Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
Although I don't disagree with anything you've said, I still wonder: If it really is that simple, why is it that publishers are fighting the internet and e-books so readily, instead of embracing it? There has to be more to it than that.
Part of it is the forced rewriting of their entire business system, partially because of the changes to profit margins that e-books would cause. But is the rest because they simply can't conceive of a way to offer a fair product and a good user experience?
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Possibly.
It
is a forced revamp of their business model.
First, they have to figure out there is a market for ebooks.
Next, they have to figure out how to produce them.
Next, they have to figure out how to price them.
Last, they have to figure out how to market and distribute them.
A lot of companies are groping with these questions. I had a conversation with SF author Peter Hamilton a few years back, where he mentioned he got perhaps a couple of hundred dollars, all told, in ebook royalties. No surprise, as his then publisher was one of the ones that didn't get it. Some of his books were available in electronic format from them, but good luck finding out they existed and buying them.
I think there is a growing awareness that there
is a market for ebooks.
Production still presents an issue: the standard marked up and typeset manuscript sent to a printer to make plates and print is a Quark file, which doesn't translate readily to ebook format. Most publishers want Word documents as electronic manuscripts from the authors (though Word sucks on long documents), but the author's manuscript requires work before it can be imported to Quark for markup and typesetting.
Pricing tends to be a killer, when a publisher prices an ebook at higher than a mass market PB.
And marketing and distribution may be the biggest hurdle, as most publishers aren't set up to handle electronic commerce at the retail level. Publishers are used to dealing with wholesalers and retail chains, not individual consumers. It wouldn't surprise me if a lot are jumping on the Amazon bandwagon because Amazon handles that for them. They have the infrastructure, and make their living dealing with individual consumers.
I see Tor's free ebook campaign as a symptom of the book industry coming to grips with the new phenonenon. Sister company St. Martins recently offered a couple of free mystery titles by a rising author in that genre, and parent company Holtzbrink seems to be trying to unify such efforts under the Macmillan umbrella. I think Holtzbrink is groping towards a coherent digital strategy, and will be curious to see where they end up.
Questions over whether to have DRM are minor pieces of the puzzle. changing your entire business model is always a scary proposition. Do it wrong and you could be
out of business.
______
Dennis