Sigh. Against my better judgement I'll share a bit more. Thanks, MB, for your interest. Here's where I'm coming from. After about 15 years as a professional journalist writing about business with jobs at major magazines, I wrote sold and published my first book a few years ago, The Startup Garden--meant to be somewhat of a What Color is Your Parachute for people starting jobs (forgive the shameless self-promotion.) It came out in 2001--three weeks after 9/11 as a matter of fact (ouch)--and has not fared well. I'm not complaining. There are many reasons, but I'm simply doing my best to figure out how to sell the next one, and increase the chances of its success.

I cling and will always cling to the book as a book and believe many others will for a number of reasons. First off, I guess, is this: simply because. There's almost as much bad writing about book-loving as there is about baseball, so I'll just say that I love them and know that many others do and that the experience cannot be replicated in any other medium. It's been true since Gutenberg and won't change soon.

Second, and this has to do with my real question about how you make money on a website (and how you Blowhards might--and why aren't you considering it?)--books still represent a much more realistic opportunity for folks to earn a living.

Note the word "opportunity" here. Publishing is a shitty business with terrible margins and it galls me no end that the company that probably makes the most money from books today is Amazon, whose highest margins come from the books which it doesn't ever touch--those that it sells through the Marketplace feature (in other words, the used copies of books that now compete with the new ones I'd prefer were sold...)

So yeah, structurally, there's a lot of inefficient factos in the publishing industry that force most books to flop. This does not dissuade me from continuing to strive to write a great book. Like a lot of other writers, I am still writing for a living, seeking to feed my family, and so writing a book is a calculated risk. The challenge is to make the right choices to find a way to increase your odds of success while clearing out the clutter so as to write the stuff you want to write. After all, I also write because I love to write, and am grateful every day that I can.

I love the web and love this site. I admire your wits and above all your energy; my website is obscenely sporadic because I don't have the time, I just can't afford it. But I fervently believe that all writers must be smart about using the web to create and speak to an audience. The act of writing is not complete until the words are read by someone else; and the technology/media should ideally help the writer reach the right audience. So any active web presence that provides interactivity, links, supplemental material, and the like, is excellent. There are few good author websites (with the exception, intriguingly of several childrens book authors like Jan Brett and Dav Pilkey, both of whom recreate the playful experience in their books on an electronic manner.) Over time I think authors will figure out a shrewd way to use both in an additive manner.

But again, until you've reached this critical mass of an audience, spending hours creating a website does not create a living.

A few other thoughts of web/book. First of all, I harbor a sentimental attachment to a book audience more than an electronic one. I know I'm irrational that way, but there's nothing more exciting than happening upon someone reading your book. Also, because I am intimidated by the technology of posting on a website, I know only enough to post new additions to my blog. For people who are comfortable doing their web stuff, it seems common sensical that it will be easy for everyone else. It isn't and won't be.

Finally, I sometimes feel quite skeptical about the online community. Yeah, the web is everywhere, but there are days when I still feel like part of a CB radio crowd. And I'm barely active.

Okay, forgive the long post. Bottom line: I doubt the romance of books will ever vanish. I doubt the economics will improve and that yes they will deteriorate and publishers and writers will need to adjust. Like major film studios vs. independents there will be cycles of big players locked into increasing folly whose error of ways will be exposed by successful independents, creating a new cycle. I doubt that the-product-formerly-known-as-thebook will become a web entity. It will have a web component but until someone cracks the code of making a living there they will still hold out for the fortunes of a bestseller.

Posted by: Tom on January 25, 2004 9:32 PM

Tom, I prefer hardcopy because it's easier on the eyes. Monitors today are not meant to be looked at for extended periods of time. This will change in the future, but that change is some time off.

Still, when used right a web site or PDF document can offer advantages a print version can't. Links to related sites and/or documents. The opportunity to comment on the work and/or provide feedback to the author or authors. How the author interacts with his readers has already changed. (I'll check and see if Tad William's Shadowmarch site is still up. If it is I'll provide a link to it in this thread. A good example of a community site where the participants can engage in 'conversations' with a writer.)

I see a lot of online 'books' getting added to the web as the idea spreads. We may even see web hosts catering to the 'book publishing' trade. But I see only a rare few actually being formally published. Then again, many could hook up with print-on-demand agents who'll do up a copy of the work in question and ship it to the customer. The folks at RPGNow already have this as an option if you'd much rather get a hardcopy of a purchase. Expect more online merchants to offer this feature as time passes.

More later when I've more to add to the discussion.

Posted by: Alan Kellogg on January 26, 2004 10:32 AM

Damn, linking aint working right in these comments. You can find RPGNow at: www.rpgnow.com

That should work better.

Posted by: Alan Kellogg on January 26, 2004 10:35 AM

Tom, Alan -- Many thanks again for interesting thoughts, links, experiences, etc. We may move in different circles, but from what I see my suspicion is that the romance of books is already dead for many under-30s, who seem to see the world as a menu of media options, books being just one of them. So (continuing to speculate semi-groundlessly), my reasoning goes a little like this: the trade book industry has always run to an amazing extent on the naivete, eagerness and credulousness of book-lovers. It's maybe the only industry I can think of where many of the people who produce the industry's product (ie., writers) often do so at a loss. To some amazing extent the business model is based on the notion that people just love books so darned much that there's always going to be a ton of people so in love with the idea of being an author of a published book that they're willing to work for next to nothing. Now, what happens if that changes? What happens if being the author of a published book stops seeming like such a big deal? What happens if people with fewer stars in their eyes look at what the publishing industry is offering them and think "that's not much." I think they're going to turn elsewhere instead, and probably most quickly to the web.

But the big complicating factor is what Tom says it is: the dream and determination some people have to make an actual living writing books. It can be done, but not by many -- both because there aren't that many who have it in them, and because there just doesn't seem to be room for all that many fulltime book-writing pros -- and it takes a ton of work, discipline and luck (let alone brains, energy and talent).

I'm just repeating what I've read in other discussions of the impact of digi-tech on various media, but it looks likely to me for a variety of reasons that there'll be a class of people who produce (or who compete to produce) highly successful books, who make good money at it, and then there'll be a lot of people who don't make any money at all. (Isn't this one of the guesses about what'll happen in the musicbiz? That the music companies will exist entirely to create and promote a handful of big acts, while nearly everyone else will be off on their own?) Which leaves me wondering: why, if you're going to make no money anyway, would you put up with what you have to put up with to get a book published? Why not instead publish on the web?

But of course I could be all wrong about this...

Posted by: Michael Blowhard on January 27, 2004 1:13 AM






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