I live in the book world. My friends are editors, agents, publicists, marketers. We all speak the same language, full of pub dates and signatures and e-books.
But I do have friends on the outside. And the other night, I was privy to a very interesting conversation. I was out with five friends of varying professions, and the talk turned to e-readers. I had my Kindle; my friend Josh—who works at a hospital—had his Nook.
As an aside, I must admit I adore my Kindle. If I leave without it, I feel wrong, just like I did when I first got an iPod or a cell phone. I mean, what am I 
supposed to do, read an actual book? But at dinner Josh’s Nook initially wiped the floor. He showed off the color touch screen and some of the animation his kids’ books had. Everyone appropriately oohed and ahhed. But then I showed people the cartoons from The New Yorker which were crisper. And the text was better.
“How much is it?” Maddie asked Josh.
“$250?” Josh said about his Nook.
“About $150 when you factor in the cover,” I said, hoping that Maddie would choose me. She asked to play with my Kindle, so I handed it over, showing her how to turn the pages and find individual chapters.
“And how much are books?” she asked. I briefly explained the agency model and how publishers are working with Amazon and B&N to sell e-books at reasonable prices. Then the most interesting segment of the conversation came in.
“I don’t want to pay for books,” interrupted our friend Yama. “I just want to read. Can’t I borrow them from the library?”
“I think they’re still working that out,” I explained and she made a face. “But whatever one store or product does, everyone else ends up copying it eventually. So, for instance, a few months ago someone who had the Nook could lend to other people who had the Nook. But you couldn’t do that on the Kindle—though now, you can.” This got nods all around. “So I expect that library lending will come about eventually. But Yama,” I said, “you know that buying books pays the author and me, right?”
This is an interesting point that few people realize. In fact, my best friend (who also works outside publishing) called the other day to crow about finding all of Stephen King’s e-books for free online---clearly stolen or illegally copied. I hung up on him. When he called back, I told him: “My salary just disappeared.”
Here’s the crux: people want content for free. Whether it’s a Britney Spears single, an e-book or a New York Times article, if we can get away with not paying for it, we will. (And I’m certainly no exception.) That’s because largely, our society thinks of piracy like this: Stephen King, hugely bestselling author, rich guy. He doesn’t need my $9.99. The New York Times, they sell subscriptions, they’ll still exist even if I, an individual, read it solely online for free. Britney Spears, she has tons of mansions and concert revenue, she doesn’t need or even get the .99 cents from iTunes, so why should I pay it?
But all artists need people to pay for their content. While Stephen King may or may not need the advance and royalties off his backlist, Scribner certainly does. It has to pay the editor , her assistant, the cover designer, the production editor, the copyeditor, the publicist, and everything else related to the publication of that book that the consumer never sees and often doesn’t even know exists. And that’s where the conflict comes in.
We’re at a precipice i
n publishing, where the normal consumer like Josh, Yama, and Maddie are buying Kindles and Nooks. If we want to compare the book publishing industry to music, as we do often, I think we’re in 2004 or 2005. That’s the moment where the early adopters and dedicated music lovers met the average consumer, and iPod sales went through the roof. Hopefully, just like music, book publishing will witness a moment where people give up on finding the new Napster or LimeWire and decide just to buy the new single on iTunes because it’s easier. There’s a moment where it becomes easier to pay than to pirate—and that, I believe--among other factors--will keep publishing afloat.
And, as a side note, all the devout readers in my group of “outsider” friends—including the reluctant Yama—preferred my Kindle.
Wildwood by Colin Meloy - As the ship’s captain at the helm of the Decemberists, Colin Meloy is best known for writing songs about whales and other esoterica. But for his first literary foray, he’ll publish a series of books aimed at a young adult audience. Wildwood, which will debut in the fall, is a collaboration between Meloy and his illustrator wife, Carson Ellis, whose art adorns the covers of several Decemberists records. Last year, Meloy told NPR the books were “a classic tale of adventure, magic, and danger, set in an alternate version of modern-day Portland, Oregon.” Isn’t that what Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein are up to on the IFC Channel?
songwriting, cult country rebel Steve Earle put down his guitar in 2001 and picked up a pen to try his hand at short-story writing. The result is Doghouse Roses, a collection of tales that sounded, well, a lot like his songs. The stories take us to many of the places Earle has traveled — lonely hotel rooms, smoky bars — and introduce us to characters, who, like the author, have made bad choices or been unlucky in love. Here we meet drug addicts, Vietnam vets, and hitchhikers. A decade on, Earle’s still best known for his music (and perhaps his guest stints on The Wire), but the tales of Doghouse Roses remain a testament to his immense talent as a storyteller, whether in song or on the page.
Auguries of Innocence by Patti Smith - The Godmother of punk stunned the literary world in 2010 when her loving chronicle of her long friendship with artist Robert Mapplethorpe, Just Kids, won the National Book Award. The disjointed and dreamy narrative of passion, ambition, and eventual success was poetic and musical, and celebrated, above all else, her love of language and literature. Patti Smith has been writing poetry for decades, and this collection, which was published in 2005, wears the influence of William Blake in its title (and owes a little to Rimbaud, too). Beloved and barrier-breaking, Smith has found success in literature, music, visual art, and performance, but this collection shows why she’s so enduring.
comes with being called a poet.” But this spring, that’s exactly what he’ll be called, when Hard Ground, a collaboration with photojournalist Michael O’Brien, debuts in March. A searing portrayal of homelessness, the book combines portraits and poems to chronicle the lives of outsiders and castoffs — themes that Waits has revisited throughout his four decade songwriting career. By asking us to look at those from whom we’d rather turn away, Waits makes the invisible visible and, like his music, deepens our understanding of what it means to be human.
See the unabridged list and original post HERE
