Why You Should Be Cheering for the Ad-Subsidized Kindle

It's so easy to predict the reaction of the literary web to some stories. Combine the specter of Amazon with inserting advertising into the reading space, and you have yourself a sure-fire whipping boy. Which is too bad, because the new ad-subsidized Kindle is a really, really good idea.

For some, the idea of advertising in literature is anathema; it contaminates the sacred space of art-writing. The publishing business, literary historians, and writers themselves have long gone to great lengths to keep the business of books outside the realm of literary discourse. It is devilishly difficult to know much, if anything, about the economics of literature: how much writers are paid, how many copies a particular book sells, and the other ledger items of publishing seem to be actively obscured. This has, in turn, created the illusion that money and literature are somehow separate.

The division of "writing" from the literary-publishing economy has been a real obstacle for the ongoing viability of the publishing business. Thinking that literature exists beyond the pale of economics allows and excuses a variety of practices and beliefs that are detrimental to the maintenance of a healthy, diverse literary economy. For example, in what other business can you borrow, subsidized by state and local government, the products of an entire industry? That literature exists in an imaginary space outside of financial pressures makes it even more subject to economic forces.

So that's one reason to be interested in the new ad-subsidized Kindle. When you now flip on your Kindle to read the new David Mitchell, you see a Buick ad first; it will be difficult to maintain an artificial separation of the business of writing with the texts themselves. Some argue that introducing advertising into literature will cheapen it. I would argue just the opposite; commercializing the literary space will reinforce the idea that that space has financial value, just as the annual ritual of tracking how much a 30-second spot during the Super Bowl costs reaffirms the value of the Super Bowl.

I think advertising in e-readers is exciting for another reason; it has the potential to open up channels of discovery. Book advertising is notoriously difficult, to the point that most people don't see any book advertising in their daily life. That "word-of-mouth" is the most powerful force in the industry speaks to the ineffectiveness of literary publicity. That said, the kind of reader-centric, targeted opportunity that integrated literary advertising presents is unprecedented.

Say I am the publisher (or, increasingly, author) of a novel about race relations in the South. Buying and crafting a specific ad that would appear to the tens of thousands of people reading Kate Stockett's The Help on their e-reader would seem outrageously appealing. From a reader's point of view, this might even be helpful; finding titles like a book you are currently enjoying is usually a task you have to take to your local bookseller, as long as they know what they are talking about. For most readers, this is a friction point that will not be surmounted. In this new scenario, a sample of the advertised, related work is just a couple of clicks away. (And if you don't think this can work, remember that Google's empire is built on accessible, contextual advertising.)

It is somewhat unfortunate that this effort is starting with Amazon, since most interested in publishing look upon them warily. I don't particularly care if this new Kindle sells, but I do think that it is in the best interest of publishing if something like it succeeds.
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Some Real Numbers on E-Reading

Analyst Jakob Nielson decided to put the rubber to the road and do a real study on the differences between e-reading and paper-ink reading. Here's the result:

The iPad measured at 6.2% lower reading speed than the printed book, whereas the Kindle10.7% slower than print. However, the difference between the two devices was not statistically significant because of the data's fairly high variability.

Thus, the only fair conclusion is that we can't say for sure which device offers the fastest reading speed. In any case, the difference would be so small that it wouldn't be a reason to buy one over the other. 

Speed is something we hadn't really thought about and don't have a ready answer for why this might be. It may be familiarity; perhaps once people are as used to e-reading as they are to print, these numbers might even out.

Though if it doesn't, this difference is not insignificant: if you read several dozen books a year, this difference could add up to several less read-books over the same time. Sample size here is pretty small and this is early in the game, but this is the first real study we've seen, so we thought we'd pass it along. 

On E-books and the End of the World as We Don't Know It

One thing that we’re really enjoying about the ongoing discussion about ebooks and the future of publishing is how it tends to bring out the nuttiness that so many writers and critics usually try to suppress. Though as entertaining as Garrison Keillor’s speech o’doom and the like are, we’re less impressed by the lack of historical thinking that happens when people are performing such prognostications. Consider for a moment this bit from the first in a series (shudder) on the “future of books” at The Globe and Mail:

One distinct trend of the Internet age is the return of the Victorian-style triple-decker: huge, unwieldy novels that let netizens tune out the annoying chatter of their native realm by means of total immersion in alternative realities. Between them, J.R.R Tolkein and J.K. Rowling set a powerful magic afoot, and it took flight in the Internet age.

Right, because, you know literary masterworks are generally slight, like The Iliad, The Decameron, Don Quixote, Anna Karenina, Moby Dick, The Last of the Mohicans, Ulysses, The Grapes of Wrath, Gravity’s Rainbow, The Quick and The Dead, and on and on.

What bothers us here is not that this is wrong (we all make mistakes from time to time), but the way in which it is wrong. Because this author, John Barber, sees that there are some large novels out there (as there have always been) and that the Internet, well, exists, so therefore the two must be somehow causally related. The entire history of the novel here is swept under the rug to connect dots because the dots seem to be close together, not because they form any sort of whole.

Using this mode of thinking, I could also make the exact opposite argument for the recent interest in flash fiction? By this logic, the Internet makes people want to read things that are both longer and shorter.

My point here is that the Internet, especially in the publishing world, becomes a nexus for all sorts of anxieties that often don't have anything at all to do with ebooks, digital publishing, Kindles, iPads, book piracy, Google Editions or any of the other several dozen barbarians at the gate.

Perhaps reading and publishing will change forever—it wouldn’t be the first time—and perhaps they won’t. The damnable part is that most of us don’t know which of those possibilities is more desirable, and this fact seems to be the core motivator for much of our contemporary befuddlement. We don’t know what’s going to happen, and, what’s worse, we don’t know anyone who does know.

This state of affairs reminds me of passage by a writer likewise concerned about the direction of literature:

If we make a century our test, and ask how much of the work produced in these days in England will be in existence then, we shall have to answer not merely that we cannot agree upon the same book, but that we are more than doubtful where such a book there is. It is an age of fragments.[…]Can we go to posterity with a sheaf of loose pages, or as the readers of those days, with the whole of literature before them, to sift our enormous rubbish heaps for our tiny pearls?

And while the subject matter here is somewhat related to the questions of our day, it is again not just the nature of the question itself that I find resonat, but also the way it is framed and who framed it----Virginia Woolf in 1923.

It would seem the more we think things change, the more we forget that often much stays the same.

A Neophyte's Impressions of Book Expo America

Well, that was something. I’m not sure what exactly, but it definitely was not nothing. A few scattered thoughts, observations, and curiosities from the exhibition floor of Book Expo America:

• While autographs have never really interested me, apparently they interest a great many of the bookish stripe. I wasn’t too surprised by the giant lines for Lemony Snicket or Fergie, but Gary Shteyngart? That’s when you realize you are in bizarro-world.
• Self-publishing is out of control--and a lot of desperate-looking authors around the self-publishing booths.
• Not as many review copies handed out as I somehow thought there would be. Picked up advance copies for new books by Paul Auster, Per Petterson, and Philp Roth (maybe I was only there for the “P” giveaways), but most of the available titles were decidedly second or third tier, though it makes sense; the new Franzen doesn’t really need hype.
• HarperCollins was giving out digital advance copies, and I picked up a stub for Elmore Leonard’s new novel Dijbouti. Now if I only had something to read it on…
• iPads destroyed Kindles. Saw the little buggers everywhere, but nary a Kindle in sight. Spent a couple of minutes with the enTourage eDGe. Verdict? Welcome to the dustbin of history, fella. And the strangest capitalization scheme since NyQuil. 
• The librarians were as thick as thieves. Seemed to travel in pods of 6-8 regularly and gave the proffered goods extreme scrutiny. As I tweeted from the floor, they are the band kids of the publishing business; they aren't exactly glamorous, but they are serious, tight-knit, and you ignore them at your peril.
• I was weirdly fascinated by the booths for bookstore supplies: shelving, display options, and bookish impulse buys. Who knew what cardboard could do?
• Even middle-aged executives can be lured with candy.
• There are a too many e-publishing answers looking for a question. We need some consolidation and standardization here.
• Amazon and Apple were surprisingly absent, so there were TWO 800-pound gorillas in the room.
• Google really, really wants us not to be nervous about Google Books. And that’s making people nervous.
• Shocked at the floor-space for children’s books. Seemed like a quarter to a third of the show. Now if only those ankle-biters would grow up to be readers.

All in all, an interesting, though not riveting, experience. Glad I went once. Looking forward to the Book Blogger Convention tomorrow--setting my nerd phaser to maximum.

The New Yorker's State of the e-Publishing World

In a recent New Yorker article, Ken Auletta gives a terrific overview of the recent and contentious e-book wars between publishers, Amazon, Apple and Google. Neither triumphalism or hand-wringing, Auletta’s recap trades in cold, hard facts. Rather than dispatch another missive about the whole business, the Ape would like to take a look at some of the realities Auletta chronicles and see what is worth caring about…and what isn’t.

1. The acorn that will be an oak:

E-books are booming. Although they account for only an estimated three to five per cent of the market, their sales increased a hundred and seventy-seven per cent in 2009, and it was projected that they would eventually account for between twenty-five and fifty per cent of all books sold.

Takeaway: it’s time to stop worrying about whether e-books are going to supplement, dominate or eliminate print books; this is a tide that won’t be turned.

2. There’s a reason they put the Snickers by the register

Apple, through its iTunes and Apple stores, had access to a hundred and twenty-five million credit cards, which would make it easy for consumers to buy books on impulse. 

and

…superstores like Target and Wal-Mart, along with clubs like Costco, account for forty-five per cent [of book sales], though they typically carry far fewer titles.

Takeaway: The fact that so many books are sold at super-stores leads me to believe that people will buy books if they are in front of them.  Getting books in front of consumers, which the iPad and the Kindle do in a big way, would seem to be kind of the point of this all, no? Which leads us to…

3. The medium matters

Russ Grandinetti, the Amazon vice-president, says the Kindle has boosted book sales over all. “On average,” he says, Kindle users “buy 3.1 times as many books as they did twelve months ago.”

Takeaway: More book-reading options means more book reading. It may not mean more money for publishers and authors (more on this in a minute), but if we care about overall reading rates, then we should embrace digital reading.

4. There may be room for everybody, just less room for some.

“I think consumers, like publishers, are living in parallel universes,” Burnham [an executive at HarperCollins} says. “Consumers are educated to have a multiplicity of choices. They still like to go to a bookstore, while they also want everything available online.”

Takeaway: While people want cheaper goods, bookstores still provide a desired service. How many bookstores can be supported by the browser-buyers is unknown, but brick and mortars are going to survive. Publishers on the other hand…

5. Welcome to, you know, capitalism guys

Without bookstores, it would take years for publishers to learn how to sell books directly to consumers. They do no market research, have little data on their customers, and have no experience in direct retailing. With the possible exception of Harlequin Romance and Penguin paperbacks, readers have no particular association with any given publisher; in books, the author is the brand name. 

Takeaway: So I might know more about the seven people who read this blog through the tools Google provides than the big six publishers know about their customers. You know what’s a worse sign? That I’m not all that surprised. I think one might reasonably conclude that the kick in the ass that Amazon is giving publishers might just create a leaner, more nimble, and in the end more sustainable book industry. Still, I think we don’t want Amazon doing it all because…

6. You get what you pay for

Good publishers find and cultivate writers, some of whom do not initially have much commercial promise. They also give advances on royalties, without which most writers of nonfiction could not afford to research new books. The industry produces more than a hundred thousand books a year, seventy per cent of which will not earn back the money that their authors have been advanced; aside from returns, royalty advances are by far publishers’ biggest expense. Although critics argue that traditional book publishing takes too much money from authors, in reality the profits earned by the relatively small percentage of authors whose books make money essentially go to subsidizing less commercially successful writers. The system is inefficient, but it supports a class of professional writers, which might not otherwise exist.

Takeaway: Publishers are risk-aggregators. They do the work of screening, supporting, and distributing the work of writers. Would Amazon as publisher-distributor do what FSG does? I highly doubt it. Wihtout this sort of gate-keeping, the result could be… 

      

7. Make ready for the hordes

Budget-conscious publishers have also reduced the editing and marketing and other services they provide to authors, which has left a vacuum for others to fill. Author Solutions, a self-publishing company in Bloomington, Indiana, has ninety thousand client-authors.

Takeaway: Here’s what you don’t want—a sea of tens of thousands of books in a huge pile. How in the world will you decide what to read? How will reviewers? It’s time to acknowledge that publishers protect us from the paralysis of choice. I’m sure some books get missed, but surely more would get missed if no one was minding the store.

8. Google to the rescue, again/finally

Google Editions will let publishers set the price of their books, he said, and will accept the agency model. Having already digitized twelve million books, including out-of-print titles, Google will have a far greater selection than Amazon or Apple. It will also make e-books available for bookstores to sell, giving “the vast majority” of revenues to the store, Clancy [director of Google Books] said. He suggested that in trying to dominate the market Amazon and Apple were taking the wrong approach to business online. “It’s much more of an open ecosystem, where you find a way for bricks-and-mortar stores to participate in the future digital world of books,” he said.

Takeaway: The digital book readers might be the eight track tapes of today’s publishing revolution. The long arc here is toward platform neutrality, universal availability, and flexible pricing. Sound like the M.O. of any super-humongous-giant tech company you know?

There are more choice nuggets in the article; the Ape suggests a full read for anyone interested in these matters.