As an agent, I think about this a lot. When I’m  looking at submissions  of  literary or “upmarket” commercial fiction, this question is always setting off sparks on the left side of my brain. Of course the big question for me is whether the book is sucking me into an immersive  trancelike vortex that makes me want to stay up all night and turn the pages. But I keep having these intrusive thoughts in my mind: “Who’s the audience? Will women relate to this? Do I really understand what women want anyway?”

So far most of the novels that I have taken on are by women authors and from the point of view of  women characters.  I am completely smitten by all of my novels. Haunted really. Obsessed even. And I know they   must appeal to women as well as men. How do I know? Because I ask  my wife Leslie to read them.  And if she stays up all night, quid erat demonstratum. (For the record, I have represented male authors as well and I am as smitten with them as with  my female authors.)

Pretty much every estimate and survey shows that  women are the audience for a vast majority of this kind of fiction. Actually, 60% of all books, fiction and non-fiction, are bought by women.  Men read relatively little fiction and overwhelmingly what they read is genre fiction, action, thrillers, and suspense. Men primarily read non-fiction – manly subjects like golf tips, right wing screeds, and “how to make ten minute meals”.  Ok. That’s a  cheap shot.

Jodi Picoult

Jennifer Weiner

Last year Jennifer Weiner and Jodi Picoult threw down their gage at the literary fiction establishment and  led an assault on the almost universal critical raves of  Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom. He was hailed as a genius and his work a masterpiece. Weiner and Picoult, whose books have sold millions, pointed out that fiction by women tends to be dismissed as “commercial” or “women’s” fiction. There was a great interview of them in The Huffington Post where they discussed this issue.

Weiner brought up the subject  again yesterday in her blog. She went through all the book reviews in The New York Times in 2011. She counted150 reviews of books by men and only 104 by women.  She also pointed out that of the books that were reviewed twice and had profiles of the author, 10 were of men and only 1 was of  a woman.

Weiner didn’t count the gender of the winners of the major literary awards, but  I did and the statistics there are even more damning. Of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction since 1984, 17 of the winners were men and only 11 were women. Of the National Book Award for fiction since 1984, 19 of the winners were men and only 7 were women.

What these statistics tell me is that Jennifer Weiner and Jodi Picoult are right to be concerned. One of the conclusions you could draw from this is that men are more brilliant writers of imaginative literature than women. That’s  a pretty odious thought. The other conclusion that you could draw is that sexism is alive and kicking in the critical literary world.

I’m grateful to Jennifer Weiner and Jodi Picoult for having the courage to point this out.

Mitt Romney circa 1962

I’ve been experiencing some exquisite  schadenfreude over the accusations and counteraccusations of the Republican presidential hopefuls. Lately the long knives are out  on Romney accusing him of never having worked an honest day in his life. I am here to tell you this is not true. I know because I was Mitt Romney’s boss. Don’t laugh. This is not one of those archly sardonic blog posts that my loyal followers have come to expect in “Ask the Agent”.

Before Romney was a conservative Republican presidential candidate, before he was a liberal Republican governor, before he was in charge of the Salt Lake City Olympics, before he either created or destroyed  tens of thousands of jobs at Bain Capital, Mitt worked for me.

Back in 1962 when I was 16 years old and living in Detroit, I decided to get a little practical experience in politics and went to work for the Republican gubernatorial candidate in Michigan. The candidate was George Romney, who had been the president of American Motors. He actually coined the term “compact car” which he used to describe the Nash Rambler.

me circa 1962

Republicans were different back then. Some of them weren’t so bad. And Romney was better than most. He was an ardent supporter of civil rights. He had a pretty enlightened attitude toward the labor movement.  He was a problem solver, not an ideologue. He ran for president in 1968 but was defeated for the Republican nomination by Nixon. Romney made the mistake (I would say he had the honesty) of admitting that he had been brainwashed about Viet Nam. That did him in.   There were a lot of people like Romney in the Republican Party back then. They weren’t perfect by any means.  Their great flaw was that they had a certain complacency and a narrowness of outlook,  probably as a result of  spending too much time with their buddies  playing golf at the country club.  But still, they were for the most part  decent practical men. Most of them have abandoned the GOP now and left it to the lunatics.

Back to my story. I went down to Romney headquarters in an office building near the Detroit River.  I was designated the person to run the mimeograph machine (no  Xeroxes back then). It was a dirty job, but somebody had to do it. One day another 16 year old showed up and I had to train him in the art and science of mimeography. That person was the candidate’s son, Mitt Romney. Actually I was only his boss for about an hour.  After I showed him how to use the mimeograph, we worked together and continued to do so for the next few months –as equals.

I’d like to be able to tell you that the child is father to the man, that even then I was able to see the chameleonlike nature of Mitt that has become so manifest in his search for the ultimate prize. I’d like to be able to tell you that when we were in a room with one group of people, Mitt would say that mimeographs were enshrined in the Constitution by our founding fathers. But when we were with others, he would say that mimeographs were part of a sinister liberal conspiracy to turn America into a socialist hell like North Korea or France.

But that would not be true. Mitt and I  had a pretty good time that summer. We sort of yucked it up in the mimeograph room, talked about teenage stuff, went out to lunch together, that sort of thing. He was pretty down to earth for a guy who’s father was running for governor. That was admirable, although it probably speaks more to the character of  his parents than to him.

I wish that Mitt had become more like his dad, George. I think America would be a better place. And the Republican Party would certainly be a more responsible political institution. But  if he were more like George Romney, then Mitt wouldn’t  really be a viable Republican candidate for president, would he? Actually, now that I think about it, if he were more like George Romney, he’d probably be a Democrat.

 

Linda Gray Sexton has written a personal memoir about suicide. The book is entitled:  Half in Love: Surviving the Legacy of Suicide. It has just been released in paperback from Counterpoint Press. It’s a book that Linda is singularly qualified to write. She is the daughter of Anne Sexton, one of America’s great poets, who committed suicide in 1974 after a long battle with depression.  Linda was 21 years old at the time.  Linda, herself, suffered from depression for much of her life and attempted to commit suicide several times. Half in Love is her remarkable story that brings to life the feelings and thoughts of her troubled mind and how she was driven to make the final and seemingly irrevocable decision to end her life. The book is beautifully written, deeply moving, honest, and courageous, and will change the way you think and feel about suicide.

AR: Linda, it is puzzling to me that both your mother and yourself were driven to suicide. My initial inclination is to view it as a kind of family curse, something out of a Greek tragedy. But you seem to see it quite differently. Is it more than a coincidence that you and your mother were haunted by the desire to end life?

LGS:I don’t see it as a curse, but I do see it as a legacy.  Suicide and mental illness were handed down in my family, from generation to generation.  My mother’s aunt, whom she called Nana, was afflicted with depression, and labeled “insane.”  She was eventually institutionalized and died within those walls.  My mother’s father intermittently sat in the kitchen of my childhood home and told my mother of his deep depression and anxiety.  Her great aunt Frances killed herself with a shotgun when I was a teenager, and her sister killed herself with an overdose of sleeping medication following my mother’s suicide.  So there was a lot of mental illness and suicide in the family well before my mother finally killed herself, after many attempts, in 1974, as she was turning forty-five.  Suicide was so much a part of our family construct, and for so many years, that I can’t even begin to imagine my life without its influence. Despite my early deep conviction that suicide would never be the route I would take, I found myself grappling with it when I was forty-five. It came knocking at the door in the same year of my life that it had finally taken my mother in hers.  I, too, found myself sinking into the abyss and came to believe the only way to escape the interior mental anguish was to end my life.

 AR: In the course of reading your book, I came to feel compassion for your condition. But I was also constantly fighting off a sense of anger at you. You had a family whom you loved. A husband. Two children who were at a tender age when you sought to end your life. And you were aware, when you made the decision, of the hurt that it would cause.  Under the circumstances a lot of people would say you were being selfish, self-absorbed, and weak. I would imagine that with the publication of Half in Love,  you came in for some pretty heavy criticism.   Can you tell us about the kind of reactions other people had after reading your book?

LGS: You would expect that I would have had a lot of that kind of  criticism.  But really, that’s not what actually happened.  I had a lot of email, and responses at readings, as well as reviews, that were compassionate with the predicament I had found myself in, much more than judgments by others that I had been self-centered in my decision.  That’s not to say that there weren’t people who perhaps felt that way. It’s simply that those weren’t the people who spoke up.  Perhaps the book convinced them that suicide isn’t a selfish act, but rather a desperate one, one that the ill person feels driven to by his or her pain.  I think “Half in Love” sheds new light on the hopelessness the suicidal person feels, the sense that there seems to be no way out of the pain except a final escape.  I was deluged with mail through my website   from people who felt that their story had at last been told.  They said that I had spoken for them, for their families, their friends.  It was a very moving experience to receive these notes from the heart, and I answered them all.  I was grateful to know that I had reached so many people and that they were open to hearing my message.

AR: And what kinds of reactions have you had from people in the helping professions who have to deal with these feelings in a therapeutic context?

LGS: Actually I have had a great deal of positive reaction and support from those who are therapists, psychiatrists, nurses, and even those who run suicide hot lines, or national suicide support groups.  Everyone seems gratified that the subject, for so long taboo, has at last been brought out into the light and discussed in something other than professional terms.  They have often told me they either recommend, or even give, “Half in Love” to patients, and/or their families and friends.

 AR: You say in Half in Love that both you and your mother suffered from bipolar disorder, a medical condition that was responsible for your extreme depression. Does it run in families?

LGS: Bipolar disorder has now been classified by the medical profession as heritable.  This means they have run studies to see whether or not it can be passed from generation to generation.  They have even constructed studies around twins who were separated at birth to see whether there is more than a purely environmental link—in other words, these studies of twins show us whether it is “nature” rather than “nurture” that accounts for the higher percentage of bipolar disorder among family members.  And indeed, twins separated at birth do still seem to share the link of mental illness, and especially, bipolar disorder, even though they were raised in entirely different environments.  So in recent years we have learned that it is not only the ways in which people are raised that accounts for the illness, but that there is also a genetic component.

 AR: I must make a confession here. My mother suffered from bipolar disorder. She never attempted suicide, but she once left a suicide note. Even though she lived to a ripe old age, I’m still angry with her for this. Truth to tell, I’m angry with myself as well for not really dealing with it in the best manner.  Is that an unusual feeling? Do the survivors often blame themselves?

LGS: I think your reaction is not an uncommon one.  In “Half in Love,” I talk about how angry my sister and my father and I, and indeed the whole extended family, were after my mother made a suicide attempt.  We were not counseled by the medical profession that it was natural to have these emotions  We were only taught that it was “not her fault” and that we should stifle any feelings we might have.  Naturally, this helped us not at all.  We were sad and grieving—and angry, angry, angry.  We felt that she had tried to desert us in a very selfish way.  As I say in “Half in Love,” suicide used to be, and still is to some extent, a deeply taboo subject.  Through the ages, for instance, suicides were not allowed to be buried in churchyard cemeteries but had their bodies interred in the crossroads, where it was hoped that the four winds would disperse their “diseased” souls.  I recently wrote a blog for my website that deals with this very question of anger and guilt within the family after a successful, or even failed, suicide attempt.  And, in addition to feeling anger, survivors of a successful suicide often blame themselves for not having been there enough emotionally for their loved one.  They believe that if only they had done something differently, the person would have lived. Both guilt and blame are nasty emotions—they take hold and are difficult to eradicate no matter how much we console the one suffering from them.  I think this is why “Half in Love” helps so many people: it allows them to see that the suffering of the one they love is not due to them, but is an interior force that can overtake and destroy a life regardless of what others attempt to do to help.

AR: But there is one thing of note about my mother’s condition. During her “manic” periods, she would spend her time writing poetry. Unlike your mother’s, hers was shockingly bad and an embarrassment to the family. But it was a form of creativity nonetheless. Do you think that this disease would explain some of your mother’s (or your) creativity?

LGS: No, I think in fact it is the opposite. Creativity does not bring about mental illness but creativity is often present in the lives of those who are touched by the fire of this disease.  Interestingly, my mother often found herself equally as unable to do any serious writing when she was manic as when she was depressed—at which time she was unable to do much of anything at all.  Though the surge toward mania often produced extremely intense creative activity, once she was in a full blown manic attack, she abandoned writing for scattered activities and scattered language.  She didn’t have the ability to marshal all her strengths and gifts necessary for creating poetry.  I find this true for myself as well.  When I was very depressed I was unable to work on “Half in Love” at all, which is why the book took nearly ten years to write.  When I was on a manic surge, I found myself at my most productive, often getting up in the early, early hours of the morning to sit down at my computer.  But once the mania had set in, I spent my time moving furniture from room to room, or cooking vast quantities of anything at all, which later had to be pitched.  My capabilities with language languished, as I wasn’t able to corral my abilities with words into some kind of recognizable work product.

AR: You also talk about “cutting”. This has struck me as odd and inexplicable behavior. It also seems to be almost the opposite of suicide. Suicide is an act that seeks to end the pain of life. Cutting is an act that creates more pain. Can you talk about this a little bit?

LGS: Cutting is something few people understand.  Why inflict pain on yourself when you already are in pain?  The only explanation I can offer is that creating the pain is one way of “letting the pain out,” of controlling it.  It is as if the pain is a poison inside of you, and by cutting you release it to flow from your body and your mind—and, in fact, from your life itself.  I found, as I describe in a chapter in “Half in Love” called “Cutting,” that once I had finished using the razor blade, I felt a tremendous sense of relief, both physical and mental.  In fact it kept me from making more suicide attempts—it was a replacement, in a way, that kept me alive.  Unfortunately, I had a psychiatrist who couldn’t understand what the cutting did for me, and thus forbade me to cut.  When I inevitably did again, once more in an attempt not to take my life, he “fired” me as a patient.  It was only later, when I found a new therapist who did understand my feelings about it, and my explanations for it, that I was able to relinquish cutting without making further suicide attempts.  I think it was at this point that I seriously began to get well. 

AR: I read a lot of memoirs. Some of them are just plain silly or exploitative. And then there are those like yours that are brutally honest, that deal with the most personal of all feelings, and that are courageous enough to talk about mistakes, flaws, and weaknesses without resorting to self-justifications. Isn’t it scary to do something like this? To expose yourself this way? To take this kind of risk? Why did you do it?

LGS: Of course, the answer is “yes:” it is very frightening to expose yourself, especially about an aspect of your character that is terribly unappealing.  You have to be willing to bring your flaws and your weaknesses into the light, without trying to self-justify, as you say, and be able to take the heat.  Ultimately, if you want to reach people, you have to be willing, as I say, “to get naked.”  And you have to do it in front of a lot of people.  Many people ask me, “why didn’t you protect yourself from public scrutiny by writing this as a novel instead?”  My answer is always that I thought it would be more authentic, more moving, if I weren’t hiding my life behind the life of a character. And, in the end, I think I was correct.  I don’t think I would have received the outpouring of mail if I had fictionalized this aspect of my life.  People responded because I had been willing “to get naked.”  They felt that if I could do it, so could they—in talking with their family members, their therapists, their friends.  And for the public, who knew so little about mental illness and suicide, the book opened the topic and so made it less taboo.  I made myself public so that the topic would be public.  I wanted to help the people who couldn’t help themselves, to give them a voice.

 AR: Well, at the end of all this, you are still here and seem to have triumphed over your desire to end your life. It sounds like you have come to love life. How did this change come about?

LGS: It took a long time.  I wrote “Half in Love” from the depths of depression and then as I began to come out of it.  I wrote it as I began to move away from death, and emerge toward health.  I did that with the help of a great therapist, and a loving husband, and an extended family that eventually began to understand what had happened to me and to forgive me.  And then there were the all-important medications, which took a long time to regulate and to get in the proper “cocktail,” but which my very skilled and compassionate therapist juggled until she had it just right. I feel grateful for all the emotional support I have received and for my ability to receive the medications that, even today, make my health possible. To return to the book’s title, which takes its source from a poem by Keats, at one time I was “half in love” with death—and now I would have to say that I am quite in love with life. 

Linda will be appearing at and discussing Half in Love at the following events:

Books Inc.,  Palo Alto.  January 11,  7:00 PM

Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute Boston, Ma.  February 29, 8 PM

Brandeis University, Waltham Ma. March 1,  4 PM

Harvard Bookstore, Cambridge, Ma.  March 5, 7 PM

Newtonville Books, Newton, Ma. March 7

National Alliance for Mental Illness, Sacramento, Ca. May 14

But that isn’t what this blog post is about. I wanted to share a very weird bookstore moment with you.  It happened today at Book Passage. One of the nice things about working on the floor is that I see books that grab my attention and I sort of thumb through them.  So anyway, I’m standing in the history section. I read a lot of history. I studied German history in graduate school. So I picked up this 1000 page brick of a book. Heinrich Himmler: A Life by Peter Longerich. It’s published by Oxford University Press. It is an important work of scholarship about a figure in history for whom most people have very little sentimental attachment.  One of the Book Passage employees came up to me and asked me if I was holding Curious George. I can only assume that the holiday frenzy had disturbed his mental equilibrium.

Well, gentle readers. I suppose I would like to say that whether you intend to put Curious George under the tree this holiday season, or perhaps Heinrich Himmler: A Life, I hope you have a very happy and peaceful holiday and get all the books you want on Christmas day.

So here’s a picture of the app icon as it appears on my new and cool iPad.  You can get it for free at the Apple App Store and download it in about 15 seconds.

I touch the app and this screen pops up. Note the announcement about the promotion on December 10 for selected categories. Also note that you are uploading information to Amazon including the geographical coordinates of your price check. You are, in effect, an Amazon secret shopper (although they aren’t paying you the  customary sub-minimum wage for the marketing service you are providing).

As you can see there are 3 ways to identify the product:  scanning, talking, and photographing. On my iPad (and on iPhones), you can do all or any of these quite easily.

Here is the book I’m testing. The Dog Who Couldn’t Stop Loving.  It is a title by my client, Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson. It’s a wonderful book on the 40,000 year romance between humans and dogs. It’s a good Christmas present for your dog loving friends. And – Jeff gets a royalty on every book you buy (with some exceptions we’ll discuss below) and I get a commission on all of Jeff’s royalties for this book. So you should buy it and everyone will be happy.

Getting back to the app, first I tried the “say it” button. A microphone logo appeared and I – well – said it. Sophisticated voice recognition software translated and digitized my words and sent it on to Amazon.  Within seconds, an Amazon page for The Dog Who Couldn’t Stop Loving popped up. I did the same with the “snap it” button. My iPad and all iPhones have cameras. Same page popped up.

Here is a photograph of me using the scanning function. I just centered the iPad on the bar code and without hitting any button, the Amazon page for the title came up again.

The Amazon title page  looks like this. Voila! Hit a button and you have bought the book. You can even do this in the independent book shop where you are  browsing, even right in front of the cash wrap where the owner is standing and glaring at you with fire in her eyes. I don’t recommend that. You should probably take the book into that dark corner over there.  Try to ignore the fact that people are looking at you funny like you are some kind of a pervert and that  the owner is still staring  hawklike at you because she thinks you are stuffing the book into your knickers.

This apps’ pretty cool, huh? And internet savvy consumers are really going to town on this.

There is something creepy about it though and troubling for me. This is the point where I have to make my obligatory statement that I am not a Luddite. And truthfully raging against technology is a fool’s errand. And Amazon is not the only company making price check scanning apps either.

Book publishers are pretty upset about the horrible troubles of  brick and mortar stores. Internet geeks say that this is just the price for progress. But it is really a little more complicated than this. We have spoken before in this blog  about the concept of “discoverability”. That is the arrangement of products that allows the consumer to find something unexpected. Amazon.com is not a good place for impulse buys.  There was a recent survey that indicated that 20% of books purchased online were on impulse while 40% at brick and mortar stores were. For some categories, children’s books come to mind, as much as 80% of all purchases are impulse.

A bookstore is a little like a showroom. Publishers know that and value that. Amazon seems to know it too and are exploiting that. Paradoxically the scanning apps which drive lots of business to Amazon are doing their part to insure that these showrooms will not survive. And there goes your “discoverability”.

Most of the people who read this blog are writers or book lovers. And many of you writers might simply think that this doesn’t matter. If customers want to buy online, hey, it’s still a sale. But wait. Go back up and take a look at Jeff’s Amazon book page. The page that pops up tells the customer that he can buy it used for as little as a penny. The  other featured books  are used copies as well. Who the hell wouldn’t rather have a book for a penny?

We  have spoken frequently  about the value of intellectual work in an internet culture that believes “information wants to be free”. Maybe I’m naïve or just venal, but it seems to me that writers deserve to get paid for their work. And price checking apps that drive consumers to buy books for a penny undermine that principle.

And mark this well.  It is also undermining the very stores who create those showrooms that give book lovers that ineffable experience of discovering an unexpected miracle.

As I said, there is something a little creepy about this.

The reasons given by Penguin are opaque; they mentioned “security considerations” (whatever that means.) As in all matters associated with e-books,  there are lots of issues and interests at stake in this decision. Let’s try to  ferret out the real back story of all this.

Publishers have always been uneasy about licensing e-books to libraries. They will tell you that they support libraries as the institution in America that creates readers and builds literacy that, in turn, allows  publishers to flourish. Most people won’t argue about this. However with the advent of e-books and e-book library lending programs, publishers are  concerned that this will harm their own  sales of e-books. The reason that they are more concerned about this  than they have been about traditional library lending is because it is so much easier to check out an e-book than it is a physical book, and an e-book is always in pristine condition no matter how many times it is lent out. The reader need not worry about those nasty spots and  unsanitary stains that populate the margins of the pages of a typical library book.  In the past in order to check out a library book, the reader must actually go down to the library and go through the normal hassles, parking, stepping over undesirables, etc.,  in order to be told that the few  titles  that the customer would actually want to read have  waiting lists for the next 3 months. Using the library e-book check out service, you can get a copy of your favorite book while at home  by downloading it  any time day or night.

To be perfectly fair, libraries have managed  in their new e-book services   to recreate every reason that you have avoided   going  to the library in the first place.  I belong to the Oakland Public Library and have availed myself of the service from time to time. And it is convenient when a book I want to read  is in stock and available.  I lie in bed, I hit a button on my new iPad, I get my book. Sweet! However, as with traditional books, the financially hard pressed libraries can only order a limited selection of popular titles and those in  small quantity.  So I still have to wait weeks or even months for the books I want to read.  Of course there  are always lots of books immediately available that are less in demand. In Oakland, most  of these books seem to be  in Chinese or Spanish and accordingly are not of great  interest to me. They have a pretty good selection of Berenstain Bears titles as well.

The e-books  at libraries are being managed by a company called Overdrive. When the programs first began last year, books were only available in the EPUB format and the largest segment of e-book customers, Kindle owners, were not able to participate. Earlier this year Amazon allowed the libraries to license Kindle editions. But  as is  Amazon’s wont, they managed to design the system so that the customer could not just hit a Kindle button on the Overdrive site. Rather they were directed to the Amazon site where there are a myriad of buttons encouraging the library patron to buy the book instead of borrowing it and, while there, to buy a plethora of other Amazon merchandise from cameras to condoms.

This is standard operating procedure for Amazon (and good retail marketing too). Amazon discounts selected items heavily, even using them as loss leaders, to get customers to the website where they then engage in an orgy of buying from Amazon’s vast selection. So Amazon has  been heavily promoting the Kindle library lending program. Sure, it takes away book sales a little bit. But a few lost book sales is a small price to pay for a magnet to bring customers coming back for more stuff.

For now the other major publishers are sitting on the sidelines. Some of them aren’t participating in the Overdrive program at all. Others, like Random House, have responded with even more obtuse comments than Penguin (“We are always evaluating all of our publishing programs.”)

So what does all this mean? For librarians this is about the fact  that they just want their e-books available and don’t want to get caught in a dispute, not of their making,  between the publishers and Amazon. For publishers, already uncomfortable about the e-book library program, this  is about the fact that they don’t want Amazon using free books to drive traffic to their web site to the detriment of e-book sales. For internet gurus and geeks,  this is an example of  the  ”legacy” media dinosaurs fighting another losing battle against the brave new world of internet where “information wants to be free”.  For authors this is about whether they have a right to be paid for their work, just like everybody else. (European libraries give authors a small royalty every time their book is checked out. See my previous blog post: Revenge of the Killer Librarians ).

I frequently talk about how difficult it is to gauge editors’ reactions to submissions. It is all very subjective and editors have a pretty broad diversity of sensibilities. But there appears to be one subject that elicits strong feelings across the spectrum. That is a loathing for Amazon.com. This is a little puzzling since Amazon has surpassed Barnes and Noble as the largest purveyor of books in America. Usually publishers, who are no different from any other business, are pretty circumspect about criticizing their largest account. Not so with Amazon.com.

The newest Amazon indignity that is causing a huge uproar with authors, agents, and publishers is the  free book lending policy that is offered as part of Amazon’s new “Prime” program. The  cost of joining Amazon Prime is $79.95 per year. It’s  a pretty good deal.  You can get free shipping from Amazon on all orders and receive thousands of streaming videos at no extra cost. But the  part of the package that is upsetting authors is the lending program that allows Prime members to borrow a book for free once a month.

There seems to be some question as to whether  publishers can and will  license their books to be read for free by Amazon,  and authors are incensed that they have  not, possibly will not be consulted in the event that the program takes off . First of all, the good news is that there are only 5000 books being offered and a lot of them will be of no interest to most readers. Amazon approached the 6 largest publishers: Random House, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Hachette, Penguin, and Simon and Schuster. All of them turned Amazon down. The next tier of mid-size publishers: Norton, Houghton Mifflin, and Bloomsbury apparently refused as well. But Amazon went ahead without their permission  putting some few  of  their books on the list. Amazon claims that if they pay the publisher the cost of an e-book every time one is checked out (thus treating it like a sale), the publisher has no say in the matter. Publishers argue that they never intended that their books be used in this manner, essentially as premiums to induce customers to buy hardware or services.

Probably the heart of the problem is concern by authors and publishers that the new culture of “free” or, at any rate, “almost free” will further degrade the public’s sense of the inherent value of books and writing. Amazon has been cultivating this sensibility for a long time. The most extreme examples are the used books that are being offered for 1 cent all over the Amazon site. But Amazon has been attempting in other ways to dictate what the inherent value of e-books should be. They have been willing to sell e-books below cost. That is no problem for Amazon. Once  customers gets on the site, they are more likely to buy other merchandise. For instance: cameras, computers, or condoms.

The Authors Guild,  which is the largest organization representing authors, is practically apoplectic over this. They are particularly concerned that authors have no say in this matter, that there is no equitable formula for compensating authors if a publisher sells a license to Amazon for this use,  and that the existing book contracts could only permit this use under a tortured interpretation.

I’m sure we will be hearing more about this soon. So stay tuned.

Meghan’s blog is very good though and I urge you all to take a look at it. Right now she is doing a survey on what kind of advances authors are getting for their published books. So if you are willing to share that information, check  it out….. And don’t lie!

What I want to say is that I’m really inspired by OWS and its many affinity groups. It reminds me that there are still things to believe in and still some values in public life that just can’t get suffocated by cynicism.  I haven’t felt that way in awhile. I haven’t felt that way in a long time.

I get really angry at those people who criticize OWS by saying that they don’t have a constructive program.  This is usually coming from people who don’t have one either or, more likely, have programs that are in conflict with everything we have learned to believe is good and true and beautiful.

When Rosa Parks got on that bus in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955 and sat right down at the front, she didn’t come armed with a 20 point plan to end segregation in America. She hadn’t studied the footnotes to Supreme Court decisions. She just got on that bus and sat down where she wanted. I don’t know what she said to that bus driver, but she was probably thinking: “this much and no more”. She was probably just thinking: “no”.

One of my intellectual heroes is Albert Camus. In his brilliant book, The Rebel, he said, “What is a rebel? A man who says no.”

I think that’s a good place to begin.

First let’s take a look at the channels. That’s a fancy word for where books are being sold. As you can see by the chart, e-commerce has increased from 27.6% to 37%. Borders’ closing certainly has a lot to do with this. Even with Borders open,  last year Amazon barely beat out Barnes and Noble for the first time as the largest bookseller. We don’t know whether BN will come roaring back this year. After all, they stand to pick up the most from Borders’ closing. But Amazon, being the largest purveyor of e-books, may very well increase its market share as the largest bookstore.

Looking at some of the other channels, book clubs are becoming more marginal.  When I first entered the book business in the 1970s, book clubs were a huge presence. Now they are insignificant. At that time one of the largest venues for selling books was department stores. As you can see in the graph, department stores have pretty much discontinued selling books, replaced by ladys’ handbags and designer beauty products.

Chain store sales have declined from 30.6% to 27.3%. That is a lot less than I would have predicted, given the fact that Border’s disappeared. The only significant chains that are left are Barnes and Noble and Books-a-Million. I would have to assume that a lot of the Borders’ business has been picked up by these two companies.

Moving down to the independent stores, some nice news here. Market share has increased from 4.5% to 5%. It is still distressingly low. But indies are also benefiting from Borders’ closing.

Mass merchants and warehouse clubs have declined slightly. That would be stores like Costco, Wal-Mart, and Target. There was a time back in the 90s when Wal-Mart bragged that it would soon be the largest purveyor of books. They expected to sell 25% of all books. It doesn’t look like it will happen.

Ok, now let’s look at how  sales of book formats have been changing. Again these figures are for the 2nd quarter 2011 compared to the same period in 2010. The largest format is still paperbacks, both trade and mass market. But it has declined from 58.3% to 51%. Hardbacks too have declined significantly from 33.3% to 28.6%.  And as expected ebooks are continuing to increase exponentially  growing from 3.2% to 13.7%.