Of Filters, Risks, and Torrents

by Cynthia Light Brown

Susan (see post below) got me to thinking about filters. You can filter data in Excel, parents can filter out objectionable material on TVs and computers, your body filters in and out all sorts of things.

One of the oldest types of filtering is in water.

Water filtration has a couple of similarities with the quality filtration in traditional publishing. For the maximum—best—filtration, you have the following:

• It normally passes through the filter at a very slow speed. (There are two speeds in publishing: Slow, and VERY SLOOOOOOW.)
• It passes through several stages of filtration. (Can you say agent, acquiring editor, executive editor, marketing personnel, acquisition committee, copy editor?)
• You have to have good quality filters to get good quality filtration. (aka you get what you pay for, or a good editor is worth her weight in signed, first edition Harry Potter books.)
• Filtering can remove beneficial constituents (in water, stuff like fluoride; in books—read on.)

I fully believe that traditional publishing will still play a big role in how we choose our books. I love my physical books, plus I’m a traditional gal at heart.

But traditional publishing also filters OUT a lot of good stuff. If you’re a writer who’s been seriously writing for any length of time—even if you’re well published—you know what I’m talking about. I wrote a picture book a few years ago that I still love; it landed me an agent, an editor who loved it, and it went to acquisitions at a major publisher. The marketers on the committee just couldn’t quite picture the illustrations. The manuscript is now in a drawer, keeping company with lots of other manuscripts. How many authors have heard that the editor loves, loves, loves the story, but it’s not quite edgy enough or is in between middle grade and YA or is too literary or too quiet or is a little too close to another book on their list or is just too too too?

Please don’t think I harbor any ill feelings towards the industry because my story isn’t in full color in Barnes and Noble. They’re a business like any business and very good at what they do. But they respond to the market, and a big part of their decisions is about risk, not about quality. The risk of new authors, the risk of a book that doesn’t quite know which shelf it should be on, the risk of something that would have a following, but maybe not a big enough following. In other words, yes they filter out a lot-lot-lot of stuff based on quality, but they also filter out a lot of stuff based on other factors.

Here’s the thing: the risk for publishers is not fully aligned with the risk for authors, or even for readers. Partly aligned, yes, but not fully. And authors need to figure out where we differ.

If you’re a writer with a quirky book, or a book that needs to sit on an in-between shelf, or may have a limited following, then your book represents a high risk for publishers, but not for you.

And if you’re a reader, when traditional publishing filters out books for reasons other than quality, your risk of not finding a book you want is higher than it is in the e-publishing world.

Except for the fact that earthquakes cause tsunamis. E-publishing is at least a 9.0 on the Richter scale of upset in the publishing world, and we now have torrents of books (and yes, I mean torrents in both the flooding sense and the internet sites for downloading illegal books sense). So even though a reader might be able to find the perfect book in the e-world that wasn’t available in the traditional world, how do they find it?

Forgive me for continuing with the water metaphor, but I think what is needed is perhaps more channeling than filtering. Getting the right book to the right reader. And the more finely divided those channels can be, the better. Part of that can be a filter for quality—sorting out the real dreck—but even more it’s style, genre, sub-genre. Not just a “it’s high quality” but what about the book makes it great. Then, as a reader, I can decide if those criteria are important to me. Because things that are important to me may not be important to other people. That’s always been tough to figure out, and with the sheer number of books coming out now, it’s even more daunting. I have some thoughts on specifics, that I’ll post in Part 2, sometime in the next week.

Hot Potato: E-Quality

by Susan Chapek

E-publishing, particularly e-self-publishing, is a burning hot topic this summer. Blogs and discussion boards are fired up for and against (Verla Kay's Blue Board thread "all the buzz about e-books" stretches 14 pages and claims 6050 hits as of this writing.)

I'm not here to persuade writers to e-s-p, nor to argue that they shouldn't. I want to focus on one powerful argument against it. How will readers be able to find the best—or even the good—e-s-p books among hundreds of thousands on offer? Popularity filters already exist. But where's the Quality Filter?

Replies to this argument tend to express merely a general optimism about how these things tend to evolve and sort themselves out naturally on the Web.

Cold comfort.

Because the objection is valid. Customers (especially for Kidlit) want Quality, and they want to find it quickly and easily. Quality Filters for e-pubbing in general, and e-self-pubbing in particular, won't work until they're at least as efficient and reliable as the filters we have in traditional publishing.

So—what Quality Filters exit in traditional Kidlit Publishing?

• Agents. (Because most slush stops here nowadays.)
• Publishers
• Awards
• Reviews
• Teachers and librarians
• Bookstores, real or virtual
• Word of Internet and Word of Mouth

(As I listed these, I realized that most of these filters are weakening these days. Bookstores are closing; review publications faltering; educators and libraries struggle with tighter budgets; marketing departments wield a powerful veto over editorial choices. Even the prize committees are under attack in recent years, from those who object to their criteria or its application.)

Do any of the same Quality Filters operate for e-s-p books?

• On-line publishers? The ones I've seen seem geared to adult genres.
• On-line bookstores? Neither reliable (provide only favorable professional reviews) nor efficient.
• Teachers and librarians? Huge potential, once they figure out a system to share ratings.
• Internet word-of-mouth (blogs, clubs, ads, social networks, etc.)? Need their own Quality Filter!

So I'd like to propose several possible E-Quality Filter models that can be created quickly, by the existing Kidlit community itself.

1) Pay a visit to the writers' cooperative e-bookstore at http://www.bookviewcafe.com/ Here the Quality Filter is the presence of some well-known, distinguished authors. Their names suggest a level of quality for all the authors in the co-op. The big names also serve as a magnet for search engines, exposing the less-known authors to potential readers.

Kidlit writer cooperatives could provide one kind of Quality Filter.

2) The Andrea Brown Agency turned publisher this spring. See http://www.austinscbwi.com/2011/04/28/hoover-announces-debut-ya-release/ Agents are established Quality Filters, many even assuming some editorial functions. In fact, as publishing houses cut staff, it's become common for ex-editors to become Agents.

Both of those models are already up and working. Meanwhile, how about all those ex-Editors? Many are willing, apparently, to work for royalties instead of a salary. A few have truly distinguished track records, discovering and nurturing Kidlit authors. Wouldn't these patron saints of Kidlit make ideal E-Quality Filters?

3) So where's the star Editor bold enough to establish her own e-publishing imprint? I'll bet teachers, librarians, and parents would flock to that Editor's web site, assured that every book on it meets a standard of quality in writing and editing.

An Editor's online imprint could operate several different ways. In one model, the Editor only reads submissions and selects works that are ready to go. (Here's where writers find a home for those books that have been shopped to tatters but never quite sold—"orphaned" books, "niche" books, "quiet" books, experiments in new genres that don't fit a writer's previous image, novellas, short stories, or any books that—horror of horrors!—are good, but neither potential blockbusters nor prize-winners.) All that might be needed is for the Editor to connect the writer with a free-lance line-editor, formatter, and cover designer. In weeks, the book is published and listed.

In this model, the Editor would earn no advance. The (barely) delayed gratification of pay by royalties would allay suspicions that the Editor accepts every book that comes her way. The Editor's fortunes would rise or sink with her line.

In another model, the Editor might read only already e-self-published books, offer to list the ones she wants to recommend, and negotiate a commission on future royalties.

Or an e-book Editor could choose to list only books she actually edits herself.

In any model, the Editor would strive for volume, but she'd have to be choosy, or her whole line would suffer.

I'd be willing to contribute to a Kickstarter account (www.kickstarter.com/) for the Editor with a good track record who is willing to start up a business along those, or similar, lines. Oh, Distinguished Editor! O Pioneer! You who wielded such benevolent power in the market before! There are many worthy mss—some of them written by the same authors you used to publish in the traditional way—waiting for you to connect them with e-readers.