ARTS & FARCES internet

In early 1972, Tom Wolfe—one of America’s true literary lions—introduced the concept of The New Journalism to the world by authoring a thirteen-page piece for New York magazine, entitled, “The Birth of ‘The New Journalism’; Eyewitness Report by Tom Wolfe.” According to Wolfe, the novel was dead, replaced by creative nonfiction and its attendant narrative tools—and the participant observer had arrived.

In 1995 Joshua Quitner rang the death knell for Wolfe’s print-bound New Journalism and rang in what he called Way New Journalism. The watermark of Way New Journalism is the process whereby anyone, for the price of a Web server and an Internet connection, can compete with traditional, mainstream publications. For the first time writers will be able to bypass Big Media’s distribution cartel, taking their readers with them.

Tom Wolfe changed forever the way journalists worked their skill. Suddenly it was okay to have fun with facts and write with a distinctive voice. Where Wolfe’s New Journalism combined the forms of the novel and standard reportage, Quitner’s Way New Journalism added video, sound, and hypertext links to the mix. But most observers agree that the practitioners of Way New Journalism are still experimenting with their tools, honing their craft as the medium itself struggles to walk.

Sad fact is that until we have much better display technologies, paper is better. It’s portable, cheap, and doesn’t crash.

In 1998 what ARTS & FARCES has in mind is Way New Publishing. Traditional print publishing is dead. Bury it. By no means does that mean that we will all suddenly stop smearing toxic dyes on dead trees. Far from it. What it means is that the business models of all publishers—print, electronic, and online—must change.

For creative information providers, the most compelling aspect of the Internet in general, and the Web in particular is the opportunity to directly reach our audience, disintermediating as many links in the distribution chain as possible. More on the distribution chain in Part Two.

Traditional Publishing Model

Consider the traditional publishing model, currently employed by almost all book publishers today:

• An author proposes a work (or submits a finished work) to a publisher for consideration. If accepted, a deal is struck and the author is provided an advance against royalties in exchange for granting the publisher a set of rights to publish the work.
• Unfortunately, the most common publishing practice is to pay royalties to the author based on the publisher’s “net receipts.” I’ve found that the definition of “net receipts” varies in direct proportion to the publisher’s integrity. Which is to say that “net” and “receipts” varies as widely as the weather in Minnesota.
• Most publishing agreements similarly classify any sales at a greater than 50% discount as “special sales.” Here’s a dirty little secret. Today, almost all books—some reports cite 95%—are sold at an average 55% discount. No royalties to the author on fully 95% of all sales.
• Almost all publishers also usually insist on all rights to the work, even those they can’t possibly exploit, and even those for media that haven’t yet been invented.
• Chapters—usually paper chapters—are slung back and forth between author and editor. Meanwhile a designer roughs out an interior design for the book, and the publisher’s marketing department begins to write cover copy, collateral marketing material, catalog copy, etc. Never mind that the manuscript is usually nowhere near final form. It probably won’t help to point out that at the same time the publisher’s sales department is busy selling a book that doesn’t yet exist.
• More chapters are slung back and forth between author and editor. Sometimes five full volleys are not unusual. The manuscript is line-edited and proofread. Multiple times.
• As chapters are finished, they are sent to the publisher’s production department, where text and images are flowed into a page layout program, from which page proofs are made.
• Page proofs are forwarded to the editor and author for corrections. Usually several rounds of corrections.
• When final page proofs are available they are sent to the author (or most likely to a professional indexer) for indexing.
• The electronic source files for the book’s cover and interior are separately output to film.
• Printing plates are created from the film and are used, separately, to create the actual cover and interior pages of the book.
• The finished book pages are trimmed to size and sent to the binder (or binding machine) that actually creates the finished books.
• The finished books are shipped to the publisher’s warehouse and/or to distributors, wholesalers, and bookstores.
• The customer purchases the book.
• Some months later the bookstore pays the wholesaler, who some months after that pays the distributor, who some months after that pays the publisher, who some months after that pays the author. And they all lived in the house that the Author built.
• Oh, and maybe you didn’t know that books are basically sold on consignment. Bookstores, wholesalers, and distributors can return books at any time for full credit.
• And that’s if everything goes flawlessly.
• Reasonable publishers will look for ways to save time at each point in the process, without sacrificing quality. Unfortunately, in my experience, “reasonable publisher” is almost universally an oxymoron.
• Nonetheless there are several points at which the editorial process can be compressed while retaining the highest possible levels of quality:
• Editorial workflow can be handled electronically. Instead of flinging atoms across the globe, authors and editors can fling bits.
• Page layout tasks can be integrated into the editorial workflow process. Instead of working on manuscript pages, authors and editors can work together, collaboratively on “live” pages.
• Electronic source files can be output directly to printing plates, bypassing the film output stage.

This may not seem like much, but the first two items can compress the editorial process significantly while actually raising the level of quality.

Way New Publishing Model

From my perspective—both as an author and as a publisher—two major trouble spots remain:

1. The publishing agreement that unfairly benefits the publisher, at the author’s expense.
2. The distribution model.

The inequities in the publishing agreement are easily addressed. ARTS & FARCES pays its authors royalties based on the cover price of the book (rather than the easily manipulated “net receipts”), maintains an open books policy with its stakeholders, and licenses only those rights necessary to publish a printed book.

The second point is decidedly more problematic, but not insurmountable, as shown in “Way New Publishing Part Two.”