INFRASTRUCTURE

The more I write on this series the more “boring” it seems to become. Why? Because I’m not revealing anything particularly new or uncovering the secret to getting published. However, the goal has been to talk about things that the traditional can do quite well. And this series ultimately is a journey through the innards of the publishing business.

Today we discuss infrastructure. I’m talking about the yawn-worthy topics of accounting, licensing, legal protection, and metadata.

A publisher must account for all revenue with the IRS and pay both corporate and state taxes. If you self-publish you have to handle this all on your own, and technically, if you travel to another state and sell your books in that state you should be paying the sales taxes in that state. The large publisher handles all of this for you and navigates the tax issues across state boundaries.

But beyond the simple tracking of money, another accounting function is price verification, sales validation, and sales report standardization. (An argument could be made that some of this is really more the responsibility of the sales department.) The publisher must make sure that every one of their titles is priced correctly at all their retail outlets, both brick-and-mortar and web stores. Then they have to have a way to validate that sales have actually been made and revenue has been received. And last they must have systems in place that standardize the information flow so that reports and audits can be handled without confusion or misunderstanding. If you are publishing on your own it can be a bit tough to get customer service at XYZ big chain to take your call and fix the info about your book, or to even get paid. I know of a situation where an independent author was doing rather well with their book until a major chain decided to “slow pay” and the author did not have the money to support the continued printing and distribution of their project. Without clout they were unable to fight successfully. (Sounds like an argument for ebooks, but that is another subject entirely!)

Anything related to foreign rights licensing can be incredibly complex. For example, if a book is licensed in English and is sold in Canada, but the license does not include Australia or South Africa, there has to be someone watching to make sure the territory boundaries are honored. We have a missionary friend in France who is frustrated by the inability to purchase certain English titles in France on his Kindle because the publisher only has North American English rights…and the European English rights have not yet been secured. I suspect we often forget that publishing is a global concern. Recently we received a royalty report at our agency for a client’s book that had been translated and sold in Korea. That Korean edition has sold nearly as many copies as the U.S. edition, and in less time. Amazing.

Some authors are very concerned with piracy and copyright violations. Sometimes this is very appropriate. I did have one person state that piracy is not the problem for most authors, instead the problem is obscurity. And yet you don’t want your book stolen and sold somewhere else. An author friend of mine discovered her entire Bible Study (published by a major publisher) online…verbatim…with another person’s name on it as author.  Would you want that to happen with your book?

I attended a presentation last year on “Digital Initiatives” made by very smart people from Hachette. They discussed their use of “Attributor Monitors” to scour the Internet for illegal versions of their book titles. I was shocked to hear that they discover and send out 1,500 take-down notices to illegal sites, every month (saying, in essence, take the illegal book down from your site, or else). Fifteen hundred! They get better than 99% compliance with the request, worldwide. (It is understandable that they would have that level of trouble since Hachette publishes the Twilight franchise.) I suspect that when a company like Hachette contacts the illegal site with their powerful legal team, the offending site owner is willing to comply. But if you tried to do it on your own, you would be ignored.

They also work very hard to protect their digital properties from theft by using a form of Digital Rights Management (DRM). And since there are multiple platforms for ebooks this can be somewhat complex. (Mobi for the Kindle; e-pub for the Nook and iBookstore; and PDF are just a few examples.) One recent complaint from a Kindle user showed how this worked. The Kindle user was highlighting and clipping numerous quotes from their ebook, but was informed that they had exceeded the limit for clipping. This was a DRM limit set by the publisher to prevent a reader from copying and pasting the entire book and possibly distributing the contents via the Internet. Of course someone could just re-type the entire book and have the same result, but the publisher was at least attempting to make it harder to “steal.” Obviously, in this particular case, the publisher had set the clipping threshold too low and offended a user.

Another legal protection issue is the fact that we have a litigious society. Lawsuits can be very expensive and lengthy to process. A famous example is the $136 million dollar defamation lawsuit brought against Harvest House and one of their books. The suit took six years to be resolved, with Harvest House and the authors being exonerated. (Read the complete report here.) I don’t know about you, but I’d prefer to have a strong legal team on my side than to have to go it alone.

Last in today’s line-up is Metadata management. This is the information filled out by the publisher for each book they publish. When you search for a book on Amazon.com there is a list of titles that pop up by other writers that would appeal to the viewer of this specific book. How does Amazon.com know this? It is an algorithm based on the information found beyond just the title author and price info and is found in the metadata. The Book Industry Study Group has provided a Metadata Best Practices guide in which they identify thirty-one key pieces of data that are necessary for every book.

Hanna Johnson, in her article “How to Sell More Books with Metadata” wrote, “It’s not just about ISBN numbers and titles anymore. Enhanced metadata can increase discoverability of books and provide marketing information to the entire publishing supply chain.” (If you want a simplified breakdown on this issue, read Carla King’s excellent article “A Self-Publisher’s Guide to Metadata for Books.”) But now Enhanced metadata is becoming more critical. That made me laugh the first time I heard that statement because most folks don’t even know “metadata” much less an “enhanced” version of it!

Let me ask you a question (those of you who have read all 1,000 words of this post). Was any of this “news” to you? Have you considered some of these complexities before? Or, in your opinion, does it even matter?

Part One: Introduction

Part Two: Curation

Part Three: Editorial

Part Four: Design

Part Five: Infrastructure

DESIGN

Napoleon Bonaparte, is supposed to have said, “Un bon croquis vaut mieux qu’un long discours,” translated “A good sketch is better than a long speech.” That has morphed into the modern phrase “A picture is worth a thousand words,” which is a fundamental truth when talking of book design.

Another cliché states, “don’t judge a book by its cover,” but we do it all the time. We are a visual people and our eyes are drawn to images that capture our imagination. In my opinion, the title and the cover vie for preeminence as the most important part of the presentation of a book to a potential reader.

I wish every author could attend a cover discussion meeting at a major publishing house. In that meeting the art director displays all the cover samples created by a designer in a room full of people (editorial, sales, marketing, and management) and opens it up for discussion. There can be as many as twelve very different designs from which to choose. Often one cover immediately jumps to the front. But there are occasions where the typeface is good on one jacket but the colors are better on another. The art director takes copious notes and has the designer work through it again.

After a final “winner” is chosen the cover is supposed to be shown to the author and the agent (sometimes we get two or three “winners” from which to choose). Then that cover is made part of the sales conference presentation and those sales reps then start showing it to key dealers and buyers around the country. There are many times where the feedback from the key accounts causes the cover to be completely redesigned before it is shipped. This is why you will occasionally see a cover on Amazon.com for pre-order and then the actual jacket is different when released.

Design and packaging is one the major strengths of the traditional publishing process. Thousands of dollars are spent on getting top level designers (some are designed in-house and others are outsourced to the tune of $3,000 to $5,000). And the rigorous vetting of that design within the company and with key accounts is nearly irreplaceable.

At the hope of embarrassment, I believe that Paul Higdon, the Creative Director at Bethany House Publishers, is one of the finest cover design coordinators in the industry. The covers for Bethany House fiction have been industry leaders for a long time. If you want to see him at work, read this interview with Paul and see a cover design being created. It is worth the time to read.

Those who want to forego the traditional publishing route need to remember one thing, don’t let your own personal taste be the final vote. What you think is gorgeous may make another person heave. (A simple walk down the mall observing fashion choices is a case in point.) This is not the place to bargain hunt or be shallow with a comment like “I just don’t like the color pink.”

Even if the book is only going to be purchased online, the consumer will still be attracted by a great cover. But online the cover is the size of a postage stamp which creates an enormous design challenge.

In addition to the cover design, the entire package of the book is critical. Everything from back cover copy to author photo to the interior font to the trim size to the design of the spine to the type of paper on which the book is printed. Admittedly this is becoming homogenized by ebook technology where the reader chooses the font type and size…and the page size disappears. But for now over 80% of all books sold are bound and in physical form, not digital.

Ever wonder why some books are thick and others thin, but have the same page count? That is due to ppi (page per inch). Paper stock can come in a massive variety of weight and thickness and texture. If the spine of a book is designed to fit a width of 0.87 inches (based on standard ppi) but the production manager chooses a thicker paper, the spine art will not fit properly. You’ve probably seen examples of this sloppy work,  but it is rare to find among professional designers and publishers. They work very hard on those details. At Bethany House we once chose a very low ppi for a book so that it would feel very thick despite the fact it was barely over 200 pages long. Along with a hardcover package and a great slip cover jacket, the book “felt” like it was worth more money and the publisher was able to price it accordingly. It was a highly successful project and spawned four other similar titles.

When thinking of the issue of design and packaging, two watershed examples of came to mind. First was in 1989 with the release of The Beginner’s Bible by a little company called Questar Publishers. I was working in the bookstore at the time and still remember the gasp when I opened the box and picked up that book for the first time. I exclaimed, “We didn’t order enough of these!” Immediately went to the phone and ordered another 100 copies. The trim size, interior design, the artwork, the price point, everything worked. The packaging was absolutely perfect. It quickly became the bestselling children’s book in the Christian market and is considered a “classic” today. (Trivia moment: Questar Publishers later became Multnomah Publishers. But then somehow lost the publication rights to The Beginner’s Bible which is why it is now published by Zondervan. Multnomah was sold to Waterbrook in 2006.)

The other example was Jesus Freaks: Stories of Those Who Stood for Jesus by dc Talk and the Voice of the Martyrs. Originally published by Albury Press (in 1999) it went on to sell over one million copies. (click through the above link and take a tour via the “Look Inside” feature on Amazon.com) Never before had there been a paperback book with a combination of a die-cut hole in the cover, a complete inside fold-out cover flap, and deckled edges (click for a definition). Each page was designed and did not use a cookie-cutter look with black ink on white paper. It was both ground-breaking and breath-taking. And incredibly expensive to print. Of course much of its success was due to the incredible popularity of dc Talk as the #1 singing group in the industry, but the book itself had an enormous “cool factor” that made reading about martyrs something everyone wanted to do. (Trivia moment: Albury Press was sold, including the Jesus Freaks book, to Bethany House in January 2002. Thus I was able to be the project manager and editor of the sequel by dc Talk called Jesus Freaks II: Revolutionaries which came out in October of that year.)

In both of these examples it was the physical product that helped created the buzz about the book. Of course the content was great, but its packaging took its popularity to another level. This kind of innovation is happening all the time in the traditional publishing world. Some really smart people are pouring their creativity into each project to give a book its best opportunity to capture a consumer’s attention.

Below is a quick two minute time-lapse video of a book cover being designed. Enjoy!

Part One: Introduction

Part Two: Curation

Part Three: Editorial

Part Four: Design

Part Five: Infrastructure

EDITORIAL

I need to clarify what I’m attempting to do with this series of posts. I am not digging deeper trenches and pouring the dirt over a head that is already buried in the sand. Some think I’m defending a dying industry and failing to see the changes around it. This series is merely an attempt to remind us what traditional publishers do well. Their critics are jettisoning all of traditional publishing as antiquated. But I posit that there is good to be found in the things that brought publishing to this place.

Today’s topic is Editorial – or more completely, “Content Development.”

Many critics say that the day of great editors is past. The legends are gone and instead we now have overworked editors who don’t have time to spend crafting and developing an author’s content into a masterpiece. They have become paper-pushers.

While editors are generally overworked…that is not anything new. It has been that way for a long time. While at Bethany House Publishers I managed the acquisition and editorial development of nearly fifty titles per year. But I did not work alone.

Editing is a multi-person process in the traditional publishing companies. First is the acquisitions editor who finds, defends, acquires, and negotiates the acquisition of a project (i.e. The Curator). Many times the actual content edit (also call the “line”  or “substantive” edit) is done by a different person. The content editor looks for accuracy, balance and fairness, cogency of argument, adequate treatment of the defined subject matters and issues, and also includes conformity to all aspects of the description of the work contained in the original book proposal. (That sentence is an adaptation from actual contract language defining an “Acceptable” manuscript.)

Next comes the copy editor who scours the manuscript looking for accuracy in grammar, citations, and factual content. Then it is sent to a proof reader who scours the work for fine-tuned details in punctuation and other tiny details.

These editors are amazing people. And despite the cutbacks in many major publishing houses there are still a number of truly incredible men and women who stay behind the scenes and pour their minds and hearts into the books they work on.

In the Christian industry I’ll highlight one man as an example (and he will likely be embarrassed by this!). David Kopp is an exceptional editor with Waterbrook Multnomah. He was the one who created the eight million copy bestseller The Prayer of Jabez out of a nearly unpublishable massive manuscript. He worked on the bestseller Do Hard Things by the Harris brothers. And recently he helped transform a book about missions into what is now called Radical (by David Platt) that has been on the NY Times bestseller list for 43 weeks (as of this writing).

This is the type of talented person that sits unknown in an office in a traditional publishing house… helping to create magic. I could rattle off a dozen or more names off the top of my head of similar people who make this happen every day. And that does not include the number of freelancers who are hired by publishers to take up the slack when they cannot meet the demands of the editing process in-house.

A critic might say, “But I can just hire these freelance people myself. Why do I need a traditional publisher?” That is a good point. But it misses a critical part of the process. It is illustrated by the question, “Who pays the invoice?”

Think about it for a moment. In a traditional publishing house the publisher is basically in charge. If there is a major dispute over editorial changes or input, the publisher has final say and contractual clout. Rarely is this used as a hammer, but the writer always knows it is there. In almost every case there are long discussions and a compromise is achieved.

But when the author hires the editor, who is the boss? The writer is the boss. The writer will usually defer to an editor’s comments. But what if your novel is going down a terrible path, a path to commercial destruction? I know of a case where an author was bent on writing a particular storyline and would not take anyone’s advice. His agent was unsuccessful. His writing friends and critique partners could not sway him from the path. If he were self-publishing he would have failed miserably. Instead an editor at a traditional publishing house recognized the talent and came alongside with valuable suggestions. The author, realizing that the editor had the goal of creating a great book, acceded to the advice. The book was saved, is now in print, and being sold in stores everywhere.

I also know of another case where a freelance editor took an author’s manuscript (to be self-published) and rearranged the non-fiction content from a topical presentation to a chronological presentation. (The book was the history of a specialized type of job in our court system.) The editor felt that a history should be told chronologically instead of topically. The author disagreed and made the editor put it all back the way it was in the first draft. Because the author was “paying the invoice” the author’s wishes prevailed. The book did not sell and was not adopted as a textbook, which was the goal of the author.

James Michener once said, “I’m not a good writer; I’ve been a masterful re-writer.” He has a fascinating book called James A. Michener’s Writer’s Handbook (1992). In this work are reproductions of the interaction between Michener and his editor. You can see the original text, the editorial suggestions, and the rewrite. A interesting exchange that is rarely seen.

As with the idea of “curation” I believe the editorial or content development process is a vital part of what a traditional publisher does for an author’s work.

Part One: Introduction

Part Two: Curation

Part Three: Editorial

Part Four: Design

Part Five: Infrastructure