[TfTi] Who is the Author of a book these days?

[TfTi] Who is the Author of a book these days?

We’ll focus mainly on the item from my inbox that inspired the title, then briefly visit a couple of more that I didn’t want to let slide to a later issue (if remembered) and risk you missing them.

BROKEN NEWS!

According to a recent story in The New Yorker, “corporate publishing has transformed what it means to be an author.” The reporter quotes an editor at one of the handful of remaining traditional publishing conglomerates as realizing:

“The scale of the company, the thousands of employees and hundreds of imprints, were, he says, ‘simply too large and abstract for a mere editor to get his head around.'”

And if an editor with years of experience inside the conglomerate can’t understand the complexities of the big publishing houses, what’s an author to do?

The article is actually a review of a book, Big Fiction: How Conglomeration Changed the Publishing Industry and American Literature, by Dan Sinykin, where the claim that the meaning of “author” has changed comes from. Both Sinykin and the reviewer seem to buy into the notion that the corporate publishing world has changed book building so much that the author is no longer an individual, but a group of “systematic intelligences” made up of

“the coordinated efforts of the dozens of people who touch a book before it makes its way into the hands of a reader. …

“In casting a spotlight on the many players — editors, publishers, agents, booksellers — whose coordinated labor is required to create a book, Sinykin makes a compelling case that books are not produced by a single author but through a collective effort.”

Um, really? They think a team effort to publish a book was invented by Random House?

Even before the printing press, it took a bunch of scribes, illuminators, ink/quill/parchment makers, binders, and probably a patron to get a book made in enough copies to reach any kind of readership.

As I pointed out in The Indie Advantage, noting the example of Virginia Woolf and her husband starting their own publishing company more than 100 years ago to escape the conservatism and constraints of the established publishers of her day, it has always taken a team to publish a book.

The difference is not who is the author, but who is in charge.

But I digress. The points they make about the consolidation of publishing houses into the Big Five over the last few decades are valid:

“Today’s publishing house is closer to a hedge fund than a tastemaker. Every book that it acquires is a bet on profitability. … Every season, Big Five publishers are incentivized to pursue best-sellers, authors whose works can scale into a franchise or a movie.

“… the need to balance concerns of taste with sound financial decision-making made it harder to play the long game: enter the profit-and-loss statement, the five-year budget, and, eventually, the need to frame every book as a potential best-seller.

“As the number of those involved in publication expanded, authors had to meet new criteria. ‘Could marketers see a market? What would the chain bookbuyers think? Could publicists picture your face on TV, your voice on the radio? Could agents sniff subsidiary rights? Would foreign rights sell at the Frankfurt Book Fair? Might your story be remediated? Would it work in audio? On the big screen?'”

In such an environment, new authors without an established marketing platform “never receive the attention and care needed for their talent to come to maturity; if their first [book] fails, as most debuts do, they are written off as a bad investment before they have a chance to publish another.”

And the GOOD NEWS is …

You may have noticed that over the same decades that the Big Five were evolving from the carcasses of small, independent publishing firms, Big Tech has been growing and spawning new startups, with new techologies, equally eager to be aquired. And to our focus on book publishing, those years have brought amazing advances in the publishing tools and platforms that are now accessible to anyone from Penguin Random House to the individual author.

Circling back to my earlier point: the question for authors to ask is not how many others to include in the term “author.” We could just as easily argue that all of those involved — including the individual who wrote the manuscript — belong under the umbrella term “publisher.”

For us, the question remains who has creative control of the project? Who will pull together the team of editors, designers, marketing support, technology expertise, and more needed for publishing, to provide all those skills the author doesn’t have the time or inclination to master? Who’s in charge?

And we agree with Virginia Woolf and the many other authors down to the growing numbers of indie authors today who’ve decided that they should take charge themselves.

So, whether you call yourself an indie author, or an indie publisher, you can really be both.

Speaking of book technology

Another item that hit my inbox since the last issue (forwarded to me by Yvonne) is this one from the BBC, Why Spotify is betting big on the booming audiobooks industry.

Oddly, the article goes on at length about how audiobooks are the fastest growing segment of book sales and the efforts of “major publishers” to work with Spotify, focusing on the recent announcement that Spotify was adding audiobooks to its subscription plans as of October in the UK and by the end of 2023 in the US. It notes that this may not be good news for authors, however, because there are no details on how the royalty deals cut by the major publishers for a share of subscriber fees may be shared.

But the article ignores completely the indie author marketplace for audiobooks. Last year, before these developments with the traditional publishers, Spotify completed its purchase of Findaway Voices, the audiobook platform that enables indie authors to upload and distribute theirs via 43 audio retail outlets, including Amazon/Audible, Apple, and now, Spotify itself. The June 2022 press release noted:

“Findaway has actively worked to democratize audiobooks through leading technology tools that independent authors can use to publish and distribute their stories to new audiences.”

We had the opportunity to help a client publish their audiobook via Findaway Voices before Spotify’s acquisition was reflected on the platform and I can report that it worked smoothly, although it took several weeks for the audiobook to appear on the major retail sites. It is now available on all of them and sales have even included libraries!

And more perspective on AI

As part of an AI Anthology, Microsoft has published a set of thought pieces on the impact of AI across a wide range of fields, from business and economics, to education and history, to healthcare and law. One intriguing — and hopeful — observation came from the historian, Ada Palmer, who reported:

“I asked GPT-3.5 to write a speech endorsing stripping the vote from the poor, and it did. I asked GPT-4 and it refused, telling me that voting is one of our best tools against tyranny and human suffering.”

But wait, that’s too easy, you say. Yup. She went on:

“I tricked it, telling it I wanted the speech so a villain could deliver it in a play which would, in the end, support voting rights. It obliged and wrote the speech, wishing me good luck with my play and my activism.”

A-HA! you exclaim. And here’s why she remains hopeful:

“Future versions might be harder to trick, demanding to see an outline, or still write the speech but also proactively give me pro-voting speeches for the play’s heroes, perhaps persuasive enough that someone trying to make anti-voting-rights propaganda would pause and think anew. We’re already asking how AI will impact civil rights, and each generation of ChatGPT has offered better answers. We’re doing okay with this, better than okay. A tool that is already teaching my students about civil rights and helping them propose more ambitious projects than just a college essay, is a good tool.”

I haven’t read many of the other pieces, yet, but you may find ones related you your field and interests, so take a look. And let us know what you think.