Category Archives: Books

I Don’t Know What DRM Is, But I’m Against It

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Day Against DRM

Well, OK, I do know what DRM is. But the biggest problem in the fight against it is the term itself. Even if he or she knows that it stands for digital rights management, the average, intelligent, but non-digerati person on the street has no clue what it means.

There are plenty of signs that book publishers are losing their taste for putting locks on the media you buy, just as music publishers have mostly done. But the process could be speeded up, I believe, if we could just come up with a better term for DRM.

As with the similarly opaque term net neutrality, which more people would favor if they understood what it was, DRM—term and practice alike—is protected by its obscurity. I admit that most of the alternatives I can come up with—locked media, restricted use rights, captive e-books—don’t resonate. So here’s an opening for someone out there who has the killer term that will, in fact, kill DRM, once and for all.

In the meantime, why not visit the Day Against DRM website and learn more about why you too should be against DRM?

A Leap-Day Special

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To mark the auspicious occasion of leap day, I’ve marked down the price of the e-book edition of the New-Media Survival Guide to just 99 cents (or, if you’re outside the United States, the equivalent in some other currency). This is just a one day sale, more or less, so if you’re tempted, don’t wait. I don’t anticipate another discount for some time.

Managing one-day sales, it appears, can be a bit tricky. You can already buy the discounted e-book on Smashwords; but Amazon requires a review of all changes, so it may not take effect for the Kindle version until leap day proper. Likewise, the price might not return to the regular $2.99 until a few hours after leap day.

Atoms being what they are, I haven’t discounted the new paperback edition of the book. However, that handsome version has its own charms, well worth the $6.99 cover price.

Though there really is not much risk in spending 99 cents, you can find out more about the New-Media Survival Guide before you buy it at NewMediaSurvivalGuide.com.

The Coming Death of Self-Publishing

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It won’t be long before self-publishing as a concept is dead.

Dance Macabre dans l'Imprimerie by Mathias Huss, Lyon 1499That’s not to say that the activity of publishing, whether it’s done by an individual, a small loose-knit group, or a corporation, is in decline. In fact, it’s healthier and growing faster than ever. But as an implicit indicator of quality, the idea inherent in the phrase “self-publishing” increasingly serves no purpose (other than a historical one).

In the book world, at least, it’s been common to distinguish between three types of publishing: traditional publishing, vanity or subsidized publishing, and self-publishing. (As Joel Friedlander notes in his excellent Self Publisher’s Companion, there is a fourth model, cooperative publishing, that blends aspects of traditional and subsidized publishing, but it is relatively rare.)

The traditional model is built around a system of gatekeepers—agents, acquisitions editors, and other publishing professionals whose role is to make judgments about what will and won’t be published. Until recently, the only practical alternative for aspiring authors was vanity publishing: paying a company a large sum of money to produce their book, with little or no marketing or sales assistance.

These distinctions were once a reliable measure of quality. Traditionally published works were probably good; vanity publications were probably bad.

But the rise of self-publishing has complicated the equation. Digital technology has made it possible for authors to produce, market, and distribute their own high-quality, low-cost books, whether in electronic or paper form. And by cutting out the middlemen—all those traditional gatekeepers and their expenses—authors now have the potential to make much more money from their works. It’s a compelling opportunity: all those bad, amateur writers who self-publish are now being joined by hordes of good, professional ones.

As a result, traditional publishers are losing their monopoly on quality. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they are going the way of the dinosaur—though Joe Konrath might say otherwise. But it does argue that who publishes a book, or how it is published, will ultimately no longer bear on the quality of the book. Traditional publishers produce lots of crappy books. Self-publishers, increasingly, are producing lots of great ones.

It won’t be long before we can safely say, to paraphrase someone or other, that there are no traditional publishers, there are no self-publishers, there are only publishers.

Will Self-Publishing Save Print?

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Last month in this blog, I made a statement that at the time seemed obvious, but now seems rash. “Most writers,” I wrote in declaring that print is effectively dead, “don’t care in a meaningful way about the physical presence of a book. They just want to tell a story, or convey information, or to create works of art out of their words.”

Since then, I’ve had cause to rethink my position. Print, it seems, isn’t dead, but just retired. Though diminished, it still has vital roles to play—especially for writers.

This realization came to me last week as I attempted to lean back and survey my achievement, such as it was, in publishing my first e-book, the New-Media Survival Guide. The leaning back was satisfactory; the surveying less so.

As a vehicle for conveying information, the e-book is superb. But as a device for signifying to yourself or others that you’ve written a book, it is dismally disappointing. The physical heft of a book that is an outmoded and inefficient drawback for traditional publishers and booksellers is, for authors, one of its most precious traits. Just try weighing an e-book appreciatively in your outstretched hand. It can’t be done.

That’s one reason why I spent many hours this weekend formatting my e-book for print-on-demand via CreateSpace (more on that experience later). Until I have a volume, however slim, that I can put on a bookshelf, I won’t feel that I’ve truly published it.

That’s why I suspect self-publishing may end up sparking a modest renaissance in printed books. In terms of units the quantity of printed books will grow ever smaller. But the number of printed titles may well explode as self-publishing grows. No matter what their motives for publishing, most book authors will want at least one printed, bound copy.

Though I plan to put the print version of the Survival Guide up for sale, I don’t expect to sell many copies. For most readers, the electronic version is ideal (ahem: why not buy a copy and find out for yourself?).

But for most authors, I now see, e-books lack one thing that only a paper book can provide: tangibility. A small thing, to be sure. But like print, it still matters.

Introducing the New-Media Survival Guide

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New-Media Survival Guide

Today I’m both pleased and relieved to announce the publication of my first e-book, the New-Media Survival Guide. (If you just can’t wait to buy a copy at the bargain price of $2.99, click here now. Not that impulsive? Then you might want to read more about it here.)

My goal in writing this e-book was to give people trained in traditional media—journalists in particular, but also people from public relations, marketing, and other areas—an easy-to-read, practical, and concise introduction to the new-media revolution. If it’s successful, readers will understand that the ways of new media are not be be feared, but to be welcomed.

If you’re skeptical or concerned about new media but want to understand it better, this is a great starting point for you. And if you’re a social-media maven, you may not need this book, but you probably know someone who does. Here are a few reasons why you may want to read or recommend it.

  • It can be read in one sitting.
  • Though it’s short, it provides numerous sources for further reading.
  • To my knowledge, there’s nothing else quite like it (or if there is, please note it in the comments—this is an equal-opportunity blog!).
  • For the moment, at least, it’s very up to date.

In coming days, I’ll be reflecting on the process of writing and self-publishing an e-book and why I recommend it. In the meantime, I hope you’ll learn more about the New-Media Survival Guide and let me know what you think of it.