Diary of a Mad Editor

As someone who’s often lamented that mainstream publishers seem more interested in investing their time and money in producing low-rent crap rather than quality literature, my curiosity was piqued earlier, reading Robert McCrum’s piece in The Guardian book section, "The best and worst times for publishing.

McCrumb refers to individuals such as myself as a "New Elitist" and points out, quite correctly, that lowbrow and highbrow culture has always coexisted. I don’t think anyone, including us new elitists, are really arguing that there was ever a time when this wasn’t so. What I (and those like me) are saying is that it’s become a factory-industry in which low-grade product such as the big multi-book celebrity book deals which seem to be announced daily by some industry hack are getting all of the juice while quality literature gets almost no play at all unless a previously unnoticed book catches on despite its handicaps.

What does it say about our culture when a talent like John Edgar Wideman publishes his latest short story collection through Lulu because he feels he’s being dissed by traditional publishers? We’re talking about a noted award-winning literary author. Yet, Hillary Can’t-Sing-Can’t-Act-Can’t-Write Duff can get a multi-book deal based on nothing but her manufactured celebrity.

Does it really make me an elitist to suggest that there’s a difference in how lowbrow and highbrow literature "coexisted" in the 1500s and how it coexists today? Now, I’m not going to say that what’s happening today is necessarily a bad thing for literature in the long run — I honestly don’t know what the long-term implications of current realities are, but I think it is a bad thing for traditional publishers —I’m fairly certain. If big publishing continues to pursue these kinds of book deals, how much longer can they sustain their sinking ship? How much longer before most of the Widemans are using companies like Lulu and Booksurge and Author Solutions to bring their works to market instead of dealing with corporate media types who continue to insult readers and real writers alike?

You think I’m kidding? Well, here’s one final thought: McCrumb argued in an earlier posting that the gatekeepers of traditional publishing are still necessary. The function of so-called gatekeepers is to maintain a certain level of quality in what is published. Okay, fair enough, but if they are publishing high-priced, low-quality garbage while driving away higher-quality, lower-priced writers one has to ask: Who’s watching the gate? Who are they really keeping out? What’s the value of what they are letting in? And, if they are not consistently nurturing, producing and publishing quality than what’s the value in having gatekeepers? Because you can’t have it both ways. You cannot argue that gatekeepers serve a necessary function then have it be okay for those gatekeepers to produce garbage. Because the assumption that traditional publishers are producing quality while “unmediated” sources are producing nothing but junk is not entirely accurate.

Call me crazy. Call me wrong. Call me an elitist. Just stick it in your flash drive for future reference and check that file five or ten years from now and see what’s what.

Dear Mad Editor,

You can have your ebooks. For me, real paper books still rule.  A story I read the other day in the online edition of the New York Times suggests that ebooks aren’t that big of a deal. I just can’t understand all this hype about ebooks.  They don’t appear to be selling all that many off them if less than 2% buy them. I don’t know anybody who reads them.

— Book Lover

Dear Book Lover,

I’m not going to argue with you about whether eBooks are superior to paper. That’s such a silly, schoolyard debate anyway and I don’t believe I ever said that eBooks were superior to paper books — on this blog or anywhere else. And far be it for me to point out the irony of you reading an article about eBooks on the digital edition of a paper newspaper. I will start off by saying that I, too, read that article you’re referring to. I think that maybe you didn’t read the entire article.

Anyway, let’s talk about those numbers in that article. Sure, hardcopy books still account for 91% (that’s hardcover, trade and mass-market paperbacks combined) and eBooks only account for 2% of sales (I would argue that this number is a bit understated and the real number is closer to 5%). Okay, 2 percent. Consider that just a few short years ago, that number was effectively zero. Also note that hardcopy book sales have declined overall in that same period. The trend is that hardcopy book sales are declining (especially mass-market paperbacks which, if you are paying attention, represents a decline that contrasts nicely with eBooks growth over the last few years which, I might add, supports what I’ve been saying about eBooks competing with the mass-market paperback).

Now, if you just look at the numbers in the article without digging any deeper, you can kind of understand why the big six publishers are putting so much of there time, energy and money into hardcover bestsellers in the chain stores. Most of the sales are still in the chain stores like Borders and Barnes and Noble. And hardcopy sales (mostly hardcovers) to libraries still represent 29% of the market according to the article. But, here’s what the article also says, albeit not so explicitly: The market for e-commerce sites like Amazon is growing. How does a major retail chain compete with an e-tailer when one can buy just about anything — even cigars online, from the privacy of one’s own home without waiting in long lines? The answer is that brick ‘n’ mortar retailers have to offer more than books to entice people into their stores. You’ve got to give the customer a "shopping experience". You go into a Barnes and Noble, they give you WiFi hotspots, they’re selling coffee. They’ve got a jazz quartet playing in the background. Big fluffy chairs and puppet shows. It takes a lot to get people in the door, keep them happy and keep them in there long enough to sell them something. And even with all that and deep discounts, it’s still a struggle. And, like most retailers, they make their biggest sales at Christmas time. In fact, the chain stores are much more dependent on the holidays for sales numbers than Amazon is. And what about Independent booksellers? Well, they’re becoming extinct. Even before Amazon, the big chain stores were picking them off. And if the big chains stores are having a hard time keeping up with Amazon, you think the remaining chain stores are having it any easier?

Libraries. There are a lot of things happening with libraries that are either forcing them to close or forcing them to scale back. Libraries are supported by tax dollars and donations and there is simply less of that money to go around. So libraries aren’t buying as many new books. They aren’t investing in repairing old worn-out books. They aren’t maintaining as many subscriptions to periodicals and newspapers. They’re looking to digitize as much as possible. Many libraries have already signed onto Google’s massive book project. Many more will follow because it’s more cost-effective and efficient than to doing it themselves. This is problematic for publishers because now the efforts to preserve books as a cultural artifact is at odds with efforts to make money from books.

The point is, books are going digital. It’s a digital world. eBooks are just a small part of that world right now, but it’s all relative because hardcopy or digital makes no difference — the analog world is so last century. And if big publishers attempt to hold onto that analog fantasy, it’s not hype to suggest that they are hurting themselves in the long run.

For the past few years, one of the most controversial subjects in the digital realm has been Google’s plan to collect, scan and digitize the world’s books into a vast virtual library. It is probably one of the most ambitious projects since the construction of the Library of Alexandria. The settlement of a dispute between Google and the Author’s Guild has exposed some legitimate concerns from well-meaning groups as well as some jealousy and hypocrisy from Google’s competition.

Most of the criticism is focused on three key areas: alleged copyright infringement, privacy concerns and concerns over the exploitation of orphan works.

Copyright

Opponents of Google Books believe that Google is doing an end-run around copyright protection by designing it’s database as an “opt-out” instead of “opt-in”.   While it’s technically true that “opt-out” may lead to copyright infringement on a large scale and that Google could easily address concerns by making it “opt-in” (and I suspect Judge Denny Chin will ultimately order in favor of doing this), I don’t believe “opt-out” is substantially unfair to authors.  Back when I used to publish a monthly newsletter promoting my press, I would usually feature at least one item that had been previously published in one of my publications as a teaser for that publication.  Given that I never knew ahead of time what piece I’d choose to reprint and close deadlines, it wasn’t practical for me to contact the writers individually to ask permission in the hopes that they’d respond in a timely fashion so I did this as an “opt-out”. I could do this because the writers I’d published were all on my mailing list so I just sent a general announcement explaining the situation and informing them if they didn’t want me to use their work all they had to do was  e-mail me if they had a problem. As I recall, in the 3 years I published the newsletter, only a couple of writers expressed concerns and only one of those individuals opted-out.  Obviously, Google is doing something on a far grander scale than my forgettable newsletter, but I suspect, like me, Google’s motivation is not really nefarious, but for convenience sake.  Opt-out isn’t that unfair — just that opt-in is fairer to writers and I suspect that most writers, if given the option to opt-in instead of opt-ing out would be eager to take part. Indeed, a lot of authors have already chosen to allow their books to be scanned. I further suspect most writers are either indifferent to Google Books or in favor of the project as public opposition to the plan among writers has been surprisingly weak.

Privacy

This argument takes the proverbial cake and, I believe, is the weakest objection critics of Google Books are making.  For one thing, critics are ignoring the fact that every time you go online, you divulge information about yourself. We accept this. That Google Books will collect information about our reading habits is a given. So does Goodreads, so does virtual bookshelf, so does Barnes and Noble.com and so does Amazon. The idea that Google collects this information to “spy” on us or sell or gift that information to governments and other third parties is fucking ridiculous.  Point two is that I don’t really think the government cares that you’ve read Wuthering Heights twice or that you’ve perused a medical text on best acne treatments or whathaveyou. And since I doubt Google’s going to be scanning books on how to build incendiary devices other dangerous books, so this criticism is just paranoia run amok. Point three is that with social networking sites, email, e-tailers, etc., you cannot really address privacy concerns absolutely without dismantling the Internet altogether.

Orphaned Works

Orphan works, as previously discussed, are works that are still technically under copyright but that the creator cannot be indentified and/or located to grant permission to a third party to use.  Now, I don’t believe this is as big of a problem as we are being led to believe.

Copyright is all about controlling access to intellectual property in an effort to exploit that property for commercial gain. Obviously, the greater the access to said property, the less commercially valuable.  A bookstore that sells 5000 volumes a year is more valuable to the publisher and the author than a library that purchases a couple hundred new volumes a year and loans out to 5000 or so patrons. But one could argue that, while the library is less valuable to the author or publisher, it’s much more valuable to society at large because it exposes people to books who couldn’t otherwise afford books thus increasing the number of educated readers.  One could further argue that our Founding Fathers intended the latter by intentionally limiting the former. Back in the day, copyright protection only last for a certain amount of time and then the work entered the public domain. These days, what usually happens is that the author’s literary estate is incorporated and representatives of that estate renew the copyright before it expires, thus keeping the work out of the public domain indefinitely.  These estates in collusion with the publishers (which are almost entirely own by big media conglomerates) have been fighting against limits to copyright for years.  In fact, modern copyright law has been less interested in protecting individual authors and serving the public interest and more about protecting the commercial interests of big media companies like Disney and Rupert Murdoch’s empire. To the extent that orphan works is a problem, it’s a problem created by extending copyright far beyond it’s natural lifecycle. Until Congress is able to clearly define what criteria constitutes a fair and reasonable search to identify the copyright owners of Orphan Works and sets a clear statute of limitation on orphan work status before such a work automatically falls into the public domain, the problem will inevitably become a bigger problem in the future. And if it is true that Google’s remedy to the problem is inadequate, their book registry is at least an improvement over similar proposals in the flawed attempts by Congress to address the problem in the Shawn Bentley Act.

My own assessment is the Google Books settlement is more good than bad.  Microsoft only opposes it because they have failed miserably in creating a successful competing search engine and are against anything that enhances Google’s value in that arena. Sour grapes if you ask me, because Google isn’t preventing Microsoft from building a better search engine. Nor does Google’s book project preclude anyone else from doing it.

Publishers and literary agents naturally hate it because they see it as a threat to their bottom line and their level of control. Amazon and Barnes and Noble are against it largely for the same reason. This isn’t necessarily true, but that remains to be seen how this will play-out once the project progresses to its next phase. It could prove to be the opposite for publishers and online booksellers. 

Certain foreign countries are against it. Europe because there is a competing book scanning project in the works.  Asia is up in arms. 15 authors from India filed objections. China also objects. Since when do Asian countries care about copyright? I think this is funny considering that Asian countries are the biggest culprits when it comes to pirating English language books, including American bestsellers. And they’re worried about Google? They should be grateful to Google for providing access to writers most of us have never heard of.

So, I’m thinking, yes, let Google do books. I personally see the Google library as a great leveler of the digital playing field.  Let’s give it a chance to succeed.