Bad luck for paper-bound publishers?

Alex Knapp at Forbes.com asks, "Are Apps the Future of Book Publishing?"

I think he begins by assuming the affirmative, and proceeds by asking which type of app.

I work in the paper-bound book publishing industry. I don't have a e-reader or tablet device.* I'm actually shopping for a bigger bookcase.

[*partly because my kids would never let me use it]

Knapp points out that something I've been wondering about since Myst is coming to fruition - a book type narrative that readers generate interactively. FWIW, I think that's a different type of literature from the dominant sale-scaled fiction narrative today, the novel.

(I know, Knapp didn't ask if enhanced ebooks would replace novels, but that seems to be the real, underlying question. Who really thinks that college students in 2020 will have 40-pound textbooks that are out of date when printed?)


Yes, this makes me worry about, first, the future of literacy (will we all require enhancements as well as phonics instruction?), second, my publishing job, and third, what I will do with my new, big bookcase in seven years.

It does not make me worry about the publishing industry. Boo-hoo. The fat cats have to adjust. Don't worry, they're already figuring out how to get authors and customers to foot the entire bill.

Maybe I should assemble a group of really creative people to publish enhanced content. We'll have to come up with a new genre, since "novel" is taken, "enhanced novel" sounds creepy, and "e-book" sounds so pre-millennial.

Suggestions?

The Boy on a Black Horse, by Nancy Springer

I'm editing books on horses, targeted for teen girls. Actually, I fought for the series, came up with the characters, the setting, and most of the plot outlines, found an artist, leveled the manuscripts, and I am now supervising the artist I selected while finishing the editing process and commissioning the cover design.

The problem is - well, problems are - I'm not a teenage girl, and I don't like horses.

I rode one once, for maybe half an hour. Then I was in a hospital for a few days. That was over three decades ago, and even with Facebook, I don't recognize most of the people I went to grade school with. They post these nice pictures, and I think, "who's that?" with almost every name and face.

The horse's name - the one that threw me: Brandy. Yes. I can remember that.

So I'm not a devotee of the genre, it may safely be said. I thought it might be good to check if we were doing it right, and last week I finally checked out a somewhat dated book by a fairly prolific author of girls' fantasy books, mainly with horses, and dove in.

It was great! Springer is one of those authors who, like Suzanne Collins, believes in grabbing the viscera in the opening lines. Nothing, for me, starts off like The Hunger Games. But Springer's The Boy on a Black Horse starts with that same, simmering power, the feeling of loss, and promise of danger.

The first time I ever saw him I was pretending to write in my daily journal in language arts class but actually drawing a horse--the head and neck had come out run-in-the-wind gorgeous, but I knew I would never get the rest of it as good--and when the door opened I looked up like everybody else, and there was a strange boy walking into my life. 

Every part of that opening works. There's suspense, questioning, romance, mystery, characterization... I can see where, over the next few paragraphs, Collins has done Springer one better, by showing the near ends of all the final threads immediately, and quickly turning dread into relief into panic. This doesn't progress like that, but instead quietly, calmly introduces Gray Calderone's motivations and history, about at the pace a real person might on meeting someone new, and coming to trust them.

Anyway, the purpose of reading this book was not to enjoy it, though I really did. It was to check on Copper Canyon, my series of short books for struggling older readers. (I say "my" - I'm not the author, and Deb did a great job, but for the purposes of writing a high interest-low reading level book, I have to take out every word or phrase and replace it with another. I call it "fossilization." Not the most promising verb, but a good metaphor for the process.) I am pleased as much by the comparison as by the research. Now I get to go back to the editing, and not worry whether the books will be enjoyable. (There's plenty else to worry about in publishing, anyway!)

online manga going legit?

I read manga. A lot of it, actually. I recently started buying it again because I was looking at so much free online manga. The group of publishers who organized to stop free distribution of manga have it right. I'm hooked - now it's time to start charging me for content. (Before the web, I collected manga. I have boxes in the garage. Maybe I should sell...)

I hope they'll start paying creators better in the same move.

Manga creators and fans may get an interesting break from the publishers' stranglehold, though. In After Scanlations: Manga Publishers Look to Offer Legal Digital Access, Kai-Ming Cha tells about several publishers' (Yen, Viz) and distributors' (Crunchyroll) plans to offer paid access online.

This is where the publishers have it wrong, I think. Yen's "Yen Plus" will only offer Yen titles. Viz will offer the much more appealing (to me) catalog of Viz titles.

Would you pay a fee to a music label for access online to its signed artists' work?

That's why I think the iTunes model (I've been going on about this for awhile) - which I'm encouraged to read Crunchyroll (currently distributing eons of anime content for low to no fees) is building a manga reader. They're not publishers, so they just license the content they think will work and for which they can get the rights.

Best of luck to 'em.

By the way, since computer screens are landscape, and manga pages mostly portrait, will the reader be capable of rendering the page legibly in the space available?