Mike Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, talked recently about how they choose which books to publish. He reveals two key criteria: brand equity and competitive advantage. Brand equity asks, "Will people buy this book because they recognize the author?" Competitive advantage asks, "Will people buy this book because it has great writing and ideas?"

Then Hyatt drops a bombshell. At Thomas Nelson, competitive advantage is more important than brand equity. A well-written book with great ideas, he claims, is better than a book with a famous author. He awards well-written/great-idea books "Tier B" status, whereas books merely written by famous people languish in "Tier C." (Books with both great writing and a "platformed" author receive the coveted "Tier A" rating.)

Brains over beauty? That's what Mike claims. Score one for the little guys! Publication—here we come!

And yet—something about Mike's post strikes me as fishy. Maybe it's my own sad experience of smashing up against the door to publication. Maybe it's my inner cynic gritting his teeth at a cruel glimpse of hope. Or maybe it's the fact that out in the real world, publishers don't think like Mike Hyatt thinks.

Consider Thomas Nelson's own bestseller list. (It's not actually a bestseller list. None of the top three titles score better than 4,000 in the Amazon sales rankings. It's a "what we wish were bestsellers" list.)

Who's the author of their number one "bestselling" title? Bill Cosby. Yes, that Bill Cosby.

Number two: Max Lucado, the most prolific writer in Christendom.

Three: David Jeremiah, megapastor. Starting to see a trend?

The trend continues through the top twenty, thirty books. William Bennett. Beth Moore. John Eldredge. Stasi Eldredge. Another Max Lucado. Frank Peretti. Bono. In fact, every author that Nelson spotlights as a "bestseller" is either a TV personality, an already-bestselling author, a radio host, or all of the above. I see Tier A books (celebrity + good writing). I see Tier C books (celebrity + bad writing). Tier B books are conspicuously missing.

Mike Hyatt says good writing trumps celebrity. His company's favorite books are all about celebrity. Where's the disconnect?

In a more recent post, Hyatt lays out some of his reasons for blogging. He says, "When I am writing, I have my employees in mind first." Maybe this statement holds the answer.

Maybe when Hyatt champions good writing, he is prescribing policy, not describing it. Maybe he regrets that his editors and marketers clamber after titles with "platform" while overlooking quiet gems. Maybe he wants to reverse the trend.

But is it really reversible?

Having worked in the video game industry for over a decade, I've seen the inner world of how games get chosen and made. I've seen great ideas passed over because they didn't have a game god to champion them. I've seen millions of dollars poured into losing ideas because the people who pushed them were "stars." In the games industry, celebrity almost always trumps quality.

The principle is universal. In an uncertain world, decision makers gravitate toward what is familiar rather than what is actually good. I got a Mac last week. I love it. Why didn't I get one before? Uncertainty. This morning I was thinking about buying a new file server. I visited the Dell site. Later I thought: "If I love my Mac so much, why don't I think about getting a Mac for my file server?" But I knew the answer: Uncertainty. I know Dells. I've used them for years in a million ways. Sometimes they've betrayed and cheated me, but I know their wiles. They may be worse, but I know how they're worse. I didn't even considering buying a Mac.

Fear of the unknown. Maintaining the status quo. "A fool returns to his folly like a dog returns to its vomit."

Imagine I'm a book editor. I've got two crisp manuscripts in front of me. On my left is a proposal by an unknown author who quilts in his spare time. His book is luscious, profound, riveting, hilarious, life-changing, world-changing. On my right is a proposal by Joel Osteen entitled Polished Turd. Which do I buy?

The answer is not as obvious as you might think. It comes down to a question of numbers. How many early adopters will each book attract? What will the book's infection rate be?

Every product—game, book, toothbrush, anything—has some number of early adopters. These are the people who buy a product as soon as they get wind of it. They're fans. They search for news about the product. They subscribe to the mailing list. There are 1 million people who will buy U2's next album on the day it comes out. (I'm one of them.) They don't care if it consists of 60 minutes of pulsing static: it's U2, they'll take it. These are U2's early adopters.

Those of us who make and sell products love early adopters. Three reasons:

1. They buy early.
2. They buy predictably.
3. They buy crap.

A product or brand that has lots of early adopters is guaranteed lots of early sales. Even if the product stinks and nobody but early adopters buy it, at least you've made that initial wave of sales.

So what's a book editor to do? I look at the initial sales figures for the last Osteen book. That tells me, roughly, how many early adopters he has. ("Roughly" because if the book sold well after the initial wave, the number of fans probably increased, but if it sold poorly then we may have lost some.) I do the math. The J Man (as I teasingly call him—we're old pals by now) will sell at least 2 million copies of Polished Turd. Well, okay, discount 25% because of the title. Call it 1.5 million.

Now I look at Quilter-Boy's masterpiece. If everyone in the world were forced to read it, 90% would love it and world peace would ensue. But we can't use force, unfortunately. So we pay for endcaps in B&N and Borders and slip Amazon a little something to nudge their Recommendations engine. Now millions of people will see the book. It will pass across their optic nerve, if only for a moment. Will they buy it?

I laugh aloud and shake my head, recalling past glories and regrets. Phew! What a question that is! How long you got?

Will the title grab them? Will my cover designer score another Poisonwood Bible? Who can I get to write the blurb? Who can I get to endorse? Who'll write the forward? How handsome is the author? How interesting his bio?

What's the competition? Will this book stand out? What titles are other publishers developing that could get the jump on us?

Is the world "feeling" this book? There's an edge of gloom to this guy's writing—is the mood of the day on the upswing? Maybe we should let it lie for a year or two. The market might be more open then.

So how many early adopters will we get? Unknown. I can ballpark it. But ballparking doesn't feed the kids.

So we ask another question. What's the infection rate? Will the thousand-odd people who read this book in the first few weeks get their friends to read it? How many early adopters will become evangelists? How virulent will their evangelism be?

"Yeah, I read it—it's okay." "There's this book I've been reading that has really got me thinking." "Listen! I just finished this new book—in one night—and you have got to read it. If you don't, we can't be friends anymore."

The infection rate is a number. It answers the question: How many new readers does each new reader make? Zero—the book is a bomb. Nobody who read it recommended it. Zero point Five—the book is okay. One out of every two readers got someone else to read it. One—the book is good. Every reader made another reader.

Two. Five. Ten. Now we're getting into Philosopher's Stone numbers. People can't talk about the book without wiping foam from their lips. Those who haven't read it feel they have to apologize.

This is what I want for Quilter-Boy. He deserves it. But will he get it?

Unknown.

For both books, their sales will be the result of their early adopters and their infection rates. An unknown author's only chance is to write such an incredible book that the infection rate is huge. Even then, infection takes time. Harry Potter's first print run was 500 copies. That was 1997. It took two years—it must have felt an age to Rowling—before the series hit the bestseller lists.

Why would an editor take a chance on so many unknowns? Here's where Mike Hyatt steps in. "We have to find the next generation of talent," he says in a related post. "In fact, we will continue to take risks on those relatively few manuscripts that are exceptionally well-written."

Why? Because the safe road leads to stagnation.

We're learning that hard truth in the games industry, where every other game is a remake of DOOM. The risky, innovative Wii is trouncing the competition. The latest Unreal Tournament (the fifth installment in the series) sold worse than all the others. Even the evergreen Ultima series died around sequel #7. (I helped dress the corpse of #9.) If the youthful games industry is learning it, the book industry must have learned it centuries ago. When it comes to choosing what product to make, risk is a necessary evil.

So I don't believe that Thomas Nelson—or any other publisher—will ever take on risky writers with as much enthusiasm as we'd like. They'll tell themselves that their Tier Cs authors belong in Tier A while tossing Tier Bs out the window. Mike Hyatt imagines a world where Tier Bs get the respect and investment they deserve. It's a dream, but maybe dreaming it can make it more true.

Labels: books, games, writing

Our family invented a new game this weekend. It's fun and cheap so we thought we'd share it with you.

We call it "Sculpture Garden." It's good for any number of players. Our 3-year old found it boring, but our 5- and 9-year olds loved it. It would probably work for 4s too, but we don't have one to test with! Oh, and I liked it a lot, which is more than I can say for most children's games.

To play, you need a set of wooden play blocks. If you have kids, you probably already have some. You want a set with interesting shapes (not just cubes) and plenty of pieces. Our set started out as 100 pieces, but we've probably lost a few.

Begin the game by removing all the blocks that don't sit "flat." Our set has triangular blocks and a sort of curved block that don't stack well. We set these aside.

Now pick three blocks and set them down about 9 inches apart. Choose who goes first, then take turns.

On your turn, you pick a block without looking (we kept them in the box, averted our eyes, and reached in). Then place the block on top of one of the three stacks.

If a stack falls over, you lose! If more stacks remain standing, the "surviving" players can keep playing to see who gets first place.

That's all there is to it.

Yes, it's like Jenga. But:

• You don't have to buy a Jenga set.
• It's faster to set up and put away.
• There's more strategy. You can decide which stack to place a block on each turn, and this choice allows you to "rig" other players.
  
• The stacks make interesting, abstract sculptures that look quite fun—until you destroy them.

(The picture shows a game where we were experimenting with a variation. In the variation, you can use any block—even those that don't "stack well." When you place a block, you don't have to put it on top of a stack—you can put it anywhere it fits. We're not sure whether we prefer the variation. We'll let you know.)

Labels: family, games

Every PC user switching to a Mac should see Dan Rodney's list of Mac-related symbols and keys, as well as LifeHacker's superb guide to the Mac for PC immigrants. Particularly helpful tidbits:

• In Firefox for Mac, use Control+Tab/Control+Shift+Tab to toggle between tabs. This is similar to the inteface on the PC, except that the Mac Control key and the PC Ctrl key are really not the same.
• If you're in an application and you need to toggle over to the Finder, then back again, don't minimize the application. If you minimize it, there's no way to restore it without using the mouse. Instead, use Cmd+H to Hide the app. Then restoring is just a matter of Cmd+Tabbing back to it. (Now how do you hide all apps at once?)
  

Labels: Mac

I spoke on the subject of "Unsolved Problems in Digital Game Development" at a recent meeting of the IEEE Consumer Electronics Society in Dallas. The talk laid out the current state of game technology, then outlined some problems that remain unsolved. I focused on three problems: Atmospheric Rendering (i.e. fog), Realtime Radiosity (i.e. indirect lighting), and Simulating People (thinking here mainly of the complexity of integrating AI, animation, and physics). I focused on these three because solving them would make such a great difference in the video game experience.

In truth, interesting possible solutions for all three of these problems have appeared in recent years, so they're not entirely unsolved. I showed several videos of these early solutions in action. The group seemed to enjoy the talk, and I enjoyed giving it. A PDF version of the talk, with links to the videos I showed, is now available.

Labels: games, technology

I'm still in the honeymoon phase. I just discovered that I could add Phit as a widget in the Mac Dashboard and play it any old time just by touching a button. Now that's good mashup.

Labels: games, iPhone, Mac, technology

I just played my first round of chess on my new MacBook using only my voice. The Mac has amazing speech input support. I can make chess moves just by calling them out—"Computer, pawn at e2 to e4." And I'm thinking, "Why have I never used speech input on my PC?" So I click the Speech icon in the Control Panel in Windows—I don't think I've ever clicked it before—and, oh yeah, XP does have speech recognition ("if installed," it cautions). I just never thought to use it before. Because the Mac is unfamiliar, it's forcing me to rethink how I use computers, and I'm discovering all sorts of new ideas.

I suppose it's a bit like moving to another country. In the early '90s I went to college in England and suddenly discovered I was a child again. I was startled by street markings. I didn't get certain grown-up jokes. I was delighted by TV shows that seemed fresh and new to me, but which—I would later realize—were actually banal.

PC users must never look at Spotlight in the Mac OS. It allows you to do a sort of Google Search with Suggestions in real time on your system. On the PC I use Google Desktop Search, but Spotlight is faster and even more friendly. And it comes with the OS. I guess Vista has something like that, but who cares?

I installed the iPhone SDK and played with the iPhone Simulator for a bit. Then I tried to get their HelloWorld project working and was astounded that it failed to compile. I have implemented hundreds—nay, thousands of HelloWorlds in my twenty-five years of programming, and I don't recall one ready-made by the SDK developer that instantly spewed out a hundred error messages. No doubt I just have a setting out of whack somewhere. Still, it's a little worrisome.

Labels: games, iPhone, Mac, technology

This week I start a new project. I'm porting Phit to the iPhone. The FedEx man just dropped off my new MacBook—my first foray into Mac. Liam uses them at school, so he initiated me. He showed me the button on the bottom of the Mac that tells the battery life. He helped me figure out which power cord to use. He assured me that the white light on the front of the Mac bodes well rather than ill. Then we formed a GarageBand and recorded our first megahit.

Labels: games, iPhone, Mac, Phit, technology

Christian book publisher Thomas Nelson laid off a tenth of their work force this week. Their president and CEO, Mike Hyatt, has been blogging about the decision. His candor and openness are quite refreshing—not to mention educational for aspiring authors like me. He gives us an glimpse into the tough inner world of book publishing.

The words "tough" and "book" don't belong in the same sentence. It's like putting Shirley Temple into a film about Jack the Ripper. As I read through Mike's posts, I realize that part of my anxiety about getting published comes from this tension. How do we marry the creative and practical sides of writing and selling books?

I might ask the question this way. Are books really about this:



Or are they really about this:



Of course the answer is that they're about both. You can't keep making books unless you make a profit. Yet nobody who chooses a career in publishing chooses it purely for the money—other industries will make you wealthier quicker. As Mike says, "It is partly about the money. Otherwise, we won't stay in business. But that is certainly not what gets us up in the morning."

So we don't want to say that the "good" side of publishing is the creative/intellectual side while the "bad" side of publishing is the practical/financial side. The two sides have to stick together. Divorce is not an option. You can't have one without the other.

Yet, from an emotional standpoint, when I imagine being a published author, it's not the money that gets me excited. It's the readers. It's the bookstores. It's the physical presence of the book itself.

Yesterday morning I spent 45 seconds sniffing C. H. Dodd's The Epistle of Paul to the Romans, which was published in 1932. The yellow pages are browning at the edges like an old daguerreotype. Dodd's commentary is fierce, but it smells sweet—literally, like a summer meadow.

My dad published a few books when I was a kid. I remember him bringing the galleys home—oversize pages with fine, typeset lettering—a sort of prototype for the book. Looking at them was like sneaking a glimpse into a secret world. They would be marked up in blue by a copy editor, who even noted things like indentions and headings and the location of page numbers—things no ordinary reader would ever know someone had fussed over. I hear publishers don't use galleys anymore. They've been cut adrift and left to bob in the wake of digital technology. Pity.

I love books, and I love reading—not just doing it, but imagining it done—the long, united centuries of paper and print and the people who have loved them. When I write a paragraph, I don't think about its market value. I think about its meaning, its function, its structure, its beauty or lack thereof.

But I know that to get published I must sometimes take off my wire-rim spectacles and don safety goggles, or even a helmet, and charge once more into the fray, and let slip the dogs of market analysis and pitch meetings and niggling contract terms. I have to make the beautiful sell.

It's tough straddling the worlds of books and business—one foot on land, the other on sea. You have no choice but to serve both logos and mammon.

Labels: books, faith, writing