Quote:
Originally Posted by Phogg
... I want them to fail if their business model includes perpetual control of the Intellecrtual property of their respective authors.
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Which it is.
But I have to tell you that they aren't going to fail. Their frontlist market share will erode over time but as long as new authors keep signing with them they will have enough new content to combine with the eternal backlist to stay in business as they steadily downsize into IP asset management companies.
Macmillan's new stated policy of putting their midlister backlist on subscriptions services guarantees they'll never revert any titles. Individually each title will likely deliver very small revenue in that hands-off promotion-free environment but since it will cost them nothing to generate those trickles it will be pure profit.
Think of their new model as a stock portfolio where the established name authors' "bestsellers" are Wall Street stocks and the midlisters' books are penny stock. The big boys books will stay on sale at bookstores forever and rarely if ever show up on subscription sites except maybe on rotation while the "penny stock" titles get dumped onto the subscription sites. Think of it as their "solution" to the tsunami of swell issue. It kills two birds with a stone: it keeps the backlist titles generating profits (and in their grasp) forever and keeps them from "crowding out" the frontlist.
The next step in what Sargent describes is still a few years off but the next logical move is to pull the midlist backlist from ebookstores once Scribd/Oyster/whatever take off and can guarantee enough revenue to satisfy the reversion clauses. At that point the ebook business will look a lot like the TV business, where current season shows are sold on iTunes, XBOX, Prime, etc and carried on Hulu plus but once the new season ends they show up on Netflix and DVD sets.
It is a clever model that should keep the corporate publishers afloat indefinitely.
Or as long as they find dreamers willing to sign their contracts.