More wood on the fire...

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Baen started with the premise, "let's believe our customers are decent people, and smart, and will therefore want to pay money to support the people who bring them what they want to read."

Instead of "let's believe our customers are borderline-criminals, waiting for the chance to screw us over."

The "customers are cool" approach works. It works *tremendously* well for Baen, which is a big player in a niche market; it's working tolerably well for smaller companies like Loose Id and Samhain Press, who are in a niche that doesn't get discussed much in public.

The "customers are bandits from whom we must seize our rightful pay" approach is not working so well. The customers don't care if the publishers are flailing under economic shifts; they don't tell their friends to buy more of that publisher's books; they don't forgive mistakes; they don't buy a copy of something they already had as a freebie.

I'm not saying, "all the major publishers should adopt Baen's methods." A lot of Baen's methods work precisely because they're small and niche-focused. But all the major publishers should look at Baen's methods, and figure out how many of them they could steal or adapt, because those methods *work*, and what Macmillan and Random House are doing... isn't working so well. The "free promo ebook--laden with DRM and don't you dare share it with anyone else" gets downloads, but not referrals.

What I am saying is that the big six ought to think of their business as a conglomerate of niches, and build little, tight Baen-like sub publishers for most of their lines. The result would be a much smaller, efficient and profitable organization. Instead we get the "Hollywood Mega-hit" mindset, which is really profitable (over the long term) even in Hollywood....

[Pardoz]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

What I am saying is that the big six ought to think of their business as a conglomerate of niches, and build little, tight Baen-like sub publishers for most of their lines. The result would be a much smaller, efficient and profitable organization. Instead we get the "Hollywood Mega-hit" mindset, which is really profitable (over the long term) even in Hollywood....

You do realize that you're describing the publishing industry of 35 years ago, right? C.J. Cherryh has just written a useful history lesson at Book View Cafe. It's mostly centred around SF/F, but the broad strokes reflect the evolution of the industry as a whole.

Publishing hasn't always been about a steadily-shrinking number of corporate behemoths trying to stay afloat on a sea of Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea-level bestsellers, and just because that's where the industry is today doesn't mean that's where the industry will be in another 35 years.

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by Pardoz

You do realize that you're describing the publishing industry of 35 years ago, right? C.J. Cherryh has just written a useful history lesson at Book View Cafe. It's mostly centred around SF/F, but the broad strokes reflect the evolution of the industry as a whole.

Publishing hasn't always been about a steadily-shrinking number of corporate behemoths trying to stay afloat on a sea of Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea-level bestsellers, and just because that's where the industry is today doesn't mean that's where the industry will be in another 35 years.

I'm quite aware that's how it used to be. That's why the conglomerate model has failed over time. The problem is that the media industry is built on groups of monopolies, and that makes them think they are above the consumer. When any company thinks that, they are goners in the long term....

[Ben Thornton]

Originally Posted by LisaPT

I would never walk into a bookstore and start shoving books into a tote bag and walk out. The fact that it is electronic bits and I can do it from inside my house, doesn't make it any less stealing.

Yes it does! This is being discussed over on the "Will you pay $15 thread", where the difference has been expressed more clearly than I could.

If you went over to someone's house and saw that, as well as a lot of albums, they had some on cassette [I am showing my age!], would you think the same of that person as you would of someone who had stolen physical copies of those albums?

When I was a student (20 years ago), I would have been shocked to find someone who DIDN'T have any copies of albums on cassette, and equally shocked if someone was stealing physical copies.

Whether or not you think that making a copy illegally is right or wrong, it's definitely different to stealing a physical copy.

[Bremen Cole]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

I'm quite aware that's how it used to be. That's why the conglomerate model has failed over time. The problem is that the media industry is built on groups of monopolies, and that makes them think they are above the consumer. When any company thinks that, they are goners in the long term....

Masterful, I stand in awe

Of course, I see you are a fellow Texan..... So I would expect a certain clarity of thought.......

It's the over time part that all parties miss. The company is so caught up in trying to recreate the past, and the consumers forget how quickly things do change. 30 years go by, and no one remembers the company, and the new generation of consumers smirk at the old technology's. The current model has been around about 40 years, time for a change. Time for independent publishers and "author publishers" to come to the front. Let the massive corporate monopolies fade....

[SCION]

Originally Posted by Bremen Cole

Of course, I see you are a fellow Texan..... So I would expect a certain clarity of thought.......

[Greg Anos]

Aw shucks, people can't help it if they aren't Texans. (Dodges rocks, clubs and copies of Shakespeare) .

What is needed by the "author publishers" is a group site, where they can offer a breath of products to encourage people to visit and buy from the site.

How to get advertising? (hee, hee, hee) Use Project Gutenberg. Create an anthology of short stories from 10-15 authors, and release it under creative commons. At the end of each story, provide a link to the website - for more stories by the author....

This works only for author with backlists and enough of a name to interest Project Gutenberg...

(And I'm not even charging to the idea....)

[Bremen Cole]

Originally Posted by SCION

Off topic, but to you SCION.... I always enjoy your post, you are a joy to experience (even on the internet), and your picture makes me think there is hope for the human race. Bless you.....

[Xenophon]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Baen started with the premise, "let's believe our customers are decent people, and smart, and will therefore want to pay money to support the people who bring them what they want to read."

Instead of "let's believe our customers are borderline-criminals, waiting for the chance to screw us over."

The "customers are cool" approach works. It works *tremendously* well for Baen, which is a big player in a niche market; it's working tolerably well for smaller companies like Loose Id and Samhain Press, who are in a niche that doesn't get discussed much in public.

The "customers are bandits from whom we must seize our rightful pay" approach is not working so well. The customers don't care if the publishers are flailing under economic shifts; they don't tell their friends to buy more of that publisher's books; they don't forgive mistakes; they don't buy a copy of something they already had as a freebie.

I'm not saying, "all the major publishers should adopt Baen's methods." A lot of Baen's methods work precisely because they're small and niche-focused. But all the major publishers should look at Baen's methods, and figure out how many of them they could steal or adapt, because those methods *work*, and what Macmillan and Random House are doing... isn't working so well. The "free promo ebook--laden with DRM and don't you dare share it with anyone else" gets downloads, but not referrals.

I agree with all of the above. But the last paragraph, in particular, is key. Any major publisher who blindly adopted Baen's methods would be failing to do right by their stockholders. They might well wind up better off than with their current mess, but they'd have failed to consider how to best make money by serving their markets well.

That said, Baen's approach remains the most successful of any mainstream* fiction publisher. (*"Mainstream" in the sense of: long successful history; books in every US bookstore that has any SF or Fantasy at all; isn't a "small press.") So any publisher who is thinking about eBooks should be studying Baen's success very carefully indeed. One important path to success, after all, is to study what works for those who are already succeeding. My recommendation for the majors would be to start their thinking with "do what Baen is doing" and then diverge from that position only when there is a truly compelling reason to do so. I'd also remind them that "we're afraid of piracy" isn't a truly compelling reason unless it comes with enough hard data to outweigh the hard data from Baen that says "piracy ain't a problem if your business model is right."

On a slightly different front, I'd also like to remind the head honchos at the major publishers "Oh-so-carefully-and-politely" of a few bits of "Business-101," since they appear to have forgotten the basics. A few samples:

• Maximising shareholder value and maximizing per-item profit margin are not necessarily the same thing.
• Worrying about the number of sales that are (??may arguably be??) lost to "piracy" is a mug's game. It's far more important to worry about maximising the total return on sales made to happy customers who are eager to purchase your product. (Big Hint: low prices, convenience, and value-for-money fight "piracy" waaay better than DRM, draconian laws, and expensive lawsuits.) More sales with little-to-no added cost (extra bits are really cheap!) means HIGHER PROFITS. Business 101 says that this is good.
• DRM increases your costs without reducing "piracy" or leading to additional sales. It pisses-off your customers too. So let's review the equation: Higher costs, with no increase in sales means LOWER PROFITS. (Hello? That's bad, right? See business-101. ) Pissed-off customers give bad publicity, bad word-of-mouth, and generally lead to reduced sales. Higher costs plus reduced sales is even worse. Or it was when last I read up on business issues.
• DRM adds hassles to your customer's experience with your electronic product. That means that DRM both increases your costs directly (you have to pay the DRM vendor) AND increases your costs indirectly (customer support and added I.T. costs—and if you think that retailers will assume this burden without passing the cost back to you, you're smoking crack!). Then—to top it all off—it makes the product worth less to the end user. Which means you sell still less of that product. Remind me again why it is that you wanted to be squeezed by both higher costs and a less-attractive product all at the same time? (Business-101 again: Higher costs + less-attractive product = LOWER PROFITS = BAD. )
• Reverse-auction-style reduction of price points over time is a fine idea. Go right ahead and make the people who want early access (or even prompt access) to new books pay more to get the books sooner. But never, ever, EVER forget to actually reduce the price of the product over time!!! (BIG HINT: That means "no more eBooks with $15.99 list price, when the paperback edition has been out for over a decade and has a list price of $7.99. The customers really do notice that kind of <self-censored>... and they quite reasonably conclude that your claims of "Reverse-auction-style reduction of price points over time" are not to be trusted. People who buy a lot of books are not stupid.)

There's more, but my "semi-polite-application-of-clue-bat-to-so-called-businessmen" well has run dry.

Xenophon
(who is feeling just a bit curmudgeonly this evening)

[Pardoz]

Originally Posted by Xenophon

(who is feeling just a bit curmudgeonly this evening)

Curmudgeonly, nothing. That was well-written, polite, sensible advice.

Screaming obscenities while repeatedly going upside John Sargent's head with a clue-by-four, then proceeding to twirl your moustache Snidely Whiplash-style while tying him down to the tracks to be repeatedly run over by the clue train? That's curmudgeonly. Justified, but curmudgeonly.

All this talk of Baen vs Status Quo Publishers seems to have missed another key difference between the houses: the authors themselves and how they and the company see's their works.

From interviews and articles from and about most of the big Baen names, they seem to see themselves as writers telling stories that they want to tell to people who want to read them. More than a few seem to actively seek feedback publicly on the company forums and will actually talk about future plans. They expect to have a voice in how the company does things with their books and take active participation in how things flow. They don't write "bestsellars" as much as "books". They don't seem to expect a large advance but DO expect a good percentage of the profits derived from their work.

Most of the names I see on the Big Houses seem to be promoted as "authors" who have written (or let their names be associated with) "books of the decade" or the "new bestsellar" (with the "bestsellar" built into the first edition jackets since it was already decided that it was going to be one before it was released). The books seem to be promoted as a vehicle for the "author" instead of a product from a "writer". (Cripes, does that make sense to anyone other than me? Maybe I need more coffee.)

Baens writers seem to have this odd idea that once a book is written, it will keep making money for them as long as it's around (either in direct sales in the case of one shots or as advertisement for series) and so act as if it's a long term investment.

The other large houses? They seem to present the books as a one time sale offered now. Anything not made now will never be made up. If it doesn't sell now it won't really sell later at the same rate so they lose interest in supporting older titles. So they sell at what they can get now and if it makes money later, well that's nice too but not really considered into things since people will only spend1 $15-30 on new books, not ones that have been out for months. They seem to see the business this way and so do many of their employees.

If you really want to see a major difference in the attitudes, go to the Baen fourms (Baen Bar) and note how often you are talking to the heads of the company about things (including errors in the books themselves). They even have a slush pile! How many publishers have the nerve to do that?

Then go to any of the others to check their forums (if they even have one). Note the general change in atmosphere.

You can say Baen is successful due to it's being a niche publisher but that minimizes the work that the authors and staff themselves put into it. Baen doesn't sell strictly to stores but to stores and readers. And if you look around in other "niche" markets I think you will find more of them starting to sprout.

That is something that could hurt the older houses more than anything in the long run since most of the more casual readers I know just read in one or two niches so if they find a comfortable home, why stray?

[tompe]

Originally Posted by stxopher

If you really want to see a major difference in the attitudes, go to the Baen fourms (Baen Bar) and note how often you are talking to the heads of the company about things (including errors in the books themselves).

Baen is a very small company (5-10 people or do I misremember?) and this often happens in small companies were everybody do everything.

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by charleski

Don't be ridiculous.

Right now, my most desperate hope is that publishers are not keeping an eye on Mobileread. Because if I were a publisher looking at this forum I'd be sorely tempted to walk away from the tiny ebook market in disgust.

Yes, because boosting the darknet even more is such a brilliant idea.

...

Wait a minute...

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by kjk

Or, they could just decide eBooks are too expensive for them, and, you know, not read eBooks.

But they won't, so don't be deliberately naive.

stustaff - Hm, from where I'm looking it would seem that Baen have more authors consistently hitting the NYT bestseller list than Tor's offerings.

[kjk]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

But they won't, so don't be deliberately naive.

Why won't they? Other people here have stated they will go back to used paperbacks, for one. I just don't think everyone goes to the darknets as their next and obvious option.