Perth Writers' Festival 2012

It is a busy day today. I have been booking my itinerary for the Perth Writers' Festival for 2012.

I really enjoyed myself at the festival last year and am looking forward to this year's event. For anyone who wants to go or just wants to see what is happening, check out the links for the program. Jo Nesbo will be there, so crime writing is well represented.

Online itinerary.
Download the brochure.

Books for tall people

Clearly this is a bookstore or library catering to a couple of Dutch customers. All the Dutch people I know are scientists, so they need a reference section there as well.

Bah, humbug

It is the season to be jolly, apparently. The jolliest people are, of course, retailers, who are doing their impersonations of Scrooge McDuck swimming. The rest of us are just happy to have some time off work and an excuse to eat until our arteries congeal and drink until the tile floor looks comfy.

Don't get me wrong, Xmas is a lovely time of year, but I have some issues with it.

1) It's Xmas not Christmas.
This celebration stopped being about Christ's birthday when shops started advertising how many shopping days there were left before Xmas. I'm glad we have the holiday but lets stop pretending it is a religious holiday. To the 16% of Australian's (check your country stats here) who actually attend church, feel free to ignore this point. And yes I'm aware of the irony here.

2) Xmas cards.
I understand the idea of sending correspondence to family and friends and given the "holiday season" it only seems logical to catch up with people. But I'm under 40, so I have Facebook, Twitter, Email, Linkedin, mobile phones, and know how to use them. Sending cards feels like people the world over are taking a vow of technophobia in order to contract hand cramps and level a rain forest.

3) Xmas lights.
I think the goal of Xmas lights, if I am understanding them correctly, is blind people in the space station orbiting Earth. In the day and age of climate change, when we really should be cutting down on energy usage, we decide to set up a whole lot of lights to blind people. It has become a competition between neighbours and streets to see who can have the most gaudy display of flashing eyesores. The winner is usually the person or street who wake up to the electricity bill in January realising they need a second job and to sell a kidney.

4) Caroling.
Why is it that people only remember for the other eleven months of the year that they can't sing?
Which also brings me to:

5) Xmas songs.
I'm not talking about the traditional carols here, I'm talking about the saccharine odes to love and presents that bombard the airwaves from every pop singer/group the world has to offer. These "artists" were barely tolerable in small doses as it was, but the competition to have the highest selling drink coaster means you can't even go near a TV or radio for fear of diabetes and the desire to hug a puppy.

6) The celebrity biography.
Speaking of stocking stuffers, every Xmas there must be more celebrity biographies bought for Dads the world over than any other time of year. In fact, it is safe to say that the book reading statistics are built on this Xmas tradition of buying a book no-one wants to read for people who don't read in the first place. Is it really a surprise that so few people read when the only book they start each year is about the mundane life of somebody with decent hand-eye coordination or a backstabbing politician proposing to tell all, but really just relating the party political line of events. I'd prefer the socks.

With that said, Merry Xmas everyone!

Dear Buddha, please bring me a pony and a plastic rocket.

An Update - Publishing Figures

I posted a few days ago about how publishing houses had had a fairly good year. All the publishers who had embraced e-books had seen an increase in profits and were probably uncorking some champagne and planning a big Xmas party to celebrate. Jill in accounting was probably going to receive a bonus as well.

The sales figures were released a week or so ago for the third quarter of this year, or is that first quarter of the financial year, and why is that different from a normal year; just to be different or annoying? E-books appear to be continuing to replace the mass market paperback, which makes sense. Given the publisher's bottom lines and these market indicators, we could see a speed up in the push for e-books by the major players in the industry. It might also be whining time for bookstores, well, more-so.

BOOKSELLING

Mass Market Paperback Sales Down 54%

By Jason Boog on December 1, 2011 3:47 PM

According to the Association of American Publishers (AAP) net sales revenue report for September 2011, the adult mass paperback category declined 54 percent (to $31 million) in September compared to the same period last year.
At the same time, adult hardcover sales dropped 18 percent (to $148.3) while eBook sales doubled to $80.3 million. Above, we’ve embedded the AAP’s sales chart.
Here’s more: “With September also being the start of the 2011-2012 academic year, Higher Education showed a nearly 9% gain in net revenue vs September 2010. Additionally, there was significant growth in the category of Professional Books (in the Professional and Scholarly Publishing division) in September, increasing nearly 13% … The September report represents data provided by 80 US publishers and is produced by the Association of American Publishers.”

Barry Eisler on Publishing

Barry Eisler is an interesting fellow, but this blog post is mainly for my writer friends.

I can't claim to have read any of Barry's books yet - although I have bought two which are waiting on my Kindle to-be-read list - but he does have some interesting things to say about publishing and writing. These videos are from a Q&A session he did in Boston. Enjoy.


Barry Eisler, Publish It Forward Lecture Part 1 from Grub Street on Vimeo.


Barry Eisler, Publish It Forward Part 2 (Q&A) from Grub Street on Vimeo.


Barry Eisler, Publish It Forward Part 3 (Q&A) from Grub Street on Vimeo.

In financial trouble? Play dominoes!

Yes, bookstores may be generally declining, or doing their impersonation of climate change deniers, but apparently it can be solved by playing dominoes.

I reckon it is worth visiting this store for two reasons.
1) They made this pretty cool ad.
2) This looks like a store that would have just about any book you are looking for.
3) Someone needs to beat up the hippie playing guitar cross-legged.

Marketing ideas - Jesus style

We had a knock on the door this morning. A lady was inquiring if we "followed the bible". My immediate reaction was to say something like, "Inanimate objects don't really take me places these days." Of course I was very polite and told her that my dog was hungry. She persisted with, "Do you follow God?" to whit I retorted, "Which one?"

I should point out at this juncture that I'm not against religion or religious people. Religion has done some good things and it has done some bad things. If we were to express their good versus bad as a baseball batting average, then I'd have to learn something about baseball.

Anyway, this got me thinking, which has been known to happen occasionally. Religious people are often very keen to sell their religion door-to-door. They often have pamphlets, invites to their church (or whatever), or even their indoctrination material for sale. I am yet to have a scientist knock on my door of a Sunday morning, "Have you heard the word of Newton?" At least with scientists door knocking they could fix the zero-point anomaly in our laundry; it's starting to cause a gravity sink.

See, this would be brilliant marketing for any author. Imagine an entire squad of people devoted to spreading the word about your book/s. Unpaid labourers whose goal it was to sell your writing to everyone. Of course this wouldn't be easy to arrange. I'm not sure I can afford the price of souls these days - what with the economy and all - so getting boots on the ground might either take a lot of  enigmatic persuasion or be the realm of wealthy authors.

There are plenty of examples of this happening. If you do a little digging you can find how L Ron Hubbard got his book Battlefield Earth on the bestseller lists. Every Scientologist was sent out to buy a copy, which they then sent back to the "church" (I use that term loosely) and the books were sent to the stores again to be resold. Brilliant!

Obviously not every author can create their own religion to sell books, but maybe there is something to be made use of here. Maybe your local Jehovah's Witness may need some extra redemption and would like to sell your book door-to-door if you promise to not set the bear traps on the doorstep. Think about it!

Book sales: told ya!

There is nothing better than to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women. The other thing that is quite nice is to be right.

In fairness a lot of people were right. Konrath has been saying for years that e-books will replace DTB (dead tree books). I posted a prediction here about what the market will look like by the end of the decade. I said that e-books would win. Guess what: they are starting their winning streak.

The figures are in for the publishing industry (source: Association of American Publishers). The year to date shows strong growth in e-book revenue, declines in anything you can't download, and that there is a growing market for Christian fiction. Maybe I should write a Christian thriller, with Jesus as the central protagonist, a man who had been forsook, turned to alcohol (well it starts out as water), and investigates paranormal phenomena in the wake of his death. I smell best-seller!

Something that jumps right out at me with these figures is that numbers don't jump. The other thing is that e-books have essentially replaced the other mediums (if you ignore kids books). E-books have grown from 7% to 18% in 12 months - I hate the 144% figure as it is misleading, I've always preferred quoting figures as a proportion of the total. The change in kids books then accounts for the decline in the industry of $100 million.

E-books are doing very well.

Save Books Now

Save the books, stop watching terrible TV!

Hard-copy books need to fight

There is a call to arms for all lovers of books. No longer can we stand by and have e-books take our readers. They may take our ink, they may take our paper, but they may never take our reading material!

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/ct-oped-0804-books-20110804,0,3970003.story

I think they are right. Books have been derailed by technology. So, to combat this, I have recruited a top advertising agency to help out. They will be promoting the smell, feel, taste and texture of real books. The smell of gold leaf that was painstakingly applied by the hands of a skilled monk. The smell of candle wax that was used for light by the monks. The texture of papyrus and hemp paper. The acrid taste in your mouth from inhaling calligraphy inks. The weight of a clay or stone tablet as it crushes your hands.

Gutenburg was wrong when he brought in mass production print. We must fight back and stop these false books from becoming the norm.

Rally behind the stone tablet and the scroll. Say no to the printing press!