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Why I Left My Publisher in Order to Publish a Book
Douglas Rushkoff, Arthur Magazine
I’m getting more questions about my latest book than about any other I’ve written. And this is before the book is even out—before anyone has even read the galleys.
That’s because the questions aren’t about what I wrote, but about how I ended up publishing it: with an independent publisher, for very little money, and through a distribution model that makes it available on only one website. Could I be doing this of sound mind and my own volition? Why would a bestselling author, capable of garnering a six-figure advance on a book, forgo the money, the media, and the mojo associated with a big publishing house?
Because it would make my book twice as expensive for you, half as profitable for me, less purposefully written, and unavailable until about two years from now. In short, the traditional publishing system is nearly dead. And publishing a book under its rules can mean the death of ideas within it, as well. Until it utterly reworks its method, gets rid of a majority of its corporate dead weight, releases its publishing houses from the conglomerates that own them, and embraces direct selling models, the publishing industry will remain rather useless to readers and writers alike.
… The model is simple: work the concept with John, write the book, print and digitize it, and then sell it. No distribution, no marketing. Just put the link online and let people pay by credit card, paypal, or whatever method they choose. No middlemen, no markups, no returns. The book comes out two months after I’ve finished it, instead of two years. The public gets the book or ebook for half of what a “regular” book would cost—and the writer and publisher actually earn more, not less, per actual book sold.
(29 September 2010)
Douglas Rushkoff is a long-time media and technology critic. -BA
Twitter and Facebook cannot change the real world, says Malcolm Gladwell
Tim Adams, The Observer,
Social networks, those loose, busy and self-absorbing communities of Facebookers and Twitterers, have always invited analogies from the insect world. If we are to accept the most common of them, then in the past week, Malcolm Gladwell, provocateur-in-chief at the New Yorker magazine, has poked a sharp stick into the online ants’ nest. The twitterers have responded to his provocation by swarming on to blogs and websites to protect their uniting belief: that the future belongs to them.
Gladwell is a spirited contrarian. His argument in the New Yorker was an attack on the prevalent idea that online social networks represent the future of campaigning and protest, and perhaps – in totalitarian states – of revolution. The bestselling author of The Tipping Point unpicked this notion with typical chutzpah, moving quickly from emotive and carefully selected individual case studies to sweeping universal principles.
(3 October 2010)
The Ten Commandments of social networking
Jonah Lowenfeld, The Jewish Journal
The increasing ubiquity of social media raises the question: How should Jews behave online? Conversations with rabbis, educators and even one lawyer, as well as with a number of Jewish Web innovators led to the following guidelines.
1. I am the Web. “Thy God?” No, but don’t ignore my power.
Using social media is no longer optional. Across the denominational spectrum, leaders of communities and congregations are reaching out to Jews online.
“Maybe we ought to say that we’re people of the Facebook now,” said Rabbi Denise Eger of Congregation Kol Ami in West Hollywood. An avid blogger, Eger recently had her synagogue added to Foursquare, and, last Shavuot, she and other Reform rabbis tweeted biblical verses (“Love your neighbor as yourself #TORAH”) every hour on the hour. Her enthusiasm for social media is unbridled. “It brings torah to where the Jews are,” Eger said. “And that’s what Moses did: He brought Torah down from Sinai to where the Jews were.”
… 3. Don’t hate the slacktivists. It’s all right to click in vain.
Slacktivists?
“It’s like low-level activism,” said Andy Neusner, Web content manager at The Jewish Federations of North America.
The Jewish Community Heroes Campaign, which Neusner manages, is one example. Hundreds of nominees have been voted upon by over 100,000 people because, for many Jews (particularly younger ones with more time than money), clicking is much easier than donating.
“I don’t much care for the term,” said Allison H. Fine, co-author of “The Networked Nonprofit: Connecting With Social Media to Drive Change” (Jossey-Bass: 2010). “It has such a negative connotation to it.”
“People are doing what nonprofits are asking them to do,” Fine said, defending slacktivists. “There’s a lot of friending causes on Facebook and fanning of pages. It’s just where the field has been. There’s nothing wrong about that.”
Organizations, Fine said, must move a person to go beyond that first click by laying out possible next steps. “A number of them would be willing to comment on blogs or post a video or host a house party,” Fine said, “but they have to be asked to do it.”
Lou Cove, executive director of Reboot, a network of Jews thinking creatively about how to adapt Jewish traditions and rituals to today’s world, suggested another possible benefit to slacktivism: “The one advantage of friending and liking—even if you yourself don’t do much more—is that other people are going to see it,” Cove said, “and that might be the person who will get really inspired by it.”
4. Remember the Sabbath, keep it holy—and unplug.
In January, Reboot began circulating and discussing a list of 10 principles intended to help people carve a day of rest out of their hectic weeks. They called it the “Sabbath Manifesto”, and the first idea—“Avoid technology”—attracted the most attention.
Cove recalled a planning meeting that took place in San Francisco earlier this year. “They handed out little burlap bags, called cell phone sleeping bags,” and told people to turn off their cell phones. “This turned out to be quite controversial,” said Cove. Some people liked the idea, Cove said, “but many people said, ‘I can’t shut it off. I can’t part with it. This is crazy.’ ”
Realizing they’d hit a nerve, Reboot threw down the gauntlet, challenging America to a 24-hour National Day of Unplugging , starting at sundown on Friday, March 19, and lasting until sundown on Saturday, March 20. Numerous media outlets covered the story, including the CBS’ Katie Couric. Thousands participated—and not just Jews.
“Jewish life allows for—and kind of mandates—this space and time within which to shut down,” Cove said. “Even though this was not an issue when Shabbos was mandated, it’s just a great gift that we can convey to a broader community, well beyond our own.”
(September 28, 2010)
Suggested by newphew and social media-ist Chris Dumas. -BA
At Flagging Tribune, Tales of a Bankrupt Culture
David Carr, New York Times
In January 2008, soon after the venerable Tribune Company was sold for $8.2 billion, Randy Michaels, a new top executive, ran into several other senior colleagues at the InterContinental Hotel next to the Tribune Tower in Chicago.
Mr. Michaels, a former radio executive and disc jockey, had been handpicked by Sam Zell, a billionaire who was the new controlling shareholder, to run much of the media company’s vast collection of properties, including The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, WGN America and The Chicago Cubs.
After Mr. Michaels arrived, according to two people at the bar that night, he sat down and said, “watch this,” and offered the waitress $100 to show him her breasts. The group sat dumbfounded.
“Here was this guy, who was responsible for all these people, getting drunk in front of senior people and saying this to a waitress who many of us knew,” said one of the Tribune executives present, who declined to be identified because he had left the company and did not want to be quoted criticizing a former employer. “I have never seen anything like it.”
… It was a preview of what would become a rugged ride under the new ownership. Mr. Zell and Mr. Michaels, who was promoted to chief executive of the Tribune Company in December 2009, arrived with much fanfare, suggesting they were going to breathe innovation and reinvention into the conservative company.
By all accounts, the reinvention did not go well. At a time when the media industry has struggled, the debt-ridden Tribune Company has done even worse. Less than a year after Mr. Zell bought the company, it tipped into bankruptcy, listing $7.6 billion in assets against a debt of $13 billion, making it the largest bankruptcy in the history of the American media industry. More than 4,200 people have lost jobs since the purchase, while resources for the Tribune newspapers and television stations have been slashed.
The new management did transform the work culture, however. Based on interviews with more than 20 employees and former employees of Tribune, Mr. Michaels’s and his executives’ use of sexual innuendo, poisonous workplace banter and profane invective shocked and offended people throughout the company. Tribune Tower, the architectural symbol of the staid company, came to resemble a frat house, complete with poker parties, juke boxes and pervasive sex talk.
… Behind the collapse of the Tribune deal and the bankruptcy is a classic example of financial hubris. Mr. Zell, a hard-charging real estate mogul with virtually no experience in the newspaper business, decided that a deal financed with heavy borrowing and followed with aggressive cost-cutting could succeed where the longtime Tribune executives he derided as bureaucrats had failed.
And while many media companies tried cost-cutting and new tactics in the last few years, Tribune was particularly aggressive in planning publicity stunts and in mixing advertising with editorial material. Those efforts alienated longtime employees and audiences in the communities its newspapers served.
… Tribune, home to some of the most important newspapers in the country — The Baltimore Sun, The Hartford Courant and The Orlando Sentinel as well as The Chicago Tribune and The Los Angeles Times — had been battered by big drops in advertising and circulation. According to Mr. Zell, the company was also suffering from stodgy thinking and what he called “journalistic arrogance.”
… Mr. Zell’s first innovation was the deal itself. He used debt in combination with an employee stock ownership plan, called an ESOP, to buy the company, while contributing only $315 million of his own money. Under the plan, the company’s discretionary matching contributions to the 401(k) retirement plan for nonunionized Tribune employees were diverted into an ownership stake. The structure of the deal allowed the Tribune to become an S corporation, which pays no federal taxes, making taxpayers essentially silent partners in the deal.
… “They were like 14-year-old boys — no boundaries at all — but with money and power,” Ms. Richards said in an interview.
… More than the Tribune’s creditors took a haircut: the shares that about 10,000 nonunion employees received in the ESOP deal are now worthless as a result of the bankruptcy, although at the beginning of this year, the company replaced the ESOP plan with a cash incentive contribution. But if and when the Tribune exits bankruptcy, the value of the company will be worth substantially less than when Mr. Zell bought a controlling interest.
(5 October 2010)
Sad fate for some great newspapers. Zell’s management is a grotesque metaphor for the current political and business leadership in America. -BA
