When Skype was founded six years ago, it was hailed as a way to change how people communicate with each other. While the program, valued at $2.75 billion, is used regularly on TV shows like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, most publishers and booksellers agree that the VoIP (voice over Internet protocol) program is no replacement for live author appearances. Still, a way to connect writers and their fans for free without paying for plane tickets and hotels is particularly appealing to publishers. And with technology changing rapidly, making use of Skype or its cousins—Apple iChat AV or Google Talk—could pay off in the not too distant future.
For now, though, Skype video quality can be spotty, with dropped connections and irritating time lags. Even Oprah Winfrey fans complain about her interviews via Skype. As “bobbyzsd” notes on the show's message board: “Enough with the Skype Oprah—please.... It's annoying, and like watching old time TV (mismatched words & mouth movement).”
Plus, security can be problematic. If preferences aren't set to exclude communication with people not in the user's address book, a session can be interrupted with unwanted images and comments.
Still, authors who spend hours preparing for visits and traveling to them find much to admire in Skype. Author Andrew Clements (Extra Credit, Atheneum), who began his Skype “shed-casts” from the writing shed in the backyard when his kids were away at college, notes, “As much as I love and believe in face-to-face contact, it is challenging if I'm going to keep writing. I have to make a choice: Am I going to be a writer or a public speaker?”
The Publisher Connection
Most publishers are only starting to experiment with Skype. Last May Random House Children's Books introduced “Dial into Summer,” a Skype tour for Jerry Spinelli's Love, Stargirl and Libba Bray's A Sweet Far Thing via Skype. In a YouTube interview with Howard Wolinsky of Skype, Bray commented on how intimate it felt to invite readers into her home. As for the decision behind the tour, she said, “It's about saving money. It always involves a little Andrew Jackson.”
While virtual tours cut down on travel expenses, Skype requires the same level of promotion as an in-store visit, if not more, according to RHCB publicity director Noreen Marchisi. There's also the matter of equipment. At present, Random House is doing most of its Skype events at schools, where having laptops, Webcams, and screens available isn't typically an issue. Like most publishers, though, it does loan out sound equipment.
For Sandee Roston, executive director of publicity at HarperCollins Children's Books, the biggest challenge in setting up a Skype tour is coordinating the timing. She had no trouble finding booksellers at BEA willing to work with a local school on a Skype event with Victoria Holmes, one of the three authors who write the Warriors series under the pseudonym Erin Hunter. But schools, aware that Holmes/Hunter wasn't physically crossing the pond, were reluctant to commit to a date.
Then there's the matter of audience. Michael Link, publisher relations and events manager for the Joseph-Beth Group, headquartered in Cincinnati, which likely held the first Skype author event in a U.S. bookstore when it hosted Mark White, editor of Watchmen and Philosophy (Wiley), in April, estimates one-tenth the attendees for a regular reading. To preserve a sense of intimacy in classroom visits, Roston used a similar ratio. Instead of speaking to 300—500 students at each stop, Holmes Skyped to 50—75.
Roston encouraged booksellers to presell books, since one of the difficulties with Skype is that the author is not physically present to sign books. Todd Anderson, director of the University of Alberta Bookstore, and Mark Leslie, book operations manager at McMaster University Bookstore, got around that earlier this fall when they held a “Double Espresso” event, printing copies of S. Minos's Squire Davis and the Crazy River (Spotted Cow Press) on each school's Espresso Book Machine. Minos appeared live at the Edmonton store, but was surrounded by three large plasma screens that showed both her and the Webcam audience at McMaster. “After the event,” says Leslie, “Todd's folks pointed the Webcam at the author's signing table. We had ours set up so that our customers could chat one-on-one with the author.” He sold a dozen copies of Minos's book, to Alberta's 88.
But even if Skype-event book sales are strong, there is not necessarily a ripple effect, notes Chronicle Books marketing manager Lara Starr. “The anchors of a traditional author tour are media interviews and appearances at book and specialty stores—or parties or speaking engagements. A newspaper isn't going to write about a Skype event.” She's been considering doing a Webcast, but says the cost is prohibitive. “We need something between Skype and a Webcast.”
While Starr estimates that Skype is still a year away from making a meaningful difference in event planning by having them work for larger audiences, Rick Wilks, director of Annick Press, which has more experience with Skype than most, is less optimistic. In 2007 the Canadian publisher launched a free online program for middle school and junior high school students, funded in part by a two-year grant from Canada Council for the Arts. It sent a dozen authors on the Skype road and set up LIVEbrary.com, where it posted lesson plans and other material.
“We saw it as a tool to present our books direct to the classroom. At the end of the day,” says Wilks, “it wasn't as successful as we had hoped to replace author visits.” Although there were spinoff benefits—getting attention from bloggers, having lesson plans picked up, and training authors to use Skype—they didn't outweigh problems. In addition to privacy concerns and technological problems, some schools had no clear-cut guidelines for having a private corporation in their classroom. “I would try it again,” he says, “but on a smaller scale.”
Authors and Booksellers Weigh In
High (Other Press) author Brian O'Dea views Skype as a way for authors to take promotion into their own hands. “Books come out every day,” he says, “and you get pushed away rather quickly. Publishers don't have the time or the money to promote them.” Earlier this year he set up SkypeBookClubs.com as a place holder until next spring, when he plans to promote it as a vehicle for bringing book clubs and authors together via Skype. Others are also looking to move into the book club and school space. At last month's National Council of Teachers of English convention, Catherine Balkin of Balkin Buddies raffled off free Skype visits, one per school, for each of the 39 authors on her list.
“It's the natural next step for an author,” says David Ebershoff, Random House editor at large and author of The 19th Wife (Random House). “I've made myself available to book clubs and a few asked if I could do it with Skype. In my experience it works better with smaller groups, because they're all huddled around a laptop. In some ways, I prefer the phone because it leaves room for everybody's imagination to fill in, which is what we do when we read.”
For Emily Stavrou Schaefer, promotions coordinator at Schuler Books & Music with four stores in Grand Rapids, Mich., “The lovely thing about Skype is it's easy to do.” Of course, her store invested $2500 in a screen and projector to make sure it would work. Having done live author chats on the schulerbooks.com Web site since 2007, she sees Skype technology as the next progression: the ability to see the author.
But there can be more to an author visit than watching a person at a desk. When Sophie Kinsella Skyped to Joseph-Beth, she gave a tour of her house that included her shoe collection, props from Confessions of a Shopaholic, and specific handbags that inspired her writing. “We have to educate people that this is another way to meet an author,” says Wiley events director P.J. Campbell. “We've been talking about touring culinary authors on Skype and bringing the audience into their kitchen. We can do more than a talking head on a screen.”
Other Possibilities
Some publishers have found hybrid uses for Skype. Author/illustrator Mo Willems used it to appear with paper-engineer Bruce Foster at the Texas Book Festival in October to talk about their pop-up, Big Frog Can't Fit In (Disney-Hyperion). And Rick Riordan used it in early November to participate in a live Webcast from New York for the 39 Clues series.
Publishers are also looking to other low-cost Web-based programming. Earlier this year the Penguin Young Readers Group streamed live events in Borders bookstores; writers Laurie Halse Anderson and John Green got between 500 and 1,000 online viewers. “We definitely saw a spike in sales,” says senior online marketing manager Courtney Wood.
If Skype isn't ready for prime time yet, it's certainly getting close. As Russell Perreault, v-p, director of publicity for Vintage/Anchor, notes, “There used to be a wall between authors and readers. Now that wall is almost completely gone. This is the next logical step.”
