Book Borrowing and Other Crazy Thoughts

My mother published a book through a POD a few years back. The book was a product of the Master's thesis. At 65 she went back to school and successfully attained her Master's Degree. The book gathered dust until I urged her to publish.

She did not intend to sell loads of books, but she did want to sell through her first print run of 100 books. She quickly learned friends and family do not necessarily own a clue as to what it's like to be an author attempting to sell your work. One dear friend of hers told her one day, "Helen, I loved your book so much I loaned it to Harriett, then Millie and then Judy. Four people read her book off one purchase. Welcome to the real world mom...

I realize this type of thing dates back centuries. Book sharing has been a bane of the industry since its inception. The music industry hate it so much they sued the crap out of their own customers (who, in truth, were not purchasing much of their products). Still, this is a hard pill to swallow given the industry today.

Check out these stats: last year over 1,000,000 books were published. 25% were published through traditional houses (can you say IBM of the late 1908's?). Over 750,000 books are fighting for recognition without a significant marketing budget. Heck, many of these books don't even have a respectable marketing plan.

Throw in well-intentioned family and friends giving away your product and you can have some angst happening. I know, I know, writers want to have their words read, but they should be compensated for their hard work. Writers have been shafted by traditional publishers for many decades. The big houses rake in the bucks and the writers get a pittance at best.

Don't hold J.K. Rowlings or Grisham or any of those folk up to me. For every millionaire writer you show me, I can show you a million who can't even put food on the table off their work. Most writers have the proverbial 'day job'.

Other crazy thoughts. My publishing company just released a wonderful book titled Motherhood is Easy (pictured above). This book happens to be one of those excellent, well written gems that may never get 'discovered' by mainstream book readers. This is an unfortunate truth.

I've observed over the years that a good marketer that just so happens to be an author can sell hundreds, even thousands of books just on their marketing prowess. Two books I've observed that are particularly horrendous have won awards and actually sold hundreds of copies with one I suspect of having sold a thousand or two.

Neither of these books will ever reach any significant heights as they are poorly written and well marketed. But what about an excellent book? What if it does not get the marketing in needs to get off the ground. It gets laid to rest in that ever-growing book graveyard while lesser books go on to at least limp through a life.

A lot of book marketing these days comes down to who picks up the book. In the right hands, a book can still go viral. Motherhood is Easy (http://www.motherhoodiseasy.com) is one of those books that have a chance, so the author and ClearView Press Inc. market it at every opportunity. The book came out May 1st, so it is extremely early to tell, but so far, so good. The accolades and attention it's receiving are promising. An excerpt in the upcoming issue of American Baby magazine is pretty cool. They have a circulation of around two million.

The ebook version will be out in about two weeks. I recognize this is critical these days for sales purposes, but I possess a certain sadness about the 'ebook' craze. We've been a throw-away society for decades now. Tactile books are become 'clutter', something to discard once read. Ebooks are 'eco-friendly' in this respect. These books are electrons. They don't take up space, they don't yellow with age and they are eliminated from existence (at least on your e-reader) by the flick of a button.

Yes, I'm old-school. I not only love tactile books, I love hardbacks. Watching this industry die is a bit painful. I think one day people will regret the loss of the tactile book, but I could be wrong. Innovations in new delivery methods for books dominate a publishing industry gone haywire right now. My publishing company will attempt to stay up on the technology because this is in the best interests of the writer.

When all the smoke clears, however, what I see is 'big money' still dominating writers who will sell their souls to get into print instead of holding back their product as leverage and negotiating a fair price for their work. Writers will continue to be treated financially as dogs to gather what scraps they can while the big dog purveyors of 'new technology' books will prey on writer's lack of business savvy.

It would be so nice for writers to not lose sales due to borrowing. It would be so nice for a legitimate 'market based' system that rewards good books with sales and bad ones with obscurity to be born of this current chaos, and it would be excruciatingly nice for authors to realize their worth, stand up to big money and not sell out.

Again, I'm a bit of a dreamer. I can't help but hope, though, that writers will wake up and realize they drive the entertainment industry of the WORLD right now and they aren't making jack off their efforts. With publishing in a chaotic flux, now's the time to step up and make a change. Why do you think 750,000+ books were published last year outside of traditional means? My only fear is writer's ostrich views of business.

I may have to write a Hub titled, Make 'Em Re-write That Initial Contract! That's where writers lose it. ANY contract can be re-written. But that's stuff other Hubs are made of...