Blog 2

BLOG 2

As you can read from the comments below, my first blog caused only ripples in cyberspace.

COMMENTS; 1) L.P. Don't like the use of the word "digitalia", not dignified. And come on, how about another post? Instantaneous is the word around here. Answer: Okay, okay. I'm new at this stuff. 2) R.A., Wow! Answer: Is that positive or negative? 3) W.H., The dumbed-down quality of books these days may reflect the educational quality of readers in general. Answer: Yes, but we publishers have to live with that unfortunate fact. 4) R.H., loved the story about Kindle, but I can't get to your email to comment. Answer: Try this: barbp39@gmail.com

I guess I must be more provocative in subsequent blogs to get you scribblers, agentos and fellow publishers to comment. You can say I’m full of it, you can say I should quit and take a long vacation. Just speak up. I need you to get on the digital bandwagon.
An independent press, such as I belong to, is first of all unlike the New York publishing houses. We are SMALL, in finances, employees and the number of titles we publish. Most of us are so-called "niche" presses and a few are like mine, Bridge Works, dedicated to quality fiction and non-fiction. None of us, even the largest Indies, has the resources of S&S or Random House, bankrolled by conglomerates. Not that they are bringing in much dough to the mother ship these days, but they do bring prestige to Bertelsmann, Holtzbrinck et al. So, how is a small press to compete? We eke out as small a living as the average writer. When I started in the business 17 years ago, I was under the impression that quality fiction and nonfiction would rise to the surface like water lilies and with the help of appropriate reviews and advertising, we would sell lots of books. Wrong. Small presses cannot compete in any sort of promotional clout with the large publishers. And promotion sells books. Small press books have been mostly ignored by reviewers of large urban papers and national magazines, and the current recession hasn't improved matters. There's even less space for book reviews. My friend and fellow publisher, Marty Shepard, who blogs at The Cockeyed Pessimist, has not only given newspaper/magazine reviewers unshirted hell for ignoring the small publisher, but has named names.

In addition, small publishers cannot give large advances (more about that queasy aspect of the industry later) and understand that if their authors get buzz, they will, after a two-book contract, move on. We expect that and are happy that we find and nurture writers who are promising but were ignored until they got to us.
Marty Shepard (see above) is positive that if the larger presses are in financial trouble and selling fewer books, that’s good for the small presses. According to him, the little guys will get more online reviews and greater notice. I frankly don’t agree about our advantage, unless we take to publishing fewer stories and more Self Help. And the small presses like ours that publish quality fiction and nonfiction like to publish GOOD STUFF which, in our lexicon, means stories that are adult without being porno, intelligent without being stuffy and very often impossible to forget.
So, how to prove to the world that small is really big??? And cool? And fabulous?

My first BIG idea shifts some of the financial burden of small publishing (editing, typesetting, proof reading, printing, distributing, marketing) onto the authors. Okay, guys and gals, don't give up your day jobs. If a writer feels that he must get published, and not by a vanity publisher (a publisher that demands full payment for producing any author's work), that she has something to say and needs a legitimate publisher, he/she must forget receiving an advance on royalties, and even the time-honored royalties themselves. In my scenario, the writer in effect becomes partners with the small publisher on his work. If a writer is selected to be published by us (and about six out of 2,000 make the cut), she will be asked to kick in an agreed-upon down payment up front. (Certain larger publishers are already experimenting with varieties of this idea, such as Dave Eggers of McSweeneys.) The publisher pays the rest of the costs. After all costs of publishing are paid, the publisher and author split profits 50/50. The lucre thrown into the pot by the author would only increase his/her connection to the publication of the work. Tough love, I know, but if you as a writer are untested and we choose you to be published, we will take the raw and tentative and, if needed, polish it up a bit, tweak the plot, strengthen the characters, and send the work out into the world professionally produced, with a cover designed to entice browsers on land and in cyberspace. And with a bit more money in the till, the small publisher could seek out more opportunities for promotion of the work.

What do you think? Comment at barbp39@gmail.com. And visit the web site of Bridge Works at bridgeworksbooks.com.

After 17 years as editorial director of Bridge Works Publishing Co., a small but mighty Independent press that publishes mainstream fiction and nonfiction, I have succumbed to joining the chorus of bloggers bellowing about their not-so-secret passions. Mine is books. To me, there's no business like book business, but it's no secret that books are in deep trouble. I'm not talking about romance novels or cookbooks, which have a devoted following of wanna-bes and gourmands, but about good, old-fashioned quality fiction and nonfiction, the kind with a story that has an original theme and a little helpful information about life thrown in. And the trouble in paradise has nothing to do with the popularity of Kindle, or other electronic books, either. Even though some naive soul inquired, "Does adding more books to Kindle make it weigh more?", e-books are here to stay, so no whining over the loss of that papery feel and smell. The one percent of readers who now have an e-book still gets news, opinion and entertainment in book form from publishers who, except for a few miscreants, have carefully edited, fact-checked, and edited again before the title sees the light of day. True, e-books might one day spell the demise of that delight of all browsers, the book store, unless Barnes and Noble decides to go totally digital. We would all hate to see that happen, but browsing has been co-opted by the digitalia already.
No, the real monster eating the adult book business is its lack of readers, period, exclamation mark. While real old people (over 50) still read, if less often than of yore, young adults and various Gen X's, Y's and Millenials seem oblivious to anything longer than two pages. Whereas writers and publishers want the public to be as intimate with Don Gately and Don Quixote as with aggro and My Space.

Except for the aforementioned cook books or bodice busters, publishers can't count on enough sales to keep afloat these days. Some publishers have stopped reading manuscripts until the financial recession takes an upturn. And, of course, the vampire from the 1930's remains: publishers must take back and eat the titles that bookstores order but don't sell. Imagine 3M having to take back its Scotch tape if Walmart doesn't sell through! And book sections and reviewers are disappearing along with their print parents, magazines and newspapers.

If the older reader, the one who used to make quality books her lover, friend and debating opponent, is reading less often, is there any hope of enticing the young to stories that may run into hundreds of pages? How can we publishers get the world to read more fiction and nonfiction and earn a living wage doing so? What's the matter with books anyway--too long, too short, too boring, too quiet? For everyone who is up for returning briefly (even once a month) to a world before Instant Messaging, texting and tweeting took over our lives, look for answers in my next blog.
Visit our web site at bridgeworksbooks.com. And please comment at barbp39@gmail.com.