An article in Publishing News this week suggests that UK publishers are bracing themselves for the arrival on these shores of the Kindle or a rival to it soon. Much discussion of e-royalties is going on; HarperCollins and Random House US are putting some whole works on line for free; meanwhile Francis Bennett, the consultant who has been gazing into the crystal ball for the booktrade re digitisation, admits to being “baffled by Amazon – they never do what you expect them to.”
Consultant (and ex-Penguin boss) Anthony Forbes Watson is more definite (maybe): “The competition will be between the best of the closed networks. Perhaps Amazon will rope in Abebooks. Perhaps Barnes & Noble will join up with a partner to combat Amazon, perhaps Amazon will develop something with Apple. But I don’t think the market will be that big. I’d be surprised if it goes above 3%, or 10% tops.”
Well, nothing to worry about there then. Meanwhile we’ve been talking to friends in the booktrade who point out how little publishers will do for their huge slice of the cake these digital days, once printing and physical distribution are out of the picture. Do the e-royalties being offered reflect these changes? Do they hell.
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HarperCollins are putting whole works online for free – or partial works – but only very temporarily. They’re very timid and worried about “piracy” – when they should be more worried about a) people not discovering books, or buying a book that doesn’t suit them and deciding to do something else with their time other than reading useless books and b) used books being efficiently and joyfully swapped, sold, and traded online, which suggests communities of readers entice more readers to read more books.
In short, the old way of doing things isn’t working, it will work even less well if that $25.00 a pop reading experience is more locked down in a digital world, and that there’s a significant community of readers out there who are happy to proselytize about books and authors they love.
If digital transmission is seen as a threat, if sharing is disabled or inhibited, all the excitement about books will become attached to a black market. There has to be a way to bring enthusiastic readers together with new books in a way that encourages a community of readers.
I would quibble over the idea that publishers get a huge slice. In the US, seven out of 10 books don’t recoup their costs for trade publishers, according to a recent book on the industry. The trouble is what is really a cottage industry – crafting one book at a time – has been acquired by corporations who want quick profits. Books aren’t quick, and they aren’t a growth industry. Acquiring a book publisher for quick profits is like planting acres of saplings, hoping everyone will want to buy five Christmas trees this year instead of one, and that Christmas will be scheduled for next week instead of next year.
I completely agree about the importance of enthusing about the contents of books rather than fixating on the means of delivery. The point is not about the slice that publishers take currently when they have to design, print, store and distribute their wares, but rather that the model for the future, when the costs and processes involved are so different, could be better for writers.
Oh, I see. Sorry, misread you, there.
At the moment (so far as I can tell) Amazon is paying US publishers for books as if they’re …. just books, and authors get the usual royalty. If you self publish through Kindle, you get 35%. And publishers say that, given their discounts, Amazon is not making much money on their $9.99 e-books. Until the technology settles down (and god, I hope it never settles on a monopoly) there aren’t a whole lot savings to share.
All of this royalty stuff, of course, ignores the fact that advances are very often not earned back. And that’s a combination of paying too much for “big books” that flop and of inefficiencies in distribution.
Back in 2000, the head of Random House got all excited about e-books and said authors would get half of wholesale – meaning 25% royalties rather than the usual 10-15%. So far as I know, that never actually turned up on contracts. And at the time, when I asked an editor about it he shrugged and said “half of zero is still zero.”
From my perspective, and I’m a writer as well as a reader, the only important question is “what’s in it for the reader?” Arguing over who gets a bigger slice of the pie until we have a pie is a bit premature, imo.
Chris- there is an assumption that because some elements of the publishing process are cut out of the equation then digital delivery is much cheaper and this should translate to a much higher royalty rate for authors. This is not necessarily the case however. With sales currently at low levels, and likely to remain at relatively low levels for the near future, the costs of setting up digital publishing programs are in fact comparatively more expensive than print when looked at on a per title basis. Distribution through digital warehouses, DRM costs, hefty retailer discounts, conversion costs and extensive Q&A all mean that it is not as cheap as might be thought. In the States the market is much larger and hence this has translated to a higher royalty for authors. If the same happens in the UK then I think royalties will adjust to reflect that. For the time being though I believe that electronic royalties are an accurate reflection of the sales to investment ratio involved in their creation.
michael said:
> costs of setting up digital publishing programs
> are in fact comparatively more expensive than
> print when looked at on a per title basis.
> Distribution through digital warehouses,
> DRM costs, hefty retailer discounts,
> conversion costs and extensive Q&A all mean
> that it is not as cheap as might be thought.
yes, it’s absolutely true that dinosaurs cannot live
eating the small portions on which mammals thrive.
of course, once the mammals have eaten all of the
small portions, there are no longer any big ones.
die, dinosaurs, die…
-bowerbird