Jon Talton is a a multi-talented journalist, author and Arizona development critic.
I first encountered Talton’s work when I moved to Phoenix in 2002. I thought he was the smartest columnist in the Valley. Yet, I was always surprised at the “love him or hate him” reaction I received when I publicly praised him.
Talton called it as he saw it on local growth and development, and that was not a popular thing to do, though time proved him largely correct. He now writes a business column for The Seattle Times, probably because of his outspokenness in Arizona!
A few years ago, at the urging of my wife Jean, I started to read Talton’s novels and my respect grew exponentially.
He writes a Phoenix-based series called the David Mapstone series, a Cincinnati-based series called The Cincinnati Casebooks series and he wrote Deadline Man. Deadline Man is a must read for newspaper junkies. It’s an Armageddon-type thriller that is damned hard to put down.
I have read every book he has written, and I say without hesitation Talton can write. His books are incredibly entertaining and he draws wonderful characters. To my untrained, journalistic eye, the line between Talton and the big name mystery-thriller authors is frighteningly thin. Big-time fame has eluded Talton, but I wonder for how long.
A few months ago, thanks to Twitter, @jontalton and I met at a Valley coffee shop. That’s where my respect for him skyrocketed.
Talton operates out of a wheelchair due to a debilitating illness and I had never realized it. As someone who is quite noisy about my own physical infirmities, Talton’s stoicism surprised and impressed me. He was a fantastic conversationalist too. I now consider him a friend.
Mimi Johnson is also a friend of mine. I have known Mimi’s husband, Steve Buttry, for several years and I have encountered Mimi three or four times as she accompanied Steve. Mimi is lively, fun and pleasantly irreverent.
Twitter played a role in my relationship with Mimi too. @mimijohnson is a world champion tweeter. She’s pithy, sarcastic and passionate. My wife only follows a few people on Twitter and Mimi is one of them. A couple of mornings a week she will ask me with a knowing chuckle, “did you read Mimi today? She’s on a tear.”
When I first met Mimi she said she was a writer. I will admit I viewed her as a bit of a dilettante because she couldn’t point to anything she had written.
A few months ago that changed with the debut of Gathering String, a book published by the self-publishing arm of Amazon. In my mind that made Mimi a real, live writer.
I found Gathering String a delightful read. It’s part political intrigue, part paean to an emerging journalism world and part mystery-thriller. It has a little whiff of romance novel to it and sometimes I feared melodrama was just around the corner. Yet, the book engaged me, intrigued me and rewarded me. It had enough surprises to keep me in the game.
Last week my friend Talton published a column he called The Stand.
And that’s where my two friends collide.
Talton challenged Amazon. He informed his readers he was going to boycott Amazon by boycotting a book store panel. He then called his fellow authors to arms against Amazon.
Talton is not engaging in this battle because of Amazon’s alleged predatory pricing. He says he is unnerved because Amazon is not a very good corporate citizen in Seattle, but that’s not the reason for his ire.
I would have been comfortable with Talton’s raging battle on either of those grounds. However, I am decidedly uncomfortable with Talton’s stated reason for cancelling an appearance at a book signing because of Amazon.
He cancelled because one of the people scheduled to be on the panel was published by Amazon’s self-publishing arm—the same self-publishing arm that published Mimi Johnson’s Gathering String.
Talton is candid when he describes his decision in the column. He writes
“On a purely selfish level, I labored in the vineyard for 20 years before I was first published, and published by a respected New York house. I didn’t have the Ivy League or Iowa Writers’ Workshop credentials, didn’t live in New York and go to the parties where one met the “right people.” I was just stubborn. I wanted it badly, to be a published author, and not from a vanity press no matter how tarted up and backed by big money. In the years since my first book, I have worked hard to improve each book, for every time I had to win a legitimate publisher. I would be damned if I was going to share the table with a self-published writer. Harsh? Perhaps.”
I sure think it is harsh. And, I think it’s mistaken. To me, Talton is saying ‘I suffered and by God everybody else should too.”
I despise that position. I find that decrying the fact that people no longer have to wait for the “lucky break’ to get their words in print to be much like endorsing hazing. People who go through initiation into fraternities or sororities always seem intent on making sure the people who come after them suffer just as much as they did. I find that silly and dangerous.
The dynamic tools of our digital age have democratized every process known to man. I am damned happy publishing is one. These tools have given access to the “people living in the vineyard.”
I am incredibly happy Mimi Johnson got her words in print. It would have been shameful if her work got blocked by an overworked, arbitrary and capricious decision-maker in a publishing house. I am convinced the line between Johnson’s book and many “published” books is just as thin as the line between Talton and the big-name authors.
In “The Stand” Talton fears for the sustained life of small publishers like Scottsdale’s Poisoned Pen Press. I think Barbara Peters (Editor-in-Chief) of Poisoned Press is one of the coolest people in the Valley. I don’t want her house to die either.
But in the same way I oppose any unnatural effort to save newspapers, I oppose any unnatural effort to save publishers. I also find it short-sighted and negative to assume that opening access to book publishing to all authors will destroy publishers like Poisoned Press.
I have faith in markets. Mimi Johnson tells me that she is facing a slow slog with her self-published effort. The market is obviously not completely comfortable with this news approach. It is will take time. Meanwhile established publishers, big and small, still have many opportunities to compete in this new redefined market. The market will speak.
If those publishers have difficulty competing it will be because of Amazon’s potential predatory practices, not because it gave access to aspiring authors to take their best shot.
Hazing is never good and I am happy it’s no longer a part of publishing.
And despite our disagreement, I still think Jon Talton is a helluva talent
4 Comments
So refreshing to see two of the smartest people I know, and greatest of friends, have an intellectually honest and respectful interaction. There is hope! TC
I agree with Tom! Tim, you’re one of the smartest guys I know. And now I’m itching to read Talton’s books.
Congratulations to Jon Talton on his hard-earned success. His books look like the kind of books I enjoy, and I look forward to reading them.
I’ve reviewed leadership and management book manuscripts for Berrett-Koehler Publishing for a dozen years or more. In 2007, the BK acquisitions editor sent out the following statistic on book publishing:
1. A book has less than a 1% chance of being stocked in an average bookstore.
2. Average book sales are shockingly small, and falling fast. In 2004, 950,000 titles out of the 1.2 million tracked by Nielsen Bookscan sold fewer than 99 copies. Another 200,000 sold fewer than 1,000 copies. Only 25,000 sold more than 5,000 copies. The average book in America sells about 500 copies” (Publishers Weekly, July 17, 2006)
3. Book industry sales are flat, despite the explosion of new books.
4.Bookstore sales peaked in 2004 and have been declining since.
5.It is getting harder and harder every year to sell books.
6. Most books today are selling only to the authors’ and publishers’ communities.
7. Most book marketing today is done by authors, not by publishers.
8. The bookselling world is in a never-ending state of turmoil.
I’ve published my essays on leadership and life via email subscriptions and my internet site since 1997. I’ve have more readers around the world each single month since 1997 than most published books ever have.
Now retired, I plan to self-publish 4 or 5 books. I’m not interested in making money or in getting speeches or consulting jobs. That work is behind me. I just want my work preserved for the occasional reader who might benefit from my life’s work.
When a published writer shares a stage with the author of a self-published book everyone knows the published author begins the conversation with more professional status. But the published author and the self-published author are also human beings with life-histories. The published author might end up learning a thing or two from the self-published human being.
Updated publishing statistics:
The 10 Awful Truths about Book Publishing
Steven Piersanti, President, Berrett-Koehler Publishers Updated March 6, 2012
1. The number of books being published every year has exploded. Bowker reports that over three million books were published in the U.S. in 2010 (May18, 2011 Bowker Report). The number of new print titles issued by U.S. publishers has grown from 215,777 in 2002 to 316,480 in 2010. And in 2010 more than 2.7 million “non-traditional” titles were also published, including self-published books, reprints of public domain works, and other print-on-demand books. In addition, hundreds of thousands of English-language books are published each year outside the U.S.
2. Book industry sales are declining, despite the explosion of books published.
Adult nonfiction print unit book sales peaked in 2007 and have declined each year since
then, according to BookScan (Publishers Weekly, January 2, 2012). Similarly, bookstore
sales peaked in 2007 and have fallen each year since then, according to the U.S. Census
Bureau (Publishers Weekly, February 20, 2012).
3. Despite skyrocketing e-book sales, overall book sales are still shrinking.
“Print Declines Outpace Digital Gains” was the Publishers Weekly’ headline of
September 19, 2011. For the full year of 2011, a 17.1% decline in print sales outweighed
a 117.3% increase in e-book sales, resulting in a 5.8% decline in combined print and ebook
sales, according to the Association of American Publishers (Publishers Weekly,
March 5, 2012). Similarly, combined print and e-book sales of adult trade books fell by
14 million units in 2010, according to the August 9, 2011 BISG BookStats report. The
total book publishing pie is not growing, yet it is being divided among ever more digital
and print products.
4. Average book sales are shockingly small, and falling fast. Combine the explosion of books published with the declining total sales and you get shrinking sales of each new title. According to BookScan – which tracks most bookstore,online, and other retail sales of books (including Amazon.com) – only 263 million books were sold in 2011 in the U.S. in all adult nonfiction categories combined (Publishers Weekly, January 2, 2012). The average U.S. nonfiction book is now selling less than 250 copies per year and less than 3,000 copies over its lifetime. And very few titles are big sellers. Only 62 of 1,000 business books released in 2009 sold more than 5,000 copies, according to an analysis by the Codex Group (New York Times, March 31, 2010).
5. A book has less than a 1% chance of being stocked in an average bookstore.
For every available bookstore shelf space, there are 100 to 1,000 or more titles competing for that shelf space. For example, the number of business titles stocked ranges from less than 100 (smaller bookstores) to approximately 1,500 (superstores). Yet there are 250,000-plus business books in print that are fighting for that limited shelf space.
6. It is getting harder and harder every year to sell books. Many book categories have become entirely saturated, with a surplus of books on every topic. It is increasingly difficult to make any book stand out. Each book is competing with more than ten million other books available for sale, while other media are claiming more and more of people’s time. Result: investing the same amount today to market a book as was invested a few years ago will yield a far smaller sales return today.
7. Most books today are selling only to the authors’ and publishers’ communities.
Everyone in the potential audiences for a book already knows of hundreds of interesting
and useful books to read but has little time to read any. Therefore people are reading
only books that their communities make important or even mandatory to read. There is
no general audience for most nonfiction books, and chasing after such a mirage is usually
far less effective than connecting with one’s communities.
8. Most book marketing today is done by authors, not by publishers. Publishers have managed to stay afloat in this worsening marketplace only by shifting more and more marketing responsibility to authors, to cut costs and prop up sales. In recognition of this reality, most book proposals from experienced authors now have an
extensive (usually many pages) section on the authors’ marketing platform and what the
authors will do to publicize and market the books. Publishers still fulfill important roles in helping craft books to succeed and making books available in sales channels, but
whether the books move in those channels depends primarily on the authors.
9. No other industry has so many new product introductions. Every new book is a new product, needing to be acquired, developed, reworked,designed, produced, named, manufactured, packaged, priced, introduced, marketed,warehoused, and sold. Yet the average new book generates only $50,000 to $200,000 in
sales, which needs to cover all of these expenses, leaving only small amounts available
for each area of expense. This more than anything limits how much publishers can invest
in any one new book and in its marketing campaign.
10. The book publishing world is in a never-ending state of turmoil.
The thin margins in the industry, high complexities of the business, intense competition,churning of new technologies, and rapid growth of other media lead to constant turmoil in bookselling and publishing (such as the bankruptcy of Borders and many other stores). Translation: expect even more changes and challenges in coming months and years.
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