And the Winners Are...

Mortimer Literary Agency is proud to announce the winner of their WRITER of the YEAR AWARD is: Robin Miller w/a Robin Caroll. Robin will get the customary plaque, and starting this year, the winner will also receive $100.00. Way to go, Robin!

Past Winners:

2007, Raz Steel

2006: Robin Miller w/a Robin Caroll

AND:

Mortimer Literary Agency is proud to announce the winner of their Mentorship Contest: Mr. Steve Sherman.

This was a blind contest, and I had no idea who the winner was. I cut the entries down to a dozen finalists by choosing the one-page essays I thought were the best, then read the one page of those entrants to find: The worst writer with the best voice.

I'll be working with Steve starting January 12^th, and ending when his manuscript is in publishable condition, or when I start my winter "vacation," whichever comes first.

Steve's essay was a kick. Steve-can I put it in the next newsletter?

A Great Web Site for Writers Gets a Face Lift

In honor of http://www.perilsofpublishing.com/ being nominated as one of Writer's Digest 101 Best    Web sites for writers, we're upgrading. New links, and a new style. Notice the right margin features 12 books either e-pubbed or self pubbed. The cover will rotate every month. These writers received no advance, and need your support. Buy the featured copy every month. Help others! [Note these ads were free. My thinks to my left-hand gal, who uploaded them for free-- Dr.Galye Link.

Blockbuster or Bust  [I'll take some of both, please.]

Why struggling publishers will keep placing outrageous bids on new books [Ah, cuz they wanna drive me to the psych ward?]

By ANITA ELBERSE

Dark days are upon the book industry. Last month alone, Random House announced a massive restructuring; Simon & Schuster laid off 35 staffers; the adult division of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt stopped acquiring manuscripts for the rest of the year; and HarperCollins sent comedian Sarah Silverman a contract worth $2.5 million to write her first book.

Yes, that's right -- amid the worst economic crisis to hit the United States in decades, publishing executives are still making what many see as outrageous gambles on new manuscripts.

The move by HarperCollins is only one of the latest in a string of big bets by companies employing a blockbuster strategy -- a common approach among movie studios, television-production companies and music labels. A spokeswoman for the publishing house says it doesn't disclose author advances. (HarperCollins Publishers is a unit of News Corp., which also owns Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal.)

Most large media firms make outsized investments to acquire and market a small number of titles with strong hit potential, and bank on their sales to make up for middling performance in the rest of their catalogs.

In the past, the strategy seemed to work wonders. For example, Grand Central Publishing, a division of Hachette Book Group USA, generated roughly 80% of its sales and an even larger share of its profits from just 20% of its titles in 2006. In 2007, Grand Central purportedly shelled out $1.25 million for the rights to Vicki Myron's "Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched The World," a nonfiction book about a fluffy orange kitten found abandoned in the returned-book slot of an Iowa public library.

Tina Fey
Tina Fey's publisher just might sell the one million copies of her collection of humorous essays it needs to make a profit; Nora Ephron's comic essay collection "I Feel Bad about My Neck" has sold 795,000 copies since its 2006 publication, according to Nielsen BookScan. [I'm creative. Let's see. I Feel Bad About My Third Toe {It's bigger than my second.} I'll be waiting for that million-dollar call....]

Sarah Silverman
HarperCollins paid edgy comedian Sarah Silverman $2.5 million to write her first book. [I'm about to faint. At least the pile of manuscripts behind me will break my fall.] Another book by a comedian, Stephen Colbert's 'I Am America (And So Can You!)' was a major hit in 2007.

Marley & Me
The unexpected success of former Philadelphia Inquirer columnist John Grogan's memoir about his poorly behaved dog gave rise to a movie starring Jennifer Aniston and Owen Wilson as well as numerous book spinoffs. Grogan's children's book, "Bad Dog Marley," has sold 171,000 units, according to Nielsen BookScan.

Dewey
Vicki Myron's book about her adopted orange tabby cat, Dewey Readmore Books, briefly occupied the No. 1 spot on the New York Times bestseller list and now sits at No. 2. The feline inhabitant of the Spencer Public Library in Spencer, Iowa has passed away, but a sequel might be in the works -- last month Ms. Myron reportedly adopted a cat named Page.

The project, which was written with Bret Witter, did not scream instant success: Cat books are not particularly hot sellers, Ms. Myron was a first-time author and the book's main character passed away in 2006 -- making him unavailable for an appearance on Oprah Winfrey's couch. But the book has been a mainstay in the upper echelons of The New York Times bestseller chart ever since its September release. To the surprise of many, the book looks well on its way to earning its advance back -- and then some.

A prudent manager in any other industry might be left scratching his head: Why would Grand Central put itself in the position of having to outsell all cat books released in recent memory to earn back its seven-figure advance? Rather than putting all its eggs in one basket, wouldn't it be smarter for a publisher to place a larger number of smaller bets -- particularly in today's harsh economic climate?

Hardly. Despite its double-or-nothing daring, the blockbuster strategy remains the most sensible approach to lasting success.

Consider, first, how these bets come about. Given the variability in execution in books, and the constantly shifting tastes of consumers, it is extremely difficult to forecast demand for a new title. The one useful indicator of commercial potential is its resemblance to an existing bestseller, so a project can be tagged, say, "the next 'Tipping Point'" or "a hipper 'Harry Potter'." This similarity is an indicator that's evident to any editor or publisher who sees the proposal -- and thanks to busy agents, many do. As a consequence, there is heavy convergence of interest on certain properties, triggering competitive bidding situations.

Soon after "Dewey" started to make the rounds, industry insiders billed it as the feline answer to "Marley & Me: Life and Love with the World's Worst Dog," John Grogan's 2005 memoir, published by William Morrow, a HarperCollins imprint. "Marley" was a runaway hit and in its wake came related children's titles and a movie starring Jennifer Aniston and Owen Wilson. Publishers saw the essential similarities in "Dewey": It was a touching story about how an animal could bring out the humanity in people it encountered. While executives at Grand Central are careful about making comparisons between "Dewey" and "Marley" -- every title needs to be judged on its own merits, after all -- the resemblances undeniably spurred publishers' enthusiasm for the "Dewey" rights. Fearful that the price would reach astronomical heights at auction, Grand Central snapped up the book with a pre-emptive bid a day before several other publishers would have had their shot at it.

When a publisher spends an inordinate amount on an acquisition, it will do everything in its power to make that project a market success. [Ya think? That's the smartest bit of news about the industry I've heard in weeks.] Most importantly, this means supporting the book with higher-than-average marketing, advertising and distribution support -- which is exactly how Grand Central handled "Dewey'"s launch. To do otherwise would be foolish: If a product like "Dewey" fails to draw readers, Grand Central knows its profitability will be severely hurt. With such high stakes and money tied up in a few big projects in the pipeline, the need to score big with a next project becomes more pressing, and the process repeats itself. The result is a spiral of ever-increasing bets on the most promising concepts, creating a "blockbuster trap."

Examples are everywhere. Perhaps buoyed by Grand Central's success with Stephen Colbert's "I Am America (And So Can You!)" in 2007, Little, Brown & Co, another division of Hachette, reportedly bid more than $5 million for the rights to comedian Tina Fey's first book in October of last year, [Yep, BIG money knockin' us conservatives down where we belong.] when the economy was already in deep trouble. A senior executive at Little, Brown declined comment on the advance. [I'd decline if I were Little Brown as well. I'll remind them of that advance when I pitch my pre-pubbed authors.]

Expect Ms. Fey to get star treatment from the publisher. And if her new book falls short of the high expectations -- to earn back the advance, industry experts estimate that the book would need to sell over a million copies -- Little Brown will be all the more determined to make its next acquisition a hit.

But what would happen if a publisher like Grand Central decided to stop making large bids like the one it placed on "Dewey" and systematically walked away from the most sought-after -- and therefore expensive -- new properties?

First, agents would stop sending such a publisher their most promising book proposals. "If you are constantly backing out of big-ticket auctions, your list is going to hurt," is how one publishing executive explains it. "You are going to get a stigma that you don't play for the big ones, and you are going to get shunned out. Agents will no longer consider you for what they feel are their best projects." [I'm getting' sick now. I'm a scrapper by nature. Even the thought of shuttin' publishers out 'cause they won't give my authors what they're worth makes my skin crawl.--I wish it'd make my skin tighten.] Publishers can't afford to cost-save themselves out of the market. Even if they could develop extraordinary competence in finding gold in the "slush pile" of hundreds of pieces of unsolicited material received each week, the dividends would be limited. After one success, the talent the publisher had nurtured would discover the value of an agent.

In addition, the most talented editors and other creative talent would leave to work for a publisher that would let them pursue the projects they thought had the highest chances of success. Careers are built on blockbusters. Jamie Raab, Grand Central's publisher, is known for discovering the bestselling novelist Nicholas Sparks. As a result, she continues to receive a steady stream of the best new love stories from literary agents. [I must've missed something. Anyone out there have her phone number? I don't think my e-mails are reaching her....]

Not bidding for sought-after projects also makes it harder to get best efforts from sales and marketing representatives and other internal constituents. After winning the hotly contested rights to a book like "Dewey," it is easier for the Grand Central executives to make the case that this book will beat its competitors. Firing up those that will be involved in the book's development and marketing process is important, because most media titles have only a short window in which to make money; the lion's share of marketing activity takes place before their launch -- when it's still largely unknown how audiences will respond.

Book retailers like Borders and Barnes & Noble want to see evidence that a book is worthy of their scarce resources. They like nothing better than to know that a book publisher has made a significant push for a title and is planning an extensive marketing campaign. In most media markets, support from the biggest retailers is decisive. A significant share of books is [are][doesn't anyone proofread anymore?] bought on impulse so significant shelf space and room on display tables ("pile 'em high and watch 'em fly" tactics) are particularly important. A blockbuster strategy helps retailers to use their resources effectively, too.

In fact, the way in which retailers market their books to consumers is driven by the same forces that made "Dewey" such a pricey creature. This is noticeable even in the smallest details. If you have ever walked into a Borders bookstore you may have noticed the "Like this? Try these!" signs with one arrow pointing to a bestseller such as "Marley & Me," and another arrow to a bunch of books that are similar to that hit book. For "Marley & Me," those included "The Art of Racing in the Rain," "A Three Dog Life," and "Merle's Door," all dog books. Expect to see "Dewey" on one of those shelves in your local store soon, if it's not there already, and an array of other cat books to follow in its footsteps.

Media companies' hit-focused marketing did not emerge in a vacuum. It reflects how consumers make choices. The truth is that consumers prefer blockbusters. Because they are inherently social, people find value in reading the same books and watching the same movies that others do. This is true even in today's markets where, thanks to the Internet, buyers have easy access to millions and millions of titles. Compounding this tendency is the fact that media products are what economists call "experience goods": that is, shoppers have trouble evaluating them before having consumed or experienced them. Unable to judge a book by its cover, readers look for cues as to its suitability for them, and find it very useful to hear that "Dewey" is "a 'Marley & Me' for cat lovers." In much the same way that potential publishers do, readers value resemblances to past favorites.

Blockbuster strategies are certainly not free of risk, but, in the long run, they beat the alternative of more balanced investment strategies. That explains why, even when the book industry struggles with the effects of the economic downturn, publishing houses won't steer away from big bets. Publishers may be even more determined to land such projects in tough times. HarperCollins won the rights to Sarah Silverman's book only after an intense auction with several other houses. The highest-performing companies in the media and entertainment sector thrive by taking a chance on certain titles, and turning those choices into successes by giving them a higher level of development and marketing support. It may be partly a self-fulfilling prophecy, but it works. And because the marginal cost of reproducing and distributing media products is relatively low -- especially compared to their up-front production expenses -- the cost advantage of brisk sellers is huge.

Are there breakout hits that no one sees coming? Sure. [Hey, I have several...!] And do media companies sometimes pick the wrong titles to focus their attention on? [Hmm, lemme think about that one....] Absolutely -- no one in the industry has a perfect record, and the process of picking winners remains "an informed crapshoot," as one executive put it. But given their recent performance, it is hard to argue against the approaches taken by publishing houses like Grand Central and Little Brown. "Dewey" is quickly turning into one fat cat: In the latest sign of his ascent to superstardom, New Line Cinema landed the rights to a film adaptation, and Meryl Streep is believed to be in talks to play his owner, author Vicki Myron. Let's hope "Marley" loves a chase. [WSJ]

Puttin' Off the Ritz: The New Austerity in Publishing

By MOTOKO RICH

For decades[comma][sheesh!] the New York publishing world promised a romantic life of fancy lunches, sparkling parties, sophisticated banter and trips to spots like the Caribbean to pitch books to sales representatives. [Ah, I missed the boat again. What dock was I supposed to be on?] If the salaries were not exactly Wall Street caliber, well, they came with a milieu that mixed cultural swagger with pure Manhattan high life.

But that cushy schmooze fest seems to be winding down. [Bummer!]

Just two weeks before announcing staff cuts and a substantial corporate restructuring in December, the publishing giant Macmillan gathered its sales and marketing staff at the historic Hotel del Coronado in San Diego - where Billy Wilder filmed Tony Curtis wooing Marilyn Monroe in "Some Like It Hot" - to talk about titles on the spring lists. Between marathon meetings to discuss plans for new books, the sales reps were invited to take part in wine tastings and spa treatments. [How about payin' a pre-pubbed author a decent advance? Okay, I'll stop ... for now.]

This year the meetings will be held via Webcam. [How will they bear it???] In a memo to staff members announcing the layoffs on Dec. 15, John Sargent, chief executive of Macmillan, said the company would hold only one of its three annual sales conferences in person, and the other two would be conducted on the Web and by telephone.

Amid a relentless string of layoffs and pay-freeze announcements, book publishers are clamping down on some of the business's most glittery and cozy traditions. Austerity measures are rippling throughout the industry as it confronts the worst retailing landscape in memory.

"This business was never meant to sustain limousines," said Amanda Urban, a literary agent who represents Cormac McCarthy and Toni Morrison, among other authors. Ms. Urban said she believed Bennett Cerf, a founder of Random House, once said something to that very effect. "At best, you can get a Town Car now and then," [I can pick ya up in the Silver Bullet's replacement, Blue Thunder. Any takers?] she said. "It's gotten out of scale, like a lot of businesses in this country."

Venerable houses including HarperCollins, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Penguin Group, Random House and Simon & Schuster have all announced salary freezes or layoffs, or both. Simon & Schuster canceled its annual holiday party, [Unbelievable!] held for the last few years at Tavern on the Green and scheduled in 2008 for Guastavino's, a splashy banquet hall in Manhattan. One division of Random House had pizza, beer and wine in a room off the cafeteria for its holiday lunch instead of going out for pricey cocktails.[Sounds like heaven. No pizza or beer for me since I discovered I have Celiac Disease. What some take for granted....] Across the city, editors with Four Seasons taste are being asked to scale back on their lunch tabs.

Random House has postponed its spring sales conference and has yet to choose a location. Stuart Applebaum, a spokesman, said one thing was certain: After holding a meeting in Bermuda last year the company "will not be returning there in 2009."  [Hey, I live on twenty acres in Aguanga! We could have a blast. I promise to sweep the property for rattlesnakes and stalkers first....]

Book sales have deteriorated since the beginning of October, falling about 7 percent compared with the same period the previous year, according to Nielsen BookScan, which tracks about 70 percent of sales. That slide is driving much of the immediate cutbacks, but the publishing industry is also being convulsed by longer-term trends, [If I haveta swallow all this, can ya at least write in active sentences? Sigh.] including a shift toward digital reading and competition from an array of entertainment options like video games and online social networking.

Ms. Urban said some of the more lavish practices could not be sustained by a slow-growth, low-margin industry that can't charge luxury prices. "Books can only support a certain retail price," she said. "It's not like you have books that can be Manolo Blahniks and books that can be Cole Haan. Books are books. A book by James Patterson costs the same as a book by some poet." [Hey, was that a dis at poets? I take offense. I used to be a poet before I turned all my poems into lyrics. This random chick is sooo uncool.]

But the economic downturn is forcing publishers to scrutinize some of the industry's hoariest traditions. One ripe target: the international book fairs in London and Frankfurt at which publishers and agents gather, ostensibly to make deals. But in reality they spend much of their time making the rounds of parties and dinners.

Many houses that previously have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on flights, hotel bills and cocktail hours are planning to prune the size of the contingents they send to the fairs this year. Similarly, companies are revising their budgets for BookExpo America, the annual spring jamboree at which publishers promote their fall lineups to booksellers.

For authors it means the prospect of smaller advances and fewer books being acquired. [Great. No comma, passive sentence AND lower advances and fewer books bought. At least Motoko got 'fewer' correct.]

"Through these economic crunches that we're all facing, some of the shibboleths of the business are being looked at with a very hard eye," said Jonathan Burnham, publisher of Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins whose authors include Ann Patchett, Barbara Kingsolver and Michael Crichton.

Nobody expects one of the staples of the business - the long lunch - to die off completely because of these straitened circumstances. But publishers, editors and literary agents, who have often been among the best diners in the city, are now reconsidering their favorite restaurants.

"We've all naturally been thinking about whether it's absolutely essential to have a lunch here or there," Mr. Burnham added, "or whether it can be a phone call or a meeting."

Industry veterans said bloated expense accounts were the least of publishing's problems. "I don't think the dire situation of the publishing world is going to be solved by tightening that particular belt," said Robert Gottlieb, the renowned editor who has shepherded authors like Doris Lessing, Robert Caro and Joseph Heller. Mr. Gottlieb, who worked at Simon & Schuster and Alfred A. Knopf, was famous for always eating lunch at his desk. "It's small potatoes compared to the problems they face," he said.

It is not just publishing's flashy customs that are getting a tough look. Other sacred cows, like the distribution of advance print galleys of coming titles and the costly practice of permitting retailers to return unsold books, are being examined. [That's a biggy for me. That return policy is ridiculous! Oops, forgot, that words means 'totally awesome' at the moment. Okay, that policy is sick! Oops, forgot, that word means 'totally awesome' at the moment. Again, that policy is absurd! Think that word is safe, for now.]

Cash advances for authors, which have risen in recent years, are being reviewed.

"Everybody is trying to look at acquisitions in the prism of a reduced and a hurting retail market," said David Rosenthal, publisher of Simon & Schuster. "You used to buy some books and you paid X because you figured it would sell 100,000 copies. Now you have to do the math saying this book may sell only 50,000 copies."

At HarperCollins a new unit is experimenting with a model that substitutes profit sharing with authors for cash advances [Oh, yeah. I heard about that 'new idea.'] and eliminates returns of unsold copies from booksellers. [This, we must do!]

"The two biggest sucking sounds on profits in our business are on advances and returns," said Robert S. Miller, president and publisher of the new HarperStudio, which was set up last year. The group is limiting advances to no more than $100,000 in exchange for giving authors half of the profits from book sales, as opposed to the 10 percent to 15 percent of the hardcover price they traditionally earn in royalties. [Ah, I'll take that deal!!!] Borders Group recently agreed to take the first 14 books on the new unit's 2009 list on a nonreturnable basis.

Some publishers said that they would like to reduce the costs of returned books - which have to be shipped and then pulped or sold at deep discounts - but that it might be unrealistic to abolish the practice in tough economic times.

Jonathan Galassi, publisher of the literary powerhouse Farrar, Straus & Giroux, said the custom of accepting returns from booksellers was created during the Great Depression to persuade bookstores to take more copies. "In a moment where getting people to put stock in a store of anything, not just books, is harder because of the money it costs to front them," Mr. Galassi said. "I think it might be counterproductive to have a return-free business at this point." [Hmm, the Great Depression. Yep. Once a policy starts, it continues, and is harder to kill than Bruce Willis. Same goes in politics, folks. Sorry.]

Booksellers hope that the publishing industry can use the current downturn as an opportunity to publish fewer books. [Great.] "They need to have some sense of what is going on in the country and what the readers are really looking for," said Vivien Jennings, owner of Rainy Day Books, an independent bookstore in Fairway, Kan. [Okay, so Viv, what's going on in the country, and what are readers really looking for? How about stuff that's uplifting, that has a happy ending, and doesn't have the word "Obama" in the title. Sorry. I really try to keep my thoughts out of politics in my newsletter, but I admit, I'm losin' it.]

Of course longtime industry insiders have seen it all before. Michael Korda, former editor in chief of Simon & Schuster, who often held court from his favorite table in the Grill Room at the Four Seasons, recalled a period in the 1970s when his bosses banned editors from dining at certain restaurants. "And then after a while business got better," Mr. Korda said. "And everybody went back to doing what they were doing before." [I wish my biggest problem was where I eat lunch. Some days, I don't even move from the computer to eat anything. Don't worry about me, I make up for it at dinner.] [Harold Tribune]

Berkley Cancels Holocaust Memoir as Author Confesses

[Okay. I gotta say it. Can't anyone write a TRUE memoir? Are our lives so boring  we need to embellish them to interest an editor? This isn't the first faked memoir I've reported on this year. And where the heck are the people checkin' these writers out? Sheesh! Hey, I've got some great stories. Keep meaning to put together a proposal for Welcome to My Worlds: A Bipolar Christian Tells All,  but the thought of the dreaded platform, which has to include a billion unique blog hits per day, and a speaking engagement every week for the next ten years, makes me wanna run to the nearest mental ward and commit myself. I'm great with commitment....]

On the quietest Saturday of the year, Berkley cancelled publication of Herman Rosenblat's ANGEL AT THE FENCE: The True Story of a Love That Survived, scheduled for release in February. In a short statement the publisher, which initially defended the book following a long piece in The New Republic, said the cancellation came "after receiving new information from Rosenblat's agent, Andrea Hurst." They also said that they "will demand that the author and the agent return all money that they have received for this work." (The NYT said later that it was sold "for less than $50,000.)

In a statement on Sunday, agent Andrea Hurst said "Herman revealed to me that part of his memoir was not true. He'd invented the crux of this amazing love story-about the girl at the fence who threw him an apple.... Like millions of others who read this story or saw Herman and Roma on Oprah, I never for a moment questioned the authenticity of the widely circulated story. I know that everyone who has worked so hard with Herman this past year is as stunned and disappointed as I am that this story of hope has such a sad ending."

Rosenblat added in a brief statement via Hurst that "I wanted to bring happiness to people, to remind them not to hate, but to love and tolerate all people. I brought good feelings to a lot of people and I brought hope to many. My motivation was to make good in this world." Hurst tells the AP, "I question why I never questioned it. I believed it; it was an incredible, hope-filled story."

The Times says today that Rosenblat "first concocted his story in the mid-1990s as an entry to a newspaper contest soliciting the 'best love stories.'" Long before he fooled his agent and Berkley, he fooled Oprah Winfrey and many others. "In 1996, he appeared on Ms. Winfrey's show with his wife and repeated the fabricated story. From there, it snowballed, with versions appearing in magazines, a volume of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, and a children's book, Angel Girl, by Laurie Friedman, released in September by an imprint of Lerner Publishing. Mr. and Mrs. Rosenblat, who now live in North Miami Beach, appeared on CBS's Early Show in October." [AP NYT]

Google gives out-of-print books a new life online

By Motoko Rich

MOUNTAIN VIEW, California: Ben Zimmer, executive producer of a Web site and software package called the Visual Thesaurus, was seeking the earliest use of the phrase "you're not the boss of me." [That's easy. I said it first, to one of my ex-husbands-the second, I think....] Using a newspaper database, he had found a reference from 1953.

But while using Google's book search recently, he found the phrase in a short story contained in "The Church," a periodical published in 1883 and scanned from the Bodleian Library at Oxford.

Ever since Google began scanning printed books four years ago, scholars and others with specialized interests have been able to tap a trove of information that had been locked away on the dusty shelves of libraries and in antiquarian bookstores.

According to Dan Clancy, the engineering director for Google book search, every month users view at least 10 pages of more than half of the one million out-of-copyright books that Google has scanned into its servers.

Google's book search "allows you to look for things that would be very difficult to search for otherwise," said Zimmer, whose site is visualthesaurus.com.

A settlement in October with authors and publishers who had brought two copyright lawsuits against Google will make it possible for users to read a far greater collection of books, including many still under copyright protection.

The agreement, pending approval by a judge this year, also paved the way for both sides to make profits from digital versions of books. Just what kind of commercial opportunity the settlement represents is unknown, but few expect it to generate significant profits for any individual author. Even Google does not necessarily expect the book program to contribute significantly to its bottom line.

"We did not think necessarily we could make money," said Sergey Brin, a Google founder and its president of technology, in a brief interview at the company's headquarters. "We just feel this is part of our core mission. There is fantastic information in books. Often when I do a search, what is in a book is miles ahead of what I find on a Web site."

Revenue will be generated through advertising sales on pages where previews of scanned books appear, through subscriptions by libraries and others to a database of all the scanned books in Google's collection, and through sales to consumers of digital access to copyrighted books. Google will take 37 percent of this revenue, leaving 63 percent for publishers and authors.

The settlement may give new life to copyrighted out-of-print books in a digital form and allow writers to make money from titles that had been out of commercial circulation for years. Of the seven million books Google has scanned so far, about five million are in this category.

Even if Google had gone to trial and won the suits, said Alexander Macgillivray, associate general counsel for products and intellectual property at the company, it would have won the right to show only previews of these books' contents. "What people want to do is read the book," Macgillivray said.

Users are already taking advantage of out-of-print books that have been scanned and are available for free download. Clancy was monitoring search queries recently when one for "concrete fountain molds" caught his attention. The search turned up a digital version of an obscure 1910 book, and the user had spent four hours perusing 350 pages of it.

For scholars and others researching topics not satisfied by a Wikipedia entry, the settlement will provide access to millions of books at the click of a mouse. "More students in small towns around America are going to have a lot more stuff at their fingertips," said Michael Keller, the university librarian at Stanford. "That is really important."

When the agreement was announced in October, all sides hailed it as a landmark settlement that permitted Google to proceed with its scanning project while protecting the rights and financial interests of authors and publishers. Both sides agreed to disagree on whether the book scanning itself violated authors' and publishers' copyrights.

In the months since, all parties to the lawsuits - as well as those, like librarians, who will be affected by it - have had the opportunity to examine the 303-page settlement document and try to digest its likely effects.

Some librarians privately expressed fears that Google might charge high prices for subscriptions to the book database as it grows. Although nonprofit groups like the Open Content Alliance are building their own digital collections, no other significant private-sector competitors are in the business. In May, Microsoft ended its book scanning project, effectively leaving Google as a monopoly corporate player.

David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer, said the company wanted to push the book database to as many libraries as possible. "If the price gets too high," he said, "we are simply not going to have libraries that can afford to purchase it."

For readers who might want to buy digital access to an individual scanned book, Clancy said, Google was likely to sell at least half of the books for $5.99 or less. Students and faculty at universities who subscribe to the database will be able to get the full contents of all the books free.

For the average author, "this is not a game changer" in an economic sense, said Richard Sarnoff, chairman of the Association of American Publishers and president of the digital media investments group at Bertelsmann, the parent company of Random House, the world's largest publisher of consumer books.

"They will get paid for the use of their book, but whether they will get paid so much that they can start living large - I think that's just a fantasy," Sarnoff said. "I think there will be a few authors who do see significant dollars out of this, but there will be a vast number of authors who see insignificant dollars out of this."

But, he added, "a few hundred dollars for an individual author can equate to a considerable sum for a publisher with rights to 10,000 books."

So far, publishers that have permitted Google to offer searchable digital versions of their new in-print books have seen a small payoff. Macmillan, the company that owns publishing houses including Farrar, Straus & Giroux and St. Martin's Press and represents authors including Jonathan Franzen and Janet Evanovich, offers 11,000 titles for search on Google. In 2007, Macmillan estimated that Google helped sell about 16,400 copies.

Authors view the possibility of readers finding their out-of-print books as a cultural victory more than a financial one.

"Our culture is not just Stephen King's latest novel or the new Harry Potter book," said James Gleick, a member of the board of the Authors Guild. "It is also 1,000 completely obscure books that appeal not to the one million people who bought the Harry Potter book but to 100 people at a time."

Some scholars worry that Google users are more likely to search for narrow information than to read at length. "I have to say that I think pedagogically and in terms of the advancement of scholarship, I have a concern that people will be encouraged to use books in this very fragmentary way," said Alice Prochaska, university librarian at Yale.

Others said they thought readers would continue to appreciate long texts and that Google's book search would simply help readers find them.

"There is no short way to appreciate Jane Austen, and I hope I'm right about that," said Paul Courant, university librarian at the University of Michigan. "But a lot of reading is going to happen on screens. One of the important things about this settlement is that it brings the literature of the 20th century back into a form that the students of the 21st century will be able to find it."

Google's book search has already entered the popular culture, in the film version of "Twilight," based on the novel by Stephenie Meyer about a teenage girl who falls in love with a vampire. Bella, one of the main characters, uses Google to find information about a local American Indian tribe. When the search leads her to a book, what does she do?

She goes to a bookstore and buys it. [Hallelujah!]  [Harold Tribune]

By Rachel Deahl -- Publishers Weekly

In a bid to promote its print and digital lists, Orbit is offering dollar e-books to readers on a rotating basis. The dollar titles, available at onedollarorbit.com and various partnering e-tailers, it's hoped, will push the sci-fi-focused imprint's backlist and frontlist from authors "across the board," according to marketing and publicity director Alex Lencicki.  

Through the program--Orbit has taken out banner ads on various sci-fi/fantasy sites promoting it--a different title is offered at the dollar price point every month. (The title will return to its list price at the end of the month.) Lencicki said the program is currenlty "open-ended" and will continue as long it is successful. When asked how the success of the program would be measured, Lencicki said if the dollar e-book drives either print or digital sales--or turns readers on to a particular series--it will be a hit. "Up until now, we haven't done a lot of direct e-book marketing, but here we found a way to promote our e-book program and to introduce readers to our series." Currently the promotion is featuring the first title in a series from debut author Brent Weeks, The Way of Shadows.

More Cuts at McGraw-Hill Education

McGraw-Hill announced "it restructured a limited number of business operations and corporate functions in the fourth quarter of 2008 to serve its markets more efficiently in the current economic environment while positioning the company for future growth." Included in those cuts they shed another 215 jobs in the McGraw-Hill Education division, the hardest-hit of the four areas that were restructured. Those reductions came on top of 240 positions eliminated at the Education division earlier in the year. Announcement

WSJ on Borders New Chief "As It Battles For Survival"

New Borders ceo Ron Marshall placed phone calls yesterday to top publishers to reassure them of the company's viability, the WSJ reports. Hachette Book Group ceo David Young says, "He said he is absolutely hell-bent on insuring that Borders is the first choice for the serious book buyer."

The WSJ adds: "Publishers and other suppliers said that Borders is currently paying its bills. But the retailer has been aggressively selling assets, slashing costs, laying off employees, and reducing debt to stave off the kind of financial crisis that could result in a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing.... However successful Mr. Marshall is in coming weeks, publishers will continue to watch Borders closely, limiting their shipments to minimize their potential exposure." WSJ

AND:

The stock of both Borders and Barnes & Noble rose significantly in yesterday's trading. BN was boosted by the disclosure of the big stake taken in the company's stock by activist investor Ron Burkle, after which genius Goldman Sachs Matthew Fassler upgraded his rating from sell to neutral. Borders rose following the news of the management shakeup, and has continued to climb this morning. Significantly, the company's market cap is up to about $40 million, putting it in compliance for now with one of the requirements for maintaining a listing on the New York Stock Exchange. AP

-- Publishers Weekly

Sourcebooks has acquired about 90 titles from Cumberland House, the Nashville-based publisher founded in 1996 by Ron Pitkin. Pitkin, who was also the cofounder of Rutledge Hill Press, will join Sourcebooks as executive acquisitions editor handling all titles acquired by Sourcebooks in the deal as well as acquiring new titles for Cumberland, which will Sourcebooks will keep as an imprint. Cumberland will continue to focus on gift books and regional titles in such areas as cooking, history and sports.

Nine of the titles acquired have not yet been released and will be publishing on the 2009 spring and fall lists. In addition to Pitkin, two other Cumberland employees are joining Sourcebooks: Chris Bauerle has been named director of mass market and specialty retail sales and Paul Mikos has been appointed acquisitions editor of the Cumberland imprint. Cumberland's Nashville offices, which had a total of 17 employees, will be closed.

Cumberland is best known for its Why a Daughter Needs a Dad series of gift books, which have sold more than 3 million copies. Other notable titles include a James Beard Cookbook of the Year winner, Smokehouse Ham, Spoon Bread & Scuppernong Wine and the Best Little Stories series by C. Brian Kelly.

Cumberland's Remaining Assets; Sourcebooks' Growth Plans

The Tennessean covers the folding of Cumberland House as Sourcebooks takes over rights to almost a hundred titles and absorbs three employees. Sourcebooks owner Dominique Raccah tells the local Daily Herald "There's a lot of opportunity in this market, but maybe I'm the only one who thinks that." She adds, "We think this is a great environment for growth." That paper says Raccah "has been in talks with three companies" about further acquisitions and is "also planning to hire three more employees, a salesperson in the Naperville office and acquisition editors in the company's New York and Connecticut offices."

Founder Ron Pitkin "said he is seeking publishers to take on rights to 400 other previously published titles not included in the Sourcebooks deal." Pitkin tells the paper "customers are afraid to bring in more books because sales are slow in bookstores -- they don't have the traffic." He adds, "More and more of the costs that should be borne by distributors and book chains are being pushed on the publisher." (He asserts that "it would have cost Cumberland a quarter of a million dollars to buy equipment to keep track of customers' inventory, a responsibility large bookstore chains are passing on to publishers.")

Pitkin adds that "I'm an editor trained in words." He says, "Once I'm finished here, I'm going to do the things I got in publishing to do."

Berkley Cancels Holocaust Memoir as Author Confesses

[Okay. I gotta say it. Can't anyone write a TRUE memoir? Are our lives so boring  we need to embellish them to interest an editor? This isn't the first faked memoir I've reported on this year. And where the heck are the people checkin' these writers out? Sheesh! Hey, I've got some great stories. Keep meaning to put together a proposal for Welcome to My Worlds: A Bipolar Christian Tells All,  but the thought of the dreaded platform, which has to include a billion unique blog hits per day, and a speaking engagement every week for the next ten years, makes me wanna run to the nearest mental ward and commit myself. I'm great with commitment....]

On the quietest Saturday of the year, Berkley cancelled publication of Herman Rosenblat's ANGEL AT THE FENCE: The True Story of a Love That Survived, scheduled for release in February. In a short statement the publisher, which initially defended the book following a long piece in The New Republic, said the cancellation came "after receiving new information from Rosenblat's agent, Andrea Hurst." They also said that they "will demand that the author and the agent return all money that they have received for this work." (The NYT said later that it was sold "for less than $50,000.")

In a statement on Sunday, agent Andrea Hurst said "Herman revealed to me that part of his memoir was not true. He'd invented the crux of this amazing love story-about the girl at the fence who threw him an apple.... Like millions of others who read this story or saw Herman and Roma on Oprah, I never for a moment questioned the authenticity of the widely circulated story. I know that everyone who has worked so hard with Herman this past year is as stunned and disappointed as I am that this story of hope has such a sad ending."

Rosenblat added in a brief statement via Hurst that "I wanted to bring happiness to people, to remind them not to hate, but to love and tolerate all people. I brought good feelings to a lot of people and I brought hope to many. My motivation was to make good in this world." Hurst tells the AP, "I question why I never questioned it. I believed it; it was an incredible, hope-filled story."

The Times says today that Rosenblat "first concocted his story in the mid-1990s as an entry to a newspaper contest soliciting the 'best love stories.'" Long before he fooled his agent and Berkley, he fooled Oprah Winfrey and many others. "In 1996, he appeared on Ms. Winfrey's show with his wife and repeated the fabricated story. From there, it snowballed, with versions appearing in magazines, a volume of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, and a children's book, Angel Girl, by Laurie Friedman, released in September by an imprint of Lerner Publishing. Mr. and Mrs. Rosenblat, who now live in North Miami Beach, appeared on CBS's Early Show in October. [AP NYT]

Galassi On the Changes at FSG

Since news of companywide cutbacks and reorganization at Macmillan began to spread, the Observer has pursued a singular focus on what the changes mean for Farrar, Straus. Today they reproduce a memo sent by publisher Jonathan Galassi to staff yesterday afternoon.

In addition to "reduc[ing] staff in certain areas," he describes "a plan that will reduce FSG's cost structure and help us to be more efficient in what everyone recognizes is an extraordinarily difficult environment. In some areas, we will rely more on the existing Macmillan infrastructure than we have up to now, to achieve greater effectiveness in an increasingly challenging marketplace."

The other specifics iterated follow the general announcement from Macmillan ceo John Sargent. The children's line is consolidated into the new Macmillan Children's division; production will also be handled companywide, under Karen Gillis (and Tom Nau for children's books); the Macmillan sales force will sell FSG's national accounts, with longtime FSG sales director Spenser Lee continuing to sell the division's adult books to Barnes & Noble and Ben White and Christina Stanley moving into the Macmillan sales group; and Denise Cronin moves over to FSG's offices from Holt, leading a new sub-rights groups that will sell for both lines.

Galassis underscores: "Our approach to publishing and what we choose to publish are not going to change. We are convinced that the role FSG has to play in the universe of writers will continue to grow in significance in the years ahead. This new structure will make us more agile, more capable of being creative in doing what we do best in an environment that is constantly changing and ever more competitive."

By Rachel Deahl -- Publishers Weekly

One of the persistent topics of conversation among agents since the trouble at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt surfaced is whether Philip Roth, one of the house's marquee (and arguably most important) authors, will remain with the publisher.

According to Roth's agent, Andrew Wylie, the author isn't going anywhere... for now. Wylie confirmed that Roth's next book, due out in fall 2009, is with HMH. As for the one after that, well, it could be up for grabs. Wylie confirmed that that book, which he said is not complete, is not under contract with HMH. When asked if he might take that title elsewhere, Wylie said it was too far off to discuss

By Jim Milliot and Diane Roback -- Publishers Weekly

Monday's job losses at Macmillan were as much about adjusting to the recession as they were about CEO John Sargent's determination to centralize some of the company's operations, a decision that involved the consolidation of the business and production functions of the entire trade group. In explaining the move in a memo to employees, Sargent said "technology has changed the publishing landscape substantially, and many of the traditional publishing methods are simply not as effective as they one were." Sargent added, however, that the changes will not "change the way we acquire books or capital we allocate to acquire them. Nor we will stray from the publishing autonomy and independence that has fueled our superb organic growth over the last decade."

The most dramatic change involved the creation of the new Macmillan Children's Publishing Group, and as part of that restructuring Jean Feiwel and Simon Boughton have both been appointed senior v-p publishing directors of the group, reporting to newly appointed group head Dan Farley. Feiwel will oversee Feiwel and Friends, Square Fish, Holt Books for Young Readers, and Priddy Books, with Laura Godwin, publisher of Holt BFYR, reporting to her. Boughton will become publisher of FSG Books for Young Readers, and continue to head Roaring Brook Press. Margaret Ferguson, associate publisher and editorial director of FSG BFYR, will now report to Boughton, as will First Second's editorial director Mark Siegel. FSG BFYR employees will be located at FSG's 18th St. offices and not move to Macmillan's headquarters in the Flatiron Building, at least for the "near term," Farley said.

As a result of the changes, Michael Eisenberg, associate publisher of FSG BFYR, is one of the Macmillan employees whose job was eliminated. The Melanie Kroupa Books imprint at FSG was also eliminated in the restructuring; Kroupa, whose imprint had been with the company since 2000, was let go. Also let go was Patrick Collins, art director at Holt BFYR; Jill Davis, who left Bloomsbury Children's Books this past September to join FSG BFYR as executive editor; Jennifer Abbots, associate publicity director at Holt BFYR; Susan Hecht, who joined Roaring Brook in June as associate director of retail marketing; and Kat Kopit, associate editor at Roaring Brook.

Under the new structure, Farley said the Feiwel and Boughton units will each have their own promotion chief (Elizabeth Fithian for Feiwel, Lauren Wohl for Boughton), and independent creative teams. The new group will have a centralized marketing operation and Farley is recruiting for a person to fill that spot. He estimated that the Macmillan Children's Publishing Group will release about 300 titles annually.

The children's group will also be affected by the overall company consolidation. Subsidiary rights for the group will be overseen by St. Martin's rights department head Karen Nordling, and the Holt and FSG BFYR rights departments will be combined. Production will also be consolidated; Tom Nau will handle children's production reporting to Karen Gillis, who has been named head of production and will oversee adult production. Longtime FSG head of production Tom Consiglio will leave the company. The consolidation also means the Holt and FSG rights departments will be combined and will be run by Denise Cronin, who will report to FSG head Jonathan Galassi.

Sargent noted that the changes, while helping the company to tighten its belt during the recession, will also reorganize Macmillan to position it for the long term, "while remaining a loose federation of publishers."

Layoffs at Macmillan; Farley to Head Single Children's Division

A restructuring throughout Macmillan in the US announced yesterday internally eliminates 64 positions from throughout the company's imprints and divisions (including cuts at their college business, central services for the whole company, and Scientific American magazine), representing about four percent of staff in all.

CEO John Sargent writes in the memo, "Going forward we are tightening our belts in response to the current recession, but we are also reorganizing and rethinking our business to position ourselves for the long term." He tells the NYT, "Book sales are markedly slower this Christmas than they were last Christmas. This is a recognition of the times that we are in this Christmas and the times that we will be in at least through the first half of next year." Earlier this month Sargent had written to employees, "We are now clearly in a recession and there is still no clarity on how long or deep it will be. What is clear is that retail book sales are down, advertising revenues are down, and even countercyclical businesses like education are struggling in many cases. We are not immune to these forces, and our business continues to be soft. So the time has come to take action for next year."

Sargent tells us that while results vary depending on the account, "big nonfiction and fiction has been difficult" this season, while it "appears at least so far that children's books are holding up pretty well through this Christmas." Their "backlist has been pretty solid; it's down, but not very much."

A consolidation of the company's many children's lines into a single Macmillan Children's division was the other focus of yesterday's announcement, though Sargent says "we've been working for quite some time on what is the best approach to move us forward in the marketplace." With a variety of acquisitions and start-ups in recent years, "when you roll up our children's business now, it's a lot bigger than it was operating as disparate individual companies." Henry Holt head Dan Farley will oversee the new Macmillan Children's Group as well, with group svp Jean Feiwel running Feiwel and Friends, Square Fish, Priddy Books and Holt Children's, and svp Simon Boughton running Farrar, Straus Children's, Roaring Brook Press, and First Second. A head of marketing for the combined group is still to be named.

In another consolidation, the company is combining individual production departments into a single group, and combining business management personnel into one unit as well (except at Farrar, Straus, which will keep its own business management personnel.) Steve Cohen, who was running business management for SMP, Tor and a portion of the children's business, will oversee the expanded department.

The AP adds that "other changes include the increased use of digital technology and reducing Macmillan's presence at BookExpo America." Speaking of the convention, Sargent tells the AP, "I think it makes more sense to funnel our marketing dollars elsewhere." [NYT AP]

Harper Studio Finds a Taker for Nonreturnable Books: Borders

Borders will buy books from the Harper Studio imprint at a deeper discount of 58 percent to 63 percent off, on a nonreturnable basis. Borders evp of merchandising and marketing Rob Gruen repeats the company's expressed position since George Jones took over: "The idea of taking inventory and then shipping it back isn't a good idea for anybody. We're open to all publishers to discuss alternatives to the traditional return model." [WSJ]

Critics Challenge Newbery Selections

The Washington Post covers the debate over the direction of the Newbery Medal, "asking whether the books that have won recently are so complicated and inaccessible to most children that they are effectively turning off kids to reading. Of the 25 winners and runners-up chosen from 2000 to 2005, four of the books deal with death, six with the absence of one or both parents and four with such mental challenges as autism. Most of the rest deal with tough social issues."

Associate professor of literacy education at St. John's University John Beach "studied 30 years of book lists chosen by children and adults. He found that less than 5 percent overlap between the Children's Choice Awards -- named every year by the International Reading Association -- and the library association's annual Notable Children's Books list, which includes many Newbery and Caldecott winners. Beach asserts, "The Newbery has probably done far more to turn kids off to reading than any other book award in children's publishing."

Founding director of the Reading and Writing Project at Columbia University's Teachers College Lucy Calkins says "I can't help but believe that thousands, even millions, more children would grow up reading if the Newbery committee aimed to spotlight books that are deep and beautiful and irresistible to kids."

President of the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association, Pat Scales replies to critics: "It is about literary quality. We don't expect every child to like every book. How many adults have read all the Pulitzer Prize-winning books and the National Book Award winners and liked every one?" [Post]

Got Celtic?

I do! Sheryl Brennen's debut will be out this spring. Not your typical fare, her novel deals with the struggle of those practicing the Celtic traditions as the Catholics try to take over. Romance ain't bad either. [This book has not yet been rated.]  To Pre-order or check out the video trailer of Sheryl Brennan's Celtic Sacrifice in Trade Paperback, go to: www.underdogpress.com.