You get a sneaking suspicion reading Ceclia McGee’s piece in the New York Times “A Way to Give Authors a Lucrative Second Platform” that the model for author readings has changed drastically and that the free in-store author reading is endangered.
Many of the major publishing houses have set up in-house speakers bureaus which now hire out their authors to various groups and businesses for a fee which includes travel expenses.
Why are they doing this? The publishers say “they are responding to common industry trends: fleeting tastes in mass-market books, shrinking shelf lives in bookstores, disappearing book review sections, and the brief attention span of a media audience hooked on celebrity sound bites and Hollywood entertainment.”
So instead of sending their authors on book tours consisting of free readings and various media appearances, most of which lose money for the publisher, they are now hiring them out to groups and businesses. The standard fee for most authors is between $5,000 to $7,500 with the speakers bureau taking a 20% cut.
From a pure business perspective it’s a no-brainer. Getting paid to read sure beats giving a reading for free. Do you invest large sums of money to get your author out in the world or do you search out a targeted audience who will pay you for your author’s time?
What about the booksellers in all this? At best they get to sell books at the off-site event, of course they lose the opportunity of selling any other books to the people who would attend the reading at their store, and at worst they are completely shut out. Oh and some publishers “want booksellers to become co-brokers” by helping the publishers find local businesses that might be interested in hiring their authors and they will split the commission with them.” Yikes.
I could see it now. In a few years the only free readings will be via the LongPen and if you want to see an author in person you are going to have to pay.
Now for the free part. The London Book Project is under way.
The project is a brilliant endeavor by the folks at the new London Project whose goal is to raise awareness of the limitations of the mainstream media and particularly the free newspapers (freesheets).
Here is their mission statement:
“The London Project is a direct challenge to the freesheets. It’s also a direct challenge to you: read something worthwhile – a free book, for example – and help others do the same. Pass it on.
The most diverse city in the world deserves a multinational newsroom for a multicultural audience.”
Here is the skinny on the book project:
It is a “free book exchange on a massive scale. Using the London Underground as a high speed distribution network, we aim to bring real literature to London’s commuters…Over the next two weeks we’ll be distributing thousands of second hand books across the tube… If you see one of our books, please pick it up! Then read it and replace with any book of your choice. Let’s make the tube a giant, free library.”
This is BookCrossing, the original “read and release” book club, on steroids. The project is actually using book crossing for people who find the free books to register them.
The 2 week project has been so successful it has already been extended for the “foreseeable future.”
Now that’s spreading the word!