As you can imagine, Lemurians have been reading a lot about changes in book selling. Sometimes it can be overwhelming, but there is one theme that comes up again and again: relationships.

“Madeline MacIntosh, who is Random House’s president for sales, operations, digital, has worked for both Amazon and book publishers, and finds the two strikingly different. ‘I think we, as an industry, do a lot of talking,’ she said of publishers. ‘We expect to have open dialogue. It’s a culture of lunches. Amazon doesn’t play in that culture.’ It has ‘an incredible discipline of answering questions by looking at the math, looking at the numbers, looking at the data . . . That’s a pretty big culture clash with the word-and-persuasion-driven lunch culture, the author-oriented culture.'” (“Publish or Perish” by Ken Auletta, The New Yorker, April 26, 2010)

Jane Friedman, formed CEO of Harper Collins, has opened up her very own e-book company. Despite her shift to the e-book, she still recognizes the importance of developing relationships with authors as well as the concern that Amazon could take on a wider role as publisher: “An author needs a publisher for nurturing, editing, distributing, and marketing. If the publishers are cutting back on marketing, which is the biggest complaint authors have, and Amazon stays at eighty per cent of the e-book market, why do you need a publisher?” (“Publish or Perish” by Ken Auletta, The New Yorker, April 26, 2010)

Laurence Kirshbaum, a New York Literary agent, echoes Jane Friedman and Random House’s Madeline MacIntosh: “‘Writers like Anne Tyler and Elmore Leonard have to simmer quite a bit before they are going to boil. Publishers no longer have the patience to work through multiple modest successes . . . There is a real danger these people could be lost today.'” (“Authors Feel the Pinch in Age of E-Books”, The Wallstreet Journal, September 26, 2010)

However, there seems to be no lack of patience and nurturing in Amy Einhorn’s relationship with the up and coming author Siobhan Fallon. Read what Fallon wrote on her blog in November: “The Tuesday before Thanksgiving, I received an email telling me that I was going on a “Pre-Pub” trip to meet some important indie booksellers. Denver, Boston, Seattle, LA. . . . Here we all are worrying the publishing industry, and yet the very savvy publicity people at Putnam have decided to send a very un-savvy first-book-of-short-stories-writer (short stories!?!) off on a little cross country adventure, with drivers waiting at airports, nice hotels, and restaurant dinners booked. You must think I am delusional. Yes, shake your head and tell me again that this kind of stuff just doesn’t happen in today’s publishing world. But, by some incredible miracle, this is all about indie bookstores. Indie bookstores are making my writing dreams come true.” (Read full blog here.)

Publishers establishing and maintaining good relationships with authors helps independent bookstores. The more authors and publishers work together, and the more publishers and independent bookstores work together the more books we can sell. There is a series of neurological connections created here–passed from author to publisher to bookseller to reader–resulting in an experience for the reader. You see the beginning of this in Siobhan Fallon’s case.

A book is a rather long term commitment. You don’t read it in 60 seconds. You spend days, weeks, maybe even months with this author, this physical book. And once you have finished reading, it stays with you forever. I think our society may have reached the end of its consumer binge. Many customers are waking up and they’re demanding community, customization and experience–not just a download, not just a cheap book. There is talk of Amazon opening their own brick-and-mortar stores to supposedly provide community, customization and experience. Which independent bookseller has already been doing this for years? It’s time for publishers and independent bookstores to do some serious work together.

The Bookstore Key Series on Changes in the Book Industry

Finding “Deep Time” in a Bookstore (March 8th) Reading The New Rules of Retail by Lewis & Dart (March 3) The Future Price of the Physical Book (Feb 18) Borders Declares Bankruptcy (Feb 16) How Great Things Happen at Lemuria (Feb 8th) The Jackson Area Book Market (Jan 25) What’s in Store for Local Bookselling Markets? (Jan 18) Selling Books Is a People Business (Jan 14) A Shift in Southern Bookselling? (Jan 13) The Changing Book Industry (Jan 11)

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