Apologies in advance for the selective excerpts:
Quote:
Originally Posted by pwalker8
Many established authors are use to getting a steady income for re-releasing older works, much like the movie industry cycled older movies on TV for years. I've read one author call his back catalog his 401-K. They fear that ebooks will cut into that income stream and that as soon as a book is released as an ebook, they will sale 1 copy and then that copy will be pirated by everyone else. My answer is that with scanner technology as it is, if their books aren't already out there on the dark net, it just means no one wants to read them, so they really have nothing to lose at this point. As Eric Flint has said, the thing that most authors should fear is obscurity, not piracy.
In the ebook industry, I see a number of opportunities out there for people willing to seize the chance. I suspect that rather than huge publishing firms, we will see a lot more of the smaller publisher, such as Baen who put out perhaps 3 or 4 books a month. The big thing that Baen provides for the authors in the ebook market is editorial services and an established market. For readers, it provides a certain known product. If you, the reader, like the type of books that Baen publishes, then it's a one stop shop where you don't have to wade through a bunch of drek to find books you want to read. I suspect that we will see a lot more niche publishers like Baen in the future.
I also think that we will see a lot more web pages, rss feeds and the like for readers to use to find books they want. Right now, I have to scroll through page after page after page of self published books and PD books just to find a couple of new ebooks that I might be interested in on Amazon. Personally, I find it a miserable experience and that is the big reason my ebook buying has slowed down.
Last, I can see ebook stores having lots of room to improve the shopping experience for customers. Let me set up a list of authors that I like and send me an email whenever a new book buy one of those authors is available. Give me recommendations based on what I buy, but let me fine tune those recommendations. Amazon does this, but it needs more fine tuning.
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Complete agreement on the above points:
1) Authors will make
more on their backlist. Right now, so many authors lose money because their backlist goes out of print and honestly, I go buy used because it makes more sense.
Cheap, DRM-free, open format ebooks at $1-5 would be my preferred choice if they were available...the author gets a lot more money (since they get none from used sales) and as a reader I have the convenience of instant access to the entire backlist of an author or publisher.
I was thinking about this yesterday: as a kid, I used to buy 20-30 comic books a month (back when they were 75 cents each). Now, comics are $3 an issue and I buy NONE (I go to Borders, grab an overpriced coffee drink and skim the latest issues) ... but if I could buy comics at $1 an issue (ZIP/HTML or PDF with no DRM), I would immediately go back to buying 40-50 titles a month.
I know I'm not alone...circulation for the X-Men has gone from about 250,000 copies an issue (in the early 80s) to less than 50,000 an issue, as per the audit reports printed in the books.
I think traditional books would be in the same boat...massive opportunity for volume sales at a lower price point, much more profit since you save the cost of printing, shipping, returns...and no, having worked in publishing, I KNOW that printing, shipping and returns is a LARGE percentage of costs (or so management always insisted when the issue of salaries and budget for editorial content came up
)
2) Absolutely, I see the spread of niche publishers cutting into the pie of dominant publishers being inevitable. The barrier for entry is so much lower now. Major publishers will need more imprints (like Del Rey, Tor, etc.) to distinguish their genres to stand out.
In the past, to be a publisher, warehouse space mattered. Lots of cash needed for printing, warehousing (money invested in inventory that might take a year or more to recoup), shipping, absorbing returns...sales reps to get you into bookstores and cut deals with distributors...waiting months for money from retailers and distributors while salaries still need to be paid and printers need to be paid for new product...all of those were very real expenses.
Now, your expenses are editorial: author, artist, editor, a little for formating. Sell either through your own dedicated ecommerce site or through Amazon, Smashwords, etc. Printing can easily be POD to your out of pocket costs low...the ebook serves the function of the cheap paperback, the POD is the premium version for the "super fan."
Yeah, the fragmenting of the industry appears, to me at least, to be all but inevitable.
3) The biggest problem: How to connect readers to authors.
I think the missing component is a few "hub" websites that serve this fuction -- I see the key ingredient being a site that combines editorial/reviews and news, voting by members, social networking...a Slashdot/Digg/Reddit for books...probably several sites by genre.
Once that one dedicated site or network is in place, I think the ebook industry could explode. (I still maintain that DRM-free, open formats like HTML, PDF, etc. are the way to go...I think if the industry went in that direction, the migration to a mature ebook industry will be much faster...and I'm sure a lot of the scruffy little upstart publishers will realize this and move to that model more quickly since they have less to lose and a lot more to gain.)