Barnes & Noble forgets it has an online business

by Libby Sternberg

First came the digital revolution with Amazon leading the charge. No longer did readers have to browse bricks and mortar bookstores looking for a specific read. Amazon brought it to their fingertips.

Then Amazon pushed the revolution farther still when they realized their customer base included writers and not just readers. The bookselling behemoth reached out to writers, making it easy for authors to self-publish and reach readers on their own without a publisher middleman, and offering them royalty deals no publisher would ever dream of handing over to a lowly scribe.

But what about print? Authors love the feel and smell of a print book. Amazon had that covered, too. Through their CreateSpace services, authors can easily upload their manuscripts, even design a cover (or contract with Amazon's services for one) and, voila, within an amazingly short period of time--nothing at all close to the year-long wait most authors face from signing a publishing contract through til actual publication--a print book is in the writer's hand.

These innovations have also made it much easier for small publishers, such as Istoria, to get up and running, securing a boutique position in the publishing marketplace.

Amazon's innovations have been applauded by everyone in the industry.

Uh, no, scratch that. Actually, several of the Big Six (make that Big Five now) publishers allegedly colluded with Apple to keep ebook prices higher than Amazon wanted. In the ensuing legal battle, Amazon was treated like the Big Bad Evil Corporation Out to Destroy All that Is Good and Holy about Books (BBECODAIGHB, for short).

Speaking of BBECODAIGHB's, though, one of them used to be Borders.. Remember Borders--the Big Box bookstore everyone loathed for quite some time, seeing in it portents of the End of Bookselling as we know it? Funny how that attitude changed when Borders went belly up. Then, everyone was mourning the loss of this bookselling giant.

Now the only bookselling giant on the block is Barnes & Noble. B&N got into the digital field with the Nook (see this post about a marketing opportunity the Nook missed), but they've not embraced the other parts of the digital revolution as nimbly as Amazon.

And the latest news from the B&N front is this: they're limiting Simon & Schuster titles in their store because the publisher won't dance to their tune on ebook discounting and "costs associated with in-store promotions," according to a Wall Street Journal article today.  In-store promotions, by the way, include publishers paying for where books are displayed. Don't assume when you go in a bookstore that the managers and staff choose which books go on the tables that catch your eye. Publishers pay for that in-store real estate.

Anyway, according to the article, B&N "worries that consumers use its stores as 'showrooms' to find titles that they then order online at a discounted price."

Sure would be helpful if B&N also had an online business, too, wouldn't it? Then customers who can't find books in their stores could order a book through the B&N online service. They could have a short and snappy URL, too. Oh, something like, maybe, www.BN.com? Just sayin'....



The cheese stands alone

Sarcasm aside, if Barnes & Noble is worried about losing customers to online retailers who can offer discounts, why doesn't B&N beat those etailers to the punch? When you walk in the door to a Barnes & Noble store, you should be walking in the door to their entire inventory, whether it's in the physical store or online.

Okay, for free, B&N, here are some ideas:

In every store, vigorously promote this slogan: Can't find it on our store shelves? Buy it on our eshelves! 

And then place computer screens around the store -- how about at the end of every other bookshelf?  And next to those screens (which are only linked to the BN.com website, of course) place coupons with discount codes for various genres. Mix it up, changing the discounts from week to week. It will draw folks in to see what kind of deal they can get the next time they come in. Even if some folks think they can get a better deal elsewhere, there is nothing like taking care of a purchase when you're thinking of it.

Barnes & Noble now stands virtually alone as the one bricks-and-mortar Big Box bookstore in the U.S. That's a tremendous advantage. They should stop sniping at publishers and competitors and start thinking about how they can use their advantage to attract customers to their physical and online stores.
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Libby Sternberg is a novelist and editor-in-chief of Istoria Books.
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Nook misses its niche

by Libby Sternberg

The news in the publishing world is that Barnes & Noble's tablet/e-reader, the Nook, didn't fare so well sales-wise this past year.

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal last Friday, "Nook revenue plunged 26 % to $316 million for the fiscal third quarter ended Jan. 26 and the segment posted a larger loss." 

While Nook languishes, profits have improved at its retail stores business. In other words, folks might not be buying Nooks, but they are buying books.

A day before the negative Nook news appeared, another story circulated: B&N's former owner and now chairman and largest shareholder, Leonard Riggio, wants to buy the company's retail assets. This means the Nook side of the business would likely be separated from the general retail side.

This represents something of an about-face for Mr. Riggio, who introduced the new B&N CEO William Lynch three years ago by saying the chain needed to be "more than a retail bookseller." Mr. Lynch had come from a tech background, and, according to news reports, spent "almost all of his time" on the digital side of B&N's business.

Now it appears that time was ill-spent. Nook never managed to capture the e-reading public's fancy in the same way the Kindle has, or even the way the iPad and its newest iteration, the iPad mini, has.

Why not? The Nook is a solid e-reading device. Although I'm in the Kindle camp, a close relative has a Nook tablet, a gift she received about a year ago. She checks her email on it and surfs the web when traveling. And, oh, yeah, she can read books on it, too.

She's not a techie--neither am I--so I have no first-person analysis of the relative advantages and disadvantages of Nook vs. Kindle vs. iPad (another close relative owns one of the latter--and asked for a Kindle as a gift within a few months after discovering that reading ebooks on an iPad in bright sunlight is a bear).

Therein, however, lies an advantage for the Nook that has never been exploited, certainly not in any promotions I've seen. If anything, after seeing a Nook ad, it's hard to remember if it was for Nook or Kindle.

The advantage for my relative with the Nook was this--she's no techie, as noted above, so when she went to set up the device, she immediately hit the brick wall of tech blah-blah-blah, the usernames, the passwords, the configure-this and download-that. She has little patience for all that. So, she took herself and her Nook to the nearest Barnes & Noble store where a real-live person cheerfully helped her set it up. A real live person--not a name at the end of an email or a voice on the other end of a phone! She loved this aspect of owning a Nook. Amazon's customer service might be good, but nothing beats talking to someone face-to-face.

So, my question is: how did Nook miss this promotional niche? They certainly used up a bunch of precious store real estate on Nook displays. Why didn't they market the fact that while Amazon's Kindle does everything a Nook does, Nook has real people to talk to when you have questions, problems or even suggestions. People who happen to be in their...stores. Smiling at you. Waiting to talk. And, you might buy some print books while you're there.

That seems to me a tremendous marketing advantage Barnes & Noble never even mentioned, let alone exploited.

Mr. Lynch might have missed the proverbial forest for the trees. He didn't see the vast opportunity Nook had to attract non-techies (the majority of folks who probably use these devices) to his product.

But who am I to suggest what captains of industry should do? Just a lowly editor who likes to occasionally mouth off on what's wrong with this business or that one.

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Libby Sternberg is editor-in-chief of Istoria Books. She is also an author.

Print Rights as Subsidiary Rights?

by Libby Sternberg

You own a business. It does reasonably well. Then the economy tanks. And what's worse, a new product appears that grabs market share from your primary source of income. In a matter of months you lose one-third of your sales. Time to cut back.

Welcome to the world of mass market paperback publishing.

According to the Association of American Publishers, net sales for mass market paperbacks slid by 30.1 percent in the first five months of this year compared to the same period last year. Here are the figures:

Mass Market Paperback
2010 YTD net sales: $264.8M
2011 YTD net sales: $185.1M

The full AAP story is here. (The headline is a wee bit confusing -- mass market paperback sales are not the same as adult paperback.)

Meanwhile, ebook sales continue to climb, with an increase of 160.1 percent over the same time period last year.

And also meanwhile, authors who had previously been published in print continue to dabble in self-publishing their material in e-book formats while new authors jump into the e-book market, forgoing the traditional publishing route entirely.

And...to add more to ponder...publishers continue to struggle with pricing in the e-book market, some of them moaning publicly about how they can't afford the lower price points e-book readers have come to expect -- usually below $5.00 with many books being offered at least initially for 99 cents.

Let me address this latter point first. The quotes that I've seen from publishers whining about low e-book pricing usually boil down to affordability -- for them, that is. They simply can't afford to offer e-books at too low a price because they'd lose money.

Here's a round-up of the rationale I've read from publishers on e-book pricing: It takes them X-number of steps to get a print book ready for digital release. Each of those steps costs them something. Therefore, they resent low pricing. Their worlds would be a lot happier if authors and e-publishers would get with their program and keep e-book prices higher.

But here's the problem -- e-book pricing is not about their needs. It's about the consumer's needs. Publishers should take a hard look at what e-books are competing with. They're not just competing with other forms of books. They're competing for a consumer's disposable "pleasure" income -- money he or she has decided to spend on something fun but not necessary -- and the choices consumers face in that market range enormously. Instead of spending, say, $11 on an e-book whose quality they're unsure of, they could a) buy a bottle of wine; b) rent a movie; c) buy some music; d) get an order of those really good egg rolls they like; e) buy some gourmet cupcakes., etc. (My choices are heavy on food. Hmm...must be hungry.)

The point is that the skeptical reading consumer (skeptical because, perhaps, of previous bad choices in the book market) sees that $11 or even $7 price tag and doesn't think "what other book can I get for this amount?" He or she is thinking "What other thing can I get for this amount that will give me as much, if not more, pleasure?"

That same consumer then sees an array of books priced below $5, many at 99 cents, and the choice of a book suddenly moves up the list of ways to spend their disposable income.

But this price battle leads to a larger point -- if more and more authors are taking control of their own publishing destiny by contracting with e-publishers (such as our own, Istoria Books) or handling e-publishing themselves, why don't traditional publishers consider a new paradigm, one that could save them all that money they spend on the "X number of steps" involved in digital release and actually make them some money on e-books priced for market expectations.

Here's the rub -- this new paradigm would require them to release control of the books for the e-market to the author.

Think about it -- authors often have the time and the motivation to get their books on the e-market. They're willing to go through the "X number of steps" themselves or to contract with someone who will. They don't have huge overheads, as print publishers do.

Why don't print publishers license e-rights back to authors? Let the authors take control of the book's e-marketing, including pricing, and instead of taking royalties from the publisher, the author pays a small percentage back to the publisher on net sales.

An aside: for many down-list authors, "royalties" is a foreign concept, and they're unlikely to see any from their print publisher anyway.

Licensing eliminates all those pesky steps the publishers moan about in taking books to the e-market. It allows them to focus on print, their primary market, and just collect the checks for the e-book editions without having to hassle with the conversion and marketing of them. Yes, they'd probably cringe seeing their authors offer e-books for 99 cents. But that's part of building readership and consumer trust. Low pricing lures consumers to a product. The more consumers who buy and like a book, the higher the possibility of getting that elusive "buzz" going that publishers yearn for.

And that brings me back to the other aspects of author-publisher relationships that are changing -- the authors who bypass print entirely, launching books themselves in the e-market. Then, if they realize some success, print publishers come along and offer a print contract. This has already happened with YA author Amanda Hocking, who was selling thousands upon thousands of copies of her e-books before she landed a print contract with St. Martin's Press. And recently, there was the case of Jon Krakauer, whose expose, Three Cups of Deceit (of Greg Mortenson's bestseller Three Cups of Tea), started life as an e-book and recently sold to Knopf for print.

In these cases, it's as if print rights become the subsidiary rights, isn't it? The author dives into the e-book pool because of its enticing freedoms -- freedom to write what he/she wants without a print publisher's constraints or just the freedom to publish without going hat-in-hand to the Big Six in New York. But that doesn't mean authors forgo a future in print.

Now, finally, back to the statistics that started this blog and the implications of all my points.

For some publishers, losing a third of their market share could be devastating. Genre publishers, for example, release the majority of their books in mass market paperback. Seeing "gold in them thar hills" of e-publishing, publishers are releasing previously print-published books into the e-market. But the problem is they still need to go through all those conversion steps to reach that market, so they're loath to price their e-books at what e-book consumers want.

More and more authors, meanwhile, don't mind taking the time to convert their own books for the e-market or releasing new ones straight to that market. Since they don't have the massive overhead of print publishers, they can offer their books at an appropriate e-book price point. Not only that, in many ways authors have become better equipped to actually sell their books to the reading consumer, a territory traditional publishers ceded long ago when they decided to focus the majority of their marketing resources on bookstores, encouraging the author to reach out directly to readers. (I've often joked with fellow authors that publishers know how to select, edit and print books, but they don't know how to sell them.)

In this new world, publishers should consider e-rights licensing agreements with authors, relinquishing control of the e-books to the people who actually have the motivation to sell the books.

In this new world, Big Box Bookstores will continue to fade in dominance as authors and publishers slowly learn how to find actual book readers instead of booksellers in the market.

In this new world, selling print rights could become akin to selling subsidiary or secondary rights after an initial e-book success.

Them's my thoughts. Now, scurry on over to the Istoria Books website and take advantage of the Gift of Summer Reading Sale -- most of the inventory is marked at 99 cents, including the first book in award-winning romance author Jerri Corgiat's Love Finds a Home series, previously published by Penguin.

Abso-Damn-Lutely, Romance Deserves Respect -- Part I of an Interview with Author Jerri Corgiat

Jerri Corgiat is the award-winning author of five romance novels in the Love Finds a Home series. Originally published by Penguin's Signet line in paperback, they are now being released with great pride by Istoria Books. (See end of post for descriptions, or visit www.IstoriaBooks.com)

Jerri Corgiat

Part One of the interview, about writing, publishing and life in general, begins below. 

Did you always want to write romance or women’s fiction?

No! In fact, I was actively avoiding romance because I knew it wouldn’t earn me my rightful place on Oprah. Not that I’m shallow. 

I’m chagrined to admit I was a snob. I had a very skewed idea of what romance writing was. I hadn’t read any romance novels after I’d gone through the so-called bodice rippers of the early 70s, never dreaming what a wide spectrum “romance” had grown to cover.

Anyway, the universe had something different in mind for me, as the universe is often wont to do, also to my chagrin. I got this idea for a love story, and despite my attempts to dismiss it, it wouldn’t leave me alone. I finally broke down and started writing it after reading an interview with bestselling romance author Kathleen Eagle in a monthly Borders’ flyer. The title of the article? I Never Intended to be a Romance Writer. She’d struggled with similar issues as she wanted to be known as A Serious Writer. I don’t think anyone would doubt her books have merit, and she’s certainly experienced some serious success with them. What was good enough for Ms. Eagle was more than good enough for me…

Just don’t ask me how long it then took me to tell anyone I was writing a -- gasp -- romance.

Your books were classified as romance, but, to me, they have a whiff (or more than that!) of women’s fiction to them. What do you consider them? What do you think is the difference between the two genres?

Whenever I see this topic raised, I sure wish they’d all just be classified as “good books!” But, sigh, books are no longer thought of in quite those simplistic terms—at least not by publishers and booksellers.

I’d say romance has its primary focus on a romantic, monogamous relationship; women’s fiction has its primary focus on some passage or event in a woman’s life and may or may not include a romance, too. That sounds simple, but even with those definitions, I often can’t, well, categorically say a book is a romance with women’s fiction elements or women’s fiction with romantic elements. It’s a spectrum – I can only recognize those that fall on one end or the other. The rest is a matter of opinion!

Yes, the Home books land somewhere in the middle. In fact, although there are plenty of highly successful authors who went before me with similar works, writing a crossbreed presented a major hurdle in finding an agent for Sing Me Home, although Sing Me Home is definitely more a traditional romance than the other four.

It’s an unfortunate fact that if print publishers can’t put a label on the spine of a book to identify where it should be shelved in a big box store—and so find the appropriate audience—they aren’t very interested in buying it, if they’re interested at all.  Unfortunate, because I’m absolutely positive that a large number of excellent books have been rejected only because it wasn’t easy to pinpoint a target audience.

Do you think romance deserves more respect from the writing community?

Abso-damn-lutely. And not just by the writing community but by critics as well as the general reading public. Far too often, romance is dismissed as soft porn or as the pejorative bodice ripper or, even sans sex scenes (like they don’t appear in other genres?), as so much fluff.  Yet romance spans the spectrum of all other genres: sci fi, mystery, suspense, historical, romantic comedy, fantasy, inspirational, family saga, series... name any other type of book, and there will be a subset of romance.   

Romances can be dramatic or comic or both, told in first or third person, be rapid-fire page turners or linger on delightful prose.  People display complete and total ignorance of the genre when they throw them all into the same box.

When anyone exhibits contempt for romance, I find it amusing to ask them what movies they’d name as favorites. Rare is even the man who does not include a romance among them… Gone With the Wind. Notting Hill. Jerry Maguire. Titanic. Casablanca. When Harry Met Sally. The Wedding Singer. Something’s Gotta Give. Like Water for Chocolate. Water for Elephants…  It’s more difficult to identify movies that have no romance than those which do.

When did you start writing?

I can’t remember not writing; I did stories and poems and letters—lots and lots of long, long, loooong letters where I exaggerated excerpts from my life. It probably scared people to see my return address appear on the envelope. (Hmm. I still do this. Peruse the archives at www.jerricorgiat.blogspot.com.)  I started my first novel—the one I titled My Learning Curve, which was ultimately consigned to the trash can to spare humanity—in the fall of 1998. I finished the first incarnation (there would be several others) of Sing Me Home, the first book that sold, sometime in 2000.  There was definitely a learning curve! 

Here's an easy question--who are your favorite authors?

Holy moly! Easy question? No way! I read all over the map, and I have an impatient, internal editor. Despite the fact that she’s only one, subjective opinion and not any All-Knowing Authority, she’s grumpy and picky about what she likes. If she’s still nattering away, pointing out flaws or, worse, dozing off  by the time I hit page 50 of any book, then I move on. Any author who gets past her is thus a favorite: someone I’d recommend. As for prioritizing those "favorites," I just couldn’t do it.

There are so many excellent authors and such a cornucopia of books and wide variety of readers... Pretty cool situation, if you think about it.      

Is there any one book you’ve read that influenced you (in life, writing) the most? 

A book called Building Your Field of Dreams by Mary Manin Morrissey. Close second: The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. I spring from a New Thought mentality.

What was the hardest part of writing the Love Finds a Home books?

It involved writing books. 

Seriously, my husband and I were talking the other day about why I frequently procrastinate with writing. Yes, I enjoy it, much as anyone enjoys any job they love, but if it was a friggin’ breeze, I’d have no trouble getting and keeping my rear in the chair. Writing a book is not easy!

(Don’t believe me? Try it!)

Author Jennifer Lawler recently said, “Every time I finish writing a book, I wonder how I did it and why I’d want to do it again. And then amnesia sets in.”  That is so true.

Your books were published before the e-book revolution started, so publishing has changed since your first sale. What advice would you have for writers trying to break into the business today?

Run for the hills!

Okay, seriously. Big discussion for little space, but I’ll give it a try:

If you haven’t finished a manuscript, don’t worry about it now. You can’t sell what you don’t have. Besides, with the rapid changes taking place in the industry, whatever you decide now is not likely to apply later.

If you already have a manuscript ready for market, you have a difficult decision to make.

Print publication still garners advances, often good (and sometimes even stellar) advances. So that’s guaranteed money with distribution into all or most major outlets (some publishers are much better than others).

On the downside, print publishing contracts are difficult to get, and it can take months—even years—to land one. That doesn’t mean give up, if that’s your goal. I had a stack of agent rejections three inches high before I made my first sale. Maybe that last query didn’t do it—but it might be the next one.

Also a consideration: royalties on ebooks in print contracts (yes, print publishers will want both rights) tend to be onerous: small royalties and no end in sight for rights reversion (which is an issue I won’t go into here, but it’s an important one).

With epublishing, by contrast, while you’ll eschew any advance, you’ll start collecting a percentage of sales—in a timely manner. (Believe me, there’s little in the traditional publishing world that’s timely.) And those sales can be the gift that keeps on giving: No books need go “out of print.” On the internet, books can live forever.

Independent epublishing is an easy nut to crack. Format, upload, and voila! You’re a published author. But therein also lies its thorniest problem. Most readers lack the patience to sort through the multitudes of available ebooks. Instead, they are increasingly relying on sites like dailycheapreads.com and goodreads.com to sort out the wheat from the chaff.

I find this exciting—readers are becoming the gatekeepers instead of traditional publishers.

But getting the word of mouth to rise to the top in a crowded field is also tough. It’s always been hard; now it's even more so. (And if any author had this mastered, we’d all have stopped writing long ago and made our fortunes presenting seminars—to other writers.)

So that’s where the new breed of independent epublishers comes into play, with their editorial staff who are selective about which authors—new or established—they’ll represent. 

I’m treading into these waters via Istoria, my ebook publisher. I know the principals of this company, know their dedication and professionalism and zeal where promotion is concerned. (A zeal that’s as lacking as timeliness in the traditional publishing world.)  I’m betting my books that someday in the not far distant future, readers will recognize the Istoria brand as one they can depend on for a good book.

For Part II of this interview, click here.

__________________

The Love Finds a Home series by Jerri Corgiat follows the extended O'Malley clan in Cordelia, Missouri as they confront both life and love challenges. Books in the series include:

• Sing Me Home-- Lil O'Malley falls for the children of rehabilitated country star Jonathan Van Castle, leading to a marriage of convenience while he fights a custody battle ... and eventually fights for her heart.
• Follow Me Home -- When Alcea O'Malley Addams's husband betrays her, luxury and self-worth go out the window...until an old flame comes into town, leading her to reevaluate her past, her value as a woman and her future.
• Home at Last -- Marigold (Mari) O'Malley returns home to lick her wounds after a big-city career sinks under the weight of a relationship with her boss. Her broken heart begins to mend when she reconnects with a bad boy from her past who teaches her how to trust and take chances at the same time.
• Home by Starlight -- Widow Patsy O'Malley remains fiercely independent until a broken ankle  and an itinerant musician (from Jonathan Van Castle's band) both knock her off her feet.
• Take Me Home -- Florida Jones thinks she has the perfect fiance and the perfect life planned until a car accident results in injuries that threaten her sight. An unlikely helpmate guides her to recovery, where she ultimately "sees" the love that is most important in her life.

An Open Letter to Book Review Editors

Dear Book Review Editor:

As an author myself, and now as a publisher, I'm a big fan of book blogs that review books and allow authors to interact with readers.

However, authors and publishers alike know that print reviews are crucial, as well. If you work for one of the big print reviewers--at Booklist, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, national magazines or city newspapers --you already know you have a great deal of influence on what books will sell well.

In fact, a small print publisher I know, who--like all small presses--struggles to get attention for his quality offerings, told me he can count on a several-thousand-copies sales jump if one of his books manages to snag a review in one of your publications. Several thousand is often a small press's full print run for an offering.

Through tradition and quality reviewing, your publications have built reputations that readers rely on.

Time marches on, though, and now you have to confront the reality of e-books. While many book blogs have embraced digital books and review them on an equal footing with print books, many of you print reviewers are still wrestling with your e-book review policy. A quick email survey of print pubication reviewers revealed to me that most of you aren't reviewing e-books yet and many of you haven't thought about how you'll handle them if you do decide to review them.

The questions you probably face are:

• Should we only review e-book editions of print books we previously failed to review?
• Should we only review e-books by print-published authors, especially well-known authors?
• Should we only review e-books offered by the e-book arms of the big print publishing companies?
• Should we review e-books by independent, unknown authors and from e-publishers not affiliated with big print publishing houses?
  

I would suggest that if you answer yes to the first three questions, thus restricting your e-book reviews to well-knowns, your reviews will have limited value. Readers of e-books don't need guidance on authors they already know or have heard of, so much as they need counsel on and exposure to digital authors they don't know or haven't heard of.

Because e-publishing allows authors to go directly to reading consumers -- bypassing print publishing and bookstore "gatekeepers" -- readers confront a vast array of offerings, many of them only available digitally. Some of these books are definitely worthy of attention.

And yes, some of them are not good at all--poorly written, marginally edited, and maybe even incorrectly formatted for digital platforms.

Right now, readers of e-books rely on book blogs, recommendations from friends, email groups devoted to e-book news, and the sampling feature of e-book publishing (where readers can download free samples of books before purchasing) in order to make purchase decisions.

Your reviewers could be providing a tremendous service to these readers by joining the growing conversation.

But here's a change you'll face as you approach this new field. Currently, your reviewers can afford to be reactive. They can sit and wait for publishers to send them ARCs and press releases months before a publishing date. They choose--or you direct them to choose-- from these offerings, delivered to their very cubicle, and decide what to review, with a fairly long lead time to read the book and write the review.

However, many, many e-book authors won't know how to reach you or won't be able to grab your attention (even small publishers such as ours might find this a challenge, as well!).

And, because e-publishing is faster than print publishing, with only a few months between signing of a contract and "publication," long lead times between receipt of an e-ARC and the release of the actual e-book disappear.

Therefore, your e-book reviewers will have to be more proactive if they're going to identify worthy offerings for their readers.

And they're either going to have to be faster or rethink the "rules" about posting reviews immediately before publication of a book.

In the e-book world, after all, books won't vanish from shelves before you have a chance to review them. In other words, if an e-book comes out in March, and you don't write your review until April or May or even later, the review still matters.

It may seem counterintuitive to suggest you expand your book review coverage to include e-books when many of you are facing shrinking column inches for book reviews at all. But the e-book market is rapidly expanding. You've read the stories yourself, I'm sure. A larger and larger percentage of publishers' revenues are coming from e-book sales.

You ignore that growing market at your peril. Start the conversation now about how you'll handle e-book reviews, keeping in mind that this is a whole new world. The e-book market is different--it's faster, it's more varied, it contains fewer guideposts, and it requires nimble and proactive review policies.

Thanks for listening.

Sincerely,
Libby Sternberg
Editor-in-Chief
Istoria Books
eBooks You Want to Read at Prices You Want to Pay
www.IstoriaBooks.com

MiniReads

by Hannah Sternberg

I've recently been in the habit of reading poetry on the Metro. My commute is about twenty minutes of training bracketed by ten-minute walks. The first walk jogs my brain awake; the second walk I usually spend running into things while furiously scanning my BlackBerry to discover what I'm already missing at work; and the Metro ride in between is a brief moment of every day when I cannot walk, and am cut off from all cell signals--I have no choice but to read. Not that I would choose anything else for that moment.

At work, I'm immured in policy papers and current affairs books. At home in the evening, I play a desperate game of catch-up among piles of history books ("I always wanted to know more about that..."). But the Metro ride, I've turned into a moment of reflection, a brief pause on information-gathering just as it's a brief pause on walking and telecommunication. It started with the Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters; I determined to read it through, as I'd promised I'd lend it to a friend when I was done. Now Walt Whitman soothes my longing for lilacs. Maybe this spring will bring the antidote to my frequent complaint, "I wish I'd read more Keats..."

It also made me realize that ePublishing is a unique opportunity to bring out new works in shorter formats, whether they're poems, short stories or novellas. The little guys often get short shrift in the publishing world. Poetry has been consigned to the university presses and back corners of bookstores, and short stories are often anthologized generically, with successful single-author collections only issuing from previously well-known writers of full-length novels. Novellas are rare; I secretly suspect publishers think people will feel ripped off if they pay trade paperback prices for a tiny book.

Short works are among my major inspirations as a writer. The poetry of E E Cummings floated me through the first draft of my first novel. More recently, the short stories of John Cheever and the novellas of J. D. Salinger electrify my imagination and my intellect. There's nothing small about the content of these small works. But would they have been published today, outside of the most academically pretentious presses, those that see the value of a work in its uniqueness of form, rather than its beauty, power or insight? Would today's publishers have turned them away on the basis of length alone? There's no way of knowing, but when's the last time you saw a new novella on the table at the front of the bookstore?

At Istoria, I hope to seek out new examples of the beauty, storytelling and insight possible in short forms, especially the novella, the prose poem and the story collection. If you're querying a work of this kind, be sure to follow our submission guidelines, but feel free to put "Attn Hannah" in the subject line if you think it's a work I'd be particularly interested in. I look forward to exploring your short fiction offerings!

Literary vs. Genre

In 2003, the National Book Foundation presented Stephen King its Medal for "Distinguished Contribution to American Letters." This scandalized some in the publishing world. King, after all, is--egads!--a genre writer.

But in his acceptance speech, King made a blunt and passionate plea to those in the literary world who turn their noses up at genre fiction and at popular culture in particular:

"Tokenism is not allowed. You can't sit back, give a self satisfied sigh and say, 'Ah, that takes care of the troublesome pop lit question. In another twenty years or perhaps thirty, we'll give this award to another writer who sells enough books to make the best seller lists.' It's not good enough. Nor do I have any patience with or use for those who make a point of pride in saying they've never read anything by John Grisham, Tom Clancy, Mary Higgins Clark or any other popular writer.

"What do you think? You get social or academic brownie points for deliberately staying out of touch with your own culture? Never in life, as Capt. Lucky Jack Aubrey would say. And if your only point of reference for Jack Aubrey is the Australian actor, Russell Crowe, shame on you..."

I don't think King is arguing that all writing is equal or that all writers are equally good. His point, with which I agree, is that transcendent writing and excellent storytelling can be found in many different kinds of books.

If you limit yourself to reading only so-called literary fiction, you're no better than someone who refuses to read anything but pulp mysteries or romance or...whatever. You can't claim to be better than those readers, in other words.

I've been thinking about King's speech lately (you can read it in its entirety here) for several reasons as we launch Istoria Books.

Soon, I'll be sharing news of a terrific upmarket/literary novel Istoria will release in a few short months. This book is written by a genre writer, a man who's had several mysteries published--as novels and short stories in mystery magazines. But this book represents a departure for him, a beautiful story set in Saigon in 1965 that explores lost love and callow youth.

The author doesn't have an MFA, never went to the big writing workshops, didn't participate in any of the publishing events that might have helped others in the book world to see him as a man of letters, and not just a man of genre fiction. But he's written a bittersweet, moving book that deserves an audience. Epublishing will, we hope, help him find it, and will help him find those bridges between literary fiction and popular fiction that King talked about so fervently in his speech eight years ago.
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Friends of Fiction

by Hannah Sternberg

"I never read fiction anymore. The last time I read a novel, I was in school."

I hear that from a lot of my friends. I'm sure you do too. We're all busy, and with the internet enabling many of us to work from home, work increasingly encroaches on precious reading time. On top of that, many of us spend our free time reading to improve our professional position, keep up with current events, or pursue an interest in that topic we wish we'd taken a class on when we'd had the chance. I work in media and public policy, and I confess that I've devoted large amounts of my supposedly-free time to catching up on the latest news analysis on the day's hot story, or hunkering down with weighty history or philosophy books to fill in the context of situations I'm less familiar with.

Don't get me wrong. I love to learn--my heart goes pitter patter when my eyes scan Amazon's history recommendations. I have a bad habit of collecting foreign language dictionaries (so far, my most unusual is a lexicon of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics). And with the complete works of Aristotle available, free of charge and instantaneously on my Kindle--don't get me started.

But I've noticed another current in some of my friends' remarks. "I don't have time for fiction. There's too much to learn." "I just don't find fiction as interesting as stuff that actually happened." "My class discussions just ruined fiction-reading for me."

I'd counter them by saying, You just aren't reading the right fiction.

I find a lot of people get fed up with the tired offerings of so many of the major publishers that are just trying to piggyback on someone else's trendy concept. Others find too much pretension and too little insight in the current "upmarket" or literary fiction offerings. Still others were so weary of their professors' over-analysis that they forgot how simply moving a good story can be.

To these, I'd say: reading nothing but nonfiction is like reading only the news reports without touching the analysis or opinion. You'll learn a lot, but you'll be missing a critical element: the debate, the contextualization, the connections. Fiction is like an editorial on the human condition. And, like a good editorial, good fiction combines top-of-the-line reporting (observation of the world) with thought-provoking insight. Just as much can be learned from reading good fiction as can be learned from reading history, philosophy, and a truckload of self-help books combined.

Giving my Kindle a click-through now, I find, in various states of partial completion: Thomas Paine; George Eliot; Alexis de Tocqueville; Jane Austen; the Old Testament; Aristotle; a short story collection by David Foster Wallace; J. R. R. Tolkein; my mom, Libby Sternberg's mysery novel, Death is the Cool Night; and a practical guide to daily life with Asperger's Syndrome (research for a novel).

I can say earnestly that I've learned from all of these books, not just the nonfiction ones. Sure, plenty of fiction is mindless escapism. But a good yarn can--and should--be both entertaining and (brace yourself for an over-used word) enlightening. Excitement and insight don't have to be mutually exclusive.

I suppose this is part of the philosophy that inspired me and my parents to start up Istoria--to show readers once again that there's more to fiction than tired genre-mongering or pretentious wheezing. If you long for our kind of fiction too, keep your eyes on Istoria Books. And if you're just as passionate as we are about writing that kind of fiction, don't leave without taking a look at our submission guidelines.

Waiting for Paul Revere

by Libby Sternberg

Okay, I'm no longer embarrassed to admit it. When I was a kid, I didn't fall in love with the Beatles. I wasn't a Rolling Stones fan. I didn't even care for Elvis that much. I liked really silly bands. Like, uh, The Monkees. And, well, Paul Revere and the Raiders.

Before you dissolve into disdainful laughter, let me tell readers who don't know me that I was trained as a classical singer, and in that area I'm not at all attracted to cheap imitations. Subtle Faure and Debussy songs call out to me in that field, and song cycles by Mahler and Schubert speak to my heart.

No, it's just popular music that brings out my inner lowbrow.

So, when I was a mere lass, I developed crushes not on John, Paul, George or Ringo, but on those guys in silly satin breeches and tights. Don't ask me which one in particular. I can't remember.

I used to have this girlish dream. It went like this--the band would be playing in my hometown, Baltimore, see? And they'd be driving around the city and its environs looking for their hotel or their venue or whatever, right? And whaddya know, they end up on my suburban street, and I happen to be out and about, and...

Pretty lame, huh?

That daydream brightened many a boring class, though. And it didn't seem outlandish to me, to believe that my favorite band would just happen to drive down my street. Crazier things have happened, right?

As I grew older, I let go of that dream, thank goodness, but I also came to realize that waiting-for-Paul-Revere could be a syndrome of sorts with no good end. That is, waiting for something to just fall into one's lap instead of setting a goal and pursuing it with vigor leads only to frustration and bitterness.

Setting appropriate goals (uh, meeting a popular band is not one of mine any longer) and working with all one's might to achieve them, however, leads to fulfillment and success.

In publishing, it's easy to live variations of the waiting-for-Paul-Revere syndrome. You wait for the right agent to say yes, the right editor to offer a contract, the right marketing plan to make you a bestseller. You wait and wait and wait. Years pass while you wait, always thinking that Paul (the contract, the breakout novel, the perfect marketing plan) is just around the corner.

In the world of ePublishing, however, a lot of that waiting can disappear. You can offer your books directly to the public yourself, or you can work with an e-publisher such as ours, Istoria Books, to make it happen.

But you don't need to sit there anymore, waiting for your dream to come true.

Istoria Books is now open to submissions -- read our guidelines below or find them on our website at www.IstoriaBooks.com. We only publish fiction (most genres) and want to see good stories, well-told.

Stop waiting...start submitting! We want to hear from you!

Kindle Peering

I confess.

I'm a book spy.

What avid reader isn't? When I'm on the Metro, though I may be squashed so tightly I can't free a hand to fish out my book and hold it in front of me (or, at least, not without elbowing a few little old ladies in the face, a price other riders have found worth paying), I can still take pleasure looking down the car at those privileged to sit, and peer over their shoulders to see what they're reading. I can invent games, awarding points for the number of Stieg Larssons in attendance. My heart always jumps a little when I see one of my abiding loves, like Jane Eyre. Some people read their morning prayers on the Metro, in English, Arabic or Hebrew. In my non-Istoria job, I work in media and public relations--and in Washington, DC, it's always interesting to see what paper or magazine someone chooses to read.

Once, when I was a teenager and my family took a trip to the beach together, my mom (Istoria co-founder Libby Sternberg) beckoned to me conspiratorially. She whispered to me, "I really want to find out what that woman over there is reading. Just walk by and see if you can see the cover." For us, book-spying was a fun beach activity, like volleyball or boogie-boarding. I mean, all those people, all those books! Think of all the quirky things people decide to read on the beach when they finally cut loose from the work world and get down to what really entertains them. Book-watching is just a subset of people-watching. That day, after making several unsuccessful, nonchalant circuits around the other family, I finally walked up to the woman my mom had pointed out and asked, "What are you reading? My mom and I are dying to know." She answered with an enormous smile.

Book-spying can bring people together. If the mp3-player revolution isolated people in public places, encapsulating them in the bubble of their earbuds, book-spying gives us the chance to learn something about each other again. In the movie 500 Days of Summer, Zoe Dechanel's character talks about the seredipity of meeting the man she fell in love with: "What if I hadn't gone to that coffee shop that day? What if I hadn't been reading Dorian Gray, or he hadn't noticed?"

Kindle-bashers and other critics of eReaders claim that eReaders will do to book-spying what mp3 players did to music-listeners in public places: isolate us further, deny the opportunity for that glimpse into someone else's tastes before meeting them. These critics clearly have little dexterity. eReaders may not display a cover on the outside of the device to show the world what you're reading, but a surreptitious glance can often reveal the title on the screen's header. I have happily been both the agent and subject of Kindle-peering. I've even struck up Metro conversations as a result of Kindle-peering. In fact, Kindle-peering adds an extra layer of challenge that many veteran book-spies will find intriguing. After all, any amateur bookspy can snatch a glance at a paperback cover held up for the world to see. Finding out what that cute girl in the coffee shop is reading on her Kindle might involve actually buying her a drink and talking to her.

Post a comment here and tell your favorite book-spying or Kindle-peering story. Be sure to leave your email address, and you'll get a free coupon for one download from Istoria Books!