The democratization of slush

[minervaK]

An interesting article by Laura Miller, NY Times Book Review contributor, over at Salon:

http://www.salon.com/books/laura_miller/index.html

I think she makes several hopeful points, especially for authors.

[I. J. Parker]

The article doesn't add anything new to the situation. Neither is it particularly encouraging. Yes, the market will turn into a gigantic slushpile. Yes, readers will be confused and head even more stubbornly to the old stuff they're used to.
What has changed for authors who aren't hung up on being on book store shelves is that they may now have a market for books that are niche material or didn't fit the agent/publisher's current plans.
And those authors need to be grateful for Amazon's efforts at sending customers their way.

[Camille LaGuire]

I have to disagree with the idea that readers will be confused and afraid to branch out, or that their eyes will glaze over. It's not the readers whose eyes will glaze over - it's the writers, publishers and agents. (We've got to be careful not to project our feelings as someone who has to enter this wild, confusing market. The consumers have a whole different experience of it.)

The readers are already dealing with it. They already have to choose from among thousands and thousands of options on everything, every single thing, they do or want. That future arrived several years ago. And guess what, in every single venue where they had more choice (though it was full of junk) they abandoned the old and familiar. They don't see shoddy work as different than any other work they don't want - and most of what's out there (gatekeeper or not) is something they don't want.

For those who are scared of a world without gatekeepers, a variation of that will still be around. It won't be a gatekeeper so much as people others look to for opinions or a seal of approval. And there are many many more of them - because every niche will have them.

And those people are already out there, because, as I mentioned above, the consumer is already dealing with a slushpile and has for years.

[I. J. Parker]

This is absolutely untrue, and proof is the quality (or lack thereof) of bestsellers. Men like Patterson et al. no longer bother to write their own books, and still their books sell madly. Even Evanovich has apparently stopped, and left matters to her son. Her readers complain but they buy. The same happened with Cornwell, who kept getting million dollar contracts even after reviewers and customers had shredded most of her titles. What it does illustrate is that the gatekeepers stop caring once an author proves to sell lots of books.

[John McFetridge]

It illustrates that we're looking at "product" and not "books," "content providors" and not "authors."

And that may be what's required to keep big multinationals functioning but it really has nothing to do with writers and readers and books.

I always come back to the restaurant analogy; Patterson, Evanovich and the companies that keep them going are McDonalds and Burger King. Sure, they're in the restaurant business, but wat we're interested in is tht little place that's owned by the chef who cares deeply about food. Not as profitable, for sure, but worth finding.

[Camille LaGuire]

I'm not sure what you mean by this, or how it relates to what I said. I sounds like what you're saying (and I'm sorry to put words in your mouth but it's the only way I can relate it to what I said) is that because publishing still has gatekeepers, and they're failing to keep quality up, that it proves that the new paradigm won't work the way it does in every other industry?

Bestsellers are part of the old paradigm. They aren't what people want - they're about limited choices that people are given when there are gatekeepers. The reason they are getting worse is because they are designed to appeal to a narrower and narrower spectrum (or at least more of a "lowest common denominator") and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy by the gatekeepers. Because they placed these pre-chosen books in every Walmart in the universe and therefore the book has been available to more people, it must be what people want, right?

Publishing is far behind the public on this. It's one of the reasons the customer base for books was shrinking before Amazon hit it so big. Now, as choice gets wider, the customer base is growing again - but publishing is still a short-tail business, and the audience hasn't been given the level of choice it's used to.

In everything else, though, the paradigm has moved beyond the short-tail and gatekeeper mode. Especially with anything related to online or electronic media. And the world didn't end, and nobody goes around saying "golly, I wish somebody would narrow my choices, because I really didn't want to find those extra-wide 4E shoes that not only fit but look good with my favorite dress."

Just because the old-school publishing industry is still keeping the long tail out of reach of your average consumer doesn't mean that the consumer would choose that if they could. Right now, where people actually have a choice of that "slushpile" (i.e. Kindle and other ebook retailers) the top sellers list is broadening out rapidly.

[John McFetridge]

Not sure if you're talking to me or not ;)

We'll see if the paradign changes or if a new one is added and we have another layer. I think bestsellers are like Big Macs and blockbuster Hollywood movies and people do like them and we'll continue to have them. People like a common experience. Oprah-recommended books sold really well because many people still like to feel connected to other people and have common experiences.

But it's early days yet, so we'll see. The old TV networks are hanging in there but they may be disappearing, too.

[Camille LaGuire]

Okay, I won't say that the blockbuster will go away. But it's going to change a lot, because those items are driven by vendors - who are gatekeepers. As it is now, it's not driven by the actual desires of the audience, just the marketable average desires of the audience.

For instance, I like Big Macs, but if MacDonald's went away, I wouldn't be seeking an exact replacement. In an environment when you can get great ethnic food for the same price, the Big Mac may still exist, but it no longer dominates. (And let's face it, fast food is a price and delivery issue more than anything else.)

Hollywood Blockbusters exist because movie theaters exist. They don't do nearly as well on TV or video (comparative to other pictures). The movie theater has a whole different experience - it's expensive to produce, and expensive to show, so to survive it's GOT to be a blockbuster. It doesn't have to be anybody's favorite thing, just just has to be sufficiently appealing to most people.

The reason we're talking about this is because ebooks have made self-publishing cheap and easy - which takes the marketing advantage out of the equation. Movies and food are NOT cheap and easy businesses.

[minervaK]

Actually, the movie analogy is an interesting one -- I just heard a story on NPR that the standard summer blockbuster movies aren't doing as well as they used to, because now people have Netflix and can order movies to watch at home that they actually enjoy, rather than going to the theater and chosing the best of the lot. Maybe book sales will go the same way -- 'blockbuster' titles will gradually die away in favor of a broader public reading base with a wider selection of well-selling titles. We can hope, anyway.

What I'd really like to see is a site like Amazon offering more ways to filter titles than just by genre -- i.e., filter down to 'mystery,' then to female authors, then down to 'no rape scene,' then down to 'no cardboard characters,' etc. etc... of course I'm being silly, but something almost like that. There are books I know I'm not going to enjoy merely from their location (New York City? get a rope) and/or the description of their protag (herbalist vampire animal psychics, et. al.). Filters along these lines would be enormously helpful in winnowing down the coming slush pile...

[Camille LaGuire]

You can do tag searches, and also use listmania lists. (I don't search that way myself much, but I know people who do search for crazy things like "vampire horse mysteries" and find them.) You can also use Google to find a lot of things.

Amazon may have boolean searches, which would allow "this, not that" criteria, but I haven't tried it. And it would be inexact too. How do you know, for instance, that a book description would mention your personal pet peeves? (Reviews, on the other hand, might.)

But that's also what sites like Good Reads is for.

[I. J. Parker]

I think she was replying to me, John. You're quite right, Camille, that the so-called gatekeepers have been giving preferential treatment to brainless shlock because it sells. They also pour their advertising dollars into these books. And that is recisely the reason why most readers will keep buying the heavily promoted shlock. But it also means that the better books will not have a chance with either the publishers or with self-publishing. People need to be told what to buy.

[Camille LaGuire]

I don't know. I did a self-publishing experiment of two books I wrote long ago for fun. They're off-genre oddball titles with no particular audience, and I haven't promoted them at all except on my own blog, and a couple of announcements here an there on the Kindle boards. I haven't even told my family (most of whom wouldn't know an ebook if it stepped out and zapped them). And though I have published a certain amount of short fiction, I would definitely classify myself as completely unknown.

I've been selling about two books every three days on Kindle, and lots more on Smashwords (but I gave out some free coupons there) and Apple, B&N and Kobo haven't reported in yet.

Now that may not be very much - maybe 50 paid sales and a hundred freebies in ten weeks or so - but go back and read that first paragraph again. Those books should not have sold anything, and the rate of sales is increasing.

Most indies I know are doing better (and you can tell they are telling the truth by their Amazon rankings), and not doing a lot more in marketing - they've just been doing what I'm doing longer and maybe more intensively. A lot of these people are unknowns. I also know midlist authors who are rescuing their backlist and sometimes their careers by doing this.

There's a big hungry audience out there that is not being served by the publishing industry. They are voracious readers, and they've been surviving on used books because of the poor price and selection that they get from the industry.

As I said, watch the top one hundred ebooks list at Amazon. While the NYT best sellers are mostly there, there are always a bunch of indie authors and small press authors on the list. These aren't people who got there via "push marketing" the way the major publishing houses do it. They got there one book at at time, and by word of mouth. IMHO, that's the very definition of "better books" in that they got there because people loved them.

The one thing I do know is that I've changed my marketing plans for my mystery novels. I'm going Indie all the way, at least for a few years. (Of course, I love the marketing and business end so it makes sense for me when it doesn't for many writers.)

[I. J. Parker]

Well, that sounds promising, though I think much depends on pricing. I haven't been selling 2 books a day in the print versions and from a major house. And that in spite of the fact that I have a track record with some readers. When you self-publish, you get to keep quite a bit. My share of the print books amounts to about 7.5 %. The ones on Kindle (haven't checked sales) I get 15 % on.