My talk about fact-checking

The Editors Guild recorded my talk about fact-checking last night and posted it to their YouTube channel, so you can watch it here:

Here’s a link to the PDF handout I prepared and refer to in my talk, with links to selected resources and information about fact-checking:
lisa-gold-fact-checking-eds-guild-handout

As I noted in the meeting description, fact-checking is about ensuring that a piece of writing and its sources are accurate, fair, and credible, and protecting writers and publications from errors, criticism, fraud, and lawsuits. I talked about the skills it requires (an obsession with accuracy, skepticism, critical thinking, the ability to do research and find and evaluate sources, and a willingness to ask questions), who does it, why it’s so rare these days and what types of publications/media generally do or don’t do it. I described the fact-checking process for a major magazine feature, what kinds of things you check and particular trouble spots, discussed some cautionary tales, gave fact-checking tips, and answered questions from the audience.

Let me know if you have any comments or questions. I’d also like to know if there’s any interest in me writing about or teaching classes on fact-checking, research, information literacy, or other topics.

For further reading on these and other subjects, browse my website/blog and my Twitter feed.

Lying to children about the past

I reviewed A Birthday Cake for George Washington, the controversial children’s picture book about slavery, for the Seattle Review of Books— read it here: http://seattlereviewofbooks.com/reviews/the-idea-of-freedom-might-be-too-great-a-temptation-for-them-to-resist/

In my review I tell the real story of Hercules, George Washington’s slave-cook, a story far different from the happy fictional one in the book, which was promoted as “based on real events.” SPOILER ALERT: On Washington’s 65th birthday, Hercules didn’t bake a cake– he escaped.

The book was withdrawn by the publisher over the MLK holiday weekend, but the issues it raises are larger than this particular book. We should tell the complicated truths about America’s founders and founding and stop lying to our children about the past.

A comparison of how the new style manuals treat tech words

Though two of the most influential style manuals (Chicago and AP) recently changed from “Web site” to  “website,” they still differ in their treatment of other tech words, which won’t be a surprise to writers and editors who work with different styles.

Below I’ve compared the current recommendations for tech words from new editions of four style and usage guides.

Chicago is the new 16th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style (published August 2010), the authoritative style guide used by most of the publishing world.

AP is the AP Stylebook Online (updated April 2010), the style manual used by most newspapers and journalists. (The New York Times uses its own idiosyncratic style.)

Yahoo! is the Yahoo! Style Guide (published July 2010), a new style guide for digital content.

Garner is the 3rd edition of Garner’s Modern American Usage (published August 2009), an excellent book that tracks recent changes in usage and language.

The results:

• All four agree on “website,” “World Wide Web,” and “the Internet.”
• All except Chicago capitalize “the Web.”
• Chicago, AP, and Garner use the hyphenated “e-mail,” but Yahoo! uses “email.”
• Yahoo! and Garner use “webpage,” Chicago uses “web page,” and AP uses “Web page.”

It may look like consensus has finally been reached on “website,” but this is not the end of “Web site,” as it is still the standard in older works like the Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications (which hasn’t been updated since the 2004 3rd edition) and both Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th edition, published in 2003) and Merriam-Webster Online. (By the way, the December 2009 Apple Publications Style Guide uses “website,” “webpage,” and “email” without the hyphen.)

What does this mean for you? If you are using an older style manual, you should probably get a more current one. Which style manual you use will depend on the kind of writing, editing, or publishing you do. Chicago will likely be your primary style manual unless you work with specialized fields or content, such as technical writing, journalism, academic writing, scientific writing, etc. If you are working for a publisher or company, use the style manual and/or “house style” they specify. (Some use a hybrid, based primarily on a particular style manual but customized for internal preferences.) If you are writing for yourself, you can do what you want, but try to be both consistent and open to change. (Though Chicago is my default style manual, I’ve been using “website” and “the web” since I began this blog two years ago. Though I’m tempted to eliminate the hyphen from “e-mail,” I’m not quite ready to do so.)

So, in light of all this, are you going to make any changes to your style or try to convince your employer to modify the house style?

For more on style manuals, see my previous posts.

Update, 8/11/10: In the comments, Delf notes that though Microsoft’s published style manual hasn’t been updated since 2004, their style guide for internal use continues to be updated, and the latest version (June 30, 2010) specifies the following:

website
World Wide Web
the Internet
the web
email
webpage

Note that all of the tech/digital style guides (Microsoft, Apple, and Yahoo!) have dropped the hyphen from “email,” which I don’t think we’ll see adopted quickly by Chicago and AP.

Update 3/18/11: AP has just dropped the hyphen from “e-mail.”

E-books and the future of publishing, with puppets

This video, “Opposing Voices in Digital Publishing,” was created by the digital publishing team at Tyndale House Publishers, and I found it through this TeleRead post.

Amazon threatens publishers again

This morning brings news (from an article in the New York Times and a blog post in MobyLives) that Amazon “has threatened to stop directly selling the books of some publishers online unless they agree to a detailed list of concessions regarding the sale of electronic books” (NYT).

Amazon is trying to prevent publishers from making deals with Apple to sell their ebooks on the iPad using the agency model. Amazon is apparently refusing to negotiate an agency model with any publishers other than the five majors who’ve already made deals with Apple. According to the MobyLives post, independent publishers are being told that “if they switched to an agency model for ebooks, Amazon would stop selling their entire list, in print and digital form.”

Amazon and Apple are each requiring publishers to agree to restrictive terms, which may in effect force publishers to choose between Amazon and Apple. From the Times article:

Five of the country’s six largest publishers — Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, HarperCollins and Penguin — have already reached deals with Apple to sell their books through its iBookstore, which will be featured on the iPad. (The holdout is Random House.)

Under those agreements, the publishers will set consumer prices for each book, and Apple will serve as an agent and take a 30 percent commission. E-book editions of most newly released adult general fiction and nonfiction will cost $12.99 to $14.99.

Amazon has agreed in principle that the major publishers would be able to set prices in its Kindle store as well. But it is also demanding that they lock into three-year contracts and guarantee that no other competitor will get lower prices or better terms.

Apple, for its part, is requiring that publishers not permit other retailers to sell any e-books for less than what is listed in the iBookstore. So the publishers have sought to renegotiate agreements they have with Amazon under which they sold books to it at wholesale, allowing Amazon to set the consumer price….

According to three people briefed on the discussions, publishers are reluctant to sign three-year contracts because the digital book world is changing so rapidly and they want room to adjust as it takes shape.

Amazon has also begun talking with smaller publishers that have not yet signed contracts with Apple. In those conversations, according to one person briefed on the discussions, Amazon has said it prefers to retain its wholesale pricing model, as opposed to Apple’s so-called agency model.

But some of these smaller publishers have begun talking with Apple, which has effectively said that any publisher that wishes to sell its books on the iPad must offer the same terms to all booksellers. In other words, to do business with Apple, publishers must export Apple’s business model to all retailers. Amazon, by contrast, has not promised to adopt the agency approach for any but the largest publishers.

Amazon appears to be responding to the Apple threat by waging a publisher-by-publisher battle, trying to keep as many books as possible out of Apple’s hands, while preserving as much flexibility as it can to set its own prices.

But if Amazon tries to enforce its demands by removing “buy” buttons from some pages again, some believe it could harm its reputation in the eyes of customers and the publishing industry….

Amazon may have more leverage with smaller publishers, which typically sell their books in fewer outlets and thus tend to rely more on Amazon for sales. Amazon may believe that if it can keep those publishers from moving to an agency model, Apple will choose not to sell their e-books, and Amazon will be seen as having a broader selection.

For those of you who want a reminder of the Amazon/Macmillan boycott battle and the ebook agency vs. wholesale sales model controversy, here are links to a two of my blog posts about it from late January and early February:

• “Amazon declares war on Friday, concedes on Sunday (updated)”
• “Day 5 of Amazon’s boycott of Macmillan books (and authors)”

More breaking news: Amazon is selling Macmillan print books again

It looks like Amazon has begun to restore Macmillan print books–but not Kindle ebooks– to their website. All week I’ve been spot-checking various titles throughout the day, and when I last checked at 3:45pm PST, these print books were finally available for sale again:

• Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall (Henry Holt)
• Atul Gawande’s The Checklist Manifesto (Metropolitan Books)
• John Scalzi’s Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded (Tor)
• Cherie Priest’s Boneshaker (Tor)

Update:  The New York Times Bits blog has confirmed it in their post, “Macmillan Books Return to Amazon After Dispute“:

Electronic and paper books from the publisher Macmillan were returning to Amazon.com Friday evening, ending a week-long public conflict as the parties negotiated over the future price of e-books.

Details of the resolution have not been made public, but the restoration of Macmillan books to Amazon’s site indicates a peaceful settlement was reached. “I am delighted to be back in business with Amazon,” John Sargent, chief executive of Macmillan, said in an e-mail message…

So what did Amazon hold out for? The company would not comment, but it is likely that Amazon demanded that no other e-book vendors, such as Apple, get preferential access to new titles, or any kind of pricing advantages. Amazon may also have negotiated terms into its agreement with the publisher that would allow users of Kindles or Kindle software to lend e-books to each other.

Breaking news: Hachette joins Macmillan, Justice Dept. still doesn’t like the Google Book Settlement

Two pieces of breaking news tonight:

Hachette joins Macmillan

David Young, the CEO of Hachette Book Group, announced that Hachette is adopting the agency model for ebook pricing. Here’s the GalleyCat article, which includes the text of Young’s letter.

For those keeping score, there are six major U.S. publishers: Macmillan, Hachette, HarperCollins, Penguin, Simon & Schuster, and Random House. Five of the six (all except Random House) made a deal with Apple to sell their ebooks on the iPad using the agency model. So now that Macmillan and Hachette have publicly committed to adopting the agency model for all of their ebooks (and with HarperCollins likely to as well, based on statements Rupert Murdoch made yesterday), it’s probably only a matter of time before the rest join in. But when will Amazon stop boycotting Macmillan books?

The Justice Department doesn’t like the amended Google Book Settlement, says “class certification, copyright and antitrust issues remain”

The Department of Justice submitted its views to the court on the amended Google Book Settlement. (The fairness hearing is on February 18th.)

James Grimmelmann summarizes:

The United States has filed a new Statement of Interest. The tone is balanced, but the conclusion is clear: the Department of Justice thinks the settlement is beyond the court’s authority and still problematic on antitrust grounds. It’s a careful, detailed brief, that raises fundamental objections to the settlement. These issues will not be resolved with quick patches, even if the parties were in the mood to revise and resubmit a second time.

The battle has been truly joined.

Here’s an excerpt from the press release issued by the Department of Justice:

The Department of Justice today advised the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York that despite the substantial progress reflected in the proposed amended settlement agreement in The Authors Guild Inc. et al. v. Google Inc., class certification, copyright and antitrust issues remain. The department also said that the United States remains committed to working with the parties on issues concerning the scope and content of the settlement…

In its statement of interest filed with the court today, the department stated, “Although the United States believes the parties have approached this effort in good faith and the amended settlement agreement is more circumscribed in its sweep than the original proposed settlement, the amended settlement agreement suffers from the same core problem as the original agreement: it is an attempt to use the class action mechanism to implement forward-looking business arrangements that go far beyond the dispute before the court in this litigation.”

Here’s the link to the Justice Department’s full “Statement of Interest of the United States of America.”

Here’s the New York Times article about it, noting: “While the Justice Department did not explicitly urge the court to reject the deal, as it had the previous version, its opposition on copyright, class action and antitrust grounds represented a further setback for Google and the other parties to the deal.”

For more on the Google Book Settlement, see my earlier posts.

Will Amazon boycott HarperCollins’ books next?

According to this Galleycat report, Rupert Murdoch today “hinted that HarperCollins will join Macmillan in negotiating higher eBook prices.  All Things Digital reporter Peter Kafka has been liveblogging an interview with Rupert Murdoch about News Corp.’s fourth quarter earnings this afternoon. The company owns HarperCollins, so talk turned to eBook pricing.”

Here’s Kafka’s “on-the-fly transcription and paraphrasing of Murdoch’s comments re: Amazon, Apple and e-book pricing”:

We don’t like the Amazon model of $9.99….we think it really devalues books and hurts all the retailers of hardcover books. We’re not against electronic books, on the contrary, we like them very much,” because they cost us less to distribute, “but we want some room to maneuver.” The Apple deal…”does allow some flexibility and higher prices” though they will still be lower than print. And now Amazon is willing to sit down with us again and renegotiate.

Well, that didn’t take long. Anyone want to place bets on how long it will take the other big publishers to join them?

I wonder whether Amazon will also “temporarily” boycott HarperCollins’ print and ebooks for leverage in the negotiation process. HarperCollins‘ imprints include  HarperPerennial, William Morrow, Eos, and Ecco, to name a few.

Disclosure: HarperCollins is the publisher of Matt’s two most recent novels (Bad Monkeys and Set This House in Order) and his current novel-in-progress (The Mirage).

Day 5 of Amazon’s boycott of Macmillan books (and authors)

This is day 5 of Amazon’s boycott of Macmillan print books and ebooks. (See my two previous blog posts if you are still catching up.) There has been no statement from Amazon other than Sunday’s unsigned post on the Kindle forum, and the “Buy” buttons have still not been restored.

John Scalzi’s new post, “A Call for Author Support,” highlights the damage this is doing to authors and notes that the best way to support authors is to buy their books. You have lots of choices as to how/where to do this.

Dennis Johnson at MobyLives has a good roundup of the latest reactions to the ebook war.

Kassia Kroszer at Booksquare continues to post new links of interest.

K Tempest Bradford has a post about “ebooks, eReaders, and why you need to keep up with the tech.”

And be sure to read Laura Miller’s excellent Salon piece on some of the less-understood elements of all this.

Update 1: The New York Times “Bits” blog has a new post titled “Macmillan Books Still Mostly Absent from Amazon.com,” which notes that “the battle is still raging… ‘We are talking,’ said John Sargent, chief executive of Macmillan, of discussions with Amazon. An Amazon spokesman declined to comment. Amazon is most likely withholding the books to maintain its leverage in negotiations, trying to get the best possible terms under the new agency model. Stay tuned.”

Update 2: Nicola Griffith has commented below that “Amazon wins, no matter what,” and she has linked to an interesting paidContent.org article by James McQuivey titled “In Amazon vs. Macmillan, Amazon is the Winner.”

Agent Nathan Bransford’s new post, “What Should an E-Book Cost?“, discusses in detail the costs of producing ebooks and print books and various pricing issues.

Update 3: Tech writer Glenn Fleishman’s article, “Is the iPad a Kindle Killer?“, directly compares the Kindle and the iPad. Here’s his take on the Amazon/Macmillan ebook war:

For major publishers, Amazon pays 50 percent of the list price of the current cheapest print format book. If a book is only in hardcover – a new release like a Dan Brown blockbuster – the cover price might be $30 and Amazon pays $15. When that book goes into paperback format and sells for $12, Amazon pays just $6.

However, Amazon wants ebooks to be cheap, and thus charges $10 for books still available only in hardcover. It subsidizes the price of these books to set the overall price low, and reaps its profit margins from cheaper books for which it makes its full 100-percent markup – or even more. Since Amazon is the dominant ebook seller, it may be marking up books higher that are cheaper for it to license…

As I write this, Amazon is fighting a public battle with Macmillan… Macmillan wants to set a higher list price for newly published books as they appear in electronic form (that $13 to $15 mentioned earlier) and give Amazon 30 percent of that list price. If Amazon doesn’t want the new terms, Macmillan would offer a far smaller catalog than it currently provides when it starts its new ebook pricing system in March 2010…

Macmillan is in part trying to prevent the erosion of revenue from the big push for new big books in hardcover. If Amazon can sell such titles for $10, even at a loss, even if Macmillan makes $15 from Amazon selling at that price, it sets the wrong expectation, and overturns some of the economics for both blockbusters and mid-range books. (The blockbusters’ margins make possible more interesting books that sell vastly fewer copies.)

Amazon balked, and not only pulled Macmillan’s ebook titles, but also stopped selling all Macmillan print books temporarily. That’s the biggest hissy fit I’ve ever seen a company pull…

On the face of it, this seems like a bad deal for consumers. Wouldn’t you rather pay $10 than $15 for a book? Absolutely. But in the long run, Amazon would achieve a de facto control over book pricing, which would hurt small and large publishers.

But it’s not that Macmillan wants to sell books for $13 to $15 forever; rather, “Pricing will be dynamic over time.” That is, Macmillan can price books in response to demand, instead of being stuck either in whatever pricing system Amazon wants to impose, or the heavily discounting books off cover price in print.

With more control on the supply side, Macmillan can reduce prices as demand lessens. Those who desperately want a book immediately might pay $15 at its launch; Macmillan would also guarantee print and ebook editions would be issued at the same time. If you can wait, you might pay less and less…

This is good for readers, writers, and publishers, as well as the ebook distributors including Amazon and Apple. More books will be sold this way, and more revenue directed at the creators, not the middlemen….

The morning after

Amazon has still not restored the Macmillan print books or ebooks to their inventory, so though it is being widely reported that Amazon has conceded, their boycott of Macmillan books and authors continues. (For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, see my previous blog post or this New York Times article, “Publisher Wins Fight With Amazon Over E-Books.”)

According to this Shelf Awareness article, “The Macmillan ban went beyond Amazon’s website: reportedly without notice to Kindle owners, Amazon went into the devices and removed Macmillan titles from wish lists and removed sample chapters of Macmillan titles. This move was reminiscent of the retailer’s quiet pulling last year of some e-titles whose copyrights were in question.”

Here are links to some new and interesting blog posts, analysis, and commentary about all this:

• John Scalzi’s “All the Many Ways Amazon So Very Failed the Weekend“
• Scott Westerfeld’s “Zinc Blinked“
• Nathan Bransford’s “The Kindle Missile Crisis“
• Gavin Grant’s “Amazon rude? Surely not?“
• Carolyn Kellogg’s “Whose Move? Amazon and Macmillan vie for position“
• C. Max Magee’s “Amazon eBook Pricing Battle Gets Ugly“
• Kassia Krozser’s “Amazon, Macmillan, Agency Models, and Quality (Oh My)
• Lynne Kiesling’s “Publishers and ebooks: innovation, DRM, and resale price maintenance“
• Mike Shatzkin’s “The wild weekend of Amazon and Macmillan“

Amazon declares war on Friday, concedes on Sunday (updated)

Well, this has been an unusually interesting weekend. For those who haven’t been glued to the interwebs, on Friday Amazon stopped selling all print books and ebooks published by Macmillan and their many imprints, including Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Tor, Henry Holt, and St. Martin’s Press.

This is the first shot with real bullets in the war over the future of ebook pricing. It can’t be a coincidence that it happened this week, after Apple announced the iPad and the iBooks app/bookstore and its deal with five of the six major U.S. publishers–of which Macmillan is one. Amazon has gained ebook market domination by selling many new ebooks for its Kindle at a loss. (Under the wholesale model, for new books (print or ebook) big retailers like Amazon pay the publisher 50% of the hardcover list price but can sell it for whatever price they want.) Amazon set the retail price for many ebooks at $9.99 even though it often had to pay the publishers more than that in order to drive sales of its Kindle and the Kindle-only formatted ebooks. Most other ebook retailers can’t afford to take a loss, so their prices are higher than Amazon’s, which convinced more people to buy the Kindle and increased Amazon’s market share. (This is the same thing that happened with print book pricing in the Amazon vs. independent booksellers battle.) But publishers feared that once Amazon completely dominated the ebook market, it would start putting pressure on them to lower their wholesale prices so that they could continue to sell ebooks at $9.99 and make a profit, but push the losses onto the publishers and authors. To try to regain a bit of control, some publishers began to withhold their ebooks from Amazon or delay them until a few months after the release of the hardcover.

Then Apple comes along and makes a deal with the publishers to sell their ebooks on the iPad. Publishers could set their own prices (ebooks would be priced individually, according to a formula tied to the print price, with most new ebooks between $12 and $15 and lower prices for backlist titles) and Apple would take 30% (this is the agency model, to be explained below). To the publishers, this seemed like a much better (more sustainable and profitable) idea, especially since Apple is one of the few companies that could take on Amazon and open up the ebook market to some real competition. If publishers could sell their ebooks profitably through Apple’s ebook store, they could resist Amazon’s push to lower their prices to a level that publishers believe would be disastrous to the industry.

So now that publishers have found an ebook pricing model they can live with, they want Amazon to agree to it as well. It would allow everyone (including Amazon) to make a profit, ebooks will still be priced significantly lower than print books so the ebook market would continue to grow, ebooks would be available simultaneously with the hardcover publication, and the price of ebooks will drop throughout the life-cycle just like print books do. Amazon, however, might lose their market advantage if they can’t significantly undercut everyone else on price. If Amazon chooses to stay with the current wholesale model and set their prices below everyone else to gain market share, publishers can accordingly choose to withhold or delay the release of the Kindle ebooks. As my husband commented this morning, it’s the clash of the monopolists, and he’s strangely unsure who to root for in this fight.

Apparently Amazon has decided to make an example out of the first publisher to try to renegotiate ebook terms. As recounted by John Sargent, the CEO of Macmillan, in a letter released yesterday:

This past Thursday I met with Amazon in Seattle. I gave them our proposal for new terms of sale for e books under the agency model which will become effective in early March. In addition, I told them they could stay with their old terms of sale, but that this would involve extensive and deep windowing of titles. By the time I arrived back in New York late yesterday afternoon they informed me that they were taking all our books off the Kindle site, and off Amazon. The books will continue to be available on Amazon.com through third parties.

I regret that we have reached this impasse. Amazon has been a valuable customer for a long time, and it is my great hope that they will continue to be in the very near future. They have been a great innovator in our industry, and I suspect they will continue to be for decades to come.

It is those decades that concern me now, as I am sure they concern you. In the ink-on-paper world we sell books to retailers far and wide on a business model that provides a level playing field, and allows all retailers the possibility of selling books profitably. Looking to the future and to a growing digital business, we need to establish the same sort of business model, one that encourages new devices and new stores. One that encourages healthy competition. One that is stable and rational. It also needs to insure that intellectual property can be widely available digitally at a price that is both fair to the consumer and allows those who create it and publish it to be fairly compensated.

Under the agency model, we will sell the digital editions of our books to consumers through our retailers. Our retailers will act as our agents and will take a 30% commission (the standard split today for many digital media businesses). The price will be set for each book individually. Our plan is to price the digital edition of most adult trade books in a price range from $14.99 to $5.99. At first release, concurrent with a hardcover, most titles will be priced between $14.99 and $12.99. E books will almost always appear day on date with the physical edition. Pricing will be dynamic over time.

The agency model would allow Amazon to make more money selling our books, not less. We would make less money in our dealings with Amazon under the new model. Our disagreement is not about short-term profitability but rather about the long-term viability and stability of the digital book market.

So, Amazon is punishing Macmillan by refusing to sell its ebooks or printed books and is sending a message to the other publishers as well. (Yes, you can buy Macmillan books and ebooks elsewhere, but considering Amazon’s market dominance, this will still hurt the publisher and the authors.) Right now, Amazon is the 800-pound gorilla, so they are acting now before the iPad comes out to try to shut down this publisher rebellion before it gains traction. But if the publishers hold firm and rally together behind this new 30% commission/agency model, Amazon is faced with a problem. Are they really going to banish all of the major publishers from their site? By refusing to sell books their customers want, Amazon’s revenue will suffer and customers will be forced to shop elsewhere. As my grandmother would say, they are cutting off their nose to spite their face. With Apple looming on the horizon, it seems like an act of desperation.

There’s been a lot of discussion in the blogosphere over ebook pricing, which I won’t rehash here (see the TeleRead blog or the various publishing/book blogs in my sidebar for background). However, I do think a dynamic pricing scheme for ebooks makes sense. In most cases, a book is published first in hardcover at a higher price (usually between $24 and $28, though Amazon and the other big discounters sell them at 30 to 50% off that price). About a year later, the book is published in trade paperback at a lower price (usually between $12 and $16, with fewer/smaller discounts). If you want to read a book when it first comes out, you have to pay a premium for it, as you would when a movie is first released. If you don’t want to pay this premium, you have to wait to buy it at a lower price or borrow it from your local library. As most ebooks are priced below the price of a trade paperback or discounted hardcover, you can see why some publishers don’t want to make them available until after the hardcover has run its course. (It’s the hardcover sales to the public and libraries that allow publishers to recoup much of their costs, and authors receive far more per book from hardcovers than they do from paperbacks.) But in the same way you release the book twice–first in hardcover at a higher price, later in paperback at a lower price–why not release an ebook at the same time as the hardcover at a lower price than the hardcover (for example, the price of a trade paperback, to account for lower production/distribution costs and the fact that unlike a paper book, you don’t really own it because of DRM and can’t resell it)– say $12 to $15– and then lower the price of the ebook to $10 or less when the trade paperback comes out.

With a dynamic pricing model, consumer behavior will eventually set pricing levels. If consumers are willing to pay more for immediate access or are willing to wait in order to pay less (like with print books), then that will become the standard. If consumers demand immediate access to ebooks but will only pay $10 or less, publishers may have to reconsider their entire model–perhaps abandon the hardcover and release new books in trade paperback to keep the prices between print books and ebooks more in line with each other. Consumers would love this, as it would lower book prices, but the publishing industry would have to change significantly, much as the music industry was forced to.

Authors, of course, are the collateral damage in this fight. Here are some blog posts of note, some by authors whose books are no longer for sale on Amazon:

• John Scalzi
• Cory Doctorow
• Tobias Buckell
• Jay Lake
• Caleb Crain
• Nicola Griffith
• Digital Book World round-up of author reactions

Update 1:  IndieBound, the collective website of U.S. independent bookstores, has posted a reminder that “Macmillan books available here – and at thousands of independent bookstores across the country!” You can search for your local independent bookstores on the IndieBound website. If you are looking for an online bookstore, check out Powells.com, which sells new, used, and out of print books and ships worldwide.  By the way, Powells and IndieBound also have affiliate programs, in case you are thinking about switching your book links away from Amazon.

Update 1.5: Another option for those looking for online booksellers who have affiliate programs and will ship internationally is The Book Depository, recommended by Cheryl Morgan. The Book Depository (.com for the U.S. or .co.uk for the rest of the world) offers free worldwide shipping.

Update 2: This just in from Nick Mamatas’ blog. The following announcement about Macmillan was posted on Amazon’s Kindle community board at 2:22pm (PST) today, signed by the Amazon Kindle team:

The Amazon Kindle team says:

Dear Customers:

Macmillan, one of the “big six” publishers, has clearly communicated to us that, regardless of our viewpoint, they are committed to switching to an agency model and charging $12.99 to $14.99 for e-book versions of bestsellers and most hardcover releases.

We have expressed our strong disagreement and the seriousness of our disagreement by temporarily ceasing the sale of all Macmillan titles. We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan’s terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books. Amazon customers will at that point decide for themselves whether they believe it’s reasonable to pay $14.99 for a bestselling e-book. We don’t believe that all of the major publishers will take the same route as Macmillan. And we know for sure that many independent presses and self-published authors will see this as an opportunity to provide attractively priced e-books as an alternative.

Kindle is a business for Amazon, and it is also a mission. We never expected it to be easy!

Thank you for being a customer.

I just checked, and Macmillan books are still not available for sale on Amazon. I wonder how long this “temporary” boycott of Macmillan books and ebooks will continue.

The news of the announcement is racing throughout the blogosphere and Twitter. Here’s the New York Times blog post, titled “Amazon Concedes on Electronic Book Prices.”

I’ll give John Scalzi the last word:

Dear Amazon,

Now that you’ve admitted that you’re going to accept Macmillan’s pricing proposal on ebooks, would you mind turning the “Buy Now” button back on for all my Tor books? Pretty please? The longer you wait, the more I’ll have to think you’re just being petulant and foot-stompy about it.

Kthxbye,

JS

P.S.: Come here, have a hug. Let’s never fight again, okay?

No, seriously. Let’s never fight again.

Thanks.

“I just love looking at old pictures of people who are now dead.”

My thanks to Gwenda Bond for the tip about the fascinating interview with author John Crowley in the current issue of The Believer magazine.

John Crowley has been a major influence on so many writers (including my husband, Matt Ruff), and he’s written nearly a dozen novels, including The Translator, the four-book Ægypt cycle, and Little, Big, one of Matt’s favorite books, which he described as  “a sprawling family chronicle that William Faulkner might have written, if he’d written about fairies.”

Here are some of John’s comments on research from the interview:

BLVR: So many of your books have a strong research element to them, whether it’s written into them with characters who are themselves researchers, like Pierce Moffett, the main character of Ægypt, who scours the world finding materials for his own book, or simply because the novels themselves are obviously the result of meticulous, extensive research. What’s the relationship, if any, between research you do for your novels and doing research for documentaries? Do they feed off one another in any way?

JC: Maybe I just have a taste for research. Most of the films that I have worked on and enjoyed doing have been based on archival footage. And I’ve found that I just love looking at old footage. I just love looking at old pictures of people who are now dead. There’s something intensely attractive and gripping in looking at these pictures of people who are gone…

I don’t know whether this research actually combines with my writing, but I do know that there is a real thrill to it. I’ve completed a book [Four Freedoms] set in the 1940s about people who are building a bomber in a war production plant, and the research I’ve done for that offers the same kind of fascination with the lives of ordinary people. You can find lots of memoirs of people who worked in these factories, especially women, how they felt about it, what they did every day, how their husbands viewed it, how scared they were to go to work, how they learned to do things they thought they never would. It’s enormously touching.

BLVR: Did you dig through even older materials for the Ægypt quartet? Did you look at old manuscripts? Was there any tactile element to your research?

JC: [Laughs] Not really. I did handle a few old books but I never went into it to that degree. There was never the kind of experience that I ascribe to some of the characters in those books, where they actually go in and palpate old books and turn old dusty leaves and things like that. Most of that, I have to say, I constructed for them to experience. Most of my research for those books came out of secondary sources; a lot of the books I read are full of printed reproductions of old imagery and texts, and I enjoyed looking at those. But I never did the kind of deep manuscript research that might have given me that kind of a thrill. Somehow I felt I was doing enough just creating all the universe around them!

John has more to say on research, genre, his books, and other subjects, so read the whole interview.

By the way, John has a blog, and his new novel, Four Freedoms, will be published at the end of this month. Matt and I heard John read from the manuscript when he came to Seattle last year, so we are very excited about reading the book.

More on literary hoaxes

After every big literary hoax, the media suddenly remembers earlier ones. ABC News has a slideshow of 19 famous literary hoaxes, and a March 2008 LA Times article lists some other interesting cases.

I find this subject fascinating and I am curious as to what motivates people to do this, especially these days when facts are easier to find and frauds are more likely to discovered (eventually).

And now, a brief rant to the media: Learn from your mistakes! And bring back fact-checkers! (And if you expect editors to fact-check for you, give them the time, training, and resources they need to do it right.) I’ll stop now.

Happy New Year!

Why don’t publishers fact-check memoirs?

A memoir is discovered to be more fiction than fact, a scandal erupts, and the publisher cancels the book. How many times have we heard this story?

In this newest case, the book is a Holocaust memoir titled Angel at the Fence, the love story of Herman Rosenblat and his wife Roma. While Rosenblat was in fact in a concentration camp as a teenager, the love story that captured the imagination of his publisher, Oprah Winfrey, and a movie producer is false. Berkley Books, part of the Penguin group, just canceled the February publication of the book. No word yet on the fate of the planned movie.

You should read Gabriel Sherman’s New Republic article, “The Greatest Love Story Ever Sold,” and his follow-up piece, “Wartime Lies,” which uncovered the story and set the latest events in motion. You should also read Deborah Lipstadt’s series of blog posts titled “Apples over the Fence,” as she cast doubt on the story a year ago, was quoted in Sherman’s article, and has interesting information and commentary about this. Here’s the link to the Angel at the Fence website, and here’s the link to a statement from Rosenblat’s literary agent, Andrea Hurst.

Each time another false memoir scandal emerges, I ask the same question– why don’t publishers fact-check memoirs? I’ve always assumed that memoir was a form of biography and thus should be fact-checked. (I know you can’t fact-check every little detail, conversation, and memory, but shouldn’t the basic premise, events, and story be true?) Why, after James Frey, haven’t things changed at all? And the bigger question– why does a story become more interesting to publishers and readers when it is represented as truth rather than fiction?

Update: Here’s the link to the New York Times‘ December 29th article about it. Here’s TNR’s summary and chronology of the events.