The Warren Adler E-Sheet 15

In this issue:

• Greetings From Publishing Central
• Have I Lost My Mind?
• What Happened to the Children of the Roses?
• Unsubscribe Instructions

	Greetings From Publishing Central We are happy to offer you another issue of the Warren Adler E-Sheet, which keeps you up to date on what is happening in the author's world. We hope you enjoy it.

Have I Lost My Mind?

Nearly two years ago, I had, what I truly believed, was a vision of the future. I would gather together and secure the rights to all of my 26 published books and their foreign translations, digitally convert them into the various e-book and print-on-demand formats, create a website to inform potential readers and interested parties about the content of my various novels, link them to all e-tailers and retailers, promote them in both cyberspace and traditional media and prepare my writing career for the new millennium.

Since many of my books had been published by major publishing companies in the period before there was much awareness of the new technologies that burst upon the scene in the past few years, I was able to accomplish my conversions without legal complications.

". . . I have encountered every conceivable setback and obstacle in creating this new enterprise. I have made profound and costly mistakes."

Although I was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a techie, I had a complete understanding of my motives and their roots. The son of a mostly unemployed and kicked-around great depression victim, I have always sought to gain, within reason and reality, control over my own destiny and not be subject to the whims and caprices of other people, which had been my father's fate. Early on, before my adolescent dream of becoming a novelist had been realized, I had been forced by circumstances to become an entrepreneur finding a business niche in areas where my writing skills could be useful, productive and profitable.

Forgive the digression, but we novelists cannot avoid the temptation to ascribe motivation to just about every human experience including our own. Thus, armed with this baggage of personal history, I set up an umbrella publishing company, complete with ISBN numbers for each format and proceeded to create what I believed was the future for all authors. I knew it was a romantic and ennobling notion and I plunged ahead with all the Dutch courage I could muster convinced I was pointing the way for other authors to rip off their shackles, unchain themselves from the whims of others and take control of their own careers and destiny.

Since that initial vision, I have encountered every conceivable setback and obstacle in creating this new enterprise. I have made profound and costly mistakes. I had no idea that there was more than one format for conversion to digital text. I had no understanding of print-on-demand technology. I had no real insight into the speed of technological change. There was no path to follow. I had to maneuver, blind and clueless through uncharted terrain.

I confess I was completely enamored of the idea that I was, arguably, the only author in the world with my extensive output to do what I was doing. I hired consultants. I hired staff. I outsourced. Mostly, I overpaid. I set up "boutiques" dedicated to my work on every on-line retailer from Amazon to Barnes and Noble, to Fictionwise, Booksurge, Gembooks, and on and on. My books are out there. Sales are rising in both e-books and print-on-demand copies, but not at the rate that warranted such economic risk. Not yet.

Most authors, even those rare ones like me, with a modicum of business experience, would not deign or could afford to enter such an economically risky and very wobbly enterprise. More than once during the process I have asked myself: Have I lost my mind? To complicate matters further, my books are mostly categorized as "relationship" novels and, with the exception of six "mysteries" do not follow any genre path. Nor do they repeat themselves in concept, which is a serious flaw in any marketing scheme.

What the hell, I told myself, it was my nickel and my career? And I took comfort in the idea that I was preserving my past copyrights as a viable entity beyond the grave, meaning my progeny would have the benefit of my book sales for 75 years after I have checked out.

I was completely aware of the fact that even if I created the infrastructure for informational exposure and book sales, the key was promotion. How would I inform people that my books, my backlist, were out there in a second life, available for sale, as they say, everywhere books are sold? Cyberspace is infinite. The web is a junkyard of hustlers hooking everything from penis and breast enlargement, mortgages, auctions, hate, sex, frauds, bizarre schemes and enough information to clog the brain cells. In such an environment, getting noticed is a challenge almost beyond the capacity of human ingenuity.

I confess I have, so far, not found the magic bullet of promotion, no sure fire formula for wider exposure to the target audience of serious readers of fiction. Many people are out there hawking book promotional methods for the eager and unsuspecting who believe naively that readers will come if only they followed the methods offered for a price. Having sold or optioned ten books to the movies with two made along with a television miniseries, which provided extraordinary exposure for my titles, I can still say with impunity that there is no sure fire way to sustain sales for a work of fiction short of word of mouth, sheer luck or a miracle. In the long run, the book is the book is the book and all the advertising, publicity and good reviews that can be brought to bear will help, but not guarantee public acceptance on a grand scale.

The paper book was and is still king of the mountain. Publishers titter at the idea of e-books, although they often take a cautious and modest pass at digital conversion, putting their clout, as always, behind their name brand authors. So far e-books have not been a profit center for publishers. In fact it is probably not a profit center for anyone except, perhaps, those in the business of conversion. The prevailing opinion everywhere, despite glimmers of hope as more and more people begin to discover e-books and find themselves comfortable reading on screens, is that the present is still economically risky.

To complicate matters further, the e-book dream which had been heavily promoted and touted as the ultimate content revolution was a long way from realization. The hardware had not caught up with the content and many so-called content providers were holding back on offering their content because the hardware, while adequate, was not deemed as user friendly for a larger market of non computer-literate readers. It is the chicken and egg syndrome.

"For clarity, portability and storage of numerous books, these new devices could, indeed, jumpstart e-book acceptance. . ."

This is not to say that the present devices do not have their place for those users of Palm Pilots or Microsoft's new tablet PC for example as well as numerous other computer products. Many people use such devices for e-book reading and are quite happy and satisfied to do so. Surveys, particularly a recent one by Dr. Harold Henke done for the Open E-Book Forum (OEBF) show e-book reading rising steadily, although not at the pace originally predicted. While the major publishers and libraries are beginning to take steps into the e-book world, they are doing so cautiously; taking a watchful and waiting posture before committing themselves whole hog to what is for them a competitive delivery system of content.

Yet, despite the initial exaggeration of its potential and its disappointing start, the future of the e-book is coming faster than we think. Things are happening just below the radar.

Content friendly devices using long awaited "digital paper" technology are on the verge of entering the book consumer fray big time. These devices will charm and amaze even the most inexperienced computer user. They will give the paper book a run for its money. Transportable, comfortable and dedicated to the reading experience, they will enhance this experience mightily, offering brighter fonts, upsizing, search and bookmaking ability that will astonish the reader. Digital paper for the layman reader "turns" its pages by a process that causes one page to disappear and another to appear in or out of sequence.

Moreover they will, hopefully, be dedicated solely to the reading experience. If they digress from that mission and offer other bells and whistles like the cell phone, they would, in my opinion, be making a profound mistake and render these new devices far less worthy for the dedicated reader. When a person walks into a brick and mortar store like Barnes and Noble, or any bookstore on the planet, chain or independent, they buy the book, not a digital camera, not an e-mail outlet, not a web browser, not a PC, not an audio device or a telephone. They buy the book.

Of course, there will be naysayers who will never buy an e-book, however friendly and despite the astonishing ease and comfort of the devices that deliver them. There are those who are totally attached to the tactile experience of "feeling" and "smelling" the printed paper book. Mostly part of an older demographic, they will not budge under any circumstance. The younger generations, computer literate and used to reading on screens from pre-school days have a far more open attitude toward electronically delivered content.

For clarity, portability and storage of numerous books, these new devices could, indeed, jumpstart e-book acceptance and as they say, "raise all boats."

I cannot say more about what is coming for reasons of confidentiality, but I am enthusiastic and wildly encouraged. We have been waiting for the better mousetrap to speed up e-book acceptance, especially for the skeptics, and it is on its way.

No, I haven't lost my mind. Rather, I have had an epiphany and because of it I have taken a long and expensive bet on the future, a nebulous and imprecise concept at best, but with an inevitability that is as certain as sunrise.       

What Happened to the Children of the Roses?
An update from last month's E-Sheet

Editing on the new novel tentatively titled The Children of the Roses is complete and heading into the production phase for release next Spring. In the process of further molding the finished manuscript with Hillel Black, the legendary editor, the author often gains new insights into the motives and actions of his characters. Told from the point of view of the children, now grown, and the spouses of one of them, it tackles the question of whether children, in this case sub-teens of divorcing or battling parents can do anything, anything at all, to keep their parent's marriage together as a tranquil, loving and productive entity, not merely an obligatory truce based on guilt and pragmatism.

Readers will recall from the original book The War of the Roses that the parents attempted to shield their two young children from the main events of their conflict. In the movie version the children were older and off to college. In the book version they had gone to summer camp while their parents fought their last and fatal battle….dying by chandelier.

For years I have been obsessed with how the children might have coped with such a trauma. The new novel answers that question and deals with the impact of such an event on the generation beyond the original children.

While not giving away any of the suspenseful turns in the plot which takes place in the dark comedy context featured in the original book, I have been posing the question to others who have had experience with such family destroying traumas as death and divorce and I welcome comments from readers of this e-sheet on the subject which I will post, anonymously or by name, if given permission.

I look forward eagerly to the reception of The Children of the Roses, and, of course, will always welcome comments from readers. See The War of the Roses Book Chat.

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Until next time, happy reading, and we hope to hear from you in our interactive book chats.

Warren Adler

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