Role of the Author

A somewhat common situation here last week prompted me to write this entry.

It seems that one of our authors had given us a large amount of content, separated neatly in different Word files, and then considered his job finished. Done. He wrote, he saved, he sent. Finito.

Not so fast, Bucko.

We held in our hands lots of content, absolutely, but it was pretty much raw content. Chapter numbers but no chapter titles. No end-of-chapter exercises even though the book was supposed to have them. No directions of any kind about what kinds of illustrations he wanted.

(By the way, I'm using "he" here but it could just as easily be "she." The point is that this situation is not rare and not confined to any particular gender, market, or type of book.)

Basically the author was saying to us, "Here's your content, make a book."

Nuh-uhn. That's not how it works.

When you author a book, you need to give the publisher all content. Everything. You write the title page, subtitle page, copyright page (though some publishers, like us, usually take that on, though we shouldn't), dedication, acknowledgments, key terms, glossaries, appendices, everything.

You tell us what kinds of illustrations you want and where to put them. You can't say, "Hey, Publisher, here's a complex graph of data from a medical study. Simplify it, please, so the average reader can make sense out of it. And then put it somewhere in this chapter."

Nope, that won't work either. You're the content expert, you tell US how you want it simplified and roughly where to place it.

So if you're thinking about writing a textbook and you think all you'll need to do is pull together some raw content and it will magically appear as a well-structured, easily read book…well, think again.

Inherent Value of Print-on-Paper Books

In a post last week, "Will the iPad and Kindle Kill Traditional Textbooks?" I promised to address elements that traditional texts have that e-books don't. First off, let me explain that I'm going to refer here to traditional print-on-paper books as books, to differentiate them from e-books.

I admit that I've thought often that eventually, books will go out of style because people will become more and more comfortable with e-books, and they'll pass on that comfort level to their children, who'll pass it on to their children, and so on.

And to an extent that surely will happen. But my mistake, until I finally figured it out (well, duh) was in assuming that increased comfort with a new medium means the elimination of the medium on which it's based.

Nunh-uh.

We've had books for several hundred years now and will continue to have them long into the future, and for good reason. One reason, principally, and it's not because they provide information, though of course they do.

And it isn't because of the pretty pictures some books have or the marvelous prose others have.

It's because they feel good.

I don't mean to oversimplify a complex relationship between a reader and a book, not at all. But when you come down to it, when you take the content out of the picture—because after all, readers can obtain content in a bunch of different ways, what with books, TV, the web, newspapers, and so forth—when you take history out of it, when you take price, portability, and all the rest out of, there remains a feel to books that people find engaging, comfortable, useful, and highly personal.

Ask someone, anyone, why they like books and you'll get an answer similar to the one a physician gave me just this morning. "I don't know," he said, "there's just something about a book. I just love the feel of a book."

As he said that last sentence, he held his hands out in front of him as if to demonstrate, forefingers to thumbs, that the touch of books was key. Tactile, he seemed to want to say, books are tactile.

That feeling of holding something so tactile carries with it an emotional bond that everyone can sense. It's something completely different that the press a button tactility of a Kindle. It's different than an iPad with its touch screen.

That experience is different and much more personal with a book than an e-book, and I believe it will be forever so. It just feels right.

Common Confusables: Sounds and the Use of A and An

You've heard them, you know you have, those, those people, for wont of a better word, who use the wrong article before a noun.

"Hey, I've got a idea. Let's have a egg for breakfast."

I could just scream.

This "rule" is so simple, it's mind-numbing how many people get it wrong.

Does the first syllable of the next word sound like a vowel? Then it gets an. If the first syllable sounds like a consonant, it gets a.

Hear that? It's the first sound.

So for "idea," "egg," "ointment," and every other danged vowel word, use an. Please. I'm begging you. Begging with every fiber of my being. An.

For almost everything else, use a.

I think what messes up most people are words that start with h, like honor, huge, and historical.

Here the rule, if you can call it a rule, is that if the h is silent, like it is in honor, use an. Otherwise go with the sound—hhh. Hhhonor. Hhhistorical. Hhhuge. (Not "yyyuge," by the way. Where do people get off saying "yyyuge"?)

So, to clarify, it's "It's an honor, your Honor."

It's "To put it into a historical context…"

It's "Hey, I've got an idea."

It's "Let's go to a movie tonight."

So, do we have AN agreement?

The Amazon-MacMillan War: Who Really Wins?

What an interesting weekend for those of us in publishing.

First, Amazon removed a flock of MacMillan titles from its virtual shelves. This is MacMillan, one of the largest and most prestigious publishers in the world. Publisher of Elie Wiesel's Night, the wonderful biography of Led Zeppelin, When Giants Walked the Earth, and the riotous Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, by Rhoda Janzen.

Gone.

Why? I'll quote co-editor of Mashable, Ben Parr: "Macmillan told Amazon that it wanted to change its pricing and compensation agreement, upping the price of some books from $9.99 to $15 and splitting sales 70/30, the same model Apple uses for the iPhone app store and its upcoming iBooks store. Amazon's apparent response was to flex its muscle and pull countless Macmillan books off the virtual shelves."

Then, yesterday, Amazon capitulated and reposted the once-banished MacMillan titles. Amazon replied on its forum, stating, "Macmillan, one of the 'big six' publishers, has clearly communicated to us that, regardless of our viewpoint, they are committed to switching to an agency model and charging $12.99 to $14.99 for e-book versions of bestsellers and most hardcover releases."

Ouch.

From a publisher's viewpoint, the battle is critical. Amazon, for most of us, is a significant sales outlet. It's a huge pain to deal with, though, and the discount they mandate is absurd. But we agree to it because, well, it's Amazon.

So I and the rest of the world's publishers will watch this battle play out very, very closely. Because in the end, it will affect you and every other book buyer out there.

Stay tuned…

Will the iPad and Kindle Kill Traditional Textbooks?

TONS of news lately on the new Apple iPad and Kindle's response to it.Some people are wondering whether traditional textbooks will be dead soon.

A blog on the British Medical Journal Group Blog asks whether recent technologies will kill off medical textbooks on paper. The blogger, Harry Brown, takes the position that yes, they will indeed kill paper texts and probably in the not so distant future.

Me, I'm not so sure.

I absolutely believe that the iPad, Kindle DX, and lots of other technologies are changing the way people buy and use clinical content, and I LOVE it. These technologies offer many features that print-on-paper (POP) products simply can't.

Yet there's something about paper, something about holding a book, about writing in the margins and highlighting key passages that make traditional textbooks important learning tools. We've seen attempts at schools going all-electronic falter because the students found the devices (the Kindle DX at Syracuse University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison) too cumbersome, especially for bookmarking, highlighting, and taking notes.

Certainly the technologies will improve and e-books will find a place in education. Absolutely. Bet the farm on it.

But they will not universally replace books just as television didn't universally replace radio, the internet didn't universally replace TV, and so on.

These devices present another option for the user, and for some applications in education, they'll make perfect sense. For others, they'll fall far short.

Same with POP products. They just don't make sense for certain pedagogical applications anymore, which is one of the reasons why all of us textbook publishers are scrambling to provide electronic ancillaries, to supplement the books with what they can't do very well, things like interactivity, rapid searchability, that kind of thing.

That doesn't mean technology will kill textbooks, it just means that the way we develop and present textbooks, and the way we link them with technology, will change. It HAS to change, the market is demanding it.

And we'll do it, we'll change. Actually we already are, and we'll continue to adapt to the technologies and we'll continue to sell paper textbooks because they offer things e-books can't.

More on that to come…

Importance of Sequence in Author Names

If you're the only author of a book, your name will be the only one on the cover. But what if a book has more than one author, then what?

Names are important, and the sequence of names on a book's cover and subtitle page can make a difference. Sometimes the "lead author" is the person with a more recognizable name, so it makes good marketing sense to put that person's name first.

If recognition within the market isn't a factor, though, then generally the authors decide the sequence of names. Maybe they'll decide that the first name is the name of the person who wrote the most content.

Maybe it'll be the person who coordinated the entire project.

If the authors are all from the same school, maybe the lead author will be the one with the highest position in the organization.

Regardless of the sequence, the royalties may be split completely differently. That's right, who gets what percentage of the royalties has nothing whatsoever to do with the sequence of names on the cover.

In fact, sometimes the people listed on the cover don't receive royalties at all. Maybe they were paid on a work-for-hire arrangement, a one-time fee paid regardless of how well a book sells.

Basically, the sequence of names on a cover often mean more to the authors than to the publisher. So, what to do when the authors can't agree on a sequence?

We look for other alternatives. For instance, I had two authors who worked together for years on two different textbooks. They used one person's name first for one book and the other's name first for the other book.

I've had other author teams that list their names alphabetically.

I've known author teams who switch the lead author names each edition, though I don't advise it. After an edition or two, it becomes difficult for people to find the book.

If push comes to shove, the decision is made by the acquisitions editor because that's the person who has final responsibility for the book.

I don't particularly like doing that. I'd much rather have the authors reach consensus, but when they can't, well, gol-dang it, I pull the trigger.