Today we are launching a new service that allows writing contests, competitions, and festivals to use our technology to filter, sort, route, and display entrants’ submissions to judges or reviewers.  No more copying and mailing writing samples – Creative Byline manages the whole thing.  So, whether your contest judges are all in one place or halfway across the globe, we’ve got you covered.  You can find more about how it works here.

I’m very pleased that our first client for the new service is the 2010 Festival of Faith and Writing (press release).  Writers attending the festival are provided with the option of submitting a manuscript to attending editors, and this year we’ll be managing their process online.  We’ve  worked closely with the Festival to mimic a process that works for them, but we know that we haven’t covered all the varieties of contests and festivals.  Are you responsible for managing a flow of manuscripts or writing samples?  Would an online system to manage the entire process be helpful?  Let us know.

Or, as M.J. Rose says in this excellent post about the current relationship between authors and publishers, “After all, we’re doing more than writing our books, we’re business partners as well.”
 
Writers have and will continue to have more and more options for monetizing their writing. Understanding which options are best at any given time requires knowledge of the business and landscape of the ever-morphing world of publishing. To help, we’ve done some small things in our new site release: adding industry news to the writer’s home page and doing more articles, essays, and interviews about the business of writing. We’ll be adding features that help track what’s happening in the marketplace. 

That’s why I am so pleased with our announcement yesterday of a marketing agreement with Bowker’s PubTrack. Bowker is a well-respected information provider in the publishing industry. Their PubTrack data offers excellent insight (based on a monthly sampling of 12,000 U.S. consumers) into buying trends and the demographics of book buyers and readers. On the Creative Byline site, whenever a writer’s manuscript is presented to a subscribing editor, we’ll do a “mash-up” of PubTrack data on how that particular genre is performing in the marketplace and typical buyers in that genre. (The PubTrack information is fascinating, and we are presenting only a small portion of what is available from Bowker.)

Equally exciting is that this same data is available to our writer members! Being able to see the business side of the publishing industry—the shape of the market, typical readers—will help writers understand the kind of responses they can expect from editors, and to plan their next projects.
 
One of the other underpinnings of Creative Byline is that by getting the manuscript submission process online (versus snail mail), there are many “mash-ups” we can do to enhance the experience for both writers and editors. Stay tuned, as the Bowker PubTrack announcement is just the beginning.

In addition to those institutional filters, consumers employ personal filters – the way they go from all available book choices down to the ones they purchase or consider purchasing.  There are many types of personal filters: a specific genre (“I only read sci-fi”), books reviews (or perhaps a specific reviewer), specific authors, recommendations from friends, the book jacket (if browsing at a store), online recommendations (“if you like Life of Pi, you might also like…”), and so on.

Bowkers PubTrack Consumer (a monthly survey of 3,000 consumers regarding their reading and book buying habits), confirms the strength of the institutional filter: More than three times as many people become aware of a book because of a store display than through a recommendaton from another person. The data does provide insight into personal filters, too; as reasons for purchasing a book, readers said:

• Recommendations, 5%
• Character/series, 7%
• Adding to collection, 8%
• Type of book, 8%
• Topic/subject, 17%
• Author, 17%

As their own filters make publishers’ reputations, personal filters affect people’s reputations as readers or book selectors. When a consumer decides that she is not getting good recommendations from a friend, she’ll look to different sources. When a reader is disappointed by an author, loses interest in a topic, or whatever, he’ll reshape his filters—and recommend different books to his friends.

Note that I’m not addressing the creation portion of the book, that is, the work of the author; nor the fulfillment side (purchase transaction, delivery [print or electronic]).   I’m not including these in the discussion because I believe there will always be authors creating content, and if anything they are increasing their power in the equation. And much has been written about the fulfillment side (everything from the influence of Amazon or Google, to POD, and the never-ending discussion of print versus ebooks).  Frankly, I see the filter discussion – and the connection of authors to readers – as much more interesting, and less predictable.

So, combined, institutional filters and personal filters are the current mechanism for sorting all of the book content that could be available, down to the book that a consumer will take to the beach on their summer vacation.  An important characteristic of how these two filters work is that they both have their “book recommendation reputations” at stake each time they endorse a book – the choices they make have an impact on the long-term success of the filter itself.

But to be successful (i.e., turn a profit consistently), MacMillan (or any other traditional publisher) needs also to pick books that people want to buy; let’s call this buyability. With their endorsement, publishers ensure both the quality of the book and its buyability. Obviously, it doesn’t work for every book, but publishers stake their reputations on doing this—on enough books and repeatedly over time. It’s because of this endorsement, and thus reputation, that the large retailers (Barnes & Noble, Target, Walmart) stock their shelves with products primarily from traditional publishers. It doesn’t mean that a self-published book can’t make its way onto the shelves at Barnes & Noble, but it’s fairly unusual. Most self-published books are sold online.

According to a presentation given by Kelly Gallagher of Bowker PubTrack at the Making Information Pay 2009 conference, “41% of all book purchases are in a retail setting, versus 27% online.”  Likewise, Bowker finds “37% of books purchased are due to the title being on the shelf/spinning rack/display.” Traditional publishers pretty much “own” the brick and mortar channel for books and do just fine online as well. The online self-publishing industry appears to be flourishing, but for authors who want to make money, books need to be in traditional retail outlets (at least for now).

So, even though it is possible for an author to publish a book himself (by LuLu, CreateSpace, etc.), create buzz (FaceBook, Twitter, MySpace), and generate sales (online retailers like Amazon), writers still flock to traditional publishers to get their books published because the publishers’ “endorsement value” still translates into the surest way for an author to maximize the monetization of their work. The “endorsement value” of a traditional publisher—coupled with the continued power of traditional retail—still holds. It’s not the only way for an author to make money any more, but for now it’s still the most reliable. I’ll stake my reputation on it.

Next: The Online Impact of Quality and Buyability

At the same time, authors (and publishers) are seeing advantages in building an online presence for an author—to attract a following who will buy books, content, and other stuff. But building an online presence and the following takes full engagement from the author for content, conversation, and engagement with readers; it’s not a one-time event, like a book release. The traditional book contract, however, revolves around the event of the book’s release.

Perhaps in the future, the relationship between writers and publishers will be more like professional athletes and the clubs they are under contract with—defined by a specific time period. Let’s say an author is under contract to Tor for two years. During that time they will blog on Tor.com, speak at the SFWA annual meeting, do a promotional tour with other Tor authors, and write a book. Perhaps they get a stipend for being on the Tor roster, in addition to bonuses for achieving certain goals (weekly blog reads, book unit sales, whatever). The author is free to work on other deals outside of his or her contract (movies, video games).

This analogy also models a good co-branding strategy. LeBron James is a brand, but so is the Cleveland Cavaliers. There are things that the two brands do together under contract (play basketball games, participate in certain charity events) and things they do separately (James has endorsements, and the Cavs sell Cavs merchandise).  Just like the author and Tor (well, kind of).

Does anyone know of time-based author contracts (versus book-based)? To carry the analogy one step further, publishers could also have farms clubs where young writers could develop… never mind.

• On her blog, Gretchen McNeil featured an interview with agent Ginger Clark about the trends in the YA fiction arena, and why writers should care about trends.
• Author Hope Vestergaard makes a guest appearance on Alice Pope’s CWIM blog. Publishing professionals typically provide advice to writers; she turns the tables by providing dos and don’ts to editors, and then to agents.
• Although I don’t agree with everything in this TheBigMoney article, it’s a good read on why devices like the Kindle Reader can have a significant influence on the industry.
• According to The New York Times, a new alternative-incarceration program “allows felons and other offenders to choose between going to jail or joining a book club.” No comment.

All but the largest imprints are a thing of the past. For those of us who came to the publishing industry from other industries, the whole imprint thing was a puzzle. Classic brand management suggests that the more brands you maintain, the higher your costs and the more you dilute your important brand(s). And in publishing, the end customer (the reader) could generally not care less about which imprint produced a book. In these tough economic times, publishers are consolidating imprints to reduce organizational redundancy and focus the brand dollars. Recently MacMillan consolidated their six children’s imprints into one division, under a brand (MacMillan Children’s Publishing Group) that will likely mean something to the end consumer.

At the conference, Michael Hyatt, CEO of Christian publisher Thomas Nelson, said they consolidated their twenty imprints into one (Thomas Nelson Publishing) two years ago. In addition to the cost and brand-focusing benefits, he has recognized that their organization is benefiting from being more clearly all part of the same team.

So, what brand is important to consumers in the post-imprint world? Authors’ brands—or, as many of the conference attendees called them, “author platforms.”  That makes a lot of sense to those of us who read books. We buy authors, not imprints. To this point, Simon & Schuster launched a new website in January; you won’t find any mention of imprints, but a lot about authors. And look at this quote from the press release announcing their new site:

“Additionally, the site serves as a curator for the author’s brand, aggregating author-related content from around the web so fans can follow activity either by or about the author, whether it is news, Twitter, or blog posts, national and local appearances, and much more. Fans can also be notified about such author activity via an email alert.”

This is great news for authors, but with it comes responsibility to work to build their own brands. As published authors have known for years, the responsibility of promotion of books (and brands) is falling more to authors (and less to publishers) all the time. Writers need to use the web, blogs, and other social media tools to build their brands and create networks of followers who will pay to consume their books and content.

Not all writers write from an outline. But if your novel is done—which is what the editor is really hoping for—then it’s just a matter of summarizing what happens in each chapter.  Even better: In the process of writing the outline, you might spot a few weaknesses in your manuscript that you can then fix before submitting it. There’s information on how to write an outline on our “resources” page, but you must be logged in to access it. (Signing up doesn’t cost anything.)

Here’s what author Robin Koontz said: “I received feedback from Creative Byline quickly and it was helpful with lots of good ideas on how to flesh out the biography I’m writing. I knew the manuscript was incomplete, but wasn’t sure how to proceed so this was a big help. Once I finish up my current project I will be revising and resubmitting it to Creative Byline.” Thanks, Robin!

If you have comments or suggestions, send us an e-mail.

Editors aren’t very keen on the process, either. They know it can make them look heartless, when in fact they wish they had the time to nurture new talent. Their bosses expect them to do more work with fewer resources; some publishers, as part of cost cutting, have gotten rid of the first readers that used to take the burden off editors. Still, editors are optimists at heart, ever hopeful that the next manuscript they pick up will be one in a million—the one they fall in love with. (Editors, tell us your biggest gripe. Take the 15-second survey.)