Jeremy Blachman's Weblog: 2012

Off for honeymoon

Wedding was great.  Leaving for honeymoon on a 6AM flight this morning, which was not our first choice as far as flight times... but should be fun anyway.  Probably won't be blogging until we're back on the 7th, but who knows...

Wedding Day...

I should be sleeping, but I'm getting excited.
Plus, I went to sleep at 9PM, so I've actually gotten 6 hours of sleep already.
In 12 hours, I'll be married!

Looks like we made it into the New York Times wedding section.
We originally sent them a different picture that I liked better:

But they said our eyebrows needed to be on the same level, so we took a new one.

It's hard to take a picture where your eyebrows are on the same level.

It's been a fun weekend so far.  Went to dinner and gelato with some friends on Friday night, for the tamest (but really pretty perfect as far as how I wanted to celebrate) bachelor party ever.  Have already had a chance to catch up with a bunch of family and friends so far, with a lot more of that coming in the next 18 hours or so. Fingers crossed that nothing bizarre happens to throw things off, but, sitting here in front of my computer at three in the morning, about to get married, I feel pretty darn lucky.

The Future of Publishing

This post is long.  The quick version: I think celebrities/thought leaders, major or minor, should start their own publishing imprints, taking print-on-demand and e-book technologies to pretty much eliminate all of the traditional costs involved in the model, and if I actually knew any of these kinds of people, I'd be trying to convince them that they should hire me to help them do this.  :)  I've just summarized the last paragraph of this post.  The rest of the post will get you there...

There was a New York Times article earlier this week about Scribd, which lets authors upload books and charge for them, in PDF format or for an iPhone reader.  And of course there's sites like Lulu.com, which let people self-publish a book, and allow print on demand, so you can get an actual physical book sent to you. And then there's this article (and the comments) about an author who released his book on the Kindle for $1.99 (instead of the usual $9.99 new-book price) and found that after he posted the link on some message boards, a couple hundred people a day were buying it just because it was cheap.

The obvious semi-problem with a site like Scribd, with self-published books generally, and with a world where people are releasing their books directly to Amazon, is that it's hard to sort through thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of books to figure out what's worth reading.  Mainstream publishers absolutely release many, many more books each year than anybody can read, but at least it's a small enough universe that someone who tries to know what's out there can feel reasonably informed and reasonably able to trust he'll stumble across a mention or a review or an article about (or an Amazon recommendations link to) most of the big mainstream books he might be interested in.

(Sort of like television -- there's absolutely too many channels and too many shows for anyone to watch everything, but there's not so many that I feel like if there's something awesome out there I'm not eventually going to hear about it somewhere, or at least have some passing notion of what it is and feel like even if I haven't seen it, I've made some kind of fake-uninformed decision that it's not for me and I'm not interested.  On the other hand, when it comes to web series, or any sort of web-based videos, the universe is much too large and there's the same problem I'm talking about with self-published books -- I have no idea what's out there, what's worth watching, what anyone I know is watching, whether any of it is worth my time, and whether even if I watched something and loved it, I could get anyone else to watch it and then have someone to talk about it with, or at least some message board to read where other people have watched it and are talking about it.  I think I've posted about relevance before, and the satisfaction of not just watching or reading something, but of having a community of people to talk to about it and feel like it's not just you.  I mean, it's sort of disappointing to stumble onto some web series or something on, say, YouTube, and see that there's been 84 total views.  Is it really worth anyone's time to watch something with 84 views?  Then again, everything starts with zero views and if it's good enough, will people find it?  It's not a problem to be viewer #84 if eventually there's going to be three million.  But to be viewer #84 when there's only going be 86 is not so awesome.)

So traditionally, mainstream publishers (and TV networks / movie studios, if we're not just talking about books) have had 4 major roles.  

(1) They're the filters -- selecting (and creating) what's worth our attention.  And there's an implicit trust there -- the expectation that what a publisher puts out in the marketplace will at least rise above some minimum bar of competency.  Of course not every book every publisher publishes is something I have any interest in reading.  Of course there are entire genres, entire categories of books that I have no interest in, and a book could be the #1 seller in the universe and I still don't really want to read it (Harry Potter, for example.  Most celebrity-related things, another example.  Diet books. Mysteries. Et cetera.).  But I do have a baseline expectation that if it's a book about something, the author must know something about that topic and isn't writing lies.  (Hence the outrage over something like the James Frey non-fiction is really fiction.)  And that there will be some competence of writing -- it won't be riddled with typos, or written by someone who's absolutely incompetent to be writing a book.  

(2) They're the editors -- presumably making books better than the raw manuscripts that come in, presumably working with authors to create products that are tighter, more polished, better to read than something some random person posts on Scribd.  And I do think there's absolutely a value-add here, in most cases.  Editors make things better, I think.  Outside voices, with experience and knowledge about books, make things better.  Not in every case, not for every author and not every editor, but I think it would be inaccurate to say that publishing companies add no value here.

(3) They're the distributors.  They get books printed and into bookstores.  Traditionally the piece of the business that really made publishers valuable.  If no one can buy your book, no one is going to read your book.

(4) They're the marketers.  They try to get reviews, they try to get your book on TV, they take out ads in newspapers, they get Barnes & Noble to move it up to the front table so people notice it.

So what's happening now?  Scribd and Lulu and the Kindle and thirty other self-publishing sites I haven't named are taking #3 out of the picture, of course.  Traditional distribution is a lot less important.  Even if a book never sees a bookstore, people can still buy it and read it, authors can make money off of it, there is a business model there.  Bookstores aren't going away, but it's no longer impossible to imagine a successful book existing without bookstore distribution.  At the same time, if there were to be a successful book sold through the online and e-book sources, it's completely reasonable that Barnes and Noble or Borders could decide to stock the book after the fact.  Even in the current model, independent publishers (like McSweeney's, for example), use third-party distributors to distribute their books (see an article about McSweeney's distributor going bankrupt a couple of years ago, here).  Distribution has already been disaggregated from the publishing model for all but the biggest publishers.  Even better, earlier this month, Amazon launched a program called Amazon Encore which will identify overlooked books that are selling lots of copies and relaunch them, not only on Amazon but in actual brick-and-mortar bookstores.  So distribution is out there.  There are models outside of traditional publishing that can handle it.

#4 is falling out of the hands of publishing companies as well.  More and more promotion is online, there are fewer and fewer print publications reviewing books, and the fewer books they review, the less relevant and necessary they become.  Lots of books succeed without a powerful (and expensive) marketing campaign behind them, and, even more important, lots of books with a powerful and expensive marketing campaign behind them fail.  Books not published by a major publisher are probably not going to get reviewed by the New York Times anytime soon, they're probably not going to get on The Daily Show or The Colbert Report, or Today or Good Morning America, or be able to afford an ad in The New Yorker.  But over time those barriers are falling.  And with blogs and with Facebook and all sorts of opportunities to reach audiences across Internet channels, the marketing end of things becomes a creative challenge more than an impossibility.  Marketing opportunities are out there.  Traditional publishing is not the only path.

Which leaves us with #1 and #2.  Filtering and editing.  Especially the filtering piece.  Traditional publishers still exist, and will continue to exist for the time being, not only because they can afford to pay authors up front and therefore enable them to make a living, but (even putting money completely aside) if an author has the choice between a "real" publisher and self-publishing, not only does the legitimacy conferred by a real publisher make it worthwhile, but also the chances anyone will notice or pay attention to the book are exponentially higher.  Of course.  

And the filters on a site like Scribd or a site like Amazon aren't really enough to make a difference. User reviews aren't really enough to make me care, in the vast majority of cases.  Seeing something high up in a sales rank aren't going to make me care, in the vast majority of cases.  Reading a chapter for free isn't going to make me care, in the vast majority of cases.  Someone needs to make a book seem relevant, someone needs to confer legitimacy on it.

But, see, without the need to really worry so much about distribution and marketing, why should filtering and editing be such a roadblock?  Why can't we disaggregate the pieces completely?

So, finally, getting to my point: Here's the model we haven't yet seen, and that I think we should and expect we will, since I haven't said anything here that isn't already being said by other people:

Right now, pretty much no one confers legitimacy on a book better than Oprah.  Because she's a celebrity and because she has an audience and because her audience trusts her.  Heck, if Oprah needed money and was interested, why couldn't she start her own publishing company?  (Same model, in fact, as O Magazine, just in the book space)  Instead of selecting books for her book club that have already been published by traditional publishers, hire some editors and create her own imprint, have them commission books from writers they want to work with, and launch them directly.  Oprah has the guest on her show, the books are available online through all channels, they use a third-party distributor... and then she makes the money instead of HarperCollins, or whoever publishes whatever books Oprah chooses.

Of course, there's nothing about this model that has anything to do with self-publishing or e-books.  Oprah could have done this ten years ago.  And if Oprah wanted to do this, she could have had it even easier and just done it within a mainstream publisher -- if she went to HarperCollins, ten years ago or today, it doesn't make a difference, and said she wanted her own imprint, I'd imagine they would jump for joy and happily give it to her.

But that's Oprah. How many other celebrities have the reach and the influence that a mainstream publisher would gladly give them their own imprint if they wanted it?  Probably Jon Stewart, I would guess.  Maybe Katie Couric.  I don't think it's a big list though.  It's a big risk for a traditional publisher, under the traditional models, to put so much money and energy behind a new imprint and try to launch a whole series of new books.

I think the self-publishing model changes that.  If I were a well-known person interested in books and publishing, with some credibility behind my name and a fan base, in any number of areas -- say, Charlie Rose, or James Carville, or Mario Batali, or Tina Fey, or Dr. Ruth, or Alice Waters, or Derek Jeter -- why not start my own publishing company?  Hire a couple of editors to acquire and edit the books, a marketing guy to deal with the (mostly online) promotion, and use print-on-demand and release a slate of books related to my broad area of expertise?  The celebrity name confers legitimacy, and helps enable mainstream promotion.  Without books to print or expensive marketing campaigns, the money involved is small -- do small advances / bigger royalty splits (like, say, HarperStudio), keep, say, one full-time editor and one business/marketing person on the payroll, so that cost is pretty small... and the potential upside is pretty big, not just to sell a bunch of books but also to enhance your own thought leader credentials, get your name more out there, and expand your personal brand.

Anyway, if I were a minor celebrity, this is what I would really think about doing.  And if I knew of any minor celebrities who were doing this, I'd have a resume and cover letter in their inboxes by morning, because this, more than anything, is the job I would love to have -- helping to build a publishing brand from the ground, finding new voices, editing and figuring out how to market their books, online and offline -- and then how to expand that platform into TV and film.  Having seen the publishing industry from both sides, and having played on the TV side a little bit, I think there's a lot of room right now for experimentation, a lot of content being created that hasn't yet figured out how to break out of the traditional models and effectively take advantage of the new technologies, and a lot of opportunities to get ahead of the curve and be the first one to find new business models that will actually work.

Wedding Notes

My wedding is a week from today!  

I haven't blogged about the planning nearly as much as I expected I would, partly because it's mostly not that dramatic, partly because I've been trying to write a play that mines a lot of this territory, and partly because most of what I've learned is that, even more than I realized beforehand, my decision-making process basically involves asking what option costs the least amount of money and then trying to make up reasons why that's the best choice for every reason other than price.  ("Everyone knows a two-piece band sounds nicer than a nine-piece band." / "Who really wants a cake made out of edible ingredients?" / "Wouldn't it be unique and special to have centerpieces made of rocks and twigs instead of flowers?")  I'm exaggerating, but not that much.  Clearly this makes me impossibly frustrating to make decisions with, and despite recognizing this, I don't know that my self-awareness makes me any easier.

I mean, I absolutely care about the pieces that count -- I want the wedding to be nice, I want the pictures to be nice, I want people to have a good time, I want to feel happy and excited and good about the day -- but there are so many trivial pieces that ultimately no one would ever notice or care about, but if you're not careful you can end up spending an unlimited amount of money on pretty much anything.  Invitations, programs, flowers, cake, anything -- it can all cost anywhere from not that much to infinity.  And it somehow feels bad to me -- in a way that I guess it doesn't feel bad to that many people -- that the real point of what's going on can easily get buried underneath all the fondant.  The wedding is about getting together everyone we care about and celebrating that we found each other and want to spend the rest of our lives together and share the future.  A friend of mine, a bunch of years ago before I met Nina or anything like that, when he was talking about his own relationship, said that he felt commitment was like putting a stake in the ground and saying this is the person I want to be in the foxhole with, when stuff happens, no matter what it is, no matter how we have to deal with it, this is who I want to be with and who I want on my side, together, figuring it all out.  That stuck with me, I liked that image.  So, like, that should be what the wedding's about, to me.  About having found that, and getting everyone we care about (and some relatives we're under legal obligation to include) together to celebrate it.

And yet too much of it ends up being about the color of the table linens.

I think what's strange to me is that if there's some long continuum of what a wedding could look like, from 15 people in a backyard having a potluck lunch off paper plates to 200 people in a hotel ballroom wearing fancy clothes and eating on actual dishes (and of course I'm sure it can get a lot fancier than that, but I just haven't been to those kinds of weddings), every wedding I've been to or heard about has been at just about the same part of the continuum, and there hasn't been much variation.  I'm surprised more people don't have backyard barbeque weddings.  But then I think maybe I'm just missing something, and there's a reason everyone wants their wedding to be fancy and cost real money, instead of being simple and easy.  And then, sort of like with law firms, I realize maybe there isn't a reason, and it's just what people do, and I'm just weird for not caring whether we have flowers in the middle of the table, or marshmallows.

In any case, all of this is overshadowed by the fact that I'm super-excited that it's just a week away, and then I get to be married.  Which is neat.

NYT Magazine Credit Crisis Article

Interesting piece on the credit crisis, written by an economics reporter for the Times who ended up with a subprime mortgage and massive debt.

Happy Birthday, Grandma

My grandma turned 93 today.  It's been a tough year for her.  Things haven't gotten a lot better since her stroke about a year ago.  Fortunately, they haven't gotten worse either, and she's been pretty stable.  But it's still awfully sad and frustrating, and it's been a real loss.  She knows who I am, and her long-term memory isn't bad -- she remembers things from her past, she remembers fundamental things about the world and her life and, in the moment, she makes a lot of sense and can carry on a conversation.  But her short-term memory isn't there, and new information just doesn't stick for more than a few seconds.  So every day, it's the same conversation, more or less, at least on her end, changed only based on however it is I respond."

"It's so good to hear your voice.  Where are you?"

"I'm back in New York.  Nina and I just moved into a new apartment."

"In Brooklyn?"

"No, Manhattan."

"Oh, Manhattan's very elegant.  It used to be quite a big deal, to tell someone you were living in Manhattan.  How can there be anything more impressive than that?  How many rooms is the apartment?"

"Two rooms.  A bedroom and a living room.  Plus a bathroom, of course.  And there's a little kitchen area attached to the living room."

"And who's living there?"

"Me and Nina."

"You already moved there?"

"Yep, last week."

"And it's in Brooklyn?"

"No, Manhattan."

"Oh, Manhattan's very elegant.  It must be very expensive,"
"It's small."

"But you're not married yet, right?"

"The wedding's in two weeks."

"Two weeks??  How come I didn't know about that?"

"You did."

"No one told me about that!  You already sent out the invitations?"

"Yes.  You have one, on your refrigerator."

"Are you sure?"

"Yep.  But that's okay.  Now you know.  Two weeks."

"And it's all planned?"
"Yep."

"That's exciting.  But where are you going to live?"

etc.

If nothing else, it has taught me patience.  But it's hard, and sad.  My whole family went out for dinner tonight with my grandma to celebrate.  She seemed to have a really nice time, she was definitely happy to see everyone, and had a whole bunch of leftovers to take home.  As we were walking her back to the house from the car, she asked, "Did I eat dinner yet?"

The brain is very interesting.

The New Yorker...

...and why I have no sympathy for magazines that can't find a way to make money now that we have the Internet.  ...And this story doesn't even really have anything to do with the Internet, it's just about running your business in a sensible way and coordinating everything you're doing and not screwing around with your customers!

I like The New Yorker.  I've been a subscriber for about 5 years, my subscription's up in a few weeks, I figured I'd get a renewal notice in the mail and would renew.  Have been paying $39.95/year.  

Last week I got a note in the mail telling me I'd been automatically renewed, some automatic renewal program, and my new rate was $59.95/year.  No way.  Called the number and said I got the renewal notice and had no interest in renewing at $59.95.  The woman said okay, my subscription would end in June when it's over.  Didn't offer me a lower rate, nothing.

I went on the website.  Logged into my account, where they were offering me a renewal for $47/year.

Logged out of my account, and back on the website, where they're offering new subscribers the $39.95/year rate.

This is annoying, and stupid.  I went from having positive feelings about The New Yorker and being a subscriber, paying them $39.95 a year to having negative feelings and not wanting to renew.  I don't like to feel like I'm being ripped off.

So I called them again, and said I'd gotten the $59.95 renewal notice but I'd seen it for cheaper online.  The guy said, "Oh, sometimes the marketing department has specials and doesn't tell the sales department."  Thrilling business model there.  Why are two departments selling subscriptions and not telling each other what they're doing?  Anyway, I said I saw it for $39.95/year.  He said, "You want to renew at that rate?"  I said no, I didn't, I'd think about it.

So I just did an Internet search and found it for $27.95/year and renewed.  Reluctantly, kind of.  I'm annoyed and don't really want to be a customer anymore, but I also like their magazine so whatever, I renewed.  Had they offered me the $39.95 rate to begin with -- that they're offering on their own website -- I would have renewed without trying to find it cheaper.  But now they lost $12 a year and I went from a satisfied customer to an irritated one.

Contrast this with the only online site where I pay for content (related question: How many sites are most people paying for?  I expect the average is zero, but I also feel like I'm particularly reluctant to pay for things and my bar might be higher than most people's, so maybe if I'm paying for one site, other people pay for stuff too, and perhaps even more than one site.) -- Baseball Prospectus, which I think is $34.95/year, and they post a ton of worthwhile baseball articles and I think the content is totally worth it.  First, they give a $5 discount when existing subscribers renew.  Second, I've never seen it advertised for less anywhere.  Third, when I blogged a few years ago about being reluctant to pay for the site even though I liked the content, one of the writers sent me an e-mail within hours and gave me a one-year subscription for free.  And he was smart to do so -- I've paid, and happily paid, every year since, and they gained a loyal customer.

This is not about being an online publication vs. being a paper publication.  It's about not screwing with your customers.

This kind of stuff probably offends me more than it should -- after all, they're just trying to make money, and if they can get people to pay $60 instead of $40 because they don't notice or care, why shouldn't they?  Well, maybe that's the right business model, and maybe I'm just the exception who notices and cares, but I still think I have a point.  Maybe.

Moving...

Not the blog.  This is staying in the same location.  Tomorrow my fiancee and I move into an apartment in Manhattan.  This way she can be close to the hospital for her 168-hour weeks as a resident.  A lot of errand-running this past week, with the move tomorrow and the wedding three weeks away.  I've started playing around with a play about wedding planning.  I like what I have so far.  The little details of this stuff have inspired more inside of me than the big things -- picking a venue, eh, it's not that interesting... but picking the font on the invitations, now that inspires a treasure trove of material.

I will spend most of tomorrow putting together some IKEA furniture.  I think most people who know me would expect that I would not enjoy this activity, but I actually like putting together furniture.  Makes me feel like I've accomplished something.  There's a satisfaction there.  Until I realize the thing is backwards and I jam a connector into the wrong hole and the whole thing ends up being wobbly and unsteady and falls apart.  Oh well.