Publishers continue to live in the past

[Blue Tyson]

Originally Posted by delphidb96

You all should bloody well MOVE to the US and leave over your former homelands to the agribusiness combines! And bloody well learn US English at the same time. *AND* give up your former histories and cultures for American culture! Long Live Michael Moore!

(Grinning. Ducking. And running for cover. )

Derek

Nah, that is what bittorrent is for. So the reverse will happen. At least according to the zillions lost to it according to the media industries.

Should be no money left there!

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Elsi

And *I* want to buy books published in the UK. I mean, after all, the US edition of the first Harry Potter book even has a bastardized title.

You can do. Just go to "amazon.co.uk".

[Crowl]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

For the rest of it, they should be talking about revenue sharing and cooperation for the remainder of their catalogues. They're not, they're talking restrictions and DRM. This is the sound of the music industry's ghost stalking them, and it will reflect on all books, losing buyers.

It would take some effort on the part of shops and the publishers to make revenue sharing work, but it just amazes me that they aren't doing more to implement such things because at the end of the day the worst thing the publishing companies can do is stop people from buying books from them. Drm and pricing are obviously major annoyances that have the potential to harm sales, but nothing harms sales more than refusing to sell.

[Direct Ebooks]

As someone who deals with publishers every day, the biggest issue is the uncertainty of publishers. Like most of us, they genuinely don't know what to do with the whole e-book "problem". Unfortunately, many of them want to hold on to the traditional methods of publishing, which are outdated and in my opinion, obsolete.
I feel that in the future, Authors will have far more power over their titles, retaining/splitting rights in their favour. The arguments for obtaining the services of a publisher are rapidly diminishing, especially with eBooks and Print on Demand where a bookshop can print the complete paperback in minutes, on demand.

For example, an author can sell 10,000 copies of a book through a publisher, receiving 9% of the retail sale of $12.99 = $11691 for the author, plus advance, if any (and many/most authors do not)

The same author, managing their own titles can achieve up to 60% of the sale price of their books. At the classic $9.99 price, selling a modest 2500 titles, the author can expect nearly $15k.

This is the way I feel that the market will grow, giving more power to the authors and the consumer, which is a good thing. If this means that some publishers may dissapear or are forced to change into effectively management agencies to assist authors, so be it. Thats business.

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by Direct Ebooks

For example, an author can sell 10,000 copies of a book through a publisher, receiving 9% of the retail sale of $12.99 = $11691 for the author, plus advance, if any (and many/most authors do not)

"Plus" advance? I thought the advance was precisely to be deduced from the possible author benefit (i.e. if the above author had received an advance of $5000, he would only get 11691-5000=$6691 from sales).

[HarryT]

It is. An advance is an "advance on royalties".

[Lemurion]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

Sorry, I disagree. Publishers should not be buying books today without worldworld right agreements for online publishing, even if they have to settle for non-exclusive rights.

And they should be going back through the back catalogue and getting assigned online rights whereever possible and not explictly set otherwise, which is someone an academic author friend tells me they are still not doing (indeed, he has recovered the worldwide online rights for his works very cheaply indeed).

For the rest of it, they should be talking about revenue sharing and cooperation for the remainder of their catalogues. They're not, they're talking restrictions and DRM. This is the sound of the music industry's ghost stalking them, and it will reflect on all books, losing buyers.

Baen's of less value for this discussion because they do buy world rights. A the actions of a company with non-exclusive world rights doesn't provide much guidance for how to deal with several different sets of exclusive regional rights. Baen avoided the problem by sidestepping it - unfortunately those companies who're in the exclusive regional trap have to deal with it.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

Baen's of less value for this discussion because they do buy world rights. A the actions of a company with non-exclusive world rights doesn't provide much guidance for how to deal with several different sets of exclusive regional rights. Baen avoided the problem by sidestepping it - unfortunately those companies who're in the exclusive regional trap have to deal with it.

I think DawnFalcon is suggesting that other publishers should follow Baen's example and buy worldwide ebook rights. Well and good, but it doesn't cover the existing cases where world rights aren't owned.

And it also raises the question of what Baen should do if the author (or author's agent) refuses to sell world ebook rights. (They may be under the impression they can do better overall selling ebook rights the same way they sell pbook rights - country by country.)
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Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

Sorry, I disagree. Publishers should not be buying books today without worldworld right agreements for online publishing, even if they have to settle for non-exclusive rights.

How would you expect non-exclusive rights to work?

And they should be going back through the back catalogue and getting assigned online rights whereever possible and not explictly set otherwise, which is someone an academic author friend tells me they are still not doing (indeed, he has recovered the worldwide online rights for his works very cheaply indeed).

This is a subset of a much older problem applicable to pbooks as well as ebooks.

Years back, I attended a talk given by Dave Hartwell, who was then a consulting editor at New American Library's Signet PB imprint. (These days, he's a Senior Editor at Tor.) Signet wanted to enhance its SF line. Dave described it taking something like seven months just to determine what existing SF properties Signet had under contract, and another five moths to dot Is, cross Ts, and make sure contracts were renewed. At that, they lost some titles they'd prefer to have kept because they might have forgotten they had the rights, but the author or author's agent didn't, and promptly asked that the rights revert as soon as the book reached out-of-print status.

I haven't seen a lot of evidence the publishing industry has gotten much better about this...

For the rest of it, they should be talking about revenue sharing and cooperation for the remainder of their catalogues. They're not, they're talking restrictions and DRM. This is the sound of the music industry's ghost stalking them, and it will reflect on all books, losing buyers.

How do you see revenue sharing and cooperation working?
______
Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Crowl

It would take some effort on the part of shops and the publishers to make revenue sharing work, but it just amazes me that they aren't doing more to implement such things because at the end of the day the worst thing the publishing companies can do is stop people from buying books from them. Drm and pricing are obviously major annoyances that have the potential to harm sales, but nothing harms sales more than refusing to sell.

If I'm a publisher getting that suggestion, my question is "What's in it for me?" Revenue sharing seems to assume I may not have exclusive rights to a title. Okay, what rights do I have? Is the suggestion that I as a publisher don't get exclusive rights on a book, and I am one of X publishers entitled to publish and sell it, taking the revenue from whatever sales I happen to make? That's a drastic revision of the typical model, and I don't see anyone going for it.

If that's not being suggested, what is? I have exclusive rights in a geographical area for pbooks, but ebooks are another matter? Someone else can offer an ebook version of a title I publish, and I get a cut of the sales? What cut? And how is this audited and verified, so I know I am getting my slice of the pie?

I'm not clear on what's being suggested here.
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Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Direct Ebooks

I feel that in the future, Authors will have far more power over their titles, retaining/splitting rights in their favour. The arguments for obtaining the services of a publisher are rapidly diminishing, especially with eBooks and Print on Demand where a bookshop can print the complete paperback in minutes, on demand.

I think you may be right, but ebooks and print on demand presume the buyer knows the book (and the author) exists.

An assortment of authors are going the self-published route. The fundamental question is marketing. How do you, as an author, let the folks who might be interested in reading what you write know you exist?

This is one of the services traditional publishers provide, even if they often don't do it well.
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Dennis

[ficbot]

Why don't we just designate 'the internet' as a country? So the ebook rights will be just one of many 'countries' you negotiate for?

[zerospinboson]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

How would you expect non-exclusive rights to work?

Why do exclusive rights exist now? It's because of the problem of print runs, correct? So that publishers won't all print the same books, and then find out they won't be able to sell all their stock because the market has been flooded.
How does this apply to ebooks, though? Yes, setting up an ebook store/'warehouse' requires an initial investment. If the estimate made in another thread is correct and representative, this cost Hachette $16m. After that, however, there are nearly no storage costs, marginal encoding costs (DRM), etc. It hardly makes any difference whether you carry 10000 or 1000000 titles (sure, redundancy, etc.. but that's a separate issue. The additional cost per-book is near-negligible.). So why would they still need exclusive ebook rights? I can see they wouldn't want to be outcompeted on price by another publisher, but that argument takes the monopoly as its starting point and goes from there.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by zerospinboson

Why do exclusive rights exist now? It's because of the problem of print runs, correct? So that publishers won't all print the same books, and then find out they won't be able to sell all their stock because the market has been flooded.

Nope. They have exclusive rights because being the sole source of something is valuable. You can find plenty of examples of that in all sorts of industries.

It's why we have copyrights. As an author of copyrighted material, you control the rights, and are the sole source of that material while the copyrights are in force. Someone who wants to publish your material must negotiate a license from you to do so. The intent of copyright in the first place was to encourage production by granting the creators exclusive rights to their creations.

When something is no longer exclusive to a vendor, it becomes a commodity, with enormous pressure on price and margins, and most vendors of whateevr it is are likely to stop offering it, as they can't make money doing so.

Let's say I'm an author, with a manuscript several publishers are interested in. Which is a better deal for me? Exclusive rights for one publisher in a particular area, or rights offered to several publishers in the same area? My guess is, a deal with a single publisher. If more than one publisher gets rights to publish, and they know they are one of a group, what incentive does any single one have to actively promote and sell the book? If there efforts may mean "generate more sales for a competitor", not much.

It's also far more complicated for me and/or my agent to negotiate rights in such a scenario.

How does this apply to ebooks, though? Yes, setting up an ebook store/'warehouse' requires an initial investment. If the estimate made in another thread is correct and representative, this cost Hachette $16m. After that, however, there are nearly no storage costs, marginal encoding costs (DRM), etc. It hardly makes any difference whether you carry 10000 or 1000000 titles (sure, redundancy, etc.. but that's a separate issue. The additional cost per-book is near-negligible.). So why would they still need exclusive ebook rights? I can see they wouldn't want to be outcompeted on price by another publisher, but that argument takes the monopoly as its starting point and goes from there.

Yes, continuing and incremental costs are lower for electronic books, You do still have warehousing and distribution costs, in terms of server maintenance and bandwidth bills, but they are an order of magnitude lower per book.

However, you still have substantial costs to acquire and develop the titles in the first palce, whether of not you actually sell paper copies of them, and those costs will impose limits on how low a price you can charge.

It would be nice if we could just ignore the buyer's location when offering ebooks. Unfortunately, in many instances, we can't.
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Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by ficbot

Why don't we just designate 'the internet' as a country? So the ebook rights will be just one of many 'countries' you negotiate for?

It's a lovely thought, but just which "we" could make this designation?
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Dennis