted Weinstein says that contract modifications like these are the goal of many literary agents fighting to establish new industry standards. But Weinstein cautions authors to let experienced agents take the lead in contract negotiations. “Authors can work themselves into a neurotic frenzy, but I say worry only about the stuff that is in your realm,” Weinstein said. And, he adds, get a good agent. (Start with the Association of Author’s Representatives.)

What royalties should I expect?

E-book royalties for authors have coalesced at 25 percent of the publisher’s receipts. This a higher royalty than is standard for hardcovers (12 to 15 percent) or paperbacks (7.5 percent); however, the sale price of e-books tends to be much lower than that of bound books, so in absolute terms an author is likely to earn less in royalties on e-books—unless the digital format allows for the sale of many more volumes.

In an online article, the Author’s Guild argues that publishers will reap far greater profits on e-books, and that this could distort publishers’ incentives and ultimately hurt authors. The Guild did the math on authors’ royalties and publishers’ gross profits for several popular hardcover titles using industry-standard contract terms (15 percent royalty for hardcover sales and 25 percent for e-book sales). For example, Kathryn Stockett, author of The Help, earns $3.75 in hardcover royalties, while her publisher earns $4.75 in profit. However, Stockett earns $2.28 in e-book royalties, while her publisher nets $6.32—a 39 percent loss per book for the author and a 33 percent e-gain for the house.

Some writers, including Terrill Lee Lankford, author of Blonde Lightning, have balked at the 75/25 royalty split. Lankford, in a blog for Publisher’s Weekly, aired his decision to walk away from a publishing contract altogether in protest. Yet, Lankford and the Guild are hopeful that as authors demand better rates, and digital sales begin to overtake print sales, the playing field will level. The current royalty rate “runs against a long-standing tradition of essentially splitting net proceeds from book sales,” Aiken said. When big-name authors—and even authors who are not at the top of the food chain—say, “‘my market is now 50 percent digital and I’m not going to be a junior partner,’” publishers will take notice. Once one publisher begins to sign known authors at a higher rate, Aiken added, other publishers will have to follow suit or risk losing business.

How are e-books priced?

On March 1, the New York Times reported that Random House became the last of the six largest U.S. publishers to switch to the “agency model” for the pricing of e-books, in order to sell its 17,000 e-titles through Apple’s iBookstore. Under this model, publishers set the list price for their e-books and online booksellers return 70 percent of this amount to the publishers for each sale, taking a 30 percent commission per book. Under the “wholesale model,” preferred by Amazon, publishers sell e-books to Amazon at about half the list price and Amazon sets the Kindle price.

The move from “wholesale” to “agency” pricing has finally broken the mega-retailer’s hold on the largest share of the e-book market: Amazon can no longer artificially lower the price of e-books in order to attract more online business. “You need competition not just among authors and publishers, but also on the distribution end,” Aiken said. “Without the agency model you’re in a winner-take-all situation, and the winner is Amazon.”

Predictably, the “agency model” has led to an overall increase in e-book prices from the “standard” 2009 Amazon listing of $9.99, spurring some e-reader owners to leave hostile comments and one-star ratings on vendors’ websites. According to a New York Times article, under new publisher agreements with Apple and Amazon, the prices for newly released e-books will rise to between $12.99 and $14.99 in the coming months. Aiken says that we are likely to see additional price fluctuation because publishers must now measure how incremental increases or decreases in price affect their volume of digital sales.

Do books ever go straight to e-book?

Some trade publishers have been experimenting with releasing titles straight to e-book—typically timely digital releases followed shortly by print editions. But in a tight publishing market, the Author’s Guild reports that midlist and maverick authors are being wooed by the prospect of self-publishing. Agent Weinstein asks: What are publishers really doing for authors when anyone can publish an e-book through Amazon in minutes and receive 70 percent of the proceeds?

The answer, of course, is that publishing houses offer advances, edit manuscripts, and market the finished product. Yet niche outlets, including Self-Publishing Boot Camp, provide opportunities for those capable of aggressive self-promotion. The rag-to-riches story of young-adult fantasy author Amanda Hocking, who sold more than 400,000 e-books in January 2011, is a testament to the power of social networking and the equalizing potential of the digital-book format.

What is the state of e-book piracy?

E-book piracy has been slow to take hold, but a study by Attributor—an online content-monitoring firm—indicates that authors and publishers may yet face the challenges recording artists and record labels did with the introduction of the iPod. “All the same mechanisms that have made music and movies stealable online are there for e-books now,” Aiken said. “It can hit overnight and decimate an industry.” In January 2010, the Attributor blog claimed that e-book piracy costs the publishing industry nearly $3 billion annually, or roughly 10 percent of U.S. book sales.

E-book files are small, and several thousand titles can be easily packaged into a single torrent requiring less than 4GB of memory. Author and C-Net blogger David Carnoy realized in February 2011 that the digital version of his novel Knife Music was being pirated in just such a package. Carnoy believes that a rise in the popularity of the Kindle e-reader and the spectacular success of the iPad have “supercharged” e-book piracy. Still, the variety of e-book file formats and the relative novelty of the technology mean that piracy has not yet had the same devastating effect on the publishing industry as it has on other sectors.

Check back with us next year for a report on the swordfights over that subject.

Related posts:

1. Sarah Baker with an E to Z on e-books
2. Constance Hale on Bucks and Book Publishing
3. Sarah Baker on do-it-yourself books

A San Francisco literary agent on the digitization of books

In 2002, Google initiated a secret project with a noble goal: to make the knowledge in the world’s 130 million books available to anyone connected to the Web. Thanks to the exploding smartphone market, by the end of the decade, this will include most of the people on the planet. But some feel that the project, now public and known as Google Book Search, has flown in the face of Google’s noble motto: “Don’t be evil.”

Indeed, the very idea of digitizing books in copyright without permission was viewed as pernicious by the writing and publishing community, which created a firestorm of protest and took various tacks to block Google’s attempt to commandeer our literary heritage.

Remember: Power corrupts. Far too much power these days rests in the hands of fewer and fewer people—or fewer corporations. After all, corporations like Google, Amazon, or the not as menacing Barnes & Noble, exist for one purpose and one purpose only, as noted by Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich in a recent San Francisco Chronicle column:  “to make as much money as possible.”

Unless stopped, technology companies like Google and Amazon, the leading online bookseller, will control the culture for which they are now the gatekeepers. Access to books is far more important than quarterly dividends. Allowing books to become victims of the corporate imperative will lead to evil being done to readers, writers, students, libraries, and publishers.

Consider this three-part solution:

1. Google should seize the opportunity created when U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin ruled against its plan, citing concerns about copyright, privacy, and monopoly. Google should turn to the publishing community to make decisions about how the corporation provides access to books. Google might finance a nonprofit governing board, which would decide how best to balance access and profit in the public interest. The board would include a representative from Google, the Association of American Publishers, the American Booksellers Association, the American Library Association, the Library of Congress, the Author’s Guild, the Association of Authors’ Representatives, the American Board of Higher Education, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the World Intellectual Property Organization, and perhaps other organizations.
2. These organizations can elect a member to serve a single two-year term for the part-time position in return for the income the member presently earns plus expenses. The ideal candidates will have integrity, creativity, and a passionate dedication to the public’s right to access books.
3. The board’s monthly meetings should be made transparent: Televise them, show who votes for what, and post the text of its meetings on the Web.

After two setbacks, let us hope that Google will see the wisdom in surrendering control to assure profits. If it does, the courts and the international book community will look more kindly on its efforts.

History has proven Napoleon right: “Humanity is only limited by its imagination.” All that separates conception and achievement are time and resources.  Creativity and collaboration across media, disciplines, and borders will continue to unleash a growing torrent of wonders.

{Michael Larsen is a partner in Larsen-Pomada Literary Agents, author or coauthor of eleven books, including How to Write a Book Proposal, and co-director of the San Francisco Writers Conference.}

No related posts.

Google eBooks are stored “in the cloud,” so you can read them on your computer, iPhone, iPad, and other devices. We liked this flexibility, as well as Google’s willingness to support bookstores like ours, and you can now buy e-books from our Web site. (There is a full FAQ at the Book Passage Web site to acquaint you with Google eBooks.)

Many breathless digerati have been heralding the arrival of e-books as a sign that the reign of the printed word is over. Soon, they claim, everyone will be reading digital type on backlit screens. Not so fast, booksellers say. We are generally happy to have an array of electronic books to offer to our customers, but few of us are tearing down our bookshelves.

Hardware-store owners may rave over a favorite screwdriver, and kitchen-store owners may fall in love with a set of pottery, but there’s nothing to match the bookseller’s love for a well-crafted book. Go to any meeting of independent booksellers, and you’ll find them swarming over authors, ogling brilliant cover designs, and passionately debating this passage or that. Booksellers consider themselves the inheritors of a 600-year-old tradition. We will do almost anything to maintain the quality of the books we offer our customers, and we bristle at the thought of anything that might undermine us.

The Luster of Books

Part of that “quality of books” is the printed page itself. The sheer physicality of books is part of their strength. I’m not just talking here about luscious paper, tasteful font, or smart design. Books on a library shelf or bookstore table support each other in a myriad of ways, one leading to another. Pick any book off the shelf, and your attention may be drawn to the ones next to it. “Touch me,” they seem to say. “I have something you want to know.” When you pass shelves of books—some of them familiar, others new and intriguing—their presence can reset your mind and give you purpose. By the time you reach the book you want, your mood may have changed from when you entered the door. You’re ready to read, and the book is ready to do its work.

For my wife, Elaine, and I, books “do their work” in a number of ways. Among our houseful of books is a large collection about food. These books are truly visceral in their impact. Sure, the recipes might be found on the Epicureus app, and some photos have probably wandered into the bowels of Flickr. But, for us, it is these books that inspire the inner chef.

The same is true of the children’s books that are scattered around our house. I can still see the pictures of the first book I had as a child—and feel the weight of it on my lap. (Can I remember the first Web page I ever saw? Hardly.) And the warmth that comes in curling up on the couch and reading with one of my grandchildren will never be replaced by leaning over a screen.

The Lust for an E-Book

As a kid I was known to carry a book with me everywhere. Decades later, being caught somewhere without a book to read is one of my worst nightmares. That’s why a recent experience with Tony Judt’s Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 was so maddening. I was about 50 pages into this riveting work when I lost it in the Heathrow Airport lounge—at the start to a three-week vacation. Damn! I groused about it for days, knowing that I’d have a hard time finding another copy in a small town in Italy. I can see why travelers might want to have e-books on hand to get around the restrictions on airplane luggage. And if my vision were impaired, I would welcome the opportunity for an e-book with adjustable print-size.

Yes, electronic books have their place. As it has become clear that electronic books are part of the literary landscape, it has also become clear that independent bookstores are an ideal place to buy them. Why? Because independent bookstores reflect the sensibility of the booksellers who work there.

No two stores are alike. But once you are in such a store, book selection becomes a two-way street: You are no longer just heading towards a book, because the books are seeking you out. Bookstores do this in many different ways. Some emphasize their careful selection of books, the manner in which they are displayed, and the shelf-talkers with staff recommendations. Others cultivate the person-to-person relationships, with booksellers making recommendations, hosting book clubs, encouraging customers to arguing in the aisles over the merits of a book. Many of us also invite authors to read from their work and take questions from our most avid customers. Some of this is serendipity, but it arises from a setting in which books and book lovers find themselves at home.

Giving Google a home

Book Passage will now bring this same sensibility to Google eBooks, which means that we will feature the best selection of electronic books in the market. It’s a pleasure to be working with a company of Google’s size, expertise, and reputation. This assures us that we can offer the finest electronic books and keep pace with new developments in the e-books field. And we believe that Google sees our role as helping it to reach the most dedicated and sophisticated readers in America.

Books have outlived some of new technologies and learned to live with others. There’s every reason to believe that books and e-books will learn to accommodate each other and find their proper place in any reader’s collection. And as lovers of printed books we welcome our new electronic cousins into the household. We’ll learn to love and respect each other —just as long as they don’t barge into the kitchen and start trying to run things.

{Bill Petrocelli is an author, a bookseller, and a former attorney. For the past three decades he has been the co-owner with his wife Elaine of Book Passage, a retail bookstore in San Francisco and Corte Madera.}

Related posts:

1. Sarah Baker with an E to Z on e-books
2. Heather Ross with an e-books update
3. Sarah Baker on do-it-yourself books

The highlight of the conference was a keynote by Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard Out of Carolina and Cavedwellers. The 62-year-old author is also a poet, an iconoclast, a mother of a “turkey-baster baby” and an inveterate watcher—with that baby, her now-18-year-old son Wolf—of American Idol. (Mind you, she only watches the first few weeks. She loses interest once the contestants get people to do their hair and makeup—“I want them in a raw, unfettered state,” she says, when they are “artists held in contempt.”)

Many other conference speakers told us how to write bestsellers (hah!), and build our brands (yuck!), and sound not a wit like a twit on Twitter (good luck—I mean, 140 characters is just 140 characters). But Allison dug in and talked about what it means, really, to be part of the tribe of People Held in Contempt (i.e., penniless writers in a society that measures success in dollar signs).

She also bucked up those of us freaked out by the tumult in publishing, whether the bankruptcy of Borders, the ubiquity of ebooks, or the building of the Huffington empire on the backs of unpaid bloggers. Allison doesn’t pooh-pooh digital storytelling, confessing that her latest iPod download features Sissy Space reading To Kill a Mockingbird. (“I’m in mad love with Sissy Space. My woman dies, I’m goin’ after Sissy. I’ll get her up in the night and make her read me other books.”)

Sissy Spacek or no, Allison still believes in books, deep in her Carolina soul: “They will say to you that publishing is dead,” she told us. But “after the Black Death comes the Renaissance. After everything changes, we go back to essentials. And this is what I believe is essential: We’re lonely. We’re scared. Some of us have insomnia. We get up in the night, and we walk back and forth. You can only watch television so long. PDX 90? Damned if I’m doin’ exercises in the night. Oprah? I already saw the show. No, no, no. I get up in the night, an’ I need a story. I need a book. I need somebody to invite me into a world they have imagined whole. Or stolen. I genuinely don’t care. Just take me there. Ride me on language. Charm me. Fascinate me. Scare me or excite me, but take me out of myself. We are lonely. We are scared. We need story. That does not change.”

Allison wrapped up by quoting Vladimir Nabokov: “I don’t write to change people. I don’t write to make a difference. I write to make that still, small sob in the spine.” Then Allison riffed on the quote: “That is not about money. That is not about prices. That is about that immediate, intimate connection.” She leaned into the microphone, her stringy gray hair sweeping the top of the podium. “Let the culture, let the economics, run behind me. I know what I’m doin’. I write to make that still, small sob in the spine.”

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In the Preface to The Art of Fact, Yagoda defines this mysterious genre, which might also be called “literary journalism.” I emailed the University of Delaware English professor to see whether his essay is available online. Alas, it isn’t. So I thought I’d summarize it here, and encourage you to buy the book.

Above all, Yagoda argues, literary journalism must be factual. Memoir and essays are out. A work in this genre must involve a process of active fact-gathering, and it must have currency. (If the writer doesn’t get on the story soon after it happens, he says, “the resulting work edges into the realm of history.”) That’s the journalism part.

The literary part involves “thoughtful, artful, and valuable” innovation. The writer casts aside the more constraining conventions of journalism, moving, for example, from quotes gotten in interviews to dialogue gathered in careful observation.

The seminal works Yagoda lists include John Hersey’s Hiroshima (“the first serious work to attempt a novelistic factual narrative on a large scale”), Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Piers Paul Read’s Alive, and Gary Smith’s “Shadow of a Nation.”

Defining the genre further, Yagoda writes subdivides literary journalism into three principal categories:

• Narrative journalism: A “fly-on-the-wall” reporter gathers information about an event and relies on the model of novels or scripts to tell the story. Think Ben Hecht, Jimmy Breslin, Bob Greene, Tracy Kidder.
• First-person reportage: The reporter plays a role in the forefront of the story, understanding that “outsized and unabashed subjectivity can be a superb route to understanding.” Think James Boswell, George Orwell, A. J. Liebling, Hunter Thompson, Norman Mailer.
• Style as substance: The writer crafts such a distinctive voice, structure, or even syntax that the work is elevated to the level of literature. Think James Agee, Joseph Mitchell, Joan Didion, John McPhee, David Simon, Svetlana Alexiyevich, Rysard Kapuscinski.

If you, like I, lament the absence of women in these lists, take heart. In addition to Joan Didion and Stalin’s daughter, Yagoda calls out Rebecca West and Lillian Ross as early practitioners of literary journalism. If you are eager to explore the non-Maileresque set, check my slightly more diverse lists of classics.

And, in case you missed it, here is my stab at defining narrative journalism.

Related posts:

1. Best of narrative journalism (articles)