Kenneth Atchity's Blog, page 239
March 16, 2012
On Demand Books Bets on Authors Who Want to Print Their Own Paperbacks
By
John Tozzi
-
Vance Alexander sent 35 query letters to publishers and
agents to pitch his book, a historical novel about a young
slave in 1801 Connecticut who escapes to Canada. No one bit.
So the retired architectural designer decided to publish
it himself. He joined more than 100 aspiring authors at the
library in Darien, Conn., on a recent Thursday night for a
demo of the technology ready to fulfill their literary
ambitions: the Espresso Book Machine.
About five feet high and eight feet wide, it turns a
manuscript into a warm paperback, bound and trimmed, in under
five minutes. Selling a big machine to print books may seem
quixotic when millions of readers are migrating to Kindles and
iPads. On Demand Books, the company behind the Espresso, is
betting on authors like Alexander -- and on the emotional
connection readers and writers have with paper pages that bend
and tear and make a sound when you turn them.
Alexander (a nom de plume—his real last name is Fazzino)
shrinks at the thought of publishing his novel strictly in
digital form. "It's too …" He searches for the word. "It's too
ephemeral," he says. "I like holding a book in my hand."
While e-books get all the attention, the publishing
business is going through a further shift: Digital printing
means books can be manufactured in tiny batches, instead of
the runs of 5,000 copies or more required to make traditional
offset printing cost-effective. A handful of "pay-to-publish"
digital presses such as Lulu and AuthorHouse are letting
writers pump out new works like never before. In 2010, authors
published 133,000 titles on their own, up from 51,000 four
years earlier, according to Bowker, the company that assigns
books unique identifiers known as ISBNs.
The Espresso links a database of digital book files to a
Xerox machine that prints pages, a photo printer to make the
cover, and a system that collates, binds, and trims the whole
package. In addition to self-published books, it can print
public domain works from Google Books and titles that
publishers like HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster have agreed
to license.
Jason Epstein, On Demand's chairman, published authors
like Norman Mailer and Vladimir Nabokov and co-founded the
"New York Review of Books" during a half-century publishing
career, mostly at Random House. He and Dane Neller, former
chief executive of gourmet emporium Dean & Deluca, founded the
company in 2003, licensing the technology from an inventor and
installing the first Espresso three years later. They've got
90 machines installed or on the way around the world, Neller
says.
Both Neller and Xerox, which has distributed Espressos
since 2010, decline to say how much they cost, though
customers estimate the price at over $100,000. Neller says On
Demand's revenue is in the millions. Xerox works with
customers to lease the machines at an affordable rate, says
Steve Simpson, Xerox's vice president of new business
ventures. (The company is an investor, along with Ingram -- a
large book distributor -- and Pete Peterson, co-founder of the
private equity firm Blackstone Group.)
The challenge for On Demand is that "the technology is
still not quite there, as far as its size and its
reliability," says Kelly Gallagher, vice president of
publisher services for Bowker. "It's like where we first
started with computers, before we quite got to a personal
computer." To broaden its reach, the 16-employee company has
started operating some machines directly, including the one in
Darien. New Espressos are on the way to Powell's Books in
Portland, Ore., and the Brooklyn Public Library in New York.
At Harvard Bookstore in Cambridge, Mass., the Espresso
patters along constantly, printing about 1,500 books a month.
Roughly two-thirds of those are self-published, says owner
Jeff Mayersohn. ("Everybody in Cambridge has a manuscript,"
quips Epstein.)
The machine, which the staff has named Paige M.
Gutenborg, isn't quite a moneymaker for the store yet. "It
obviously has to advance, the price has to come down, and the
speed has to go up," says Mayersohn, a former tech executive.
But the promise of limitless inventory is part of why he
bought the shop in 2008, and he thinks it will help
booksellers thrive.
The store charges authors a $70 set-up fee and $10 per
copy for a 200-page book, with discounts for volume. Customers
often print books of home recipes, family diaries, or academic
theses. One title, a memoir about growing up under
Mussolini, became a store bestseller.
For writers whom Epstein would have been unlikely to
publish at Random House, his machine is liberating. Alexander
says he's done querying publishers. He plans to print 200
copies of his novel, "Expectant Journey," in Darien to sell on
his own. "If a publisher reads it and likes it," he
says, "then they will pick it up."
To contact the reporter on this story: John Tozzi at
jtozzi2@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Nick
Leiber at nleiber@bloomberg.net
Story Merchant Client Lisa Cerasoli's "14 DAYS with Alzheimer's" is an Official Selection at 7th International Women's Film Festival
Screening is at 11:00 am on Sunday, March 25th
West Hollywood Library
625 N San Vicente
West Hollywood CA 90069
Based on the award-winning memoir, As Nora Jo Fades Away, 14 DAYS with Alzheimer's is the documentary short (follow-up) to the book. It's a humorous, heartbreaking and revealing look into the lives of Nora Jo and Lisa, her granddaughter and caregiver. This film leaves little to the imagination. Nora Jo has officially turned into 'Archie Bunker in really great drag,' and so this film captures not only the series of tragedies that come with this illness, but the 'funnies and the foibles' as well. And it proves that while Alzheimer's is also known as The Memory Thief, it's incapable of stealing love.The Los Angeles Women’s International Film Festival is produced by Alliance of Women Filmmakers Inc. a non-profit 501c(3) organization established by Diana Means to empower women filmmakers to create diverse roles for women. Each year in March the festival showcases narratives, documentaries, animation and student short films. The festival’s programming reflects Diana’s commitment to educate and inform audiences of social political and health issues impacting women globally.
To Purchase Tickets Click Here
March 14, 2012
March 13, 2012
Join Me At the Houston Writers Conference April 13-14
Would-be Writers to be Focus of April 13-14 Writers Conference
Program to Include Literary Agents, Authors and How-To Sessions on Getting Published—Hollywood ‘Story Merchant‘ Ken Atchity a Featured Speaker
Houston writers will gather April 13-14, when the Houston Writers’ Guild (HWG) holds the 2012 4th annual writers’ conference in Sugar Land.
Writers may choose between several tracks, including mystery, nonfiction, young adult and writing/publishing basics. The two-day meeting includes presentations from:
· Hollywood ‘Story Merchant’ Ken Atchity, producer and literary manager
· Self-Publishing super-star and zombie thriller novelist Rhiannon Frater
· Young Adult author Nikki Loftin, author of two novels and numerous short stories
· True crime writer and novelist Kathryn Casey
· Larry Thompson, author of legal thriller, “The Trial”
· Award-winning novelist and poet Chitra Divakaruni
· New York literary agents
Conference cost is $125 for Friday and Saturday; $100 for Saturday only. Saturday lunch is included in the fee. Friday night dinner optional. For an additional cost, attendees may schedule brief one-on-one sessions with literary agents and published writers.
For online registration and further program information, see HWG website, www.houstonwritersguild.org or call 281-498-5025.
March 12, 2012
Guest Post: Going the Distance: How to Survive Writing a Screenplay by Dennis Palumbo
Screenwriting: staying sane over the long haul
In the early 1960's, there was a hot art-house movie called The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. I think of this film sometimes when trying to help my TV and film writer patients working on long-form projects---miniseries, screenplays, cable channel movies, etc.
The running analogy is a good one, because long-form writing is like running a marathon: it requires endurance, patience, and a deep reserve of will power and commitment. Not to mention an almost Herculean ability to delay gratification.
(To continue the analogy, other kinds of script writing might be likened to sprints---sitcoms, comedy sketches, etc. Sprints require a burst of speed and power, the knock-out punch of a single idea or concept, and a quick build to an explosive finish.)
Where the long-form Hollywood writer gets in trouble is in believing that he or she can maintain over the length of the project the same vigor and intensity that's brought to a shorter piece.
Hence, when the work slows, or gets bogged down in exposition, or drifts off on tangents, the writer panics. His or her confidence flags. Enthusiasm drains away. The screenplay or miniseries is, metaphorically speaking, "put away in a drawer," often never to be brought out again.
To avoid this, here are some suggestions to help you "keep on keeping on" during those long, painful stretches that plague anyone writing a big project:
*Pace yourself. As I said, it's a marathon, not a sprint. Sixteen-hour days at the keyboard, living on pizza and Red Bull, may get you through a TV episode or a re-write that's on deadline, but for a two-hour pilot or screenplay it's deadly. Hard on your family, your vital organs, and your outlook on life.
*Expect slow spots, things that don't work, and reverses. Long-form story-telling has its own rhythm, in the reading as well as the writing. The reader needs to take a breath, be reminded of plot points, given a break from unending action and/or revelation. So do you, the writer. Like any extended trip, the journey through a miniseries, long TV pilot or screenplay involves wrong turns, pleasant surprises off the beaten path, some down time to remind yourself why you're even taking this route---even return visits to places and events to see what further gold can be mined from them.
Just keep reminding yourself that you're in this for the long haul, that there'll be good days and bad, pitfalls and peaks of inspiration, and then get on with it.
*Take side-trips. Stop occasionally to write a short piece---an article or essay, an email to a friend, a blog, etc. Maybe even help a fellow writer punch-up his or her sitcom pilot or comedy monologue. This gives your long-form muscles some much-needed R & R, and helps flex those short-form ones. Just because you're running a marathon doesn't mean you want to forget how to sprint.
*Don't rush the ending (just to get the damned thing finished). A hard temptation to resist, but you've got to try. There's no sense laboring over a piece for months, or even years, getting the narrative, characters and tone just right, only to rush the thing to its climax because you're so relieved to finally see the end approaching. Let the reader---and you, too---enjoy the fruits of your labor; give yourself the luxury of bringing the same effort and care to making the most out of the conclusion. Do justice to your characters, your story---and to yourself.
*Finally, when the project is done, expect some post-partum blues. You've lived in the world of your cable movie or feature screenplay so long, it's familiar, the known. Despite its myriad problems and headaches, it's what you've called home for a long time. Believe me, after bitching about it the whole time you've been writing it, when it's finally finished...you'll miss it.
Which is why, as hard as it is to write a long-form piece, as vehemently as you swear that you'll never do it again, pretty soon you'll start thinking about a new one.
It's like the end of a long, painful relationship. You swear to anyone who'll listen that you'll never fall
in love again. You don't want the grief, the false hopes, all the drama. Then, one day, you see someone in a coffee shop, or at a party, and you say, "Hmmmm..."
It's kinda like that.
