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

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

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

Both books are examples of masterful war reporting, but they also make a study in contrasts about the role of the narrator in nonfiction storytelling. Finkel choses the third person, zooming on his soldier protagonists. (See this Washington Post excerpt.) Filkins, on the other hand, uses his book to write in a way that is impossible in his New York Times stories, as he explains in “Up Close and Personal in Iraq,” an article by Ankush Khardori in The American Prospect. Just read the first few pages of each, and you’ll notice the difference in point of view.

How will books like these fare in the future, as traditional publishing adapts to new technology? You may have seen the host of recent news articles about e-books, and you may even be considering buying a brand-new iPad. In the Sin and Syntax Salon, Sarah Baker gives you the lowdown on what she calls the “chaotic bazaar” of book publishing.

Motoko Rich also had an interesting (if oddly written—did anyone else think it went in circles?) article about how e-readers kill the fun of looking at what others are reading. Is the Kindle a conversation killer? I once sat next to a handsome guy on a plane who was reading The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. My asking how he liked the book kicked off a conversation that took us to Frankfurt. And it gave me a cool connection in Washington, D.C. (He was a staffer for Congressman John Conyers.)

OK, now back to our conversation about writing. I wanted to share some suggestions from my California colleague Nora Isaacs, who is a terrific journalist as well as a freelance editor.

Nora is good on tips. I appreciated the ones in her book Women in Overdrive. And taking some of those tips to heart, I will stop writing and start assembling some literal bits and pieces for a dinner party tonight.

No related posts.

This frenzy, and a barrage of media attention, has left most people involved feeling confused. Agent Laurie Liss, vice president of Sterling Lord Literistic, says, “I have never felt such a divide between publishers and agents as there is now about electronic rights.” And Mark Gompertz, executive vice president of digital publishing at Simon and Schuster, acknowledges an “anxiety on the publishing side, too. We’re on the threshold of something new.”

So what should a writer know in a labyrinth of twisting alleys and ad-hoc product stands? Here are some key terms and general guidelines to the unstable warren of the U.S. market.

E-book

According to PC Magazine Encyclopedia, an e-book is “the electronic counterpart of a printed book, which can be viewed on a desktop computer or a portable device such as a laptop, PDA or e-book reader.”

E-reader

The Free Dictionary states that an e-reader, or e-book reader, is “a small, portable device onto which the contents of a book in electronic format can be downloaded and read.” Although there are more then two-dozen different brands of e-reader available, the most popular are Amazon’s Kindle, Sony’s Reader, and Barnes and Noble’s Nook. Then there’s Apple’s iPad Tablet, which will be available April 3, 2010.

Enhanced e-books

These are e-books with bells and whistles. Think of a DVD—you get the movie plus the option to watch cuts or interviews with the director. An enhanced e-book could include audio, a video interview with the author, passages cut from the final text, slide-shows, or illustrations. You might even be able to click on a recipe, or a footnote, that takes you to a full citation. Enhanced e-books are interactive e-books.

How big is the e-book market?

Publisher’s Weekly recently reported that “e-book sales from the 13 publishers that report figures to the Association of American Publishers soared 176.6 percent in 2009, to $169.5 million.” The jump in sales increased the e-book’s share of trade sales from 1.2 percent in 2008 to 3.3 percent in 2009. And, five million e-readers sold worldwide in 2009 and an estimated twelve million will be sold in 2010, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Who is the market?

“Most e-book devices were bought by baby boomers (or older) and, mostly, women,” says Gompertz. At $259 a pop for a Kindle, or around $500 for the iPad, it’s understandable that they are selling to a more mature market. Peter Miller, director of publicity at Bloomsbury Books says that these readers are devouring “genre fiction.” In other words, the e-book market so far is most popular for “people who read for guilty pleasure.”

What should I be aware of in my contract?

Get an agent or have a publishing lawyer check over your contract. “You wouldn’t have your spouse pull your tooth for you,” says agent Wendy Strothman. That isn’t just a plug for her industry; contracts are confusing and if a professional looks at them, you’ll sleep better. Some things to look for in particular:

1. If you have been previously published, now is the time to check your contract to see if you control e-rights, says Liss. In other words, be on top of it.
2. For new contracts, “publishers will demand e-book rights. “No book publisher will allow e-book rights to be retained by the author,” adds Strothman.
3. Double-check the reversion of rights clause and insert a minimum number of annual sales for a work to be deemed “in print,” suggests The Author’s Guild.
4. Agents and publishers are in battle mode over enhanced e-books and there is no standard yet. A big question is whether they will be classified separately from regular e-books. Many publishers want these rights, but most agents are trying to retain them.
5. Read the fine print regarding the format of book. If the publisher is considering publishing straight to e-book, you want to be aware of that.

Don’t rush into anything. The e-book market is uncertain and changing.

What royalties should I expect?

Most publishers (“about 90 percent” according to Liss) are offering rates of 25 percent of net receipts for e-books. The Author’s Guild thinks these are low and suggests ways to protect you if industry standards change: First, because the market is changing so quickly, don’t lock yourself into a rate. Try to obtain the unconditional right to renegotiate after a period of, say, two years. Second, negotiate for a royalty floor. Insist that your royalty amount for e-books will never fall below the royalty amount for the hardcover edition of your work.

Do books ever go straight to e-book?

You can self-publish straight to an e-book. The advantages are obvious: no rejection letters from editors, no distribution costs, no royalties to an agent. Plus, you’ll get marketing for you or your business. The disadvantages are that—unless you are a jack-of-all-trades—you must now pay someone to copyedit, proofread, design your cover, market, advertise, and publicize. And you don’t have the advice and expertise of editors and designers. There are many sites on-line that offer self-publishing services including Amazon.com and Lulu.com. Or you can set up PayPal on your own Web site. Publishers have started publishing a few books straight to e-book. According to Gompertz, this is still experimental. Simon & Schuster published a book straight to e-book because it was topical, but then published it as a regular book.

Are there any pitfalls to e-books?

Piracy. It happens. If you are self-publishing and want to make sure that nobody steals your content, copyright every page or install PDF security features. If you are working with a publisher, check with them about protecting your content.

The other pitfall? Things can go wrong, Orwellian wrong, like in 2009 when Amazon removed 1984 from people’s Kindles.

What’s the lowdown on the pricing of e-books?

There’s been a lot of press about e-books, but a little history might help. It all started with Amazon and its Kindle and an e-book price of $9.99.  Amazon and the publishers used a wholesale model, whereby publishers would sell the books to Amazon at about half the list price and then Amazon would set the Kindle price. So, if a book was priced at $24.95, Amazon would pay the publisher $12.50. But since the online giant was charging $9.99, it was actually losing money ($2.50) on the e-book. It didn’t matter to Amazon because it was making up for it in Kindle sales. In the process, however, consumers got used to paying that lower price.

This price started a dispute between Amazon and publishers because, as Mark Gompertz points out, “publishers are against devaluing content.” Two years of disagreement led to Amazon temporarily removing the “buy” button from Macmillan books in January, although they were still offered on the site by third parties. Eventually a resolution was reached; soon an e-book on Amazon will be priced at $12.99 to $14.99.

Then publishers came to a pricing agreement with Apple, known as an agency model, for the downloading of e-books on the iPad.  Apple will give publishers 70 percent of the consumer price, which the publishers set. But Apple wants a guarantee from the publishers that no other retailer will sell e-books for less then their iBookstore price. Consequently publishers and Amazon are back at the negotiating table. Now, according to The New York Times, Amazon is insisting that publishers sign a three-year contract guaranteeing that no other competitor will get lower prices or better terms.  Mark Gompertz says, “We felt like we were losing ground, but now we have possibility because of competition.”

Next up, Google. Publishers are currently in discussion with the Internet giant over its plans to enter the e-book world. Because of the Amazon and Apple discussions, Google is now open to talking about an agency model and to paying publishers 70 percent of each sale, according to Mokoto Rich of The New York Times.

For the moment, publishers and e-retailers have devised a formula that works. But if e-book sales outpace hardcover sales—or if bookstores can’t compete—the equation might not work. This would mean that publishers aren’t making the money they need to acquire, edit, design, support, and promote books. And, as Jonathan Galassi wrote in The New York Times, “An e-book distributor is not a publisher, but rather a purveyor of work that has already been created.”

So, check regularly. The offerings at this bazaar change daily–new vendors, new products, new prices, and new customers. I’ll do without enhanced pomegranates, though. I like them just the way they are.

{Formerly a book editor at Viking/Penguin and Simon & Schuster in New York City, Sarah Baker is now a freelance writer and an independent producer for Word of Mouth on New Hampshire Public Radio. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.}

Sources:

Motoko Rich, The New York Times, “Amazon Threatens Publishers as Apple Looms”

Douglas MacMillan, Business Week, “E-Readers Everywhere: The Inevitable Shakeout”

Motoko Rich, The New York Times, “Math of Publishing Meets the E-Book”

Jim Milliot, Publisher’s Weekly E-Book Sales Jump 176 % in Flat Trade Year”

Louisa Ermelino, Publisher’s Weekly PW’s Panel on Going from Book to e-Book

Nicholson Baker, The New Yorker, “A New Page”

Jonathan Galassi, The New York Times, “There’s More to Publishing than Meets the Screen”

Geoffrey A. Fowler, The Wall Street Journal, “More Makers Jump into the E-Reader Market”

Ina Fried, CNET News, “Amazon recalls (and embodies) Orwell’s ’1984′“

Steven Pearlstein, The Washington Post, “The Amazon-Macmillan book saga heralds publishing’s progress”

Sarah Weinman, Daily Finance, “Enhanced e-books”

Kevin Kelly, The New York Times Magazine, “Scan This Book!“

Related posts:

1. Sarah Baker on do-it-yourself books
2. Heather Ross with an e-books update
3. Constance Hale on Bucks and Book Publishing

David Carr, in “Why Twitter Will Endure,” confesses his own infatuation with Twitter, and defies conventional notions about that brand of social media. He sees the possibility of narrative in “short-burst communication” and applauds the economy and precision forced by text messages. But he concedes that “the real value of the service is listening to a wired collective voice.”

In Talking Story, Shelly Runyon writes about the Twitter feed of Susan Orlean, and what it tells us about Orlean’s particular brand of short-burst communication. For you doubters who snicker at the Morse-Code-like rhythms of Twitter and insist that Tweet feeds are fluff, Orlean may change your mind. The author of The Orchid Thief proves two things about micro-narrative: first, that it is possible to tell stories in 140 characters; second, that it takes a damn good writer to do it.

Related posts:

1. Shelly Runyon on Twit Wit and Chick Lit
2. A-lists, e-books, and the iPad
3. Orlean, Bronson, Butler and others on style