Chicago Review Press also publishes under three imprints:

Chicago Review Press editors will have profiles available on the Creative Byline system in mid-August.  Welcome, Chicago Review Press, to the Creative Byline community.

When we interviewed writers earlier this year, we confirmed that most of them have experience writing in a variety of media (blogs, magazines, newsletters, scripts, and, yes, books).  They are writers first, book authors second.  Putting this together with our publisher client’s challenge with finding a writer with very specific experience led us to conclude that we could help our writer members (and our publishing clients) with a new set of tools on Creative Byline.

These new tools allow writers to develop a robust online portfolio of their writing background and experiences. This is matched with a sophisticated search capability for editors and publishers to find exactly the type of writer they are looking for.  There are a number of other “profile” capabilities on the web for book authors to create a platform and attract readers, but ours is focused earlier in the process… attracting editors who may be interested in acquiring a writer’s content.  We’ll roll out this and other exciting enhancements to Creative Byline soon.

Year five? It’s not that what’s in the business plan isn’t my best estimate of what will transpire: It is. I spend a lot of time making make sure all of the information and figures are congruent and consistent, even out in year five. But the odds of us actually hitting the year five plan as written are 1000:1.

It’s not because I’m bad at forecasting. It’s because we’re starting a new venture, and we’ll learn things along the way that will enable us to adjust our path. Which I think is a good thing and part of the fun of building something new: You’ve got to be willing to adjust along the way—and get good at it!

It’s not enough, of course, to be willing to make changes to the business plan. It’s critical that you’re gathering feedback from customers and using that information to make adjustments to your products and services. Over this past year we’ve received great feedback through Creative Byline Client Services (and one of the pieces of feedback is that you love our Client Services service. Thanks!). 

So a couple of months ago we set out to determine what we could do to make Creative Byline a more valuable tool for connecting writers and editors. We did surveys and phone interviews with writers, we spoke with editors, we brainstormed, we tried to get a sense of where the industry was headed (both for writers and for written content). Then we adjusted our plan.  And we think both our publishing clients and our writer members will like where we’re headed.

So, in August we’ll formally drop the “Beta” from our site name and introduce new capabilities and services for both writers and publishers.  I doubt these are the last changes we’ll see for Creative Byline before we get to year five of our plan, but for right now, they’re feeling right on target. We’ll share more details over the next few weeks.

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.

This makes a lot of sense, but it also brings up two other points. First, will publishers earn the same margin on different formats? Clearly, publishers are thinking not, because Amazon offering e-books for $9.99 seems to be raising a stink. Recently, Carolyn K. Reidy, CEO of Simon & Schuster, told the New York Times. “I don’t believe that a new book by an author should ipso facto be less expensive electronically than it is in paper format.” Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, argued to the contrary, saying, “readers are going to demand that [e-books are cheaper than printed books], and they are right because there are so many supply-chain efficiencies relative to printing a paper book.”

Secondly, as the popularity of varying formats grows (dedicated e-reader, mobile devices, traditional format, audio) what do authors need to consider that wasn’t important before?  For example, e-readers have crisp screens that can be read in just about any light, but they are [now] monochromatic. In nonfiction, color photographs won’t have the same impact; charts and graphs need something other than color to be meaningful. Or, for a fiction author, what are the pacing implications of reading a novel on an iPhone with smaller page sizes? Scott Meyers gave a great talk (“Authoring Challenges in a Multiplatform World”) on this at TOC.

I believe in addition to challenges for authors, these expanded platforms offer opportunities for new types of authoring that weren’t possible before (blog post).  E-books and e-readers will continue to gain popularity, but they will also push traditional thinking about books, publishing, and authoring.

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.

Don’t wait to sign up—it’s still free! Once you’ve uploaded a manuscript (or even just the title of your project and the genre) to Creative Byline, you’ll automatically receive an e-mail telling you which editor is looking for the kind of manuscript you’ve written. Sign up now, work on your profile, and get your manuscript into the system so that when the editors are ready, you are, too.