16 ms·

Publishers are a dying species. With infinite shelf-space, online retailers can stock any and all books. They do not need to be curated by some value-added midd

by Elessar 12y ago

Publishers are a dying species. With infinite shelf-space, online retailers can stock any and all books. They do not need to be curated by some value-added middleman in order to ensure only the likeliest successes will become books. I'm a big supporter for Amazon on this one. There are plenty of authors that the publisher will deny the opportunity to even put a book on the shelf. Amazon is not doing that, and it is not a personal attack on any author despite what media spin they might try to put on this story.

clarky07 12y ago
while i agree with most of your comment, i think you are selling publishers a bit short of what they actually do. They also provide several services such as editing, marketing, designing, making ebooks, etc. They also take some of the risk out of publishing. obviously all of these things can be done individually by third parties freelance and not using a publisher, but most indie books don't because they likely can't afford it and they suffer from a quality standpoint because of it. publishers can still bring plenty of value, they just need to adapt.
- secabeen 12y ago
  Even if copy-writing, editing, marketing, cover design, and all of the like can be done by freelancers, most writers don't want to spend their time organizing all of those people, paying them, dealing with the taxes, etc. Some of the best people in those fields are staff at the publishers, and aren't even available for freelancing, nor do they want to freelance.
  - clarky07 12y ago
    I agree. that's mostly the point of my comment. :-)
- ekianjo 12y ago
  > They also provide several services such as editing, marketing, designing, making ebooks, etc And you know what? They are incredibly bad at most of this. I have a friend who's recently been accepted by a publisher, and he gets virtually no support from them for promotion of his books. Their sole job seems to be putting the books on the shelves in a few places. At the same time, if you were a marketing guy, you wouldn't want to waste your time working in such companies anchored in centuries of immobility.
  - vacri 12y ago
    Some publishers are just plain bad, but to be frank, there are plenty of authors who are also just plain bad[1], and their work is often saved in editing. I've been exposed to the publishing world through my mother's bookshop and small publishing business - and some publishers are worth the weight in gold, others aren't worth crossing the street to spit on. The problem is that until you're established in the industry (or know someone who is), you don't really know how to tell between them; what services are not being offered or being done poorly. [1]My housemate's mother used to be an editor for a publisher as well, and in her words "You know the saying that everyone has a book in them? It just isn't true..."
  - clarky07 12y ago
    I'll second what vacri said. of course there are bad publishers. just like there are bad software developers. that doesn't make them all bad.
- icelancer 12y ago
  >while i agree with most of your comment, i think you are selling publishers a bit short of what they actually do. They also provide several services such as editing, marketing, designing, making ebooks, etc. They also take some of the risk out of publishing. They do not do any of this for new authors, yet they take huge cuts anyway.
  - clarky07 12y ago
    is that so. i'd love to know which publishers you are referring to that do absolutely nothing for the publishing of their books. No editing, no marketing, no design, probably not even paying for the cost to print the books are they? How about getting the books into barnes and noble and walmart?
    - icelancer 12y ago
      They MIGHT get your book into B&N and other large bookstores (Walmart is a different story). But so what? It just sits on the shelf. Is that really worth giving up 2-3x more royalties to be able to say your book that might sell 1-2 copies in physical stores is available down the street? (Which it often won't be.) If you self-publish and are wildly successful, you can always sign with a publisher to get an in-store deal later when you have more leverage. I've been through both paths. James Altucher also wrote about it on his blog and I totally agree with him.
      - clarky07 12y ago
        If you have a platform like James you should absolutely self-publish IMO. If you are an unknown trying to break into it, I think you should go with a publisher if you can get one to take you. It very much depends on where you are. Publishers have value, it just depends on where you are in your writing career as to how much value. And if you are going to go the self-publish route, you really need to have someone help you with the roles a publisher traditionally fills, such as editing. I say this as someone who has self-published a book. I didn't even consider traditional publishing, but I did use a professional editor.
- facepalm 12y ago
  Are those services valuable enough for what publishers charge, though? I don't think all those services enter into the cost equation to the same degree. I would guess marketing to be a much, much larger expense than say editing (which presumably is a somewhat constant cost per page, while marketing is open ended). Maybe it makes sense for authors to bond together to alleviate risks. Again, the question is, what is the right price for that service. I'd say publishers are just a normal business. They provide some services that have some value. But they are not the gatekeepers they used to be anymore, hence authors should be able to get much better deals now. As for marketing, a single person with a million followers on Twitter can probably achieve more than a whole traditional PR section of a big publisher? Or a recommendation on the front page of Amazon... Sure PR still has some value (getting into newspapers and so on). But it's not the only way anymore.
will_work4tears 12y ago
I feel Amazon really supports authors more than any publisher. I'm actually working on a project that will help authors on Amazon find an audience. Hopefully I can launch something before somebody else does(it's a pretty obvious idea, and either way, I wish the best for Indie authors).
- rdam 12y ago
  >I feel Amazon really supports authors more than any publisher. I'm actually working on a project that will help authors on Amazon find an audience. That's what a publisher does.
  - will_work4tears 12y ago
    That's true, but they also are very selective and pay very little of the actual profits to the author. My project will help any author, even those with the standard publisher, but it's really aimed at finding the good writers from the flood of newly "published" authors on Amazon. There's so much noise due to the sheer number of self published authors it's really hard to find anything. It's like the Netflix problem, you spend all your spare time going through looking for something by the time you find it, you don't have free time anymore.
    - abhimir 12y ago
      I would love to know more if you are planning to do something similar for mobile games. As a mobile games developer I know that something like this will resonate with a lot of mobile game developers
      - will_work4tears 12y ago
        I hadn't really considered games (or even games and apps), but now that you bring it up, it seems like the perfect fit. I think it's certainly feasible to merge the two ideas into the same solution.
- greyman 12y ago
sytelus 12y ago
Publishers are the one squeezing the writers thin by throwing them only breadcrumbs and made publishing as some kind of privileged activity despite the technological advances. Amazon is doing the right thing here. Having said that you may not want to discount them completely. Here are the few things publishers did do: 1. They would give advances to writers so the writers can focus on writing full time or even visit the places to get that extra reality experiences. 2. They had this huge networking with newspapers that allowed books to get significant publicity. It would be almost impossible to get individual writer featured by themselves. 3. They managed events like book signing at popular venues that again added in to significant marketting. Today its not uncommon to have publisher fly out an author to 50 city tour across the country on their dime. 4. They provided cover designer, editors, art work etc although these services now have become much cheaper to get elsewhere by independent writers. 5. Many publishers have great relationships with TV channels and popular bloggers. When you see a book featured on Colbert Report you can almost bet some publisher pulled some strings and their wallets. I think eventually above kind of book marketing activities would become services provided by companies and publishing books becomes like little startups with investors and what not. That way relationship is much more transparent and authors can own biggest chunk of pie. At some extent this has already started on Kick Starter.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - clarky07 12y ago
    It sounds like you don't know much about the publishing industry. Writers do have agents. Generally the agents then work with the publishers, who happen to also provide quite a bit of value.
- icelancer 12y ago
  I am a somewhat well-read author and certainly a subject matter expert in my niche, so let me chime in: 1) Advances have gone to absolute garbage. This means the author has to actually develop and maintain and online presence that is a renewable source of leads and other income. This is more work for same pay, but it's also the evolution of a ridiculously stagnant industry. 2) Shrug. Not really. First time authors get absolutely nothing from publishers. Big time authors get plenty of help (that they could have done themselves or contracted others to do for them at cheaper rates and no points off their royalties). Middling authors sometimes get a break. It is a VERY small portion that gets help from the marketing wing that really needs it. 3) Again, not really. See #2. 4) You covered this. 5) See #2. All of the "marketing" is overblown. I know this is somewhat your point, but I just wanted to reinforce it. I self-publish now and could not be happier. When I saw how much I'd give up in royalties by going with any of the 3 publishers who sent me contracts, I laughed.
IBM 12y ago
Publishers are a dying species like music labels are, as in not at all and only as a techie trope. They're in business because they provide value to the authors and artists they represent and that will continue being the case as long as authors and artists don't want to deal with the burden of the business side of their craft and figuring out how to commercialize it. Keep in mind that Amazon is also a "value-added middleman".
- NaOH 12y ago
  A friend recently published a Kindle Single, about 16,000 words. It's done quite well, largely because of three factors: Amazon marketing, the popularity of the subject matter, and timely external events tied to the subject matter. The piece is currently in the top 120 of the Kindle store. I'm certain that Amazon marketing has played a significant role in the initial success of this piece. On the other hand, I proofread the final draft that the author had before approving the piece for publication. The Amazon/Kindle person he had been working with as a proofreader supposedly had 25 years experience proofreading at the NY Times. I probably found 100–200 errors, not the "I would do it like this: kind, but the "this is wrong" kind. When I spoke to my friend/author later on, he said that the proofreader is simply overwhelmed with work. I can't remember how much she once described to him she'd have to do in short order, but it was a ridiculous amount of work. So while there is a value add to a middle man like Amazon, I can see how there are shortcomings to what they offer since the grunt-work side of publishing isn’t their focus, even if they do a bit of it. That’s not to suggest the long-standing publishers are better, just that there are shortcomings to what each style of publisher offers, and it may be difficult for a new author to learn the shortcomings before it’s too late.
  - Semaphor 12y ago
    Many self-published authors with their first novel out I read comments from on Reddit (fiction) say that for their next novel, they are planning to use a dedicated editor/proofreader.
  - jonnathanson 12y ago
    Can you clarify what you mean when you say "Amazon marketing?" Do you mean being featured by Amazon, or algorithmically suggested to readers of other books, or something else altogether? I am not asking snarkily; I am genuinely curious. I'm contemplating self-publishing, but I'm aware that Amazon is a pretty noisy landscape. If there are ways to power one's signal through the noise, I'm interested in learning about them.
wozniacki 12y ago
There are plenty of authors that the publisher will deny the opportunity to even put a book on the shelf. I strongly second this. Precisely this. In as many words. It's dumbfounding how artists, authors and advocates who claim to support those lowly artists and authors make such self-serving cases against the likes of Amazon, when it does not suit their mores. What about the democratization of publishing? What about the ability of anyone outside the inner circles of literary royalty, to actually see their work in print? These very same advocates, could not care less. This is also the reason that newspapers, tabloids and general interest magazines everywhere and the writers who write for them despise what Google has done to their curating (read: gate-keeping) potential. Their power to singularly table the issues and frame the conversations around those issues has dwindled. And they loathe that with a fervor. Make no mistake. Artists and authors who demand things to be done on their terms are, first and foremost are unbearable egotists. They want to control the narrative, the medium and the delivery. They want to be power-brokers of their craft. Anyone familiar with the publishing houses will tell you this. ( On a slight tangent, read up on the Frank Gehry - Eli Broad fiasco to learn how difficult even architects are to work with. ) [1] The outrage in most of these cases is not that some behemoth has unfairly moved the goal posts. Its that the changing landscape is allowing for a larger pool of players to release their works and thereby introducing competition. Hence the playing field is no longer tilted in the favor of these storied publishers and their authors. That's the gripe here. As in most such cases. [1] Why and how Eli Broad is giving billions away http://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-and-how-eli-broad-is-giving-billions-away/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-and-how-eli-broad-is-giving-...
- wiredfool 12y ago
  A publisher has a certain amount of bandwidth. They can manage to acquire, edit, copyedit, promote, ship, etc a certain number of books and authors per year, per editor. They acquire books that fit with the marketing direction of their imprint. There's a lot of good stuff coming out. But good stuff takes curation and nurturing to get over the hump of good enough to Really Damn Good. Amazon is not going to do that. Editing is important. Filters are a damn useful invention. I could be talking about websites, music, or books.
comex 12y ago
What I don't understand is why supporting self-publishing (and even what Amazon has been doing in that regard), and perhaps disliking the publishers, equates to supporting Amazon's bargaining against the publishers. After all, one of the things this feud demonstrates is how enormous a share of the book market Amazon has and how strong a bargaining position it therefore has. That's against a big publisher who, whether or not it's acting fully in the interests of its authors, is basically collectively bargaining on their behalf - in the self-published future, most authors would have nobody to bargain for them. Regardless of how nice Amazon is to them at the moment, surely this is asking for trouble in the long run.
Semaphor 12y ago
Why In Fact Publishing Will Not Go Away Anytime Soon: A Deeply Slanted Play in Three Acts - John Scalzi (2010) http://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/02/03/why-in-fact-publishing-will-not-go-away-anytime-soon-a-deeply-slanted-play-in-three-acts/ http://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/02/03/why-in-fact-publishing... Disclaimer: I know very little about the publishing industry but my impression is that both ways make sense. I wanted to link his post here as it seems to me it would make sense regarding this discussion.

by Elessar 12y ago

clarky07 12y ago

while i agree with most of your comment, i think you are selling publishers a bit short of what they actually do. They also provide several services such as editing, marketing, designing, making ebooks, etc. They also take some of the risk out of publishing. obviously all of these things can be done individually by third parties freelance and not using a publisher, but most indie books don't because they likely can't afford it and they suffer from a quality standpoint because of it. publishers can still bring plenty of value, they just need to adapt.

secabeen 12y ago
Even if copy-writing, editing, marketing, cover design, and all of the like can be done by freelancers, most writers don't want to spend their time organizing all of those people, paying them, dealing with the taxes, etc. Some of the best people in those fields are staff at the publishers, and aren't even available for freelancing, nor do they want to freelance.
- clarky07 12y ago
  I agree. that's mostly the point of my comment. :-)
ekianjo 12y ago
> They also provide several services such as editing, marketing, designing, making ebooks, etc And you know what? They are incredibly bad at most of this. I have a friend who's recently been accepted by a publisher, and he gets virtually no support from them for promotion of his books. Their sole job seems to be putting the books on the shelves in a few places. At the same time, if you were a marketing guy, you wouldn't want to waste your time working in such companies anchored in centuries of immobility.
- vacri 12y ago
  Some publishers are just plain bad, but to be frank, there are plenty of authors who are also just plain bad[1], and their work is often saved in editing. I've been exposed to the publishing world through my mother's bookshop and small publishing business - and some publishers are worth the weight in gold, others aren't worth crossing the street to spit on. The problem is that until you're established in the industry (or know someone who is), you don't really know how to tell between them; what services are not being offered or being done poorly. [1]My housemate's mother used to be an editor for a publisher as well, and in her words "You know the saying that everyone has a book in them? It just isn't true..."
- clarky07 12y ago
  I'll second what vacri said. of course there are bad publishers. just like there are bad software developers. that doesn't make them all bad.
icelancer 12y ago
>while i agree with most of your comment, i think you are selling publishers a bit short of what they actually do. They also provide several services such as editing, marketing, designing, making ebooks, etc. They also take some of the risk out of publishing. They do not do any of this for new authors, yet they take huge cuts anyway.
- clarky07 12y ago
  is that so. i'd love to know which publishers you are referring to that do absolutely nothing for the publishing of their books. No editing, no marketing, no design, probably not even paying for the cost to print the books are they? How about getting the books into barnes and noble and walmart?
  - icelancer 12y ago
    They MIGHT get your book into B&N and other large bookstores (Walmart is a different story). But so what? It just sits on the shelf. Is that really worth giving up 2-3x more royalties to be able to say your book that might sell 1-2 copies in physical stores is available down the street? (Which it often won't be.) If you self-publish and are wildly successful, you can always sign with a publisher to get an in-store deal later when you have more leverage. I've been through both paths. James Altucher also wrote about it on his blog and I totally agree with him.
    - clarky07 12y ago
      If you have a platform like James you should absolutely self-publish IMO. If you are an unknown trying to break into it, I think you should go with a publisher if you can get one to take you. It very much depends on where you are. Publishers have value, it just depends on where you are in your writing career as to how much value. And if you are going to go the self-publish route, you really need to have someone help you with the roles a publisher traditionally fills, such as editing. I say this as someone who has self-published a book. I didn't even consider traditional publishing, but I did use a professional editor.
facepalm 12y ago
Are those services valuable enough for what publishers charge, though? I don't think all those services enter into the cost equation to the same degree. I would guess marketing to be a much, much larger expense than say editing (which presumably is a somewhat constant cost per page, while marketing is open ended). Maybe it makes sense for authors to bond together to alleviate risks. Again, the question is, what is the right price for that service. I'd say publishers are just a normal business. They provide some services that have some value. But they are not the gatekeepers they used to be anymore, hence authors should be able to get much better deals now. As for marketing, a single person with a million followers on Twitter can probably achieve more than a whole traditional PR section of a big publisher? Or a recommendation on the front page of Amazon... Sure PR still has some value (getting into newspapers and so on). But it's not the only way anymore.

will_work4tears 12y ago

I feel Amazon really supports authors more than any publisher. I'm actually working on a project that will help authors on Amazon find an audience. Hopefully I can launch something before somebody else does(it's a pretty obvious idea, and either way, I wish the best for Indie authors).

rdam 12y ago
>I feel Amazon really supports authors more than any publisher. I'm actually working on a project that will help authors on Amazon find an audience. That's what a publisher does.
- will_work4tears 12y ago
  That's true, but they also are very selective and pay very little of the actual profits to the author. My project will help any author, even those with the standard publisher, but it's really aimed at finding the good writers from the flood of newly "published" authors on Amazon. There's so much noise due to the sheer number of self published authors it's really hard to find anything. It's like the Netflix problem, you spend all your spare time going through looking for something by the time you find it, you don't have free time anymore.
  - abhimir 12y ago
    I would love to know more if you are planning to do something similar for mobile games. As a mobile games developer I know that something like this will resonate with a lot of mobile game developers
    - will_work4tears 12y ago
      I hadn't really considered games (or even games and apps), but now that you bring it up, it seems like the perfect fit. I think it's certainly feasible to merge the two ideas into the same solution.
greyman 12y ago

sytelus 12y ago

Publishers are the one squeezing the writers thin by throwing them only breadcrumbs and made publishing as some kind of privileged activity despite the technological advances. Amazon is doing the right thing here. Having said that you may not want to discount them completely. Here are the few things publishers did do: 1. They would give advances to writers so the writers can focus on writing full time or even visit the places to get that extra reality experiences. 2. They had this huge networking with newspapers that allowed books to get significant publicity. It would be almost impossible to get individual writer featured by themselves. 3. They managed events like book signing at popular venues that again added in to significant marketting. Today its not uncommon to have publisher fly out an author to 50 city tour across the country on their dime. 4. They provided cover designer, editors, art work etc although these services now have become much cheaper to get elsewhere by independent writers. 5. Many publishers have great relationships with TV channels and popular bloggers. When you see a book featured on Colbert Report you can almost bet some publisher pulled some strings and their wallets. I think eventually above kind of book marketing activities would become services provided by companies and publishing books becomes like little startups with investors and what not. That way relationship is much more transparent and authors can own biggest chunk of pie. At some extent this has already started on Kick Starter.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- clarky07 12y ago
  It sounds like you don't know much about the publishing industry. Writers do have agents. Generally the agents then work with the publishers, who happen to also provide quite a bit of value.
icelancer 12y ago
I am a somewhat well-read author and certainly a subject matter expert in my niche, so let me chime in: 1) Advances have gone to absolute garbage. This means the author has to actually develop and maintain and online presence that is a renewable source of leads and other income. This is more work for same pay, but it's also the evolution of a ridiculously stagnant industry. 2) Shrug. Not really. First time authors get absolutely nothing from publishers. Big time authors get plenty of help (that they could have done themselves or contracted others to do for them at cheaper rates and no points off their royalties). Middling authors sometimes get a break. It is a VERY small portion that gets help from the marketing wing that really needs it. 3) Again, not really. See #2. 4) You covered this. 5) See #2. All of the "marketing" is overblown. I know this is somewhat your point, but I just wanted to reinforce it. I self-publish now and could not be happier. When I saw how much I'd give up in royalties by going with any of the 3 publishers who sent me contracts, I laughed.

IBM 12y ago

Publishers are a dying species like music labels are, as in not at all and only as a techie trope. They're in business because they provide value to the authors and artists they represent and that will continue being the case as long as authors and artists don't want to deal with the burden of the business side of their craft and figuring out how to commercialize it. Keep in mind that Amazon is also a "value-added middleman".

NaOH 12y ago
A friend recently published a Kindle Single, about 16,000 words. It's done quite well, largely because of three factors: Amazon marketing, the popularity of the subject matter, and timely external events tied to the subject matter. The piece is currently in the top 120 of the Kindle store. I'm certain that Amazon marketing has played a significant role in the initial success of this piece. On the other hand, I proofread the final draft that the author had before approving the piece for publication. The Amazon/Kindle person he had been working with as a proofreader supposedly had 25 years experience proofreading at the NY Times. I probably found 100–200 errors, not the "I would do it like this: kind, but the "this is wrong" kind. When I spoke to my friend/author later on, he said that the proofreader is simply overwhelmed with work. I can't remember how much she once described to him she'd have to do in short order, but it was a ridiculous amount of work. So while there is a value add to a middle man like Amazon, I can see how there are shortcomings to what they offer since the grunt-work side of publishing isn’t their focus, even if they do a bit of it. That’s not to suggest the long-standing publishers are better, just that there are shortcomings to what each style of publisher offers, and it may be difficult for a new author to learn the shortcomings before it’s too late.
- Semaphor 12y ago
  Many self-published authors with their first novel out I read comments from on Reddit (fiction) say that for their next novel, they are planning to use a dedicated editor/proofreader.
- jonnathanson 12y ago
  Can you clarify what you mean when you say "Amazon marketing?" Do you mean being featured by Amazon, or algorithmically suggested to readers of other books, or something else altogether? I am not asking snarkily; I am genuinely curious. I'm contemplating self-publishing, but I'm aware that Amazon is a pretty noisy landscape. If there are ways to power one's signal through the noise, I'm interested in learning about them.

wozniacki 12y ago

There are plenty of authors that the publisher will deny the opportunity to even put a book on the shelf. I strongly second this. Precisely this. In as many words. It's dumbfounding how artists, authors and advocates who claim to support those lowly artists and authors make such self-serving cases against the likes of Amazon, when it does not suit their mores. What about the democratization of publishing? What about the ability of anyone outside the inner circles of literary royalty, to actually see their work in print? These very same advocates, could not care less. This is also the reason that newspapers, tabloids and general interest magazines everywhere and the writers who write for them despise what Google has done to their curating (read: gate-keeping) potential. Their power to singularly table the issues and frame the conversations around those issues has dwindled. And they loathe that with a fervor. Make no mistake. Artists and authors who demand things to be done on their terms are, first and foremost are unbearable egotists. They want to control the narrative, the medium and the delivery. They want to be power-brokers of their craft. Anyone familiar with the publishing houses will tell you this. ( On a slight tangent, read up on the Frank Gehry - Eli Broad fiasco to learn how difficult even architects are to work with. ) [1] The outrage in most of these cases is not that some behemoth has unfairly moved the goal posts. Its that the changing landscape is allowing for a larger pool of players to release their works and thereby introducing competition. Hence the playing field is no longer tilted in the favor of these storied publishers and their authors. That's the gripe here. As in most such cases. [1] Why and how Eli Broad is giving billions away http://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-and-how-eli-broad-is-giving-billions-away/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-and-how-eli-broad-is-giving-...

wiredfool 12y ago
A publisher has a certain amount of bandwidth. They can manage to acquire, edit, copyedit, promote, ship, etc a certain number of books and authors per year, per editor. They acquire books that fit with the marketing direction of their imprint. There's a lot of good stuff coming out. But good stuff takes curation and nurturing to get over the hump of good enough to Really Damn Good. Amazon is not going to do that. Editing is important. Filters are a damn useful invention. I could be talking about websites, music, or books.

comex 12y ago

What I don't understand is why supporting self-publishing (and even what Amazon has been doing in that regard), and perhaps disliking the publishers, equates to supporting Amazon's bargaining against the publishers. After all, one of the things this feud demonstrates is how enormous a share of the book market Amazon has and how strong a bargaining position it therefore has. That's against a big publisher who, whether or not it's acting fully in the interests of its authors, is basically collectively bargaining on their behalf - in the self-published future, most authors would have nobody to bargain for them. Regardless of how nice Amazon is to them at the moment, surely this is asking for trouble in the long run.

Semaphor 12y ago

Why In Fact Publishing Will Not Go Away Anytime Soon: A Deeply Slanted Play in Three Acts - John Scalzi (2010) http://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/02/03/why-in-fact-publishing-will-not-go-away-anytime-soon-a-deeply-slanted-play-in-three-acts/ http://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/02/03/why-in-fact-publishing... Disclaimer: I know very little about the publishing industry but my impression is that both ways make sense. I wanted to link his post here as it seems to me it would make sense regarding this discussion.