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Originally Posted by darryl
I too recommend this post. It is excellent. KKR, like Joe Konrath, is well worth a read, albeit for different reasons. KKR, whilst agreeing with Joe Konrath's comments, herself shows a remarkable degree of restraint. And, slightly off-topic here but well worth a read, is her comments on accounting transparency. In a nutshell, she agrees with a commentator who predicts that this will be the next big battle in the music industry, from where it will likely spread to publishing. Given today's technology twice yearly and largely "opaque" reporting on Royalties is almost as archaic as the Large Publishing Cartel members themselves. Given this lack of transparency, one can only wonder what discrepancies proper audits of Royalties based on full and complete disclosure of figures may turn up. Based on the past behaviour of some of the players I can only say that after I shook hands with them I would be counting my fingers.
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Accounting transparency in publishing is going to be very topical soon because when revenues decline "partners" start looking at each other askance. Some of the big name authors have mandatory auditing in their contracts but very few others do. In the olden days, asking for a royalty audit, even when allowed by contract, often led to blacklisting. I vaguely remember one author (KKR herself, I think) saying that one publisher reverted all her titles rather than face an audit.
Another author with both tradpub and indie titles similarly ranked at Amazon reported that the Amazon sales alone for the tradpub title exceeded the reported sales for all channels, leaving the impression that those channels provided negative sales. A challenge to the publisher brought a substatially higher revised statement.
Not that tradpubbers are necessarily shorting authors on purpose, but their internal processes are so archaic and downsizing so extreme it is impossible to tell incompetence from malice from the outside. Of course, implemening transparent reporting costs money that is going to be increasingly hard to find in coming months.
http://the-digital-reader.com/2015/0...arter-of-2015/
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In terms of formats, hardback sales dropped 6.7%, to $463 million. Paperback sales rose 8.6%, to $443 million, and ebooks fell 7.5%, to $374 million. Downloaded audiobooks continued its growth streak, with a 33.6% increase over the same quarter last year. Physical audio, mass market, paperback and board book formats all experienced growth this quarter as well.
The AAP also reported today that total publisher revenues were down 6.6% in the first quarter at $2.22 billion, compared to $2.38 billion for the first quarter in 2014. That figure includes sales for all tracked categories (Trade, K-12 Instructional Materials, Higher Education Course Materials, Professional Publishing, and University Presses).
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(Note the shift from hardcovers and ebooks to the cheaper paperback formats, which had long been declining. Newstands and supermarkets must be happy.)