The Open Author

I’ve talked a lot about why publishers and editors should be nervous, but today I figure it’s time to point the finger at authors. There are a lot of good reasons why we should be excited about e-books, but there are also some things that should make the beads of sweat pop out on our collective brows.

Today in a book store, readers walk in and have literally thousands of books to choose from. In an e-book store, there are hundreds of thousands of choices. Marketing and outreach will be key if you hope to convince that one reader to choose your book out of all of the books at their disposal.

But something even more worrisome is on the horizon. When I go into a book store, there are new books, or there are classics. The classics (Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Jane Austin) are often much cheaper than the new releases. Sometimes you can pick them up for just a few bucks.

However, with e-books, these books will be free, not just cheap. You may think there is not much difference between cheap and free, but you would be wrong. :)

In Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely talks about an experiment where he offered Hersey’s kisses for one penny, and a much better kind of chocolate for 26 cents. When he did this, most people opted for the more expensive chocolate. Hershey’s kisses just aren’t that good.

However, then he lowered the price of both chocolates by one penny. Now the Hershey Kiss was free, and the better chocolate was a quarter. The results flip flopped. More people chose the inferior-but-free chocolate to the better chocolate, even though the price difference was identical.

Ariely says the reason we saw this change is because whether something is 1 penny, 1 dollar, or a hundred dollars, we have to make a decision. Is the benefit worth the cost. However, when the price drops to free, we don’t see the obvious monetary cost. There is no decision. We see that it’s free, and we take it, because there is no cost.

So, right now authors compete against each other. But what happens when readers realize they can download thousands of books for free from Project Gutenberg? It’s daunting enough to think I’m in competition with Steven King and J. K. Rowling, but Mark Twain? Charles Dickens? That is stiff competition indeed. And what makes it worse is their books are priced to move.

Sweating now?

Amazon has launched their new Kindle DX. They’ve also lowered the price. The old price was simply too close to the iPad, while the new price, $379, is enough of a difference to attract folks who just don’t want to shell out the $500.

Personally I’d rather have a smaller device than the larger screen size, but the lower price shows that Amazon is making adjustments. We’ll see if the trend continues.

Is this a sign of things to come? Last week we saw Amazon drop the price of the kindle to $189. Today they acquire Woot! and are offering an exclusive deal for one day. You can pick up the Kindle for $149. If you’re not familiar with how Woot! works, this deal will be good for 24 hours, so you’ve got to move fast.

I’ll be honest, I’m severely tempted. Will prices drop further before Christmas? Will this be the best deal that comes along? The thought of me dropping 50 public domain books on that bad boy and sitting fat and happy in my recliner is oh so tempting.

There has been a battle waging for the last several years. I’m not talking about Iraq or Afghanistan, I’m talking about the battle between Google and publishers.

Google has been trying to digitize books and make them searchable. The idea is people could find material in a book, read a little bit of it, and if that is what they are looking for, they could either buy a physical copy, or find one at a library to check it out.

Publishers don’t like this. Technically this is violating the copyright because Google is. . .well, they’re copying the book.

There is a classic scene in movies–one where the protagonist falls over the side of a cliff. As the camera pans, we see the protagonist is clinging for dear life to a small branch.

Publishers are clinging to the old model with the same sense of desperation. There are opportunities in the new model. Times are scary for publishers, and nobody knows for sure which path will work, but clinging to the old model will NOT work.

Look at the lengths to which the Internet Archive is forced to go to make a digital copy available to readers. The Internet Archive has a lot of public domain material, but is trying to make more in-copyright material available. From a Wall Street Journal article:

“With its latest project, the organization is making inroads into the idea of loaning in-copyright books to the masses. Only one person at a time will be allowed to check out a digital copy of an in-copyright book for two weeks. While on loan, the physical copy of the book won’t be loaned, due to copyright restrictions.”

So imagine you’re a reader who just found a book at a library. But you’re told you can’t check it out because somebody has a digital copy checked out somewhere. The whole beauty of digital copies is you can make millions of exact copies with negligible cost. But we’re going to tie up physical books, and only allow one digital copy out at a time because of outdated copyright laws?

As an author, I’m fully aware of how hard it is to make a living in this profession. But this attempt to lock down copies and create a monoploy doesn’t help me, they help my publisher. If a person comes to a library and finds my book on the shelf, and they are told they can’t check it out, I’ve just lost the opportunity of making a fan. That person will find something else to read. And when Christmas rolls around, and he needs a gift for Aunt Betty, he won’t think of my book because he hasn’t read it.

Nothing about the new models is for certain, but what is for certain is that those who cling to the old model will be left behind. The landscape is changing, and authors and publishers who change with it will likely be better off than those who keep holding onto that branch.

Publishing an e-book does not mean authors can skip the most important step of all–mastering the craft.  A friend of mine, Trent Cameron, sent me an interesting link about online file sharing (pirating or information liberation, depending on how you look at things) and how it affects content creators.

For those unfamiliar with the idea of openness it may come as a surprise to hear that Sam Bozzo, a film director, embraces the idea of people sharing his movies online. From the article:

“For me, the [online sharing] was ultimately “free advertising”, and I am the only truly independent documentary filmmaker I know making his money back this year.”

But he goes on to say something equally interesting about how pirating does hurt bad or mediocre movies. People watch them, are unimpressed, and they don’t tell their friends, nor do they buy the product. The good films, however, are shared, talked about, and people generate buzz which ultimately leads to more revenue in DVD sales or box office sales. Again, from the article:

“With “Blue Gold” already available on DVD in North America, UK, Japan, and Australia, the initial fear of a filmmaker is that each person who downloads a torrent would have instead paid to buy or rent a DVD if the torrent were not available. I feel this is false for many reasons. For an independent film like mine, most torrent users would have never heard of my film if not for the torrent. Unlike a large blockbuster film, I had no advertising money to spread the word of the film, so the torrent leak provided another outlet to hopefully create a viral campaign of word-of-mouth. The main point, though, is that this only worked because the film is a solid good film (for the target market at least), so word of mouth could only help the film.”

I’ve said it before, and I think it’s worth repeating–E-books and The Open Model aren’t shortcuts to publishing. They are additional options now available to writers.