The Future of Barnes and Noble?

I was somewhere in my early twenties when a Barnes and Noble opened in Vorhees NJ. I was probably a year out of the Army and was probably just getting around to going out with my Mom on a book hunting expedition like we'd done when I was younger. There's no doubt I inherited a love of reading and books from good ole' Mom an although our tastes varied severely we both enjoyed going to bookstores and libraries together. A Borders opened around the same time in the same part of South Jersey, I forget which was actually first, and I still recall hearing about them first when I was overseas in Germany.

"Oh Dave, you have to check this store out. It's ten  times the size of the B.Dalton and Waldenbooks! You're going to love it!""

And when I got home we did go and it was amazing. Aisle after aisle of sci-fi, fantasy and military books. Virtually every single thing King, Clancy, Rice or Heinlen had ever written. Magazines I didn't even know existed. As a young, idealistic Communications Major at a local Community College dreaming of transferring to a 4 year school with a "big" film program I was able to actually touch, buy and read the fabled magazines called Variety and Hollywood Reporter.

I discovered Science Fiction Age Magazine there and fell deeply in love with its magnificently illustrated pages and would later subscribe to it for four years before their demise. I had read King's "The Dark Tower" in High School and was completely blown away by it. While I had heard of follow up novels I'd never seen them overseas (real small Army Exchange in Budingen, pre-internet folks) but I finally found them in the massive, sprawling aisles of these book cathedrals. I held the gleaming, brilliant paperbacks of "The Drawing of the Three" and "The Wastelands" and was truly happy.

They were (and can still be) wondrous places for readers and book lovers but times have very clearly changed. In the wake of the demise of Borders (which usually is of extreme benefit to a direct competitor) B&N is clearly on the rocks.           

The Wall Street Journal released an online article discussing how B&N is seeking "the next chapter", both a play on words regarding them as a book store and cynical predictions that B&N is doomed to follow Borders into a Chapter 13 demise.

Read the full WSJ article here.

Quick tangent: Flash forward some 18 odd years since that first trip to a B&N and my family had moved to Baltimore MD in 2007. We had our third child soon thereafter and although my Navy Officer salary was very nice there was little dough to spare. I had for years been in the habit of buying my books off Amazon, usually "used" ones. This practice rubs some authors the wrong way because the used book seller and not the author profits but hey...buy one book or three...save a tree maybe? Don't throw stones folks. In short, I generally did not go into the local B&N and there was no local Borders.

Just before this past Christmas my older daughter had a Girl Scout function where they were wrapping presents in stores. One night I took her to the B&N, realizing it was the first time in about two years I had been in one. I had heard and read about how the retailer had changed up their store scheme. And then I saw it for myself.

Aisle after aisle of mugs, stuffed animals, nick-nacks and decorative desk top crap.

The giant, three aisle Lego display was pretty cool but they didn't have the deluxe Millenium Falcon though.

Basically, they had about a third less book space then they'd traditionally had.  

I had a B&N gift card burning a hole in my pocket for about a year, the previous X-mas, so I did pick up some crisp, new books, something I said I no longer did regularly.

The picture here is, obviously, from the New Yorker and I don't think it takes an analyst to deduce that they're parodying the current B&N store makeup. Credit where credit is due: I first saw this cover on Kris Rusch's page and she makes an interesting point that B&N regularly advertises in the New Yorker (pays their bills) yet the NY'er couldn't resist taking a poke at them.

I guess they felt that strongly about it.

I think the marginalization of their book space (which is supposed to build retail sales) is but a symptom of the bigger problem. Poor and increasingly lower paper sales. Nook is a good seller but the WSJ article highlights how B&N is now admitting, in addition to poor paper sales, that their investment in the Nook technology (which I imagine was substantial) is not quite paying off for them, especially not in the face of brutal, exploding Amazon competition.

In short there's trouble on the horizon. If B&N were to go under that would leave roughly 200 Books-A-Million stores, a smaller retailer call Atlantic Books and your mom-and-pop store, unless I missed any others.

Like I said: 2012 is the year of change. The year to watch.

Good times

News Flash: Traditional Publishing Model is Broken!

For those that purvey sites and blogs regarding independent e-publishing this news may be more of an epiphanic admission than a dazzling headline. The ranks of authors who have either forgone or abandoned traditional publishers for the numerous independent channels in recent year has swelled and, perhaps, hit a landmark plateaus this past Christmas shopping season (in conjunction with record e-reader and tablet device sales) as evident by some very high profile success stories.

In a Digital Book World interview released today Hyperion CEO, Ellen Archer makes a statement about the traditional publishing business model: This business model, while it’s never been great, is broken; 2012 is going to be about finding new business models.

Read the full Digital Book World article here

Some key points from the discussion and other admissions are below. My cynical thoughts in red:

- Royalties will likely continue to go down if not disappear for authors. Big payouts are still happening for select books but Archer admits that they "don't generate revenue". In short, they're not seeing returns on their investments. Expect those investments to diminish or disappear altogether.

Then the list of reasons to pursue traditional publishing just got smaller by one! 


- Big 6 publishers, as part of larger media conglomerates, will look to find and develop multi-media properties, IE; novelizations of films and TV shows and vice versa. Archer cites the success of Tie-in Novels on the ABC "Castle" TV show.

Not every book will get this treatment. Will they survive by only publishing tie-in or "movie" books?

- Managing both print and digital production will require restructuring of staff and personnel. Right now they're figuring a lot of things out.

Work fast. Your NY rent and overhead costs aren't going to shrink.

-  The successful "book" publisher of the future needs to move away from the concept of producing "books" and in producing a "reading experience."

Which is what independent authors are delivering to readers by themselves now...without giving away 50-70% royalties for editing and cover design. Just saying.

What we can take away from this as aspiring authors? My take:

- As a "Newb" with zero track record, zero readership and zero marketability (IE: ZERO contractual negotiating leverage) Stay the hell away from traditional publishers and their contracts.

- Publish independently and start earning now!

- When I say "Earn" I'm not talking only about dollars: start earning your readership...start earning your branding as an author and start earning your marketability.

- I'm not against signing with any Legacy publisher (I think Amazon is quickly becoming the top choice for Newbs) but I consider it only prudent when one has the leverage to omit punitive terms such as no-compete clauses and to possible secure higher digital pay out rates.

- The Big 6 need to figure out (and stake out) what their place is going to be in the new digital market. Right now my opinion is that they're grasping at straws with still-born attempts at royalty grabs like "Book Country Fair" in the face of disintegrating paper sales and are getting lucky in the short term with back lists of titles that are abhorrently overpriced on digital but are still selling.

If anything I give Mrs. Archer credit for having the insight (and the guts) to come out publicly and say: "We're failing at this new digital thing. We're broken and we need to get fixed."

For writers and publishers 2011 was historic but 2012 will be the year of change.

This is the year to watch. Very closely.

Good times.

A Crazy Ass Christmas Season And My 2012 Writer Resolutions!

So the heralded 2011 Christmas season has come at last as has the much anticipated Kindle sales rush. I posted earlier in the year about the skyrocketing Black Friday Kindle Fire sales. As was discussed all year by many with dogs in this race a lot of phenomenally good things have happened for E-publishing.

Side note: I thought the pic here was hilarious and aptly illustrated how some writers are figuratively "getting some" this holiday sales season.

Back to the Amazon Kindle discussion. This news below is from Dec 15 but describes a pretty good precedent to assume sales up to today, read the Amazon press release here.

Here's a standout comment;

“Kindle Fire is the most successful product we’ve ever launched – it’s the bestselling product across all of Amazon for 11 straight weeks, we’ve already sold millions of units, and we’re building millions more to meet the high demand. In fact, demand is accelerating – Kindle Fire sales increased week over week for each of the past three weeks. People are buying Kindle Fire because it's a simple, fully-integrated service that makes it easy to do the things they love.

So, to overview some obvious ramifications:

1.) There are now a mutiple of millions of new e-reading devices and e-reading households out there right now.

2.) The silly little kiddie fad of E-reading is officially a cornerstone business of the worlds largest bookseller.

3.) More e-readers means more devices, more people reading, more people buying affordable and instantly delivered material. More "new favorites" being discovered and even more of those author's titles being bought.

4.) More book sales all with a royalty return (at 2.99$ or even more if at a higher price) comparable to that of a top priced hardcover. This is less and less dollars for Big 6 houses, not that I'm a DIE-BIG 6-DIE pundit but it's relevant to see how their declining profits affect their interaction with the digital market.

Easy math here. What E-commerce has been doing since day 1.

For a fresh example feel free to click over to Mr. Konraths site. He's always been open and vocal about his sales. Whether you think he posts his numbers to "stick-it" to the Legacy Man or to inspire newbs over what's possible is irrelevant. He's done very well in recent years publishing on his own.

This week though the man made 10k$ in one day!

So we all know what's possible and what can happen when planets align, whether those celestial bodies be comprised of luck, talent, perseverance or an amalgamation of all three, and an indie pub becomes a breakout...whether the overnight success took two months, years or decades.

Before my resolutions, this note:

I wanted my Novella "The Doomsday Door" (see "Coming Soon" for a description...that needs updating of course ) uploaded to throw my hat in this seasons sales and downloading rainstorm but it simply didn't happen. A highly qualified failure, I think, but I won't go into any long, painful overviews of my current personal and family challenges, no one likes a blogging complainer. So, having (seemingly) missed the boat this holiday season all I can do is to look ahead to 2012 and start drawing more lines in sand.

Which brings us to:

My 2012 "Goal" resolutions

- Finish my final revisions of "The Doomsday Door."

- Allocate funds for editing and cover design of "The Doomsday Door."

- Execute said editing and cover design for "The Doomsday Door."

- Upload "The Doomsday Door" and finally become an e-published author.

- E-market and promote the living hell out of "The Doomsday Door."

- Repeat this process for "Subversion", "The Ambassador" and "Holy War".

In short, meeting these goals will give myself a full length novel, two novellas and a (as of right now) one short by this time next year. Not a bad "footprint" for  first year of self-publishing I think. As is the mantra for setting goals...all attainable, are achievable by me alone and are not dependent on anyone else.

My 2012 "Writer" resolutions.

- I will write everyday, even if it's only 100 words or less or only for a few minutes. I need to keep my head in my stories everyday until they are complete. The words will all add up to finished works which is key.

- For the love of God I need to nail down some good, experience, non-family related Beta readers..can someone, anyone...throw me a bone here!

- Continue to enhance my web presence. I will expand and utilize my unused Twitter and my "writer" Facebook pages as I have with my much improved blog. Got two compliments on my blog this past month...still only at 5 followers as of this writing but it's 5 more than 0. Also more than some guys with actual books available online.

- Continue to formulate and analyze my marketing strategies and plans...IE: identify what book review and reader blogs I will submit to. 

- I will stay optimistic because while success is always possible it's rarely easy. The first month(s) or maybe even year(s) could be dismal in terms of readership and sales. If so...tough shit...that's life...I've had much worse problems in my 39 years. The readers are out there and it may take a lot of time and effort to breakthrough to them in any respectable number.

- I will analyze and objectively evaluate everything I do...plans need to be flexible and change should never be prohibited. 

- I will follow the examples of bestselling authors but not necessarily their footsteps. Every writer is a different creative entity and cannot expect similarities in how their work is received.    

- I will continue to evaluate my writing, always remembering that almost every creative professional out there has a story on how their personal favorite work is not their most popular. I will objectively evaluate myself as a Science Fiction writer, as a Thriller writer...as an Action Adventure writer. many writers have "switched" genre's and found true success. I will always consider all creative options. 

- I will remember that this is a marathon and not a sprint. If I do find some level of success this year it will be roughly 24 years in the making.

- I will believe in myself as a talented writer capable of delivering to a readership...first and always...I need to be able to fill in the blank areas when no one else does.

- I will truly love and appreciate my beautiful, young wife for always listening to my (thus far) bullshit posturing on how I'm going to be a successful writer someday (going on since about '98) and how she still endures me tapping away when I could be doing something else.    

That's it for now, best of luck and a happy 2012 to all!

Good Times.

Hachette Job!

Another heated discussion topic in the ongoing Indie vs. Traditional publishing debate recently was, if you didn't already know, the now infamous "inside memo" leaked from Big 6 house Hachette Book Group.

As is often the case of late, a topic regarding Traditional vs. E-pub was first addressed over on Mr. Konrath's site and was commented on (dissected and thoroughly Fisk'd) by JA Konrath and Barry Eisler, here. The analysis and criticism was done so flawlessly by two top indie authors with substantial traditional publishing backgrounds (which I lack) and knowledge that I won't regurgitate or attempt to imitate it. I will however provide my own commentary here.

The main criticisms of the "memo" are that it serves to remind Hachette employees and customers of their "relevance" in the face of the exploding e-publishing market, a significant portion of which represent independently published authors.

Sounds OK, normal practice for big business, but the problem is the extremely vague, unspecific, unsupported and unsubstantive buzz-word laden bullet points of the statement. It draws (and justly deserves) scrutiny and questioning of what value traditional publishing still offers to aspiring authors seeking publication as paper distribution models continue to diminish and the merit of taking disproportionately large royalty shares, particularly in the digital format.  

Not having been traditionally published I can, however, offer these observations from practical work experience: whenever you need to remind someone what you do; you're probably not doing it.

Highlights of the memo included these competencies, which we can argue are wholly unremarkable attributes for any service based business:

- They curate and nurture talent, foster rich relationships and collaborate on content.

- Venture capitalist's, investing in ideas.

- Offering expertise in sales and distribution, ensuring broadest distribution possible.

- Brand builder and "excitement generator" (this one drew some particularly harsh and humorous criticism's)

- Copyright and IP protector.

As was discussed, virtually none of the attributes cited in the memo are unique to any publisher, or for that matter, most customer service or product generation business's. The primary questions and criticism's generated were how this memo was completely devoid of recognition for the e-publishing growth and the emerging issues traditional publishers will face against this growing market.

Barry Eisler went as far as to mockingly refer to it as Bullshit Bingo for the repeated use of unsubstantive, vague and general slogans and business buzz words while not addressing any of the significant issues facing traditional and why authors should still pursue them.

As a newb looking at the fork in the road I'll just throw out some random issues that concern me (and many others) when choosing an appropriate publishing path to pursue.

- Agency model and gatekeepers; It's understandable that a certain level of quality is required for any publisher, hence gatekeepers and submission guidelines, but what we're finding out time and time again from successful independents is that it's more or less a contest of appeasing individual preferences within this system. Editor loved it, marketing department hated it, sorry.

- The timeline: 18 months or longer to see publication.

- The value of publication itself: retail bookshelves are going away. Quickly! Where is the remaining value in pursuing a spot on one.

- The true value of the "creative collaboration". Cover design, formatting and editing can be gotten, easily and professionally, for a flat charge leaving the majority of royalties intact.

-  The Marketing Push! This time in their statement was met with criticism at best and outright mockery at worst by many writers with traditional experience that I have seen posts from.

- Windowing, part of the 18 month (avg) time frame that manuscript see during their publishing. This is a cornerstone argument by indie pundits like Konrath that the digital release is intentionally held until the paper release. The complaint is that this is done to maximize the sale of a paper release by restricting the digital distribution, thereby benefiting the publisher (and not the author) who still controls said paper distribution process.

What is also clear is that the profitability of digital distribution vs paper is very evident as publishers are now moving, aggressively, to produce more digital titles, either through back list titles still under contract or through new "services" such as Penguin;s Book Country Fair, which was widely discussed with much negative criticism.

The commercial challenges of "real" Science Fiction.

At the risk of being a lazy blog poster today I'm offering links to a trio of (rather brilliant) roundtable discussions from Locus Online, the magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy.

The table consists of of a panel of SF writer and editors discussing many of the issues facing SF. Also known as "hard", "speculative" or even "real" Science Fiction, depending if you lean that far to the end of the snob-o-meter.

Some discussion points on the intricacies of writing in genre that really stood out to me, not only as a reader but also as a writer still trying to find his place on the Sci-Fi---SF spectrum. A lot of the issues discussed in this rountable have been questions I've been asking myself about my attempts within the genre for a long time now.

- Should you write what's commercial...or what you like?

- Most SF books ARE NOT and DO NOT become break-out hits vs. other genere's. Why am I writing it?

- I will NEVER be as smart as a Brin, Bear, Baxter, Banks  (lot of B's, I know) Niven, Poul, Stephenson, etc. Why am I even trying to write in the same genre?

- Since I'm NEVER going to write from some brilliant arena of scientific extrapolation..won't I forever be a Sci-Fi HACK!

- Conversely...seeing as how the overwhelming majority of the "serious" SF bloggers and readers (and more than a few authors) regularly glare down their tenured, credentialed noses at the "cheap seats", the SF humor novels, the serialized Star Trek, Star Wars, Video game novelizations, space marines vs. an evil alien/bug/cyborg empire shoot-em-ups, etc...(most common criticism: ack...weak science)...why is the "real SF" consistently outsold by them?  

- What's the subject matter of the biggest grossing, most anticipated summer movies...sci-fi? Save fantasy standouts like Rowling and Meyers, why isn't this reflected more in the publishing world?

Here's the opening, links below:

A question came up: Has contemporary science fiction become too self-absorbed, or does it still have the capacity to cross over to a mass audience? If so, who are the authors and books that have managed to do so? And who do the folks in our Roundtable discussion group think are likely candidate to break out of the genre and find a large non-genre readership in the future–and why?


Cecelia Holland, Stefan Dziemianowicz, Paul Di Filippo, Ellen Klages, Karen Lord, Carolyn Cushman, Elizabeth Hand, N. K. Jemisin, Gary K. Wolfe, Rachel Swirsky, James Patrick Kelly, Jeffrey Ford, Gardner Dozois, Paul Graham Raven, Rich Horton, Russell Letson, and Guy Gavriel Kay all join in the discussion.

Roundtable #1

Roundtable #2

Roundtable #3

Extremely interesting reading regardless of your chosen genre regarding the issue of whether or not to write popular and commercial.

Your thoughts?

Kindle Fire Black Friday Sales News

We we're all expecting to see huge sales for Kindles this season, especially from the new and highly touted Kindle Fire. Here's a press release for you:

SEATTLE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–(NASDAQ: AMZN) Amazon.com, Inc. today announced that this Black Friday was the best ever for the Kindle family and the popular Kindle Fire remained the bestselling product across all of Amazon since its introduction 8 weeks ago. The bestselling Kindle family – the $79 Kindle, $99 Kindle Touch, $149 Kindle Touch 3G and the $199 Kindle Fire – are available now at www.amazon.com/kindle and at over 16,000 retail locations throughout the United States.

“This was a great Black Friday for Target and for Kindle Fire, which was the bestselling tablet in our stores on Black Friday,” said Nik Nayar, vice president merchandising, Target. “We’re excited so many guests chose Target as their destination for the new family of Kindle devices and we’re sure Kindle Fire will continue to be at the top of wish lists this holiday season.”“Even before the busy holiday shopping weekend, we’d already sold millions of the new Kindle family and Kindle Fire was the bestselling product across all of Amazon.com. 

Black Friday was the best ever for the Kindle family – customers purchased 4X as many Kindle devices as they did last Black Friday – and last year was a great year,” said Dave Limp, Vice President, Amazon Kindle. “In addition, we’re seeing a lot of customers buying multiple Kindles – one for themselves and others as gifts – we expect this trend to continue on Cyber Monday and through the holiday shopping season.”

Four times as many kindle sales as last year and multiple devices per household!

I consider this monumental news for independent e-pubbers. I was sort of expecting to see sales perhaps not hit the stellar highs that were forcasted due to (some) poor reviews and public criticisms centered around how the Fire stacks up to the I-pad, that other super popular tablet.

Personally I thought these were unfair comparisons based on a number of points. First would be price point, they two devices may look very much alike but both are clearly marketed with a different end user in mind, Fire is clearly not designed as a PC replacement at any level, it's clearly designed as an advanced e-reader with web capability.

To me it's apples and oranges especially considering the next plateau for tablet PC's is to impart retina displays, an exceedingly high level of screen ddefinition that will enable technical professional use; for Dr's and pilots as an example. Conversely, no tablet, high priced or otherwise, has yet to deliver an effective e-ink display, which is what makes e-readers so much more enjoyable and desirable than say, your smart phone for reading!

Link to full press release here

As for an expanded picture of expected continued sales into Christmas and beyond: take a look at this report back in June from "All Things D" A WSJ web news site:

Amazon’s Kindle e-reader, a gawky novelty just three years ago, is now a big business getting bigger. Really big.

Jeff Bezos and company continue not to release sales numbers for the devices, but everyone else keeps guessing. Citigroup’s Mark Mahaney, an Amazon bull, has bumped up his sales estimates, and now thinks the company will sell 17.5 million devices this year, and another 26 million in 2012.

The big picture is that Mahaney thinks Kindle readers and books will generate $6.1 billion for Amazon next year–nearly 10 percent of its overall sales. Again, remember: This business didn’t exist until Thanksgiving 2007.

Full story here

All of this on top of news that traditional publishers are adopting more aggressive e-pub models, pay to e-pub services are sprouting up agencies are seeking out, contracting with e-pub services and vice versa.

Quick! Someone go over to Konrath's blog and tell him his tone sucks...or something else...not a lot else for anti-indie pundits to say regarding his long standing message and predictions.

Back to work...going to be a lot of new, future customers out there.

Good times. 



Smashwords Seeking Agented Writers For Backlist E-publishing.

In a hot off-the-web PW release today, Smashwords founder Mark Coker is cited as being in the process of pursing agents and agented writers for the purposes (obviously) of providing additional content to the Smashwords e-list of available titles.

The explosive growth of E-pub has clearly made the case for the E-Pub commerce value of back-list, out of print, and midlist titles. "Never published" authors (B.V. Larson and Ms. Hocking anyone?) established authors with out of print backlists and completed works that were passed over by publishers have all contributed to the current "gold rush" of E-pub. These results are now very public in the movement that traditional publishers are now taking to adapt to more profitable E-pub models.

This is clearly an example of a smart market expansion on the part of Smashwords as increasing numbers of established writers are no doubt looking  at E-pub options, now that the platform is clearly out of the alleged "fad" stage (as was widely alleged by critics of the market and those resistant to the clear changes in reader preference) and is now poised for explosive global growth.

The questions that come to my mind are of the possible rewards, profitability and the beneficiaries. My thoughts in a sec but first: 

From PW:

"Smashwords, the California-based company that converts and digitally distributes Word files uploaded through its interface, is offering a suite of services to literary agents. The company will allow agents to digitally convert their authors' files, for free, and also provide agents with metadate on the files, as well as merchandising at Smashwords.com.

So the Agents handle the consversion, uploading and management leaving the writer free to write. Ok, sounds like a good deal.

Speaking to the decision to court agents, in particular, Smashwords founder Mark Coker said many authors, with out-of-print titles, would prefer to let their agents handle things like digital publication. "Agents represent the most commercially successful authors. These authors are now asking their agents to add e-publishing services to exploit the potential of their reverted-rights works and unpublished works. Although all authors have the freedom to self-publish, many would prefer to delegate the e-publishing and back office duties to their agent so the author can focus their energy on writing."

This practice is reflective of  number of predictions that have been made by popular bloggers regarding the future of publishing, one I believe in, that cottage industries will sprout offering writers the benefits of managing the plethora of duties required for successful 'independent' e-publishing. Most likely, for a cut. I think it goes without saying that the quality of the end result of such arrangements will depend wholly on the quality of the agent in question managing them.

Here's the rest:

Through a change in its metadata tagging, Smashwords will now have a field for publisher and agent, where previously there was only the option to indicate a publisher for a title. Agents, who can create an account for free, will also be able to have the titles they upload onto Smashwords appear in co-branded Smashwords bookstore that will group represented titles by agency.

Interesting visibility boost tactic though I doubt many readers search for work based on agency.

Smashwords does not charge to convert files, but does take a 10% commission on the list price of books it converts and then sells through other retailers, such as Apple and B&N; it takes a 15% commission on titles sold directly through Smashwords. A number of agencies have titles available on Smashwords, including Dystel & Goderich and the Beverly Slopen Agency.

Recently this October McMillan Bello and the Curtis Brown agency announced they were releasing 520 previously out of print titles starting in 2011 and into 2012. This raised eyebrows and criticisms alike as it seemed unlikely that any degree of quality could be applied to that many uploaded works in that small a timeframe.  It was also noted that a number of the authors were deceased raising some questions about who was best being served by this arrangement. At the outset it sounds likea good deal for widows and surviving children who'se deceased relatives work was generating 0 dollars to perhaps make something. Read the full story here.

This issue arose even earlier when Dystel-Goderich announced it's own e-publishing service which was touted by some as a conflict of interest and a "royalties" grab, full story on paidcontent.org here. with a link to a new release below it.

Are writers entering a new age of  predatory royalty and rights grabbers? To be sure there are a number of questionable operations in place attempting to lure new writers in (see my thoughts on Penguins Book Country Fair below) but I'll keep my opinions objective regarding Smashwords agent outreach for now.

Your thoughts?