alt.books
a column by M.J. Rose

Off the Record

Ebooks, print on demand, and all things digital have changed the face of the book industry. In fact there has been more change, more news, and more invention in the last two years than in the last twenty decades.

Yet, as I attempt to report on this fascinating facet of the industry, I keep coming up against industry professionals who will not go on the record.

Don’t misunderstand. The news is not hard to come by, but getting attributable reaction to it from within the publishing community has become rare. Requests for interviews are often granted only if I agree to give the speaker anonymity.

Other reporters report encountering the same situation. But they won't go on the record either – they don't want it to look like they are losing their connections. As I write this there are only a very few brave souls willing to speak frankly, candidly and on the record.

Why?

Let’s start with Barnes & Noble, a bookseller that operates thousands of superstores and mall-based stores and also operates an e-commerce site. B&N sells books from every publisher in the U.S. and every sales department of every publisher courts B&N. Some industry pundits say that B&N has become more powerful than any single publishing house.

Without having to dig too hard, one discovers Barnes & Noble has strategic alliances with major web portals and content sites, such as AOL Time Warner, Lycos, and MSN. The company has also invested US$20 million in Mightywords.com, and bought 49% of iUniverse.com – both of which have open door policies and publish work from any author.

"MightyWords will… enable us to foster a vibrant marketplace for content that falls outside the bounds of traditional publishing," Len Riggio, Chairman of B&N said. "It will provide established writers with a new distribution channel for their intellectual property. We believe it will both inspire forms of publishing we have yet to imagine as well as revive the lost art of publishing in serial format, as Dickens and Dumas did more than 100 years ago. In short, it puts the power to publish into the hands of the authors, which is where it belongs."

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