Diary of a Mad Editor

I’ve been saying for years that eBook prices are too high — a position I reiterated during the whole Kindle/Macmillan/iPad debacle.

The position of the publishing industry and the bestselling authors they publish is that the current digital book market devalues their creations and Amazon is the chief baddie in this scenario. Well, black hat or not, Amazon’s $9.99 price tag came from it’s realization that this was the tipping point for most of their customers.

It’s true that you cannot really put a price tag on genuine art. However, when you try to sell your art — whether it be a painting, a song or a book, you have to assign a dollar value to it. Now, you can charge whatever you think it’s worth, but what you think it’s worth isn’t necessarily what people will pay for it. In a recent article in the New York Times, this point was addressed quite well:

When digital editions have cost more, or have been delayed until after the release of hardcover versions, these raucous readers have organized impromptu boycotts and gone to the Web sites of Amazon and Barnes & Noble to leave one-star ratings and negative comments for those books and their authors.

Authors and Publishers cry foul. One author, the second-rate horror writer, Douglas Preston says,“It’s the Wal-Mart mentality, which in my view is very unhealthy for our country. It’s this notion of not wanting to pay the real price of something.” Well, boo-fucking-hoo to you, Douglas. The real price! What is the real price of an eBook? If you’re talking about it’s inherent artistic value, I’d point out that a novel by Douglas Preston has far less artistic value than say, a novel by Leo Tolstoy or Charles Dickens. If you are talking about fair market value then I don’t see how you can possibly justify charging more than $10 for a digital copy of a book. Dougie, you do, in fact, come off as a greedy asshole who doesn’t respect his readers.

An executive at Simon & Shuster adds:

“There are people who don’t always understand what goes into an author writing and an editor editing and a publishing house with hundreds of men and women working on these books. If you want something that has no quality to it, fine, but we’re out to bring out things of quality, regardless of what type of book it is.”

Quality? Like Celebrity Pets Tell All? Really? Are you going to tell me that hundreds of men and women worked on that book? Listen. I think most people understand that there are people behind the scenes producing these books. They also understand that those people make a lot more money than most of the people who buy those books. Readers are not just paying for a book — they’re paying for the bestselling author’s kid to go to Harvard and Costa Rica vacation rentals and other shit. That’s a bit of hyperbole on my part, but my point is that when publishers and author’s talk about "real value" they are talking out of their assholes. eBooks have a practical value closer to zero than to any price above $10. And your average book buyer certainly knows this. Jacking-up eBook prices is no way to grow readership or build customer loyalty. Obviously, writers like Douglas Preston are doing well enough that they don’t have to shop at Wal-Mart. Unfortunately, the rest of us do.

One of the last great literary heavyweights of the last century, died the other day, of natural causes. J. D. Salinger, the notoriously reclusive literary legend who hadn’t published anything since 1965 and had rarely been seen since the 70’s passed away at his home in Cornish, New Hampshire at the ripe old age of 91. Although, Salinger had published a few stories in the 1940’s and had struck-up a friendship with Ernest Hemingway while serving in the Second World War, it wasn’t until the publication of his most famous work, The Catcher in the Rye, that Salinger earned his place in American literature.

Salinger began writing short stories while in high school, and published a number of stories in the early 1940s before serving in World War II. In 1948 he published the critically acclaimed story "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" in The New Yorker. After the publication of Catcher, Salinger became at once a popular, influential and controversial writer. Since it’s publication, the famous novel has sold around 65 million copies, averaging 250000 copies per year. Salinger followed Catcher with a short story collection, Nine Stories (1953), a collection of a novella and a short story, Franny and Zooey (1961), and a collection of two novellas, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963). His last published work, a novella entitled "Hapworth 16, 1924," appeared in The New Yorker on June 19, 1965.

Although many film producers pursued the possibility of translating Catcher in the Rye for the big screen, Salinger refused to allow it due to an early bad experience with a screen adaptation of one of his short stories. Salinger was also famous for pursuing legal action to block unauthorized adaptations and derivative works base on his writing.

I was rather shocked to learn just this afternoon that, one of my favorite mystery writers, Robert B. Parker — died suddenly yesterday. The creator of the Spenser detective series and the equally popular Jesse Stone novels died at his desk. A fitting death for a prolific writer.

I first discovered Parker in my junior year in high school, not long after discovering Raymond Chandler, a writer Parker was often compared to. The first book of his I remember reading was Valediction, a Spenser novel. The Godwulf Manuscript and Taming the Seahorse were among my favorites of the earlier Spenser books. Over a period of several years I worked my way through his other Spenser novels and many of his other novels, including his three westerns and a few of his Jesse Stone books. What I most admired about his writing was how simply he wrote and how effortless he made it seem and how he rarely disappointed his fans.

An English Lit professor turned full-time novelist, Parker completed over sixty novels. His last completed book, Split Image, featuring Jesse Stone was finished just prior to his death and will be published later this year. During his lifetime, Parker was nominated for the Edgar Award three times and won the award once. In addition, he was awarded a Gumshoe Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008.