{"id":2741,"date":"2009-11-06T11:50:01","date_gmt":"2009-11-06T18:50:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.candlelightstories.com\/?p=2741"},"modified":"2009-11-18T13:52:53","modified_gmt":"2009-11-18T20:52:53","slug":"publishers-doomed-by-predatory-book-pricing-so-what","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/2009\/11\/06\/publishers-doomed-by-predatory-book-pricing-so-what\/","title":{"rendered":"Publishers Doomed by Predatory Book Pricing?  So what?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>John Grisham<\/em> on NBC&#8217;s <em>Today Show<\/em> discusses his new book, writing novels versus short stories, and so-called predatory book pricing by large retailers like <em>Walmart<\/em>, <em>Target<\/em> and <em>Amazon.com<\/em>.\u00a0 I like Grisham in this interview.\u00a0 He&#8217;s a good interview and he seems sharp.\u00a0 He talks about how it&#8217;s much more difficult to fix a problem in the middle of writing a novel than to do so with a short story.\u00a0 So he advises writers to &#8216;not have a problem.&#8217;\u00a0 The trick is to thoroughly outline your entire novel before you even start to write it so that you know every single thing that happens along the way.\u00a0 Pretty sound advice in most cases.\u00a0 Not all.\u00a0 Some of the greatest novels in the world were written by writers who had absolutely no idea where the novel was going from page one.\u00a0 It depends on what kind of book you&#8217;re writing.\u00a0 I think his advice is perfectly good for most books that are intended for sale in a grocery store.\u00a0 Certainly.\u00a0 But writers should never listen to famous writers.\u00a0 They&#8217;re full of crap.\u00a0 You write what makes you sweat and drink lots of coffee late into the night and bang your fingers on your keyboard until they hurt.\u00a0 Or not.\u00a0 Whatever.\u00a0 I hate outlines.\u00a0 Especially in word processors.\u00a0 Awful things.\u00a0 They destroy good minds and belong mostly in PowerPoint presentations for corporate managers.\u00a0 I&#8217;m not sure what the hell Grisham is talking about quite frankly.\u00a0 But then again, I&#8217;m not selling thrillers in the grocery store either.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-video\">\n<div><iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"339\" width=\"425\" src=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/22425001\/vp\/22896642#22896642\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>But what mainly interests me in this interview is the discussion about <em>&#8216;predatory pricing&#8217;<\/em> by the giant retailers.\u00a0 Apparently, if you listen to publishers, this spells doom for publishing and book selling as we know it.\u00a0 When asked what he thinks about his latest book being available for nine dollars at Target, Grisham says:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It\u2019s shortsighted. Short term, they know what they are doing, I think. But if a book is worth $10 then suddenly the whole industry is going to change. You are going to lose publishers and book stores, and though I\u2019ll probably be alright, aspiring authors are going to find it difficult to get published.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Yeah?  So what.\u00a0 So we lose publishers and book stores.\u00a0 Who cares?\u00a0 The key in Grisham&#8217;s statement is where he says, <em>&#8216;&#8230;and though I&#8217;ll probably be alright.&#8217;<\/em> He means writers will be alright.\u00a0 The big scary fact of the matter is that we simply don&#8217;t give a tiny damn whether or not a publisher prints a book or an author does.\u00a0 Publishers read, accept, edit, design, print and promote books.\u00a0 At least they used to.\u00a0 I don&#8217;t care what anyone tells you, but we do not need the editors.\u00a0 Writers can do that.\u00a0 You write the book and you edit it and you&#8217;re done with it.\u00a0 Readers are getting used to reading writers without editors.\u00a0 That&#8217;s why blogs are so popular.\u00a0 No editors.\u00a0 If you have an editor poking around in a blog, trust me, it&#8217;s not a blog.\u00a0 It&#8217;s a corporate front-end.\u00a0 A writer can also design and print a book.\u00a0 And sell it.\u00a0 Writers are publishers.\u00a0 No reader cares about Penguin.\u00a0 They care about the guy holding the gun.\u00a0 The guy holding the gun is put there by the writer.\u00a0 Writers will make guys, guns and gals forever.\u00a0 It&#8217;s what they do and it&#8217;s what readers want.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t care if the guy with the gun says, &#8216;I&#8217;ve been looking for you for a long time, Mr. Peabody.\u00a0 Smile, because it&#8217;s the last thing you&#8217;ll ever do.&#8217;\u00a0 Or if he says, &#8216;I&#8217;ve been looking for you.\u00a0 Smile.\u00a0 It&#8217;s your last.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>The writer can pick.\u00a0 The editor can go watch <em>Kitchen Nightmares<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>There is absolutely no excuse for a writer to work hard on a story, hammering it into existence from nothing, polishing it and making it exactly what he or she wants it to be&#8230; and then sit around to wait for some agent or publisher to get back via the U.S. mail so that said writer can be allowed to move on and send out yet another plea for acceptance.\u00a0 This is old technology.\u00a0 Twentieth century.\u00a0 It&#8217;s gone.\u00a0 In this century a writer writes and edits and publishes and sells.\u00a0 His book can sell in Target for nine dollars or three dollars.\u00a0 Magnificent.\u00a0 Literature available to people who don&#8217;t make lots of money.\u00a0 What a novel idea!\u00a0 If you&#8217;re griping about Target selling books for nine dollars, you must not be buying books.\u00a0 Go watch <em>His Girl Friday<\/em> and pretend that typewriters still make newspapers.<\/p>\n<p>And you know something else?\u00a0 The guy with the gun doesn&#8217;t care.\u00a0 He&#8217;ll always be there.\u00a0 He&#8217;s not going anywhere.\u00a0 All the publishers and book stores could burn and all the editors could go to their early graves, and you know what?\u00a0 The guy with the gun is still gonna getcha.\u00a0 He&#8217;s going to find you wherever you go.\u00a0 He&#8217;s alive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>John Grisham on NBC&#8217;s Today Show discusses his new book, writing novels versus short stories, and so-called predatory book pricing by large retailers like Walmart, Target and Amazon.com.\u00a0 I like Grisham in this interview.\u00a0 He&#8217;s a good interview and he seems sharp.\u00a0 He talks about how it&#8217;s much more difficult to fix a problem in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[70,137,117,163,209],"tags":[224,747,2500,2492,200],"class_list":["post-2741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-publishing","category-books","category-online-literature","category-opinion","category-web","tag-amazon","tag-book-store","tag-books","tag-novels","tag-publishing"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2741"}],"version-history":[{"count":40,"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2741\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2902,"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2741\/revisions\/2902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}