How can other publishers use a "wesbscription-like" service?

Darqref · 10-22-2010, 01:50 AM

How can other publishers use a "webscription-like" service?

In numerous other threads, one response to the drm/price/geo-restriction mess is to point to Baen Books and say "See, it can be done this way!"

Again, numerous times the corresponding comeback is "Baen is a special case, and others can not do the same".

My first reaction is to swear and.... but that isn't very useful. So here, lets think and talk about ways that other publishers, big or small, might create and use a system as close to (or maybe better than? ) the Baen Books Webscription program.

To start, here are the parts of Webscriptions that I think are important.

1. Access. Webscription books are available early (before print copies for some formats, see below), without DRM, and using a worldwide non-exclusive "printing" right (for the ebooks, I believe most of their print books carry a North American print right.) They even try to make them available in multiple formats, but many technically savvy people prefer to create their own formatted versions from some standard version. Whatever works, since no DRM.

2. Price. Webscription books are available in single book purchases in the month the paper books ship. Singly, they currently cost $6.00 each, which is well below the paperback price, even when the release in question is a hardback (and won't be a paperback for a year or more - or in some cases are a trade paper format and will NEVER be a mass market version).
This is great, but the signature part is the monthly bundle of every book published in paper that month, for a set price (currently $15.00 per month). The monthly bundle is made available with the first half of each book available three months BEFORE paper, the third quarter two months before paper, and the last quarter the month before the paper edition. This program was originally set up to encourage people who had read all or part of the webscription month to go to their local bookstore and pre-order the paper copy. This worked (and still works) quite well, to the extent that Baen publishes many more hardback books than previously.
The critical point about the monthly package, is that readers are encouraged to try authors or books that they would not normally try, simply because the rest of the month contains some interesting material. This really helps first time authors, and also lesser known authors who are being re-printed.

3. The third part is more nebulous, but very powerful - Author Access. There's an unwritten agreement that most Baen authors will show up and at least sometimes pay attention to Baen's Bar, the chat forums at Baen's web site. Because of the small size of Baen Books, this ends up being a relatively small handful of authors who interact with readers. Many are quite reserved, most have to limit their time (or they'd never get the next book written - Write, Lois, Write!!), but a surprising number are open to talking about their work. Sometimes they've been known to post snippets of the next book even before it has been officially submitted to the publisher. Overall, the author interaction is another factor that drives traffic and loyalty to their books.

So, How do we make/encourage/beg other publishers to use something like this system?

Bigger publishers might divide their monthly bundles by imprint or genre within their lines. It's possible that they could set another price point for a bundle of different size. It's possible they could restrict the bundles to books that are coming out in massmarket, but that assumes that all the hardbacks make it to pb.

Price seems to be a sticking point. Would readers commit to a whole year's "subscription" to make the bundle's sales more stable? Part of the previously mention "special case" argument is that Baen doesn't see a significant reduction in the sales of their lead hardbacks, but they don't have the world-wide blockbusters that some other publishers do. How do we argue for the blockbuster case? In my opinion, the monthly bundle would suffer if the best-sellers were held out of the bundle, but I suppose it might work if only the lead book each month was held out. Maybe include the best-seller in a bundle that's three or six months behind?

DRM is obviously a sticking point, but I'd prefer not to start arguments about it.

Small publishers? Would it work to make a bundle combining multiple publishers? Baen makes up for months that have too many pbs that have already been included in a previous monthly bundle by using newly digitalized editions from their backlist. How would a small publisher that doesn't have a large backlist fill out a bundle? maybe reduce frequency to once per quarter? but still, it might be too small.

How would small publishers advertise? The current Webscription program has Baen marketing, but the Webscription proprietor is certainly capable of making a version with other company marketing.

Worldwalker · 10-22-2010, 03:21 AM

How? Simple: they can sell their books through Webscriptions. Not all of the books it offers as ebooks are from Baen.

bgalbrecht · 10-22-2010, 07:40 AM

It may work for indie publishers (who are the other publishers besides Baen sold through Webscriptions), but none of the top six publishers will go for it because they are convinced that low cost ebooks will kill their hardcover market. However, when at least 70% of the ebook marketplace seems to be at Amazon, it seems to me that Webscriptions probably doesn't give the indie publisher the exposure they need. Perhaps that is why Subterranean Press sold through Webscriptions for about a year and then stopped. I don't know if Amazon, B&N, et. al., support the bundling that Webscriptions does. I know I've bought stuff at Webscriptions that I might not otherwise because it was in a bundle, so I think it might be a good thing for the publisher and author, even though the price of the book was discounted.

susan_cassidy · 10-22-2010, 12:17 PM

Personally, I love Baen, but don't buy the bundle webscription stuff. I hate serials - I want the whole book at once. Plus, it is extremely rare if they have a bundle with more than 2 books that I am interested in. So, I just wait until the full book is released, then buy it.

bbqncigars · 10-23-2010, 10:32 AM

I used to buy mostly the bundles over the individual books, now it's reversed. My last three purchases were ARCs, so I could get the book now. The high price of ebooks from BPH is ridiculous IMHO.

Xenophon · 10-23-2010, 02:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by susan_cassidy

Personally, I love Baen, but don't buy the bundle webscription stuff. I hate serials - I want the whole book at once. Plus, it is extremely rare if they have a bundle with more than 2 books that I am interested in. So, I just wait until the full book is released, then buy it.

You can always do what I do: Buy the bundle, but wait to download until all books are available. That way I get the whole book at once. You do realize that they "monthly" bit is timed by publication month, not by when a particular person buys the month, right? So anytime from (roughly) the 20th of the month on, the books are complete.

Xenophon

susan_cassidy · 10-23-2010, 03:46 PM

Yes, I know, but again, the collection rarely ever contains more than one or two books that I'm interested in, so buying them individually is actually cheaper.

Xenophon · 10-23-2010, 05:45 PM

The attractively priced multi-book bundle is a stroke of genius! When I'm considering four to eight books for the price of 2.5, I consider* the bundle any time it contains at least two books I know I want -- the other 1/2-a-book price is the "maybe I'll like one of the others" cost. I'd do the same with other SF and Fantasy houses, if only I could! Hint. Hint! [Xenophon picks up clue-bat and starts whaling away on some other publishers, screaming: "Sell me more good stuff at nice prices!!!"]

And it works! Most of the Baen authors I read today are folks I'd have passed up in the bookstore. I wound up with one or more of their books as part of a bundle. And the number of authors I look for has gone up. And up. And... well, more and more of them are published by Baen. It's not because Baen has all the good authors, either. Rather because that bundle thing gets more of Baen's authors' work into my hands.

Xenophon

*Consider? Heck, I just buy the bundle if there're two or more books I want. The extra $3 once a month is way waaaay less than I spend on coffee, for pete's sake!

emellaich · 10-25-2010, 08:31 PM

I love Baen, and regularly buy from them. I have hundreds of their books. ... However, I am interested in a perception/opinion of other Baen visitors. Is the bar/message board what it used to be?

My perception is that it has fallen way off in terms of quality and volume. A lot of the authors seem to visit much less frequently. For me, I began to visit less often as other message boards proliferated (such as mobileread). One of my biggest problems has been the speed of the bar -- It takes forever to load pages/threads.

So, I continue to be a big Baen booster -- just today, I tried to convert someone to become a webscriptions.net buyer. However, I only occasionally visit the bar.

What do the rest of the old-timers think? Is the bar everything it used to be? Or is it less central to the Baen 'empire' than it was in the early days?

Darqref · 10-26-2010, 01:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by emellaich

What do the rest of the old-timers think? Is the bar everything it used to be? Or is it less central to the Baen 'empire' than it was in the early days?

The level of traffic in the forums that I used to frequent got so heavy that even one day away made Waaaaay too many posts to read. I've been a barfly from about three bar crashes ago, just before webscriptions actually started. I used to read everything in 1632, but so many new people joined that I couldn't keep track any more.

But my original point still stands: the promise of author interaction still helps interest newer readers.

Another poster commented about Amazon policies, and that brings up a good point. One improvement might be to convince Amazon to allow grouped purchases, so that one price could obtain more than one item. Would a larger publisher be interested in a "monthly bundle" if it could still sell through Amazon or one of the other major markets? I bet Smashwords could be convinced to add such a feature...

Or maybe even B&N could have a sales bundle that is only available when you physically go to the store.

More publishers might be interested if they could still make use of their standard market share and advertising.

Hatgirl · 10-26-2010, 06:51 AM

I adore Baen (print and ebooks). But I loathe the layout of the Bar. I log in evey six months or so, scream in frustration at the completly insane layout and log out again. Please, please, Baen, switch to something saner!

bobavey · 10-26-2010, 01:59 PM

Sounds good to me.

Kali Yuga · 10-27-2010, 09:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by darqref

Again, numerous times the corresponding comeback is "Baen is a special case, and others can not do the same".

Pretty much.

Baen is not unique in that many genre publishers can benefit from similar approaches. IIRC Harlequin has an ebook subscription offering, as well as deals every Friday.

However, the reason why this works for Baen and Harlequin, but not a more diverse publisher, is that in the former cases it is the publisher that is the brand. If you subscribe to something at Baen, you pretty much know what you're going to get, why you want it, and why you want it from them.

99% of the time, though, the only entity the reader actually cares about is the author. Unless there is a problem, readers couldn't care less who's publishing Stephen King's books.

As a result, the larger publishers will use other promo devices like offering one title by an author for free on a temporary basis or pushing the author to do a publicity tour.

As to "author access," that's a mixed bag. On one hand, IMO it's beneficial to authors to cultivate and engage their audience, and it's likely getting harder and harder to get published without already bringing an audience to the table. On the other hand, authors should not be treated like trained seals who need to perform for an insatiable audience. Thus, I'm not entirely convinced that a publisher demanding author access, and controlling that outlet, is 100% in the author's best interests -- as opposed to, say, offering professional advice in audience engagement as part of a PR / marketing package.

10-22-2010, 01:50 AM	#1
Darqref space cadet Posts: 334 Karma: 2999999 Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: Seattle area Device: Rocket PRO, gen3, Pocketbook360	How can other publishers use a "wesbscription-like" service? How can other publishers use a "webscription-like" service? In numerous other threads, one response to the drm/price/geo-restriction mess is to point to Baen Books and say "See, it can be done this way!" Again, numerous times the corresponding comeback is "Baen is a special case, and others can not do the same". My first reaction is to swear and.... but that isn't very useful. So here, lets think and talk about ways that other publishers, big or small, might create and use a system as close to (or maybe better than? ) the Baen Books Webscription program. To start, here are the parts of Webscriptions that I think are important. 1. Access. Webscription books are available early (before print copies for some formats, see below), without DRM, and using a worldwide non-exclusive "printing" right (for the ebooks, I believe most of their print books carry a North American print right.) They even try to make them available in multiple formats, but many technically savvy people prefer to create their own formatted versions from some standard version. Whatever works, since no DRM. 2. Price. Webscription books are available in single book purchases in the month the paper books ship. Singly, they currently cost $6.00 each, which is well below the paperback price, even when the release in question is a hardback (and won't be a paperback for a year or more - or in some cases are a trade paper format and will NEVER be a mass market version). This is great, but the signature part is the monthly bundle of every book published in paper that month, for a set price (currently $15.00 per month). The monthly bundle is made available with the first half of each book available three months BEFORE paper, the third quarter two months before paper, and the last quarter the month before the paper edition. This program was originally set up to encourage people who had read all or part of the webscription month to go to their local bookstore and pre-order the paper copy. This worked (and still works) quite well, to the extent that Baen publishes many more hardback books than previously. The critical point about the monthly package, is that readers are encouraged to try authors or books that they would not normally try, simply because the rest of the month contains some interesting material. This really helps first time authors, and also lesser known authors who are being re-printed. 3. The third part is more nebulous, but very powerful - Author Access. There's an unwritten agreement that most Baen authors will show up and at least sometimes pay attention to Baen's Bar, the chat forums at Baen's web site. Because of the small size of Baen Books, this ends up being a relatively small handful of authors who interact with readers. Many are quite reserved, most have to limit their time (or they'd never get the next book written - Write, Lois, Write!!), but a surprising number are open to talking about their work. Sometimes they've been known to post snippets of the next book even before it has been officially submitted to the publisher. Overall, the author interaction is another factor that drives traffic and loyalty to their books. So, How do we make/encourage/beg other publishers to use something like this system? Bigger publishers might divide their monthly bundles by imprint or genre within their lines. It's possible that they could set another price point for a bundle of different size. It's possible they could restrict the bundles to books that are coming out in massmarket, but that assumes that all the hardbacks make it to pb. Price seems to be a sticking point. Would readers commit to a whole year's "subscription" to make the bundle's sales more stable? Part of the previously mention "special case" argument is that Baen doesn't see a significant reduction in the sales of their lead hardbacks, but they don't have the world-wide blockbusters that some other publishers do. How do we argue for the blockbuster case? In my opinion, the monthly bundle would suffer if the best-sellers were held out of the bundle, but I suppose it might work if only the lead book each month was held out. Maybe include the best-seller in a bundle that's three or six months behind? DRM is obviously a sticking point, but I'd prefer not to start arguments about it. Small publishers? Would it work to make a bundle combining multiple publishers? Baen makes up for months that have too many pbs that have already been included in a previous monthly bundle by using newly digitalized editions from their backlist. How would a small publisher that doesn't have a large backlist fill out a bundle? maybe reduce frequency to once per quarter? but still, it might be too small. How would small publishers advertise? The current Webscription program has Baen marketing, but the Webscription proprietor is certainly capable of making a version with other company marketing.

10-23-2010, 05:45 PM	#8
Xenophon curmudgeon Posts: 1,487 Karma: 5748190 Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: Redwood City, CA USA Device: Kobo Aura HD, (ex)nook, (ex)PRS-700, (ex)PRS-500	The attractively priced multi-book bundle is a stroke of genius! When I'm considering four to eight books for the price of 2.5, I consider* the bundle any time it contains at least two books I know I want -- the other 1/2-a-book price is the "maybe I'll like one of the others" cost. I'd do the same with other SF and Fantasy houses, if only I could! Hint. Hint! [Xenophon picks up clue-bat and starts whaling away on some other publishers, screaming: "Sell me more good stuff at nice prices!!!"] And it works! Most of the Baen authors I read today are folks I'd have passed up in the bookstore. I wound up with one or more of their books as part of a bundle. And the number of authors I look for has gone up. And up. And... well, more and more of them are published by Baen. It's not because Baen has all the good authors, either. Rather because that bundle thing gets more of Baen's authors' work into my hands. Xenophon Consider? Heck, I just buy* the bundle if there're two or more books I want. The extra $3 once a month is way waaaay less than I spend on coffee, for pete's sake! Last edited by Xenophon; 10-23-2010 at 05:47 PM. Reason: clarify "consider"

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10-22-2010, 03:21 AM	#2
Worldwalker Curmudgeon Posts: 3,085 Karma: 722357 Join Date: Feb 2010 Device: PRS-505	How? Simple: they can sell their books through Webscriptions. Not all of the books it offers as ebooks are from Baen.

10-22-2010, 07:40 AM	#3
bgalbrecht Wizard Posts: 1,806 Karma: 13399999 Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: US Device: Nook Simple Touch, Kobo Glo HD, Kobo Clara HD, Kindle 4	It may work for indie publishers (who are the other publishers besides Baen sold through Webscriptions), but none of the top six publishers will go for it because they are convinced that low cost ebooks will kill their hardcover market. However, when at least 70% of the ebook marketplace seems to be at Amazon, it seems to me that Webscriptions probably doesn't give the indie publisher the exposure they need. Perhaps that is why Subterranean Press sold through Webscriptions for about a year and then stopped. I don't know if Amazon, B&N, et. al., support the bundling that Webscriptions does. I know I've bought stuff at Webscriptions that I might not otherwise because it was in a bundle, so I think it might be a good thing for the publisher and author, even though the price of the book was discounted.

10-22-2010, 12:17 PM	#4
susan_cassidy Wizard Posts: 2,251 Karma: 3720310 Join Date: Jan 2009 Location: USA Device: Kindle, iPad (not used much for reading)	Personally, I love Baen, but don't buy the bundle webscription stuff. I hate serials - I want the whole book at once. Plus, it is extremely rare if they have a bundle with more than 2 books that I am interested in. So, I just wait until the full book is released, then buy it.

10-23-2010, 10:32 AM	#5
bbqncigars PDA dino Posts: 80 Karma: 1527072 Join Date: Oct 2009 Location: Iowa, USA Device: Palm IIIx, Rooted NC, Voyages(2)	I used to buy mostly the bundles over the individual books, now it's reversed. My last three purchases were ARCs, so I could get the book now. The high price of ebooks from BPH is ridiculous IMHO.

10-23-2010, 03:46 PM	#7
susan_cassidy Wizard Posts: 2,251 Karma: 3720310 Join Date: Jan 2009 Location: USA Device: Kindle, iPad (not used much for reading)	Yes, I know, but again, the collection rarely ever contains more than one or two books that I'm interested in, so buying them individually is actually cheaper.

10-25-2010, 08:31 PM	#9
emellaich Wizard Posts: 1,101 Karma: 4388403 Join Date: Oct 2007 Device: Palm>Ebookman>IPaq>Axim>Cybook>Kndl2>IPAD>Kndl3SO>Voyager>Oasis	I love Baen, and regularly buy from them. I have hundreds of their books. ... However, I am interested in a perception/opinion of other Baen visitors. Is the bar/message board what it used to be? My perception is that it has fallen way off in terms of quality and volume. A lot of the authors seem to visit much less frequently. For me, I began to visit less often as other message boards proliferated (such as mobileread). One of my biggest problems has been the speed of the bar -- It takes forever to load pages/threads. So, I continue to be a big Baen booster -- just today, I tried to convert someone to become a webscriptions.net buyer. However, I only occasionally visit the bar. What do the rest of the old-timers think? Is the bar everything it used to be? Or is it less central to the Baen 'empire' than it was in the early days?

10-26-2010, 06:51 AM	#11
Hatgirl Addict Posts: 296 Karma: 955301 Join Date: Oct 2008 Device: Sony PRS-300, Sony PRS-T2, Kindle (7th Gen)	I adore Baen (print and ebooks). But I loathe the layout of the Bar. I log in evey six months or so, scream in frustration at the completly insane layout and log out again. Please, please, Baen, switch to something saner!

10-26-2010, 01:59 PM	#12
bobavey Bob Avey Posts: 117 Karma: 501082 Join Date: Sep 2010 Location: Broken Arrow, OK Device: none	Sounds good to me.

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