If you're looking for an old favorite or a lost “gem,” many long out-of-print titles by popular authors are finally available again. Every week, we feature a handful of titles from the hundreds on our site. Be sure to check out the latest featured titles!
Okay, hotshot, so you want to be an e-book publisher? Piece of cake. All you have to do is provide your retailers with the following information about your books:
eISBN
Title
Contributors
Description
Publisher
Language
Territorial Rights with Country Code
Suggested Retail Price with country code
Publication Date
BISAC Code
Collectively, this information is known as Metadata, and unless you provide it for every title and in a format that is usable by retailers, the stores will not carry your e-books. And every retailer has its own format requirements.
Take the simple matter of book titles. What is your retailer's protocol for designating them? Do they prefer "The Grapes of Wrath" Or "Grapes of Wrath, The"? And how about the byline? "John Steinbeck"? Or "Steinbeck, John"?
Or take suggested retail price. Which currency are we talking about? US dollars? Canadian dollars? Australian dollars? British Pounds? And do you know the Country Code associated with the currency?
Then there's the matter of territorial rights. There's a code for every country in which you have the right to sell your books. Do you know the country code for Lesotho? Cameroon? Mozambique? How about the USA? Canada? You'll need a 13-digit eISBN for each and every e-book. Do you have them? Know where to get them? Are they free or do you have to buy them?
And of course you'll need BISAC codes, the numbered subject headings organized to help retailers display books by topic. Are you publishing a fantasy? What kind of fantasy? Contemporary (FIC009010)? Historical (FIC009030)? Paranormal (FIC009050)? (You can read all about BISAC Codes here.)
What about your covers? What's the retailer's convention for image files, .png or .jpg? What's the minimum pixels per square inch? Minimum width in pixels?
There's lots more -- pages and pages of definitions, specs and tolerances in fine print provided by each retailer.
Still think any bozo can become an e-publisher? Do your Metadata homework and get back to me.
"I've been robbed!" is a cry heard with growing frequency as authors discover that their books are being sold or given away on any one of countless pirate websites. To make things worse, these pirates work in the open, flagrantly touting their wares and thumbing their nose at legitimate copyright owners and their legal representatives.
Many of the perpetrators operate far beyond the reach of any laws and understand too well that few copyright owners are willing to spend time or money to bring them to justice. Stephen King stated it as well as anyone: “The question is, how much time and energy do I want to spend chasing these guys,” he said in an email reported on Teleread. “And to what end? My sense is that most of them live in basements floored with carpeting remnants, living on Funions and discount beer.” (It's a wonderful image but not necessarily an accurate one, as we recently reported).
Although piracy is rampant, victims are not completely without recourse. Every major legitimate Internet service provider has a procedure for reporting incidents of piracy perpetrated on their sites and redressing offenses. Reputable ISPs fear liability if they enable infringements. Using threats of terminating service, they will pressure culprits to take down illegal material - at least, when they know about it. All too often, however, they do not know they are hosting an infringement until the infringee brings it to their attention.
You would think that as soon as that happens the ISP would hasten to yank the pirated material off its website. But, as those who have complained to their carriers have discovered, it's not that easy, because the service provider has no way of knowing whether or not the complaint is valid. You have to prove that you are the true copyright owner and have a valid claim of infringement. The victim, in other words, has to demonstrate that he or she is in truth the victim. Here is where injury is compounded by insult.
Anyone who's ever been abused and then told that he or she was "asking for it" will appreciate how offensive it is for an author to be asked to provide proof of authorship. But if we put our lawyer hat on we will realize that it's necessary. Those who review claims have no way of distinguishing the robber from the robbed without some ID and documentation. Thus, when you click on a website's "takedown" link to request removal of your stolen book, try to keep your cool when you are informed that "Under Section 512(f) of the DMCA, any person who knowingly materially misrepresents that material or activity is infringing may be subject to liability."
We recently had reason to ask Scribd to remove a work by our client that had been posted on its site by a third party. We were furnished with a link to its takedown procedure such as this one. It took us only a few minutes to fill out and within 24 hours our request was heeded and the file removed. I am told that Scribd has been cooperative about such complaints. Once it receives and investigates one and confirms that an infringement has occurred, Scribd creates a file documenting the true copyright owner so that future attempts at illegal uploads will be flagged if not summarily rejected.
That's one win for the good guys. Unfortunately, the score is Bad Guys 1000- Good Guys 1. What it will take to level the playing field?
After reporting on a remarkable dialogue between blogger C. Max Magee and a book pirate we received a comment from a person named jap [sic] claiming to be a pirate too.
His posting elicited a host of comments from readers ranging from vituperative ("Pirate is too sexy a term. What you are is a petty thief") to respectful ("You have me intrigued, Jap. I would suggest you are not a typical pirate...") to grudging agreement ("In a world without pirating, a majority of people would just not buy the book. So yeah, I definitely think the impact is overrated (or over-agonized about.")
From his cover of anonymity jap responded to many of these comments and amplified on his original contention that "You have your morality and I have mine." Though we deplore piracy and are reluctant to offer a forum for its practitioners, we happen to think that it's sometimes better to listen to our adversaries than ignore them, however diabolical their reasoning may seem. This is especially true when they offer cogent suggestions about where we should be focusing our efforts to deal with piracy.
I invited "jap" to write an article for us but he declined. However, in the hopes that we can benefit from his observations, below are a few that we have gleaned from his communications. We will do our best to accept his airy reassurance: "Don't worry: the book business is not in danger."
Richard Curtis ********************************** *You have your morality and I have mine. It is perfectly okay for me to download books (or movies btw). It was also okay to copy or print books for everybody before 1710 (when the first copyright law was passed), or buying that "unauthorized by author" book...
*Probably you are thinking just now "but it is unlawful!!" Is it necessary to explain that law and moral[ity] are not the same thing?
*Morality aside, it is probably of your interest to know that we the ebook pirates do buy books. I understand you are worried for your business but don't worry: the book business is not in danger.
*I have never read most of the books I have downloaded. One of the downloads was a file containing several thousands of books. I have also bought several of the books I previously downloaded and read. Other books I did read I would never buy them. There are also books that I did read and I will buy as soon as I find them in a bookstore. I have also bought books that I know are easy to find and download. In fact buying books is a great pleasure for me.
*Why do many people pirate? I think the answer is different for each person. In my case, I think and I feel that that Internet is a great tool to get books, tons of books. It is the greatest library and the greatest bookstore at same time.
*DRM is a Bad Idea. It decreases sales, and believe me, it has never stopped pirates.
*There is a difference between stealing and downloading. If I steal a printed book at Best Buy, Best Buy becomes poorer. If I download a Dan Brown's book, Dan Brown does not become poorer.
*Part of my money went to Dan Brown's pockets. If you are interested in business, instead of your morality, the question is why many people go to library, and download books AND buy books. For centuries books have been bought by the very same people that go to libraries.
*I am a typical pirate. Most pirates never upload works, neither sell them, just download. Also most pirates buy content in a way or other. I for instance download movies but go to movie theatres. In fact many pirates are high spending people. And many music pirates are buying CDs, the real problem of CD market is that CD is becoming obsolete. Digital sales (iTunes and alikes) are speedily increasing. Hulu is not yet available in my country but I am willing to try it as soon as possible,
*Do you really think a guy who is scanning a book and uploading it is trying to avoid buying it at Fictionwise? That's nonsense.
*How is not paying for a book in a library wrong? How is downloading for free a 1922 book (public domain) right but a 1923 book wrong?
*Until 1978 copyright term was a maximum of 56 years since the work was first published. Nowadays is 70 years since author's death. If I download a 1950 book, is that wrong or right?
*The above terms are for United States. If I live in a country where a 1989 book is in public domain, is it wrong to download it?
*Morality? Copyright is (sometimes) useful, not moral.
*Btw I prefer to buy O'Reilly ebooks, they are not DRM'd.
*It is not possible to protect copyright. You can fight for-profit piracy because you can always follow the money and because any seller (lawful or not) needs to offer his product to public. You cannot successfully fight not-for-profit piracy because it is possible to do it so privately as desired. 10 years of RIAA prosecution did get nothing.
*However may be I can be useful for your business. I am not just a pirate, I am also a customer. Sometimes I pirate books, sometimes I buy them. Obviously, if you get to maximize the times I buy then you are increasing your sales.
*As I said DRM is a Bad Idea. When people buy ebooks, they want to do things like read that book on any present and future device. So many people break the DRM (it is easy) but breaking the DRM is unlawful, so your customers have paid to be outlaws. This is not the kind of thing that discourage piracy.
*Everytime I have bought a DRMed book I broke the DRM for the above reason and I did feel fooled because I paid but I was out of law. Just imagine which is the effect on your law abiding customers. They get a product that is worse than what I get when I pirate. Do you want to reduce piracy? Sell your books sans DRM.
*My best hint for you: don't obsess with piracy, focus on selling.
*How did I read this article? It is not because it is an article about piracy, but because it is an article of this blog, and I usually read this blog because it is a good blog about the book world.
We Have Met the Enemy and He is The Real Caterpillar
He's ripped off hundreds of books.
He can rip yours off in five minutes. It's so easy even a caveman can do it.
He painstakingly proofreads the books he steals.
He has ethical and moral standards. And a conscience...of sorts.
Though piracy's toll is in the billions of dollars, he thinks the crime is overrated.
But he admits it's a crime.
That's a thumbnail profile of a book pirate. I've condensed it from an astounding interview with one conducted by C. Max Magee on his website "The Millions".
After pondering the phenomenon of book piracy, a crime estimated to drain over $3 billion annually from legitimate copyright owners, Magee decided the best way to understand it was to ask a practitioner. "Who are the people downloading these books? How are they doing it and where is it happening? And, perhaps most critical for the publishing industry, why are people deciding to download books and why now? I decided to find out. After a few hours of searching – stalled by a number dead links and password protected sites – I found, on an online forum focused on sharing books via BitTorrent, someone willing to talk."
The perpetrator's handle is "The Real Caterpillar" and, as is so often the case, he is far from a noble Robin Hood. "He lives in the Midwest," writes Magee, "he’s in his mid-30s and is a computer programmer by trade. By some measures, he’s the publishing industry’s ideal customer, an avid reader who buys dozens of books a year and enthusiastically recommends his favorites to friends. But he’s also uploaded hundreds of books to file sharing sites and he’s downloaded thousands."
Here are a few revelations in his own words:
I generally only upload content that I have scanned, with some exceptions. I have been out of the book scene for a while, concentrating on rare and out of print movies instead of books because it is much easier to rip a movie from VHS or DVD than to scan and proof a book
I do not pretend that uploading or downloading unpurchased electronic books is morally correct, but I do think it is more of a grey area than some of your readers may
Just because someone downloads a file, it does not mean they would have bought the product I think this is the key fact that many people in the music industry ignore – a download does not translate to a lost sale
In truth, I think it is clear that morally, the act of pirating a product is, in fact, the moral equivalent of stealing…however, I feel the impact of e-piracy is overrated, at least in terms of ebooks
I’ve spent anywhere from 5 to 40 hours proofing the OCR output
And, finally: "In truth, I think it is clear that morally, the act of pirating a product is, in fact, the moral equivalent of stealing… although that nagging question of what the person who has been stolen from is missing still lingers."
Two persons mentioned by Caterpillar as having been stolen from are Mark Helprin and Harlan Ellison. Both have published privacy or anti-piracy statements on their websites. You may read Helprin's here but it says in part: "You agree to comply with all copyright laws worldwide in your use of this site and to prevent any unauthorized copying of the materials." Ellison's is an all-caps fist-shaking no-prisoners Jeremiad which you may read in its entirety here. Here's a taste: A HOST OF SELF-SERVING INDIVIDUALS SEEM TO THINK THAT THEY CAN ALLOW THE DISSEMINATION OF WRITERS’ WORK ON THE INTERNET WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION, AND WITHOUT PAYMENT, UNDER THE BANNER OF “FAIR USE” OR THE IDIOT SLOGAN “INFORMATION MUST BE FREE.” A WRITER’S WORK IS NOT INFORMATION: IT IS OUR CREATIVE PROPERTY, OUR LIVELIHOOD AND OUR FAMILIES’ ANNUITY. WHY SHOULD ANY ARTIST, OF ANY KIND, CONTINUE CREATING NEW WORK, EKING OUT AN EXISTENCE IN PURSUIT OF A CAREER, FOLLOWING THE MUSE, WHEN LITTLE INTERNET THIEVES, RODENTS WITHOUT ETHIC OR UNDERSTANDING, STEAL AND STEAL AND STEAL, CONVENIENCING THEMSELVES AND “SCREW THE AUTHOR”? WHAT WE’RE LOOKING AT IS THE DEATH OF THE PROFESSIONAL WRITER!
Caterpillar laughs at them. "One thing that will definitely not change anyone’s mind or inspire them to stop," he says, "are polemics from people like Mark Helprin and Harlan Ellison – attitudes like that ensure that all of their works are available online all of the time."
For the full flavor of Magee's interview read Confessions of a Book Pirate in its entirety here.
We are Harlan Ellison's literary agents. Our e-book company is publisher of some thirty of his books. Though we cannot express ourselves as colorfully as he, we support his position completely. His work and property, the work and property of countless other authors, our own labor and investment and that of all legitimate, reputable publishers worldwide are being stolen. Those who file-share copyrighted books are receiving stolen property. We ask those who take and those who receive to consider whether there is any difference between having your literary property robbed and your purse stolen. For one victim's answer, read Are Pirate-site Downloaders Better Than Muggers, Pickpockets and Shoplifters? This Victim Doesn't Think So. Richard Curtis
Inkling Cuts Textbooks into Inexpensive Bite-Sized Morsels
"There are lots of schoolkids in the world," writes Tyler Cowen on the Marginal Revolution website.
We were thinking the same thing. In fact, we were thinking it a decade ago when we leaped into the e-book space: the medium is perfect for textbooks. But education had to wait for hardware and software to catch up.
It's caught up.
Hardware: Apple will lead the way. "The superior Apple graphics, colors, and fonts will support all of the textbook features which Kindle botches and destroys" says Cowen in My predictions about the iPad. "In the longer run the iPad will compete with your university, or in some ways enhance your university. It will offer homework services and instructional videos and courses, none of which can work well on the current iPhone or Kindle."
Platform: We've been reading up on a San Francisco startup called Inkling. "Stacked with pedigreed veterans of Microsoft and Google, Harvard, MIT and Stanford," writes Paul Boutin of VentureBeat, Inkling surfaced after Apple's iPad launch with $1 million to seed development of software aimed not just at student's learning needs but their pocketbooks as well. The company is working with a number of textbook publishers like McGraw-Hill and Pearson."First, they’ll port their existing tomes onto Apple’s iPad as interactive, socialized objects. Then, they’ll create all-new learning modules — interactive, social, and mobile — that leave ink-on-paper textbooks in the dust."
Inkling offers color, interactivity, highlighter capability, social network sharing features, talking text and dynamic quizzes. And all of this delivered lightning-fast. "The iPad’s A4 chip is even faster than the Android G2 that gets geeks so excited," says Boutin, "so rich layouts and interactive illustrations run quickly."
"But the real breakthrough," he writes, "is in pricing. Instead of a $180 textbook, learning modules built with Inkling will be priced individually on iTunes, just as music and TV shows are. Instead of buying all 50 chapters of a 1,200-page biology book, an instructor can create a customized bundle of only the modules students will actually use. Pricing hasn’t been determined yet, but it’s likely to be a few dollars per unit — much cheaper than current textbooks.
Are you listening, students? Modular bundles so cheap they're not worth ripping off!
Here are some details from Inkling's "About" page:
Interactive figures. Inkling lets you directly manipulate objects to explore them. Want to know if two molecules bond? Use your fingertips to pull them together and see what happens.
Custom spine. Inkling organizes content based on your assignments. It shows you everything you need to do, all at once, no matter where the content is from. It's like a custom textbook, just for you.
Reader. When it's time to read a traditional textbook, Inkling does an amazing job. Dog-ear your pages, skip from chapter to chapter with gestures, and jump from figure to figure with your finger.
Quizzes. Measure your progress with interactive tests that deepen your understanding of the content.
Note following. Ever borrow a classmate's notes? Borrow them in realtime with Inkling NoteSync™. Annotations, highlights and comments from your friends show up alongside your own, instantly.
Device sync. Want to finish up a reading while waiting in line? Anything you've got on your iPad appears right on your iPhone or iPod touch, too.
Look for iPads utilizing the Inkling platform on campuses as early as next fall.
Publishing's Weekend War: 48 Hours That Changed an Industry
The facedown lasted from Friday evening to Sunday afternoon but when it was over the landscape of the book business was permanently altered. On Friday, in reaction to Macmillan's refusal to play the Kindle pricing game by Amazon's rules, the retailer punished Macmillan by extinguishing the publisher's Buy buttons on the Amazon website.
Obviously, Amazon hoped this tactic would bring Macmillan to its knees. Instead it triggered another wave of customer outrage as Kindle owners reacted just as they had in 2009 when Amazon reached into their Kindles and recaptured files without notice or explanation. Though the response of the author community was mixed, many authors were angered at becoming victims of a war they scarcely understood but they too blamed Amazon.
Amazon also underestimated the possibility that other major publishers might support Macmillan. This turned out to be a well founded concern. In the past few weeks all of the big houses except Random House conducted discussions, and in all likelihood negotiations, with Apple to forge a new retailing model that would return control of e-book pricing to the publishers, who had become alarmed that Amazon's insistence on a $9.99 price cap would force them to accept lower wholesale terms. Conditions were ripe for mutiny, and on Friday the test of wills began. By Sunday, as Amazon realized that this was a fight it could not win, it capitulated.
I stated that this might well be a turning point for the book industry - both e-book and print - and I stand by that statement.
I also made a prediction that publishers will no longer be able to hold the line on the current 20-25% royalty rate offered to authors. In fact I guaranteed that they won't be able to, and I stand by that guarantee as well. Authors, and more importantly their powerful literary agents, have viewed the new landscape and found it rich with the potential for profit. They perceive the current royalty level as arbitrary and without basis in the economies of e-book production and distribution. The current rates cannot and will not hold. Just as Amazon blinked in its stare-down with Macmillan, Macmillan and its Big Six companions will also blink in the inevitable confrontation with authors.
Guaranteed: E-book Royalties Will Rise When Publishers' Hands Untied
I don't know if people still make pinkie bets, but when I was a kid that's what we called friendly wagers with no money at stake - just the satisfaction of being right. And I'm making a pinkie bet right now: If publishers can untangle themselves from the current e-book pricing model that ties their hands with a $9.99 ceiling, author royalties will rise. Any takers? Warning - before you extend your pinkie, you must know that I never bet on anything I'm not absolutely certain about.
Currently the e-book royalty offered to authors by five of the Big Six is 25% of the publisher's net receipts, and Macmillan's is even lower. Indeed, it's the lowest in Big Publishing: 20%. And because it is, Macmillan has attracted less support from the author community for its facedown of Amazon than it would otherwise receive. Here for instance is a line from a Silicon Valley blogger that called Macmillan "evil": "they're trying to force all ebook vendors to adopt the new contract, while forcing authors to accept a below industry average (20% vs. 25%) on ebook royalties."
If, as a result of negative publicity, Amazon relents on its rigid pricing formula, e-book revenues will increase and it will be so much harder - indeed, it will be intensely embarrassing - for publishers to continue parceling out the mingy royalty they now proffer. How much higher will the royalty go? Publishers will kick and scream over every point they have to give up, but in time someone will blink and go to 50%, and the rest of the industry will follow.
You can bet the house on that, but I'll accept a friendly pinkie.
Richard Curtis (who is happy to disclose that E-Reads pays 50% royalty to its authors, and has paid it from Day One, 2000).
Today a publisher brought to my attention an oddity on the Amazon.com website. It seems that you cannot purchase more than three copies of many bestsellers. On the evening of January 28, 2010 I viewed the top ten books on the Amazon.com bestseller list. In every case I was prohibited from putting more than three copies into my shopping cart. To make certain this was not a fluke, I sampled the first 50 titles on the list but did not find any exceptions to the three-to-a-customer rule.
You can see this for yourself by clicking on the following links for the top five titles, then going to the "Quantity" drop-down box over the "Add to Shopping Cart" button. (As listings change, future visitors to this posting may not find the same condition.)
It was not until I clicked on #53 - What Would Google Do? (list price $17.91, Amazon price $9.18) - that the Quantity drop-down box indicated I could buy as many as 30 copies. I did not try to buy multiple copies by buying three and three and three etc. - I don't really need one copy of Food Rules let alone six or nine or thirty - but I'm sure a clever shopper could find a way around the rule. It occurred to me however that if I did order three copies ten times, the freight and handling charges would be substantially higher than if I purchased 30 in one shot.
But that's just incidental to the bigger question of why one must buy no more than three copies in one transaction.
I can understand this restrictive practice in the case of a high ticket item, where one $10,000 fur coat or $50,000 diamond ring per customer is enough. Pictured here is a Prada Ostrich Leather Tote listing on Saks Fifth Avenue's website for $5,850.00. On the bag's web page is this notice: DUE TO POPULAR DEMAND, A CUSTOMER MAY ORDER NO MORE THAN THREE UNITS OF THIS ITEM EVERY THIRTY DAYS.
But books are not luxury purchases. Why would Amazon prevent us from buying as many copies of a book as we want? After all, the more we buy the more money Amazon makes, yes?
In listing the books here I included their list price versus their Amazon.com price. I wonder if therein lies a clue to the restrictive policy. Assuming a 50% publisher discount, Amazon's profit margin on these books is slim to none. For instance, on A People's History of the United States (list price $18.95, Amazon price $10.00) Amazon nets about $.50 profit. Food Rules retailing for $11.00? The wholesale price would be $5.50. Amazon is selling it for $5.00, a $.50 loss. For The Help (list price $24.95, Amazon price $9.50), Amazon is losing $3.00 a copy.
Nothing unusual here: retailers in every business work on a slim margin, and loss leaders are a common competitive practice. However...
Suppose I opened a bookshop and stocked it with bestsellers purchased from Amazon. I could buy 100 copies of The Help for $9.50 each and sell them in my store for, say, $15.00. Even folding in the cost of freight from Amazon to my shop, I would make two or three dollars profit and still sell the books far beneath the publisher's list price.
I anticipate your question: why would people buy from my shop when they could get the same book cheaper from Amazon? The answer is, some will but some won't. That's why we have independent bookstores (barely, but we still do have them).
If this reasoning is correct, then the Amazon's three-to-a-customer rule makes sense: Amazon doesn't want resellers stocking their stores with Amazon books. Why not? Because Amazon doesn't make any money on those resales.
Authors will recognize an irony here. When their books are resold via Amazon, Amazon gets a piece of the resale of those used books but the authors get nothing. Could it be that Amazon is worried that it is not benefiting from resales that do not use Amazon as agent?
This theory could be all wet. But if it is, I invite smarter business heads than me to speculate on just what's behind the three-book cap on Amazon's bestseller shopping cart. Meanwhile, publishers and authors may be hurt by the curtailment of large book orders on the Amazon.com retail site.
When Galley Cat invited me to make some predictions for the coming decade, I conjectured that sometime in the near future we would see the merger of a major retailer and a major publisher. Here was my reasoning: "A combined publisher/retailer solves many problems for both.The retailer owns the content and doesn't have to pay a premium for it. The publisher does not have to pay a premium to distribute its books. There would be huge efficiencies of manufacturing and distribution."
I've had about a month to think about what I said, and I want to revise it. The efficiencies of a retailer/publisher combine would not merely be huge. They would be decisive. If you don't believe it, ask Barnes & Noble and Amazon.
In 2003 Barnes & Noble acquired Sterling Publishing, described at the time as "one of the top 25 publishers in America and the industry's leading publisher of how-to books." Publishers were gravely concerned, and they had every reason to be. Barnes & Noble's own titles were like a supermarket's house brand, often undercutting the prices of outside purveyors.
And now Amazon is a publisher too. It started with its Encore program aimed at identifying overlooked books and authors. That was followed by the creation of a service called CreateSpace aimed at self-published authors. And now Amazon has begun publishing mainstream authors like Stephen King and recently acquired Stephen (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People®) Covey for the Kindle.
The potential for mischief created by such combines was cogently articulated a few years ago by Morris Rosenthal and I urge you to read it. In essence, the savings generated by dissolving the barrier between seller and buyer enable the combine to lower prices below - sometimes far below - those charged by publishers that do not own their own retail branch. To state the case as simply as possible: Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com, the two most powerful retailers in the book business, have become competitors of the very publishers they serve.
Though these retailers have no qualms about becoming publishers, publishers on the other hand are terrified of becoming retailers for fear of provoking the wrath of their key accounts - B&N and Amazon! When publishers do dip a timid toe in the water and try to sell their books direct to the consumer, they offer them at full list price, which cannot possibly compete with the deeply discounted prices charged by B&N and Amazon. Yet, if they wanted to, publishers could sell their books directly to the public at 40% discount or higher and thus level the playing field.
The solution? To survive, to remain competitive, publishers may have no choice: they must either become retailers or end up being acquired by them.
At this moment Borders, one of the best and most popular bookstore chains in the business, is in a life and death struggle to remain viable. If a publisher were smart it would rescue Borders and go into the retail business.
Retailers, I said a while ago (see Direct Sales: Publishing’s Last Stand), are intermediaries in a world that is rapidly disintermediating. As big as they are, retailers like Barnes & Noble and Amazon are vulnerable to market forces bent on eliminating middlemen, and that's precisely why they have begun publishing books. The digital revolution demands a direct relationship between content provider and consumer. Merging a publisher and a bookstore like Borders would bring both struggling enterprises a little closer to that direct relationship, to profitability and to competitiveness.
Eric Engleman, in his Amazon Blog, writes that Kindle fans are punishing a publisher that has held back the Kindle version of a just-published book.
The book in question is Game Change by Mark Halperin and John Heilman, the juicy tell-all about the 2008 presidential campaign. Though it has generally garnered raves for its brilliant investigative reporting and jaw-dropping revelations, and indeed has received 59 five-star reviews on Amazon, it has also received no fewer than 119 one-star reviews, with scarcely any ratings in between the two poles. Why?
"The book has been deluged with one-star, negative reviews from people who are protesting publisher HarperCollins' decision to delay the Kindle version to Feb. 23," writes Engleman. "Those one-star reviews have contributed to a ho-hum average customer review rating of a 2.5 stars (out of 5). Customer reviews are an important factor for book sales on Amazon, and it will be interesting to see if the Kindle protests spread."
You can read both the raves and the boo-hisses here, but as to the latter, they can be summed up by this one: "No Kindle version? No Sale!"
The wisdom of simultaneously publishing hardcover books and e-books was questioned at the end of last year by a number of publishing figures including literary agent Nat Sobel whose posting here sparked an outpouring of strong feelings on both sides of the issue. Now the strong feelings have spilled over to consumers. The "windowing" (delay) of e-book reprints may seem like sound publishing practice for many kinds of books, but a hot-gossipy and time-sensitive book like Game Change may be the exception to that rule.
Consumers may not consider, and certainly may not care about, sound publishing practice. But for HarperCollins, Game Change's publisher, there's a solid economic reason for withholding the e-print. The hardcover lists at $27.99 on Amazon, discounted to $15.39. If it were available today on Kindle the price would undoubtedly be the standard $9.99 that Amazon is trying to impose on the book retail business. "Some in the publishing industry fear that Amazon's standard $9.99 (or lower) for new release books on Kindle will create a 'sticky' price in consumers' minds, dragging down the overall perceived value of books," writes Engleman.
Sometime in the first half of this year Google will open the doors to its bookstore, called Google Editions. Ian Paul, in PC World, writes: "Unlike Google's biggest competitors, Amazon and Barnes & Noble, which rely heavily on restrictive DRM, Google's store will not be device-specific - allowing for e-books purchased through Google Editions to be read on the far greater number of e-book readers that will flood the market in 2010"
That spells good news for the makers of all those new e-reading gadgets that may be well engineered and loaded with fun features but are hard-up for content. Amazon has its Kindle, but because its system is closed (that's what DRM means) you can't easily get Kindle content on a non-Kindle device. Same goes for B&N and its Nook.
Now you'll be able to download Google's vast (half a million at launch) library on just about any device available. Since most publishers have not given their content exclusively to Amazon or B&N, you'll be able to find and buy it from Google editions and read it on your Que, Skiff, Cool-Er, Flepia, or any other device. Just try not to be embarrassed when someone asks you the name of that e-book reader you're holding in your hand.
The deal Google offers publishers is 63 % of gross sales. This compares favorable with the 50% offered by most e-retailers. But Google is also offering to partner with retailers. If you decide you'd like to open an e-book retail store but don't know how and where to acquire the content, Google will furnish it. Your company would get 55 percent of revenues less a commission for Google.
"Google's e-books would reportedly be indexed and searchable like many books are now through Google's Book Search," says Paul. "Unlike titles offered through e-readers, Google Editions books would not have to be accessed through a dedicated reader or special application.Instead, any device with a Web browser will be able to access a Google Editions book. After you purchase and access your online book for the first time, it will be cached in your browser making the book available when you're offline."
Digital Book World Conference Hopes to Lure Agents into E-Revolution
Don't start the e-book revolution without us. That seems to be the message coming out of the literary agent community as reflected in their response to invitations to a major conference taking place in New York City's Sheraton Hotel and Towers at the end of January.
The revolution has overcome countless obstacles on the road to the tipping point, but one stubborn source of resistance has been the agents. Their intransigence has not been so much a matter of hostility as uncertainty. Caught flat-footed by developments that went from zero to warp-drive speed in the blink of an eye, agents have struggled to get a handle on their role in the new e-world order. Though they take pride in being ahead of their clients, in the case of e-books many of their authors are way ahead of them, doing things or at least thinking thoughts that do not involve services commissionable by their agents such as self-publication of unsold books. Other agents simply want to be able to answer author questions or help their clients find a place in a universe that seems to be hurtling out of control. One wag described it as "Agents on the verge of a nervous breakdown." (See Why Don't Agents Want to Play?)
Mike Shatzkin, chairing Digital Book World on January 26th-27th, is determined to draw agents into the e-book process by designing a number of programs specifically to interest them. "The Changing Agent-Author Relationship: How It Will Affect the Business Model Speakers," chaired by Oprah's Book Club's Sara Nelson, is one such. Another, "Tomorrow’s Book Contract," chaired by yours truly, features several agents, a lawyer and a publishing company rights manager presenting wish lists of contract language and provisions reflecting changes in the publishing landscape.
Other panels and speeches will address non-e-book topics of concern to agents such as "Back-Loaded Book Deals: No (and Low) Advance Contracts, Profit-Sharing and Other Innovative Business Models".
With its glittering roster of publishing industry star speakers and panelists, we're told that the conference is almost sold out, but if you're a literary agent you can be sure Mike Shatzkin will do his best to squeeze you in.
We hate to rain on iSlate's apotheosis, but some of us are wondering about battery life.
A portable computer is only as good as its battery. A blogger with the handle of "Andrew", writing for TabletPCReview.com, said that "Whenever we review notebooks one of the questions that always needs to be answered is, what's the battery life like on this tablet? We all know manufacturers overstate the quoted battery life for a system, probably because they test for battery life under ideal conditions for getting a high number. For example, wireless off, processor underclocked, system idle, LCD brightness set to low, no DVD and so on. So when your notebook with a quoted 5 hour battery life actually gets three hours, you're left wondering what happened to those other two hours the manufacturer got?"
Andrew wrote that in 2007, but the fundamental issues have not changed since then.
A January 26-scheduled announcement by Apple, which few pundits believe could be about anything else than the imminent release of a tablet-sized computer/e-book reader, has created nearly messianic frenzy. A New York Times columnist said that some are calling the device a "Jesus tablet". But at least one authority, physicist Eric Hellmann, thinks we should look under the hood before declaring January 26th a religious holiday.
Hellman, whose popular blog Go To Hellman covers the e-book scene, has speculated on the device's power source. "The design problem is the battery," he recently wrote. "Assuming that the iSlate is a multimedia device implies that it's not an e-ink device. It's going to have a screen not so different from an iPhone screen, and that will consume power. That will in turn require a battery proportional to the iPhone battery, and batteries are what cause iPhones to be reasonably heavy for their size. The Kindle works as a book-replacement because it's light enough; I'm guessing the iSlate will be a more of a tv than a book."
Apple will undoubtedly imbed a state of the art battery in its tablet, but when you consider the load that a tabet will have to pull - movie and game videos, photo archives, videocam, multitouch screen, full color e-books, magazines, newspapers, music, plus countless juice-draining apps, to say nothing of the demands of the tablet's own operating and processing system, you have to wonder whether Apple's battery, or anybody else's at this moment in history, will be able to do the job without adding an unacceptable weight burden.
Knowledgeable insiders confirm these concerns. When a website named islate.org posted some allegedly leaked specs (you can read them here), one commenter wrote that "for as thin as the device is intended to be, there is no possible way it’ll run a HD, 2Gb RAM, and a Core 2 Duo processor. Factor in the large multitouch screen and you could expect a battery life of about 15-minutes with those specs, AND it’d be too hot to handle AND weigh a few pounds. No way."
There will undoubtedly be a stampede to snap up the iSlate, but the coolheaded will scrutinize the specs before committing to the hefty - rumored at $1000 - price of a device that, if you believe some iSlate evangelists, embeds nothing less than the spiritual hopes and dreams of humankind within its fragile case.
Howdy Brownsville, New York Calling, Have We Got a Great Bio of Spinoza for Y'all!
If you're a sales rep for a publishing company, you can be replaced by a telemarketer. At least that seems to be the message communicated by Simon & Schuster.
Michael Cader reports in Publishers Lunch that S&S has cut nine field representatives, leaving but seven to service the book buying needs of a nation. An adjunct to this action is the establishment of a telemarketing group that will presumably service the needs of far-flung independent bookstores around the country.
S&S justifies its decision on "the changing nature of the market place." That phrase should be nominated for the Understatement of the Year Award. The marketplace served by publisher field reps twenty or even ten years ago is all but unrecognizable, and what's left of it is melting away like an ice cube in a teapot.
Up until the mid-1990s rural bookshops and paperback outlets like drugstores were serviced by traveling sales reps or independent distributors. These people not only understood the reading tastes of the communities on their routes but knew many of the readers personally. They knew that this bookshop catered to lovers of western fiction and that one to historical romance.
The system worked wonderfully well, but it suffered a major hammer blow in 1996 when several influential paperback distribution agencies let go of most of the independent driver/rack jobbers that covered all those rural bookstores. The reason was that the growing power of computers enabled these agencies to stock stores by remote control instead of employing human beings driving vans and station wagons. It wasn't long before stores in Tuscaloosa or Paducah were being stocked from agencies in Chicago or Toronto who knew little if anything about what they liked to read. And actually it didn't matter, because Chicago and Toronto simply shipped those stores the top fifteen or twenty New York Times bestselling titles anyway. (I've detailed this crucial moment in publishing history in The Rise and Fall of the Mass Market Paperback, Part 1 and Part 2.)
So much for mass market paperbacks. But there were still hardcover books being sold in mall bookstores, right? Wrong. As the 1990s progressed, closing of mall stores reached epidemic proportions as the major chains, especially Barnes & Noble, realized that store traffic simply didn't justify keeping them open. At the same time the rise of Amazon shifted book buying patterns from the car to the armchair. Why drive into town when you could handle the transaction at home?
Given the withering of the rural bookstore market, why should we be surprised to hear S&S declare that "new field sales team will focus on the geographic regions where our sales are strongest--urban areas with a large base of key independent retail, wholesale, and educational accounts"?
The fact that it makes perfect economic sense doesn't palliate the pain that independent bookshop owners and their customers feel to have one more tie to the publishing community severed. One store owner said it all in a tweet: "SO pissed to see my rep go. My one link to you is now someone who has NO idea about my store."
In fairness to Simon & Schuster, this erosion of bookstore culture outside of the big cities is reflected in strategies pursued by every trade publisher. But that will not mitigate the sense among our country cousins that they're having a lot of undesirable and inappropriate books shoved down their throats by (to use Dave Barry's phrase) a bunch of "godless unpatriotic pierced-nose Volvo-driving France-loving left-wing communist latte-sucking tofu-chomping holistic-wacko neurotic vegan weenie perverts."
Incentives? Or Shmears? A Window Into Bookselling's Heart of Darkness
Adam Pennenberg, writing for Fast Company, has discovered that books don't find their way to the front of bookstores by themselves. Someone puts them there, and that's because money has crossed hands. "The practice is known as Co-op," Pennenberg writes in Bookstore Baksheesh: The Real Estate Deals That Sell Books,"and each book on each table costs publishers anywhere from $3,000 to $30,000, and even up to $50,000 depending on placement. The closer a table is to the front of the store, the more expensive the real estate."
Pennenberg's depiction of the seamy side of bookselling will come as a revelation to newcomers to the book industry, and some of you will feel the same poignant disillusionment as the discovery that it was mommy and daddy who slipped the dollar under your pillow to compensate you for that tooth that fell out.
For older timers, however, Pennenberg's article is just an update of an age-old practice that reveals the ugly underbelly of our glamorous book business. More than ten years ago I wrote about it in a piece called Incentives? Or Shmears? For those of you who understand a shmear to be helping of cream cheese spread on a bagel, it also has a second connotation in the Yiddish lexicon, namely, a bribe or payoff. "It is somewhat disconcerting," I said, "to learn that such elegant phrases as 'sales incentives,' 'slotting allowances,' 'co-op contributions,' and 'display fees' may be euphemisms for something more akin to what was done in the garment business than to the way ladies and gentlemen conduct business upstairs in Editorial.
"Bismarck said that it is unwise to look too closely into the way we make our laws or our sausages. You may be able think of some other things that don't bear up too well under intense scrutiny. High on my list is what publishers, particularly mass-market paperback publishers, have to do these days to get their merchandise displayed in and promoted by bookstores. It might be described as publishing's dirty little secret, except that it's not so little. In fact, it's become so pervasive that it touches everybody in publishing."
If you'd like to descend into the sewer system that runs beneath your local chain bookstore, click here.
After the introduction last year of the Espresso print on demand press we wondered about that. As we wrote at the time (see I'll Have Four Sesames, Four Poppy-Seeds, and One Copy of War and Peace), "If you think outside the bookstore box, it's not beyond the realm of possibility that, as POD printing technology improves and miniaturizes, tabletop presses could be installed in a Wal-Mart, Macy's or 7-Eleven. You just go to any neighborhood kiosk and browse Amazon or Barnes & Noble or another book retail website, make your selection, enter your credit card and order the book. Finish shopping or get a cup of coffee, then come back and pick up your bound volume, still warm like a fresh bagel. Hey, you can put POD presses in bagel shops too! Just don't shmear lox spread on your newly minted paperback."
Installation of kiosks to support any product is still an expensive proposition when you think about all the technical challenges and support they require. Think for instance about what's involved just to place an ATM - a kiosk that dispenses cash - in a newspaper shop. So, not only must the operation be impeccably smooth over countless uses, it must sell a product in a volume that justifies the use of the real estate it sits on. DVDs are one such product. We wonder if e-books and print books are another.
These reflections were triggered by the recent announcement of installation of DVD kiosks in 200 pharmacies in the Duane Reade chain, a drugstore outfit that has become as ubiquitous in New York City as yellow cabs.The kiosks will be sponsored by Blockbuster, the movie rental giant that is trying to reinvent itself after a media revolution that left it holding a bag full of videotapes. "Now Duane Reade pharmacy customers can get a movie with their next prescription pickup," writes Alex Palmer in brandweek.com. (We're not sure where the kiosk pictured here is installed.)
The rental is $1.00 per day. That's pretty cheap, so cheap that it only plays up how profitable the volume projections must be if two corporations splitting the revenue believe they can make out well. Some other high-traffic chains like grocery leviathan Publix have opted in.“'These are places that consumers are going by every day,'” the Brandweek article quoted an executive for NCR, the company operating the kiosks under the Blockbuster name. “'You’ve got a kid who’s home sick, you can run to the drug store and pick up their medicine and grab a movie, so as they’re sitting on the couch they can enjoy the rest of their day.'"
Okay, now read Blockbuster Kiosks Debut at Duane Reade and switch "book" for "movie" and you will grasp that, as Espresso technology is refined and the machines are miniaturized, a Duane Read or Publix book nook on every corner is entirely within the realm of imagination.
Apple Tablet Announcement Slated for Jan 26 - We Have a Name Sighting And It's a Good One
All eyes will be on the stage of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco on January 26th. That's where and when Apple is expected to introduce its long-awaited tablet. . We couldn't get odds in Las Vegas but David Gelles of Financial Times's ft.com website reports that at least one analyst rates the likelihood at 50-50. Investors liked the odds a lot better than that, driving Apple shares up by almost $7.00 to an all-time high of over $209.00 at the end of last week's trading. If you'd bought Apple last January you'd be up about $130.00 a share today.
What will the Apple tablet look and feel like? Since everything at this stage is pure conjecture, the device is literally a tabula rasa. But Jeremy Horwitz, editor in chief of iLounge.com, who has a pretty good track record in the conjecture department, speculated about it in September. Among other features he thinks we will see when the curtain is pulled back are:
It has a 10.7-inch screen
It runs on an iPhone OS
It will come in two different variations: one with 3G networking capabilities, and one without. "Think of the 3G version as a bigscreen iPhone 3GS, and the non-3G version as a bigscreen iPod touch."
It will have a 480 x 320-pixel display, enabling easy reading of full-sized book and magazine pages."Expect something like 5-6 times the resolution of an iPod touch or iPhone screen (720p or thereabouts) and 7 times the touchable surface area."
It is designed to be a slate-like replacement for books and magazines, plus all of the media, gaming, app, and web functionality of the iPhone and iPod touch
Gelles in his ft.com article adds that "Apple is working to solidify a new round of content deals with TV studios. Meanwhile, publishers have been working on new versions of digital magazines that would be viewed on touch screen computers."
We have frequently stated here that as red-hot as the e-book industry's growth may be, it will not reach its full potential until there's a tablet under the arm of every student on every campus. There is simply no dedicated reading device available today with screen size adequate to serve the educational community.
So, what's the name of Apple's tablet? Typical of Steve Jobs's secretive style the company is holding it tightly under wraps. However, a little birdie tells us it's iSlate. "It seems Apple's name was temporarily exposed as the actual owner of 'iSlate.com' for several weeks in late 2007," explains a website called MacRumors. "It was changed back within a few weeks, but MacRumors has found the historic record proving Apple ownership of the iSlate.com domain."
You can actually see the document here. But don't go looking for it online, at least not yet. We tried and got one of these:
PROBLEM LOADING PAGE Firefox can't find the server at www.islate.com.
Do we like the name "iSlate"? Well, given the epidemic of dumb names assigned to e-book readers lately, we give a big thumbs-up to iSlate. That is, unless you misread it as "Is Late." If Apple fails to release its tablet early in the new year (March is the projected date), you can expect no end of plays on an otherwise memorable name.
Ticked Off about Delayed Release of E-Book Reprint? Enhancements Will Make It Worth Waiting For
In July of 2008, about nine months after the first season of Mad Men ended, Lionsgate, the hit television show's producer, released the DVD. It not only carried all 13 episodes but a number of special features as well. Among them were audio commentaries on each episode; a "featurette" exploring the world of Mad Men; a documentary called The Desire of the American Dream, described as "featuring the 1960's creative revolution in media"; "Pictures of Elegance" a photo gallery with commentaries from the costume, hair and production designers; another featurette called "Scoring Mad Men"; and a Mad Men Music Sampler.
Some leading publishing executives must have watched that or some other DVD and had an "Aha!" moment. Why couldn't you enhance e-book reprints the same way that film and television studios enhance the DVD rereleases of theatrical movies or television series?
That idea seems to be taking hold. Jack McKeown, a founder of book publisher and distributor Perseus Group, recently discussed this idea, citing remarks by HarperCollins CEO Brian Murray: "Publishers would do well to seize the high ground here by offering enhanced e-book editions, accompanied by robust internet-focused marketing campaigns to further distinguish their e-book launches."
And Jeffrey Trachtenberg of the Wall Street Journal reports that Macmillan will be releasing special e-book editions of key hardcover books, but with an interesting twist: they will actually be sold for a higher price than the hardcovers! "The special editions, which will include author interviews and other material, such as reading guides, will carry a list price slightly higher than the hardcover edition. (Hardcover books typically list for at least $25, while e-book versions of best sellers can go for as little as $9.99.) The new e-books will go on sale on the same day as the hardcover. After 90 days, the special edition will be replaced by a standard e-book."
It should come as no surprise that the idea for enhanced e-books was introduced, or at least articulated, last March by Mike Shatzkin, the closest thing our business has to a Nostradumus. In a two part posting he laid out everything a publisher needs to know and do to maximize its e-book resources.
One of the key benefits of the medium is economy. Enhanced e-books "present the opportunity to deliver additional content and features to consumers with no additional run-on production cost," Shatzkin explains. "Traditional printed books cost something additional for every extra page we put into them; e-books don’t.
"An enhanced ebook," he points out, "can be an infinite number of things, and probably will become dozens, if not hundreds, of different things over time...The tools include internal linking, external linking, embedded video and audio, additional text-and-illustration content, and even software utilities." You can read details in Part 1 and Part 2 of Shatzkin's oracular posts.
By glamorizing their e-book reprints with author interviews, special prefaces by guests or by the authors themselves, audios and videos, previews of the author's new book, etc., publishers will go far to pacify complaints by fans irritated about having to wait. (See Agent Nat Sobel Challenges Publishers to Hold Back E-Reprints.)
Richard Curtis
Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by the Wall Street Journal.
Richard Curtis Verses the Publishing Industry, 2009
For seven or eight years in the mid 1980s and early '90s Publisher's Weekly ran literary agent Richard Curtis's end-of-the-year summary, in tongue-in-cheek verse, of the highlights and lowlights of the year in the publishing industry. The annual rhymes carried such titles as, "Merger, He Wrote," (1986), "Wedding Bells Are Breaking Up That Old Industry of Mine" (1989) and "Stop the Millennium, I Want to Get Off" (1990).
After a hiatus of some fifteen years, the verse-atile agent returned to PW in 2007 with "The Year of the Platform," which boasted such lines as,
Are our values turning asswards When opening books requires passwords?
It’s fine for paradigms to shift As long as authors don’t get stiffed.
Click here to read it in its entirety, and discover how Curtis actually found a rhyme for "Shatzkin". Verses for prior years as well as his prose spoofs are collected in The Client From Hell and Other Publishing Satires.
The only problem is that if you really enjoy his latest poem, you'll have to wait a whole year before you get to read another.
John Douglas
Poem excerpts (c) Richard Curtis reprinted from Publishers Weekly, December 31 2007, December 22 2008 and December 21 2009 Reed Elsevier Magazines.
Separation of E-Book Rights: Publishers' Worst Nightmare
Publishers are fighting the last war, but they'd better turn their heads forward if they don't want to lose the next one.
The notice served by Random House to authors and agents, vowing to protect its backlist from predatory e-book developers, focused so much attention on previously published books that just about everybody took their eyes off an infinitely larger issue and an infinitely larger prize: the future.
When we look back at the fireworks triggered by Random House's action we will see it as a noisy squabble over a relatively small number of contracts with ambiguous definitions of the word "book". Very old books have entered the public domain beyond the reach of proprietary publishers. Very new ones, on the other hand, dating from around 1990, carry explicit language defining e-rights that no buccaneer would dream of challenging. That leaves a body of post-World War II titles predating the e-book revolution, and in a great many cases their contracts have just enough references to things like "information storage and retrieval rights" and "no competing editions" to intimidate most would be poachers. There may not be that many books worth fighting over, and certainly not that many worth suing over.
But there is one body of books that publishers will have to fight for if they are to avoid calamity: the ones that have not yet been published. Events of the last few weeks have introduced a concept so terrifying to book publishers that they have refused to think about it: the separation of e-books from the suite of rights that they have taken as God-given for centuries. Who can blame them for living in denial? Deprive publishers of e-rights and they become mere printers, game set match.
We don't have to look at ancient history to see how another right that publishers took for granted was pried out of their clutches, and that's audio. For decades "audio" was a sleepy little curiosity that no one felt worth fighting over. For many of us, it meant a boxed set of Caedmon records of Dylan Thomas reading his play Under Milkwood in 1953. But as recording media evolved from vinyl to tape to CD to streaming, the audio business became a billion dollar one, and authors and agents began demanding separation of those rights from the fundamental package just as they had done early in the 20th century with movie and television rights.
The turmoil of the last few weeks, capped by the dramatic announcement by business book author Stephen Covey of his intention to sell his e-book rights to Amazon, should make it crystal-clear that severance of those rights from a publisher's franchise is now a viable option for authors. At the moment it is an option for big-name stars only, but don't so many revolutions begin on the backs of the mighty? As we recently wrote, agents have been sitting on the sidelines waiting to hear the words "e-book" and "advance" used in the same sentence. Now they smell money. A recent all-expenses-paid junket by agents to Amazon's headquarters may have had some influence on these developments (See Why Don't Agents Want to Play? Amazon Flies a Bunch to Seattle to Find Out).
The implications of separation of e-rights are profound and for publishers they must be excrutiatingly threatening, for their biggest nightmare is that Amazon will become a publisher. Now that Amazon is a bidder for electronic rights, that day has arrived.
It must be said that publishers have brought some of this on themselves by pegging the e-book royalty rate at 25% of net proceeds or even less. There are enough independent e-book outfits offering 50% (including - full disclosure - E-Reads) that it was only a matter of time before authors and agents did the math and came to the conclusion that 50% was twice as large as 25%.
The nightmare is out of the box. Is there any way for publishers to get it back in and contain the threat? The answer is yes, if they are willing to bite the 50% royalty bullet. Earlier this week in connection with Random House's dictum, the Authors Guild urged that very condition. Random House, said the Guild, should "start offering a fair royalty for those rights." Their statement went on to say:
Authors and publishers have traditionally split the proceeds from book sales. Most sublicenses, for example, provide for a 50/50 split of proceeds, and the standard trade book royalty of 15% of the hardcover retail price, back in the days that industry standard was established, represented about 50% of the net proceeds of the sale of the book. We're confident that the current practice of paying 25% of net on e-books will not, in the long run, prevail. Savvy agents are well aware of this. The only reason e-book royalty rates are so low right now is that so little attention has been paid to them: sales were simply too low to scrap over. That's beginning to change.
While it's well and good for publishers to pore over their old contracts, they really need to examine the boilerplate in their current ones, and where it says "25%" they should consider amending it to 50%. Otherwise they may see their digital book rights calve off irretrievably like glaciers falling into the sea.
Like a wolf marking its territory against rivals, Random House served unequivocal notice today on what it perceives as potential e-poachers seeking a loophole in Random's definition of "book". The warning was embedded in a letter from Random CEO Markus Dohle mailed or emailed to literary agents describing the company's plans and initiatives in the digital world. Authors were also put on notice that they are "precluded from granting publishing rights to third parties that would compromise the rights for which Random House has bargained."
"The vast majority of our backlist contracts," writes Dohle, "grant us the exclusive right to publish books in electronic formats. At the same time, we are aware there have been some misunderstandings concerning ebook rights in older backlist titles. Our older older agreements often give the exclusive rights to publish 'in book form' or 'in any and all editions'. Many of those contracts also include enhanced language that references other forms of copying or displaying the text that might be developed in the future or other more relevant language that more specifically reflects the already expansive scope of rights. Such grants are usually not limited to any specific format, and indeed the "form" of a book has evolved over the years to include variations of hardcover, paperback and other written word formats, all of which have understood to be included in the grant of book publishing rights. Indeed, ebook retailers market, sell and merchandise ebooks as an alternate book format, alongside the hardcover, trade paperback and mass market versions of a given title. Whether physical or digital, the product is used and experienced in the same manner, serves the same function, and satisfies the same fundamental urge to discovery stories, ideas and information through the process of reading. Accordingly, Random House considers contracts that grant the exclusive right to publish 'in book form' or 'in any and all editions' to include the exclusive right to publish in electronic book publishing formats. Our agreements also contain broad non-competition provisions, so that the author is precluded from granting publishing rights to third parties that would compromise the rights for which Random House has bargained."
If Random's position sounded familiar to some, it's the same one that the company used in 2001 when it sued Rosetta, an e-book startup that offered digital editions of books by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., William Styron and Robert B. Parker, having secured them directly from the authors. Random had published the books before there was such a thing as the Internet, but nevertheless considered a book to be a book no matter what form it took. Random's request for an injunction was denied by the court, and Random then filed an appeal. It too was denied.
Random and Rosetta eventually settled, allowing Rosetta to continue publishing the books but leaving unresolved the issue of who controls e-rights to books where the language defining them is ambiguous.
By issuing its letter to agents today, Random House reasserted its position that, ambiguous or not, the publisher considers the language in its contracts to grant it ironclad control over e-rights. Anyone who believes otherwise is advised to take a good sniff before venturing over the perimeter of Random's territory.
Agent Nat Sobel Challenges Publishers to Hold Back E-Reprints
Literary agent Nat Sobel, one of the most respected figures in his field, has issued an appeal to book industry leaders urging them to resist the temptation to release e-book reprints of hardcover books too early. Noting with alarm that movie exhibitors had recently pulled a film after learning that an early release of the DVD had been scheduled, Sobel drew the analogy with booksellers whose hardcover sales are cannibalized by early release of e-book editions.
The issues Sobel raises reared their head last summer when Dominique Raccah, publisher of Sourcebooks, put the brakes on simultaneous e-print of a hardcover YA thriller, Bran Hambric: The Farfield Curse by Kaleb Nation. When pundits questioned the wisdom of waiting to release the e-edition, Raccah wrote a lively defense of her decision in a posting for E-Reads called Are E-Books the New Cheap Paperback Reprint Edition?
Now Sobel is advancing Raccah's argument with a plea for publishers to hold back e-prints to give hardcovers their moment in the sun without fear of being undercut by a cheap digital edition. "I suggest that the electronic versions not be made available for six months after initial publication, eventually being released when the paperback hits the market," Sobel writes. "I’d like to believe that electronic book sales can and should be the mass market of the future."
His reasoning is by no means theoretical. He recently demonstrated its correctness by asking Tor Books to hold back the e-edition of a series by the late bestselling fantasy author Robert Jordan. "Now," he writes, "four weeks after its release in hardcover, The Gathering Storm has sold 24% more copies than the previous volume, even though the work was completed by another writer."
Sobel told us that only one of the sixteen publishing executives he'd contacted had answered him. Because he feels that "the future of hardcover publishing is at stake" we believe it is incumbent on those executives to respond and make their views known. We are inviting them to comment on Sobel's letter, which we reproduce in its entirety below, and we will publish their remarks on this website. Needless to say, we invite all writers, agents, editors, booksellers and book lovers to post their comments here as well.
Richard Curtis
*************************************************
Subject: Before It's Too Late
Dear Friends,
This week’s Variety has a story of the fight going on between the studios and the exhibitors about the too-early release of films electronically. The exhibitors pulled the film Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs on news that the studio planned a special quick release of the film prior to the DVDs hitting the market. The independent booksellers, even some of the chains, do not have this option, when it comes to instant releases of hard cover bestsellers
Why did that movie news remind me of what book publishers are doing to the lives of the hardcovers they publish, by making their top books instantly available electronically? We’ve lived for a year or two with the Kindle, but must now reckon with how the dissemination of books through some of the 140 million cell phones available, is going to change hardcover publishing?
In just a few years we have seen electronic sales of bestsellers go from 2% to 12 to15% of total sales. Next year, they may constitute 20%. Who knows where this will end, once bestsellers are on cell phones, blackberries and the like?
As someone who got his first job in publishing 40 years ago, working for a mass market paperback house, I have seen that area of sales rise and then nearly disappear. My first job was to open accounts and get a 64-pocket wire rack of Dell paperbacks into every imaginable outlet – variety stores, cigar stores – wherever there was foot traffic. At one point, there were more than 100,000 outlets for mass market paperbacks in the US. Those millions of customers didn’t disappear, but the racks and the distributers did.
I’d like to believe that electronic book sales can and should be the mass market of the future. For this reason, I requested that the bestselling Robert Jordan fantasy series not be available electronically until the paperback is released. Now, four weeks after its release in hardcover, The Gathering Storm has sold 24% more copies than the previous volume, even though the work was completed by another writer.
I have nothing to gain, personally, by urging all of you to consider postponing the release of the electronic version of your next bestsellers. As a first step, I suggest that the electronic versions not be made available for six months after initial publication, eventually being released when the paperback hits the market. There’s a clear line between the success of the mass market paperback and its electronic cousin – convenience and price.
The future of hardcover publishing is at stake. You don’t have a lot of time left to save it.
Where Is E Going? Forrester Research Offers Ten Predictions
PaidContent.org has released ten predictions for the e-book industry prepared by Forrester Research analysts Sarah Rotman Epps and James McQuivey. They offer a rich banquet of food for thought, and though many are surprising, all of them confirm what we know in our bones and our stats - that the industry is definitely going in the right direction. Here's an abstract:
1. "E Ink will lose its claim to near-100% market share for e-reader displays. Next year will see the first devices that are marketed as “e-readers” but that don’t exclusively use E Ink displays."
2. "Dual-screen mobile phones and netbooks will eat into e-reader demand. Most consumers don’t read enough to justify buying a single-function reading device, and according to Forrester’s data, more consumers already read e-books on mobile phones and PCs than on e-readers."
3. "Apps will make non-reading devices more e-book-friendly. E-readers like the Kindle have catalyzed demand for digital reading: e-books have been around for more than a decade, but no one bought them before Amazon made it convenient to buy and consume them. But the market for e-books is not limited to e-readers."
4. "eReaders will get apps, too. As anyone with an iPhone knows, apps are where the magic happens: They make the device infinitely more useful."
5. "Amazon will launch a suite of new touchscreen e-readers. Awkward Kindle keyboard, begone!"
6. "B&N will steal market share from Amazon and Sony. This year was a setup year for B&N, and 2010 will see its efforts start to pay off."
7. "E-book content sales will top $500 million in the U.S. ...This means that AAP data, while directionally useful, far under-reports the true size of the e-book content market. Considering the growth rate of e-book trade sales (up 176% year-to-date), we think it’s reasonable to project overall e-book revenue will top $500 million in the U.S. in 2010."
8. "E-textbooks will become more accessible, but sales will be modest. If you’re holding your breath waiting for the electronic textbook market to take off, slowly start exhaling, because it won’t happen in 2010."
9. "Magazine and newspaper publishers will launch their own apps and devices. Magazine and newspaper publishers aren’t satisfied with the way their content looks and acts on the Kindle and Sony Readers—they want color, video, interactivity, the ability to sell ads and control the subscriber relationship."
10. "China, India, Brazil, and the EU will propel global growth, but the U.S. will still be the biggest market. Right now, the U.S. is the biggest market for e-readers and e-books, and that won’t change in 2010. But the rest of the world will start to catch up."
Bottom line? "Next year will be anything but boring." Amen to that, Forrester Research!
For the full and detailed summary of Forrester's predictions, click here.
"All is vanity." Ecclesiastes ********************** The uproar over Harlequin Enterprises' launch of a self-publishing venture reminded me of something my father used to say. He was an honest businessman, but every once in a while, when he saw an unscrupulous competitor getting stinking rich, he would shake his head and say, "I'm in the wrong racket."
I sometimes wonder if I'm in the wrong racket too. Maybe I should have gone into vanity publishing. I'm sure I'd have made a fortune. Everyone who's gone into it has made one, so I can't blame anyone for succumbing to its allure.
And now mainstream publishing has jumped on the bandwagon, with respectable firms like religious publisher Thomas Nelson and, most recently, Harlequin Enterprises picking up the banner. The line that once sharply separated traditional publishing ("We pay you") and vanity publishing ("You pay us") has all but dissolved in this corrosive environment of fabulous riches.
My early exposure to the power of vanity occurred when I joined Scott Meredith's literary agency after graduating college. Meredith had a fee-reading operation that ran like a turbine engine. Using his agency's track record as bait - his brochure was a collage of six- and seven-digit checks paid to professional clients - Meredith attracted countless would-be authors prepared to shell out hundreds of dollars for a manuscript reading they hoped might lead to acceptance for representation and an eventual professional career. I don't believe I ever saw a book accepted for representation out of the fee-reading program in all the years I worked there. Meredith's operation made tons of money and he died a wealthy man.
Around 2000 a number of enterprising business people recognized the profit potential in self-published books utilizing digital media. (For purposes of this piece I draw no distinction between self-publication, subsidized publication and vanity publication.) Until then the most famous name in subsidy publishing was Vantage Press (which, significantly, is still going strong). But companies like iUniverse, Xlibris and an outfit called Fatbrain offered a variety of self-publication services. How well did they do?
Well, Fatbrain with its subsidiary Mighty-Words, which published technical and professional material online (someone described it as Amazon for geeks), was sold to Barnes & Noble for $64 million. Xlibris? Acquired by Random House for an undisclosed sum, then sold to Author Solutions, the vast self-publishing empire which embraces iUniverse, Author House, Wordclay, Inkubook and Canadian vanity publisher Trafford Press. Kevin Weiss, CEO of Author Solutions, projects $100 million in revenue in 2009. Last year, Author Solutions released more than 21,000 new titles, according to Mediabistro, "including one out of every 20 new titles put into distribution in the U.S. Overall, ASI's catalog now includes more than 120,000 titles from more than 85,000 authors." Author Solutions is partnering with Harlequin in its soon-to-be-renamed Horizons self-publication program.
But there's more. Publishers Marketplace publisher Michael Cader recently reported that "Ebook distributor and online self-publishing platform Smashwords announced late Friday that BarnesandNoble.com will sell titles from the company as part of its new 'premium feed.' Smashwords, which says they publish about 2,600 titles electronically, will sell to BN.com at a traditional discount... Founder Mark Coker says that 'additional distribution relationships are forthcoming.' He says that 'until today, it was difficult if not impossible for independent authors and publishers to gain such mainstream digital distibution.'"
Yet another company, Scribd, calls itself "the largest social publishing company in the world, the website where tens of millions of people each month publish and discover original writings and documents." Scribd boasts "10 million documents published" and "5 million Scribd document reader embeds." Last spring it was reported that Scribd was partnering "with a number of major publishers, including Random House, Simon & Schuster, Workman Publishing Co., Berrett-Koehler, Thomas Nelson, and Manning Publications, to legally offer some of their content to Scribd’s community free of charge. Publishers have begun to add an array of content to Scribd’s library, including full-length novels as well as briefer teaser excerpts."
With so much money being thrown at subsidy publishers, and with the blessing of mainstream publishing, the evolution of vanity from the margins to the center of the publishing universe is complete. The erosion of traditional gatekeepers like reviewers, critics, newspaper book editors, and other refined literary tastemakers makes it clear why even a conservative publisher might lose its head over the prospect of all that money - and be tempted to go into another racket.
Okay, hotshot, so you want to be an e-book publisher? Piece of cake. All you have to do is provide your retailers with the following information about your books:
