Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson (right), brought to my attention that he actually did (and promptly) respond to questions raised by Mike Shatzkin about Nelson’s self-publishing venture, WestBow Press. His response was in the form of a comment on Shatzkin’s blog, and we’re very happy to reproduce it here.

Richard Curtis
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Mike,

Thanks for asking these questions and giving me a chance to respond. I do, by the way, enjoy your blog and your perspective on publishing.

“1. How many such titles will they do per season or per year?”

This question doesn’t apply to the WestBow Press situation in quite the same way it applies to a traditional publisher. The WestBow model is the exact opposite of traditional publishing. In the traditional model, the publisher is the customer because the publisher buys manuscripts from authors. In the WestBow model, the author is the customer because the author buys services from the publisher.

The traditional model is resource-driven. The publisher is constrained by its access to capital and its appetite for risk. At Thomas Nelson, for example, we only do about 500 new titles per year, because we have a finite amount of capital that we can invest in royalty advances, inventory, and accounts receivable.

The WestBow model is demand-driven. The author is putting up the capital and taking the risk, so the publisher—or service provider, if you prefer—is only constrained by its ability to scale its operation up quickly enough to meet the demand.

All that to say, I have no idea how many titles we will do per season or per year. This is completely a function of demand.

“2. How will access to Nelson’s (always limited, as is any publisher’s) sales and marketing bandwidth be allocated to this imprint?”

Other than macro-level advice from time to time, none of Thomas Nelson’s resources will be allocated to sales and marketing. This is entirely ASI’s responsibility in the partnership. This kind of sales and marketing bandwidth is available to WestBow authors as a service from ASI, just like other services. Thomas Nelson’s bandwidth will be 100% focused on Thomas Nelson authors—just like now.

By the way, some of the questions we have received like this imply that traditional booksellers are the primary or only legitimate outlet for distribution. Many authors have their own platforms (e.g., speaking, blog, radio show, etc.) which more than justifies their investment in the WestBow model. They don’t need anyone else’s bandwidth to be successful.

“3. Will the books be vetted as suitable for Nelson’s Christian mission? And, if so, how and by whom?”

Yes, all WestBow Press titles must be congruent with the Thomas Nelson Content Standards. Every manuscript will be reviewed by either a WestBow editor who has been trained by us or a qualified freelancer who has been trained by us. This is precisely how we do it now at Thomas Nelson. In fact, I joked the other day that I think we have given the WestBow editors more training than our own people.

“4. Will the books be vetted at all for quality? Or will an author just choose the WestBow option and, if that’s the case, how much extra will be they paying and what will they be told they’re getting for their money?”

No, they will not be vetted for quality. They will be given a candid assessment of the quality and offered various editorial services that will make the manuscript better. But in the end, we are providing a service to the customer. He or she will be the final judge of quality.

These services are priced differently, depending on how involved they are. For example, substantive editing is more expensive than copy editing. Copy editing is more expensive than proof-reading. This is how it works in the world of traditional publishing, too, when we hire outside editors or proofreaders.

“5. The story says that Nelson editors won’t touch the books but will ‘monitor sales to identify potential big sellers.’ What’s the pre-monitoring launch plan? What’s the plan if Nelson editors actually identify a ‘potential big’ book?”

I’d like to tell you that we have all this figured out. We don’t. Here’s what I can tell you: we will be getting weekly sales reports from ASI. It will show all WestBow Press titles and how they are selling. We currently do this internally for our own titles at Thomas Nelson. We call it our “Movement Report.”

We will obviously pay attention to those WestBow titles that are selling the most or at the highest velocity. At some point, I envision one our editors reviewing the WestBow edition of the book and then calling the author to discuss the possibility of entering into a traditional publishing relationship with Thomas Nelson.

From that point, it will be handled as a typical author-publisher negotiation. We do not require them to publish with us or “lock them in” in via the WestBow contract in any way. They are free to publish with anyone they wish. However, we will have the early visibility and, hopefully, the first-mover advantage.

Someone asked on another forum, why would a WestBow author want to sign with Thomas Nelson if they already had proven they can be successful without us. Good question. The short answer is that they may not want to sign with us. No problem. Every situation is different.

But if they do sign with us, they will then go into our catalog, be represented by our sales team, and have the potential to get their books into other channels and accounts not available to them through WestBow.

I hope this answers some of your questions, Mike. I’m sure that I have created others! Please know that it is my desire to be as transparent and open about this as I can be, subject only to the availability of my time and attention.

Thanks again.

In our coverage of the friction between Harlequin and Romance Writers of America (New Harlequin Venture Doesn’t Pass Romance Writers of America Smell Test) we may have given the impression that both of the recently announced initiatives, Carina and Horizons, are self-publishing enterprises. Angela James, Executive Editor of Carina Press, has informed us that “Carina and Horizons are two separate entities and Carina is not affiliated in any way with self-publishing. We [Carina] differ from the traditional model in two ways: our books go digital-first and rather than paying advances we pay larger royalties. But Carina is not a self-publishing enterprise and I’d hate for anyone reading your post to think it was.”

We’re happy to set the record straight and apologize for any misimpression we may have communicated. And while we’re at we do want to express our hope that Harlequin and RWA will find a path back to the harmony that has characterized their relationship for decades.

We also take this opportunity to reiterate our welcome to Carina Press and wishes for its success.

Richard Curtis

About two years ago we asked Do Amazon Reviews Count? and wondered why we saw so few of them quoted by respectable publishers. “We live in an age when peer review is meaningful if not significant,” I noted, thinking about the fabulously successful Zagat restaurant review model utilizing the opinions of our very own next-door neighbors.

If the same group-sourcing dynamic could be applied to books, we could see a revolution in the way books are reviewed to match the way they are digitally delivered. If Amazon could assemble a cadre of reviewers to replace the publishing establishment’s phalanx of critics, endorsers and other brand-bestowing literary Gatekeepers, the 21st century’s paradigm shift would be that much closer to total.

But it all depends on the integrity of Amazon’s reviewers, just as our assessment of a restaurant’s ambiance, service and food depend on the integrity of the men and women who write it up for Zagat. So, it was with no small measure of concern that I read a blog by Scott MacDonald in Quill & Quire calling our attention to a website called readerspoils.com that arranges for authors to pay for reviews on Amazon. “Yes, that’s right,” MacDonald writes, “for just $15 U.S. you can get a completely ‘honest’ review of your book posted to Amazon in mere days!” In fact, he adds, while $15 is the base price, the site “is apparently selling reviews only in bulk quantities: 100 reviews for $1,400 and 500 reviews for a mere $6,500.”

The site’s owner is a self-published promoter named Clark Covington (pictured left) who describes himself as “a book writing fool. I’ve written several nonfiction books, and have a fiction novel in the works.” For many agents the redundant phrase “fiction novel” instantly identifies the author as a writing fool, but we’ll let that pass. Because when it comes to P. T. Barnum pitch, Covington is nobody’s fool. Here it is:

“Up until now the publishing industry kept a tight lock on their book reviewers, paying them large sums of money and giving them many freebies to urge them to review books for well known authors. The time has finally come where you, the self published author, can get quality, real life book reviews for the price of a couple of tickets to the movies…”

You are then instructed to select how many reviews you want, prepay for them, and enter information about your book, whereupon “You receive an email from us when all of your reviews are posted on Amazon, usually within a week of your purchase.” In case you’re still on the fence, Covington furnishes sample Amazon reviews including video testimonials.”I admit it, this sounds unbelievable,” Covington adds, beating us to the punch. “This sounds too remarkable to be true, this is the type of thing that makes you want to call your local attorney general and tell them a scam is brewing.” Covington claims to have access to 5,000 reviewers. How does he line them up?

“With a few strokes of luck and a hearty bribe, that’s how,” he boasts. Readers interested in reviewing can register on the site, and apparently there is some sort of consideration. I came across one complaint by a reviewer who claims to have gotten stiffed.

This operation is so patently humbug that it would be falling-down-funny if it were not for the stain it casts on the potential honesty and integrity of Amazon’s review system. Yes, it is true that the imperfect old review system is also subject to manipulation and even corruption. But Amazon represents an opportunity to get it right, to hear the recommendations of intelligent peers and neighbors about books that interest us. If we lose our trust in their honesty – the Quill & Quire article is called One more reason not to trust reader reviews – we also lose our literary value system.

Many of us grew up in a world where there were legitimate books and there were vanity books and everyone knew which ones to take seriously thanks to the tastemakers and gatekeepers. If they were biased, if their judgment was flawed, if they sometimes exalted the worthless and trashed the sublime, we lived with it because it was the only system we had. But now there is another way, and as we move into a socially networked future most of us are willing to give it a chance – unless we suspect the game is rigged.

Richard Curtis

A while back we wrote up a book lover who said she was reluctant to buy a Kindle “unless Amazon comes out with a special ‘book scented’ Kindle.” (See If They Can Make the Kindle Smell Like a Book, Maybe She’ll Buy One). It was all kind of a joke, but an enterprising manufacturer took it seriously enough to produce a line of aromatics simulating book scents. The aromas include New Book Smell and Classic Musty. The product is trademarked as Smell of Books™ and here’s how their website describes it:

Does your Kindle leave you feeling like there’s something missing from your reading experience?
Have you been avoiding e-books because they just don’t smell right?
If you’ve been hesitant to jump on the e-book bandwagon, you’re not alone. Book lovers everywhere have resisted digital books because they still don’t compare to the experience of reading a good old fashioned paper book.
But all of that is changing thanks to Smell of Books™, a revolutionary new aerosol e-book enhancer.
Now you can finally enjoy reading e-books without giving up the smell you love so much. With Smell of Books™ you can have the best of both worlds, the convenience of an e-book and the smell of your favorite paper book.
Smell of Books™ is compatible with a wide range of e-reading devices and e-book formats and is 100% DRM-compatible. Whether you read your e-books on a Kindle or an iPhone using Stanza, Smell of Books™ will bring back that real book smell you miss so much.

Among the five smells offered is “Crunchy Bacon”. This is a welcome novelty for noses jaded by such natural book fragrances as grass, leather, printer’s ink, and decaying paper. Hopefully, the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France will invest heavily in shpritzing their collections with Crunchy Bacon. Some other but lesser known aromas associated with books are baked lamb shank, General Cho’s Chicken, and asparagus vinaigrette.

On a more scientific note, Henry Fountain of the New York Times reports on research to quantify old-book odors to help librarians preserve books more effectively. Fountain describes how conservators “analyzed the volatiles produced by 72 samples of old paper of different types and in varying condition from the 19th and 20th centuries, using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry. They found that some compounds were reliable markers for paper with certain characteristics — high concentrations of lignin or rosin, for example, which make paper degrade relatively quickly.”

There was apparently no manifestation of crunchy bacon in the spectrum analyzed by the scientists, but it is well known that subatomic bacon particles are even more elusive to detect spectrometrically than the Higgs boson, and the Large Hadron Collider at CERN may be required to capture one.

Read Digging Into the Science of That Old-Book Smell.

Richard Curtis

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by The New York Times.

Remember why Tivo was invented? Looks like we’ll now need the equivalent of a Tivo to skip embedded advertising popups that simply will not go away until you acknowledge them with a click. Certainly that’s an Apple App waiting to be invented, yes?

Don’t count on it. The evil feature was created by Apple CEO Steve Jobs himself. Of the five inventors listed on the patent application, his name comes first. The application would post popups on anything that has a screen: phones, TVs, games, media players – if it has a screen the ads will appear, and they will not go away until you actively do something about them.

Randall Stross, writing in the Digital Domain column of the New York Times, describes the technology: “Its distinctive feature is a design that doesn’t simply invite a user to pay attention to an ad — it also compels attention. The technology can freeze the device until the user clicks a button or answers a test question to demonstrate that he or she has dutifully noticed the commercial message. Because this technology would be embedded in the innermost core of the device, the ads could appear on the screen at any time, no matter what one is doing.”

In other words, you are now utterly at the mercy of the advertiser.

As Stross explains it, “What the application calls the “enforcement routine” entails administering periodic tests, like displaying on top of an ad a pop-up box with a response button that must be pressed within five seconds before disappearing to confirm that the user is paying attention.”

Or, to put it crudely, Apple holds you down while the advertiser inserts its ad. And there’s no app to prevent it.

Stross wonders aloud if the invention could be a big turnoff even for fanatically loyal Apple lovers: “Would anyone have guessed that Apple, so widely revered, would seek patent protection of a gimmick not unlike one used to sell vacation timeshares?”

For details, read Apple Wouldn’t Risk Its Cool Over a Gimmick, Would It?

Richard Curtis

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by The New York Times.

Google, the Authors Guild, and publishing industry leaders have filed a revised and sweetened settlement with the court. To those who are still opposed to it despite every reasonable effort to placate them, a request:

Spare us the hypocrisy.

You can dress up your objections to the Google settlement in legal niceties and pious pleas for fairness, but the truth is you’re just jealous that Google took initiatives that you lacked the vision to take – until it looked like there was money to be made. So now you want to gut the settlement so you can get a piece of the action you didn’t raise a finger or spend a dime to earn.

Where were you when a treasure house of literary works was abandoned? And isn’t it odd that now that someone has come along with a viable plan to recover that treasure and wants to make a reasonable profit, you have suddenly become passionate bibliophiles and champions of fairness?

Google, the publishing industry, and the Authors Guild have walked an extra mile to satisfy your so-called “concerns”. A revised and sweetened settlement has been presented to the court. Do the right thing: honor the men and women of good will who have forged it, the corporate leaders who deserve to profit from it and the generations of humanity that stand to benefit from it.

Read the sweetened terms of the settlement here. For additional observations read Google Settlement Under Attack for Making Treasure Out of Trash.

Richard Curtis

Silicon Valley is perpetually hyping the smartphone du jour that is supposed to sweep the iPhone into the dustbin. After a while one’s eyes glaze. But Good Morning Silicon Valley’s John Murrell thinks the Motorola Droid may be the real deal. “This,” he says, “may be one contender that’s not all talk.”

What makes Droid any better than the rest of the pack? Murrell says the television commercial cleverly distinguishes Motorola’s device from Apple’s. If you haven’t caught it, it goes like this:

“iDon’t have a real keyboard. iDon’t run simultaneous apps. iDon’t take night shots. iDon’t allow open development. iDon’t customize. iDon’t run widgets. iDon’t have interchangeable batteries.” — and finishes with a hard right: “Everything iDon’t, Droid does.”

Droid’s underlying operating system? Google Android.

For details and informed rumors, read Motorola gives Apple a poke in the i, and for some other reviews and comments, read another Good Morning Silicon Valley blogger, Susan Steade, here.

RC

Author’s Guild today filed an amended Google settlement with the court today and issued this interim statement:

Normally, we wouldn’t recommend a piece that in any way compares out-of-print books to sewage, but this piece in Slate is by Tim Wu, a Columbia Law professor and former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. Mr. Wu specializes in copyright law and telecommunications policy and is best known online as the popularizer of the net neutrality movement. He’s also chairman of the board of Free Press, a nonprofit dedicated, among other things, to combating media monopolies. For those wary of Google, his concluding paragraph is worth reading:

“But if you want to put Google in its place, the book project is the wrong way to do so. It is Google’s monopoly on Internet search that is valuable and potentially dangerous, not a quixotic project to provide access to unpopular books. So hold on to that sense of wariness, but understand that in this case, it’s misplaced. To punish Google by killing Book Search would be like punishing Andrew Carnegie by blowing up Carnegie Hall.”

Here’s Mr. Wu’s article: http://www.slate.com/id/2229391/pagenum/all

The editorial departments of some major publications found much to like in the settlement as well. Have a look–

The Economist: http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14363287
New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/29/opinion/29wed3.html
Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/07/AR2009080703382.html

We’re confident they’ll all find even more reasons to cheer the amended settlement. We’re holding to our core principles: lots of access to out-of-print books for readers, students and scholars; compensation and control for authors and publishers.

We’ll be back later with details on the amended settlement.

It’s our favorite time of the month, IDPF’s report on e-book sales, and the third quarter’s numbers leave the previous year’s in the dust: $46.5 million versus $13.9M. Q3-09 also tops the previous quarter by $8.9 million.

September of this year nearly tripled the same month a year ago, $15.9 million vs. $5.9M

The true sales numbers may be even higher than the above chart indicates. Michael Smith, Executive Director of IDPF (International Digital Publishing Forum) reminds us that:

* This data represents United States revenues only
* This data represents only trade eBook sales via wholesale channels. Retail numbers may be as much as double the above figures due to industry wholesale discounts.
* This data represents only data submitted from approx. 12 to 15 trade publishers
* This data does not include library, educational or professional electronic sales
* The numbers reflect the wholesale revenues of publishers
* The definition used for reporting electronic book sales is “All books delivered electronically over the Internet OR to hand-held reading devices”

RC

Joanna Trollope, the distinguished novelist, has posted a blog on the guardian.co.uk home page complaining about the characterization of serious women’s literature as “chick lit”. She lays this derisive nomenclature at the feet of the male literary establishment.

“When I was an editor,” she writes, “my books written in the genre known for some reason as ‘commercial women’s fiction’. We – my colleagues and fellow publishers – loved these books and knew the truth, which is that books bought by women prop up the book trade, and that we should be proud both of the product itself and the diversion it gives hardworking people who want a good read. Now I’ve left, I’m looking at it from the other side – and what I see alarms me.“

“Books – both fiction and non-fiction – reflecting women’s lives, whether young or old, are labelled. Hence ‘chick-lit’: often a derogatory term used to mean books by young women drinking chardonnay and being silly about boys, without the thought that novels by women about women might accurately reflect their lives and thus have merit or, at the very least, relevance.”

Ms, Trollope, you have every reason to be offended. But I wonder if you would deflect your ill will if you knew that commercial men’s literature suffers the same treatment by the female staffs of many publishing houses. Science fiction, action adventure, thrillers, and biography and history appealing to male tastes are characterized as “boy books.”

This term arose in the 1980s as a large, capable and influential cadre of female editors took charge of the mass market paperback industry. Their attitudes were feminist and, after decades of second class citizenship in editorial management they wielded their influence on every category of popular fiction. “Chick lit” was one of the terms coined at the time; “boy books” another. But they were not really terms of opprobrium. The editors I know and work with daily are quite good humored and comfortable with these terms.

Another reason for what appears to be dismissive categorization of popular literature is the BISAC (Book Industry Standards and Communications) system of codifying books by subject matter. The titles you see on the spines of paperbacks are governed by types of literature and are so designated to help bookstores place their titles in the most effective way possible. General women’s fiction and romance tend to get stocked in a female oriented part of the store, whereas stuff like western fiction, military science fiction, and male action adventure go into the male part of the store.

So, I have to differ with you: it’s not the male conspiracy that you say it is. It’s just an age-old fact of life: Vive la difference.

Read Don’t patronise popular fiction by women posted by Harriet Evans

Richard Curtis