Reply to T. Mercer
I was so happy, entertained, and confused to receive a response from pro-Kindle Amazon reviewer T. Mercer regarding my last post (Kindle Schmindle), that I decided to answer as a new post.
Dear T. Mercer,
Thank you for your kind message, and for your interest in The Possessed. I was deeply gratified to learn of your willingness to pay $15 to read it electronically. As it happens, I don’t have an electronic version to send you. The last few rounds of editing are done on paper proofs that are literally sent back and forth via UPS. In the end, the marked-up proofs are shipped to Ghana to be retyped by orphans. So if you really want to “cut through all this middle-man bullshit,” you’d probably better get in touch with those orphans.
In the meantime, I’ve been thinking about whether I would send Kindle fans an electronic copy if I had one… and I’m really not sure! I don’t know who is right and who is wrong in the standoff between Amazon and Macmillan (which owns FSG)—from what I see, it’s two huge corporations pursuing their huge corporate interests, far from the realm of ordinary human existences like yours and mine.
So let’s leave that out.
In general, of course, I’m in favor of books being made available electronically and at a low price, and it seems that in the future this will happen according to the model you suggest, with authors releasing material directly to the public. But, the state of the world today being what it is, I’m actually really grateful that FSG published my book—and I’m super-grateful to my super-editor Lorin and his super-assistant Georgia and the super-publicist Brian, and the numerous super copy-editors, who are all such great people and worked so hard to make The Possessed as good as it could be, and to get it out there. And if you and I cut out the middleman, what do they get? I mean, guess I could give them their cut myself, but I’m a writer, not an HR manager—I don’t have the time, training, or temperament to go around dividing up checks.
Furthermore, I’m also grateful to Amazon for selling my book under the list price. (I am disappointed that they’ve now hiked it up to $10.20, which can still get you a single Brita replacement filter with $.04 left over—and needless to say I would love The Possessed to be on Kindle—but still, a $10 paperback is not bad at all.) But, at the same time, I’m also definitely in favor of independent bookstores, and I know they can’t afford to give $5 discounts whenever they feel like it. So maybe I’m wrong to send people to buy a cheap copy on Amazon (which giant sinister corporation now gives me 6.5% of the price of every book sold through the URL on this website, so I’m extra-compromised!).
In the end I decided it’s OK to leave the question of Amazon vs. independent up to individual readers to work out between their ideals and their pocketbooks. But of course if I go around selling the book myself, that’s bad for independent booksellers and Amazon!
In short, T. Mercer, the more I think about it, the more I realize the only thing I’m really sure of in this mess is that you should definitely read Oblomov. I notice it’s available in multiple Kindle editions.
Всего лучшего!
Elif
Tags: bureaucracy, money, non-publications, outsourcing, publications, reviews, Russia, THE POSSESSED
February 25th, 2010 at 11:48 am
Hi Elif,
Well, now you have me reconsidering my spring vacation plans. I’m sure Ghana would be lovely that time of year. I had never before considered the need for ethical standards in book production, but you have opened my eyes. (If I had heard those two concepts juxtaposed before, I would have immediately called to mind the strikingly low compensation awaiting college grads in their entry-level publishing job.)
Now that we are speaking in the more civilized tone befitting a face-to-face conversation, I’ll share my real frustration here. I like reading on my Kindle. I’m a little conflicted about it, because one of my favorite pastimes when getting to know new friends and acquaintances is examining their bookshelves. And there’s something resonant about going to the bookshelf and rereading a favorite passage that physically reflects calling on memory and experience, which is most certainly missing when thumbing through the home menu of a Kindle. I’m not denying the shortcomings. But the portability and convenience makes reading more accessible to me in more situations. Plus, the balance of studies show that e-books are end-to-end more resource efficient than paper books, which is a great side benefit.
In the past, the book industry has taken pains to make books available on the same date to all readers, retailers, and in multiple media (including audio). With big bestsellers, even more effort was made getting the books in everybody’s hands at the same time. Some of this was to build hype, but there was also an element of fairness embedded here. Even if you lived in Fairbanks, Alaska or only listened to audiobooks, you wouldn’t miss out on the latest YA vampire sensation or pirate romance novel when the breathless Entertainment Weekly review came out.
Apparently, FSG/Macmillan and some other publishers have been/are experimenting with the notion that those principles of fairness don’t apply to e-books. They seem to be proposing that an e-book is more like a paperback format that can be released later and at a lower price – totally ignoring the many avid readers who prefer to read on their Kindles for convenience, the ability to increase the text size to large print, or whatever else.
So that puts me as a reader in the position of wanting to support a humorous, talented, albeit D-list author like you and enjoy your overwhelmingly critically acclaimed book, which was written about my favorite pastimes. However, it’s not available in my preferred format, and in fact, I have no idea when it will be available. Moreover, I have no better way to express my frustration and displeasure than to delay buying the book and post the review I posted on Amazon. Obviously, these are imperfect solutions, which is why I proposed cutting out the middle man and all the corporate shenanigans.
If I were you, I would have fatigued long ago of talking about this, so I’ll leave it at that. I’ll most certainly give Oblomov a second look, and I wish you a whole pile of steaming American-style literary success. You clearly deserve it, but only the good parts.
Sincerely,
T.Mercer