Soft Skull News

So while the below is something I'm luck y to share with you, it was because I still haven't figured out how to turn on the comments for this blog (because, yes, I do want them enabled, provided there's some type of spam protection). Anyone who feels like walking me through this, can you email me.

The comment would have followed this post, a speech from Mike Shatzkin. And I've no doubt but that it would have been the single most thoughtful comment this "The Future is Now" category would have gotten. Instead, he emailed me his comment, and I was so taken, I asked if I could post it:

Hi Richard,

I was just about going to post a right-on type of comment regarding the article you linked to your on your blog from Mike Shatzkin ... but your comments aren't enabled. Hope your enable them so that Soft Skull's blog can participate in the happy vertical-making internets.

But anyway, that is the truly the case what he is saying about publishers NOT reflecting niche markets. Writers who do work a niche that isn't defined or properly understood by the trade publishers (and for the most part small presses, with notable exceptions, kind of follow like sheep what the big guys are doing because the big, old companies have set the entire tone and structure of the horizontal market.) ... consequently these writers end up, I believe, not being served very well by the publishing industry. The Tennessee novelist William Gay, being a good example I think. He’s published four books with three different presses.

Multicultural literature, on the other hand, has a niche and often these special sections -- Gay Novels, African-America Lit, etc. in bookstores seem fertile compared to the alphabetic shuffle of the general "fiction" section. There is a context for work in a special section in the same way there is a context for nonfiction books filed away in their various sections: biology, WW2, cooking, etc.

My own experience has been one of working in and gradually building a context for my work in relation to the existing niche of Pacific Northwest literature. Mass publishers and agents seemed flummoxed by this somehow. I've had no trouble selling (a few) books in other markets (and not to say I’ve sold many books in any market), but I think it is in relation to the existing niche that it has worked. The flattening of the Web has been essential, and as he points out in his article -- the digital defined vertical markets, connects them, and provides the means of actually selling books. There are (a few) people interested in this niche. The Web automatically creates its own nearly-infinite special sections.

I think it is interesting that in Seattle, too, these special sections have become entire bookstores that have managed to do okay business in an environment that has been particularly hostile to most independent, general bookstores. We have a poetry-only bookstore: Open Books, and a genre bookstore Seattle Mystery Bookshop.

My main problem though with the SOP of publishers is that they pay little attention to creating a vertical market. Taken to the extreme, each individual author becomes their own niche with their own special section. Stephen King could easily support a physical bookstore. But, remove the expense and constraints of a physical store front, and suddenly every writer has a store. If you are interested in James Sallis, his Web site offers an extensive array of Sallisannia. If you are interested in J. Robert Lennon, Matthew Simmons, Kathleen Alcala, and on and on.

In this highly vertical environment, I think any content has to be develop through the structure of "a channel," like TV, movies, a movie serial, or magazines. New York Literary agent Marie Massie told me that an author should release a book every six years or something like that so that each event could possibly become an event. This seems like pure horizontal thinking to me... there needs to be some manufactured or real event, an appearance on Oprah, an award, the release of a book after some scandal to excite the chains of horizontal commerce.

The vast majority of writers do not have access these kind of external prompts to juice up the veins of horizontal commerce. To wait six years between books is to let any possible sustained interest from readers wither and pass away. This has been my experience. The gap between my first proper book and my second proper book was six years. My first book received okay notice, but by the time my second book came out all of those folks had moved on and I had to essentially start from scratch in terms of relating the book to an existing community.

This is a tremendous waste of resources from a writing perspective and of course in those six years I ended up writing three more books that lacked any kind of outlet.

Compare this with how Maxwell Perkins worked Scribner’s magazine by serializing novelists he wanted to establish. He pushed them through his magazine and then released the book.

I think a book should be released at regular intervals, say, once a year or once every eighteen months. It should be released in such as way that readers who like the book know when to expect the next one. And around this regular channel, the author can contribute to or work on relating their book to the community that may find interest in the book. In my case, the completely misunderstood (in the East) vertical of Pac Northwest Lit -- other people write from different vertical niches, submarkets, or what have you.

The reality of trade production and bookselling do not serve this kind of writer (my kind of writer) at all. Writers are constantly switching presses, which screws up the entire infrastructure of book releases. Lit Writers in particular, tend to be marketed, too, as denatured, contextless athletes of the written word, i.e., Annie Dillard’s much-used blurb: "The best we've got." This positions a writer as a kind of prize boxer in a global contest.

This article I think makes it clear that the Long Tail will undo much of the market control that has been established by the publishing industry. Nice bit on the irrelevance of publishers' brands to consumers -- yeah B2B all of the way -- although I think that is more important than he makes out, but certainly not as important as Viking/Penguin would have you believe. Often key influencers in a vertical market are very aware of the B2B brands. Thus FSG will have more traction with the influencers than Lulu.com. But increasingly, even influencers are playing less of a vital role in the commerce of books and, instead, readers frequent the million special sections of individual author Web pages where they can buy whatever Raymond Mungo or James Sallis are selling.

Anyway thanks for posting a link to the speech it was pretty good...

Matt

[I'm going to let this speak for itself, except to add one tiny comment, which is that I don't know that Maria Massie, an agent for whom I have great admiration, necessarily meant the once-every-six-years as something that would apply to all authors...]