Amazon vs Hachette

[Sydney's Mom]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

Who will hold hearings on baseball if Congress is off worrying about whether the masses have access to Patterson's books????

Love this! Patterson's "we need a law" is ridiculous. We had a law--it destroyed the agency arrangement Hachette is trying to reconstruct.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Sydney's Mom

Love this! Patterson's "we need a law" is ridiculous. We had a law--it destroyed the agency arrangement Hachette is trying to reconstruct.

There is still nothing illegal with agency pricing. And the law did not complain about agency pricing.

[tompe]

The quality is generated by the fact that most books do not earn money and the method of finding good books by giving money to a lot of authors and loosing money on most of them. It seems to me that Amazons commodification of books will make it impossible to have such a system.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by tompe

The quality is generated by the fact that most books do not earn money and the method of finding good books by giving money to a lot of authors and loosing money on most of them. It seems to me that Amazons commodification of books will make it impossible to have such a system.

No. The quality comes about because some authors are more talented than others.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Sydney's Mom

Love this! Patterson's "we need a law" is ridiculous. We had a law--it destroyed the agency arrangement Hachette is trying to reconstruct.

No, it didn't. There's nothing illegal about agency pricing. What was illegal was collusion between the BPH's.

[Sydney's Mom]

Originally Posted by HarryT

No, it didn't. There's nothing illegal about agency pricing. What was illegal was collusion between the BPH's.

Yes, I realize that. The antitrust law was what lead to the court setting up the staggered contract negotiations. Which is how we got here. And now Patterson is saying we need a law. You had one-how do you like it?

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

No. The quality comes about because some authors are more talented than others.

Not to be a pedant, but editors can and do help raise the quality of a book/story in many cases. This is true whether we are indie or trad. Sometimes these editors are called beta readers, sometimes they are trained editors, sometimes they are just astute readers with talent for a good story. None of us learn in a vacuum. That is not to say that every trad book even HAS an editor--many of them do not, only getting copyediting at best. And I actually know one writer who had to hire an outside copyeditor for her trad book. I know two others who SHOULD have hired an outside copyeditor.

I hope what you really mean is that the the traditional method of publishing is not the only way to achieve quality. Some authors really do have the talent to go it completely alone, but that is rare. Some of us have to take a tiny glimmer of talent, add a thousand percent hard work, mix well, involve editors, beta readers, work some more and then age for varying amounts of time...

[sirmaru]

Originally Posted by tompe

The quality is generated by the fact that most books do not earn money and the method of finding good books by giving money to a lot of authors and loosing money on most of them. It seems to me that Amazons commodification of books will make it impossible to have such a system.

I prefer the Amazon system for the only eBooks I read: history and biography. They tell me the price and number of pages and I pick the most pages for the buck.

Of course, Amazon could improve by allowing one to sort that way instead of my using an excel spreadsheet to do it.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

I hope what you really mean is that the the traditional method of publishing is not the only way to achieve quality. Some authors really do have the talent to go it completely alone, but that is rare. Some of us have to take a tiny glimmer of talent, add a thousand percent hard work, mix well, involve editors, beta readers, work some more and then age for varying amounts of time...

That is indeed what I meant.

Though I still contend that the traditional publishing process has little to do with generating talent and/or quality writing. They're just in the business of helping to polish that which they think they can get people to buy. I don't mean to devalue their contribution at all, but rather to clarify it: they are not the talent in the equation.

I have no desire to see the entire tradpub industry fail utterly. They just need to get over seeing themselves (and presenting themselves) as the "bastion of literature." The sooner they learn to share the stage (and more of the proceeds--in the form of royalties--with their authors), the sooner we can put this battle behind us. There's enough pie for authors, publishers, and editors (and any and all hybrid combinations of those roles in one or more entities) to go around.

The world will go on, and everyone will happily continue to read, write, publish, edit, and market "quality" literature long after Traditional Publishing gets done being redefined.

[BearMountainBooks]

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I have no desire to see the entire tradpub industry fail utterly. They just need to get over seeing themselves (and presenting themselves) as the "bastion of literature." The sooner they learn to share the stage (and more of the proceeds--in the form of royalties--with their authors), the sooner we can put this battle behind us. There's enough pie for authors, publishers, and editors (and any and all hybrid combinations of those roles in one or more entities) to go around.

There are plenty of "indie" publishers that are actually small presses with inhouse editors, formatters, and audio studios. (And some "medium" presses that are actually large indie operations.) What distinguishes them all from the NYC gang of Corporate publishers is their contracts and author-centric approach. Traditional publishing houses don't necessarily need to go away but even some of the most rabid anti-indie pundits recognize the "industry-standard" predatory contracts need to go away. And soon.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

That is indeed what I meant.
...
I have no desire to see the entire tradpub industry fail utterly. They just need to get over seeing themselves (and presenting themselves) as the "bastion of literature." The sooner they learn to share the stage (and more of the proceeds--in the form of royalties--with their authors), the sooner we can put this battle behind us. There's enough pie for authors, publishers, and editors (and any and all hybrid combinations of those roles in one or more entities) to go around.
...
.

Two comments. Quite a few of those NYC publishers/editors/et al that some look at with disdain, do what they do as a labor of love. Sure the big mother ship publishing house has a decent profit margin (though not nearly what some thing to think), but that tends to go to the suits, most of whom have very little to do with the day to day publishing business. Most of the front line people who actually deal with the authors, the editors, the people making the decision which books to push and which ones to reject, don't make much money. Many here seem to confuse the suits over in Europe with the people doing the actual work.

Second, people seem to keep glossing over the basic business model of the publishing world. Very few books each year earn out their advance. For every J.K. Rowlings selling millions and millions of copies, there are hundreds of books that sell perhaps 10,000 if they do well, and many more that sale only a few thousand copies. The cut that the publishing company takes from the best sellers basically subsidizes all those books that never really take off. This is true even for the very small publishers. If you take a small publishing house such as Baen Books, the best selling authors such as David Weber allow them to continue to republish old Heinlein books and take chances on new authors, some of whom do fairly well, others who never pan out. Taking that model away will leave you with a system that quickly falls apart as new authors are never developed.

Over the past 30 years, we have seen the publishers merging and being bought out, leaving only a few very large publishing companies. To a great extent, this was because of changes to the tax laws and economy of scale. It is my guess as the need for physical inventory goes away and as the cost of physical presses goes down, we will see the publishing industry start to fragment back into the much smaller units that we use to have, much like the indie record labels have sprung up all over the place.

[speakingtohe]

All it would take to change things quite a bit is for one successful traditional publishing house to break ranks and do things differently. Pay the authors more for example.

But I doubt this is as easy as it sounds. The have tiers of operations that must be paid for and stockholders to pay etc.

What seems to many as predatory practices may have seemed quite generous in the past.
Advances were paid, which in some cases were higher than the author was making for the equivalent time put in on their day job. I suspect that advances were higher in the past in terms of buying power on average, but I do not know.

There was a lot less competition in terms of books available to the public at large so the publisher had a better chance of recoupling the initial royalties on a higher percentages of the advances paid.

What many seem to not take into consideration is that it does cost money to publish a book. And the majority of books do not make enough money to cover the initial advance, never mind proof reading, typesetting, formatting, publicizing, printing, didtribution costs etc.

And the majority of books sold are still paper which has the same costs associated with it as always.

Publishers are making more money off the ebook distribution of backlists but not so much as we imagine of the publication of a new book in both print and ebook.

And if I was an established author I would want both print and ebook. Mainly to earn a higher revenue as pbooks still outsell ebooks, but also for the satisfaction of seeing the print book on the shelves and holding it in my hand etc. But that maybe is just me.

Publishers do make much more from selling both for established authors, but for a first time or previously unsuccessful author are the risks that much lower? Sure they could do as Amazon and just publish the book regardless of quality and give higher royalties for ebook only sales. But would they not then lose any credibility as a publisher with certain standards and risk losing their successful authors, not to mention some of their customers?

And while some discount piracy it does exist and it is cutting into sales somewhat. I see statements that going DRM free has not noticeably hurt sales, but so far not one that it has increased sales or profits. Given that most of us know that it is easy to circumvent DRM, and the fact that ebooks can be easily copied by any but the totally technically challenged, it must be affecting the bottom line for the publishers and the authors.

And in today's world, with technology relatively cheap compared to 50 years ago, it would be possible for a couple of big name authors, most of whom have worked their way up the ranks being paid peanuts at the beginning, to set up an ebook publishing house. I can understand why they don't leap at the opportunity to instantly pay budding authors more money then they were paid at that stage of the game, but if the publishing business is suddenly that much more profitable to the publishers, where is the knowledgeable and competent competition? You have a few small independent publishing houses and a few small subsidiaries of the big publishers.

And as has been pointed out innumerable times, authors have a choice. The big publishers have no power over the market than that granted to them by the author the publish and the people who buy the books. Sure many books are already locked in, and even some unwritten books are locked in, but the amount of books published seems to be increasing exponentially and if publishers give so little added value to the book buyer and so little money to the authors, then surely this has become self correcting already and in time no one will use the existing traditional publishers.

Helen

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Very few books each year earn out their advance.

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

And the majority of books do not make enough money to cover the initial advance, never mind proof reading, typesetting, formatting, publicizing, printing, didtribution costs etc.

Why does everyone keep listing the obvious fiscal irresponsibility of the current advance system (on the part of corporate giants, anyway) in the plus column?

[BearMountainBooks]

It should be noted that publishers could easily pay authors more--but it does not have to be royalties against potential sales. There are models out there where the author gets a higher percentage--but not so large an advance or no advance at all. This model is usually seen with small to medium sized publishers.

And if I was an established author I would want both print and ebook. Mainly to earn a higher revenue as pbooks still outsell ebooks, but also for the satisfaction of seeing the print book on the shelves and holding it in my hand etc. But that maybe is just me.

It's nice, but it's not a necessity. A necessity is sales. Authors earn a higher percentage from ebooks, which means many more paperbacks have to sell to keep up with ebooks. For a mass market paperback, authors earn about 35 cents per copy. For an ebook selling at near the same price they are likely earning 20 to 40 percent of the list price.

This holds true for indie as well, only more so. I can earn 60 to 70 percent per ebook while I only earn about 10 percent for a print copy (or far less depending on where it sells because of third party cuts along the way). So, while a paperback costs approximately 10 dollars in my print world, I might earn 1 dollar per copy. An ebook sells for approximately 2.99-- and I earn closer to 2 dollars per copy sold.

It should also be noted that in some genres and at some publishers, ebooks outsell print copy already--and in fact, several ONLY do ebooks now unless the sales are high enough to warrant stretching into the print world. This is also certainly true for most indies.