The Abbeville Manual of Style

Illustration by Molly Crabapple, courtesy Booksquare.com

Kassia Krozser is one of the more formidable presences in the online book world today. A founding partner of digital media site Medialoper as well as the author of the popular Booksquare weblog, she is known for her informed, passionate, often mordant commentary on contemporary publishing. In a previous recommendation of Booksquare, we noted: “Kassia Krozser is one of our true kindred spirits on the Web…Declaring that she ‘lavishes all her adoration on the publishing industry because, like a child who needs firm, corrective guidance, publishers and authors need Booksquare,’ she makes tongue-in-cheek pontificating look like taking candy (firmly and correctively) from a baby.” Today we are pleased to present a full-blown interview with Ms. Krozser, in which we discuss everything from the ideal e-book audience to the much-maligned romance novel to why “the clock is ticking” for traditional publishers.

AMoS: What is the Booksquare origin story? When you launched the site, did you expect it to attain its current level of popularity?

KK: Booksquare has a origin story. And it has a rebirth story. We’ll go with the second one because it’s more fun. I started blogging in the vacuum known as Radio Userland. I’m not insulting the software or community, but I couldn’t figure out how to get noticed (writers…what is it about us?). Of course, what I was doing was completely wrong, blog-wise, writing-wise. So I went back into my cave and rethought my thoughts about blogging. Once I understood what I wanted to blog about, I practiced a while (no, seriously, I did about a month of practice blogging before posting my first piece) and settled on a voice.

Which morphed almost immediately. For reasons that made sense at the time, the original voice for Booksquare was the “Royal We.” It felt right, it felt natural. Once I switched to writing under my own name, obviously writing as “we” made no sense. [De gustibus non est disputandum. -Ed.] So the voice changed again—what was once distant and haughty became more personal. Both, sorry, are snarky and cranky.

Obviously, I hoped the site would reach untold millions, but, no, I didn’t really expect it to become popular or influential (at least I like to think it is!). Looking back, I put a lot of hard work and effort into growing the site. I wish I had that same energy today!

AMoS: Describe your own tastes as a reader. What are some of your favorite books and genres?

KK: I’m an omnivore reader, with a strong preference for fiction. I was the kid who sat at the table reading and rereading cereal boxes. My mother was my elementary school librarian (I had to save my trouble-making tendencies for later in life), and I used to pretend to be sick so I could spend the day in bed, reading the books she’d bring home. It’s not like I needed to know addition or subtraction, right?

I have always been attracted to romance novels. Critics dismiss them for various reasons, but, as with all genres, there is excellent writing and there is bad writing. I’ve read some pretty awful romances in my day, but I’ve also read some completely horrendous literary fiction. And mystery/suspense. And science fiction (a genre I wish I’d started reading when I was younger because I’m not sure I’ll catch up on the classics). If the story sucks me in, that’s all that matters.

Sometimes books about and/or by women are dismissed as being too domestic. I’d argue that all fiction is, at heart, domestic. But the criticism really seems to be masking an implication that this fiction deals too much with hearth, home, emotions, even sex. But those are as much a part of the human condition as running with bulls in Pamplona. Is there anything more rife with drama than a family? So, yeah, I love books that focus on the intensity and diversity of human relationships. We are one crazy, messed-up species.

AMoS: You are noted for, as you put it, “dissecting the publishing industry with love and skepticism.” What about the industry in its current state do you love most, and what makes you the most skeptical?

KK: Skeptical first. The industry, as currently run, is almost unsustainable. Business models haven’t changed rapidly enough to address societal changes. I’m not sure they can change. I use the dawn of Amazon as the day the clock started ticking (I think the first press release was somewhere around late 1994—and I’d already been online for a few years before that). And if you didn’t see the sea-change wrought by Amazon, surely the Napster era was a wake-up call. Then there was the iTunes/iPod revolution. We have a friend who said, in 1998, that the Internet was just a fad, no need to change. His entire business changed within two years. I’m not sure what the future holds, but I do know that you have to be ready to pivot or at least experiment wildly.

What do I love the most? The people. I think the system is a huge mess, and I think we’ll be seeing some serious implosions of big publishers (how these will manifest depends on a lot of corporate nonsense). I also think we’re seeing the dawn of new business models, new publishing ideas, and new blood. I think it’s helpful to have people who don’t immediately fall back on the “that’s how we’ve always done it” mantra. Look at Harlequin—they not only created the first (that I know of) publisher online community (going strong for about ten years, I believe), but they’re rapidly innovating in other electronic/digital publishing areas. Look at companies like Smashwords. They’re trying to reimagine publishing from an author-centric perspective.

Look at Lexcycle and their Stanza reader. They’re not publishing people, they’re tech people. And they’ve brought reading to the iPhone in a very reader-friendly way. Instead of believing Steve Jobs when he said* that people don’t read, they went ahead and created a business for the iPhone/Touch. Because they know that people do read—in fact, we’re reading more than ever—and they know that the mobile space is the next frontier.

It’s the people I love. When you talk to them, you realize that change is happening and there will be winners and losers, but publishing—getting words to people who want to read them—is vibrant and bigger than you imagine.

*And I don’t take him literally, of course.

AMoS: Tell us about your participation in the recent O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing conference. What was the most important idea or lesson you took away from it?

KK: I’ve attended all three Tools of Change conferences, and this year, someone new was in the room: the reader. Publishers have not been accustomed to thinking about reader experience, at least not from a technological perspective. I led a terrific panel called “Smart Women Read eBooks” that focused entirely on the digital reading experience of women. We talked about content, pricing, devices, DRM (not a popular thing, as you can imagine), and the importance of listening to your customers.

But the reader was in the room in other sessions, as well. Understanding the person who reads books, how they read books, what they want is vitally important to the future. One thing that was really emphasized at this year’s ToC was the fact that readers don’t read in just one way. The go-forward mantra needs to be flexibility and portability.

Plus, it’s just a blast to talk to like-minded people. The energy is amazing.

AMoS: You are a supporter and enthusiastic user of e-reading devices. Make your best case for the e-reader and describe what you believe its impact will be on the industry.

KK: I am! I am an enthusiastic supporter and user of e-reading devices. I am one of those people who breaks out in hives if I don’t have reading material with me. Some people in LA carry water in the event of the Big One; I carry books—on my Kindle, on my iPhone, on my laptop, and print books. Also some water.

We are a crazy busy society. We’re also a demanding society. Women have been early adopters of e-books. I became aware of the female ebook reader in 1998. The reader I carry in my head is a mother of three in the Midwest. She works full-time, she’s raising a family, she’s shuttling between job, soccer, shopping, piano lessons, dance lessons, doctor visits, cooking, cleaning, interacting with grown-ups, and just about everything else that makes up our human existence. Reading for this person is a luxury. It’s something you do in line at the post office. It’s something you do during soccer practice. It’s something you sneak in between the other moments of the day. We don’t like to think of reading being that way, but for many of us, it is.

So this mother is also carrying—sometimes literally—the weight of her family. An e-reader allows her to carry an entire library in her purse. On her phone. In the diaper bag. The technology allows her to buy books on the fly. While pumping gas. She can read whenever, wherever, however she wants. So this is the customer, and this customer buys and reads a minimum of 2–5 books a month, with many women exceeding that average. They are your best customers.

My case for ereaders is that they provide flexibility and portability for prime reading consumers. E-books are a small part of the market, yes, but thanks to what I call the Oprah factor (did you know she did an entire issue of her home magazine devoted to books and home libraries? Man, she is an incredible advocate for the book industry), e-readers have become mainstream. The market is growing. Publishers are seeing gains in sales as they increase content.

Print isn’t going away, not anytime soon. That’s a key aspect of the flexibility and portability mantra. Rather than seeing e-readers as competition to print books, see them as complements. Everyone has a different life and experience, make it easy for them to read your books, and it’s all good for you.

AMoS: One of your most widely disseminated articles is called “Why Publishers Should Blog.” Obviously this one hits close to home for us. What do you believe the ideal publisher’s blog should do for its readers?

KK: I admit it, I was naïve about the actual distance publishers have between themselves and readers. There is a lot of talk about building brand and increasing awareness and, sheesh!, creating destination websites. The problem is that publishers don’t know what to do with readers once they get there. For a long time, there was multiple personality disorder on publisher websites: who is our customer? Booksellers? Distributors? Reviewers? Readers? Agents? Authors? School kids doing reports? Journalists?

It’s hard to build a website that caters to every constituency, even though you have to be aware that these are all potential users of your site. What good does it do to offer an online version of your catalog? Why would anyone want to visit your website?

Blogs, done right, build community, generate interest, and—most importantly—give you, the publisher, a chance to share your passion about your books. You have put so much time and energy into acquiring, editing, publishing, and distributing this book. Then you just dump it on the market and hope that someone else will carry your banner. Maybe that worked really well years ago, but I’m not so sure. A good publisher blog talks about books—and not just yours!—and stimulates interest among all those constituencies.

You have your marketing materials and they are dull. Boring. You are selling at me. It’s a one-way conversation, and the material you’ve presented has been edited and polished and disinfected. Your blog is personal, sometimes messy, and full of life. It sucks me into your world and your books. Oh, and it gives me a reason to keep in touch with you—websites are not places people visit on a daily basis, but blogs, with inherent RSS and syndicating tools, bring your content to me at my convenience. On that portable reading device. I read blogs on my iPhone, on my laptop, not so much on the Kindle.

AMoS: Many commentators believe the book publishing industry is dying; others say it’s simply changing and finding new forms. What do you believe the industry will look like in ten years? In fifty?

KK: Ten years from now? I think we’ll have a hybrid of today’s business. I am most fascinated—and have been for a few years now—about the prospects of curation when it comes to information. Booksellers are uniquely qualified for this role. Librarians even more so. We will see increased e-book adoption, but we’ll also see increased challenges to the notion of “book”. Already we’re seeing experiments; I, personally, like those that focus on expanding the boundaries of storytelling beyond the covers. We’ve always had a sort of, well, rich media approach to storytelling—sitting around the campfire, cave drawings, hikes to destinations—and remembering that will serve us well.

“Book publishing” is changing. Publishers are changing. Authors are changing. And readers are changing. It’s actually an awesome time to be in publishing…if you’re willing to be part of the experiment.

Fifty? We will be far more digital than physical. We have a generation growing up digital, and they will be the leaders of our world. They will not be mourning the death of newspapers—print edition—because they have always known content that is accessible in a wide range of ways, on demand. They won’t mourn the death of books because they will have a different understanding of “book”.

It’s not an either/or world. It’s either/and.

Well put. Many thanks to Kassia Krozser for lending her time, and be sure to follow Booksquare and Medialoper as the tumultuous, possibly wonderful future of publishing cometh swiftly to us all.

P.S.: For an entire blog’s worth of discussion, debate, and news about e-reading devices, we also recommend TeleRead.

Tags: booksquare, e-book, e-reader, kassia krozser, kindle, romance novels