[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by GA Russell

Dennis, the inability of the big publishers to publish cheaply is a recurrent theme of yours.

It appears to me, however, that it would be more correct (assuming that you know what you are talking about, and I am willing to believe that you do) to say that they cannot do so if they do not change their way of doing business.

I fully agree. There are actually two questions. The first is what the changes ought to be. I don't think anyone knows at the moment.

The fundamental problem the industry is facing is not a new one. It's been going on for years, and ebooks didn't cause it. There are simply too many books chasing too few readers, and there have been waves of wrenching consolidation as publishers trimmed lines (and dropped authors from contract and laid off employees), imprints folded, and larger houses acquired smaller ones to get economies of scale and gain market share.

eBooks simply add a complication, as publishers try to figure out how to produce them profitably. They may well be the savior of the publishing industry, though they may also doom most bookstores.

The second question is whether publishers should try to publish ebooks at the rate many on MR would like to see.

Consider the poster who commented that he restricted his ebook purchases to indie published and self-published work that he could get for $2 - $4 each. If what you read is fiction, and you can find enough that satisfies you restricting your purchases to that sort of material, fine. What if you can't?

For instance, I read a lot of fiction, primarily in the SF/fantasy and Mystery genres, but with a mix of other types mixed in. I also read a lot of non-fiction, including works on the arts, history, politics, business and finance, economics, politics, philosophy and the sciences. I'm not going to find stuff like that written by people writing as a hobby who are happy if they cover expenses and people read them. Consider a book like David McCullough's _The Path Between the Seas_, a history of the creation of the Panama Canal. It won the National Book Award for History, the Francis Parkman Prize, the Cornelius Ryan Award, and the Samuel Eliot Morrison award. It was not a spare time activity. It was the author's full time job for a couple of years. I'm not going to see that published as an ebook for under $5, and it would be absurd to expect to.

Some things just cost more to do, and you pay more for them. If you aren't willing to pay, you don't get them.

But this is not an unusual concept in business. Change or die is how the business world works if the industry is not protected (from competition) or propped up by the government.

Yes, it is. And the industry is changing, but everyone is still reading the tea leaves, trying to figure out what the new environment will be, and how they'll need to change to adapt to it.

And change will be a slow process. Fundamental changes in the business model of a large corporation don't happen quickly. They can't. Changes must be made by people, and those people must understand what they are doing and why they are doing it, and agree with what's being done. Since that sort of fundamental change often means that many of those working for the company now won't be when the changes are finished, getting that agreement can be fraught.

Another recurrent theme of yours is that the corporate parents of the big publishers have unrealistic expectations of the profits these publishers can earn. Well, whose fault is that?

Not entirely that of the publishers. I think I've lost count of the number of times I've seen major corporations stumble because they misunderstood exactly what they were doing. The growth of media-centric corporations including book publishing was predicated on the idea that there were benefits to having all forms of media under one roof. It foundered on money and differences in business model. Different businesses have different fundamentals and different ways they should be measured, and require different kinds of management. Those details got lost in the consolidations.

And even having all forms of media under the same roof doesn't mean you'll have synergies. Each division will have its own agenda, and will be competing for resources. Cooperation that will be seen by one division as benefiting another without helping them will be resisted. Take a look at the internal tensions in the former AOL Time Warner between the folks from the web side and the folks from the traditional publishing side. That combination came unglued even though it made sense on the surface to have both online and traditional publishing assets under the same roof.

Book publishing and things like films, TV, and music have similarities in that all are content based and need to insure a continual flow of new content. But they differ in the amount of money they can make. A successful movie studio can earn far more than any publisher. As mentioned, management at large publicly held corporations are custodians of other people's money. They have a fiduciary responsibility to invest corporate funds where they will yield the greatest return. It means that there will be extreme pressure on divisions to produce results in line with expectations, and divisions that don't might get folded.

You have frequently said, "Be careful what you wish for..." Given a continued reluctance to change and unrealistic profit expectations, I don't see why the customer shouldn't wish for change. It's not like we owe them anything.

No, we don't. But from a reader perspective, ask yourself a couple of questions. Think about the books you like to read, and the authors who wrote those books. I'd bet most of them were from major trade houses. If those outfits went Poof!, and disappeared tomorrow, where would what you like to read come from? What would happen to the authors who may well be making a living writing those books? (Never mind about the people working for the publishers that produce those books.)

Something would doubtless arise to fill the publishing void, but the effects in the meantime would likely fall into the "Be careful what you wish for" category.
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Dennis