WEATHERING THE TRANSITION...KEEPING THE FAITH

When Linda Winstead-Jones approached me to give this address, I asked if there was anything specific the board wanted me to speak about, and she replied: well, it's usually inspirational, and sometimes funny, but it should really be a reflection of the individual author.

I thought: Oh, good - then no one who knows me is going to be surprised if I talk about the business - our business - and perhaps, given where we stand now, in the middle of 2012, that might be rather apt.

So my title today is: Weathering the Transition - Keeping the Faith. And I hope that, as all good titles should, it will raise questions in your minds - such as: Which transition? Why use the term weathering? And keeping the faith with what?

Before I get to answering those questions, I have 2 caveats to make - first, everything I say applies to all genre fiction but not necessarily to other forms of fiction. Genre fiction - the work of storytellers who tell tales to entertain - is entertainment, and so subject to the rules governing entertainment, unlike general and literary fiction, which are bought and read for other reasons. What I say might or might not apply to those other forms of fiction.

Secondly, what I'm about to present is my personal view of our business - my interpretation of my observations and it's not intended to advocate any particular path. Every author is an individual - we have our own paths to forge, our own challenges to meet. Each author's individuality is what makes our voices unique. If something I say resonates with you, by all means share it, discuss and promulgate in whatever way you wish. Conversely, if what I say rings no bells, just chalk it up to another person's pov and move on.

So - to my first question. Which transition? You might think I mean the transition from print to digital, but no - while the shift from print to digital consumption is a major driver contributing to the critical transition that's causing the upheaval in our business, it's not the critical transition itself - which is the migration of readers from buying offline to buying online. Whether they buy print or digital doesn't matter - it's the fact that readers access our works online that's key, because once a reader is buying online, the author can reach that reader directly, and that alters one critical segment of our business irrreversibly.

To examine this change, I want to share with you three simple pictures that help me understand our business, and what's happening to it through these turbulent times. For those who buy this address in audio, these pictures are available on my website, stephanielaurens.com, the link is on the home page, and you can see, copy, share, and disseminate as you please.

So to my first picture: The Business of Being a Storyteller.

For me, this simple cartoon encapsulates everything about our business. We create the story told, the publishing industry transmits the story to the reader, and the reader derives enjoyment from the story. Of course, our Reader shown here is a placeholder for readers en masse - we're entertainers, so we're always wanting to reach as large an audience as possible.

I mentioned I use these pictures to help me understand aspects of our business - for instance, pricing. What does the reader pay for? Answer: the emotional experience she derives from the story. Most of our readers don't truly care how they access our stories, only that they get to experience them. So while different formats of a book might have different prices, there needs to be a consistent story value included in each price. And remember the old adage: if you don't respect and value your work, don't expect anyone else to.

Another point: what is the definition of success in our business? Recently I've heard some contend that success for an author is getting published. Really? Getting published is you handing your manuscript over for transmittal - how can that be success? No - we're entertainers, and as an entertainer's success is measured by their box office draw, our success is measured by the number of readers lining up to buy our next book. Not the book that just went out, but our next book. Our success is measured by the size of our already captured audience.

For today, the one point I want you to take from this picture is that the publishing industry is not our business. It's a segment of our business, it's the necessary bit that takes our story from us to our readers, but publishing is merely a transmittal process - think of it as the mechanics of passing the story parcel from the author to the readers en masse.

So - moving on to my 2nd picture, this depicts the Offline Publishing Industry - where the reader buys a physical book in a physical store. This is the industry that's been around for over 200 years, and with which we're all very familiar.

In the offline publishing industry, there are three intermediaries between author and reader, and all are essential - the story parcel gets passed from one to the other to the other, down a straight line - it's straight because there is no getting around any of the intermediaries in offline publishing, at least not if you want to reach readers en masse. Essential means cannot be done without.

So in offline publishing, there is only one route between author and reader, and in order to get her book to readers en masse, the author has to sell her work to the publisher, who packages and on-sells the book to the distributors and key retail accounts.

Note that, please: in offline publishing, the author sells to the publisher, and publishers are the sole direct customer, or gatekeeper, for authors.

Further to that, see those two rectangles? Those are the priority lists of the commercial relationships for Retailer and Publisher. Retailer, of course, has readers, their customers, as their top priority, followed by distributors, their suppliers, followed by the publishers, who give help to sell specific books.

For Publishers in the offline industry, their principal focus is on Distributors and their key retail accounts - because just as publishers are gatekeepers for authors, distributors and key accounts are gatekeepers for publishers. Authors often feel neglected when, once we've signed with a publisher, the publisher turns away and concentrates on the distributors and retailers, but in that publishers are only doing what they commercially must. A publisher isn't of much use to the author if the publisher can't get the author's book into a large number of retailers. And of course, with that focus, publishers never even see readers, at the far end of the chain. And there's no real reason they need to, because that's not how offline publishing works.

Which brings us to my 3rd picture - what we're transitioning into: The Online Publishing Industry.

This is a simplified diagram - I've left out a spectrum of emerging players in order to better focus on the principal relationships. Of all romance works sold via all channels, I believe we've now passed the point where more than 50% of units sold per month are sold online. For romance, the Online Industry already dominates and will increasely dominate over time. And online, while the major players are the same, the structure is different, which means the Online Industry operates in critically different ways.

For instance, in passing the story parcel from author to reader, instead of there being only one way, there are now four - Author to Reader, Author to Publisher to Reader, Author to Retailer to Reader, and Author to Publisher to Retailer to Reader. All four routes are viable and being effectively used by authors to transmit their stories to readers, so authors as of now have multiple online routes by which they can reach readers en masse.

That - multiple routes instead of one - is one critical difference between the Online Industry and the Offline Industry.

Here's another - in the Online industry, only Author and Reader are essential - meaning cannot be done without. Publishers and Retailers, no matter who they are, can never be or make themselves essential - not unless they can take control of the internet. Not just a part of it, all of it. Which is why I waste no time worrying about anyone controlling my business again - that's not going to happen while I can reach my readers direct. And thanks to JK Rowling and Pottermore for establishing that beyond question. One way or another, if authors are forced to it, it can and will be done.

But for many of us, for many reasons, we'd rather not go the direct route if we don't have to. And we don't have to. But I've just said that neither publishers nor retailers are essential online, so how does a given publisher or retailer secure a place in our new online industry? The answer is through commercial desirability, and the standout exponent of that art is Amazon.

Commercial desirability is a dynamic equation, meaning it changes with time, but it's a simple sum of likes and dislikes. Any Amazon customer will have things they don't like about Amazon, but the things they like far outweigh the dislikes, and the customer always returns to buy from Amazon. Amazon understands that online retail success is all about maximizing profit while simultaneously remaining commercially desirable, so when it introduced the Kindle and realized it needed to ensure supply - to keep its customers happy - Amazon started building commercial desirability relationships with…authors. Not publishers, because Amazon can't be sure which publishers will survive in the online era, and it doesn't need to worry about publishers anyway, because if Amazon has authors, the essential suppliers, on side, then authors will ensure Amazon gets their content even if authors transmit via publishers.

So for a retailer to be successful in our online industry, they need to make themselves commercially desirable first and foremost to their customers, the readers, then to their essential suppliers, the authors, with publishers running a distant third.

But what about publishers? How does a publisher suceed in our online world? Like retailers, publishers are non-essential, so, like retailers, to secure a place in our online industry publishers need to make themselves commercially desirable…to whom? Their customers. But in the online world, who are a publisher's customers? Who will pay for what a publisher offers - editing, production, distribution and management of sales channels, publicity and promotion? Authors. Only authors. Unless engaged by authors to act as publishing facilitators, publishers have nothing to offer readers or retailers. Readers are only interested in authors' works, and the retailers are only interested in supplying readers.

Successful online-era publishers are flexible, responsive, author-oriented providers of publishing services, cost-effectively value-adding to authors' releases. They are acutely focused on what authors want and provide those services for a competitive fee. I say "are" because new online-era publishers adhering to these principles already exist.

In addition, offline publishers are, unsurprisingly, seeking to transition into the online industry. To successfully transition, a previously offline publisher needs to accomplish two feats - first, refashion their old business into an author-oriented publishing services business, and second, convince authors of their worth in what is emerging as a fiercely competitive field. Those two feats form the challenge that lies squarely before offline publishers wishing to transition into the online sphere.

Two aspects of that challenge deserve special mention. First, remember how things were in the offline industry - author sells her work to publisher. In the online industry, publisher sells its services to author. That is a 180-degree turn around in relationship.

I know many authors are having difficulty getting their heads around that, and unsurprisingly offline publishers are having an even harder time grappling with the change, but to claim a position in the online industry, offline publishers must embrace and internalize this attitudinal switch.

A compounding difficulty for offline publishers lies in the conflicting priorities of their commercial relationships - distributors, retailers, with authors a poor third in the offline world, and authors, authors, authors, and forget the rest online. Offline publishers wishing to transition online have to drastically - and for romance now very quickly - shift focus, even while simultaneously managing their residual offline business.

In transitioning into the online industry, of all the players in our business it's offline publishers who have to change the most, and who face the biggest challenge in doing so. Ultimately, an offline publisher's success in our online world will depend on how well they implement the necessary changes, and how willingly they accept that their online future will be determined by their relationships with authors.

But that's Publishers, and we're Authors. So what changes for us in this transition?

The answer is: Not that much. Our relationship with publishers changes, our opportunities increase, but other than that? Let's look at my final picture, which is the first picture adjusted for where we are today, showing the multiple channels an author now has to transmit her work to her readers.

It's the publishing industry - the transmittal process - that's undergoing change, but the only point at which that affects an author is when she's ready to hit the transmittal button and she has to decide which one to press - the send button on an email taking her manuscript to a publisher? Or does she spend time and prepare the work so she can hit the Publish button on KDP, PubIt, Kobo, Smashwords, etc, or the upload button to her website? That's all that truly changes for us - the interface where we connect with the transmittal process.

For us, everything else remains the same. And our readers are in the mirror position. The only thing that changes for them is the method by which they access our stories. The way they read our words, the way they interact with and respond to our stories, changes not at all.

And that's why I used the verb "weathering." Weathering describes the changes in a rock subjected to external forces such as wind, sun, rain, snow, hail. The surface of the rock alters in response to the external forces, but the core of the rock does not change in either structure or composition.

That's us - we're the rock. When there's change happening around us, it's human nature to focus on the change rather than on what stays the same, but for us in this transition, it's only that transmittal interface that's being reshaped, and nothing more.

My principal message for you today is this: We are the storytellers. Whether its offline or online, we are still the storytellers, the spinners of tales, the weavers of emotional magic, the essential creators. We tell stories - we create them, shape them, write them down - and none of that changes.

To successfully weather this transition, all we as authors need to do is keep faith with our calling, and remember all the things about it that do not change.

A good story well told will always find its audience - that will never change.

A great story excitingly, thrillingly, and intriguingly well told will establish a career - that doesn't change either.

And if you consistently tell stories that fall between the good and the great, you will have a long and prosperous career in this business - and that won't change.

What else? Readers rule. Always. That's readers with an s. Readers en masse. Not your agent, your editor, your critique partners, not even reviewers actually matter. All that ever matters is how readers en masse respond to your story - all else will follow. And that doesn't change either.

Distribution is key - and even though that's the arrow end of the transmittal process, the importance of that doesn't change. Whichever route you choose, you want to reach the largest audience you can.

Now it's entirely natural to stare out of the window at the earthquake that's rocking the property next door and worry that it's going to crack the foundations of your house. This earthquake won't. It will alter the landscape on the boundary between you and that publishing house next door, and it will certainly reshape that publishing house itself, but your house won't be materially affected as long as you protect the bedrock on which your house's foundations rest - as long as you keep telling your stories, and tell them well.

So yes, lots of things are changing in the industry segment of our business, but for us as authors, what we must do to succeed remains the same.

I hope that when you leave on Sunday after this fabulous conference, you'll go home, plant your butt in your chair, and write your next damn fine book. Then you'll look at your transmittal options, press the button that's most appropriate for you at that time…and then go right back to your chair, plonk yourself back down, and start the next damn fine - and possibly even better - book. That's what's important for us, and that won't ever change. Keep the faith and you won't go wrong.

I'm reminded of the end sequence in the movie, Flashdance, with the song What a Feeling running over it, and the enormous upswell of sheer exuberance, joy, and passion for the work conveyed in that. When I look out at the gradually settling landscape of our new online business, all I see is freedom and opportunity - the freedom to create as we've never done before, and the opportunity to reach readers beyond our wildest dreams.

So my last words to you are these: Seize the day. Go forth with that same exuberance, joy, and passion in your heart - and write your stories. Seize the day - because for authors there is no danger in this new era. Take your passion and make it happen. Seize the freedom, embrace the opportunity, because one thing is absolutely certain - in all the millennia, there has never been a better time to be a storyteller.

I wish you all the very best in moving forward into our new online business.

Thank you - and good luck!

Stephanie Laurens