If I Want a Soundtrack for The Grapes of Wrath, I’ll Just Rent the Movie
Published August 25th, 2011 | 
I don’t know business attire from blac label clothing, which is, I suppose, why I’m not involved in the fashion biz. But I do know the difference between a good publishing idea and a bad one. A good idea: e-books. A bad idea: adding soundtracks to e-books. Yeah, I know . . . Who the fuck wants to listen to a soundtrack while reading a book? But that’s exactly what Peter Thiel, one of the co-founders of Facebook is doing. He’s formed a company called Booktrack that will be producing and adding music to e-books.
Much like the current 3-D fad with movies, adding audio tracks to e-books is nothing but an excuse to jack up the price of an already too costly product. I suppose it makes sense to resort to gimmicks if you’re greedy and think you can make a buck, but from the consumer’s point of view, what’s the value? Be interesting to see how many of these enhanced e-books sell.
If You Can’t Beat’em, Publish Them
Published August 22nd, 2011 | For the past couple of years, traditional publishers have been scrambling to respond to the changes wrought upon them by the digital revolution. In the beginning, they poo-pooed new technology such as the ereaders and POD. They had nothing but scorn for self-publishers who chose to publish and distribute their own works, bypassing traditional channels. They dismissed them all as untalented amateurs and lamented the loss of quality control. Now, it seems, they are seeing the benefit of recruiting successful self-publishers to mainstream publishing deals.
This is nothing new, really. Some successful self-publishers have eventually gotten book deals with major publishers in the past. Remember that kid who wrote the fantasy novels about dragons? Or, how about that guy who wrote the sappy Christmas-themed novel. Sure, it’s been known to happen. But now it’s happening with a guy who sold a million copies of his thrillers on the Kindle.
Remember John Locke? I blogged about him earlier this year. He sold his thrillers directly on the Kindle Market. Now Simon & Schuster has smelled the coffee and has decided that it’s not such a bad idea to snap up a writer with a huge built-in audience from self-publishing. Locke did all the work himself, now S&S gets to reap benefits from his hard work. Another self-published e-book writer, Amanda Hocking, had already signed a 4-book deal with St. Martin’s Press. This is the future of publishing, folks. Get used to it.
Betty Lou Sue Reads E-Books on a Kindle
Published August 11th, 2011 | Perhaps some of you have heard about the class action lawsuit being filed against Apple and the five publishers who first jumped on the Apple bandwagon with the agency pricing model for e-books. The suit filed by Hagens Berman alleges price-fixing in a deliberate attempt to hurt Amazon.
Given my early criticism of the agency model and my own anti-Apple opining, you might think I’m siding with the law firm on this one. You’d be mistaken. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see the law suit go against Apple and the publishers named in the suit if it means getting rid of the agency model. I simply don’t agree that there is any evidence of collusion. I do not believe that there was this secret meeting between Apple reps and the big five publishers in which they cooked-up the agency scheme. Publishers aren’t bright enough to come up with that plot and Apple is smart enough to know that. So why would they have to conspire to get what they want? If you’re some two-martini buy your cao cigars online type looking at a dwindling balance sheet with Amazon controlling your destiny, you’re going to take any deal you think will save your ass. No matter that Amazon wasn’t really hurt by the move because they smartly responded by lowering cost of the Kindle and sweetening the pot for self-publishers. Apple laughed all the way to the bank as well. And, while publishers didn’t do that badly, their decision didn’t slow the downward slide in mass market sales. The bottom line, here is that the only ones who got conned by the agency model were the publisher who are being sued. They benefited, but not quite as much as Apple, Amazon or the digital pirates who expanded their market due to the price jump on some books.
