Book^2 Campis an unconference. For the unitiated, with an unconference there is absolutely no set agenda or speakers prior to the event. A group of 100+ publishing executives gathered in a Soho office space and people suggested ideas for discussions. Those ideas – written down – were then taped to a grid and attendees decided what conversations/discussions piqued their interest. Again, for the unitiated, it can sound somewhat like chaos, but I’ve attended many unconferences and find the level of conversation and discussion extremely rewarding and though-provoking. Book2Camp was no exception.

And, as many people have mentioned on Twitter, the many conversations were the best part of the day.

I met new people and spoke to many people I’ve met previously, including:

Levi Asher – Levi publishes the site Literary Kicks, and he’s published several ebooks, including: The Cards I’m Playing: Poker and Postmodern Literature, Why Ayn Rand is Wrong (And Why It Matters), and others.

Levi organized the session – Surviving and Thriving as an eBook Publisher – that I participated in. I look forward to reading more of Literary Kicks and conversing with Levi on Twitter.

Philip Turner – Philip and I attended many of the same sessions. When we spoke during a break, I was beyond excited to discover that Philip published Edward Robb Ellis’ Diary of a Century when he worked at Kodansha. The late Edward Robb Ellis, a Midwesterner who moved to New York City and worked for a variety of newspapers, wrote a volumnious diary for his entire life. If you’ve never heard of A Diary of the Century: Tales By America’s Greatest Diarist, I wholeheartedly recommend tracking the book down. The book features excerpts from Ellis’ diary throughout the years and is a wonderful look at one man’s life. I also loved the book becuase Ellis love for New York City shone through.

Ardal Powell – Ardal is the CEO of Music Word Media Group. I didn’t speak to Ardal for long, but I’m interested in learning more about Music Word Media and what he’s working on.

Jim Hanas – Jim is the author of Why They Cried and is at the forefront of digital publishing and eBooks. Hanas learned a lot of valuable insight in the eBook trenches – giving away thousands of electronic copies of his book. Hanas presented at the first Book Camp and reportered actual numbers. You can read more about Hanas’ presentation and ebook knowledge here.

Tobias Buckell – I hadn’t seen Tobias in person since we attended a Writers of the Future writing workshop in Los Angeles in 2001. If you’re a science fiction fan, you should be reading Tobias’ novels and shorts stories. Over the years, I’ve been extremely impressed by Tobias’ approach to book publishing and making a living as a writer. He was in town to talk about Kickstarter at O’Reilly’s Tools of Change conference.

Ann Kingman and Michael Kindness – the co-hosts of Books on the Nightstand, a wonderful books and reading podcast, and Random House sales reps. It’s always great to see Ann and Michael in person and have a chance to discuss books and book publishing. And, if you’re not listening to Books on the Nightstand, you really should be. At this point, there are tons of previous episodes to fill your podcast listening time for weeks. Fair warning – your wallet will suffer if you listen for long, because you simply can’t listen without scribbling down at least 2-3 books to buy per episode.

Erica Barmash – Erica is the Senior Marketing Manager at Harper Perennial. We met last year at the Book Blogger Convention and have traded various Tweets throughout the year. Erica is also deep into planning her wedding for the NYC Courthouse. My wife and I got married on a barge in Red Hook, Brooklyn, and it’s always fun to hear people’s wedding and wedding preparation stories.

David Wilk – According to his business card, David is the Head Trickster at Booktrix. We attended many of the same sessions, and it was definitely interesting hearing about David’s eBook publishing experience.

Again, Book2Camp was all about the people and conversations. There were a lot of people passionately discussing books, reading, the future of independent bookstores and the future of book publishing – exactly my kind of people.

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As the founder of Delabarre Publishing, I attended Book^2. I’ve been a lifelong, voracious reader. I worked in a variety of bookstores in college and post-college. I worked in book publishing for 3.5 years when I worked at the Denise Marcil Literary Agency in NYC. And, since August 2010, I’ve been actively and successfully publishing a wide variety of eBooks.

There were multiple tracks of discussions going on throughout the afternoon, so I can only report/discuss the conversations I participated in.

Surviving and Thriving as an eBook publisher – Organized by Levi Asher of Literary Kicks, I spent some time discussing my ebook publishing experiences. I enjoyed hearing from others in the trenches of eBook publishing – including Harlequin Books’ successful eBook publishing imprint Carina Press.

Some of the issues we discussed, included:

• eBook pricing strategies,
• the challenges of eBook publishing and production even for large publishers where some executives believe that eBook publishing should as simple as hitting one button with a book file you already have,
• the “black boxes” of most eBook marketplaces – Amazon, BN, etc.. Data would be invaluable for book publishers – how many people are downloading eBook samples, how many of those samples converted to sales, which other book did a buyer purchase or browse prior to buying your eBook? That type of data would be invaluable, but for now, it’s just not there.

 Publishers – what are they good for. Non-fiction book marketing without bricks-and-mortar

Will mainstream book buyers purchase a book based on a publishers’ brand? Some argued that average consumers don’t pay attention to who published a book – they’re simply looking for content re: a specific topic. Others pointed to the example of Chronicle Books or Workman as distinctive publishing brands that people recognize. Again, I’m not sure if we’re recognizing those brands because we’re people who eat, sleep, and dream books.

We also discussed the visibility and branding of editors – so that ultimately consumers could make purchasing decisions based on an editor’s reputation and influence and taste. Ann Kingman made the point that whenever this issue is discussed there is often resistance, but this type of branding/marketing of editors as tastemakers hasn’t been tried in a sustained, consistent way.

Handselling in the digital age – I may have the exact title of this session wrong. We discussed how hand selling works both offline by independent bookstores – and how that can translate digitally.

While the people in the room are intimately familiar with digital affiliate programs whether via Amazon or Indiebound, etc. and make purchasing decisions accordingly, many consumers and book buyers aren’t aware of the impact of buying a title from Amazon vs. an independent. I think there was condense that the higher degree of friction involved in purchasing a book from a digital recommendation, the more likelihood that a buyer will opt for the easiest ordering process. Unfortunately, for independents, that’s often Amazon. Amazon has credit card info, shipping addresses for millions of customers.

In the future, digital hand selling could benefit independents even more if there was a frictionless affiliate/recommendation program connecting independents with online book recommendations. We’re not there yet.

Other things we discussed:

• Book subscription plans in many variations, including RJ Julia’s Just the Right Book.
• Curation – can you make a living curating or will it be done purely out of passion? (I think it will be a combination. I think some “curators” will be able to turn their passion and knowledge about a certain niche or speciality into a job while some will do this strictly out of passion and enthusiasm – such as the many book bloggers who spend hours each week reviewing and writing about books.

If you’re interested in the future of books and book publishing, I recommend that you search twitter for #book2 and read the many comments from Book2Camp.

Others are already writing about their Book2Camp experiences as well:

Dan Blank

Guy LeCharles Gonzalez

Nishan Stepak

Patti Henderson

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In addition to being interested in reading, I was always interested in book publishing too. As a teenager and in college, I spent countless hours in bookstores browsing – and buying when I had the money. And, I eventually ended up working for several bookstore chains – Waldenbooks, Books A Million, and Barnes & Noble.

The literary agent that I worked for was extremely diligent at pursuing rights reversions. And, I was the one tracking when books went out print, and writing the letters to book publishers requesting that they revert the rights to the author. FYI – for those who don’t know all the ins-and-outs of book publishing, when an author sells a book to a publisher, they’re usually selling the publisher the right to print and sell the book – they’re not selling the book outright. And, when the publisher decided not to order any more reprints, we would swoop in and immediately request rights reversions.

Interestingly enough, towards the end of my stint at the literary agency, many book publishers were starting to realize the impact that eBooks could one day have, so they began dragging their feet on reverting rights. Before that, most publishers would respond quickly to reversion requests.

So, what’s my point re: rights reversion? If an author still has an active and interested fan base, and they’re sitting on 5-10-15 or more novels that have been written, edited, and previously published, then those authors are sitting on a potential, passive revenue stream.

JA Konrath, a successful novelist who has published a series of suspense novels, recently blogged about his experience uploading and selling several old, “trunk” novels via Amazon’s Kindle. He’s selling the novels for $1.59 each. In May, Konrath made $1,250 on his Kindle sales. Now, no one is going to get rich on $1,250 per month, but that’s not Konrath’s only income. He’s writing and selling traditionally published too. An extra $1,250 per month could definitely come in handy for many writers.

However, any published fiction – or non-fiction – writer can attest that they often have ideas that they can’t sell – despite their existing success. In the past, writers would often have to either give up on those ideas – or try to sell them under a pen name. Now, if a writer is passionate about a book that their current editor and publisher doesn’t respond to – they have an option. They could publish that novel via Amazon Kindle – and other eBook platforms. Don’t forget – Google is planning to launch their own eBook platform for selling eBooks, and Sony has promised to also make writer-submitted novels and stories available for Sony Readers in the future.

If you’re an author with a fan base, or even an “expert” or “guru” with manuscripts or novels you’ve already written, you may want to consider selling them via Amazon Kindle.

One note, as Lee Goldberg, already pointed out. This isn’t going to work for everyone. If self-published authors who’ve never sold a novel to a traditional publisher flood Amazon’s Kindle store with half-baked, poorly edited, 10th generation ripoffs of James Patterson or JK Rowling, then Amazon will be forced to police the novels submitted directly from authors.

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Meanwhile, the latest Fortune magazine has a glowing cover story about Amazon’s Kindle, and the launch of the Kindle DX – a large-screen Kindle.

Despite Amazon’s success with the Kindle thus far, the Kindle’s only differentiation at this point is wireless connectivity. Admittedly, the ability to instantly download a title that you’ve heard about on NPR or read about in your morning paper drives unbelievable impulse purchases. And, those impulse purchases, are surely adding to the Kindle’s financial success thus far.

But, that wireless advantage could be short-lived. Ultimately – in the next 18 months – a competitor, Plastic Logic or Sony, will introduce an eReader with wireless connectivity. And, lurking in the background, is the 500 pound gorilla of well-designed consumer electronics – Apple. There have been plenty of rumors about a much larger iPod touch scheduled to be released. Regardless if Apple launches a larger iPod touch, as netbooks continue to grow, smartphones continue to grow, Apple will eventually release a device akin to an iPod touch with a larger form factor.

As eBook devices proliferate and eBook availability continues to expand via Google’s new initiative and others, will consumers continue forking over $359 for an Amazon Kindle? I doubt it.

Who is certain to lose regardless of how the eBook future unfolds? Sadly independent bookstores.

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If you’ve read much of this blog, then you know that I’m very interested in the book publishing and especially eBooks. In the mid-90s, before I moved into public relations, I worked in the book publishing industry. I worked for a literary agency in NYC.

This morning, I read a blog post Some eBook Observations by Mike Shatzkin at his Idea Logical blog. I left a comment on his blog. I think his comments are moderated, because I haven’t seen my comment appear yet. But, I also thought my comment would be of interest to people reading this blog too. So here it is.

“Mike,

I have to respectfully disagree with you. I would wager that if you walked into a bookstore today and asked 100 random people to name three specific publishers, you’d be hardpressed to find 10 who could give the names of three. Sure, bibliophiles know the names of HarperCollins, Penguin, or Random House. However, the vast majority of the buying public don’t buy books based on publishers. Instead, they’re interested in buying the new Stephen King, the new Dan Brown, etc. Consumers buy specific authors – or titles – not publishers.

Re: pricing, I also disagree. Many technology pundits have started warning publishers, “Rethink, rethink, rethink, rethink your pricing for books, and if you can’t bring yourself to radically examine your pricing, then you’re headed down the same, sad road as the music industry.” As smartphones continue to multiply, as netbook sales increase, and as the eBook industry continues to grow, the book publishers’ Napster is not far off. Hackers love cracking code, and if eBook prices don’t dramatically decrease, hackers will gleefully crack the eBook DRM out there, and distribute the latest bestsellers via an eBook Napster service.

Sure, there’s printing costs, and sure there’s fixed costs for publishers, but we all know that distributing a digital eBook file costs less than a penny. That’s a concept that someone with zero knowledge of the book industry can grasp, because just about everyone sends attached files via email these days.

Why can’t publishers follow the instincts of the master retailer himself – Sam Walton? I’m paraphrasing, but Walton often said, “I’d rather sell a million pairs of socks, and make a nickel from each pair, than sell 100 pairs of socks and make $100 per pair.” Publishers could dramatically lower the price of eBooks and make up the difference in volume.

Why not sell backlist paperback titles for $1.00 a piece in eBook format – and split the net profit 50/50 with the author? The $1.00, $2.00, $3.00 price point is such an affront to publishers, they won’t even seriously consider it, and they try to justify – with a straight face – charging a trade paperback price for a digital file that cost them basically nothing to distribute.

Realistically though, I don’t see that type of adventurous pricing happening. Amazon is taking a loss on just about every hardcover title they sell on the Kindle for $9.99. Publishers aren’t budging on prices. And, as publishers try to justify their eBook pricing with elaborate explanations and justifications, the hackers are eating pizza, sleeping under their desks, coding around the clock, and the eBook Napster gets closer and closer.”

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