Myth of Print Sales Comeback

[cfrizz]

Originally Posted by crich70

The thing is they can't put the cork back in the bottle now. Ebooks are here to stay I'm thinking. Overpricing them to make print books more appealing won't help in the long run. People will just wait them out til the prices come down or find another source (legal or not) to acquire a given ebook. Not that I'm advocating for pirate sites or anything of course. All the publishers are doing is hurting themselves by refusing to join the 21st century.

This is on the money. People are not only waiting them out, they are actually turning to self published authors. The list of known authors is growing in the self published category making it even easier for fans to find something to read at a reasonable price.

So they can spin it any way they want to, but they are only shooting themselves in the foot trying so desperately to hold on to their overpriced ebooks & paper books.

[ekbell]

Books are not the only media which has been affected by easy access to alternative material. Decades ago I remember folks bemoaning the loss of a common culture as people were no longer listening to the exact same things, watching the exact same shows and reading the exact same books.

[CWatkinsNash]

Originally Posted by cfrizz

This is on the money. People are not only waiting them out, they are actually turning to self published authors.

Some of us are also turning to publishers like Open Road that are reissuing backlist gems at sensible prices (and also offering up a selection of discounted titles daily). I love Open Road, they've become my favorite publisher. Actually, "favorite publisher" was never a thing for me until now.

Then there's the library. I just started reading a series that's published by Roc (Penguin imprint). The book prices are sort of tiered based on age, so I bought the first three at prices I was willing to pay (9.99 or less), the others I'll check out from my library.

When publishers price books sensibly, I'll work with them. When they don't, I'll work around them by either waiting, using the library, or choosing a different book from a different publisher. I don't consider books to be fungible, but I generally don't know what makes a given book unique until after I've read it, and by then the decision of what to buy has already been made. What some of the publishers are doing feels like the equivalent of holding one water source hostage behind a huge paywall, while trying to ignore the fact that all the potential customers have access to cheap or free water from a thousand other sources.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by cfrizz

This is on the money. People are not only waiting them out, they are actually turning to self published authors. The list of known authors is growing in the self published category making it even easier for fans to find something to read at a reasonable price.

So they can spin it any way they want to, but they are only shooting themselves in the foot trying so desperately to hold on to their overpriced ebooks & paper books.

1- "Waiting them out" is increasingly common now that they're driving mass market paperback back to its roots as strictly a reprint format for top sellers. If a title is first released as a trade paperback it'll never have a mmpk edition but if it is first released as a hardcover it will definitely have one a few months down the road, typically six months. More and more people are choosing to wait for the paperback to see if the ebook drops along with it.

2- The problem the BPHs face is that they will have to retool their entire business model once pbook sales drop below a certain threshold. At that point they'll have to get rid of returns and remainders, rework payola rates, downsize warehouses... They've done some of that but they need to do much more and they have little stomach for what comes next: more focused imprints and less of them, dropping out of some genres...

They still have a lot further to go before they get their cost structure closer to where the successful small tradpubs live. And a good chunk of extra market share to give up. Faced between defending their market share or their cost structure they chose to defend the latter. The rest of the industry hopes they keep it up.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by ekbell

Books are not the only media which has been affected by easy access to alternative material. Decades ago I remember folks bemoaning the loss of a common culture as people were no longer listening to the exact same things, watching the exact same shows and reading the exact same books.

And I remember the big to do about home video recorders when they became more popular in the late 70's early 80's. The movie studios fought to make it against the law to ever record anything off of TV. In the end though they woke up to the marketing bonanza that the home video systems were and started to sell their movies on cassettes. It was slow at first. I remember the 1st Batman movie (with Michael Keaton) took a year to come out on VHS. Now often new movies can come out on DVD before they finish making the rounds of the local movie theaters. Hollywood learned to embrace the new media as a new way to make a profit. Book publishers have yet to do the same alas.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by cfrizz

This is on the money. People are not only waiting them out, they are actually turning to self published authors. The list of known authors is growing in the self published category making it even easier for fans to find something to read at a reasonable price.

So they can spin it any way they want to, but they are only shooting themselves in the foot trying so desperately to hold on to their overpriced ebooks & paper books.

And authors like Tony Richards and Wesley Allison (both members here at MR) have turned to self publishing to sell their books. At least in the cases of ebooks by both men that I've seen at sites like Smashwords and Amazon. The world is changing and publishers will either have to change with it or be left in the dust.

[DiapDealer]

I'd be happy if publishers (and the sycophantic A.G.) would just shut up and get to work. Stop worrying about making money the way you WANT to make money, and just make money.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by cfrizz

So they can spin it any way they want to, but they are only shooting themselves in the foot trying so desperately to hold on to their overpriced ebooks & paper books.

Well, if it was true that they were shooting themselves in the foot, that wouldn't be the only thing they were doing. It would also mean they were leaving more consumer money on the table to be spent on products of small and self publishers. Are you against that?

Publishers pay people to pour over statistics to see what would be optimum prices. It slightly mystifies me why people here would think they know better.

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Stop worrying about making money the way you WANT to make money, and just make money.

Why do you want them to make money? I just want them to do well enough to stay in the business of improving manuscripts I will want to read.

But for your benefit:

Citing continued benefits from the integration of Penguin and Random House, Pearson said its 47% stake in the world’s largest trade publisher earned 129 million pounds ($136 million) in operating profits for the company in 2016. The sum marks a 43% increase over 2015.

As I said, I don't see this as positive or negative. Losing lots of money year after year -- as in the newspaper industry -- now that is negative, since it results in less good reading material, especially regarding current affairs.

[DiapDealer]

I don't care if they make money or not. I just want them to shut up. If they want to make money, there's money to be made. Make it and shut up, or don't make it and shut up. But shut up.

[darryl]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

Publishers pay people to pour over statistics to see what would be optimum prices. It slightly mystifies me why people here would think they know better.

Not very logical reasoning, Steve. This is another area where publishers seem to be behind the times. They seem to be pretending that books without ISBN's don't exist and rely on sources that do the same. Their actions speak for themselves. They are pricing in accordance with a strategy that seems to me and many others to be doomed to failure.

fjtorres hit the nail on the head. Their bloated cost structure is a huge problem, and they don't want to make the necessary adjustments. But if they want to stay in the business long term they are going to have to hold their noses and compete with those grubby upstart Indies.

Why do you want them to make money? I just want them to do well enough to stay in the business of improving manuscripts I will want to read.

I too hope they can continue to provide the books that you like. Unfortunately, the authors who write them sell their souls for editorial services that have never been more reasonably priced and available on the open market. Few of them will make a living from these books. Publishers can live off their backlist for a long time, but unless they get rid of the fat, or at least most of it, I expect that they will have increasing trouble attracting new authors. I expect even Academics who must, as the saying goes, publish or perish will abandon them when the current exploitative system changes, which it must. Unless they stop burying their heads in the sand and face up to reality.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

...

Publishers pay people to pour over statistics to see what would be optimum prices. It slightly mystifies me why people here would think they know better.
...

Because they want it to be true and the echo chamber keeps telling them that publishers don't know what they are doing.

There is a lot of money to be made by pretending to be an expert and putting out estimates, especially if the real numbers are never released. You see it in financial estimates before earning calls, you see it in political polling. Heck, that's why there are still fortune tellers out there.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by darryl

Unfortunately, the authors who write them sell their souls for editorial services that have never been more reasonably priced and available on the open market. Few of them will make a living from these books. Publishers can live off their backlist for a long time, but unless they get rid of the fat, or at least most of it, I expect that they will have increasing trouble attracting new authors.

That is already happening in several genres.
Romance and SF are already majority Indie and small tradpub. Black urban fiction is even more so: 94% of titles on sale are Indie.

There is a tendency to look at the overall publishing disruption and cast it as Indies vs tradpub but it isn't. It is about the BPHs vs everybody else. Plenty of smaller tradpubs have adopted Indie economics and workflows and are surviving and prospering. The same reports that show the BPHs shedding market share left and right show smaller tradpub market share growing, especially lately when, unnoticed, many broke ranks with the big boys on pricing.

Now, yes, the BPHs "know what they are doing" "and they price their books to best advantage" and all that. But the "best advantage" they seek is short term advantage for themselves. Not for the authors. And not for the long term.

And it is being noticed.
Most particularly, by newcomers to the business.

Which is where things are going to get interesting.
Two weeks ago, KKR's column ran a prelude to her next series on author branding and, among other things, ran these snippets:

http://kriswrites.com/2017/05/03/bus....YWztLCis.dpuf

(More at the source, especially in coming weeks as she dissects how authors build up their brands now. Indies are getting ambitious.)

Courtesy of Randy and J.T. Ellison, I received a copy of Targoz Strategic Marketing’s Reading Pulse Survey. They wanted some comments on it before it went live, and I did a quick dive into the survey before the workshop.

As I read it, I realized I needed to spend a lot of time with this thing, because it’s actual research on reading that’s useful, not wish fulfillment. Here’s how the press release describes it:

Based on six years of survey research, the syndicated study provides book publishers, agents, and sellers with an accurate picture of readers, and delivers actionable data on what readers want and how to influence them to buy.

It does deliver “actionable data.” I got very excited by what I read. I got permission to share bits of this with you, but I can’t share all of it, because the survey isn’t public. It’s designed for larger companies with the resources to buy surveys like this. (That’s how they get funded.) Randy says there will be a different version for indies that won’t be as expensive. But that won’t appear until after the big push for the survey to traditional publishers in the next few weeks or more.

This survey can be tailored to a particular company. If I were running one of the Big Five? Four? Three? Two? (who the hell knows) major publishers, I’d be plunking down the money for a customized version of this thing. Because there’s a lot of information here that could change traditional publishing forever.

It won’t, however. Even if traditional publishers buy this survey, they won’t act on the suggestions inside. The corporate headwinds are too strong. A lot of what’s in here would cost department heads their jobs, and devastate the sales departments. Of course, a lot of what’s here would result in new hires as well, for new jobs that would have a completely different focus.

That kind of sea change is almost impossible in large companies. But in small ones, it’s definitely possible.

Then there is this:

So what’s been rolling around in my head isn’t the proprietary numbers that I can’t tell you or the changes I’m thinking about for my own business based on these facts. Instead, it’s a section at the end of the survey that essentially has actionable information for Writer Me.

The section at the end talks about Brand Name Authors. There’s a long list of writers by genre that readers identify by name. And the survey found something that I was aware of, but not that I had really thought about.

Almost all of the Brand Name authors that readers are familiar with are traditionally published. And most of those Brand Name authors are baby boomers. Not just baby boomers, but on the upper end of the baby boomer scale. One genre didn’t have a single person in the top ten brand names under the age of 60.

I would normally dismiss that kind of finding as irrelevant. Writing is a career that many people start late. It’s not at all unusual for “new” writers to be in their fifties, so by the time their name is established, they’d be in their sixties.

But I looked at the names more closely, and saw a completely different problem. The survey broke into four rather broad genre categories: Mystery, Thriller & Crime; Romance & Paranormal Romance; Literature & Literary Fiction; and Science Fiction & Fantasy. Then the survey noted the top ten most recognized names in each of those categories, chosen by readers.

Of the forty names on those lists, only three got their start in this century. Those three included two whose books were made into major movies, and one author who (as far as I can tell) jumped on the coat tails of one of those two. (That’s not something to be ashamed of in any way: John Grisham jumped on the coat tails of Scott Turow, and eventually surpassed Turow in numbers of books published and recognizability and a whole bunch of other things.)

The remaining 37 brand names were nurtured in a completely different publishing climate. One I’m not going to count because he’s an actor, not an author, and I have no idea how he got on the list. So that brings us to 36. Two got their start before 1960. Five got their start in the 1960s. Six got their start in the 1970s. The bulk got their start in the 1980s, with only two getting their starts in the 1990s.

(I’m doing this off the top of my head, so I might be wrong on the exact start dates for the previous century. But I do know for a fact that not a one of those 36 names got started in this century.)

That pre-2000 publishing climate allowed series writers to build. It also allowed writers who only wrote standalone titles (and there are several on these lists) to have lower book sales on one title but still buy the next.

In the 1990s, a publisher could let a series author go, and another publisher would pick up that author—and buy the series out from the old publisher, keeping all of the books in print.

From the late 1990s onward, traditional publishing stopped nurturing careers. It stopped trying to grow a brand name, and instead tried to create one. It’s still doing that.

In case it's not a clear distinction: the BPHs are no longer interested in waiting for good writers to become top selling Name Brand authors over time. They want authors than can become top-selling Name Brand authors *instantly* from day one.

Quick money for them! Yay.

The Authors? Who cares if they can build a career, right?
King and Patterson and Roberts and the rest of the forty Brand Name authors are going to live forever. (Or at least their copyrights will last another century. No rush.)

This is just a single market research study, big deal.
Well, it turns out, last summer Author Earnings tracked the top revenue generators in both print and digital and found that practically all the top esrning authors on the tradpub side started out last century. They broke down the list by earnings brackets and found a literal handful (4) of tradpub authors that started this century are making more than $100K a year.

And of course, the Authors Guild did find that their average author member makes a whole lots less. In the $10K range.

And even Industry cheerleader Shatzkin did a column recognizing that BPH pricing was totally killing debut authors and very softly suggested a lower price point for debut authors might salvage their careers. Nothing followed. Of course not: the BPHs know what's best

Try this drill guys:

List out the top ten most popular authors you're familiar with (not your top ten, just the Big Names you hear.) See how many got started this century.

We can do it and so can newcomer authors.
And remember that when publishers try to handwave the lower bestseller sales the first excuse (aside from the pokitical climate) is "the books weren't as good".

They might be right.
The best writers are going elsewhere.

But the BPHs know best. That is never going to come back and bite them. Nope.
Not at all.

And that is a good thing.
Less for them, more for everybody else.

[pwalker8]

Let's just say that the idea that publishers stopped developing new writers in the late 90's is not only wrong, it's trivially wrong. Rick Riordan's the Lightning Thief came out in 2005. Ernest Cline's Ready Player One came out in 2011. Larry Correia's Monster Hunter International came out in 2008. Patrick Rothfuss' The Name of the Wind came out in 2007. Jim Butcher's Storm Front came out in 2000. Those are just the names that come to mind without looking back through my purchase list. I manage to keep finding new authors every year. While some are indies, most come from traditional publishers.

Publishers are always on the look out for new talent, it's their life blood.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

List out the top ten most popular authors you're familiar with (not your top ten, just the Big Names you hear.)

Why would I list Big Names I've heard of but haven't read?

Any such list should be based on two criteria:

Artistry

Public service

Originally Posted by darryl

Unfortunately, the authors who write them sell their souls for editorial services that have never been more reasonably priced and available on the open market. Few of them will make a living from these books.

The latter is often true. But what's described in the book proposal is unlikely to ever get finished without some kind of advance and/or research subsidy.

I'm focusing on research-based non-fiction. But even with a novel, and excepting the one person in a hundred million genius author, it a good idea to have friends read your book, tell you what parts confuse or drag, and follow their advice. And since it is impossible to tell if you are a genius, you had best assume you are not. This is, as I understand it, the practice of my favorite series author.

Is that what you mean by selling your soul?

[darryl]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

But what's described in the book proposal is unlikely to ever get finished without some kind of advance and/or research subsidy.

Even if we confine our discussion solely to "research based non-fiction", I don't know that this was true even in the past. And things have, you may have noticed, changed. I haven't seen any hard data to back up either my point of view or yours in this area. The reality seems to be that we simply don't know.

I'm focusing on research-based non-fiction. But even with a novel, and excepting the one person in a hundred million genius author, it a good idea to have friends read your book, tell you what parts confuse or drag, and follow their advice. And since it is impossible to tell if you are a genius, you had best assume you are not.
This is, as I understand it, the practice of my favorite series author.
Is that what you mean by selling your soul?

An author signing the usual BPH contract gives up almost completely all control of their work and its marketing, distribution etc. Effectively they trade their intellectual property rights in return for a bundle of services, including editing etc. Most of these services are available on the open market and reasonably priced. The services not so easily available mainly involve the distribution to Brick and Mortar stores and other physical book outlets. Not only is the latter becoming far less important. It is now available from some much more innovative non-BPH traditional publishers who offer authors much better terms.