Editors

While many in publishing will disparage Amazon, agent Robert Gottlieb admits to being a fan. The legendary agency who worked his way up at the William Morris Agency and discovered such authors as Tom Clancy, said in a podcast interview with Copyright Clearance Center’s Chris Kenneally, that he uses Amazon to look for new authors.

Here is an excerpt from the interview:

“I enjoy working with Amazon.  They’re innovative.  They are giving authors a very, very good deal on the e-book rights to their books as part of the overall publishing matrix that you arrange with them.  That’s a very important factor because it’s not just a front list business, but it’s a back list business, and as the mass market business continues to decline, the back list business will be in the e-book business, and those publishers who are giving the most advantageous royalties in the e-book business are going to be the ones who are the best ones to be in business for authors … I also believe that Amazon has demonstrated the capability across its platform to work on authors’ behalf in terms of marketing and promotion, which has not existed previously in our industry.”

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Paris Review editor Lorin Stein made headlines last month when he spoke about the changing world of literary journals: “We used to think of [the readership] as a little old lady who lived on the Upper East Side … [She's] moved to Florida and now she’s on Facebook, on Skype, with her grandkids.”

In our Media Beat interview this week, Electric Literature co-founder Andy Hunter explained how his literary journal has coped with this evolving readership.

The complete interview is embedded above. Stay tuned the rest of the week for the next two installments. Hunter will be one of many guests at Mediabistro’s eBook Summit on December 15th.

The eBook reporting world had a big deal break during the winter storm today. The digital book reporting website TeleRead was purchased by the Gadgetell subsidiary of the North American Publishing Company (NAPCO) today.

Editor David Rothman reports that he will be leaving his role as editor and publisher, but his co-editor Paul Biba will take over as editor. In addition, senior writer Chris Meadows will also remain with the blog. NAPCO has been in business since 1958, running 16 magazines in addition to such online enterprises as email newsletters and the Gadgetell tech blog.

Here’s more about the sale, from Rothman: “Our sale to NAPCO happened for several reasons. We needed more resources to survive the remainder of this recession and compete with the growing number of other e-book-related sites. Also, I suffered a heart attack in 2008 and prefer to spend my mornings–when I’m at my freshest–on walking and other cardio-exercise rather than reading RSS feeds.”

This weekend, Farrar, Straus & Giroux president Jonathan Galassi published an op-ed piece in The New York Times essentially railing against Open Road Media’s claim to William Styron’s eBook rights, a subject which has been much-debated in recent weeks, especially since Random House, Styron’s longtime publisher, made its big backlist rights grab at the end of last year.

Galassi specifically expresses skepticism in the particular case of Styron’s works, citing the indelible imprint of Styron’s Random House editors, copyeditors, designers, etc, on the finished work that Open Road plans to publish. More generally, Galassi argues that a company like Open Road is merely a distributor, and that, “A publisher–and I write as one–does far more than print and sell a book. It selects, nurtures, positions and promotes the writer’s work…An e-book distributor is not a publisher, but rather a purveyor of work that has already been created. In this way, e-books are no different from large-print or paperback or audio versions.”

That last statement especially may seem frustrating to many on the leading edge of the eBook world–the words of the old guard afraid of the new world. The ever-incendiary Mike Cane finds Galassi childish at best: “Are you going to whine like a crybaby after a business arrangement has been concluded that we owe you–what?–emotional loyalty?”

So what do you think? Is Galassi justifiably trying to make sure publishers don’t miss out on the payoff for all the work they’re done? Or is he once again expressing the fears of a dying publishing business? Do you think publishers still usefully provide the services Galassi cites?

Jane Friedman’s current project, Open Road Media, is eBook venture about which people have lots of questions. Friedman logged on to Twitter today and answered some of those questions in a Twitter discussion led by Charlotte Abbot and Kat Meyer (#followreader). As of this posting the conversation is still going on, but here are some of the highlights, in a sort of Harper’s Index flurry.

Friedman said that the first Open Road titles will be released Spring 2010. She says the company will think of the author and their works as the brand. Agents will be involved in brokering deals with Open Road “where appropriate.”

The company plans to deliver formats for various eReader devices, like Kindle, Nook and Sony. Open Road is not like Vook–not doing text and video together. The company is acquiring fiction and nonfiction for a studio line of eBooks called “E-riginals.”

Open Road will rely heavily on social networks. Open Road will begin promoting as soon as the contract is signed, presumably using social networks. Friedman predicts “Exponential” growth in the eBook market.

See you next week.

Over at GalleyCat–eBookNewser’s not-quite-as-digital sibling–Senior Editor (and soon–to-be director of e-marketing strategy at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) Ron Hogan weighs in on this week’s news about Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and HarperCollins delaying frontlist eBooks. He starts out with a baseball metaphor (which, admittedly, this blogger does not understand), and then goes on to make some very good non-sports-oriented points about the ways publishers are essentially setting themselves against readers with these delays.

“If you want to create an enduring hardcover-digital-paperback cycle,” says Hogan, “you need to convince readers, especially digital-embracing readers, that this cycle offers them genuine value, and that’s where these decisions seem to have failed most, because Young and Reidy (and HarperCollins CEO Brian Murray) have not made (or, perhaps, have not had the opportunity to make) a fully compelling argument that withholding content from a small but significant class of passionate readers for several months actually benefits those readers. The main argument for establishing a timetable, as Reidy articulated it, is “we need to do this now, before the installed base of e-book reading devices gets to a size where doing it would be impossible.” That’s not about publishers helping readers, it’s about saving themselves, and you see why readers might take umbrage.”

And so what are publishers going to do about this? Do they realize they’re pissing off their end-customers? Hopefully this is one of the problems Hogan plans to address in his new role at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and hopefully he’ll set an example for other publishers. Things are changing pretty fast. Publishers need to start thinking faster. (That’s kind of a sports metaphor, isn’t it?)