Lorina Stephens's Blog, page 88
September 24, 2009
Debut and Launch at Word on the Street
Getting ridiculously excited Five Rivers' debut at Word on the Street on Sunday, September 27!
The book festival is one of Canada's largest consumer book fairs. The Toronto venue is held annually at Queen's Park and this year marks 20 years. I remember attending the first WOTS when it was held near the old Bakka Books. Spider Robinson was there that year, and when I had him sign one of my books he looked up, smiled and asked if I was that Lorina Stephens. Knowing he referred to my infamy as b...
The book festival is one of Canada's largest consumer book fairs. The Toronto venue is held annually at Queen's Park and this year marks 20 years. I remember attending the first WOTS when it was held near the old Bakka Books. Spider Robinson was there that year, and when I had him sign one of my books he looked up, smiled and asked if I was that Lorina Stephens. Knowing he referred to my infamy as b...
September 16, 2009
Five Rivers Author's Events
Thought I'd take a moment today to update you on all the appearances our authors will be making through to the close of the year.
September 27 - Word on the Street, Queen's Park, Toronto, Ontario, 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Both Lorina Stephens and Paul Lima will be in attendance, signing and selling books. Booth FB18 on the Fringe Beat, Queen's Park Crescent East.
October 10 - Book Signing, Smith Books, Heritage Place, 1350 - 16th Street East, Owen Sound N4K 5N3, 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. Lorina...
September 27 - Word on the Street, Queen's Park, Toronto, Ontario, 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Both Lorina Stephens and Paul Lima will be in attendance, signing and selling books. Booth FB18 on the Fringe Beat, Queen's Park Crescent East.
October 10 - Book Signing, Smith Books, Heritage Place, 1350 - 16th Street East, Owen Sound N4K 5N3, 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. Lorina...
September 15, 2009
Welcome to Patrick Lima
Well known gardener and author Patrick Lima joins our enclave of writers here at Five Rivers with the re-issue of a revised and updated version of The Organic Home Garden: How to Grow Vegetables & Fruits Naturally.
Patrick is the author of seven gardening books previously published by Key Porter and Camden House, as well as owner, with his partner John Scanlan, of the well-known Bruce Peninsula oasis, Larkwhistle.
With over 30 years of organic gardening experience, Patrick writes credibly...
Patrick is the author of seven gardening books previously published by Key Porter and Camden House, as well as owner, with his partner John Scanlan, of the well-known Bruce Peninsula oasis, Larkwhistle.
With over 30 years of organic gardening experience, Patrick writes credibly...
September 12, 2009
No Surrender
Reprinted here with permission of the author, Matthew Hughes.
Keynote Opening Speech to the Surrey International Writers Conference
(This is a speech I gave to about six hundred emerging writers a few years ago. I thought it might be inspirational – except for the scary parts)
Good morning.
I thought I would tell you the story of my life as a writer. It's meant to be inspiring, though for emerging writers, parts of it may be terrifying.
I was born in a council house in Liverpool. My father was ...
Keynote Opening Speech to the Surrey International Writers Conference
(This is a speech I gave to about six hundred emerging writers a few years ago. I thought it might be inspirational – except for the scary parts)
Good morning.
I thought I would tell you the story of my life as a writer. It's meant to be inspiring, though for emerging writers, parts of it may be terrifying.
I was born in a council house in Liverpool. My father was ...
September 11, 2009
The Indies
I’ve been schleping Five Rivers’ books now for a year and have discovered some rather startling facts about the retail book industry, the sort of thing that isn’t written in agreements or contracts, the insider sort of thing a person only learns through experience.
One of these discoveries centres around the relationship between publisher and bookseller. I thought it would be a straightforward thing. But no, like everything else in publishing, there are rituals and forms and secret handshakes and signals, passwords and traditions. It doesn’t matter if all of these customs are antiquated, illogical, ponderous and obstructive. This is the way things have always been done. And who are you to question this venerable tradition?
Well I question this venerable tradition because it doesn’t work. Not anymore. Not in this Communication Age.
Quite aside from the whole nonsense about needing a retail book distributor (as compared to a wholesale book distributor) in order for a publisher to access many bookstores, is the whole issue of independent booksellers and independent publishers. You would think this a match of legendry proportions. Apparently not.
While independent book stores are swept from the streets like yesterday’s debris, the major chains flourish, offering legacy house books by 10-week wonder writers – shelf after shelf of variants of vanilla, with generally high returns and maximum exposure. Independent publishers, offering the quirky, the unusual, the niche market books that likely won’t hit best-seller lists but will gain cult followings, struggle to gain an audience with these major chains.
Often indie publishers are marginalized by these bookseller goliaths. You can’t sell to us. You need a retail distributor and I don’t care if you’re not going to make money because of distribution fees. No, wait, we’ll give you a break so you best be grateful, and these are the terms and discount at which you can sell to us.
And in the meantime those indie booksellers keep disappearing from the landscape because they’re trying to mimic the goliaths and can’t compete because of profit margins and deep discounts and customer reward programs.
But there are those few indie booksellers who are succeeding and have done so for some time, companies like Bakka Books who offer only science fiction and fantasy books; The Cook Book Store who, you guessed it, sell only cookbooks and DeMille Technical and Business Books to name only three.
Why are these indie booksellers succeeding? Because they’re offering what the major chains don’t – speciality books.
And that’s where the perfect marriage should happen, but doesn’t. On one hand you have indie publishers offering up speciality and niche market books the legacy houses won’t touch and the major chains disdain, slogging it out in an attempt to bring their books to market. On the other hand you have independent booksellers dropping like ants in a tsunami of Raid, unable to compete with the marketing juggernaut of the major chains.
Oh, I don’t know. Seems like a radical thought to me: Indie bookseller, meet indie publisher.
Tired of vampire stories that are a rehash of Stephanie Meyers abominable series? Let me introduce you to C. June Wolf’s Finding Creatures & other stories published by Wattle and Daub Books. Or Hayden Trenholm’s Steel Whispers published by Bundoran Press, or Brian Rathbone’s The Dawning of Power published by White Wolf Press. Or dare I say it, my own From Mountains of Ice published by Five Rivers.
And while many of these books can be found on major online retailers’ websites, being able to thumb through a copy in your favourite indie bookseller’s is often an impossibility. The indie bookseller, parroting the arrogance of the major chains, won’t give the indie publisher the courtesy of their attention. Emails go unacknowledged, phone messages unanswered, and a visit to the store often finds the buyer unavailable, permanently.
I hope you’re listening, indie booksellers. There’s an opportunity here.
One of these discoveries centres around the relationship between publisher and bookseller. I thought it would be a straightforward thing. But no, like everything else in publishing, there are rituals and forms and secret handshakes and signals, passwords and traditions. It doesn’t matter if all of these customs are antiquated, illogical, ponderous and obstructive. This is the way things have always been done. And who are you to question this venerable tradition?
Well I question this venerable tradition because it doesn’t work. Not anymore. Not in this Communication Age.
Quite aside from the whole nonsense about needing a retail book distributor (as compared to a wholesale book distributor) in order for a publisher to access many bookstores, is the whole issue of independent booksellers and independent publishers. You would think this a match of legendry proportions. Apparently not.
While independent book stores are swept from the streets like yesterday’s debris, the major chains flourish, offering legacy house books by 10-week wonder writers – shelf after shelf of variants of vanilla, with generally high returns and maximum exposure. Independent publishers, offering the quirky, the unusual, the niche market books that likely won’t hit best-seller lists but will gain cult followings, struggle to gain an audience with these major chains.
Often indie publishers are marginalized by these bookseller goliaths. You can’t sell to us. You need a retail distributor and I don’t care if you’re not going to make money because of distribution fees. No, wait, we’ll give you a break so you best be grateful, and these are the terms and discount at which you can sell to us.
And in the meantime those indie booksellers keep disappearing from the landscape because they’re trying to mimic the goliaths and can’t compete because of profit margins and deep discounts and customer reward programs.
But there are those few indie booksellers who are succeeding and have done so for some time, companies like Bakka Books who offer only science fiction and fantasy books; The Cook Book Store who, you guessed it, sell only cookbooks and DeMille Technical and Business Books to name only three.
Why are these indie booksellers succeeding? Because they’re offering what the major chains don’t – speciality books.
And that’s where the perfect marriage should happen, but doesn’t. On one hand you have indie publishers offering up speciality and niche market books the legacy houses won’t touch and the major chains disdain, slogging it out in an attempt to bring their books to market. On the other hand you have independent booksellers dropping like ants in a tsunami of Raid, unable to compete with the marketing juggernaut of the major chains.
Oh, I don’t know. Seems like a radical thought to me: Indie bookseller, meet indie publisher.
Tired of vampire stories that are a rehash of Stephanie Meyers abominable series? Let me introduce you to C. June Wolf’s Finding Creatures & other stories published by Wattle and Daub Books. Or Hayden Trenholm’s Steel Whispers published by Bundoran Press, or Brian Rathbone’s The Dawning of Power published by White Wolf Press. Or dare I say it, my own From Mountains of Ice published by Five Rivers.
And while many of these books can be found on major online retailers’ websites, being able to thumb through a copy in your favourite indie bookseller’s is often an impossibility. The indie bookseller, parroting the arrogance of the major chains, won’t give the indie publisher the courtesy of their attention. Emails go unacknowledged, phone messages unanswered, and a visit to the store often finds the buyer unavailable, permanently.
I hope you’re listening, indie booksellers. There’s an opportunity here.
Award Winners and Amazon Rankings
I've been thinking a great deal more about indie publishers and authors and their standing in the marketplace, stimulated by a read of Aaron Shepard's book, Aiming at Amazon. The book is a frank insight for indie publishers into the burgeoning world of online booksellers versus bricks and mortar stores.
In the book Shepard submits that Amazon sales rankings are definite indicators of a book's marketing success. He breaks those rankings down thus:
Top 10,000. If you can your book here and keep...
In the book Shepard submits that Amazon sales rankings are definite indicators of a book's marketing success. He breaks those rankings down thus:
Top 10,000. If you can your book here and keep...
One More Shift in the Publishing World
I read an article today at http://www.Bookseller.com by Benedicte Page entitled 'Publishers cancelling books to cut costs.'
Needless to say the thrust of the article was rather germane to what's going on in the publishing world, and in particular to the evolution we're experiencing here at Five Rivers. Once more it seems the legacy houses are cutting back, claiming publishing Armageddon, only this time they're cutting not just staff but authors, in fact killing off titles and their stable of writers. The rationale behind this is explained by Jonathan Lloyd of Curtis Brown, who says publishers are saying to authors under contract their manuscripts are not up to standard.
Lloyd called the issue of a book’s quality a “grey area” in publishers’ contracts. “Who decides if a book is publishable? There are books on the bestseller lists that people say are rubbish. What publishers are meaning [when they say a book is not up to standard:] is ‘We’re not going to sell as many copies as thought when we commissioned the book,’” he said.
And there's the nut of the problem. Legacy publishers still insist on clinging to old publishing business models that are not only archaic in this Communication Age, but not viable. Setting enormous print runs and expecting to sell that run in 10 to 20 weeks simply doesn't fly today. The consumer is tired of the same old hash, and as a result we're seeing a rise in indie publishing, to the point the ivy league Princeton Review now publishes an indie best-seller list.
So, while the legacy publishers are cutting to the point of bleeding, indie publishers, like Five Rivers, are picking up the wounded the legacy houses are leaving behind, publishing legacy back-lists that are now the intellectual property of the authors.
What prevents many indie publishers from facing the same Armageddon is the fact we're using print on demand technologies, and thereby not investing capital in unwieldy stock that needs to be expensively warehoused. We can take a risk on an author, on a title, and leave the title out there in the marketplace indefinitely, employing cost-efficient and effective Internet marketing, sales and delivery systems, and still turn a profit. The authors benefit because their titles remain in print with the potential of royalties ever-present. The indie publishers benefit because they're able to acquire titles and cultivate authors with minimal risk. The consumers benefit because they're favourite authors and titles remain available, while being allowed the bonus of having greater variety available to them. And perhaps the most astonishing of all is the environment benefits, because remaindered books no longer find their way to landfill, less energy is consumed through warehousing enormous quantities of books, and fewer trees are sacrificed to the paper industry.
What the legacy houses are unable to comprehend or recognize is they've become useless to society, the five pound mobile phone in a world of ultra-light, super-efficient smart phones.
Needless to say the thrust of the article was rather germane to what's going on in the publishing world, and in particular to the evolution we're experiencing here at Five Rivers. Once more it seems the legacy houses are cutting back, claiming publishing Armageddon, only this time they're cutting not just staff but authors, in fact killing off titles and their stable of writers. The rationale behind this is explained by Jonathan Lloyd of Curtis Brown, who says publishers are saying to authors under contract their manuscripts are not up to standard.
Lloyd called the issue of a book’s quality a “grey area” in publishers’ contracts. “Who decides if a book is publishable? There are books on the bestseller lists that people say are rubbish. What publishers are meaning [when they say a book is not up to standard:] is ‘We’re not going to sell as many copies as thought when we commissioned the book,’” he said.
And there's the nut of the problem. Legacy publishers still insist on clinging to old publishing business models that are not only archaic in this Communication Age, but not viable. Setting enormous print runs and expecting to sell that run in 10 to 20 weeks simply doesn't fly today. The consumer is tired of the same old hash, and as a result we're seeing a rise in indie publishing, to the point the ivy league Princeton Review now publishes an indie best-seller list.
So, while the legacy publishers are cutting to the point of bleeding, indie publishers, like Five Rivers, are picking up the wounded the legacy houses are leaving behind, publishing legacy back-lists that are now the intellectual property of the authors.
What prevents many indie publishers from facing the same Armageddon is the fact we're using print on demand technologies, and thereby not investing capital in unwieldy stock that needs to be expensively warehoused. We can take a risk on an author, on a title, and leave the title out there in the marketplace indefinitely, employing cost-efficient and effective Internet marketing, sales and delivery systems, and still turn a profit. The authors benefit because their titles remain in print with the potential of royalties ever-present. The indie publishers benefit because they're able to acquire titles and cultivate authors with minimal risk. The consumers benefit because they're favourite authors and titles remain available, while being allowed the bonus of having greater variety available to them. And perhaps the most astonishing of all is the environment benefits, because remaindered books no longer find their way to landfill, less energy is consumed through warehousing enormous quantities of books, and fewer trees are sacrificed to the paper industry.
What the legacy houses are unable to comprehend or recognize is they've become useless to society, the five pound mobile phone in a world of ultra-light, super-efficient smart phones.
September 10, 2009
The Indies
I've been schleping Five Rivers' books now for a year and have discovered some rather startling facts about the retail book industry, the sort of thing that isn't written in agreements or contracts, the insider sort of thing a person only learns through experience.
One of these discoveries centres around the relationship between publisher and bookseller. I thought it would be a straightforward thing. But no, like everything else in publishing, there are rituals and forms and secret...
One of these discoveries centres around the relationship between publisher and bookseller. I thought it would be a straightforward thing. But no, like everything else in publishing, there are rituals and forms and secret...
September 9, 2009
Word on the Street
On Sunday, September 27, from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., Queen's Park will be home to more than 200,000 avid readers celebrating literacy and the written word, and this year Five Rivers makes a debut appearance at Toronto's Word on the Street. If you love books, and you're in the Toronto area, you need to experience this remarkable book festival.
Five Rivers' booth is FB18, in the Fringe Beat section, south of St. Joseph Street on Queen's Park Crescent East, and north of Wellesley Street West...
September 8, 2009
Requiem to an Enigma
This is supposed to be a blog about business, about the business of Five Rivers. In reality, Five Rivers is a very small organization run by Gary and me and because of that, there's a very human side to our enterprise and the way we deal with associates and colleagues.
And, because of that, I'm going to beg indulgence for a little latitude today regarding a matter of personal concern.
I learned last night my step-father, John Gerard Batherson, died. Gerry, as he was known, came into my life...
And, because of that, I'm going to beg indulgence for a little latitude today regarding a matter of personal concern.
I learned last night my step-father, John Gerard Batherson, died. Gerry, as he was known, came into my life...
