So how do we fix it?

What if we take a page from the mortgage industry?  I know, they don’t have the greatest reputation these days, and when I say, “mortgage-backed securities”, you probably get a little nervous.  But the underlying idea behind mortgage-backed securities is sound.  It’s just the implementation that failed.  Bundling risky things with less risky things to create a package of moderately risky things makes a lot of sense.

How would it work for publishing?  Let’s say you have two known authors in the same genre.  Pick three other authors that no one has heard of, but writing similar stuff in the same genre.  Package them all together.  If you buy the two books from the known authors, you get the three unknown authors for free.  This works even better if we use ebooks, where “printing” and “shipping” one additional unit doesn’t cost anything.

Another option is for a group of unknown authors with a similar target demographic to form a legal partnership and act as one unit.  They could save on marketing costs and act as evangelists for each other.  Share the costs, share the risk, share the profits.

If publishers could lower their risk, they could publish more authors.  As long as we keep effective filters (like indie bookstores!), publishing more authors is a win for everyone.

There are a couple of big, important functions that traditional publishers have always provided:  editing, filtering, distributing, and marketing.  All of these things are still important.  The big change is that you can get pretty good providers of all of these outside of traditional publishing.  This is not to say that traditional publishers aren’t doing these things well.  It just means that people now have other options that are good enough to be successful.

First, editing.  I don’t have any sort of data on comparing editors at big publishing houses to good freelancers.  I suspect that there are really good ones and really bad ones of both categories, with a better good-to-bad ratio at the big publishers.  But I do know that you can get a good editor without a big publisher.  This has probably been true for a while.

Next, filtering.  The self-publishing world hasn’t quite figured this one out yet, but neither have traditional publishers, so I’m going to call it a wash.  There are plenty of books that get published by respected publishers that are just garbage.  And there are plenty of books that are really good that don’t get published at all because they don’t hit enough of the checkboxes to qualify them as a good bet, so they get ignored.

Amazon and Lulu have distribution pretty well covered.

Marketing is the one big thing where traditional publishers still have a huge advantage.  Unless you’re Seth Godin, and know a thing or two about marketing yourself.  People talk about authors needing a “platform”, and some hate that word, but having a platform makes the marketing a lot easier.  The bigger the platform, the less marketing you need to do, and the more your network will do for you.  Seth Godin’s platform is one of the biggest out there.

The point is, everything that traditional publishers do is easier now than it was ten years ago.  Some of it is easier than it was last week.  It will only get easier.  Smart publishers will start focusing on the advantages they still have, and look for new ways to use what they know and what they do well to gain more advantages.  Smart publishers will survive.  Others won’t.  Whining about the death of this or that, the relative merits of ebooks versus print books, and most of the rest of it just isn’t productive.

I think what we’ll start seeing is publishing-as-a-service.  Make a list of every step that goes between the author finishing a first draft and a satisfied customer parting with money.  A good publisher can help with all those steps.  A smart publisher will figure out how to let authors do some of those steps themselves, perhaps in exchange for a higher royalty rate.  An author should be able to choose which of these steps to handle, and which to let the publisher handle.

Some will probably say that sounds like vanity publishing, and I agree.  There is nothing inherently wrong with vanity publishing.  If the publisher is taking money from the author and not giving anything back, then that’s wrong, but that’s the publisher, not the process.  If I give you a list of services related to publishing that we do, along with a list of prices, and you choose which ones you want and which you don’t, no on is taking advantage of you.

The bottom line is that there is no one right way for every author to make a living by writing.  There are more paths available now than ever before in human history, and this is a fantastic, exciting time to be starting in the industry.  And I’m really looking forward to what’s going to happen when the big publishers start thinking about where the market wants to go, and how best they can serve it, rather than crying about agency models and ebook cannibalization and copyright infringement.

But if you are stuck in the mindset where this is the way it has always been done, so this is the way we must always do it, then you’re going to have a problem.  The subtext of Godin’s announcement that I haven’t seen discussed much is the implication that he’s not even sure the book form is useful to him anymore.  For most people, the books will be important for a while (though I think the ebook transition will happen faster than many are predicting), but getting stuck thinking about selling books is dangerous.  Think about selling your authors, or helping them sell themselves.  Then, when we transition from ebooks to direct brain interfaces with nearly human-equivalent artificial intelligences designed to immerse you in a story, you still have your business.

Edit to add:  I’ve been asked to firm up my conclusion.  It is this:  If you want to remain in publishing longer than a few more years, stop whining.  Stop thinking about how you can make the industry keep behaving like it always has.  Think about things you are good at that are hard for other people.  Find more people who need those things done.  Make a compelling case to those people that you should be the one to do those things for them.  Continue to refrain from whining.

Industries change.  The companies that survive those changes are the ones who scour those changes for opportunity.

These two issues – payment and ownership/control of copies should be conceptually separated. They are connected under our current system, but they are not naturally or necessarily connected. We can unfasten them and toggle them separately to see what happens. If we could imagine other ways for you to get paid for your work (maybe we can’t, but assume for argument’s sake we can) as an artist, then whether or not people “take” your song is beside the point. You only want to stop people from taking things because you need to get paid. If you got an acceptable income from your work, you would probably not care about who plays or doesn’t play your song. This is because, unlike a screwdriver, it is not bound by physical world zero-sumness. In fact, you’d probably prefer such a system because you’d get paid and at the same time a greater number of people would hear your song. I think your teen correspondent mentioned a similar point.

Emphasis is mine.  This is what we do at Manfred Macx.  We are trying to allow authors to earn an acceptable income from their work without needing to think about who might have given a digital copy to a friend (or a couple thousand anonymous P2P users).  Fighting against what technology allows is a losing battle.  Embracing new technology, and seeing how it can work for you, not only good business, but it’s future proof.  If you stop caring about copies of your content, you still have a business when the next killer delivery system comes out.

Both articles, however, don’t address one important point made by Jason Robert Brown, the composer who originally argued with the fan and started this whole thing.

Let’s say I invent a self-replicating screwdriver. There’s a whole pile of them in my driveway – if you take one away, another one will appear in its place. Weirdly, my neighbor also invented a self-replicating screwdriver. I think mine is better, but that’s neither here nor there. On my driveway, there’s a sign saying “Screwdrivers $4.00″. On his driveway, there’s a sign saying “Free screwdrivers!” There is no legitimate defense of the idea that it’s okay to take my screwdriver for free just because there are an infinite number of them available. If you want a free screwdriver, go get the one from my neighbor; but if you want mine, the fruit of my labor, as Locke would have it, then you are obligated – in every sense of the word – to pay me the price I am asking. I don’t owe the commons a free screwdriver, nor do I owe them free sheet music to my songs. Nothing you’ve written above changes my mind on that matter.

This is really important.  When someone is using a business model that you feel is outdated, you may write blog posts about how wrong they are, you may boycott them, you may even petition your elected officials to relax the laws on which these models depend if you feel they are no longer just or relevant.

What you can not do is take and share their content without their permission, and then think you have the right to tell them why their business model is wrong.  You forfeit that right when you fail to respect the wishes of the content creator.

1. If you could be any animal, what would it be?
2. Of all the people you don’t know personally, but who are generally considered to be unpleasant, who would you most like to have a drink with?
3. Is it better to be early and have to wait for someone, or be late and make them wait for you?
4. If you could find out the true meaning of life, would you?

Answers:

1. It’s a tough call, deciding between something like a lion, being a total badass, or being something like a bald eagle and getting to fly.  I think I’d go with flying, so mark me down as a Bald Eagle.
2. Unpleasant people who I’d like to sit down with for a drink…another tough one.  I think I’d do George W., just to see if he really is that stupid.
3. Definitely be early and wait.  It’s a sign of respect to be punctual for others, in my opinion.
4. I would love to find out the true meaning of life.  In my opinion, our purpose is to do enough in our own lifetime to be remembered once it is over.

Haiku:

George and an eagle
Drinking, talking about life
Meaning?  Ask eagle.

One of the items for sale related to my books is a four question haiku.  I ask the buyer four questions, and write a haiku based on at least three of their answers.  I’ll be posting all the results both here at the blog (see all of them here, though there’s just one so far), and also in a thread in the “social” section of ManfredMacx.com.

The first haiku is for Frannie Serafin, a friend who “introduced” us to our charity partner, Reach Incorporated.

Questions:

Drinks on Scalia
The dolphin understands life
Early, never late

It’s been a good week.  We’ve raised $185 towards our goal of $500 (with all the money raised going to Reach Incorporated).  That’s 37%.  Not bad for a couple of days.

Next, we need some new authors.  Raising money for charity with my book is great, but if this little venture is going to succeed, we need to help some authors make a living.  Do you have a book you want to sell?  Do you have a friend or a loved one, perhaps, who you know has a book in them, but might be afraid of letting it out?  We want to help.  We want to help you find your audience, connect with them, and give them something they’re eager to pay for.  If you or someone you know is interested, let us know.  Or, sign up for an account and follow the instructions to become one of our authors.

Now, for most people, buying an album of MP3s makes a lot of sense.  I mean, who uses cds anymore?  I don’t even know.

But I’ve never bought an album of MP3s.  I bought a single MP3 before, but it was an extenuating circumstance, and not characteristic of my behavior.  I don’t like buying MP3s.  I’ve mentioned before that I think it’s immoral to sell something that can be instantly and perfectly copied, and I still stand by that.

And it’s equally immoral to take that thing without permission, so I only use BitTorrent for authorized files, like Linux distributions.

So, how did I end up buying an album of MP3s?  Well, it’s because Amazon isn’t Manfred Macx.  They don’t give you the options that we do.  I can’t download the album (Outside if you’re curious) for free and pay $500 to have a drink with David Bowie (which would be pretty cool.  You’d pay for that, wouldn’t you?  He’s, like, a legend).  And it just seemed silly to buy a cd that I didn’t want, and then wait for it to ship.

As an aside, the process to buy an album was incredibly annoying.  Amazon requires you to use their special MP3 downloader if you want to buy a full album.  Installing it wasn’t too bad, but every time a song finished downloading, it tried to open up Windows Media Player.  I don’t use Windows Media Player.  It’s a piece of junk that came with the operating system, and I want nothing to do with it.  I couldn’t choose a download location, either.  The entire experience was just bad.  But now I have the MP3s.

I realized at some point that my stubborn refusal to buy digital content was hurting me more than it was hurting those selling it.  I still don’t like it, and I still won’t do it often, but it’s silly to stick to my guns, at my own expense, while the vast majority still thinks I’m crazy.

Better to show them that these old business models are tired and outdated, relics of a time when it was hard to distribute content.  Creating the art is still hard.  So is polishing it (the sound engineers, the book editor, etc), and marketing it.  But distributing it?  The only reason you need anyone to distribute your work is to collect the money.  Stop charging for the content, spend that money connecting with your fans, and make it easy for them to give you money for other things.  That’s what we’re doing, and we hope you all will join us.