The Great Equalizer

This is perhaps the most beautiful time in human history; it is really pregnant with all kinds of creative possibilities made possible by science and technology which now constitute the slave of man – if man is not enslaved by it. 

~Jonas Salk, Polio slayer

Good morning, and happy Monday.  It’s an exciting week, good stuff on tap.

Today I’d like to talk about the new great equalizer by taking two previous posts from other writers and cook them up into a delicious Writer Dad dish.  First off, Hunter Nuttall previously discussed the varying values of an Ebook. Second, a few weeks ago, Men With Pens were discussing Real Authors.  Harry said, “If you write, you’re a writer. If you have a blog, consider yourself published. If you create an ebook, you’re an author.”

Harry, you’re dead on.

Though I know it seems like we’re already drowning in a sea of Ebooks, we are really only at the foot of the mountain, eyes turned skyward, searching for a peak that, at present, is only a suggestion.  And as the world keeps shifting, traditional publishers will find themselves on the fault lines of the new great equalizer.  

In the middle (dark) ages, information was controlled exclusively by the church.  People learned only what they were allowed, and things were generally pretty grim.  In 1439, Johanas Gutenberg invented movable type.  By doing so, he diverted the traffic of information between the overlords and the masses creating the first great equalizer of the written word.

Tomorrow’s history isn’t much different.

The internet took the ordained from our living room, and dropped them in the ring with intelligent men and woman around the globe who had nothing but opinions and an internet connection.  The same will happen to publishing.  

Here’s the math:

I’ve got a pile of children’s stories sitting on an agent’s desk.  They are now on their sixth week of an eight week stay, where at the end, I may not get so much as an email saying, “Thank you, but no.”  I do not take this personally. They accept five new clients a year, and they get three-hundred submissions a week.  

Best case scenario?  

We sign, and the ball starts rolling.  I’ll get partnered with an illustrator and the book will go into production.  A year later, I’ll see it sitting on an end cap at Barnes and Noble with a jacket price of $16.95.  10% of it mine.  

Now before I move to the future, allow me to clearly state.  I love traditional books and always will. They will be here forever and I will buy them as long as they are. They are beautiful and romantic and absolutely perfect in design.  Even if I’m rejected by the agency’s deafening silence, I have nothing against them or the industry in which their gears must turn.  

But I can smell milk when it’s starting to sour.

Okay, back to the future.  

We have the internet – the great equalizer, standing stolid against an industry of saber rattling, in a war that’s already over.  It makes me think of the battle between Blue-Ray and HD DVD.  

Either victor is the last of his tribe.

My kids aren’t going to be carrying around hard media; their world will be digital.  They’ll have versions of their favorite books in whatever media boxes we’re all carrying around in another five years (remember, technology years to regular years = dog years to human).  

When I was a kid, my sister plowed through every Babysitter’s Club book there was.  She loved them.  By the time Mia is reading her version of the same, she’ll be carrying her collection around in a digital format, like charms on a bracelet, even if she has a dog eared copy sitting on the shelf at home.  It’s difficult to imagine that within a few years of our immediate future, we won’t be seeing digital copies included with every hard purchase.  

This goes for all media.  It’s simple to do and makes perfect sense.  Fox, wisely, already understands Internet as equalizer and does this with many of their films.

If I want to write what I want to write, then I’ve entered the perfect situation at the perfect time.  

I’m sure that at some point, I’ll have books that go the traditional route.  I am simply too big a romantic to discard the notion of finding my work pulled lovingly from a shelf, purchased, then traded from one lover to the other, or handed from a mother to her son.  

My Grandma used to say, and she was right, “There’s a place for everything, with everything in it’s place.”  

When I leave my day job behind, I want to write. Chapter books and picture books; children’s adventures and long winded novels; short essays and long works of engaging non-fiction.  Some of these books will lend themselves very well to downloads, some of them would serve better as POD books, sold through a company like Lulu or Amazon.  

Yes, the price for the hard product is more if I do it myself, but there is no risk because there is no inventory, and I’m catering to my own audience that I can speak to everyday.  To me, that is a remarkable situation that has not been possible before.  How often do you think great writers have simply fallen off because they’re either trying to duplicate a prior success or hitch a ride on the perfect ebb of the current market flow.  

With the Internet as our new great equalizer, a writer can build a small but loyal audience who will be happy to see what he or she might pull from their brain next.  

I love this model: deliver a new project to a loyal fan base frequently, and keep the creativity dancing.

As far as value, I’ll try to find a price point that balances how involved a project was from conception to delivery, with value to the reader.  Some projects might be worth $2, others $20.  Right now, I’m toying with the idea of charging $100,000 for my novel, once it’s finally finished.  I see it as win-win.  I’ll only need to sell a single copy, and I will not be to open to ridicule.  

I’m sure someone could afford it, and the guy who does will declare it as genius, just to keep himself from looking like an idiot.

Anyway, this coming Friday, August 15, I’ll be announcing the title and release date of my first project.  I’m pretty excited.

Writer Dad

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