E-Refuseniks

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by Ankh

Baen has a very close mechanism, the lengthy (say, 30% of the ebook?) teaser. The price is set, though.

Qite a few times I've started reading the sample, flicked over to the webscription site, bought the book and continued. That could be more seamless, but it's quick anyway...it works quite nicely.

(Be even nicer if they could work to get them onto e-readers. Hmm...)

Not to mention the even earlier "snippets" (Fifth Imperium / Eric Flint's Site)

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Exactly what terms a Baen author gets will be between the author, author's agent, and Baen.... generally, Baen authors seem happy enough with their treatment.

Just to be clear, I am not saying that Baen screws its authors, nor do I claim to have any insider info about their contracts. I'm merely guessing that the compensation is less than at a big publishing house, and this is one factor in lower book costs. (Acting as their own retailer is another.)

Originally Posted by jasonkchapman

Jim Minatel, Associate Publisher at Wiley/Wrox, had this to say in response to a similar complaint....

I'm a little surprised by this, but I guess I shouldn't be. Wiley's books are rather technical in nature and I assume require extensive formatting. I assume fiction is much easier and cheaper to format.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

Just to be clear, I am not saying that Baen screws its authors, nor do I claim to have any insider info about their contracts. I'm merely guessing that the compensation is less than at a big publishing house, and this is one factor in lower book costs. (Acting as their own retailer is another.)

I didn't think you were making such claims.

But compensation, as mentioned, is based on sales. A James Patterson or John Grisham (or Dan Brown) can expect a far more lucrative contract than Baen offers, but their books regularly hit the New York Times best seller list. Baen does mid-level action/adventure SF/Fantasy. While David Weber, for example, now hits the best seller list, most Baen authors don't.

I think what makes Baen attractive to an author is knowledge of the market, and greater likelihood of getting published in hardcover and being kept in print.

Contracts are matters of negotiation between publisher and author/author's agent. We have to assume Baen is competitive, as they have a stable who aren't published elsewhere with enough of a proven track record that they could jump ship. Most Baen authors seem happy to be there.
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Dennis

[Xenophon]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

Just to be clear, I am not saying that Baen screws its authors, nor do I claim to have any insider info about their contracts. I'm merely guessing that the compensation is less than at a big publishing house, and this is one factor in lower book costs. (Acting as their own retailer is another.)

Here's my understanding of author compensation at Baen, based on talking with a variety of authors and agents at SF cons. They were speaking "not-for-attribution," so no names here. Note also that I have absolutely no inside knowledge here; rather, this is a dump of what supposedly-knowledgeable folks have told me. That said, here goes...

It seems that Baen's royalty rates are competitive or better, and that they pay competitive advances. On the negative side, they don't have deep enough pockets to pay giant advances to top-tier authors (some sources speculated that this may be due to lack of a large corporate parent) -- but note that this effect is a non-issue until an author hits at least top-of-mid-list status. On the positive side, they have a reputation for being totally up-front and ethical with their authors; "you can do business with them on a handshake, and it'll be fine" was a common description. They also have deep knowledge of what sells to their chosen markets (their sell-through rates are the envy of the industry), and a well-respected start in ePublishing.

Some of their very top authors could probably get larger advances from other publishers, but there's no reason to believe that those authors would wind up with more income overall. For an author who is routinely best-selling, and considering things on a long-term basis, switching from Baen's "smaller advance with royalties on earn-out" to other publisher's "larger advance, but you probably never earn-out" system winds up looking like a one-time bump of shifting income 12-18 months earlier.

Some authors have jumped ship over that, others have not. YMMV.

Baen doesn't exactly act as their own retailer, by the way. Webscriptions is a completely separate business run by Arnold Bailey. However, Arnold cooperates very closely with Baen. It looks (from the outside, and via rumor and grapevine) like he performs many of the steps of ebook production and formatting that would normally have to happen directly at the publisher's expense. Also, there's no other distributor intervening between Baen and Webscriptions. IF this picture is correct (note the important caveat!), ebook production has a somewhat lower direct cost for Baen than it does for many other publishers. And the only markup between publisher and reader is Webscriptions -- who are providing quite a few useful services to both publisher and reader.

It seems to me that the key cost reductions in their scheme are (1) shortening the retail distribution chain by cutting out middlemen, (2) moving some production costs to a partner who is paid on sales volume rather than on fixed price, and (3) running an amazingly efficient shop.

Xenophon

[Ankh]

Originally Posted by Xenophon

Baen doesn't exactly act as their own retailer, by the way. Webscriptions is a completely separate business run by Arnold Bailey. However, Arnold cooperates very closely with Baen. It looks (from the outside, and via rumor and grapevine) like he performs many of the steps of ebook production and formatting that would normally have to happen directly at the publisher's expense. Also, there's no other distributor intervening between Baen and Webscriptions. IF this picture is correct (note the important caveat!), ebook production has a somewhat lower direct cost for Baen than it does for many other publishers. And the only markup between publisher and reader is Webscriptions -- who are providing quite a few useful services to both publisher and reader.

Oh for crying out loud!

What, even Baen, the poster company for e-book publishing still needs additional "steps of ebook production and formatting"? It is not integral part of their regular workflow, they don't have a standard electronic version as a byproduct of pbook run, where different formats are generated by a click of a button or execution of a script?

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by Ankh

Oh for crying out loud!

What, even Baen, the poster company for e-book publishing still needs additional "steps of ebook production and formatting"? It is not integral part of their regular workflow, they don't have a standard electronic version as a byproduct of pbook run, where different formats are generated by a click of a button or execution of a script?

I'm sure they could do it that way (if you don't mind the output looking like crap).

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Ankh

Oh for crying out loud!

What, even Baen, the poster company for e-book publishing still needs additional "steps of ebook production and formatting"? It is not integral part of their regular workflow, they don't have a standard electronic version as a byproduct of pbook run, where different formats are generated by a click of a button or execution of a script?

I think it depends on what you consider the standard workflow.

The last I knew. markup and typesetting for Baen's pbooks were done by Nancy Hanger, their Managing Editor. Nancy would generate a PDF that would go the the printer, and the printer's image setter would generate printing plates from the PDF.

Publishers all use Adobe InDesign these days for typesetting and markup. The problem from our viewpoint is that while InDesign can output ePub output as well as PDF files, but the ePub it generates is poor. (Adobe is working on this.)

Doing what I think you want would require PDF and ePub generated as output from InDesign for a book. Since ePub contains all of the required metadata, you could have a post processing script that did conversion to other ebook formats, if you had decent ePub to start with.

I think Arnold Bailey starts with the same copy edited and proofread manuscript in Word format that Nancy will use to create the source files for the printer, and I suspect most of his process is scripted. A lot of the work done by the MR posters creating ebooks for MobileRead is requied because the source material isn't in good condition, and requires massaging to get it into a format a decent ebook can be generated from.
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Dennis

[Xenophon]

Originally Posted by Ankh

Oh for crying out loud!

What, even Baen, the poster company for e-book publishing still needs additional "steps of ebook production and formatting"? It is not integral part of their regular workflow, they don't have a standard electronic version as a byproduct of pbook run, where different formats are generated by a click of a button or execution of a script?

Well... At least one of the "production steps" I had in mind involves arranging for conversion of back-list items into bits. Webscriptions guarantees that each month will include N books never-before-in-bits (N==4, I think). When Baen's output some month doesn't have enough all-new books, Arnold has to fill in with backlist material -- most of which is not available in bits in any format whatsoever. That means scanning and proofing and all those other icky things one has to do to produce usable text from DTF.

There's also all of the format conversions (scripted, for certain-sure). And checking that the results of the conversions are OK (a step that really can't be scripted). And...

As to whether they have a standard electronic version produced from the same final camera-ready source by a single button press... Only Arnold and the Baen folks know for sure. Neither grape-vine, nor well placed sources, nor little birdies have said anything to me on that front.

Xenophon

[Ankh]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I think Arnold Bailey starts with the same copy edited and proofread manuscript in Word format that Nancy will use to create the source files for the printer, and I suspect most of his process is scripted.

I assumed that first step in the process (result of editing and proofreading) is "normalization" to structured format like DocBook, which is then imported as XML into InDesign for pbook creation, script-converted to a myriad of e-book formats (except PDF)... I thought that O'Reilly has closed the DocBook/XML/InDesign loop long time ago?

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Ankh

I assumed that first step in the process (result of editing and proofreading) is "normalization" to structured format like DocBook, which is then imported as XML into InDesign for pbook creation, script-converted to a myriad of e-book formats (except PDF)... I thought that O'Reilly has closed the DocBook/XML/InDesign loop long time ago?

O'Reilly might have, but I don't believe other publishers do so. Writers submit manuscripts as Word documents. The Word docs are copy edited and proofread, then imported into InDesign for markup and typesetting. "Normalization" as you think of it doesn't happen.
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Dennis

[Ankh]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

O'Reilly might have, but I don't believe other publishers do so.

I am almost certain that the rest of the publishing industry doesn't do so. The complaints about additional costs, stories that the price to produce ebook is the same if not higher than that for pbook... It is clear that ebook preparation is a separate process, sometimes done by other publishing house, that reuse is minimal at best, nonexistent in big number of cases. I am not surprised by ebook prices, really.

But for ebook publishing and digital distribution, Baen is anything but your typical publishing house. The list of differences is too long, and not needed, I hope. It is reasonable to expect that Baen is not bound by the "best practices" of the industry. When it comes to digital era, "the industry" and its practices sucks. Big time.

[geneven]

What is the marginal cost of one more e-book? Let's say that you, the publisher, expected to sell 5,000 copies of a book, but instead, you sold 5,001 copies. How much did that extra book cost you to make available?

My guess is that the cost of supplying 5001 copies minus the cost of supplying 5000 copies is almost zero. Note that proofreading and marketing would not count in this figure, but if the author gets a fixed amount per copy, that would count.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by geneven

What is the marginal cost of one more e-book? Let's say that you, the publisher, expected to sell 5,000 copies of a book, but instead, you sold 5,001 copies. How much did that extra book cost you to make available?

My guess is that the cost of supplying 5001 copies minus the cost of supplying 5000 copies is almost zero. Note that proofreading and marketing would not count in this figure, but if the author gets a fixed amount per copy, that would count.

Correct. The marginal cost of one more ebook is almost zero. Only one copy of the electronic file needs to reside on the commerce server. The cost I can see will essentially be the bandwidth used by the download and an allocated share of overhead, plus author royalties if the book has already earned out the advance.
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Dennis

[Ankh]

Originally Posted by Xenophon

Well... At least one of the "production steps" I had in mind involves arranging for conversion of back-list items into bits. Webscriptions guarantees that each month will include N books never-before-in-bits (N==4, I think). When Baen's output some month doesn't have enough all-new books, Arnold has to fill in with backlist material -- most of which is not available in bits in any format whatsoever. That means scanning and proofing and all those other icky things one has to do to produce usable text from DTF.

That's understood, Webscriptions content is not bound by the limitations of pbook (the physical size, the need to have a complete story before it is sold, etc.). However Websriptions is the primary distributor for their ebook equivalent of Baen pbooks, isn't it? I expect those "pbook equivalents" to come as a painless byproduct of their pbook production process. Heck, whoever is typesetting their pbooks should be the one responsible for the uniform "look and feel" of ebooks, as well.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Ankh

I am almost certain that the rest of the publishing industry doesn't do so. The complaints about additional costs, stories that the price to produce ebook is the same if not higher than that for pbook... It is clear that ebook preparation is a separate process, sometimes done by other publishing house, that reuse is minimal at best, nonexistent in big number of cases. I am not surprised by ebook prices, really.

Nor am I, but it has less to do with costs higher than need be than with publisher stupidity that results in the higher costs. (Like the comment elsewhere about the publisher stating their ebook price was pegged to the cost of the cloth bound edition. <blink> Excuse me? Do you folks actually want to sell ebooks?)

But for ebook publishing and digital distribution, Baen is anything but your typical publishing house. The list of differences is too long, and not needed, I hope. It is reasonable to expect that Baen is not bound by the "best practices" of the industry. When it comes to digital era, "the industry" and its practices sucks. Big time.

You can argue that Baen is actually creating the "best practices" in the industry.

From where I sit, we're waiting on Adobe. Publishers all use InDesign to do typeset and markup. The output from InDesign is a PDF that goes to the printer and is used to make plates. InDesign can output ePub as well as PDF, but the ePub output is terrible.

What we want is ePub output from InDesign that can be used as-is as an ebook. That can in turn be converted by scripted operation to other ebook formats. Production of ebooks can happen automatically as part of the production process and become a true part of the workflow.

An Adobe rep at the Barnes and Noble nook press conference told me a "point release" of InDesign with better ePub support was available from Adobe, so I assume they are aware of the need for better ePub support. I'm just bemused that is isn't there already, since Adobe was the biggest push behind ePub in the first place.
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Dennis