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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No sex, no swearing, no drugs, no alcohol: Istoria Books YA line

by Libby Sternberg

During the Christmas holiday, I received a charming card from a family we know. On it, the twelve-year-old daughter had written her own message to me: "I love your books! When I'm not reading them, I'm thinking about them!"

She was referring to my first two published novels--the Edgar-nominated teen mystery Uncovering Sadie's Secrets, and its sequel, Finding the Forger. There's a third book in the series, Recovering Dad, that I will dispatch to her this week.

Not only did her comments warm my heart, they affirmed for me a commitment I, as an author, made to myself when I first wrote "young adult" fiction. That is, I would write the kind of YA books that I enjoyed reading as a preteen, books that didn't shock or startle or depress but instead invited the reader into a world worth visiting. In this world were people who set good examples, tried their best, loved their families, and didn't try too hard to be part of the cool crowd.

Notice, by the way, that I mention "YA books that I enjoyed reading as a preteen."  Many preteens read YA, while teens themselves have moved on to adult fiction. So, when I write YA, I assume my audience is more likely to be nine- to twelve-year-olds than it is older readers.

In my YA mysteries, the characters don't swear. They don't use drugs or alcohol. They don't have sex or talk about it. And I know--this doesn't reflect reality for all teens. But for a good number of kids, it does; or, at least, it's the life they aspire to. Their parents scold them if they swear. They're expected to abide by their family's rules. They're expected to try to be good, even if they sometimes fail. They're not trying so hard to be cool that they'll fall into trouble easily.

Many teen novels don't follow this pattern. Many YA novelists believe their books would betray the worlds they want to create and a sense of verisimilitude if the characters don't confront coarse situations and use coarse language. Some of these authors, I learned from participating in a YA writers email group years ago, take a perverse pride in being provocative, as if shocking parents of teen readers with dark tales is the goal, rather than telling a good story or even offering a good lesson.

The Wall Street Journal's children's book reviewer shared some thoughts on the dark state of YA fiction in a June 2011 article that generated controversy. Meghan Cox Gurdon wrote in that article:

How dark is contemporary fiction for teens? Darker than when you were a child, my dear: So dark that kidnapping and pederasty and incest and brutal beatings are now just part of the run of things in novels directed, broadly speaking, at children from the ages of 12 to 18.

Pathologies that went undescribed in print 40 years ago, that were still only sparingly outlined a generation ago, are now spelled out in stomach-clenching detail. Profanity that would get a song or movie branded with a parental warning is, in young-adult novels, so commonplace that most reviewers do not even remark upon it.

If books show us the world, teen fiction can be like a hall of fun-house mirrors, constantly reflecting back hideously distorted portrayals of what life is. There are of course exceptions, but a careless young reader—or one who seeks out depravity—will find himself surrounded by images not of joy or beauty but of damage, brutality and losses of the most horrendous kinds.

Don't get me wrong--I don't begrudge YA authors success if they happen to tell grittier tales than mine. And I'm not suggesting that YA fiction should be censored or have the real world whitewashed within its pages. (Neither was Gurdon in her article.)  But I do think there's a place--an important place--for YA fiction that does not focus on what's wrong in a teen's world, for stories that make readers feel good about themselves and perhaps even affirm the good choices they are making.

These are the kinds of YAs Istoria Books is looking for.

That kind of "clean" YA fiction doesn't have to be boring. In fact, this spring Istoria Books is proud to release a sweet and fun YA, The Body Electric by Allie Duzett, that doesn't include a single curse or reference to sex or substance abuse. It's a rollicking journey to the "end of the world," an exploration of young love and ancient curses. It's the exact opposite of boring. But it doesn't have a single element in it that would make a parent cringe.

Editing Allie Duzett's debut novel reinforced my belief in this kind of YA fiction. It's the epitome of our mission: we publish "good stories, well told."  Good stories--where you want to keep turning the pages to see what happens. Well told--where you want to keep hearing that author tell the story to you (instead of jumping ahead to the finish). And while our adult fiction does handle adult themes, sometimes explicitly and realistically, our young adult fiction will be a place of refuge for the preteen and teen reader who wants stories where they feel comfortable with the characters and don't mind inviting them into their own lives.

In The Body Electric, an eighteen-year-old Colorado girl meets and falls for an odd new fellow in town. He seems to possess heroic strength, is a gentleman of the old school, dresses as if he stepped off the pages of a menswear ad spread, is cheerful, honest and...has a family of grudge-bearing maniacs. As Lena learns more about Zach, she finds more to admire...and also fear. She learns just as much about herself in the process, about what values she holds dear, about what is most important in life.

I hope young readers will enjoy The Body Electric as much as all of us at Istoria have. Watch these blog pages for an interview with Allie Duzett in the weeks before its spring release!
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Libby Sternberg is an award-winning novelist. She is editor-in-chief of Istoria Books. If you have a young adult novel you'd like to submit to her, send a query to IstoriaBks@gmail.com

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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