C h a z z W r i t e s . c o m

See all my books at AllThatChazz.com.

10/20/2010 • 12:33 PM 0

Poll: What’s your favorite children’s book?

Filed under: Books, poll, children's books, Children's literature, poll

10/20/2010 • 9:40 AM 0

What Books are Safe from the E-book Revolution?

Cover of The Going-To-Bed Book

I bet you never thought about this. I sure didn’t until I was hanging about with my friend Peter at the Toronto’s Word on the Street. What Books will be safe from the E-book Revolution?

We wandered around the venue and it was a great time. But Peter is sharper than I am and he picked up on a few things. He noticed right away that there were a lot of big publishers absent from the festivities. He also wasn’t impressed with many of the discounts. True, there were some smaller publishers trying to move their remainders with sale prices as low as a buck a book. Generally the discounts were around 15%. Peter pointed out that when he worked Word on the Street for a major publisher, their discounts were deep but they made it up on volume. They moved a lot of books.

The other thing he noticed was that several children’s bookstores and publishers were represented. “Maybe they won’t have to cut so deep because they’ll be safe from the e-book cull,” he said.

I’d never thought about it, but yes, children’s bookstores should survive. When I think of children’s books, I think of treasured books from my youth. I still have Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. It’s Ian Fleming‘s best work. (I loved many of the Bond movies, but the books don’t hold up.) Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was the Christmas I went to bed with a huge container of Smarties and ate and read until I had no appetite for the Christmas turkey.

When I think of my own kids’ books, an e-book version just wouldn’t do. I can’t read Sandra Boynton‘s The Going to Bed Book* on a screen to my baby! And what if the kid throws up on my iPad? Unacceptable! Besides, little kids are fascinated with the turning of the pages of actual books.

Also, the scholastic market needs children’s readers. School budgets won’t allow for electronic readers for all those kids. Also, little kids with sticky fingers would constantly smear your screen as you read to them.

Taking this logic one step further, it occurs to me that cookbooks might be sustainable. You don’t want to get buttery fingers on your Kindle. However, maybe people will just print off individual pages unless they are really devoted cookbooks fans (there is a wild foodie sub-culture.) There are tons of free recipes available online, so if you have a printer, you’ll never really need to buy a cookbook again unless you look at cookbooks like a dying scuba diver looks at a fresh oxygen tank.

I don’t know what books will be immune. What do you think?

*If you have little kids or know someone who does, you must go buy The Going to Bed Book. It’s very sweet. I read it to my kids so often I can still recite it. We had a massive purge of our children’s library because the kids were getting too old for a lot of the books on the shelves. Sandra Boynton’s book is one of those we kept. We always will.

Luka and the Fire Of Life, By Salman Rushdie (independent.co.uk)
Why I Secretly Hope For An Epidemic Of Book Piracy (hypebot.com)
Will the ebook kill the book? (technollama.co.uk)
e-Book Piracy Surges, Says Study (livescience.com)
Obama Joins Authors Writing Lit for Kids [Part 1 of 3] (psychologytoday.com)
Ebooks are weighted to front-list authors says Bnet’s Marion Maneker (teleread.com)
A problem: ebook rights, small markets & divergent growth rates (teleread.com)
Do ebooks make it harder for new literary authors? (teleread.com)
Revised “50 Benefits of Ebooks” issued (teleread.com)
Borders Launches $89 & $199 eBook Packages for Self-Published Authors (mediabistro.com)
Sales of e-books – still growing! (i-programmer.info)

Filed under: ebooks, publishing, Children's literature, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, E-book, IPad, Sandra Boynton

10/19/2010 • 12:24 PM 0

Poll: NaMoWriMo! In or out?

Filed under: poll, NanNoWriMo, poll

10/19/2010 • 9:34 AM 0

The Paper Book Sustainability Question

Image by SewPixie via Flickr

I was mulling over PA Melo’s post from yesterday. E-book or P-book? To be or not to be?

I do agree with him that paper books will continue to be available, though eventually you’ll have to pay through the nose to get those specialty items. (Oh, right, you already do!)

The conundrum is not just that ebooks are biting into the paper book market. It is that ebooks eventually make p-books impractical on the grand scale they now occupy (i.e. that scale which allows me to wander around bookstores as I love to do.) Part of what makes books affordable is volume. The more you produce, the less you pay per unit.

My question: How much of the industry—what percentage*—has to go electronic before mass production of paperbacks is unsustainable? Please let me know what you think.

*I have heard predictions as low as 35% and as high as 50% Either way, we’re well on our way to being bookstoreless. I’ll have to go back to hanging out in bars (okay) or coffeehouses that aren’t part of bookstores. Horrors!

EBook Pricing Goes Outright Insane (mikecanex.wordpress.com)
Charlie Stross: Why a middle Merchant Princes book has no e-book (teleread.com)
Ebooks dont cannibalize print, people do, says Evan Schnittman (teleread.com)
EZ Read Celebrates eBookstore Makeover and New eBook Publishing Service (prweb.com)
The Evolution of the E-book: When is a Book Not a Book? (gigaom.com)
John Scalzi enjoys e-reading (teleread.com)
Margaret Atwood on Ebooks (teleread.com)
E-Book Sales Continue to Surge (nytimes.com)
Choosing the Best eBook Service (compukol.com)
J.A. Konrath: eBooks And The Ease Of Self-Publishing (huffingtonpost.com)
When do you think e-books will start to outsell paper books? (greenanswers.com)
Alyson Books to Go E-Only (slog.thestranger.com)
Are ebooks greener than paper books? | Leo Hickman (guardian.co.uk)

Filed under: ebooks, publishing, Bookselling, E-book, publishing

10/18/2010 • 12:45 PM 0

Your Happy Monday Dance

Filed under: Intentionally Hilarious, Ke$ha, kids dancing, Take It Off

10/18/2010 • 12:34 PM 0

Contest #3 Deadline Looms

Image via Wikipedia

Just a heads-up folks! The Contest #3 deadline is looming. Please submit your book reviews by October 27 at 9 PM EST to enter the draw for an awesome book on establishing and working with a writing critique group. Just 400 words could get you there. (See the header post above for details!)

Writing Competitions: Poetry Contests: 2010 – 2011 (writinghood.com)

Filed under: book reviews, Contest announcement, Contest, Writers Resources

10/18/2010 • 11:30 AM 0

Poll: When will you be ready to buy an e-reader?

Filed under: ebooks, poll, e-books, e-readers, poll

10/18/2010 • 9:45 AM 0

Contest #2 Winning Post: Don’t Fear the Reaper

Image via Wikipedia

Chazz here. Writer and aspiring scriptwriter PA Melo wrote an interesting article on the future of publishing. He won the book Time Was Soft There by Jeremy Mercer. Here’s his article:

The future of book publishing is grim right now. From what I see, it’s on a path to destruction. However, it will change from the path it’s on once publishers realize they can no longer hope to make the current model sustainable. (The term “current” is misleading in this context. The publishing model has changed very little in a very long time. What is current is debatable because the state of publishing is in flux.)

In a recent Quill & Quire article, for instance, the Canadian publishing journal reported that book sales reps are becoming obsolete. One veteran sales person advised anyone who thought about getting into the sales side of publishing to “go learn how to build a website.” That’s good advice. And it’s also good news for the planet. Sending book salespeople all over with paper catalogues and then shipping tons of books all over the place isn’t an earth-friendly strategy. What made the article even more poignant was another reason book sales representatives were less useful: There are far fewer independent bookstores upon which they could even make sales calls.

When I talk to older relatives, they all say how resistant they are to reading books on screens. Most of those same relatives have never attempted to read a book on a screen. I sang a little “Don’t dear the Reaper,” to them in reply. No, dead tree books won’t disappear entirely, but if my family wants to buy them, they will have to pay a premium for them. Already I pay for audiobooks from iTunes at $9.99. I used to have to pay up between $60 – $70 for that privilege when I bought audiobooks on CDs. Now it’s on my MP3 or iPod and it’s cheap.

Right now, as the industry goes through its transition, there are still naysayers, but their voices are getting smaller and less sure of themselves. I’m convinced writers will be paid less and will have to write more. However, they will also have new opportunities to reach new markets and to market themselves. Publishers are in flux because they aren’t sure of their role anymore. Before they could point to their distribution networks. However, in a world where I can put up my own website and sell my own stuff, build my own fanbase and (some day) deliver my books to my readers immediately, I don’t need no stinkin’ publisher! (Or maybe I do. But the terms for my ebooks better get a whole lot more fair than what I’ve been hearing lately!)

I’m a novice writer. I’ll grow into this profession of writing and me and my peers think no more about reading onscreen than you do about putting on your seatbelt. I wish publishers were changing faster, but I’m sure that those who cling to old contracts and old business models won’t be around in a few years. Their role is being redefined. If they aren’t very careful, it will be redefined for them.

Our roles as writers is also being redefined. We’ll have to take less money up front just like musicians have had to do. (Now I hardly ever buy a whole album. It’s only the songs I absolutely want or nothing.) And we’ll have to take more responsibility for our own careers. I’m looking forward to the challenge!

(Chazz again. As I posted this editorial, I noticed one of the links below. E-book Sales Up 193% So Far This Year (mashable.com) seems to gel with Mr. Melo’s remarks.)