“We need to be sure books don’t become a commodity.”

–Oren Teicher, CEO, American Booksellers Association

“It would be terrible if the booksellers ran out from this event and said ‘this is it, it’s over.’”

–David Shanks, CEO, Penguin Group USA

I walked into last week’s Book Expo America excited about seeing old friends, meeting new friends and looking for new opportunities, and on these points the show was a complete success for me.

On Tuesday morning, I attended the “Opening Plenary: A CEO Panel On The Value Of The Book Presented by ABA and BEA,” and I’m not sure what I expected, but I spent a lot of time visualizing some of the panelists as Statler and Waldorf, the curmudgeonly Muppets. Author Scott Turrow, the incoming President of The Author’s Guild, may not have actually said “get off my lawn,” but that’s what it sounded like to me.

There are many complex and serious issues publishers have to tackle as the digital book world gains market share, so I was hoping to hear fresh ideas as to how we as an industry could continue to run parallel businesses, both traditional and digital. Unfortunately, trotting out the same tired lines about piracy, windowing and pricing did not help shine a light on the path into the future,  nor did it set the right tone for the rest of the conference.

Of course, the panel wasn’t all a disappointment. My favorite positive comment came from Penguin’s CEO, David Shanks, and I’ll have to paraphrase him, but in discussing pricing he suggested that to compensate for the lower prices of eBooks we’ll need to sell more books and went on to talk about embracing any mechanism that brings books to more people.

More people reading more books in the manner of their choosing? Yes, please!

Esther Newberg, EVP, International Creative Management, noted that “word of mouth still means something.” In my humble opinion, word of mouth is everything. Not addressed by this particular panel was that how word of mouth has dramatically shifted from booksellers to readers. Putting aside the notion of electronically receiving a galley via NetGalley, I’m sure I’m not alone when I head over to GetGlue or GoodReads, and reach out to my friends on Facebook or Twitter. (I live in a town without a good bookstore, which is increasingly more common.)

Speaking of word of mouth, Verso Digital’s Jack McKeown presented updated results from their “2010 Survey of Book-Buying Behavior,” and found that 45% of those surveyed were willing to give their email address to bookstores for relevant marketing. Indie booksellers should be jumping on this opportunity!

The “Designing and Executing an e-Strategy for Authors: A Publisher and Agency Perspective” panel offered one of the most important takeaways that is applicable to booksellers and publishers, too: Social Media, like all marketing endeavors, requires a strategy. You can not simply put up a Facebook Page and hope they will come; you need to develop and cultivate an audience, and treat them with the same respect you would treat a live audience: listen, engage and provide value or entertainment. Do NOT repeatedly hawk your wares!

Also, different platforms are, in fact, different. If you would dress differently for a backyard swim party than you would a fancy ball, please get to know each platform before you jump in. Tailor your message to appropriately fit each platform.

During the “Rights, Royalties & Retailers: What Works?” panel, Cursor founder Richard Nash declared, “The age of abundance makes copyright irrelevant. Owning a well really meant something before bottled water. A right is useless if there is no demand for it.”

He presented his proposed new model which will feature 3-year contracts, and expressed confidence that they would be renewed as long as the publisher is holding up their end of the bargain. “That doesn’t mean after three years, you lose your author,” he noted; “you renegotiate.”

Scott Waxman, a literary agent, is taking a similar approach with his own experimental start-up, Diversion Books, where he is offering 5-year contracts on a profit-sharing model, and securing world rights. He’s already signed 20 authors, “with 30 more in the hopper.”

Nash and Waxman’s new initiatives are ones to watch as they become a reality in the coming months; it will be exciting to see how they evolve and hopefully invigorate the publishing industry.

Out on the exhibition floor, while noticeably smaller and leaner than past years, I am glad to report it was still a challenge to make your way through it all! I was also impressed by the “IDPF’s Digital Zone” where several tech companies were showing off their shiny toys and some pretty neat technology in the crossroads between content creators and readers. In particular, I spent time at Firebrand Technology’s booth – which hosted both Digital Book World’s Roundtable WEBcast and Laura Dawson’s #ISBNhour Twitter chat – as well as checking out Kobo and iScroll.

A particularly fun highlight for me, having nothing to do with the open bar, was the 7×20x21 event put together by Ryan Chapman and Ami Greko. I especially enjoyed the presentations by Clay Shirky and Nick Bilton, and since I believe they will be posted online soon, I encourage you to check them out for yourself.

It was also fun to see/meet my Twitterstream In Real Life, and that, on top of everything else, that made it a great event.

The overall mood at BEA 2010 was probably best summed up by one John Hanlon, from “N/A,” labeled as such because he was not yet a bookseller, though he is looking to open up a new indie bookstore in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It was his first time attending BEA, and he found the panels informative, the crowd flow a bit chaotic, and he left feeling hopeful about the future.

I did, too.

Babette Ross is a publishing industry professional who enjoyed a long career at Random House, including her last position as the Associate Director of Sales Administration. She collaborated with 44 imprint marketing departments, liaised with the IT department, and created and maintained databases which facilitated inventory, fulfillment and tracking of sales materials. She is currently looking for a new job and is excited by all the possibilities the digital world is bringing to publishing and marketing.

[NOTE: DBW Members can view the full presentation with audio here.]

Among the findings was one surprising bit of data that could be a sign of encouragement for beleaguered independent booksellers: as many book-buyers preferred shopping with their local indies (21.5%) as with chain bookstores (21.4%) and on-line retailers (20%).

On Twitter, McKeown offered some additional insight: “To turn indie mindshare to marketshare will involve Community, Convenience and Price, online and offline. This much we know.”

Leveraging community both online and offline was a primary theme of our December WEBcast, Indie Booksellers and the Digital Transition: Opportunity Knocks?, and was at the heart of the inspiring 7×20x21 presentation two weeks ago by WORD Brooklyn’s Stephanie Anderson:

I could have taken out ads—not in the NYT, but maybe the Greenpoint Gazette, and maybe also on Facebook. I could have had a sale, which WORD almost never does. People would like that…

Instead [I] started a basketball league.

With Borders seemingly on the brink of disaster, it would seem there’s a genuine opportunity for innovative independent booksellers to step up and convert that mindshare into marketshare, but they can’t do it alone.

What can publishers and authors do to be better partners with their most passionate evangelists?

By Elizabeth Burton, Executive Editor, Zumaya Publications LLC

Most bookstores still don’t consider eBooks “real.” They see them as a sales gimmick (hence the “bundled” concept where an eBook and a print book are sold together). They aren’t geared mentally to coming up with the kind of marketing ideas for eBooks they can for print because in many cases booksellers don’t read eBooks, have no intention of reading eBooks, etc., etc., etc.

When they start thinking of eBooks separately from print, as if it were, say, a line of stationery or a fancy bookmark, they’ll be in a better position to take advantage of the potential revenue stream. The problem is, most of them also seem to hate the idea that books are products, so there’s a second layer of resistance to that concept.

In this sense, eBooks are more like music than books. It’s not about the tactile pleasures of turning pages or sniffing ink. It’s about entertainment, period. I’m not talking about multi-media digital books here–just the entertainment we avid readers derive from reading in and of itself. The joy of words and stories and characters.

Both booksellers and mainstream publishing have the same basic problem: they’re trying to fit eBooks (and, to a lesser degree, on-demand printing) into the status quo, and it won’t work. I sighed during Digital Book World’s recent webinar discussing how indie booksellers might benefit from eBooks  and POD, when a representative from Vroman’s commented several times that the Espresso Book Machine costs $100K, and how it would take ten years to make that back, by which time the technology would have changed drastically.

Yes, an EBM is a big investment, but like every major infrastructure investment the idea is to come up with ways to maximize revenue to provide a good return. For example, small community organizations that lack big budgets but would love to be able to have a cookbook to sell as a fundraiser. They might lack the funds to pay for even a digital short run, but having the file loaded on the local EBM would mean they could obtain as many copies or as few as they wanted at any given time.

However, in discussing the issue, everything the gentleman from Vroman’s said practically screamed that he wasn’t getting beyond “how we do things now” to “how we could be doing other things and making money.”

From my perspective, of course, the frustrating point was that once again a means by which my authors could gain entry into bookstores was rejected, even though that means addresses all of the previously applied arguments against stocking our books–notably our general refusal to accept returns. I’ve often wondered how many small bookstores who rely heavily on credit from returns have actually calculated the cost of pulling them from the shelves and packaging them.

A small bookstore willing to invest in an EBM can literally increase their stock by thousands of books very few other bookstores have.

If the goal is to make money, then how is having the ability to recommend little-known titles and produce the book in 15 minutes not an advantage? And if, as the booksellers insist repeatedly, they exist to connect customers to new and undiscovered authors, why is there such resistance to expanding their horizons to include established, reputable publishers with books of proven quality solely because of the way those books are produced?

The Harlequin Horizons subsidy press uproar, in particular the response of the writers’ groups, was no surprise to those of us in the POD trenches. Everything about digital publishing challenges the status quo–and the emphasis there is on “status.”

Getting that New York publishing contract has become the brass ring for writers, and many of those who manage to get theirs seem to feel as though anyone’s managing to attain the goal any other way somehow diminishes their accomplishment.

Do I think the Horizons business was handled badly? Unquestionably. Do I think it’s a good idea? Absolutely. It’s hard making a buck in publishing, and business decisions have to be made on the basis of what’s good for the company, not whether said decision is going to violate some artificially derived “standard” of the industry established by third parties.

After all, if all the publishers go out of business, all the authors will have to–dare we say it?–self-publish.

My goal as a writer is to be read. If I make money at it, too, that’s all the better, but I don’t feel I need the approval of anyone other than the people who buy my work and read it and enjoy it. If other writers feel the need to barricade themselves behind arbitrary standards and insist those standards are the only “real” path to publication, they’re welcome to do so.

The irony is that, since I’m also an acquiring editor, I know full well how heavily personal tastes determine what books get past those vaunted guardians, and as a publisher I know how commercial viability has to be considered. I’m also aware that the determination of what’s commercially viable is as subjective in many ways as defining a great book.

When I’m presented the argument that self-publishing or print on demand are de facto vanity publishing, I usually refer to an anecdote about Abraham Lincoln.

Lincoln was once called upon to defend a man accused of breaking into a neighbor’s chicken coop and stealing chickens. There was no solid evidence against the alleged thief, but the victim of the theft and the prosecutor insisted there was no doubt he was guilty because everyone knew the defendant was a thief.

When it came time for Lincoln to cross-examine the accuser, he asked the man, “How many legs does a cow have?“

“Four, of course,” the farmer replied.

“And if we called the cow’s tail a leg, how many would it have then?”

“Why, five,” said the farmer.

“Well, no,” Lincoln said, “it would still only have four, because calling a cow’s tail a leg doesn’t make it one. And calling a man a thief doesn’t make him one either.”

The jury’s verdict? Not guilty.

Yes, POD and eBooks have allowed subsidy presses to sprout like toadstools after a rain, but authors and booksellers who dismiss the technology as if it defines end results are limiting not only the possibilities for previously unpublished writers but their own as well. Calling a legitimate publisher who uses an inventory-free business model a subsidy press or an author mill solely because they operate differently from the mainstream model doesn’t make them either one.

Elizabeth K. Burton is a former journalist, published novelist and editor who in 2003 was plunged head-first into the business of digital publishing. Zumaya Publications LLC in Austin TX has published more than 100 works of fiction and nonfiction printed on demand and available in non-DRM ebooks.

by Guy LeCharles Gonzalez, Director of Audience Development, Digital Book World

Yesterday’s webinar, Indie Booksellers and the Digital Transition: Opportunity Knocks?, was an enlightening conversation that covered a number of timely topics — from bundling print and eBooks to bookstores as a “third place” — and attempted to answer the ultimate question: how can publishers be better partners?

Debbie Stier, SVP/Associate Publisher for HarperStudio and Director of Digital Marketing for HarperCollins moderated a lively conversation with a panel of veteran independent booksellers: Stephanie Anderson, WORD (Brooklyn), Patrick Brown, Vroman’s (Pasadena, CA), and Bridget Warren, Vertigo Books (College Park, MD).

The slides from the presentation have been made available via Slideshare, but they only give a hint of the great conversation that took place; DBW members can view the entire archived presentation, with audio, here.

Among the topics addressed was Clay Shirky’s idea of bookstores as social hubs, wherein he proposed “turning some customers into members, patrons, donors”, aka the NPR model. Brown’s response was succinct:

“Clay’s piece was interesting as a sort of think piece on theoretical bookstores of the future. I don’t really think that it’s all that feasible to implement many of his ideas for a bookstore that’s on the ground right now…

That tends to be how a lot of people go about it. They’re like, ‘Well, if I had a bookstore, this is how I would do it.’ But you don’t have a bookstore right now.”

Shelf Awareness has a great recap of the session, including some answers to “What can publishers do to help indies?”

Warren suggested, “Integrate sales so the reps we know and trust sell e-books. Publishers need to make sure their reps are comfortable selling e-books, and ease pricing disparity for indies.” Anderson wished for “Better communication, more openness, more back and forth. We have the same goal: we want people to buy good books.” Brown said, “Publishers [need to] recognize how important we are to the ecosystem. Shelf space is advertising space.”

Some of the highlights from our attendees via Twitter:

Kirtim reason harper studio doesn’t bundle? no major retailer does it #dbw is this the opportunity for indies?

DigiBookWorld “The bundle sounds easy, yet no one seems to be able to make a shopping cart that bundles a physical and digital product.” @debbiestier #dbw

DonLinn OR Books had a bundle of digital and print for GOING ROUGE. Sold only a couple of hundred copies. #dbw

KatherineBoG I’ve had ppl express interest in having hard copy of book + e-version. Unfortunately all who’ve said that to me are kindle owners. #dbw

katerados #dbw – interesting correlation b/w apple’s itunes dynamic pricing and ebook pricing. Get the early adopters at premium price?

changinghands #dbw Yes, online e-book purchases will be the norm. Our job to encourage customers to buy digital from indies. Price disadvantage crippling.

WendyHudson #dbw Does anyone here use Symtio cards in their stores?

Kirtim I would think Symtio cards would help towards a bundle idea -maybe just a barcode on the p-book? #dbw

changinghands #dbw Why is public expectation for e-books set at $9.99? Jeff Bezos decided for all of us. Fellow travelers who link to Amazon complicit.

thebookjournal #dbw so seeing as we can’t sell Kindle format ebooks, do we really stand a chance?

Kirtim interesting how convo for #dbw is no longer about content but about bundle and pricing. Seems a huge advance from a couple years ago.

WendyHudson #dbw I want a POD machine as soon as it’s feasible, but $, size, and staffing are big issues.

bookateur #dbw Espresso can be leased vs. outright buy.

emmittc was told by andrew pate with ondemand books (espresso) in october that they are “not currently leasing”…..#dbw

Kirtim Titles in Hamilton, Canada and University of Alberta have espresso and rave #dbw/news/7079.html#dbw

KSchechner More on indies using the Espresso Book Machine: http://news.bookweb.org

KatherineBoG Interesting: @bookavore’s argument that indies must make ebooks a local experience vs Sherman Alexie last week that it’s impossible. #dbw

ca_gordon Mobile devices allow people to bring the internet & social networks with them to stores with a physical inventory. via @vromans #dbw

KatherineBoG “use mobile technology to take advantage of our physical space” ex. foursquare. @vromans #dbw

KatherineBoG “Social media is a way to remind people of how wonderful it is to actually be in the store” @bookavore #dbw

DigiBookWorld “We have to focus on the things we can do that software can’t.” Patrick from @Vromans #dbw

changinghands #dbw Disagree with Patrick. Doing the things software can’t and incorporating the new not mutually exclusive. Do both.