Publishing Archives

Defining the Category of Your Novel in the New Age of Publishing

July 18, 2012 by Randy Ingermanson 6 Comments

How do you know the category or genre of that pesky novel you’re writing? Is there some infallible way to know your category?

Lisa posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

Randy reading the question today about target audience got me thinking of another area I am having difficulty narrowing down. Genre/category.

It seems so simple on the surface, but in reality there are so many parts of a novel that it is difficult. I have even seem some authors call there book one thing while agents and editors call it another.

To make it even more difficult bookstores here have three sections Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Romance, and Fiction. So how is an aspiring author to learn where their book belongs if they never see categories on the book store shelves.

I think I am writing literary suspense (maybe action) because my book is character driven with a plot based around family relationships (so literary) but it is also driven by external events that put the characters in danger (so suspense/action) I think..but there are supernatural elements that could put it in fantasy as well so how is a writer to know?

I am yet to see a list of criteria for telling what genre is what but perhaps I am not looking in the right places please help!

Randy sez: Category is complicated. I discovered this when I was writing my book Writing Fiction for Dummies and got to Chapter 3, on “Finding Your Audience and Category.” I thought this chapter would be a breeze to write, but the more I thought about it, the more subtleties I saw.

I had to talk to a number of author, editor, and agent friends to get it all untangled in my mind. Uber-agent Chip MacGregor was probably the most helpful at getting it all sorted out. Chip was the acquisition editor of my first novel; later on he became my second agent; later on, he spent a couple of years as Publisher at Time-Warner. Now, he’s back to the agenting business and he’s one of my most-respected go-to guys when it comes to questions about the publishing world.

The main thing I realized after talking to Chip is that the primary category of a novel is sometimes defined by its content and sometimes by its target audience.

There are several categories that are defined by the target audience:

Children’s Fiction
Young Adult Fiction
Christian Fiction

If your book falls in one of these categories, then that is its primary category and your book will be shelved in that section of the bookstore.

I have a number of friends who write Christian fiction, and this drives them nuts. If they write mystery, they want it shelved with the other mysteries, not in the Christian section where they’ll be jumbled up with the Amish fiction, the sweet romances, the suspense novels, and what not.

Fact is, you’re not going to change the system by complaining about it. This is the way bookstores do it and they believe they can run their business without any help from the authors. So if you write in any of the above categories, that’s your primary category.

Most fiction will be categorized by its content, however. Here are some of the usual categories:

Romance
Thriller (or suspense)
Mystery/crime
Science Fiction & Fantasy
Horror
Literary
General

These are not fixed in stone. Different bookstores may break out Mystery from Crime, or Science Fiction from Fantasy.

You may also see a Women’s Fiction section, which is like the Children’s, Young Adult, and Christian categories in the sense that it is defined by its target audience. However, it’s unlike them because it generally has no subcategories.

Note that Literary fiction is not defined by its content but by its voice. In Literary fiction, style and theme often play a large role, and language is considered an artistic medium, rather than just a tool to get the job done.

If you really want to get confused, check out Amazon, where the classification scheme can go really deep, with a given category having numerous subcategories, each of which can have subcategories, and often subsubcategories. The paper book store is organized a bit differently from the e-book store. Barnes & Noble is organized differently, and Smashwords is different yet.

Lisa, you describe your book as literary suspense, with possible fantasy elements in it.

It’s not clear to me that the term “literary” applies. I’d need to read a bit to get a feel for your voice and use of language. Having a plot based on family relationships is not what would make it a literary novel (although plenty of literary novels do that). It might actually be women’s fiction, or general fiction. I can’t tell without more information. One thing an agent would do for you is to help you nail down whether the term “literary” applies to your fiction.

Also, it’s not entirely obvious whether the category “suspense” applies to your work. Many novels have an element of danger, but they are suspense novels only when the suspense is the primary aspect of the novel. (In the same way, many novels have a romance thread, but they are romance novels only when the romance is the main story.)

Finally, having supernatural elements doesn’t automatically make the book a fantasy novel, unless those are the primary driver for the story.

Ask yourself what’s the main thing that makes the story go? It sounds to me like it’s the family relationships. To me, that would make it either women’s fiction or general (or some people might use the term “mainstream”).

If you’re working with a traditional publisher, then you really need to nail down the primary category and be very sure that’s what it is. The reason is because the publisher will want to sell your book into bookstores, and the bookstore people really insist that they know what section of the store to shelve the book.

Things have become incredibly murky in this new age of publishing in which authors work directly with the online retailers to publish their fiction. There is no shelf in an online store. An e-book on Amazon can be listed under two categories, and they might be completely different. Barnes & Noble lets you define up to FIVE categories.

I spent quite a lot of time thinking about categories when I released the second editions of my novels OXYGEN and THE FIFTH MAN as e-books. Both of them are apparently science fiction novels (about the first manned mission to Mars).

But I’m a suspense writer, and the only reason I ever agreed to work with my coauthor John Olson on these books was because of the very high suspense content.

John particularly likes fiction with a strong romantic storyline and he absolutely loves fantasy.

Since there were no particular requirements to define only one main category, John and I finally decided to give the book the following categories (with subcategories in parentheses) on Amazon:

Science Fiction (Adventure)
Romance (Fantasy&Futuristic)

We assigned similar categories and subcategories on the other online retailers. It’s hard to know what to call a book, sometimes. The new world of online publishing makes it a lot easier to mix categories and have the best of several different worlds.

Lisa, I hope that answered your question. The bottom line is that assigning a category can be HARD. It’s often very confusing and sometimes can get messy.

Ultimately, the main thing that matters is that your readers know why they like your fiction and know what they get out of it.

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.

What Author Name Should You Put On Your Cover?

July 5, 2012 by Randy Ingermanson 35 Comments

in Publishing

When you’re writing a novel, how do you decide what author name to use on the cover?

Jessica posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

Hi Randy, I love both your blog and e-zine!

My question is whether I should publish under a pseudonym or not. Unfortunately my name (Jessica Smith) is an incredibly common name and so I share it with at least one already published author, although she writes in a different genre to me and uses her middle name too. Does this mean I should publish under a pseudonym instead? Thank you for taking the time to answer my question!

Randy sez: This is a good question and it’s going to affect you for the rest of your publishing career, so it’s worth thinking about carefully.

When I started writing, I though you were “supposed to” use your legal name. So my first several books were all published under the name “Randall Ingermanson.” But NOBODY on the planet calls me “Randall” except telemarketers. Everybody calls me “Randy.” Furthermore, my name is long enough that it causes problems on the cover.

So I’ve recently switched to using the author name “Randy Ingermanson” which feels less formal and more right. Plus it saves two letters on the cover. This has caused me some hassle to make sure that online retailers know that “Randall” and “Randy” are the same person. In the long run, I think it’ll pay off.

It would have been smarter if I’d started off using the right name from the beginning.

Jessica, you have several options, each with advantages and disadvantages, and only you have enough information to decide which is right for you. I don’t know your middle name, so I made one up for you in the examples that follow:

Use your name: Jessica Smith
Use your full name: Jessica Gretchen Smith
Use your initials: J.G. Smith
Use a pseudonym

The advantage of using “Jessica Smith” is that it’s the name everybody already knows you by. When your friends and family search for you, they’ll find you easily. The disadvantage is that there’ll be a bit of confusion with that other Jessica Smith. However, she’s done you the favor of using her middle name, which leaves you free to not use yours.

The advantage of using “Jessica Gretchen Smith” is that it mostly removes the confusion with that other Jessica. Mostly, but not completely. However, this solution is less confusing than using “Jessica Smith” so it might be a good bet if your middle name isn’t too long. You do need your name to fit on the cover in a readable size font. That would be the main disadvantage I can see–if it makes your name too long.

The advantage of “J.G. Smith” is that you remove the ambiguity with the other Jessica. However, there might be another “J.G. Smith” out there, so this might just trade one ambiguity for another. Plenty of authors use initials. J.K. Rowling and J.D. Robb seem to have done OK that way. For sure, your name will be short enough so your publisher can put your name in giant letters on the cover. But you’ll always have to remind your family and friends to look for “J.G.” instead of “Jessica”.

The advantage of a pseudonym is that you have almost infinite freedom to choose a name that’s unique, cool, memorable, and short. The disadvantage of a pseudonym is that you have almost infinite freedom to choose a name that’s unique, cool, memorable, and short. Plus you have to constantly explain to people why you don’t use your real name. Plus, if you ever make it big, all those jerks who ignored you in high school will never know and won’t beat themselves up for being awful to you.

None of the above is a really bad option. If your middle name is short enough, then that option might be the best. But it’s up to you.

The really critical question is this: How important is it to avoid the ambiguity?

For example, if you were writing sweet Amish romances and the other Jessica were writing naughty erotica, then it would be Xtremely important and you should try as hard as possible to differentiate your name from hers.

However, if you were writing police procedural mysteries and she were writing category romances, it would probably be not much of a problem and you wouldn’t need to work quite so hard.

What Kind of Training Do You Need to Publish a Novel?

June 20, 2012 by Randy Ingermanson 17 Comments

in Craft, Fiction Writing, Marketing, Publishing

So you’re writing a novel but you don’t have a degree in English literature. Are you out in the cold? What kind of training do you need to get your novel published?

Elizabeth posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

Hi! My name is Elizabeth and I love your blog!

I am a first time writer working on the first book of a trilogy and my question is,
Do I have to take writing classes or be an English major to write a book?

I had an idea that came to me and have been writing it for over a year in between work and science classes. I only recently thought of trying to publish it but I am worried it won’t be good enough because I don’t have “academic” training but I really want to start pitching the book soon. (I almost completed the first draft).

Randy sez: I wasn’t an English major. I double-majored in math and physics and scratched through college in four years. The way I did that was by taking CLEP tests to get out of as many humanities courses as possible. So I wound up taking only one history class and one English class total.

My lack of training in history and English in college has never stopped me from writing historical suspense novels. The reason is simple:

Education is about learning how to learn. My training in math and physics taught me how to think and how to learn what I need.

So the short answer is “No, you don’t need to have a degree in English literature to write a novel.”

There is a longer answer that is not quite so cheerful. No matter what degree you have or don’t have, you need to learn the craft of fiction writing. And these days, because publishers only market the winners, you also need to learn how to market yourself effectively so that your publisher will perceive you as enough of a winner to put some marketing money behind you. And (because we all have limited time, energy, and money), you need a bit of organizational skill to get it all done.

So you do need to learn, somehow or another, quite a lot about craft, marketing, and organization.

Now would be a great time for me to make a self-serving comment about why I created this web site. After publishing several novels, winning a bunch of awards, and teaching at a fair number of conferences, I woke up one day and realized that I knew a lot of stuff that other writers thought was immensely valuable.

OK, that’s a bit of a fib there. I didn’t wake up and realize that. My friend Marcia Ramsland told me that every month for six straight months, until I finally realized she was right. That’s when I decided to create this site — to teach how it’s done, as best I can. I don’t know everything, but I do know quite a lot. I hear all the time from people who say my teaching is helpful.

Now if I can be REALLY self-serving, I’ll add one more thing. Quite a lot of what I know is packed into my book WRITING FICTION FOR DUMMIES. There is a limit to what you can put in 384 pages, but I did the best I could. The book is the #1 book in the fiction writing reference section on Amazon, and also has the highest customer ratings of any book in that section.

Gack, that’s probably enough self-advertisement for about a year. My main point here is that there is a lot to know about writing fiction, but you typically don’t learn it in school. You learn the craft in three ways:

Writing fiction
Getting critiqued
Studying the theory from excellent books and teachers

I will note that there are plenty of excellent schools with Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degrees, where you can do all of the above. I know a number of writers who hold MFA degrees, and I think getting an MFA is a fine way to learn the craft. It’s not the cheapest way, but it works perfectly well.

However, most working novelists I know don’t have an MFA and have done just fine. And I gather that MFA programs focus on craft but generally don’t teach you much about marketing and organizational skills. So even if you were to get formal training in the craft, you’d still need to learn some things on your own.

So Elizabeth, there are many roads to publishing nirvana. A formal education is one way to get there. An informal education is another. Pick the road that suits you best.

Remember also that getting published requires talent, training, and time. If you don’t have at least some talent, no amount of training or time will get you there. If you do have the talent, you still MUST get the training and you MUST put in the time.

Every year, hundreds of aspiring authors get published by traditional royalty-paying publishers. You can too, if you have the talent, get the training, and put in the time.

The Economics of E-books

March 11, 2011 by Randy Ingermanson 12 Comments

in Publishing

A friend of mine referred me to a blog post today on “Why Some E-books Cost More Than The Hardcover” by Nathan Bransford.

The article is worth reading because it explains why an e-book can now cost more than a p-book (a paper book). It shows how, until about a year ago, Amazon actually sold some e-books at a loss in order to gain market share. At that time, Amazon would buy an e-book at a wholesale price that was typically 50% of the retail price set by the publisher. Then Amazon would sell the e-book at $9.99, which in some cases cost them several dollars per book.

When Apple announced the iPad and the associated iBookStore, they promised to sell books on an “agency model” in which the publisher would set the retail price and Apple would sell an e-book for that exact amount and then pay the publisher 70% of that price, keeping 30% for itself.

Soon after Apple made this announcement, Amazon made the agency model an option for e-books. 5 of the 6 major US publishers took the agency model option then, and now all of them use this model.

Amazon still sells paper books using the wholesale model, while selling e-books using the agency model. This can lead to cases where the hardcover edition of a book on Amazon is about the same price as the e-book (or possibly even cheaper).

Bransford backs this up with some calculations, but the results are misleading because in most cases, the assumptions are incorrect. Quoting from the article:

Well, here’s the thing that’s kind of wacky about the wholesale model vs. the agency model: the publisher made more money per copy with the wholesale model.

Again, napkin math for a $24.99 hardcover. Let’s say the e-book would have sold for $9.99 at Amazon in the old days but now the publisher charges $12.99:

Wholesale model e-book:
Publisher: $12.50 (roughly 50% of $24.99 hardcover retail price)
Amazon: – $2.50 (selling at $9.99)

Agency model e-book:
Publisher: $9.09 (70% of $12.99)
E-bookseller: $3.90 (30% of $12.99)

Randy sez: The napkin math would be correct, if its napkin assumptions were correct. But one of those assumptions is usually wrong. E-books are NOT usually assigned the same retail price as a hardcover these days. E-books are usually assigned a retail price no higher than the retail price of the trade paper edition, which is typically close to half the retail price of the hardcover.

[Note added on 3/15/2011 as a result of a comment left by Nathan: Even when there is no trade paper edition of a book, the e-book version is generally sold at a price point no higher than a typical trade paper book. I looked at today’s Amazon Top 100 Kindle list and found only 3 e-books priced as high as $14.99. A few were at $12.99 or $11.99. Most were at $9.99 or less. I can’t recall seeing any recent e-book on Amazon in which the retail price for the e-book was anywhere close to the retail price for the hardcover. There are some cases where the retail price for the e-book is about the same as the heavily discounted price for the hardcover, but the retail price for that hardcover is close to twice the retail price of the e-book.]

Let’s wipe off that napkin and do the math again and let’s also figure in the author’s cut, assuming 25% of the publisher’s net, which is the absurd standard royalty these days:

The hardcover price is $24.99 and the trade paper price is $12.99. We’ll assume the e-book price also gets a retail price of $12.99.

Wholesale model e-book:
Publisher: $6.50 (50% of the $12.99 e-book retail price)
Amazon: $3.49 (selling at $9.99 and paying $6.50 to the publisher)
Author: $1.30 (25% of publisher’s take of $6.50)

Agency model e-book:
Publisher: $4.55 (35% of the $12.99 e-book retail price)
Amazon: $8.44 (selling at $12.99 and paying $4.55 to the publisher)
Author: $1.14 (25% of publisher’s take of $4.55)
[Note added 3/15/2011: This is a revision of figures I showed in the original post, where I was using a 70% royalty rate. An alert reader reminded me that Amazon pays only 35% to the publisher for e-books priced above $9.99.]

Clearly the agency model benefits Amazon, costs the publisher and the author, and screws the consumer, who ends up paying $3.00 more for the book and therefore ends up buying 23.1% fewer books because if the consumer has a fixed number of dollars, those dollars will only buy 9.99/12.99 as many books at the higher price point.

That reduction in sales volume needs to be accounted for too. The simplest way to do that is by subtracting 23.1% from the Agency model computations:
Publisher: $3.50 (76.9% of $4.55)
Amazon: $6.49 (76.9% of $8.44)
Author: $0.87 (76.9% of $1.14)

Comparing these to the wholesale model for books priced at $9.99, we see that the publisher and the author come out behind and Amazon comes out ahead.

However, the story changes pretty dramatically when we look at the agency model for books priced at $9.99, where the publisher’s royalty rate goes up to 70%:
Publisher: $6.99 (70% of $9.99)
Amazon: $3.00 (selling at $9.99 and paying the publisher $6.99)
Author: $1.75 (25% of the publisher’s take)
This is why most of the e-books on Amazon are priced at $9.99 or lower. The publisher does considerably better at this price point than it does at higher prices. [Amazon’s royalty is 70% for price points between $2.99 and $9.99. The royalty is 35% for all other price points. The last time I checked, the 70% royalty was paid by Amazon US only for sales to US customers; it was 35% for sales outside the US. I have not checked on royalties paid by Amazon Canada, or Amazon UK. The situation, as you can see, is complicated, and of course it is subject to change.]

What is missing here is the same set of calculations where the author self-publishes the book and prices it at $2.99, where it will sell many more copies because it is now an impulse buy:
Publisher: $0.00 (because the publisher is out of this picture)
Amazon: $.90 (30% of the price of $2.99)
Author: $2.09 (70% of the price of $2.99)

Assuming the consumer will now buy 3.341 times as many books as the wholesale model priced at $9.99 (this is just 9.99/2.99 and it assumes that the consumer only has a fixed number of dollars to spend on books and will spend them on as many books as possible), the real advantage to the author becomes clear:
Publisher: $0.00 (because the publisher is still out of the picture)
Amazon: $3.00 (3.341 times $.90)
Author: $6.99 (3.341 times $2.09)

It should be clear that low-priced e-books with an agency model massively benefits the author and the consumer (as compared to the wholesale model priced at $9.99), slightly costs Amazon, and massively crushes the publisher.

This is why we call the thing happening right now a “revolution.”

Agents and the Wild New World of Publishing

March 9, 2011 by Randy Ingermanson 5 Comments

in Publishing

What role will agents play in the not-so-brave new world of publishing which is evolving rapidly? Does a novelist still need an agent? If so, what will that agent do? If not, where will all the agents go?

Charles posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

First I would like to thank you for the work that you are doing to help newbie writers like myself to delve into the world of fiction writing. I must say if it weren’t for your website and your snowflake method of writing, which in my structured and incredibly anal opinion is pure genius, I would still likely be flailing with the first few chapters, or more likely burning them in the nearest fireplace in frustration.

All that out of the way, the question I have is probably painfully obvious to anyone in the business but has become more and more confusing to me. I have been reading your and several other blogs about publishing and the way the business is turning away from printed books and more toward digital versions. My question however, has less to do with which direction I should go than how to get there. I understand the importance of agents and publishers if I am able to go the route of the typical printed author but what about going in the direction of e-books. Should I still look for an agent and if so what is that he/she would do. Does an agent handle the editing and promotion of a digitally published book? If an agent handles such things then do certain agents specialize in this area or would any agent be open to doing it? I guess what Iím saying is what exactly does an agent do that I couldn’t do for myself if I self published in the digital realm. I for one am excited about the way publishing is going, probably because I have no idea of what I’m talking about, but none the less, if my book turns out to be a decent story, I hope to be able to take advantage of this new turn in the publishing world.

Well that was my incredibly long winded and probably overly vague question. I hope you will excuse the lavish butt kissing in the beginning but truly your methods have helped me to do something I have always wanted to do but never had the courage to start. Thanks to you I have one scene left to write in my rough draft and then God willing I will edit and start looking for that way to get my preverbal foot in the door. Thanks again for all you’re doing and I look forward to your response.

Randy sez: I believe agents will play a crucial role in the evolving book market. The reason is simple: Agents are industry pros who understand the complex blend of craft, marketing, and career planning that writers so desperately need. Your agent is on your side. The more money you earn from traditional, royalty-paying publishers, the more your agent earns.

Having said that, what about the e-book thing? Does an agent get a cut of your self-published e-books?

The answer depends partly on your agency contract and partly on exactly what sort of self-publishing you’re doing.

If you have an out-of-print book that you and your agent agree isn’t marketable as a paper book, then you are probably free to self-publish that as an e-book with no money due to your agent. You should of course check with your agent and look at your agency contract to verify that.

Likewise, if you have an unpublished book that you and your agent were just never able to sell, then probably the same situation applies, but again you should check with your agent to make sure.

If you have an unpublished book that your agent hasn’t yet had a chance to sell, then your agent probably has the right to try to sell it for you and take a cut of the profits. Your agency agreement should specify that sort of thing.

If you don’t have an agent, then before you sign on with one, you should discuss your plans for self-publishing e-books, (if you have any such plans) and be clear in advance what books are your agent’s job to sell and which ones are off the table.

If you don’t have an agent, should you get one? That depends:

Do you plan to exclusively self-publish your work and are you willing to do all the grunt work to make that happen (or hire somebody to do so)? If so, then you don’t need an agent. You might need a marketing guru or a freelance editor or a graphic artist or a career planner or some mix of all of those. But you don’t need an agent, because an agent sells your work to publishers and receives payment for that hard work.

Do you plan to first publish your work through a publisher and let the publisher do all the e-book stuff? If so, then you definitely need an agent. The publishing contracts are becoming increasingly slanted to benefit publishers. An agent will get you a much fairer deal than you can get yourself, in much less time.

I have believed for several months that agents are going to shift towards the e-book business. There are two main reasons for this:

Publishers are not currently giving a fair deal on e-book royalties. The almost universal royalty rate paid by publishers is 25% of monies received. This is ridiculously unfair to authors. I think everybody in the industry agrees with me on this point. I believe that a fair royalty for e-books is AT LEAST 50%, and probably a bit higher. If publishers won’t budge on this, then agents can and will provide an e-publishing service that pays the author a much higher royalty rate.
Many authors have books that are out of print and earning nothing. They would love to put these back into print as e-books, but they’re daunted by the technology. It takes time and effort to put out a good e-book. It may require hiring a graphic artist to create a new cover. Many authors would be happy to give their agent a cut of the profits to just “take care of the problem” and get those out-of-print books back on the market.

The obvious question is, “What about a conflict of interest?” If an agent has a choice between e-publishing an author and selling the author’s work to a publisher, won’t the agent take the option that earns him the most money–even if it doesn’t earn the most money for the author?

Randy sez: Yes, I suppose there is that possibility. An agent gets a 15% cut of an author’s earnings when sold to a royalty-paying publisher. If the agent were to also earn a 15% cut on the author’s e-books, it seems to me that the whole question would become a moot point. In that case, the agent’s self-interest exactly coincides with the author’s self-interest. I might be wrong here, but that seems plausible.

It’s worth noting that agents have ALWAYS had an implicit conflict of interest whenever they represent more than one author. After all, if two authors have similar work and are both represented by the same agent, then the agent has a vested interest in promoting the more salable author harder. And furthermore, an agent may hesitate to be a jerk with a publisher on behalf of one author if that would damage other authors. In both these cases, the conflict of interest is actually pretty minor, and agents have many years of experience in dealing with them. I haven’t heard that either of these issues has caused authors major grief. Again, I might be wrong, but I just don’t see that it’s ever been a big problem.

Frankly, I’m not that concerned about the potential conflict of interest of an agent who also does e-publishing. The agent is on the author’s side, more so than anybody else.

I’ve said this before, but it’s worth repeating: The world of publishing is changing incredibly fast. E-books are giving authors power they’ve never had before–the power to cheaply publish a book and market it effectively on a global scale without interference from “gatekeepers” who decide what the market wants.

Will agents still be around in 5 years? I am very sure they will, and I believe the best agents will be earning more than ever. I do think some agents are going to transition to other ventures, such as free-lance editing, book development, and e-publishing. But I see most of them continuing on as agents.

Will publishers still be around in 5 years? I believe they will, but they’ll be smaller and leaner, earning less revenue but higher profit margins. I believe they’ll be forced out of the e-book business, though. I foresee publishers being willing to die on the hill of 25% royalty rates for e-books. I foresee that authors will simply walk away from that deal. By the time publishers cave in and offer higher rates, authors will have found better, faster, and much more lucrative deals elsewhere. And authors won’t come back to publishers, except to say, “I’ll sell you the rights to the paper edition only. Take it or leave it.”

Will chain bookstores still be around in 5 years? That’s an open question, but I suspect they will. Again, they’ll be smaller and leaner, assuming they survive. They’re an endangered species, but if they can learn to sell e-books effectively, they’ll survive.

Will authors still be around in 5 years? Now THAT’S a no-brainer. You can’t have books without authors. As long as people want story in text form, we’ll have authors to write them.