Wicked Witch Survey Results: Publishing Companies Create Vanity Web Sites, Authors Twist in the Wind, Readers Really Do Read
I’m heartened and, yet, disheartened by the results of my survey: I did cast a slightly “different” net for my survey: I included Web friends, personal friends, strangers appearing in group emails I received from friends, and fellow-volunteers at New England English Springer Spaniel Rescue. Referrals from other blogs trickled in for a look-see, and comment, as well. (Thank you to everyone who stopped by! My “visitor counter” was whirring madly again!) Here’s my armchair analysis of my straw pole:
- What books are you and your family actively reading? We read, and read a lot. Well, YOU read a lot. It’s clear I’ve got to put my foot through the TV, stop blogging obsessively, or go on a long vacation to an isolated, electricity-free beach to match the ferocious pace of reading that seems to be going on. However, I think we have a dirty little secret about what we are reading and we don’t want to fess up. What I should have asked for question #1 was: What highbrow and lowbrow books are you reading? I, too, committed a sin of, shall we say, title omission. Yes, I do have The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri ready to read, but I also have Marley & Me by John Grogan in my stack, too. (I’m hanging my head. Yes, I guess, I’m a literary snob and the occasional, but very closeted, trash reader.) When Frazer Dobson doubled back after seeing my comment asking why none of the best-sellers were on anyone’s list, he, too, admitted to, gasp, reading Stephen King! So I am going to chalk up all of those responses to: Legamus – we read, indeed we do, and leave it at that.
- Were any of these books from online, self-publishing companies such as iuniverse or lulu? Discouraging news here. No. No. No. No. No. So many No’s. Frazer Dobson’s comment in the previous post should be read carefully by all self-published authors. Frazer is a bookseller. He finds self-published books generally poorly written and poorly edited, if edited at all. And are we really surprised that the general reading public (not the rabid blogging, Web surfing survey takers here) looks blank when I mention iuniverse or lulu? It takes a lot of marketing to reach outside the Internet and drag people in. A company’s reach is only as far as its marketing arm can throw the ball. They have to be throwing the ball and not just satisfied with making money off of desperate, unpublished or unpublishable (sorry!) authors. The Casual Count: 22 no/3 yes.
- Were any of your books free, online books in PDF format? No. No. No. No. No. So many more no’s. So rarely had anyone read an online book, and then not complained about how uncomfortable it was to be facing the computer screen, it became clear that these folks would much rather have been reading in bed, pajama tops covered in chocolate chip cookie crumbs, and a nice glass of warm milk on the beside table. And the question I might have included was: Did you read these online books to the end? I just finished reading A Half Life of One online, and I tell you it was torture to sit on my swivel chair, pitching forward and backward, resting my elbows on the desk or half-sliding off the chair for the hours it took to read that book–good (and horrifying!) though it was. The Casual Count: 22 No/4 yes.
- Did any of your books come from seeing author websites? This count looks a little better, but when you look closer, you see that, again, it’s the literary blogging community checking out each other’s Web sites, introducing themselves to each other; in short, marketing themselves to each other, and not reaching the general buying public at all. I’ve heard a lot about Val Landi and the success he has with A Woman from Cairo on his Web site. (Val and I are trying to get together in NYC.) Val Landi recommends an independent Web site for all authors. He wants authors to refinance their houses, sell their first-born, and do whatever it takes to have a presence on the web. Is he taking into account that authors may not have his Harvard MBA background, or his resources, or his commercial drive, or his ability to work with Web designers? The Casual Count: 22 No/7 yes.
- Were any of these books purchased directly from Random House, Simon & Schuster, William Morrow, Knopf or Rodale’s online bookstore? Nusquam, nihilum, nihil. No. Publishing executives howl with laughter about the ridiculousness of lowly authors self-publishing and making feeble attempts to promote their own books into something other than oblivion through personal Web sites, iuniverse or lulu. (Scoff, scoff.) But look! Publishing companies now have their very own vanity Web sites and are making feeble attempts to promote “their own” books into something other than oblivion through their own in-house, online bookstores. In some ways I find humor and not a little irony in this: Big, beautiful Web sites are launched without fanfare, maintained at great cost, and run by people obviously incapable of figuring out how to market the Web page to the buying public. Dare I point out that there are good and even GREAT books on these million dollar Web sites, and no one is buying from them? (With a million dollars, I can think of a million ways to reach the buying public and drag them to a publishing company’s Web site instead of letting them go to Barnesandnoble.com or Amazon.) The truth is, publishing companies don’t really care about their online sites. Authors’ online Web sites are a measure of desperation and determination. Publishing industry vanity Web sites are the sweet “arm candy” of self-satisfied, powerful, older, rich guys on 345’ yachts pulling up to dock at Little Palm Island: irrelevant, but pretty, and good for the ego.
If you feel like entering the confessional and revealing your secret passion for trash books, feel free to list them (anonymously if you must!) in the comments section below.
Thanks to everyone for dropping by over the past few days! Here’s some more limp-along Latin: Come back soon…Redeo nunc!
===============
How to Get on the Wicked Witch of Publishing ™ Email List: Send an email if you want to be notified when a new posting goes live. Just go to the top of the right-hand sidebar, click on “EMAIL,” and fire away. Your email address will be stored.
April 20th, 2006 at 4:17 pm
Da Vinci Code, The Tipping Point, Rule #1.
April 20th, 2006 at 4:41 pm
Lynne - Why would anyone with a TV hooked to a cable need to seek out lo-brow piles of crap to read? And even if we did, after being assailed with intimidating Latin phrases all week (I stumbled through a year and a half of college German, never to return to languages when they dropped the requirement for my major.), who would be humble enough to admit it?
But okay, since I never watch reality TV, I guess it’s safe to fess up about my reading taste. In between literary fiction, I read a lot of thrillers, especially when I’m traveling. I find the airport paperbacks totally engaging and a wonderful foil for the person wedged in next to me who actually believes I want to hear their life story. If my being engrossed in the book doesn’t stop them from either telling me how terrified they are to fly or sharing their darkest secrets then a good whack in the head does the trick every time. (Just kidding about the whack - so far that’s only a fantasy - sigh.)
I love Daniel DeSilva, Laurie King and I’ve read all of Robin Cook’s and John Grisham’s books (although I’m not sure any of them qualify as trash -in fact DeSilva and Laurie King are consistently good writers.)
So now that you know, you can flail me with a string of Latin verbs.
April 20th, 2006 at 4:50 pm
OK ok, how about I confess to a passion for yet another Amazon giant “Naked Justice Volume One.” Gosh, why do I find myself picking on Amazon, since they are setting the standard followed by the other giants. It’s not doing badly, I’m sure to Amazon’s delight, and I DON’T think it’s self-published, which makes it safe literary reading. I’m desperately hoping there’s a Volume 2. Volume One includes “Horny apes, evil lesbians, and maniacal mad scientists…” all trying to find themselves in angst-relieving ways, I’m sure. I haven’t yet seen a simpering Times or PW review yet, but I’m sure it’s coming. “Cutting edge,” by gum. If there’s a message or redeeming value, they’ll sure as heck find it. I bought 20 copies just to be safe.
I also confess to reading “Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking” by Gladwell, but the Horny apes, evil lesbians, maniacal mad scientists seem to have a more direct track on things.
April 20th, 2006 at 6:12 pm
Lynne: From my geographical and spiritual viewpoint (San Francisco and Silicon Valley), I must say I smiled at your comment about publishers “howling with laughter at lowly authors selfpublishing…” From our Web-centric perspective out here nothing but nothing (oh, okay, maybe Tony Soprano’s cement business) is more broken or lowly or myopic than the NYC book publishing industry. My personal goal with A Woman from Cairo is to try to create another sensible entry point for emerging talent to showcase their books, put a marketing and pr platform in place, and then, after they’ve created their market, contract with a traditional publisher for retail bookstore distribution worldwide. New, emerging filmmakers have been mortgaging their houses to do exactly this for the past couple of decades at venues such as Sundance and Telluride. Some win big, many lose big. The fate that is truly worse than self-publishing via Amazon is to be anything other than a top-of-the-list book at a traditional book publisher. To sum up my own experience with Amazon to date (A Woman from Cairo went live on Amazon.com on March 13th): I’ve never had more fun or made more fascinating, potentially life-changing acquiantances in my career. People from around the world have contacted me, Hollywood has come knocking, and I’ve barely scratched the surface of the potential. I own the rights to my book; I control the creative; I control the marketing and pr; and, most importantly, I have more than a 90-day window to build an audience of buyers and readers. If I do eventually sign up with a traditional house, most of the risk for them will have been eliminated and they’ll inherit a marketing platform that is equal to or better than anything they’ve got out there. Sounds like a huge win win for all. Yes?
April 21st, 2006 at 8:14 am
Sorry, no literary snob here. I think my life is too short and my time too short to try and read books that don’t hold my attention. So, give me trash, sci-fi, mystery, whatever holds my interest and caught my attention in the first place. AND, at least my kids see me reading and maybe they’ll get the idea too.
I’ve got stacks of books “I should read”, mostly they just make my mind wander and then what have I gotten out of them? Nothing.
I look forward that as authors network, and they grab hold of the opportunity to promote themselves, and get the word out, that I may come across books I may never have found otherwise.
April 21st, 2006 at 10:01 am
Oh dear, did we come across as snobby readers? I would read the back of a cereal packet if there was nothing else. Come to that I would ‘write’ the back of a cereal packet if they would let me!
April 21st, 2006 at 10:33 am
I have to say that people ARE being good about ‘fessing up though ….. well done for calling them on it.
April 21st, 2006 at 10:52 am
I’m gonna read A Woman From Cairo right away after reading Val’s post, that’s for sure.
The literary snob stuff is corrosive–and my head’s at least as rusted out as anybody’s. LitSnobism reminds me of the jazz scene–sell more than a hundred albums and you’re a sellout. I’m shocked to read inferences that I’m not supposed to tell anybody I’ve read some Gladwell. What’s THAT all about? And, nobody writes better dialogue or quicker narrative than Stephen King. He grosses me out, and pisses me off by setting me up for emotional pain, then delivering it without blinking–I still cringe at the way he killed that sheriff off in “Misery”–but his imagination is astonishing and he always nails the American voice. Too bad he’s so (ugh) popular. And who hates Elmore Leonard? He’s no Annie Proulx, but hey, she’s no Elmore Leonard.
Thanks for the unscientific survey, Lynne. Oh, and, if you’re looking for a more clueless industry than book publishing, try radio.
April 21st, 2006 at 10:57 am
Oh, by the way, you can mount a Web site for next to no bucks. ‘Way less than POD. It’s the time that’ll kill you.
How much are you paying to create this blog, Lynne? Don’t let fear-of-spending keep you off the Web.
April 21st, 2006 at 1:46 pm
Val Landi makes some excellent points about self-publishing, and I have to give him credit. His appears to be an example of some good work being published that would otherwise vanish in the slushpile. He is quite correct in his points regarding maintaining control over content and marketing. While those who have not really looked into it, self-publishing is often arrogantly brushed aside as “vanity printing,” which is a totally different process–but it’s a terminology used deliberately to denigrate it. I will note that Borders (credit should go where it’s due) is one of the few brick and mortars to actually look at Print-on-Demands and, after review, stock many of the best ones on their shelves through their BINC process.
Much depends on the author’s marketing strategy–I have followed a couple of self-published authors who, by seeking alternative strategies, have probably reached a wider audience than they would have through a traditional publishers 6-month cut-and-run process. I do disagree a bit with Mr. Landi’s suggestion that a traditional house might pick up a self-published book that has shown some success, however, as they are too threatened by allowing themselves to do that.
“Traditional houses” do hate self-publishing and, as a result, “literary reviewers” have ignored some quality work just to spite it. Yes, there IS some poor stuff coming out of self-publishing because it is a truly free market, but as one writer above noted, take a hundred titles from Amazon or B&N and check out the quality. I find about 80% of it to be trash and poor quality–which may be a little better than the rate for self-publishers, but not much. For all their arrogance, they may find self-publishing will continue to make some good in-roads. I hope so. And I guess I just like a free market that allows the best and worst to get their chance–with the public deciding.
April 21st, 2006 at 4:51 pm
I just donated (literally) a trunkload of books to our local library. About half were mysteries/thrillers, all of which I had read, and the rest were “shoulds” — literary books I should have read but didn’t. I agree with Shelley H: “I think my life is too short and my time too short to try and read books that don’t hold my attention.”
April 22nd, 2006 at 8:42 am
A quick correction to my list of favorite thriller writers: I should have said Daniel Silva (NOT DeSilva) - his protagonist is an art restorer in Venice/covert operative. Or maybe all that Latin fried my brain.
April 22nd, 2006 at 9:40 pm
I see Lynne has rightly opened some introspection and even guilt amongst us when it comes to our admissions of frivolous reading. I felt quite awful because my admitted addiction to Wolf’s ‘Naked Justice” series (ranked at 377,000), might be mistaken for a Mr. John Mortimer’s book by the same title, which is only standing at 2,128,00–presumably because his book foolishly lacks the superheroines in bondage at the hands of the horny apes. As someone said, we must do something about all these duplicate titles. I’m almost afraid to buy anything, now.
April 24th, 2006 at 12:32 am
After doing a little more research–that I should have done earlier–I discovered what the rest of you must know
already: Mr. Landi has a career as a publishing person behind him--he’s been an editor. He’s connected. I suppose it’s possible for one of us-the-unconnected to acquire the knowledge to go into book publishing for ourselves. But it surely helps that Val is already known to those beyond the slush readers and receptionists. And that somewhere in there he signed with a major agent. You’ve done an impressive job of mounting a novel, sir. It’s apparently a bit more socially acceptable in NY for you to control your book. The lesson? There are no shortcuts. First, write a great book. Second, prepare a Scanlon-ized proposal package. Third, don’t forget your SASE.
April 24th, 2006 at 6:10 pm
I’m with Dave on the Stephen King thing. The man can write rings around many of his contemporaries. I was glad to see him come back after announcing that the Dark Tower (the only King I have no interest in) was the last. I’m about halfway through his newest one, “Lisey’s Story,” (due in October–hey, there has to be some perks to being a bookseller!), and while “Cell” was enjoyable but forgettable, I’m really finding this one interesting, resonant, and compelling. BUT he has one flaw in that he’ll overuse a certain phrase his characters do TO DEATH. Worse, near the beginning of “Lisey’s Story,” he makes fun of Southern characters and accents for page after agonizing page of phonetical dialect (”puff-ickly huh-yooge,” etc.). I mean, Steve, some of us Southern folk think Maine Yankees talk funny too. But keep an eye out for this one–Scribner is being unusually generous with the galley, and thus far it’s his most compelling novel in many years.
And other commercial stuff I’ll cop to: I never miss a Carl Hiaasen, I love cheap pulp horror from the 30s to now, and my wife Sally (who is ten times the bookseller I am) reads commercial and good indiscriminately, a true literary omnivore. But that’s easy when you can read a book a day.
April 24th, 2006 at 11:01 pm
So I have to ask another of those questions that isn’t supposed to be asked in polite circles, though. I was in the library the other day (can’t afford the Starbuck coffee) and noticed one of the above writers–heck, could have been King, or Clancey, whoever–who had a seventy five foot shelf with nothing but their own books.
I’m guessing–someone tell me I’m wrong–that these repeated best selling writers are not Jessica Fletchers with typewriters at their kitchen tables. I’m guessing they have a staff of writers (like some “painters”) cranking out their books by assigned chapters as they give the general guidance on the plot, etc–a committee effort, in other words, with final proofing by the, um, author. Are there many of you/us that, having read the gazillionth one by one of these guys, couldn’t begin to mimic their style? This would, of course, be a horrible secret to ever get out……….but I have five bucks (well, on payday, anyway) that says it’s a strong possibility–but kept very quiet. So call me a heretic to suggest such a thing…
April 25th, 2006 at 10:25 am
Andrew–King is not prolific enough for such things to worry me. But surely you’ve noticed that James Patterson manages four a year like clockwork (and his coauthors have complained enough that now they share credit), as does Danielle Steele. And let’s not even mention Nora Roberts.
April 25th, 2006 at 8:57 pm
Thanks, Frazer. Henry Ford would be proud.
February 17th, 2007 at 4:22 am
Everything of James Patterson. Yes, this is not what literary critics tend to hype up. But it’s great entertainment! I read books and listen to audio books for pleasure and to relax. Why should I work my throuhg a contorted, difficult to read and even more difficult to understand book, just because it has been labeled by literary circles? And once more Yes: The book stands at airports are where I bought most of these, and of Grisham, King etc… in my opinion good literature that entertains me. What else do I want?
You survey results are interesting, just shows that big bucks don’t mean big success. As you say, give me a million dollars and I bring you a website into the top 10′000 anytime. — Anybody who actually has that budget? give me a call!
Note from the Wicked Witch of Publishing ™: I see nothing wrong with reading for entertainment. To each his own. I like mindless TV on occasion as well, after a tough day or not-so-tough day. And some people ONLY like a breezy read or TV show. Usually, there is something for everyone on the various best-seller lists. And one man’s literature is another man’s dreck. The vanity Web sites, mostly from the large publishers, are vanity Web sites by my definition because the publishers don’t market their Web sites and more than they market the books they publish. Actually, it’s worse with the Web sites. That may change, however, as publishers find they MUST tap into the Web market, or continue to lose ground to others who do.
May 7th, 2007 at 5:55 pm
Am I the only person on the planet who reads non-fiction? My guilty pleasure is shelter porn — beautiful pictures of villas I can never have.