Readin', 'Ritin', and (Publishing) 'Rithmetic

A similar game is being played in the book industry today, as it has been played in many other industries. Here at BEA, I’m hearing a lot about monopolies. (And monopsonies, for those who prefer to quibble semantically rather than understand what is meant and forge ahead in productive conversation.) Practically everyone here at the book expo believes that Amazon has gotten too big, that they wield a disproportionate amount of power, and that they must be reigned in or defeated.

I am told, without exaggeration and in all seriousness, that Amazon wants to “crush their competition.” I hear that they want to “put everyone else out of business.” Two things are true, both of which make these statements ridiculous

We sift through nearly 5 years of deal reports to find out whether women receive lower book advances than men. The answer may surprise you.

What I learned reshaped how I assemble and present material, how I write, and how I visually communicate. Furthermore, it inspired me to restyle the UI, design and layout, and the flow to function and look less like a traditional printed book and instead perform with the familiarity of a digital medium in an analog package. For those who have read the book, this explains the square shape and four-color format as it mimics a screen. This work also represents why there’s a navigation bar throughout the book and graphical breaks that are presented with cadence.

In the end, this experience made me rethink everything. If I could take these learnings into a book, could it apply to conventional text books? Could it encourage a new way to teach rather than force students to conform to customary methods? What was clear though is that technology plays a part in all of this but the real story was influenced by behavior…behavior that’s different than the world I know. As tempted as I was to apply these resources to building a killer digital app for the book, it was a lesson to re-examine everything we take for granted today, everything we do simply because it’s the way things have always been done, and more importantly, a lesson in restraint. By restraint, I mean holding back from using technology for the sake of technology and instead take a few steps back to take something ordinary and make it matter in a digital society.

To many book professionals, Amazon is a ruthless predator; recently, the company has even started publishing books. A monopoly is dangerous because it concentrates so much economic power, but in the book business the prospect is especially worrisome: it would give Amazon more control over the exchange of ideas than any company in U.S. history.

From a small American literary journal's vow to dedicate a year's coverage to women writers and writers of colour to author and artist Joanna Walsh's burgeoning  #readwomen2014 project, readers – and publishers – around the world are starting to take their own small steps to address male writers' dominance in the literary universe.

Danish friends, followers, and collectors! I’ll be in Aarhus on December 11th and I’d love to meet you. Please come out and spread the word!