Warren Adler's Blog, page 53

The Knee-Jerk Standing Ovation

I have been baffled for the last few years by audiences rising up like ecstatic robots to give a standing ovation to every Broadway show I have recently attended, no matter how puerile, how badly performed or conceived, no matter how mediocre, as if they have just experienced a high point in national culture.

Of course, there have been some shows, admittedly few and far between deserving of such a tribute. And it is a tribute. It suggests that the new theater audience might not know the difference or that they are sincerely in thrall to anything at all that appears live on stage.

As a veteran theatergoer, I refuse to stand and celebrate what I believe is in my opinion mediocre, undeserving or, put another way, routine and unspectacular. It is not easy to be a snobby non-conformist while people around me are joyously demonstrating their robust indiscriminant praise. Sorry folks, but it makes me feel like the only one not heiling at a Leni Riefenstahl film of a Nazi rally.

Frankly these raucous cheerleaders make me feel intimidated, an unappreciative luddite, out of place, someone to be ostracized or, at best, pitied with an arthritic problem that inhibits an easy standing position.

Are these mesmerized worshipful people around me really celebrating the greatness and glory of what they have experienced? Are they celebrating the fact that they have finally seen their first Broadway show? Are they the family and friends of one of the actors, the director or producer of the show? Do they believe this is the traditional way one shows one’s appreciation for the act of simple practicing performance art?

Such gestures do not routinely happen in London or Sydney, except when what has been seen is really unique, and spectacularly praiseworthy. On the other hand, based on the premise that there are different strokes for different folks, it could be that I am truly the only one in the audience who was not moved by the performance. Vive la difference.

To a veteran theatergoer like me, it is tempting to characterize these enthusiasts as a bunch of out of town hicks, which could be seen as a typical hard-bitten New Yorker’s display of attitude. Going to the Broadway theater used to be an entirely different experience. Pardon the nostalgia but not everything new is as shiny as it seems. From my perspective the experience is badly tarnished and needs a rehab.

It used to be that people actually dressed up when they went to the Broadway theater. Most men wore shirts, ties and jackets and most women wore their finest clothes. Shorts, polo shirts, sneakers, backpacks and other types of so-called leisure wear were simply not worn as if somehow looking less than your best would denigrate the experience, the players and other members of the audience. It was part of the etiquette of theatergoing, a kind of respect for the performers and the idea of theater being an important cultural experience.

It is even worse when one observes what is going on in opera, particularly at the Met, which is undergoing a sea change in audience participation, demographics and productions in an effort to make the experience more egalitarian. Watching grand opera live has always been an ecstatic emotional experience for many and one has far more tolerance for an audience rushing to their feet after a performance and showering the stars with ear splitting appreciation.

It is, of course, a noble effort to open the audience to last minute bargain hunters who cannot afford the astoundingly high-ticket prices. To a true opera lover watching a live performance is as close to nirvana as one can get. All I’m suggesting is that everyone in the audience should be respectful of the protocol in dress and conduct. There is no polite or more subtle way to offer that point.

Yes, I can hear all the clatter from the peanut gallery of accusations of elitism, snobbery and fuddy-duddyism. When all is said and done however, the argument comes down to money. Making money in legitimate theater is a tough slog. Making money in opera is beyond hope and needs subsidies from everywhere to create its magic.

Grand opera aside, I am inclined to believe that, perhaps, my objection to the indiscriminate standing ovation is indicative of not only the decline in the cultural aspirations of the audience, but in the decline of the quality of what is on offer. For many of us addictive theatergoers the plethora of revivals can tend to be off-putting although we understand that branding and nostalgia is a powerful commercial tool. After all, Shakespeare plays have always been the coin of the realm on the live stage. That is one brand that is hard to tarnish.

What the shower of revivals indicates may not be because of the lack of originality in the creative pool of today’s playwrights and composers, but because it is too risky financially to mount a production that is an unknown quantity by an unbranded talent. The result is that we are doomed to revivalism and the creative original has a tougher and tougher time to be seen and savored.

Perhaps to be kind, the indiscriminate ovation after the show is more a tribute to the survival of this art form than the appreciation of what the audience has just seen. That I can understand.

Are Best-seller Lists Irrelevant?

It may be time for the media that covers the book business to stop publishing best seller lists. They are, in today’s book choosing environment, disorienting, unhelpful and confusing, a valiant but failed attempt to make sense out of disorder.

For some time now the New York Times Book Review has devoted the best part of six pages of its shrinking section to various best-seller lists. They cover numerous categories; children’s books, how to, fiction, non-fiction, e-books, hardcover, paperback and trade fiction. They are a cracked mirror of the fractionalized, overstuffed and disorganized image of contemporary book publishing.

Once upon a time, they might have served their purpose for devoted general readers who based their choices on the premise that a book which sells best might be worth the investment of time and money. It was assumed, too, that what sold best might provide the reader with a better reading experience than what was not on the list. In other words, follow the crowd. They may know where they’re going. Or may not.

As everyone knows, popularity rarely equates with quality. On the other hand, quality is too subjective to be quantified and it would be the essence of snobbery to condemn all of the books on best-seller lists as potboilers. Many are. But some have stood the test of time and have introduced authors who have shown remarkable durability, and given pleasure and insight to generations of readers.

The goal of publishers has been always to get one or another of their authors on the top rankings of the various lists. They are, after all, in business. Getting them on those lists is essential to their bets on how they believe their books will do in the marketplace and they gear their print runs and promotional investments to these bets. The goal is to dominate the shelf space in bookstores and the Net.

If these books make it on the various lists, published week to week, not only in the Times but in other sources of lesser prestige and importance, readers will assume that their choices have been vetted by the public.

Like practically every business on the planet, technology has been a profound game changer and nowhere has it been more so than in the publishing business. We all know the scenario, the astounding rise of e-books, the precipitous decline of printed books, the ever-shrinking number of bookstores, the loss of the usual quality filters that appeared in newspapers and magazines, the rise of thousands of book bloggers world-wide, the proliferation of self-appointed book reviewers offering a myriad of opinions on the merits of books, and the rise of author factories that keep the output of so-called “branded” authors in production e.g. Patterson, Cussler and numerous others who slap their names on books produced by well paid “ghosts,” some of whom are modestly credited.

With approximately thousands of books published every week the pool of books available is rising exponentially. Today, anybody who can put a sentence together can publish a book on the cheap and get it on the technology shelf available for downloading inside of a few weeks or less.

For those of us in the fiction reader pool, the implications of the best-seller list in today’s world imply that there are “them” (those on the list) and “the rest” (those piled up in the cyber bins outside of the lists).

There has, of course, always been an intrepid band of talented writers buried in the so-called “rest” who, for one reason or another, have been crowded out of the contemporary sales arena by the over powering ubiquity of the best seller lists.

It can be argued that, best-seller lists aside, the true worth and power of, for example, a novel is passed from reader to reader by what is characterized as “word of mouth,” and the overwhelming majority of the most enduring works of fiction have never been best-sellers in their time.

As any author today knows, the business of attracting readers in today’s Wild West world of publishing is not only difficult, but often futile and heartbreaking. When one thinks of some great fiction writing by talented writers going unread and unheralded, crowded out in the marketplace by the harsh realities of commerce, one can only chant a sad melody of regret.

Yes, I am well aware that traditional publishers still in business depend, like the movie studios and distributors, on the one or two big hits that will make them financially whole in today’s commercial environment. And perhaps, like Don Quixote, I am fighting the windmills, but there are many of us around who passionately love books, great stories, wonderful writing, and whose lives have been enriched by being stimulated, inspired and informed by such stellar works of the imagination.

For readers like us, the best-seller lists are increasingly irrelevant, and they may actually be a deterrent in our never-ending search for great new books to enhance our lives.

Eliminating them entirely might not sit well for authors who have been branded into popularity and those who publish them, but the elitism of market manipulation through such lists does not, in the opinion of this dedicated reader, serve us as well as they did in bygone days.

The Greying of America

The success of the movie The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel may yet prove to be the watershed moment when the movie industry gets the message that ignoring people over 60 is a profound marketing mistake, not only for the film business but for “everything.”

For those not yet conversant with this excellent movie, the ensemble cast is led by two formidable actresses Judi Dench and Maggie Smith, both 77. Others in the ensemble include Tom Wilkinson and Bill Nighy, both over 60. The plot deals with a group of still vital British retirees visiting India desperate to find some saving grace to enrich the remainder of their lives.

It is a skillfully told character driven story which takes place in an exotic locale in modern India and deals with how intelligent human beings cope with their still resonant hopes and dreams in the twilight of their lives. What struck me as notable was that the audience was pretty much the same age as the characters in the film.

For too long this demographic, meaning people over 60, have been largely non-existent as a target for putting butts in the seats of movie auditoriums. The prime target demographic for films has been teenagers and below and people of dating age.

From the point of view of a movie goer in this “senior” bracket, I have nothing but high praise for the movie, largely because it deals with the most compelling problems that will affect the 77 million baby boomers in this country about to enter the physical and emotional territory explored by this film. Think of the subject matter of the film as a pebble thrown into a pond. Every part of the pond is affected by its ripple effect.

The central question it deals with is how one who enters this last rung on the ladder of life finds fulfillment, relevance, happiness and contentment when the heavy lifting of their “working” and “caregiving” life ebbs and they move into this last phase.

What those now entering this cycle are confronting is a new paradigm. Health science with its breakthrough pharmaceuticals and lifestyle changes has increased longevity to the point where people over 60 are a fast growing active, energetic, vital and productive population bubble.

People in the 60 to 90 category are growing at an astonishing rate and they are not going quietly into oblivion.

They are active sexually, intellectually, athletically, and a good portion of them have a reasonable cache of disposable income. Many are still in the workplace and in positions of authority in industry and academia. Mandatory retirement rules are being rethought and many are embarking on second careers. Indeed, as consumers and innovators, they are an active, energetic and creative force.

Using this film as an example makes the point that the big shift in marketing is, at long last, finding traction in this astonishingly fertile demographic. Of course, this trend has been out there for a number of years, but the surprise monetary success of this movie is a sign that there is a vast new shift in play.

The movie business has for years been the tailwind to spot popular trends and it has done so again with the full force of its hype and razzle dazzle promotion.

If my crystal ball is in operative mode, I would say that we are entering an era where more attention, a lot more, will be paid to this demographic in every phase of marketing products and services. It will also spawn a sea change in the way this group is approached in other forms of media and by advertisers eager to find productive eyeballs to flack their products.

For the most part, the people in this category will require a different approach than the mindless pitches that attract the still naïve and blindly hopeful young. They can’t easily be conned and will be looking for offerings in product and entertainment that fill the needs of their current aspirations and lifestyles. Experience generally equates with greater wisdom and insight and one can expect more sophisticated attempts to engage their interest. In movies, magazines, books and other media, for example, they will be looking for material that explores real life and less mindless cartoony entertainment currently crowding out any more substantive offerings.

As time goes on, too, the yawning technological gap between the generations will close and people in the 60 to 90 demographic will be those who led the computer surge from its infancy. By then, they will surely have discovered that technology alone has not divorced them from the ups and downs of the human condition and hopefully they will have acquired the wisdom and insight to navigate the tricky shoals of their maturity.

Indeed, if the movie that sparked this essay is a harbinger, get ready for what is clearly the next new thing, the greying of America… and the world.

Fiction in Flux

For fiction writers in search of a publishing outlet, these are the best of times. For fiction writers in search of readers, this is the worst of times. For fiction writers in search of monetary rewards it is, for most, a disaster.

The challenges for genre fiction writers, those who fashion their stories within the confines of categories such as mysteries, romance, fantasy, zombies, vampires, erotic, and all the subgenres within them, are enormous. If such writers are unbranded and unknown, the odds of finding readership traction in an arena where thousands enter the fray daily are daunting.

For the mainstream serious fiction writer who does not fit into any genre category and might be categorized by the vague classification of literary, popular or commercial, none of which are wholly accurate, the odds are directly proportional to the author’s level of branding success and discoverability.

There are winners, of course. After all, someone wins the lottery. As for so-called branded writers, they are subject to the shifting sands of memory, durability and the vicissitudes of trends, an enigma within an enigma.

The fact is that, despite the odds, the urge to write in general, to tell, to create stories, to have one’s say, to inform, to be known, to be noticed is a drive that ranks far up on the scale of human aspirations. Note the second half of the Facebook name. Now that the magic of electronics has opened the floodgates, there is no closing them ever again.

As one who introduced the first electronic reader at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show in 2007, along with my friend Nick Taylor, the former head of the Author’s Guild, I have been inundated with questions from fellow mainstream novelists on how to find readers, be discovered, sustain a career, earn money and sell to the movies and television. The revolution in publishing is happening so fast and going in so many directions that it is nearly impossible to pin down a plan of action, especially for the dedicated writer of mainstream fiction like yours truly.

Aside from the mysterious and extraordinarily metric “word of mouth,” no one has yet come up with an all-encompassing answer. For the mainstream novelists one size does not fit all and finding one’s target readership is the ultimate challenge. Think fly-fishing where the angler must “match the hatch,” meaning come up with a replica of the insect that is currently on the live menu for the hungry trout.

Discoverability and branding are now the operative words for all writers. The Internet is filled with people who think they have the answer to how to achieve these ever-elusive goals. Some tout social networking, book clubs, book signings; interaction on all levels. Thousands of writer groups have emerged with all members searching for answers. Thousands of profit-making ventures have emerged with surefire answers to both discoverability and branding.

None are surefire. Talk of so-called quality, length and attention span, are subjects of debate with no clear answers. An entire industry has grown up around electronic publishing. But for the author of mainstream fiction, monetization for most practitioners is still an illusion.

Everything is in flux. We are poised with one foot in the old world and one foot in the new. Bookstores are shrinking. Book reviewers have morphed into book “bloggers.” The old ways of manuscript buying have changed. Self-publishing is exploding. Advances by traditional publishers are less and fewer. What worked yesterday no longer works today. Indeed, what worked five hours ago is no longer viable.

As always, there are spectacular successes, but, for the vast majority of authors, little traction, little income, little branding, little discoverability. Such obvious facts will deter nobody who wants to be a writer. Within a few years, there will be millions upon millions of books available on the Net. Most authors will face smaller and smaller circles of fans, which may or may not satisfy their aspirations.

Entrepreneurial Internet publishers will continue to enter the field and enlist numerous authors with back lists and some historic successes. For these entrepreneurs, their income will depend on numbers. The more authors they can sign up the better. Enlist thousands of authors who sell fifty books and you have real money rolling in. In the self-publishing realm the same formula applies. For an author, the operative slogan is “Better than Nothing.” Actually, as it now stands, the free e-book phenomenon is soaring as authors give away their books to hopefully gain reader traction.

I have watched this new book culture evolve and have tried most ploys of discoverability and branding, and have advised countless others of my experiences. I came to the field of electronic publishing at its inception, a decade before e-book readers were available, modestly branded, and have embarked on a long term plan designed to keep my authorial name before the public, which is now the number one task of every author who must meet the challenges imposed by this new world.

Everything I’ve done in my career is purely experimental. With my 33rd book, The Serpent’s Bite, a novel about a dysfunctional family, I am embarking on a new experiment that will attempt to meld the old with the new, the print world with the digital world.

As I have from the beginning, I will share my experiences with any writer who asks. We are, after all, part of the vast battalion of storytellers who are compelled by unknown and powerful forces to produce works of the imagination and share them with others.

For us, this is real life and we’ll keep at it until the last dog dies.

The Most Divisive Political Campaign in History

Fasten your seatbelts, boys and girls, we are about to embark on the most divisive, assaultive and malicious political campaign in American history. It will also be the most expensive.

Whatever your political affiliation, whatever one of hundreds of passionate causes you embrace, this election season will be both virtual and geographic ground zero for making one’s voice heard. The objective as always will be to make the message attract as much media and Internet attention as possible.

As we speak, plans are surely afoot for orchestrating protests for every fervent cause under the sun. Expect to hear from every conceivable rights group — gay, racial, feminine, immigrant and animal to environmental and others too numerous to mention. What will be pro will also be anti. The atmosphere will be noisy, unruly and determined. The louder, the better. The media and the net love pandemonium.

The vernacular of protest will ring out over the land, not only in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Tampa, Florida, where the two political parties will hold their conventions, but in every nook and cranny of cyberspace. A tsunami of indignation and complaint will sweep over America.

The competition for attention will be cutthroat. After all, what good is a protest if it does not multiply its message through the media and the Internet? The Twitter and Facebook pipelines, having reached full maturity, will be jammed with invective opinions and pronouncements. Bedlam is the coin of the realm of the relentless and ever expanding bubble of attention getting information.

Early signs of this coming season of grievance and dissent can be seen in the gathering media clouds. Accusations against candidates will stem from cyber or shoe leather research that will cover every aspect of a candidate’s life, background and schooling. Gotcha will be fair game. Contributors to parties and causes will be outed, many to be insulted and reviled. We are about to discover the darker side of political giving.

Nothing will remain hidden. Every untoward sexual episode of a candidate’s life will be uncovered and exposed, every behavioral flaw, every teenage caper, every past speech, essay, email, conversation, promise and pronouncement with the slightest contrarian view of the candidate’s present stand will be unearthed, recycled, attacked and reinterpreted to fuel media attention.

Past friendships with the unorthodox, the radical, the renegade will be exposed. The old bugaboo of guilt by association will rise with predictable accusations. An inadvertent and innocent remark, even a comical throwaway line will be labeled a character flaw. There will be little restraint on accusation, nastiness and insult.

It amazes me what guts and courage is required these days to seek or hold on to political office. It seems like an exercise in madness, especially for those who aspire to a national perch. But then ambition must trump caution, especially when it comes to the presidency. It is, after all, the gold medal of politics, the ultimate prize. Whatever your ideological bent you have to bend a knee in admiration for the aspirants for their energy, fortitude, singleness of purpose and, especially, their figurative body armor that makes them impervious to insult. As they say, it’s not a game for sissies.

There is no question that the democratic process, distorted or, some would say, enhanced by technology is no longer what our founding fathers could have envisioned. Yes, it still looks good on paper with its core ideal of power by the people ruled through candidates chosen by election. Still, I go with Churchill, who opined that it is the best of the worst formula for governing on the planet, despite its chaotic and often disordered jumble.

Yes, there have always been conflict and vituperation surrounding national elections and conventions. The last big fracas was in Chicago, circa 1968. Will it be worse this time? I certainly hope not, although the recent global disturbances point to eruptions apparently fueled by social networking sites, which now serve as conduits of public rage.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the leaders of both parties and the candidates put maintaining public decorum on the top of their election agendas? Unfortunately, in the present climate of uncompromising anger and perceived inequality and unfairness obsessing the electorate and the nervousness and fear surrounding public policy in an economic downturn, such niceties are impossible.

Am I exaggerating? I don’t think so. Even the most sober observer of the human comedy of political theater, if he tells himself the truth, is bound to come to the same conclusion.

The Coming Battle of E-Readers

Okay, so now we know where the e-book is going. Ever upward.

To have predicted that twelve years ago, when I had all my novels reversed from major publishers and launched all my writings in e-books and print-on-demand, was a no-brainer. People thought I was mad. No brownie points required. It was a slam-dunk. Publishers, authors, retailers, the whole kit and caboodle of the book industry were asleep at the switch.

Even when I introduced the first reader on the planet in 2007, from SONY, the audience at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics show was spotty and indifferent. In fact, everywhere I went to evangelize the concept the reception was always cool.

So here we are, five years later, with the Kindle in the dominant e-book position, the Nook positioned for the coming battle for market share, and SONY being re-constituted to join the fray while the legacy publishers mull their future moves. Anyone who didn’t see it coming was either brain dead or too busy in the basement counting their money.

I don’t claim any supernatural insight. I was merely pursuing my own agenda based on the handwriting that was visible on the wall for all to see.

The fact is that my dirty little secret was to try to improve the prospects for the likes of myself, a dedicated author of mainstream novels. You know the kind. Those written by committed, passionate, novelists to whom the written word is as sacred as a painter’s brush stroke and notes dancing in a composer’s brain.

We, who persist in this undertaking, always seem to be fighting a perpetual war, battling to reconcile popularity with personal fulfillment and fame with obscurity, often fighting valiantly to preserve the form itself, which, arguably, has had a mere 200-odd-year history, according to literary scholars. Perhaps that is true in a purely commercial sense, although I’ve always dated the kind of storytelling encased in the novel form as being as old as those illustrated stories found on the walls of ancient caves.

The question for my fellow practitioners and me is how to preserve and enhance the so-called mainstream novel, meaning the stand-alone, one-off novel, the kind that your English high school teacher assigned for book reports. I mean no disrespect to genre novelists whose talents, creativity, and ingenuity need no defense and are an important adjunct to popular culture and mass entertainment.

Perhaps there is an element of snobbery in such distinctions, but all serious readers of fiction should understand my definition, especially if they are among that hardy band of questers among us who know the mysterious value of storytelling in providing insight to furthering our understanding of what it means to be human.

And so the question that has always loomed in my mind is how the serious author of novels can get his or her work “discovered,” read, talked about, and, perhaps, bought. I’m afraid that outcome is harder to predict than the inevitable rise of the e-book phenomenon.

After all, e-books are merely a method of obtaining content through a machine. They have some inherent advantages for the reader over the printed books. They are, above all, convenient, quick to obtain, less costly (or should be), easily portable and provide a reading experience that arguably approximates the experience of reading a printed book. They provide a different tactile and olfactory experience than one gets from a paper book but that is based in large part on age, nostalgia and memory. Today’s youth, inculcated with the tactile experience of the machine from the age of two or earlier, share no such nostalgic recollection.

There are thousands of categories that e-books support, running the gamut from instruction to politics and every thing in between and beyond. Works of the imagination, meaning fiction, cover numerous genres aimed to specific reader requirements. The so-called mainstream novel, the work I have labored to define, is the toughest category to monetize, especially in today’s environment, which tempts creative writers to replicate and attracts the self-published.

The mainstream novel is also challenging to the author, who must be branded as a serious contributor in order to attain enough status to attract interest and sales where outlets for recognition and discoverability are shrinking.

While it was easy to make a prediction about the future of e-books it is no simple matter to predict the fate of the serious novelist in the ever-accelerating rough and tumble world of e-books. I suspect that most authors in this category will have to shoulder the task of relying on themselves to publicize, advertise, promote, and project his or her authorial name and titles, whether his or her books are published by a traditional publisher or via self-publishing. Authors of this material will either have to learn how to promote their own works or risk the ultimate curse of artistic endeavor… obscurity and dismissal.

Numerous ways to handle this daunting task have popped up on the net and I have no way of knowing their efficacy, although I caution those who enlist such services to check out those who have experienced them before hiring.

As for me, with my latest novel The Serpent’s Bite, due out in September, I am undertaking a massive and very expensive experiment to test some creative aspects of the marketplace. Since the action of the novel takes place on a trek in the American wilderness and deals with a father’s attempt to win back the love of his two estranged adult children, I am slicing and dicing the innards of the novel to plant my flag in the Internet turf within those categories in an attempt to harvest readers.

Naturally, the story in the novel will have to ride the waves of the mysterious tides of word of mouth and to run the gauntlet of the drawn swords of numerous critics to attain any traction in a traditionally skeptical environment. But the objective of my campaign will be above all, discoverability.

I hope to share my experiences with other novelists currently baffled, frustrated and confounded as they troll the angry seas for readers.

Don’t Believe the E-Book Monopoly Ploy

Don’t believe all that hype about government interference that is designed to foster an Amazon monopoly of the ebook business. What the six major publishers were alleged to have done was collude in fixing prices that, if true, was a desperate act that they must have known would fall afoul of anti-trust laws.

The new ploy by book publishers is to characterize Amazon as a monopoly poised to take over and dictate terms and run rampant over those who create ebook content. That is like saying Starbucks is a monopoly because it currently dominates the coffee retail business.

As an author who introduced the SONY reader, the very first reading device at the 2007 Las Vegas Consumer Electronics show to what was then an indifferent audience, I felt certain that one day e-readers would dominate the marketplace. I thought SONY was really on to something and would one day be the imaginative leader of the ebook industry.

Soon after the SONY launch, Amazon introduced the Kindle and followed through with verve and imagination to become, as we speak, the dominant force in ebook content and sales. I was an evangelist for these devices largely because of the ease of purchase, clarity and wide variety of available content and, above all, convenience, especially for those of us to whom reading is an important part of our lives.

Barnes and Noble, a super successful big-box book chain, apparently saw the advantages of getting into the ebook business early on, created an infrastructure and then, in an act of counter-productive bean cutting, abandoned its ebook business entirely. I remember meeting Steve Riggio, Barnes and Noble’s chief honcho, at the home of the late Bill Riley, one of his board members, and politely chastising him for getting out of that business.

Sure, it was light cocktail chatter, but I could tell that he was contemplating getting back into ebooks. It must have soon become apparent that in order to survive, Riggio had to get into that business, and Barnes and Noble did indeed with its excellent reader, the Nook. Unfortunately, they were late and are now playing catch-up. But to dismiss the Nook as a competitor to the Kindle is to sell Barnes and Noble short. Early on, they revolutionized the book business with their big-box stores and merchandising techniques and will undoubtedly ratchet up the ebook competition.

Then there is Kobo, a Canadian company trying to earn its bones in the business. They have to be counted as a future factor in the competition. There are others, as well, trying to crack into the coming e-reader bonanza.

The introduction of Apple’s iPad gave the publishers, as they might have seen it, leverage to fix their ebook prices. You couldn’t blame them since the challenges posed by ebooks are a very real threat to the profitable print publishing business. I have a feeling they believed that Apple would, like everything they touched, eventually dominate the e-book business as well, hence their alleged collusion.

Although I am an Apple guy and a great admirer and loyal user of their products, I did not think that the iPad would dominate the book business. It doesn’t and, in my opinion, will not. My opinion is based on the fact that the tablet concept is too distractive for the customer, to whom reading is a centerpiece of their leisure activities.

Marketers use a cute term called “immersive reading.” It is redundant. All book reading is immersive and requires from its devotees time and, above all, mental concentration.

Somewhere I read that the great Steve Jobs thought that reading, meaning the content that is defined as “books,” would decline against the onslaught of other cyber activities, which he seemed to deem more important. Indeed, he must have fashioned his foray into the book business with that in mind. With a million distractions now available on the iPad, the so-called “immersive reader” is relegated to be merely one of the pack, with “book” content hardly in the same exclusive domain of a solo device.

I am well aware that Amazon is having great success with its “Fire” tablet. My sense is that it will have exceptional value to Apps Aficionados but might not to book content readers. In my view, those who are repetitive “immersive” readers of all ages will stick with the solo reading device.

What could be a worry for Amazon, Nook, and Kobo would be if Apple decides to come out with its own solo reading device.

I have not dealt with the plight of the author, the creator of the content without which the traditional publishing business would have to close its doors. What could happen is that authors might find it more advantageous to create their own self-publishing business models, which has been my choice, join together to create cooperative ventures, or throw their oar in with numerous enterprises serving authors who have the means to self-publish with all the bells and whistles of traditional publishers.

As it stands now, the publishers are busy scratching their heads and trying to come up with measures to assure their future viability. Someone, perhaps far outside the publishing box or an enterprising author might come up with a business plan that will make economic sense. We shall see.

Fear not. Readers must read. Writers must write. It has always been thus. And creative minds will prevail to eventually figure out ways to bring the two together in ways profitable to each.

Warren Adler is the author of 32 novels and short story collections. His books are published in 25 languages worldwide and several have been adapted to movies, including “The War of the Roses” and “Random Hearts.”

An Experiment in Self-Publishing for the Non-Genre Novelist: Part One

Based on more than a decade’s experience in pioneering e-books and non-traditional methods of publishing non-genre novels, I am embarking on a costly experiment to determine whether it is possible for an author of such works to take control of his own career, increase his readership and beat the odds in an increasingly confusing and destructive traditional publishing environment.

My latest novel The Serpent’s Bite will be published in September by my company Stonehouse Press. It will hopefully establish a new paradigm for an author of numerous novels to continue on a career path in an environment that does not favor an author of non-genre novels.

I define non-genre as mainstream novels, strong on both character and plot that tell stories that offer insightful revelations into the human condition that cannot be slotted into the traditional genre and sub-genre categories such as mysteries, fantasy, thrillers, romance, zombies, vampires, young adult, children’s books and on and on.

My hope is that following my experiment will be instructive to the vast numbers of non-genre novelists who believe their work is worthy of readership by discriminating serious readers, and who are either unknown or, like me, modestly branded but still determined to keep on writing and finding readers.

My objective is to inform, instruct and lay out what I will be doing over the course of a number of blog posts and to keep interested readers up-to-date on my progress and the various strategies to be employed. Essentially this is an experiment in marketing and although it might seem blatantly self-promotional, that is not the final objective of this instruction.

Whether or not my experiment works, to break out of the box will be largely dependent on the size of my investment and the choice of companies I have made to administer this experiment. I have incidentally experimented in other ways, having released five of my books simultaneously with Amazon exclusive, about which I have learned the hazards of multiple releasing.

For this marketing experiment and after careful research, I have hired Greenleaf Book Group for distribution, Media Connect for Public Relations and Verso for advertising. I will keep all those interested in how this is working out in future posts. As a further inducement we will be offering limited free downloads periodically of my earlier works in advance of publication and during the launch phase beginning with The Children of the Roses, the sequel to The War of the Roses. Keeping my back list viable will be an essential part of my promotion.

Beyond that will be the subject matter, style and interest in the novel, which is completely unpredictable and in the end, will decide its sales fate. In my case, I write only what interests me with little thought to its marketability until the book is finished and awaits public exposure.

Everything will be transparent and designed to instruct those who will hopefully profit by my experience or discover its flaws. There is no way to assess whether or not it will succeed or fail.

Below is the present reality that is the fate of the self-published non-genre novelist.

There are thousands of books being published every day, both by traditional publishers large and small and a growing band of intrepid self-publishers. The fiction category is dominated by genre novels.

Among the most successful are “factory” books, published under the name of branded authors who “supervise” and no longer write their books like Patterson, Cussler and many others, some acknowledged, many not. Yes, your favorite author may be a gaggle of ghosts.

The young adult category influenced by the astonishing success of the Harry Potter books and romance fiction aimed at women is currently in vogue for publishers, both traditional and self-published. Vampire and fantasy books are particularly strong.

In the non-fiction category, note the number of best-selling “authors” who flack their largely ghost written or committee written books daily on their own television programs.

Such books by authors branded by other industries, particularly entertainment, politics, finance, news and discussion TV personalities, are now the primary sweet spot for commercially minded publishers. This is why you see so many books by television personalities like O’Reilly and novels by Gingrich, et al, many of them out of context with their day jobs. That kind of “free” promotion is eagerly sought by publishers.

Books by celebrities, mostly ghost written, in categories like children’s books, memoirs and biographies are also the fare of choice by many publishers for their brand recognition sales potential.

The fact is that traditional publishers are reluctant to invest in promoting non-genre novels, especially by non-branded novelists, although they are attempting to brand a very limited number of first time authors hoping for a breakout. Many are quickly abandoned if their books don’t sell.

Even well-known novelists are falling off the sales cliff because of the revving up of technology, the reading tablet distraction factor, the shortening readership concentration spectrum and the swiftly widening generation gap. Warhol’s fifteen minutes of fame has been reduced to fifteen seconds.

Add to this the reality that big box bookstores are imploding at a fairly rapid rate, with Borders gone and Barnes and Noble struggling and shifting to their Nook device and beginning to sell products other than books in their stores. Amazon, relentless and creative with its own publishing company, is eating the traditional publisher’s lunch.

Beyond all this gloom and doom meandering is my belief that there is still enough of a robust market out there for emersion reading, for books self-written by serious novelists who wish to engage with serious readers, who look for compelling stories that provide insight into the human condition, excite the psyche and offer a parallel world for people in search of meaning to explore and enjoy.

Serious novelists who self-define themselves in such a category are, of course, opening themselves up to discourse by peers, critics, and academics who believe themselves to be the expert arbiters of such interpretations. But then, that has always been the case. Such folks, who consider themselves keepers of the canon have strong and influential opinions and may look askance at the self-published and ignore their work.

So what is a serious novelist to do to gain readers in the hurly burly unpredictability of this revolutionary phase of modern publishing?

For those who are determined to stay or enter the non genre fiction arena and have exhausted the shrinking traditional publisher route, the only course of action is self-publishing. A giant industry has arisen to guide self-published novelists through the technical shoals to launch their work into cyberspace. This will give the novelist the possibility of discoverability in the huge open landscape of cyberspace.

Finding readers for even the genre self-published novelist is a tough slog. For the non-genre self-published novelist it is like scaling a sheer cliff without climbing equipment. Indeed, the list of free e-books is the fastest growing category of books, offered by writers trying to get a foothold into the reading public.

There is a huge cottage industry promising miraculous sales but in the end, those who have aspirations of self- supported economic independence will most likely be faced with financial disappointment.

Self-published authors will, of course, receive great psychic rewards e.g. the ability to be recognized by peers as an authentic novelist, join groups of common interest with other writers on the vast number of websites where writers with similar yearnings can share conversation and experience, widen one’s circle of readers through book signings, book club discussions, attract local media, and, if really really lucky, generate a following of loyal fans that will provide recognition, favorable feedback, some reviews and personal satisfaction. Not too shabby for hours spent in isolation pursuing one’s artistic bliss.

This is the reality for the self-published writer. My goal will be to help others transcend this outcome, increase their chances of greater visibility and sales and refine ways in which the present and future non-genre novelists will be able to increase their odds of success. In the end, of course, content rules and whether or not, once discovered, the novel connects with the reader will always be the wild card that will determine an author’s success.

Stay tuned.

Download a FREE copy of The Children of the Roses.

The Sunset Gang: A Journey from Page to PBS to Musical

A number of years ago, Larry Russell Brown and I met at the Donna Reed Festival in Denison, Iowa. Larry is a songwriter whose credits include such perennial favorites as “Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree,” “C’mon Marianne,” “Knock Three Times,” and many others. We were each invited to speak to high school students as part of the festival.

We had time on our hands, since there was little to do once our talks were over, and would sit around discussing our careers and how we saw our future projects. I told him about the eleven stories that Viking had just published titled “The Sunset Gang.” The president of Viking at the time, Tom Guinzburg, had given the manuscript to his mother to read and he reported that she was so taken with the stories that he just had to publish them.

The fact was that these stories were based upon my own mother’s experiences as a resident of Century Village, a huge community created in West Palm Beach for middle class people like my parents. Many of them were people who were either immigrants or had come to America as children as part of the mass migrations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century from Eastern Europe. They were mostly new residents who had retired to Florida and were bonding together late in life.

After the short story collection was published, Linda Lavin, a superb actress looking for producing projects, was taken with the stories. She had a retired Dad living in Florida and, as a consequence, related to the material. The project was quickly sold to the Public Television Networks and three of the stories were shot on location in Florida. The first of them is titled “Yiddish,” but, although there is an ethnic twist to the trilogy, the stories apply to seniors of all ethnicities.

In my conversations with Larry, I told him about this upcoming project and he reacted by suggesting that we take the material and, using our mutual talents, create a musical. We wrote nineteen songs. Larry wrote wonderful music and I wrote the lyrics and the book. The musical, developed in a number of showcase events, was put on by the Jewish Repertory Theater to full houses and ecstatic audiences. It is now making the rounds of producers. Our hope is that it establishes itself as a classic about how the senior years can be creative, fruitful, and filled with excitement and romance.

The three episodes of the acclaimed trilogy of the Sunset Gang are now online. I will be posting them soon for your enjoyment.

This is one of my favorite songs from our musical collaboration: WE ARE THE SUNSET GANG

Theater Companies, both professional and amateur are welcome to request both the script and all the songs. Inquiries on production of the musical should be directed to Catherine Crow at Catherine@warrenadler.com.

Warren Adler

The E-Book Dilemma

So now that the pricing structure of e-books has been resolved once and for all, where does that leave the authors, without whom the publishers, their employees, and agents might be on food stamps?

Once the gatekeepers of the printed word, the power of the publishing community has been severely diminished by the indifferent scythe of technology. The e-book intrusion on their vaunted system of cultural filtration has been breached and they are now forced to compete with anyone who believes they have something to say that will add to our knowledge, entertainment and cultural advancement, once the exclusive purview of the publisher-chosen printed book.

For fiction authors who are published by traditional publishers and rely on advances and royalties for their living, the future is dim. There will be exceptions of course, especially in those books that attract youthful, computer-savvy genre readers and in certain categories, like romance fiction, which a largely feminine audience gobbles up like popcorn and currently represents a large chunk of the e-book consumer market.

But the destiny is in the numbers. There are presently multi-thousands of books published every week. This number is sure to rise now that the ease and cost of entering the marketplace has shrunk affordably. A growing portion of these books are self-published by mostly genre fiction authors. Many are priced at 99 cents and still others are given away free by self-published authors hoping to gain reader traction in the process. So far, there is no metric to determine the success or failure of such giveaways.

The best rule of thumb for the marketing of trade books is that 50 percent of readers are persuaded to purchase by publisher advertising and promotion, if any, and the other fifty percent by author familiarity and word of mouth. It is a purely arbitrary number since no one really knows the answer and the variables are legion.

The endurance rate of author popularity will most likely shrink rapidly in the forever-spinning universe of cyberspace. So called “Best Sellers” will have a much shorter lifespan than before. Entrepreneurial authors will proliferate in cyber space, especially in the genre fiction field.

The traditional publishers will probably continue to publish the non-genre authors, especially the serious novelists to whom writing is an artistic calling, as a matter of prestige and devotion, but the advances will, by economic necessity, continue to shrink. But then, serious novelists have always been on the bottom rung of the author income chain and yet continue to pursue their calling, despite the slim odds of making a living, by creating their brand of immersive reading.

Publishers and authors are now scrambling to find the magic bullet that will propel books sales. The process is bound to get hotter now that pricing has become a wild card. There is still, however, some robustness left in the traditional book business. But the changes that are occurring are swift and profound and what’s ahead is, to say the least, challenging.

Unfortunately, the traditional publishers either did not see it coming or did not react fast enough to their changing fortunes. Their reaction comes a bit late in the process as e-books have begun to take hold. Their agency ploy strikes me, with its secrecy and collusion, as a desperate act that they knew would fail.

My guess is that more and more authors will opt for their own promotion and depend on creating circles of interest that could proliferate and help to increase readership. Like everything else, what was once mass has now becoming splintered and fractionalized. Success may soon be measured in more modest terms.

But while my clairvoyance meter has run pretty high when it comes to e-books, I cannot discount the creative imagination that rarely fails to choose a wayward path to another, more satisfactory outcome. The fact is that immersive reading is a powerful motivator and important human need. It has proven its resilience time and time again.

There are certain bedrock givens that continue to stoke my optimism. Stories are created by the author and, however delivered, they are the very essence of human communications. Their value to culture and civilization is immeasurable. A way will be found to fulfill this need and what is important to the human condition will find its way to be profitable.