What Will Publishing Look Like in 2021?

In the comment thread of my post on What Readers Won’t Miss from Corporate Publishers When They’re Gone, “Ghostly Girl” asked the above question. It sure is a hot topic..

What will happen in the next ten years? Will corporate publishers stumble along into dodoland? Will bookstores become a faded memory? Will all writers become entrepreneurial self-publishers? Will everybody who’s got a novel in him/her get fifteen Warhol fame-minutes on a bloated, crap-laden Amazon.com?

Things do look dire for corporate book publishing and brick-and-mortar retail sales at the moment. Early in the week we heard the Borders chain has finally shuffled off its mortal coil, and on Thursday, Publisher’s Lunch reported book sales suffered another huge monthly drop—especially for adult hardcover and mass market paperbacks.

This has made the future of publishing a hot topic of discussion everywhere I go. On Wednesday night, a friend in my critique group asked what the Barnes and Noble of the future might look like. Most said “Barnes and Who?” or “What’s a bookstore?”

But I disagreed. I predicted Barnes and Noble will survive—in a rather different configuration—maybe a combination of a much-expanded Starbucks café and an Apple-like outlet, displaying a variety of Nookish products, X-boxy things, coffee-related paraphernalia—and one book.

Written by Snooki.

Turns out I might be something of a clairvoyant. In that same Thursday issue of Publisher’s Lunch there was also news of a big-money auction of a hot new literary property, shorthanded as, “Pippa Middleton’s Pilates Coach.”

So. Maybe publishing isn’t so moribund after all. At least some Big Six guys are still partying like it’s 2009.

I had to look into it. Pippa Middleton’s Pilates Coach sounded like a brilliant satire of our shallow, celebrity-obsessed culture—maybe some uproarious comedy about fictional idiots spending millions to learn Pilates from the coach, “who’s coaching the girl, who’s related to the girl, who danced with the son of the Prince of Wales.” (Paraphrasing the classic song from 1927.) 

But a quick Google showed the celebrity-crazed idiots aren’t fictional. And the book is not meant to be funny. And it’s coming soon to a Barnes and Noble near you.

To further confirm the accuracy of my crystal ball, Kris Rusch reported the same day that Barnes and Noble is drastically reducing its book inventory in order to put in more toys and electronics. She’d heard from friends at Barnes and Noble who said they “were notified at our B&N location this week that in the next couple of weeks we will be receiving a ‘massive returns download.’ To coincide with this outflux of books we will be adding 3 more of the massive toys and games displays, as well as expanding gift and the digital presence.”

Toys, games, Nooks, and—an “outflux” of books. 

The books left will no doubt be written by the girl who danced with the boy who danced with the Pilates coach of the chauffeur of the Prince of Wales. Or whoever is current incarnation of Snooki.

This is how corporate publishing/bookselling will survive. As long as there are royals, vulgar bimbos, and aging rock stars with debauched tales to tell, people will buy their stories.

Thing is, people who buy Snookibooks aren’t big on other types of books, so they probably won’t invest in e-readers.

They will be kind of like the people who watch broadcast TV—the ones who don’t need to buy cable, because it’s stupid to pay money for some high-falutent Mad Men or Game of Thrones when you can watch America’s Got Broads who can Crush Beer Cans with their Boobs…for free.

So Snookibooks will have to be in paper. In bookstores. On that one shelf between the Xboxes, Nook carrying cases and Starbucks coffee mugs.

In fact, I see publishing following in the footsteps of television in many ways. The Big Six will be like the broadcast networks. Paper books will be the So You Think You Can Dance with the Biggest Loser/Big Brother fare. Plus there will be a few token Jonathan Franzen/Safran Foer tomes standing in for the Good Wife/Glee win-a-few-arty-awards broadcast offerings.

I think a few other very popular books will probably still be produced in paper as well.

In an article in the July 17th Boston Globe, Amanda Katz wrote about people who buy books in paper after they read the e-book. She reported a conversation with the general manager of the Harvard Book Store, who observed, “People come in and say, ‘I read this on my iPad, and now I want to own it’…as if somehow having it on their e-reading device is not really owning it.” (Italics are mine.)

So what books will people really want to “own”? 

Here’s what I predict—

Top-Selling Superstar Books in Hardcover, Suitable for Gift-Giving: An awful lot of people give books for holiday, graduation, and birthday gifts. You can’t give somebody a Kindle download and wrap it with a bow. So the biggest bestsellers will probably still be available in paper for quite a while.

Humor Books: You can’t leave your Kindle in the bathroom for your guests to chuckle at the latest Garfield offering, so it’s gotta be in paper.

Coffee Table Books: The paintings of Gustav Klimt in Kindle black-and-white are not going to have the same impact. High-ticket art books will stick around.

Impress-the-Guests/Keepsake Literary Books: That lovely leather-bound copy of Leaves of Grass can’t be replaced by electrons.

Bibles and other Iconic Religious Books. Thumping a Kindle is unlikely to give the same satisfaction.

Decorator Books: Books make a room feel cozy without being cutsie. I suppose people will start making faux-book 3-D wallpaper, but it won’t be the same. So books will become a premium decorator item. I predict used bookstores will become much more upscale as hardcover books become rare collectibles.

Books for Small Children: Patting the e-Bunny probably won’t amuse your 2-year old in quite the same way. And until they get holographic, an e-book is not going to replace the pop-up book.

And of course, Snookibooks: I include those big-advance political books published to be bought up by PACs in this category. Schlock never dies.

And as for everything else—that will of course be in ebooks.

But I can picture us reading our Kindles and Nooks while sitting in the Starbucks inside the Barnes and Noble, because, let’s face it, people like the feeling of a bookstore.

So when I look in my crystal ball, I’m seeing a few bookstores sticking around. There will be the Barnes-and-Noble one-Snookibook model, and the upscale collectible bookstore. 

I also see the survivor-indies still hanging on. Those are the ones that have weathered the last century’s bookshop assaults: first from Costco/Walmart, then the Big and Nasty chains, and then from Amazon.com. These are the tough little guys who survive partly on greeting cards, crystals, games, and/or coffee—and mostly on damned good service.

And what about the corporate publishers? Will they be part of the vast non-Snookibook market? 

Mark Williams of Mark Williams International (the quiet half of bestselling author “Saffi Desforges”) sees things going this way: “It cannot be long now before the Big Six start taking on authors on an e-book only basis. Offering all the traditional editorial services, translations and access to the full range of e-markets, but without the cost of paper production. If they get realistic about royalties they could yet survive the Transition and emerge stronger.”

He’s probably right. If the corporate guys finally figure out they can make more money without their heads crammed into their derrières, they’ll probably figure out how to cash in and take control of the e-books.

But while the corporations try to make their creaky way out of the 19^th century, I see a huge growth in small presses. There are hundreds of small publishers mushrooming up everywhere on the Interwebz. (Just Google “small presses”.)

I also see the emergence of the collective small press—groups of writers in the same genre banding together to form their own brand.

Like independent cable TV companies, small and collective publishers can each address a different niche. With e-books, their overhead will be almost non-existent, so they can afford to put time and energy into building brands and promoting writers.

We already have Ellora’s Cave for Playboy channel-type erotica, and I’m sure there will be another for “characters welcome” caper stories, another for FX-style noir and dark thrillers, women’s fiction presses for the Lifetime TV crowd, etc.

Some will come and go, but the small publishers who become established will be the new "gatekeepers” for readers who want professionals to sort through the vast number of books on offer.

Literary agencies who have become facilitators for self-publishing may expand to become this kind of branded-niche wholesaler.

Midsized and University presses might play the part of the premium cable networks as literary stars and Pulitzer prize-winners are dropped by their corporate publishers and/or seek homes outside of the déclassé corporate Snookibook-world. As Pulitzer-winner Alice Walker said when she moved to a small press, “As water is to flowers, independent publishing is to democracy.” 

Smaller publishers aren’t just smarter, they’re cooler. 

And of course some superstars will create their own franchises/networks. Joe Konrath’s indie superstar turn might be compared to Keith Olberman’s TV network. Konrath Inc. is certainly a brand that needs no gatekeeper or umbrella (My crystal ball isn’t quite so sure about Olberman, since my satellite company doesn’t carry his network.)

Other branches of the industry will jump in and fill the void as well. Amazon-the-bookstore becoming Amazon-the-publisher is rather like Direct Satellite TV becoming the producer of Glenn Close’s Damages. Both in TV and publishing I see the retailer controlling the product in a much bigger way. (If that is good or bad, I don’t know.)

The innovation and creative spark that fuels all this will originate with the indies. Yes, there will be tens of thousands of us—all doing our thing on Amazon like amateur filmmakers on YouTube. Some will become breakout superstars who get their books on that hardcover gift shelf at B & N; some will find a steady income with small e-publishers or collectives; some will establish their own brands, and most will fade into obscurity. But at least we’ll all have a shot at our Warhol minutes. A way better shot than we had in 2009.

So I think we will still have corporate publishers, bookstores, and paper books in the next decade—all quite different from the ones we have now, but traditions will be preserved, at least in appearance. People hate change.

So what about you, scriveners? What do you see in your crystal ball? Do you think bookstores will dodo off to extinction before 2021? Do you think publishing will reconfigure but not really be all that different, like the TV industry?

BTW, if you scroll down, you will see I made an Awesome Announcement on Friday. Yes! I’m going to be back in print. And yes, I love small publishers. <3

And next week, I’ll have yet another Awesome Announcement! This one is concerning an exciting addition  to this blog. I’m totally jazzed about it.

In two weeks, we will have a guest post by the incomparable Samuel Park, whose literary novel, This Burns My Heart  has been getting rave reviews from all the most prestigious literati--and is one of Amazon’s top picks for this month. Come read Samuel's words of wisdom on August 7^th.

And if you’re going to be in California in September, there’s still time to get the early bird discount for the Central Coast Writers' Conference. Deadline: July 31! 

Literary Agents: An Endangered Species?

Publishing keeps zooming into the future:

• This week, J.K. Rowling announced she’s self-publishing the Harry Potter ebooks, and as one agent tweeted “why [does] she need a publisher anymore? I predict Pottermore becomes her sole publisher.”

• On the same day, Publishers Lunch announced yet another agent, Sarah Dickman, is leaving agenting for the greener pastures of social media, following the parade led by former agents Nathan Bransford and Colleen Lindsay.  

• Also this week, John Locke became the first million-selling self-published Kindle author.

• Every day brings more reports of self-pubbed authors making good money without the help of agents or publishers.

• Self-published e-book authors are being approached by foreign rights buyers and film companies (and making lucrative, 100% agent-free deals.)

• Brick-and-mortar bookstores are heading for extinction faster than anybody predicted. This means the agent/big-corporate-publisher/big-corporate-store paradigm is also slouching off to dodoland.

• The world’s biggest online bookstore is also becoming a major publisher. Not only is Amazon’s Kindle Direct the biggest producer of ebooks, but they’ll soon be competing directly with traditional publishers when they launch their romance line, Montlake, in September. Sci-fi, mystery, and thriller imprints will follow. Amazon-the-publisher makes offers directly to its own top-selling self-pubbed ebook authors. No agent-gatekeeper required.

• For a while now, the six big publishing houses have been paying smaller and smaller advances for fewer and fewer titles. This is the era of the predatory multinational corporation and the Big Six—mostly European-owned—are not exceptions. Many no longer trust an agent’s judgment as to whether a book is good or not—and don’t care. Nothing matters but sales numbers. Note: there's more on this at Eric's Pimp my Novel blog today (Monday, June 27) in a blogpost titled "the Vanishing Advance."

So is the Literary Agent about to become extinct?

Some of us might do some secret gloating at the thought. If you’ve spent decades knocking on agents’ doors, only to be told your work is too quirky/unremarkable, dark/light, similar/different, and “not right for us at this time,” it’s kind of nice to get your brain around this wonderful new fact: you don’t need an agent to be a successful writer any more.

But most agents aren’t leaving the profession. They’re retrenching, redefining their roles, and trying out innovative concepts: some smart; some not so much.

Here are some of the new tactics:

1) Providing flat fee services for self-publishers: 

• Marketing: Laurie McLean of Larsen-Pomada has a side business called Agent Savant.com . For $500 she’ll help you through all the steps of marketing your self-pubbed book. I think this is kind of brilliant. You get the expertise of a literary agent for a flat, upfront fee.

• E-coding: Another side business some agents are providing is formatting e-books for self-publishing in all the various platforms. Meredith Barnes of Lowenstein Associates offers this service. Nice to hire somebody in the business who knows how it all works. 

Bottom line for authors? Good.

This is win/win if you can afford them.

2) Only taking new clients with proven sales numbers.

• Closing offices to queries. I recently read that only 1% of new books are by debut authors now, so a lot of agents aren’t bothering to plow through mountains of slush to find authors the big publishers won’t look at anyway.

• Trolling the Kindle lists and offering representation to top-selling self-pubbers. I talked about this last week, and I’m hearing of more news of it all the time. I expect more agencies to follow this trend.

• Poaching other agents’ clients. I’ve seen at least one agency that actually posts on their website they only want writers who already have representation. They suggest querying to get a better deal. Maybe 15 minutes could save you 15%, like with that insurance lizard on TV. At least they seem to have the lizard part right.

Bottom line for authors? Bad.

Authors are judged on their ability to market, not their writing. And as for the poaching—would you really want to be represented by somebody that slimy?

  

3) Adding draconian clauses to contracts.

Here’s the problem with the Kindle-trollers. Sometimes the contracts they offer the starry-eyed self-publisher are seriously predatory. Here’s some of the stuff they’re doing:

• Demanding a percentage not just of your sales but of your COPYRIGHT. This means they will own part of your book for your entire lifetime—and, in the U.S., for 70 years after you die.

• Making authors sign away rights to characters—so you can never write about those characters again without paying the agent a fee.

• Adding “In perpetuity” riders: you must pay them even if you move to another agency. (I guess this is supposed to be anti-lizard protection.) This means you’ll pay 30% in agent fees: 15% to this agency, and 15% to the agency that actually sells your books.

• Making authors sign away a percentage of EVERYTHING THEY’VE EVER WRITTEN OR WILL EVER WRITE. I don’t know if that gives them the right to ferret out your grade-school poems about “What Flag Day Means to Me” and publish them, but it probably does.

• Demanding that you cease all your self-publishing operations immediately, even books they don’t want to represent.

Always run a contract by a lawyer. Big, well-known agencies can be as guilty of nasty dealings as smaller, obscure ones. There are a lot more horror stories at The Passive Voice and The Business Rusch. If you’re at the point in your career where you’re looking for an agent, they are a must-read.

If an agency won’t negotiate on these clauses, walk away. If this agent wants you, a more ethical one will, too (YES, THERE ARE STILL ETHICAL AGENTS!!) 

Bottom line for authors? Seriously sucky.

4) Becoming publishers

There was much wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth earlier this year when the Wylie agency began publishing e-books of their clients’ backlist instead of selling the e-rights to the Big Six. Many people in the industry have called this a conflict of interest and a predatory practice.

Kris Rusch of the Business Rusch Blog is still frantic about it: “If your agent has become an e-publisher, fire that agent now. That agent is not working in your best interest and never will again (if they ever did). Your agent has left the agenting business and has become a publisher, so your agent now has a conflict of interest.”

And according to agent Meredith Barnes, some agencies are indeed charging way too much for the service—especially when they pay themselves 15% to “represent” the client to themselves as “publishers” who get another hefty cut—often over 50%.

But the Association of Author’s Agents refused to condemn it, saying: “There are certain activities that our code of conduct explicitly prohibits and the practice of agencies offering their authors a way to market their books directly to the reader is not one of them.”

The Andrea Brown Agency made headlines this week when they joined in the epublishing fray. But Pay it Forward author Catherine Ryan Hyde, who is repped by Laura Rennert at Andrea Brown, couldn’t be happier. CRH has a number of titles that have not sold to US publishers, although they sell well in the UK and other foreign markets. If the Big Six had their way, none of these books would ever be available to the majority of U.S. readers.

But as of this week, Second Hand Heart is now available on Kindle for $2.99, published by the Andrea Brown Agency.

And Catherine is NOT paying the agency the usual 15%. Just a very reasonable publisher’s fee—less than most of us would pay if we got the books coded and designed ourselves.

Bottom line for authors?: Depends entirely on the ethics of the agency.

Personally, do I still want an agent? I sure do. I think it’s worth 15% of possible earnings to have a savvy advocate in my corner.

But are all agents savvy advocates these days? Nope. Especially the ones who are running scared or trying to cling to 20th century ways.

This means we have to screen agents as carefully as they screen us.

For more on the role of agents in the 21st century, read agent Kristin Nelson blogpost on the subject. She warns writers not to sign “in perpetuity” agreements and cautions against other unethical practices.

But in this new publishing world, writers don’t need agents anywhere near as much as agents need writers. Be smart and protect yourself.

And remember there are still ways to be traditionally published without an agent. Michelle Davidson Argyle wrote a great blog series on this a couple of weeks ago. She’s very happy with a small publisher, as are many successful authors I know.

This just in: On Monday, June 27, the Dystel and Goderich agency announced its foray into the digital world: they will represent their clients who want to e-publish some of their titles. Again this is a slightly slippery slope, because some may accuse them of pushing clients into self-publishing. But they will walk that line by leaving the decisions up to the client. Here's what they said--

"What we are going to do is to facilitate e-publishing for those of our clients who decide that they want to go this route, after consultation and strategizing about whether they should try traditional publishing first or perhaps simply set aside the current book and move on to the next. We will charge a 15% commission for our services in helping them project manage everything from choosing a cover artist to working with a copyeditor to uploading their work.  We will continue to negotiate all agreements that may ensue as a result of e-publishing, try to place subsidiary rights where applicable, collect monies and review statements to make sure the author is being paid.  In short, we will continue to be agents and do the myriad things that agents do."

What about you, fellow scriveners? Are you still hoping to land that agent? Self-publish? Find a cozy small press to call home? Have you heard any horror stories of predatory agents and nasty contracts?