Some years ago, after presenting a talk on one of my books, I was setting copies of the book on a display table, in case someone wanted to buy one. A woman who’d been in the audience for this event – I think it was at a library – began flipping through a copy of the book. She asked me a couple of questions and then noticed the price on the flap of the dust jacket.
“Gee, that’s a lot… for a book,” she said.
I tried to keep my sense of outrage from making it as far as an expression on my face. Instead, I offered one of my usual retorts in this type of situation. I asked her what she did for a living.
“Oh, I sell new cars,” she told me.
“Great,” I said. “I’ve always thought paying thousands is an awful lot… for a car.”
First of all, it was an insult for the woman to refer to a writer’s creative output as if it were an overpriced novelty at the flea market. But in addition, her remark clearly showed she had no concept of the value of the written word. She probably said the same about a cob of corn at a farmers’ market or a new refrigerator in an appliance store or perhaps even a new house before she bought it. For her, I sensed, there was no understanding of the care that goes into raising the corn, manufacturing the fridge or building the house.
Similarly, she had no concept of the contents of a non-fiction book. She had probably no idea how much research and interviewing goes on before the writing and re-writing of a manuscript. And she likely didn’t realize what a publisher adds to the value of a book by assisting in the editing process, assembling an index, photo captions and the book cover. Nor did she likely know what it takes to find the right printer and binder for a book. Nor did she realize that the strategy and labour to market, promote and sell such a book, influences the cost.
The notion of what writing is worth came up often over this past weekend. I attended the 39th annual general meeting of The Writers’ Union of Canada in Vancouver; I have been a TWUC member for 35 or those 40 years. When the union started out in the 1970s, the criteria for entry were pretty rigid. One could not join unless the “writer had a book published by a commercial or university press.”
Consequently, that eliminated such things as how-to publications, a lot of poetry, and also vanity (or self-published) books. Of course, smaller press publications, how-to’s and self-publishing are rampant today, thanks to the Internet. And that has forced TWUC to rethink its entrance criteria for membership.
Over the weekend, I attended a number of workshops to learn the latest. One workshop explored new business models, such as self-published e-books, book applications, and such things as “crowd-funded” books on such websites as Kickstarter.com (through which authors get their fans to invest in their manuscripts before they’re published). There were sessions on the growth of e-book tablet computers (e-readers) such as Kobo and Kindle. Generally, I get it. I realize that electronic production and distribution are now part of publishing.
Then I attended a workshop, entitled “Going digital in your own backyard.” It was hosted by a marketer from Amazon.com. He talked about the demise of traditional publishing as a grand opportunity for all writers to be published. He said that digital publishing allowed new authors to write, edit and print a book on demand (at a printing location somewhere in the U.S.) and then distribute everywhere to everyone.
How naïve. I know how complicated those minor steps he seemed to throw away can be. I know how valuable another set of eyes – an editor – can be at making a book make sense. And I know that a group of marketing, promotion and selling professionals is better than one writer trying to do all those functions. In other words, there’s a reason publishers exist in the book creating chain; they know publishing. But the Amazon.com rep lost me completely when he wondered why the authors in the audience felt so threatened by the illegal downloading of their work on the Internet.
“What’s wrong with having your work pirated?” he asked rhetorically. “It just means that people love your work.”
At that point, one of my fellow TWUC members, a B.C. lawyer and author named Katherine Gordon, responded to his suggestion.
“That’s like saying, ‘If somebody breaks into my house, I shouldn’t be concerned because it just means burglars love my stuff,’” she said.
I’m ready to embrace a brave new world of publishing. But I’m not eager to have my creative property stolen or given away for free… no matter how much that woman at the library thinks she’s being ripped off.