This week’s topic at RAW4ALL yahoo group (our literary hang-out) is on the literary industry.
What are your overall thoughts on the literary industry? What about as it relates to African-American authors? What do you think we’ll see in the next 5-10 years and what one thing would you do if you were in charge of things.
Dee Stewart shares her answers below:
If I Were Queen of American Publishing by Dee Stewart
Overall:
The industry is experiencing a paradigm shift. We no longer build books but information assets. Be it books, ebooks, novellas, manga, comics the way we share information is no longer just bound in books, but packaged digitally, mobi, and in artistic form(i.e. artists books.)
Therefore the industry is working at lightning speed to adjust to this shift in thinking. As the digitization of the music industry changed the way the players were paid, authors, publishing houses, distributors, and retailers will expand their stream of income. But only if they get ahead of the digital divide.
How does this relate to the African-American Author?
As I’ve said before AA authors must get ahead of the pace car, so to speak. There is no longer an excuse why AA authors do not:
- know what is going on with their publisher
- understand book digitization
- get digitized and mobi
- become advocates for their writing career
- understand basic marketing principles
- understand social media’s role in not just marketing, but a gamut of functions that will help them leverage their base
If an AA author does not get educated like yesterday on doing listed above, then they will not be prepared for the very near future.
Five year prediction:
And, thus, African American Authors, who haven’t gotten it together will be pushed out of the industry, because in less than five years expect:
1. A higher percentage of e-book purchases will make up your income mix.
prepare for the cost of ebooks to matter to your bottom line.’
2. A shift in dynamic pricing on ebooks that will take the price of ebooks up, which for the first three years will cause AA ebook purchases to drop.
Our culture, historically are the last to accept change in the marketplace. Some book buyers will complain of ebook price raising. However, they will—just like they did with itunes and mp3 downloads—will pick it up and be the largest consumers of ebooks.
3. A redux of AA books acquired in the industry
Publishing houses have already begun dropping their old flagship authors, but not necessarily for celebrity packaged authors like they do now, but to diminish an imprint. As publishers streamline more will not see the need for having imprints, but will add according to a specific need.
4. Publishing houses will focus on branding more, which will oust the midlist and many AA authors.
With digitization of publishing, publishing houses will secure self-pub entities to take care of the midlist and focus more on branding the house. In order to compete globally especially with the UK American publishing houses will redefine the PH using Thomas Nelson as a possible model.
In Ten Years:
1. A Change in Readership
The African American literary marketplace is saturated with poor quality, poorly written, poorly distributed, poorly crafted books. PH self-pub entities will squeeze out those books, because once traditionally published authors will have their own smaller presses and produce better looking books.
2. Mobi Books
- Not only will the digitization of publishing add more e-readers, but smart phones will begin—as they already have—provide e-reader apps.
- These books will be shorter and serialized. Readers will subscribe for installments.
- These installments will also provide graphics or 12 second videos to accompany the text.
3. Language Conversion
- More stories will become global faster. These stories need to be easily convertible by the user.
If I were queen of publishing:
1. Host a Publishing Summit, to convert all houses to agency model.
I would host a publishing summit –not digibookworld—but a summit to encourage all publishers, including small press to convert to the agency model for ebooks and begin a concerted shift to dynamic pricing for ebooks. that is the only way Amazon will stop dropping buy back buttons and the only way readers will realize that the current model isn’t doable in the long run, even for the consumer. it is also the only way the African-American author will stop complaining to their readers about the price. let’s not make the mistake many recording artists made when the music industry went digital. many have gone out of business, lost contracts and are no longer viable in the industry. and guess what most music lovers haven’t missed them yet.
2. Change Bookstore Infrastructure & Design
- I would do away with the African American section and house books according to genre.
- I would reinforce the old buy back program, whereby publishing houses pay according to terms on books returned from bookstores that are less than a certain set amount and credit stores for books over that amount. it is not fair for publishing houses to return payment to a bookstore that cannot manage inventory, but on the other hand if a bookstore has a few books to return because of an instore event they should be credited.
- authors should receive an addendum to ebook commissions once universal dynamic pricing for ebooks have come into effect
3. Personally, if I was a published author, I would start a small press that can handle mobi.
Wow, Dee. Your knowledge about the industry shows!
Despite the present upheaval in the industry, I feel that there will be growth as well as major changes as trends develop. And because of this, I feel that authors have no choice but to EDUCATE THEMSELVES to the influx of alterations that are inevitable! We all ascribe to the industry changing to some degree of success for us in varying degrees of achievement. But in my mind, I see no upgrade as long as the scales are imbalanced and we’re not enhancing entrepreneurial pursuits to better our positioning in decision-making enclaves and actually owning a piece of the rock! I wish there were more of unifying forces where we’ve formed coalitions to galvanize efforts to justify one voice and one constituency. I recall both the late essayist June Jordan and paranormal writer, Octavia Butler echo the same sentiments of a misjointed agenda with everyone doing their own thing as they scurry up the barrel while pulling each other down at the same time! In other words, there’s strength in numbers.
There’s much to be said about how distribution should be changed in order for us to cut out the middle man and for US to be not only in the middle, but the final piece of the puzzle so as not to be relegated to the major publishing houses’ bottom lines. We need to establish our own lines of demarkation. With that said, there should be no boundaries or limits to our potentiality for improving our lot, be it with better writing, understanding the craft just a tad bit beyond status quo, or even learning the business side better to justify challenging systematic roadblocks. We don’t own nothing and enough of anything for clout and swagger to announce that we’ve finally made it.
E-books are the wave of the future, if not now. Extensive marketing has already begun, especially with the hardware that will propel them for mass-market appeal. Rarely is there any industry that does not adhere and cater to trends that would help extrapolate growth in any core medium. This will more than likely change how publishers market new product and carry (or delete) complete lines and/or divisions…and I can see how imprints and midline authors would suffer. Until all of the above and other persuasions take us serious enough to read our books, invite us to dinner, and allowing equal parity to hold sway to better judgment, then we won’t get no further than the long handled spoon that’s between us and a book that turn pages for the world to know that we too, are great writers and can do business just as well as mainstream American claim to do! If indeed, I was King of Publishing, I’d relax the rigid standards in place and revert the who industry in a co-opt type of venture where independency would allow digitization and mobi-books to be virtual partners for stability. JMO.
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@D.J. Thanks, but I don’t know as much as I would like. Wished I went to SXSW last weekend to hear the discussions on digital publishing.
@Alvin You said that sir. An author friend of mine who has a contract with a publishing house expressed the same sentiment to me last year and has begun to take steps at taking ownership of her writing products. What Stephen King and Gary V are doing with Harper Studio are great examples of collaborating with a publisher to create more products, while have more ownership and marketing responsibility.
Sadly, we are still ill-educated about the industry we provide products and services for and I don’t know why. I can’t say that is mostly because other authors and industry insiders do not share. Many shared with me and I in turn pass on the information to those who care to read. In my experience those that have shared freely were–also sad to say–not African American. And don’t know why that is either. Perhaps we don’t know as much as we pretend to or as you’ve said in your response we don’t want ourselves to succeed.
If we don’t get this important fact in our heads, we will drive ourselves out of this industry as vital players. We must share and help each other. African Americans only make up 15% of the population and our percentage diminishes every decade. So if we aren’t supporting each other, then our percentage goes even lower.
On top of that if our stories aren’t written with universal characters and themes, then we don’t have enough information asset to engage readers of different cultures. My novel series which debuts with the first title next year has a multiracial cast. I wrote it that way, because my world is multicultural and the problem my heroine has is one many women regardless of color or ethnic enclave have. What will you do for your family? We will market this book as a crossover title.
My hopes is that I continue the series or something similar as a serialized print & digital version in five years under my own publishing house. my dream is to actually form a branded publishing house within the next five to ten years using this book as the model of the type of books we will create.
Thanks for sharing Dee…
I hope the article was beneficial to you, Monique.