Further to this morning's post this link just hit my inbox. 

Two stories from yesterday's PN Online depressed me.

The first was about HMV's 'disappointing results'. The headline affecting the book trade is that Waterstone's like-for-like sales were down 4.1% in spite of all the price promotions, marketing activities, Richard and Judy hype and some brilliant books being published. Apparently, this year has started better and we all want the new team at Waterstone's to succeed. My concern is that the Chairman's statement doesn't seem to address the fundamental need to sell more books at economically viable prices:

 “The strategy has three important strands: protecting our core business, saving costs aggressively and growing in new channels and related products. The environment for entertainment and books retailing will remain highly competitive. However, with aggressive plans, focused leadership and the continued commitment and dedication of our employees, our resilient brands will strengthen their market positions and performance as they comprehensively satisfy the preferences of our customers.”

The second story relates to a much smaller chain, Fopp Music Books + Film who are fighting to avoid bankrupcy and the closure of its 46 stores. Fopp has tried to innovate with very contemporary shops and eclectic purchasing but it doesn't look like it's working.

Add these two stories to the continuing drip drip of independent bookshop closures and the picture for book retailing in the UK does not look pretty. It's a little too easy to blame the lack of retail price maintenance, or competition from supermarkets and the Internet, or the existence of a returns system. It is also simply too easy for bookshops to demand ever higher discounts (or marketing bungs) from publishers. A vibrant high street book trade is vital culturally as well as economically. We must fix it - and fast.

Most educational publishers and many other businesses have invested heavily in building software platforms to present materials for schools and universities. The amounts of money invested have been astonishing in some cases. Financial and pedagogical successes have been limited.

At Macmillan we have focussed on a subset of education rather than the whole curriculum and we have concentrated on building a system which uses technology in the context of the traditional classroom and with the teacher absolutely playing the central role. The subset is the teaching of English for non-English speakers and the project is known as the Macmillan English Campus (MEC). Today we announce a new edition which will further strengthen our leadership in this important and fast-growing market. Everyone at Macmillan is proud of what we've achieved not only in creating a brand new business but in showing that online education actually works - both students and teachers have confirmed that our language is learnt faster and better using MEC.

While innovations such as MEC are flourishing, other parts of the publishing industry are still enmired in legal actions and arguments about copyright in a digital world. We have to find solutions and we have to be flexible. This announcement about so-called 'orphan works' is another example of our industry's efforts to adapt and take leadership in the digital world.

Not all things digital are good though. This 3-D model was produced for a business English course we are publishing. I imagine this particular CEO avatar might deter anyone from aspiring to be one.

Nature, along with many other publications, runs a regular feature reprinting clips from 50 years ago. This one from 22 June 1957 caught my eye:

"Far from causing a decline in reading, as was once predicted, it is now becoming evident that television has led to a greatly increased sale of books dealing with topics which have proved popular on the screen. This is perhaps most evident in archaeology, but it is becoming noticeable in other fields too. The growing sport of undersea swimming has reinforced the demand for books about sea life, the publication of which has received a further fillip from the film and television successes of Hans Hass and Jacques Cousteau. We cannot blame the publishers for trying to satisfy this demand, but we can blame them for publishing books seemingly written in haste merely to profit from this fashion.”

The messages are clear and still relevant.

New technology does not necessarily kill old technology and can in fact enhance it.

Publishers are profit-chasing idiots (or at least blameworthy profiteers) and always have been.

Yesterday I gave a talk at the Annual Meeting of the Publishers Licensing Society (PLS) whose job is to distribute money received from licensing organisations to publishers. It is a parallel organisation to the Authors Licensing and Collecting Agency (ALCS). Both organisations are excellent and vital. They are both facing challenges as we move into the digital world. It's not going to be easy. Will publishers be happy to see a third party doing deals with the digital content they control? The organisations were set up to ensure fair payment for the use of copyright material from photocopying etc. A collective licence was clearly the best way to deal with that. But is it the best way to deal with digital delivery of content which can be tracked much more readily? I definitely don't know the answer but I do know that working together through these organisations is a better way forward than every author and every publisher trying to set rules.

And today, on a similar theme, I am attending the first international conference of ACAP whose acronym hides the incomprehensible but important words 'Automatic content access protocol'. It sounds arcane but it is an essential development if copyright holders are to work successfully with the major search engine companies. I quote from the conference programme:

At its first major conference on 26 June in London, ACAP (Automated Content Access Protocol), is presenting its work so far in developing a standard by which the owners of content published on the World Wide Web can provide permissions information (relating to access and use of their content) in a form that can be recognised and interpreted by a search engine “spider”, so that the search engine operator is enabled systematically to comply with the permissions granted by the owner. ACAP will allow publishers, broadcasters and any other to express their individual access and use policies in a language that search engine’s robot “spiders” can be taught to understand.

It is not an easy road and some of the technical stuff is jaw-breakingly dull but ACAP has managed to bring together most parts of the media industry (newspapers, TV, radio, publishing) to work with search engines. The result, if we can get there, will be that search engines will be able to find relevant pieces of information and allow the content holder to control access and charge if desirable. That is beneficial to all and allows full copyright control.

As today's posting is a bit serious and acronymic I thought I'd end with this link. Many people have suggested that I suffer from ADD but I thought they meant attention deficiency disorder not this alternative translation.

There has been much discussion recently about the definition of 'in print and 'out of print' in a world where one copy of a book can be printed at a time. That debate will, I suspect, run and run until everyone gets tired. What is much more important is the technology development itself. I was delighted to see this press release last week.

The New York Public Library has installed an on-demand printing machine in its Science, Industry and Business section where library users will be able to print out-of-copyright works for free. This is what the machine (an Espresso) looks like.

It's too big. It's too expensive. It's too slow. It's too limited. I'm sure it's too noisy. But later versions will be smaller, faster, cheaper. The advantages are huge. With the help of publishers digitising their material and making them available readers will be able to find, create and read a vastly larger selection of books. Physical distribution costs will be reduced significantly. Authors will be paid via a licence fee and a new income stream opened up to them. Libraries themselves might decide to use this to generate income for themselves and thus be able to fund more purchases for their traditional collections.  

And the machines need not be restricted to libraries. Why not have machines installed in large bookshops - or even small bookshops as the prices drop.

In a perfect world, returns could be virtually eliminated saving trees, energy and money. This is a huge opportunity for transformation of our industry. For it to to become more concrete we need publishers to invest more rapidly in their digitisation and storage programmes; authors and their agents to cease fretting about the issues surrounding rights reversion; libraries and booksellers to take a few risks while the technology develops; and the industry to work together to develop  a new and equitable business model.

Not much to ask...

I was re-reading this article from the Bookseller about the debate in New York on the subject of territoriality. It is a fairly obstruse argument and ultimately revolves around whether or not it is a good idea to have both American and British editions of the same book available for sale in a particular market. I attended most of the debate (I stomped out at one point when one of the speakers had become plain offensive) and what surprised me was the heatedness of the language. Phrases such as 'atavistic protectionisn', 'last gasp tactics' and 'imaginary empire called the Commonwealth' were a bit over the top.

The issue seems pretty simple to me. If authors and agents wish to have separate US and British editions of their book (as opposed to a single global publisher) that is their choice. If having both editions available in a country increases sales (which I don't believe) then both editions should be available in all countries and British and American publishers should open their home markets to allow any editions from overseas to enter and compete. I cannot quite see American publishers being happy about this. Nor would I be. I think that exclusivity is good for authors and retailers and the health of th eindustry. In which case American and British publishers should do everything in their power to protect territorial exclusivity, including granting exclusive EU rights to British publishers, rather than the very dangerous open-market Europe of the past.

Or am I being simplistic?

The wedding in Vienna was sensational, ending up with a wonderful party at the Schönbrunn Palace below. Old Europe certainly knew how to build palaces and knows how to celebrate weddings. I cannot, however, resist recording that the groom's mobile rang just as the bride was making her wedding vows. What a moment.

Please note the change in spelling from yesterday's post, which generated some interesting and alarming comments. I do hope that Chip Dale has made it up with his cat although I'm not quite sure why he should have been so depressed. More authors are being published than ever. Whilst it may be harder to find publication through the traditional 'literary' publishing houses there are many alternative ways of being published and many new and innovative companies. Glass half full or half empty? There have always been bad books as well as good books. There have always been potboilers and ground-breakers. I believe there has never been a more interesting time in the history of the book trade and authors are in the perfect position to take advantage of all the new ways of reaching readers either with traditional publishers or through new routes.

This extraordinary room is the lobby of the Hotel Sacher in Vienna, which is probably most famous for its invention of Sachertorte. It's hard to avoid while you're here. Even the soap is chocolate-scented. Here is a slice to admire.

I'm here for the wedding of a friend and it's the whole works - morning suit, evening dress, hats, reception, waltzes. I'm not really used to all this dressing up and the FAZ description of me as having the look of a Möbelpacker (furniture mover) is feeling distinctly accurate. Must run and pick up my morning coat and make my way to the Schottenkirche where the wedding takes place - beautiful.

This arrived at my inbox yesterday.

Dear Mr Charkin,

I intended sending this as a comment to your blog. But I didn’t want to use my name, which might have embarrassed my agent. Also, there wasn’t an obvious opening. But if you would care to respond on the blog, while keeping me anonymous, that would be fine.

I realise that you are a busy globetrotter and top company executive, with a lot more on your mind than the anguish of would-be writers, but I wonder if I could drag you back for a moment to the business of publishing – or not publishing – first novels.
 
I have a number of friends who are successful novelists. They started years ago and have have continued ever since, winning a loyal following over the years and attracting, for the most part, postive reviews. I have also met several writers, Robert Harris and Sebastian Faulkes among them, who have gone on to great things.
 
In my own case, and I am now in my late fifties, the story has been very different. I have written six novels so far, none of which has been published. The first two probably deserved their fate. The subsequent four, were, however, above average (if I say so myself) and could easily have sat alongside the products of my more successful pals.
 
I don’t say this vaingloriously. The agents I have had over the years – two in the United States, three in Britain, were all convinced that I had the talent to make it to the top. Each in his (or her) turn assured me that the book they were representing would get published, make me good money and provide the basis of what would be a successful literary career.
 
Of the five, three are very big in the trade. My present agent is even, I might say, a leading luminary, much quoted on the state of the business and the difficulties of marketing.
 
In an email to me this morning, he said it was “tragic” that my latest offering had not made it. He couldn’t understand it, he said. And even though he much likes both of my latest proposals, he now fears that they may not be saleable.
 
Time after time, the responses from publishers have been that my writing is first class, my plots fascinating, my structure solid and resourceful. There has been criticism, of course, but most of it centred on detail or the foibles of individual characters.
 
In the most recent case, one leading publisher (not from Macmillan, I hasten to add) said that my main character was someone he recognised immediately. He had laughed out loud, he said. I had got the particular corner of London life that I was after exactly right. Sadly, he added, his sales people were not convinced that there would be a big enough market for what I was offering. So, in the end, he felt he had to decline.
 
One of the country’s top publishers, who years ago produced a non-fiction book of mine, told my agent that I was a “wonderful” writer Another, a former Fleet Street colleague, said she was sure I had what it took to succeed in fiction. Yet both turned me down, as did the head of popular fiction at one of your principal rivals, who said that he loved the book himself but was unable to persuade his sales team of its virtues.
 
What is going on? I don’t expect to become rich and famous. I don’t expect to be annointed in the Guardian as the new Evelyn Waugh. But I do believe that I write accomplished fiction and deserve my place, for a week at least, on Waterstone’s Big Tables.
 
Is it because I write, mainly, about men in their fifties? Is it because I have left it too late to break through? Is it because these days I lack a proper media “platform” that would guarantee me notice from the critics?  I don’t know, but I feel sure my age has a lot to do with it.

What really gets my goat is the sheer volume of truly awful fiction that does get published, only to go nowhere. In every such case, the publisher concerned must have thought, yes, this one is in with a chance, and the sales people must have agreed. The fact that they turned out to be wrong does not appear to embarrass them. Water under the bridge, dear boy ... publishing isn’t an exact science. Well, if these books are allowed to fight their corner (and lose money hand over fist), why not mine? At least once.
 
I might add that I am sticking with my latest agent, who is a prince among men and seems determined to get me published. But it has been hard pounding for both of us.
 
Your thoughts on the above would be much appreciated.
 
Best wishes,
 
Puzzled of London

What can I say? It must be deeply frustrating for the correspondent. We set up Macmillan New Writing with precisely this type of author in mind. The list is doing fine but the numbers wouldn't make an accountant's eyes light up with excitement. If we had to publish these books under the currently traditional model - advances, hype etc - the accountant would throw him/herself out of the window. Even so and even though we have had success, other publishers haven't followed suit. Why not?

Publishing fiction is tough. There are arguably more wannabe authors than readers. Of course there is rubbish published but there is more fine novels published every year than anyone could possibly read. Readers also have to be picky. We all enjoy only a limited amount of leisure time and we are likely to think twice before spending it on an unknown author. This posting on Susan Hill's blog highlights another set of issues. Even if an author does get published and does become successful there appears to be little loyalty to the publisher who took the original risk. The big profits frequently go to an author's second or third publisher and some of the most successful publishing houses deliberately and intelligently ignore first novels in order to pick up the third or fourth from an author after much of the hard work is done.

Perhaps the answer does lie in Lulu or simply web publishing under a Creative Commons licence. At least such publication allows an author some exposure. But it will do little to stem the flow of so-so or worse novels being published which will make it even harder for the reader to discern the good from the bad and encourage even less reading experimentation.

Anyone else want to contribute their thoughts?