Last Bookstore in America

Welcome!

The Last Bookstore in America is a novel about an extraordinary ebook reader that changed books and bookstores forever.  It's available on Scribd (for your Sony Reader or computer), and you can download it to your Kindle or iPhone.

Check the links on the right to find out more about the book. You can also visit my website to find out more about my other books, and also check out my bookstore, Eureka Books, which was the inspiration for the bookstore in the novel.

Then post a comment and join in the discussion!

The Bookstore of Tomorrow, the Publisher of Tomorrow

Here are two fascinating visions for the future of the book and bookstores:

First, a piece by Richard Nash, formerly of Soft Skull press, about an online community of readers and writers from which published works will emerge. It's intended to be a highly social experience that allows much more feedback from readers than publishers usually have access to.  Check it out.

And then there's novelist Moriah Jovan's vision for the bookstore of the future--one without books, mostly.  It's very much like the bookstore at the very end of LAST BOOKSTORE IN AMERICA-a bookstore in which books serve as a touchstone but books are mostly sold in digital editions. She really tells it like it is:

You booksellers have been rolling around on the back of the consignment system like it’s catnip for too long—and it’s still going to bite you in the butt.

You publishers are doing everything you can to stymie ebooks and are determined to cling to your outmoded ways. You can lay off people all you want, but you’re not actually willing to do what it takes. Never fear, though! The economy will help you with that.

And really, the model that she suggests does seem, as she says, perfectly reasonable. Sell some books, sure.  Sell print-on-demand editions of what you don't have in the store.  Sell digital downloads and the devices to read them on.  Sell devices already loaded with a library of great books.  Why not?

Oh, and Nicholson Baker isn't so crazy about the Kindle.

The Scribd Preview

Reading an entire book on your computer:  a little weird.  I know.  But the idea behind Scribd really interests me:  it's like YouTube for text.  Anyone can upload any kind of document and share it for free or charge money for it. As a writer, I think it's an interesting way to put your work out in the world and get feedback on it.  Here's a preview of what Last Bookstore looks like on Scribd.  You can read a chapter or two in preview mode (click the Enlarge button, upper right, to make it full screen). 

And no, the book is not really 699 pages long.  It's been reformatted to be very easy to read on a screen, and that means that a breezy 300-page book in the traditional printed format converts to twice as many 'pages' on your screen.

The Last Bookstore in America

digitize: the discussion

It's the topic du jour in the book world right now.  Do people really want to read books on a little hand-held computer?  How much will they pay for them?  Where will they buy them?  Can bookstores survive?  Can publishers survive?  Can writers survive?

The irony of releasing a book about the death of bookstores as an ebook is not lost on me. But because this is still a work in progress, I didn't want to commit it to print until I was sure it was really and truly complete.  This seemed like a quick and easy way to get a book out there and to see what readers think.  Besides, people who own Kindles, Sony Readers, iPhones, etc. might be the best audience for a book about the digital book. It's a beta version, going out to you for testing and feedback. It's fun to experiment with this technology, but for me it's just that--an experiment.

But for people in the book world, ebooks are not just an experiment--they're a technological force that's changing the industry. What does this new digital reality mean for writers, editors, publishers, and booksellers? If you're new to this discussion, I'll share a few links of interest here.

Indie Booksellers Debate the e-Book. Can a bookstore sell electronic books?

The E-Book Pricing Debate.  A great discussion at Harper Studio about what e-books should cost and why.  And it continues here.

But What About Piracy?  In which Cory Doctorow made waves for saying, "I really feel like my problem isn’t piracy.  It’s obscurity."

Some People Just Really Don't Like e-Books. In which Sherman Alexie made waves for saying that when he saw a woman on a plane reading a Kindle, "I wanted to hit her." (He later clarified that.)

And here's an interesting essay by thriller writer Kemble Scott about why he decided to release his newest novel first on Scribd. So far, 4771 people have downloaded the book from Scribd.

And on it goes.  Mention e-books to most people and they'll say, "I don't want to read a book on a computer.  I love my books just the way they are."   And I agree with that.  After all, I own a bookstore.  I live in a house full of books.  Some of them are books I wrote myself.  I am pro-printed books.

But you know what?  I lug four or five books with me when I travel.  For someone who's on the road a lot, being able to carry a dozen books in your pocket sounds pretty good.

And interestingly, those digital devices are starting to look very attractive to the people who are most threatened by them--people in the book industry.  Editors can load dozens of manuscripts onto a Kindle rather than lug bundles of paper home on the subway.  Sales reps and reviewers can carry promotional copies around instead of drowning under the 100-200 books they would otherwise be grappling with every week.

For Last Bookstore in America, I imagined a gadget that was so cheap and accessible and easy to use that people weren't just persuaded, they were delighted.  They loved it. Even more than people love their iPhones. But we don't live in that world--not yet, anyway.

So what do you think about digital books?  Ramp it up or pull the plug?

legalize: the discussion

In The Last Bookstore in America, there's this other product that is also being changed forever by the forces around it. You can read more about why the legalization of marijuana interested me as a subplot in a book about bookstores here. I had to answer some questions from my publisher (who has since decided not to publish the novel) about the marijuana plot line, and I thought I'd share those answers with you here.

Who would ever believe that a bookstore could sell pot under the counter?

Welcome to my world. Humboldt County is part of what is known as the "emerald triangle" which includes the adjacent Mendocino and Trinity counties. This is the largest marijuana-producing area in the United States. A study commissioned by Mendocino County estimates that marijuana accounts for a full two-thirds of that county's economy. Humboldt State University economists estimate the value of our marijuana crop at $300-$500 million, larger than all our legal agricultural crops put together.

Thanks to our medical marijuana law, which allows a cardholder to grow up to 99 plants at a time, marijuana is practically legal here already. People stop on the sidewalk and finish their joint before they walk into our bookstore. During the fall harvest season, our cash drawer smells like pot because there’s so much money rubbing up against dope. The City Council recently issued safety guidelines for indoor grow operations to reduce the risk of house fires caused by faulty wiring, and the fire department will come out to people's homes and perform free safety inspections of grow operations.

We have twelve hydroponic shops (for pot growers) as compared to eight garden centers (for gardeners). We also have several retail medical marijuana dispensaries that sell pot in a variety of forms, including tintures and baked goods. Our local Border’s bookstore, hardly an independent-minded business, devotes three prominent endcaps to marijuana books.

Pot growers have a lot of cash they need to spend. A great deal of it goes through the post office in the form of money orders, which are harder to trace, so pot growers use them to pay their bills. One day, a kid in dreadlocks walked up to the window ahead of me and asked for $4000 in money orders. The postman calmly said, “Sorry, kid. The maximum amount of money you can launder through the post office is $3000 per day.”

On the town square, just across from our bookstore, a young woman selling handmade jewelry from a cart was shooed away last week when the Old Town merchants realized she was selling pot, not jewelry, from her cart. There was very little outrage; the owner of another shop just said, “Now, if only she had only been paying sales tax, nobody would've minded.” Believe me, there is nothing implausible about a bookstore selling pot under the counter.

Here is a blog post about the time Scott bought a box of books that included a little residual marijuana in the bottom of the box.

For a wonderful analysis of Humboldt's perspective on the legalization of marijuana, read Ryan Burn's feature on the subject in the North Coast Journal.

How plausible is it to imagine that marijuana could be legalized on a national level?

I wanted to have a little fun with the idea of legalization. I think the best fiction and the best satire pushes against the boundaries of what seems plausible to challenge people's assumptions about how the world might work. The trick, of course, is to do it well enough to get people to buy in. And it’s not that far-fetched; look at Amsterdam.

And-- consider the following:

· A bill was introduced recently in California's State Assembly to legalize and tax marijuana.

· At one of President Obama's town hall meetings, he had agreed to answer the top questions chosen through online voting. The top question, submitted and voted on by 92,000 people, had to do with the legalization of marijuana, forcing him to address the issue on the air. (It was also the top issue submitted by citizens to Change.gov during the transition.)

· Congress is granting the FDA to regulate tobacco, which doesn’t outlaw it but is somewhat similar to the law Congress passes in my novel.

· News stories on NPR and elsewhere about Secretary Clinton's visit to Mexico have highlighted the fact that legalizing marijuana would allow us to better focus law enforcement and prison resources on hard drugs, while generating a good source of tax revenue.

· Government surveys show that 35 million Americans have smoked pot in the last year, and 100 million Americans have smoked pot in their lifetimes (that’s 40 percent of us.)

Won’t people be put off by a novel that has marijuana as a plot line?

35 million Americans can't be wrong. That’s the same number of people that played golf last year, and nobody worries about not being able to sell a book about golf. Showtime’s ‘Weeds’ manages to draw 1.3 million viewers, making it their top-rated show. And I would say that murder and violence are off-putting. Plenty of books celebrate irresponsible drinking, sex, and violence. Novels explore all kinds of taboos.

So.  That's where I'm coming from when I decide to explore the issue in fiction.  But back to reality--what do you think? Legalize it or lock it up?

editorialize: the discussion

When I'm working on a book, I don't usually get feedback from anyone.  Some writers like to work with a critique group, and some share early drafts with their spouse or a good friend.  I don't do any of that.  I work in complete isolation, sharing drafts with my editor only when I think they're ready for her eyes.

But I wanted to get some feedback about Last Bookstore in America. I'd never written a novel before, and I couldn't quite tell whether it worked or not. 

When you paint a painting, you can stand back and look at it, either alone or with a group of friends.  You can say, "Do you think my duck looks like a duck, or does it look more like a boat to you?"  Your friends can say, "Yeah, I see what you mean.  Work on the feathers a little more."

But with a novel, you can't stand back and get one good look at the thing.  It takes a week or so to read a novel.  When people give feedback, they're mostly telling you about their memory of their experience reading the novel.  It's a tricky process, and fraught with peril. 

Nonetheless, I decided to share the manuscript with a few friends.  This was a new experience for me.  People gave good, detailed feedback, and they liked the book more than I thought they would.  I found myself begging these people, most of whom were friends of mine, to be very honest and please tell me (kindly, but honestly) if they thought I should put the book in a drawer and move on with my life.

No one did.

So now it's your turn.  Read more about how I think writers and readers can work together here. And feel free to post your opinions and comments here. I'm listening.

monetize: the discussion

When I first starting writing books (you can find out about my other books here), I was surprised by how secretive, befuddling, and un-transparent the money side of the business was.

For one thing, authors get paid in a very strange way.  We get an advance--a check up front when we sign a contract--and when the book sells, we get paid royalties on every sale only after the advance has been paid back. The amount that an author receives for an advance is generally a secret, unless it's a very large, shocking number, in which case everybody finds out somehow.

But let's take a normal advance of, say, forty thousand dollars.  You might get half up front and half when the book is finished. Your agent gets 15 percent.  So basically, that $40,000 translates to $17,000 up front.  After taxes (including self-employment taxes) you might be left with $10,000.  Let's say you can somehow live on $2000 per month.  That gives you five months' worth of income to get your book written.

When the book comes out, you get paid royalties of anywhere from 7.5% (for paperbacks) to 10-15% (for hardcovers, depending on how many copies sell) of the cover price.  Which means that authors make about a dollar for every paperback that sells, and two or three dollars for every hardcover.

And that money comes in 6-9 months after the book sells.  Writers usually get paid twice a year, once in spring (for July-December's sales) and once in fall (for January-June's sales).  Because bookstores can return unsold books for a full refund, publishers often hold back a 'reserve for returns,' meaning that you don't get paid for all of the books that sold because it is expected that some of them will be returned.

It is also surprisingly difficult for authors to know how well their book is selling.  We obsessively watch our Amazon sales rank because it's the only real-time data we have access to.  Publishers can usually tell you how many copies have been shipped out of their warehouse, but that's not the kind of data that really does you much good.

When I'm on a book tour, people ask me all these questions that I don't really know the answer to:

How many books do you sell the week after you're on NPR?

--I have no idea.

Do you sell more books on the east coast or the west coast?

--Huh.  I don't know.

Do you see an uptick in sales of your older books when a new one comes out?

--Who can say?

So authors operate with an astonishing lack of data about how their own products are selling. That's one of the reasons I'm so interested in the idea of digital books.  Imagine:  real-time data!  Fast payments!  Instant feedback!

So in the name of transparency, here are some facts and figures about The Last Bookstore in America.  I'll update this as I go along, so check back.

Scribd:  On Scribd the book is priced at $1.81.  After Scribd takes its 20%, plus a 40 cent per-transaction fee, that leaves me with $1.05, the same royalty I make on $13.95 trade paperbacks.

Kindle:  On Amazon the book is priced at $2.99.  After Amazon takes its 65%, I'm left with the same $1.05 I make on paperbacks.

So why, you may be asking, do books cost so much if the author only makes a dollar or two?

First, the retailer gets 40-50% of the cover price.

And what's left goes to editing, design, marketing, printing, and distribution, not to mention those advances that don't earn out. None of that comes cheap.  Read a great discussion about book pricing here and here.

But my novel, being a novel-in-progress that has not benefitted from editing, design, marketing, printing, and distribution, is not priced to factor in those expenses.  Why should you pay for what you're not getting?

Here's what I have spent to date.

$10 to register the lastbookstoreinamerica.com domain.

$0 to set up this blog because I already had a TypePad account, which would otherwise run $108/ year. (Or I could have used Blogger for free.)

$200 for cover and blog header design from a freelance designer I found on eLance.

$60 to get the book professionally formatted for the Kindle because I didn't want to learn how to do it myself.

$0 for editing. A few writers and editors I know read the manuscript and offered comments, but I didn't pay them--I traded my time for theirs in a variety of ways--reading their manuscripts, helping them with a website or some other thing they needed assistance with. A couple friends read it and asked for nothing in return, but they know I owe them a favor. (Freelance editors can be found here and typically charge a few thousand bucks.)

$0 for publicity.  I'm getting the word out on Twitter, Facebook, on this blog, and through my friends.

Total:  $270. So that's my budget. This is not, of course, a realistic budget on which the brave new world of digital publishing can be based.  But for a beta test of a novel-in-progress, where all I'm asking is for feedback from a community of readers, it's all pretty feasible.

And I'm still considering a print version if anyone seems interested in that.  More soon.

Meanwhile, I'd love to hear your thoughts about the financial side of what is, after all, a business as well as an art.