I plan to email blog update notifications at the beginning of each month to announce our upcoming monthly meetings and events. I will also send an email a few days before each meeting or event. These will be the only instances that I will issue an email to the group regarding information posted on the blog.
Please make it a habit to check out the blog at least once per week. In addition to a monthly email update on our planned activities I am also posting articles a few times per week to the blog that may be of interest to all writers.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Upcoming June Events
Thursday, June 2nd - deadline for short stories.
Wednesday, June 15th - Night Writers group meeting at the deli.
Friday, June 24th - deadline for brunch reservations.
Sunday, June 26th - brunch at the tavern.
Wednesday, June 15th - Night Writers group meeting at the deli.
Friday, June 24th - deadline for brunch reservations.
Sunday, June 26th - brunch at the tavern.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
This article is relevant to all authors
Appeared on HealthNewsDigest.com on 5/18/2011
(HealthNewsDigest.com) - The publishing world gathers next week in Manhattan at BookExpo America, its annual trade show, but the one subject attendees won’t be discussing is the coming collapse of publishing and the inevitable disappearance of books.
It’s not just that books are going to Kindles and iPads. It’s that books are going away, and the publishers have no one but themselves to blame.
The traditional New York publishing business model—publish a ton of books, fail to market most of them, and hope that somebody buys something—worked well when publishers had a hammerlock on the distribution and marketing of books. Publishers essentially faced no competition and enjoyed complete control of what books people could publish and sell.
In today’s world, however, anyone from John Grisham to John Doe can put up a book online with Smashwords, Lulu, or Kindle Direct, and bypass publishers—and bookstores—all together. Authors can use Google AdWords or social networking strategies to market their books far more effectively than publishers ever could. So who needs New York?
Yes, Kindle and iPad are game-changers. When you read books on a device, a few things change. You’re moving into an environment where you typically don’t pay for content—almost everything online is free. So publishers won’t be able to charge $10 or $12 for an entire book when people only want a chapter’s worth of information. So much for ebooks as a revenue stream for the publishing houses.
Publishers can also blame Amazon for the collapse of their industry. When you went into a bookstore, you typically browsed and bought a handful of books, each from a different department. Amazon killed browsing. You go on, you find the book you wanted, you pay, and you leave. So instead of buying five books, you buy just one.
But the real reason why books are going to vanish is the remarkably un-businesslike business model of the publishers. Think of General Motors—decades of inefficiency, but without the federal bailouts.
In no other industry do producers actually wait passively to see what products are suggested to them, instead of doing market research to see what people really want to buy. Yet publishers seldom generate book ideas; instead they wait for literary agents to submit proposals. Houses decide which book to publish based on little more than a gut feeling that says, “I think we can make money selling this!”
Yet the books that publishers choose are almost entirely of zero interest to actual bookbuyers. After 9/11, there were a ton of books about 9/11, which nobody bought. Same thing with the Iraq War, the rise of Obama, the economic meltdown, and even, inexplicably, the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Or the books are rehashed business lessons, religious truths, sports clichés, motivational babble, exercise fads, weight loss techniques, or pandering to the political left or the right. Who wants these books? Almost no one.
Most of the major publishers today are owned by international conglomerates who, at some point, will awaken to the realization that English majors in their employ are spending millions of dollars on books that no one wants to read.
As a result, few trade books earn real money for the publisher (and certainly not for the author!). That’s because the publisher bears the entire risk of buying, editing, printing, and shipping copies of the book to bookstores all over the country on a 100% returnable basis. If your local Barnes & Noble doesn’t sell a particular book, it goes right back to the publisher, at the publisher’s shipping cost, for a full refund. Especially in the Internet era, you can’t make money putting books on trucks and hoping someone buys them.
At BEA next week, the attendees will solemnly discuss the latest trends, discuss how to get 70-year-old authors to use Twitter, and generally party like it’s 1989. But for traditional publishing, the party’s over. They just don’t want to realize that it’s time to turn out the lights.
About: Michael Levin is an eight-time best-selling author, a former member of the Authors Guild Council, and a prolific and highly admired business writer (www.BusinessGhost.com). He has written with Baseball Hall of Famer Dave Winfield, football broadcasting legend Pat Summerall, FBI undercover agent Joaquin Garcia, and E-Myth creator Michael Gerber. He has written for the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, CBS News, the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, and many other top outlets.
(HealthNewsDigest.com) - The publishing world gathers next week in Manhattan at BookExpo America, its annual trade show, but the one subject attendees won’t be discussing is the coming collapse of publishing and the inevitable disappearance of books.
It’s not just that books are going to Kindles and iPads. It’s that books are going away, and the publishers have no one but themselves to blame.
The traditional New York publishing business model—publish a ton of books, fail to market most of them, and hope that somebody buys something—worked well when publishers had a hammerlock on the distribution and marketing of books. Publishers essentially faced no competition and enjoyed complete control of what books people could publish and sell.
In today’s world, however, anyone from John Grisham to John Doe can put up a book online with Smashwords, Lulu, or Kindle Direct, and bypass publishers—and bookstores—all together. Authors can use Google AdWords or social networking strategies to market their books far more effectively than publishers ever could. So who needs New York?
Yes, Kindle and iPad are game-changers. When you read books on a device, a few things change. You’re moving into an environment where you typically don’t pay for content—almost everything online is free. So publishers won’t be able to charge $10 or $12 for an entire book when people only want a chapter’s worth of information. So much for ebooks as a revenue stream for the publishing houses.
Publishers can also blame Amazon for the collapse of their industry. When you went into a bookstore, you typically browsed and bought a handful of books, each from a different department. Amazon killed browsing. You go on, you find the book you wanted, you pay, and you leave. So instead of buying five books, you buy just one.
But the real reason why books are going to vanish is the remarkably un-businesslike business model of the publishers. Think of General Motors—decades of inefficiency, but without the federal bailouts.
In no other industry do producers actually wait passively to see what products are suggested to them, instead of doing market research to see what people really want to buy. Yet publishers seldom generate book ideas; instead they wait for literary agents to submit proposals. Houses decide which book to publish based on little more than a gut feeling that says, “I think we can make money selling this!”
Yet the books that publishers choose are almost entirely of zero interest to actual bookbuyers. After 9/11, there were a ton of books about 9/11, which nobody bought. Same thing with the Iraq War, the rise of Obama, the economic meltdown, and even, inexplicably, the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Or the books are rehashed business lessons, religious truths, sports clichés, motivational babble, exercise fads, weight loss techniques, or pandering to the political left or the right. Who wants these books? Almost no one.
Most of the major publishers today are owned by international conglomerates who, at some point, will awaken to the realization that English majors in their employ are spending millions of dollars on books that no one wants to read.
As a result, few trade books earn real money for the publisher (and certainly not for the author!). That’s because the publisher bears the entire risk of buying, editing, printing, and shipping copies of the book to bookstores all over the country on a 100% returnable basis. If your local Barnes & Noble doesn’t sell a particular book, it goes right back to the publisher, at the publisher’s shipping cost, for a full refund. Especially in the Internet era, you can’t make money putting books on trucks and hoping someone buys them.
At BEA next week, the attendees will solemnly discuss the latest trends, discuss how to get 70-year-old authors to use Twitter, and generally party like it’s 1989. But for traditional publishing, the party’s over. They just don’t want to realize that it’s time to turn out the lights.
About: Michael Levin is an eight-time best-selling author, a former member of the Authors Guild Council, and a prolific and highly admired business writer (www.BusinessGhost.com). He has written with Baseball Hall of Famer Dave Winfield, football broadcasting legend Pat Summerall, FBI undercover agent Joaquin Garcia, and E-Myth creator Michael Gerber. He has written for the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, CBS News, the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, and many other top outlets.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Saturday, May 21, 2011
REMINDER
Our brunch scheduled for tomorrow (May 22nd) has been canceled.
It has been rescheduled for June 26th at noon at the same location where we had our brunch last September. Please let me know no later than Friday, June 24th whether you will attend so that I may contact the restaurant with a head count the day prior to our brunch.
It has been rescheduled for June 26th at noon at the same location where we had our brunch last September. Please let me know no later than Friday, June 24th whether you will attend so that I may contact the restaurant with a head count the day prior to our brunch.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Reminder
We have a brunch scheduled for next Sunday (May 22nd) at noon at the same location where we had our brunch last September. If you had a change of plans and cannot make it please let me know no later than this Friday (5/20) so that I may contact the restaurant the day prior to our brunch.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Night Writers
Welcome to the Night Writers blog. Today, May 11, 2011 is the first day for our blog, the first day of many more daily blog entries.
Included in future blog entries you will find helpful tips for writers, links to such resources as upcoming writers conferences, writers organizations, the US Copyright Office, agents, authors, etc.
Stay focused and keep on writing!
Included in future blog entries you will find helpful tips for writers, links to such resources as upcoming writers conferences, writers organizations, the US Copyright Office, agents, authors, etc.
Stay focused and keep on writing!
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