Category: Q & A

If your field is homemaking/household management, almost certainly.

Is it possible to reach the top of your field and have a successful family life?

Once whenever it's true,
and twice when it feels like it's not.

How often should you tell your parents you love them?

Every book ever written by Neal Stephenson (Author), the majority of which were not "must reads" when I read them, but seem to have become so since, given the pace of technological and economic development the world over.

Seriously, people often ask me why I liked one of his books, and when I inquire how far they got, it's usually "a couple chapters" or "50-60 pages". I've found that for the vast majority of his works, one must read around 150-200 pages to become "hooked" enough to barrel through the rest (often at great detriment to sleep and dietary habits). But it does seem to happen quite reliably every time.

Which "must read" books are difficult to finish or "get into"?

• Author's Desire, at least in some genres. They have heard horror stories of the lower royalties (based on pre-Internet book contracts) for the format, "rampant" piracy losses, and of course some writers simply still don't "get" e-publishing, or otherwise associate as low class/amateurish compared to publishing a real physical object. Of course, this also works both ways – I've heard of a big name fiction author suddenly jumping on the bandwagon when she noticed a hated peer's latest release while sitting across the aisle from a Kindle-reader in some first class cabin somewhere.
• Publisher's Capacity. Not every print publisher today can support conversion to the wide variety of e-publishing formats, nor are they all aware of third-party solutions like Dan Pacheco's BookBrewer.com. Admittedly, most of these solutions (including Dan's) are more focused on targeting authors directly, though there's a lot of applicability for really small independent presses, as well.
• Publisher's Desire. Given a solidly established brick and mortar distribution channel, most publishers really didn't understand the true advantages of digital books until very recently. Big setbacks like the Borders implosion, as well as much harsher terms from big box stores like Wal*Mart and Costco have significantly changed this outlook, however, so I think we are seeing a pretty large uptick in availability across the board for new titles. The biggest laggard in my opinion are non-bestselling back catalog books, which have the most to gain from being perpetually "in stock" online… But from a publisher's perspective I understand why focusing investment on the biggest near-term wins makes the most sense on paper.
• Existing Book Contracts. Any print books published in at least the last 50 years or so usually include various types of ancillary rights clauses, for things like radio, tv, and movie rights, and more recently audiobooks[*]. As time has moved on, and lawyers have gotten progressively more evil, these clauses tended to get so broad and vague that any new technology/format – including Ebooks – usually sits under the control of the publisher for the term of the contract, or until certain conditions are met. This usually also means that e-publishing rights and royalties would need to be separately renegotiated (some big authors), or simply at the whim of the publisher (most everyone else), with the author usually receiving a much smaller cut of each sale, on what in theory is a much higher margin product.

[* Audiobooks are especially interesting to me, in that they suffer the contract and licensing restrictions of (a) books, (b) the recording industry, and (with the introduction of services like Audible.com) (c) digital distribution. How Audible, especially, ever got off the ground must've involved a huge team of lawyers, a vast portfolio of compromising hidden-camera photos, or both. ]

What factors determine whether a book is published electronically as well as traditionally?

Piracy shouldn't be stopped, not ever. Piracy is the "edge beyond the bleed", and much like the more legit porn business, innovates and adapts new technologies much faster than the rest of the entertainment industry otherwise would.

For 8 years, I worked at the largest publisher of Japanese Manga in the US, VIZ Media. Given the enormous costs of licensing, translating, editing, laying out, and selling/distributing a title, illegal "fan scanslations" of original Japanese works were often the most accurate indicator of commercial success in the retail market. Even today, VIZ and their competitors have a two-headed approach: pursuing the shutdown of pirate sites, while also comprehensively studying the most popular titles on such sites to gauge consumer interest… Of course, they'll never admit that, but let's just say they could be pursuing the pirates a lot harder than they have been to date, and leave it at that.

Far from taking sales away, these pirate-fans basically did test marketing for free, in ways that would never have been approved by VIZ's parent companies and licensors in Japan. Not only did they indicate what titles they wanted to see in translation, but they also made it painfully clear that waiting 3-4 years between a title's Japanese and US debuts was intolerable… And even that waiting 6-12 months between volume releases was just leaving money on the table.

Recently, I read[*] that DC comics will be doing day and date releases of digital comics alongside printed monthlies for many titles. In the future, it's even likely that we'll see titles being released "digital first", or perhaps using a Kickstarter-like pre-pay model, with print runs being a follow-on only for proven titles – sort of like the comic book version of the "Daily Syndication Hurdle" for TV shows[“]. If such a day comes, it wouldn't really be a manga/comic book industry innovation, but merely a complete modeling of the successful pirate scanslation model into the legit marketplace.

Now, are the fans who read the comics online, and never buy the books (or T-shirts, or movie tickets, or DVDs) doing something wrong? Absolutely! But those folks make up a tiny minority, and even if they're just spreading interest among their friends, that can have a huge beneficial effect, especially since not all of a pirate's friends are going to be pirates. Not convinced? Read this spot-on analysis of the launch of both the rebooted Battlestar Galactica and Doctor Who TV series: http://www.mindjack.com/feature/….

To a far lesser extent (unfortunately), Internet piracy has helped to surface some amazing foreign films, like the epic Bollywood SciFi movie Enthiran, which is the single most mind-blowing film I have watched in the last 10 years[†]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q…

Anyway, long story short, I think your basic premise is correct: the best way to "fight piracy" is to co-opt and incorporate the advantages and benefits piracy gives to the end-user within the legitimate distribution channel. Then, the pirates will move on to the "next thing", and help drag us forward to whatever that is. 🙂

[* Credit to Mark Hughes for his post: DC Comics is Rebooting Everything and Going Digital ]

[“ 88-100 shows in the can, according to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bro… ]

[† Update, 7/17/2011: I recently saw "The Cannonball Run I + II" for the first time in my adult life, and I have to say the sheer volume of drunk and coked-out stars on screen was epic at a level that no amount of spirited CGI effects work could possibly compete against. ]

How should piracy be stopped?