Ask a publisher?

[Taylor514ce]

Graciously offered, and accepted. No worries.

[cush]

Deleted-duplicate post (cush)

[cush]

The entire printed media business is undergoing a sea change. The internet, and the associated explosion of blogging have greatly impacted the print media's- especially newspapers- ability to make money.

Book publishing is one of the oldest and most traditional businesses we have in Western culture. I can remember the introduction of paperbacks and the predictions of doom for the book industry this caused. After all, only trashy novels were issued in paperback format, weren't they? Yes, for a short time until they were embraced by smart publishers. Now they are dominant.

Book publishers that will continue to succeed will be ones who adapt and expand their ebook publishing and de-emphasize the production of hardbacks except for technical publications requiring large format detailed illustrations (medical texts come to mind) or other text that might be technically unsuitable for digitization. There will always, I believe, be a limited market for beautiful, well printed paper hardbacks but I believe the era of the popular novel in either hardback or paperback is ending. It seems to me that books that today have too limited an appeal for traditional publishing might also be economically published as ebooks. I'd like to know more about the process of digitizing a book so I could discuss this intelligently.

Publishers should start emphasizing the digital part of their business (or get one going!) and start selling well edited ebooks, efficiently produced and distributed. With all the inherent cost savings realized by reducing printing, binding, and distribution facilities the smart publisher should be able to turn a respectable profit, especially if they "retail" the books themselves online.

The small bookselers, except those specializing in out of prints or specialty books will probably go the way of the local hardware store or grocery.

Don't like Amazon? Then digitize and sell your own books in either multiple formats or non DRM protected versions that will work on platforms like the Kindle. I can't believe the potential "sharing" of ebooks between friends is enough of a problem that a publisher gains by DRMing his product thereby forgoing sales to a wider audience.

A long post but this has been an interesting thread (until now! )

[Darqref]

Originally Posted by cush

Book publishers that will continue to succeed will be ones who adapt and expand their ebook publishing and de-emphasize the production of hardbacks except for technical publications requiring large format detailed illustrations (medical texts come to mind) or other text that might be technically unsuitable for digitization. There will always, I believe, be a limited market for beautiful, well printed paper hardbacks but I believe the era of the popular novel in either hardback or paperback is ending.

Actually, this doesn't have to be the case....

Baen Books has been releasing ALL their books in electronic form on or before the day they're available in paper. Their system releases the first half three months early, the third quarter two months early, and the last quarter the month before the paper books are due in the store. They originally tried this as pure advertising, to help make customers aware of the books due to be published.

What they found is that they got far more hardback sales. People were special-ordering the hardbacks ahead of the publishing date, which helped drive sales to the large chains. Now, they release more of their new authors in hardback (which makes more money for both publisher and author). Their hardback sales are thriving, and their webscription plan tends to invite people to try authors they wouldn't normally have purchased, just because the ebooks were sold in a monthly bundle. And they seem to have found that the people who would buy BOTH the hardback and the ebook outnumber those who would buy either but not both. There are even people who buy the electronic ARC (usually available at a hardback price more than 6 months before paper) AND the hardback, and usually the normal webscription too.

And they've grown a crop of VERY enthusiastic promoters, because we like the whole policy.

A side note: Couple years back, Baen released a CD enclosed with the first edition of War of Honor by David Weber. This disc included the ebook editions of the whole Honor Harrington series, plus additional books by other authors who had contributed stories to the Honor Harrington anthologies. Plus high-res versions of the cover art, etc. The disc cover said "This disk and its contents may be copied and shared, but NOT sold". A couple of months later, a Barfly asked if he could give away copies at an SF convention. Jim Baen replied "Sure, be my advertising department for free. I love it."

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Darqref

A side note: Couple years back, Baen released a CD enclosed with the first edition of War of Honor by David Weber. This disc included the ebook editions of the whole Honor Harrington series, plus additional books by other authors who had contributed stories to the Honor Harrington anthologies. Plus high-res versions of the cover art, etc. The disc cover said "This disk and its contents may be copied and shared, but NOT sold". A couple of months later, a Barfly asked if he could give away copies at an SF convention. Jim Baen replied "Sure, be my advertising department for free. I love it."

Baen subsequently bundled similar CDs into other hardcovers, and there are about twenty currently in existence. Fifteen were bound-in CDs, and five were other promotional efforts. They contain a good bit of material not on the Free Library web site. The site also mirrors the Project Gutenberg SF CD.

The CDs even contain things like the images stamped on the CD, so you can create your own exact duplicates to pass around. I asked Jim in email a while back about creating a custom compilation version: I wanted to produce a CD that contained only the books, and not the art galleries, MP3s, movies, etc., as I could fit just the books on one CD. He had no problem with that either.

Interested parties can find the complete set at http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com, as ISO images or big Zip files, and the site has a function that will let you extract individual books from CDs as well.
______
Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by JMikeD

Thier claim is that for every 100 books that Amazon sells, they could sell 1,000 through independent sellers, but the indies won't stock his books since Amazon (or Borders, B&N, etc) sells them for less. I can't reject this out of hand. My own experience is that I end up at Amazon (and abebooks.com) because the chain stores don't have the books I want, the nearest indie store for mysteries is 200 miles away and gasoline is $4.00 a gallon.

I can't agree with the conclusion that independent bookstores won't stock the titles because Amazon will undercut them on price. Amazon can undercut them on price, regardless.

The small independent bookstore is in trouble. Booksellers compete on price among other things, and the independents can't match the pricing offered by Barnes and Noble, Borders, and the like. And those chains are under heavy pressure from "warehouse" retailers like CostCo and Sam's Club. (You don't normally think of places like CostCo as major booksellers, but they are. Very major.)

The independent bookstores I know of that still exist are specialty stores serving niche markets, like travel and children's literature. And the independent bookstore survives by understanding who their customers are and what they want to read, and making sure they carry it.

The problem the independent faces, beyond price competition, is simple space. Shelf space is finite, and a small independent bookstore simply doesn't have enough space to stock everything. I saw numbers years back, before the big chains were dominant, indicating that the average bookstore could stock 5,000 to 8,000 titles, and there were 50,000 tiles being published per year.

A larger problem for the book industry is less known. What titles to stock in the stores controlled by a chain tends to be a headquarters decision. As the industry consolidates, purchasing decisions are in far fewer hands.

An old friend managed a bookstore at one point. Her store was part of a small chain, and she was in near tears from frustration. Purchasing decisions for her chain were made by the buyer at the main store, based on the demographics and buying patterns of that store's customers. Her store had different demographics and buying patterns, but getting that across to HQ was an uphill task. One hopes the big chains are sophisticated enough to account for regional variations when buying, but I wouldn't bet large amounts on it.
______
Dennis

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by JMikeD

gasoline is $4.00 a gallon.

Hah! If only! We're paying £1.15 a litre; that's about US$8.70 per US gallon. You don't know when you're well off .

[Alisa]

I'm hoping in place of bookstores, we have reading clubs. They could be social places that people could hang out, read and discuss books, host readings and signings. The clubs would be helping to market the books and could get a cut of the sales to the members. It would probably actually be easier to run than a bookstore, too. These days so many bookstores have had to add cafes and other merchandise to the store to stay competitive. I wonder if some day we'll have bookstores without all the physical books. To me, what's great about my small local bookshop isn't the shelves of paper, it's the booklovers that run it. When you shop there, you feel part of that community. That doesn't have to become irrelevant in the face of ebooks, but it will have to evolve.

I know publishers also worry about preserving relevance in this new market, but even if they're no longer gatekeepers to the expensive printing and distribution process, they still have a lot to offer. Publishers add real value. Like that small bookstore, that value is not in the paper, it's in the people. They separate out the books they think their customers want then refine them. I'm glad there are publishers out there to do this. While there are good self-published works, there is also a lot of stuff that wasn't commercially published for a reason and sifting through it all isn't easy. A boutique publisher has more opportunity to develop as a brand and the center of a community in a market where self-publishing is so easy.

The only thing that worries me is how we can get to DRM-free with books. Having DRM-free be standard or, short of that, fair, non-cumbersome and widely-adopted DRM seems to me to be a must for ebooks to take off but publishers worry about people downloading without paying. A big publisher may sell lots of titles anyway but the lower-volume publishers need the money for pretty much every download. It's easier to sell the concept of DRM-free to a music label. The recording is not the only revenue generator for music. I often see it argued that the amount of actual revenue lost from people who download and don't pay for tracks is counterbalanced by the exposure it provides. With a book there is rarely any other revenue but the book sale. If the little guys can't be sure of some revenue, we'll have a future full blockbuster best-sellers and not much else. That would be a very sad day. I can see why some publishers worry that it could be the end rather than the beginning.

[JMikeD]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Hah! If only! We're paying £1.15 a litre; that's about US$8.70 per US gallon. You don't know when you're well off .

Yeah, but isn't about $4.00 of the $8.70 for government taxes? That doesn't make it hurt less when you fill the tank, though.

[GeoffC]

Am I incorrect in thinking that most books (of all genre) now start off in digital format...if so, then surely a publisher already has a potential e-book before they even start to go to print...

Geoff
(may be I'm way off with this thought but surely technology now suggests most writers and their editors use computors at some stage in a book development)

[JMikeD]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I can't agree with the conclusion that independent bookstores won't stock the titles because Amazon will undercut them on price.

This fellow stated it as a fact; he tried to get indies to carry his books and they refused because people could go to Amazon and get them for less money. So it's not a conclusion for him, it's a statement of fact.

As long as manufacturers will give quantity discounts to stores, this would seem to be inevitable.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by GeoffC

Am I incorrect in thinking that most books (of all genre) now start off in digital format...if so, then surely a publisher already has a potential e-book before they even start to go to print...

Geoff
(may be I'm way off with this thought but surely technology now suggests most writers and their editors use computors at some stage in a book development)

Just about everybody in publishing expects a Microsoft Word document as the manuscript they will work from. (I know writers who despise Word but are forced to use it for the submission draft because of this.)

The Word document will be imported into Quark Express or Adobe InDesign for markup, typesetting, and the production of the electronic files (usually PDF) that the printer's prepress department will use as input to their imagesetters, which will create the plates used for printing.

Adobe Indesign can create ePub as output, and I've speculated before on a workflow that creates ePub files as well as PDFs to feed to imagesetters. ePub contains all of the elements needed for an ebook, and can serve as a base file for conversions to other formats. (Mobipocket's command line Mobigen tool can take an ePub file as input and produce a Mobi file as output.)

As more conversion tools become available, it's not unreasonable to think about a workflow where once markup is completed in InDesign, output to ePub, and conversion from ePub to Mobipocket, Sony LRF, EB1150 IMP, eReader PML, and other formats can happen automatically.

The barriers to publishers producing ebooks are not technological. They are issues of business model -- "How do we do this and make money?"
______
Dennis

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by JMikeD

This fellow stated it as a fact; he tried to get indies to carry his books and they refused because people could go to Amazon and get them for less money. So it's not a conclusion for him, it's a statement of fact.

As long as manufacturers will give quantity discounts to stores, this would seem to be inevitable.

This is the way a capitalist society works. The manufacturer sells to a wholesaler/distributar at a certain price. The distributor sells it to retailer at a mark up of that price, and the retailer sells it to the end user at any price they want. If all products were sold at the MSRP then we would be paying much more for many products and competition would go away.

Granted, there are some products that are the same price no matter where you go, Apple, Nintendo, XBox... prices are controlled... you can't sell these devices at any amount other than the set MSRP.

Does this capitalist market force out smaller sellers... in many cases yes. But, these smaller sellers have ways to off set that... customer service is one way. Although there is not alot of service after the sale on a p-book so it is hard for these stores to compete there. B&N try to do it with a large selection, cafe's, internet access, etc.

While capitalism isn't perfect, it does work.

BOb

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

"How do we do this and make money?"
______
Dennis

and the 'obvious' way is to cut costs, in other words removing the vast expence of keeping a printing press and its drain on resources...removing the costs of transport and storage...

as a business model it makes more sense for publishers to ditch paper forms of most popular books and actively encourage by all means the electronic options...

their biggest problem is likely to be creating a large enough customer base, which should not be difficult if the will is really there...

[JMikeD]

Originally Posted by Alisa

The only thing that worries me is how we can get to DRM-free with books. Having DRM-free be standard or, short of that, fair, non-cumbersome and widely-adopted DRM seems to me to be a must for ebooks to take off but publishers worry about people downloading without paying.

I have absolutely no problem with DRM for e-books as long as it doesn't cause me to lose books if the reader is lost/stolen/explodes, doesn't require me to enter passwords or other onerous access procedures, etc.

The Amazon model is quite acceptable with only two annoyances for me: Minor - you can't loan books, to the dismay of one of my brothers (but you can share with people on your account if they pony up the $360 for their own Kindle), and Major - there appears to be no mechanism for transferring ownership in case of the death of the account owner. I'd hate to build up a library of thousands of books, only to have them disappear when I die. I have 4,000 printed books, and I like the idea that my heirs will be able to keep them in the family if they see fit.