John Grisham speaks out on the future of pbooks and ebooks

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Grisham is in the same position as his publishers: They are (finally) aware that the books industry is going to undergo a radical change, and that things won't be the way they used to be. Grisham himself, as famous as he is, now has to face the fact that his future economics will be very different than what they are now. They might be better. But it will be so different as to be a complete mystery to him at this point, and it's always easier to stay with the devil you know.

Originally Posted by Jack Tingle

No, but the flaw in your assumptions is that making a treebook and making an ebook are nearly identical processes, with a big cost saving if you skip some of the treebook steps. That's just not true. Omitting the printing steps saves (as best anyone can account for) about $1.

Actually, the costs of printing are badly accounted for because no one factors in the adverse effects of printing and distributing paper... namely, the air and water pollution caused by the paper production process, plus the use of oil and requisite air pollution involved in transportation of those materials. Those hidden costs (that we taxpayers pay to clean up, or to pay our doctors when it sickens us) are kept out of the paper trail deliberately... add them in, and the differences between paper books and e-books are much more significant. And since a single reading device can hold hundreds to thousands of e-books, you can multiply that difference accordingly and see the real value of going e-book.

This is only one of the reasons why the industry is going to undergo a radical change, and likely come out the other end looking very little like the industry looks today. Authors like Grisham, and their publishers, will scarcely recognize the new publishing world, and many of them will quit rather than adapt, which is their prerogative. But others will embrace the new models and continue on, maybe not becoming rich like Grisham, or maybe making enough to buy twenty Grishams... who knows? (I'm guessing the former, for the record.)

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by jbjb

The reduced singal to noise ratio for CDs at low amplitudes isn't necessarily any worse than the SNR for vinyl at the same amplitude - the level of CD quantisation noise isn't necessarily any higher than the analogue noise that comes from vinyl.

/JB

Yea, that is why I didn't refer to Vinyl at all.

Dale

[MerLock]

I think it's just the sign of the times. Technology has been and will continue to change the way we shop. It's about the convenience. In my opinion, the book industry has to change the way they do business like the way the music industry has done and the movie industry is doing. Even for physical books, I think maintaining a brick and mortar store is going to be too expensive giving the number of sales that is going to come in. Physical books will be kept alive by online stores that can ship them to you for those that still prefer printed media.

When the music/movie industry started going digital, there was a lot of fear that artists would no longer produce songs since they feared that there wouldn't be enough money in sales to compensate them for what they do. Same for movies. However, music is still around and so are movies. I think some people are just afraid of change when they are comfortable with the structure they currently have and know what to expect.

The strong points of ebooks will be in selling older perhaps out of print books. In my opinion, publishers/authors will gain a lot of addidtional revenue from selling older books that they probably don't see in traditional bookstores. Traditional bookstores don't usually carry a lot of older books due to limited shelf space. A lot of books old titles are out of print because it's not cost effective to continue to print books that don't sell many copies. However, this isn't true for ebooks so sales of older books may increase with those seeking older titles combined with those who decide to repurchase ebooks copies of there current physical books. I see someone buying a new book and enjoying it enough to do a search at the ebook store for the rest of the authors titles. They can then easily order some of the out of print or hard to find titles by that same author.

[Janet54]

Originally Posted by Format C:

Talking about Grisham and today, I think that if HE puts online hist site (or facebook/twitter/myspace/whatever blog)with direct ebook selling, he'll be noticed.
He'll get the news without even paying for it just for being the fist one!

Bingo! I am huge Fan of Ted Dekker and follow him on Facebook. He recently posted that he was in New York with publishers trying to decide what cover to use for the Mass Market of Boneman's Daughter. He got on line, posted both covers and asked our opinion (A or B) within an hour he had over 1000 responses and they literally stopped the presses as we had overwhelmingly voted for the opposite one that the publisher had picked.
(Ted had not told us which one they were leaning towards)

Needless to say it blew the minds of the publishers he had this kind of followers and was able to tap into their opinions with in a matter of SECONDS of its posting on FB.

It thrilled us fans as we felt we were apart of the process. Even though I have that book on my Kindle, I will still buy the MM. as it is sentimental to me now and I'll be darned that the publisher,author, stores didn't get a bit of coin twice from my pocket book for the same book!!

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by kindlekitten

I think that is a great idea, but put it back into a bookstore environment with a bbookstore "feeling"

I do think it would sell and yes even B&M bookstores could have them. That way users browsing in the store that are currently leaving and buying at home could buy on the spot if they found a book they liked. I also think that places that sell eBook readers such as Target, Walmart, etc. sell one reader to a customer but could get that customer back to the store with ongoing sales if they offered eBooks for the products they sell.

Dale

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Janet54

Bingo! I am huge Fan of Ted Dekker and follow him on Facebook. He recently posted that he was in New York with publishers trying to decide what cover to use for the Mass Market of Boneman's Daughter. He got on line, posted both covers and asked our opinion (A or B) within an hour he had over 1000 responses and they literally stopped the presses as we had overwhelmingly voted for the opposite one that the publisher had picked.
(Ted had not told us which one they were leaning towards)

Needless to say it blew the minds of the publishers he had this kind of followers and was able to tap into their opinions with in a matter of SECONDS of its posting on FB.

It thrilled us fans as we felt we were apart of the process. Even though I have that book on my Kindle, I will still buy the MM. as it is sentimental to me now and I'll be darned that the publisher,author, stores didn't get a bit of coin twice from my pocket book for the same book!!

Now that is a great web anecdote, and a true indicator of the power of the new medium.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

There's no reasons bookstores can't continue to exist, and even thrive... just not as huge, impersonal "open warehouses" of printed books. Bringing back the knowledgeable staff, there to help customers, to make recommendations, to help guide them in appropriate directions, would bring people back to bookstores in droves. It would be more like a book-centric lounge, and probably sell food, drinks and other things to enjoy as you visited.

And there's no reason the online sales can't be accomplished at the bookstores as well, either e-mailed to you, or downloaded into whatever storage medium you brought with you--and these days, the reality of having some kind of memory storage available on your person is becoming almost ubiquitous.

[eGeezer]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

If Amazon sells her book in hardcover, new, she gets a royalty check. If they sell it in paperback, new, she gets a royalty check for a bit less. If they sell a used copy of it, she gets nothing.

Okay. I didn't have the terms right, but sort of understood that part -- especially the used book zero income part. But thanks again for more clarity.

One thing I was (and am still) specifically not clear on is the amount the author receives. No, I am not asking how much your friend makes on a book. But I would like to understand whether the royalty fluctuates with the retailer's selling price.

In other words, if the hb is marketed for $29.95, does the author get the same royalty amount if it is sold for $29.95 as she does if it is sold for $12.45?

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by eGeezer

Okay. I didn't have the terms right, but sort of understood that part -- especially the used book zero income part. But thanks again for more clarity.

One thing I was (and am still) specifically not clear on is the amount the author receives. No, I am not asking how much your friend makes on a book. But I would like to understand whether the royalty fluctuates with the retailer's selling price.

In other words, if the hb is marketed for $29.95, does the author get the same royalty amount if it is sold for $29.95 as she does if it is sold for $12.45?

The authors agreement is with the publisher. It is independent of the retail price. (at least as far as I've ever seen).

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by eGeezer

In other words, if the hb is marketed for $29.95, does the author get the same royalty amount if it is sold for $29.95 as she does if it is sold for $12.45?

Barring strange and exotic contracts--anything's possible--in theory, authors receive $X for each hardcover, $Y for each trade paperback, and $Z for each mm paperback. And $Q for each ebook, I suppose. It doesn't matter how much the retailer sells them for; the royalty amount is set as a per-book payment established by the publication contract.

I believe this may be phrased as a percentage rather than a flat dollar rate--but it's a percentage of the official asking price of the book. So, if a the author gets 10%, and the trade paperback says $14.95 on the cover, she receives $1.46. If it's reprinted next year at $17.95, she gets $1.80 for the sale--even if the retailer slapped a "40% off clearance" sticker on it.

However, if the books have been "remaindered"--returned as not-sellable--they can be resold later by someone else, without paying royalties. (It's, umm, complicated. And somewhat crazy-making.)

[Harmon]

I think pbook publishers and ebook publishers are involved in two different but overlapping markets. I mean this not merely in terms of the consumer, but in terms of the production process.

I think publishers see ebooks as an add-on to the pbook market. So they are letting pbook concerns dominate their marketing strategies. And it needs to be born in mind that the current pbook marketing strategies are based on (1) getting the resellers to provide the cash flow which permits the publishers to continue in business and (2) making the resellers responsible for some, if not all, of the production & distribution costs.

I think that there is already a model out there which would meet publishers' needs and which has demonstrated that it will work for book readers - and it's not Netflix or iTunes. It's Audible, which for the two or three people who don't know it, purports to sell audiobooks for download. What Audible really does is run a subscription service for abooks, where you can keep your abook forever, run it on whatever mp3/aac player you want, and download replacement copies.

Now, think about an ebook service of the same kind, called Readable. You sign up for $17.95 a month, get a "credit" or two against "purchases" of ebooks, have access to additional ebooks at a discounted price, with the option of higher priced plans that get you more credits. The discounted price is sometimes less than the cost of the credit, so you "buy" that ebook for the lower price, saving your credit to use for higer cost ebooks. You can read the ebook on whatever device you have registered at any particular time. So when you go from a Kindle to a SonyReader, you can still read your book.

I'd sign on to something like this. Would you?

[kindlekitten]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

I do think it would sell and yes even B&M bookstores could have them. That way users browsing in the store that are currently leaving and buying at home could buy on the spot if they found a book they liked. I also think that places that sell eBook readers such as Target, Walmart, etc. sell one reader to a customer but could get that customer back to the store with ongoing sales if they offered eBooks for the products they sell.

Dale

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

There's no reasons bookstores can't continue to exist, and even thrive... just not as huge, impersonal "open warehouses" of printed books. Bringing back the knowledgeable staff, there to help customers, to make recommendations, to help guide them in appropriate directions, would bring people back to bookstores in droves. It would be more like a book-centric lounge, and probably sell food, drinks and other things to enjoy as you visited.

And there's no reason the online sales can't be accomplished at the bookstores as well, either e-mailed to you, or downloaded into whatever storage medium you brought with you--and these days, the reality of having some kind of memory storage available on your person is becoming almost ubiquitous.

I think that this is extremely "doable", but the biggest draw would be the "ambience". that is what would lure the customer in. make them feel comfy, at home, and they start buying things.

Originally Posted by Harmon

Now, think about an ebook service of the same kind, called Readable. You sign up for $17.95 a month, get a "credit" or two against "purchases" of ebooks, have access to additional ebooks at a discounted price, with the option of higher priced plans that get you more credits. The discounted price is sometimes less than the cost of the credit, so you "buy" that ebook for the lower price, saving your credit to use for higer cost ebooks. You can read the ebook on whatever device you have registered at any particular time. So when you go from a Kindle to a SonyReader, you can still read your book.

I'd sign on to something like this. Would you?

no

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by kindlekitten

I think that this is extremely "doable", but the biggest draw would be the "ambience". that is what would lure the customer in. make them feel comfy, at home, and they start buying things.

Coffee? Doughnuts?

[kindlekitten]

yep.

wine and cheese even.... fireplace!

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Comfy chairs, alone and in groups. Nice music. Kiosks that allow you (and a helpful friend or store associate) to browse and investigate, discuss, then buy.

Maybe separate rooms devoted to types of literature, to personalize each section.