Samhain Publishing is winding down and will close

[MikeB1972]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

I did say "disinterested" not "uninteresting", you know.

The main problem is that the parents of all four major Kindle alternatives have other interests with much higher priority than consumer ebooks. In the case of the one that should have been their biggest threat, Nook, (and was headed that way before the conspiracy kicked in) the bigger interest is surviving.

I'm pretty sure Amazon has other interests as well. Ebooks must be a rounding error on their accounts.
I'd have thought kobo would be the bigger threat with rakuten being more competition to the "everything everywhere" store. Well, if they can ever sort out their search algorithm, can't find a damn thing on play nowadays.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by MikeB1972

I'm pretty sure Amazon has other interests as well. Ebooks must be a rounding error on their accounts.
I'd have thought kobo would be the bigger threat with rakuten being more competition to the "everything everywhere" store. Well, if they can ever sort out their search algorithm, can't find a damn thing on play nowadays.

It's a matter of scale and interests: Amazon is actively growing its content businesses--books, music, and video. Together, they add to a sizeable portion of their business.

Apple and Google?

Consider this:
http://www.zdnet.com/article/google-...tag=TREc64629f

As for Kobo, well, Rakuten is so "interested" in boosting them they can't spare even a text link on their US webpage. And so confident in their prospects they just took a charge on their balance sheet for Kobo lost "goodwill".

I'm not holding my breath for Kobo to beome a true challenge to Kindle any time soon.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by MikeB1972

I thought comments on politicians had a special forum???

Sorry, couldn't resist
Back to our regular viewing.

I immediately thought funeral when you said viewing.

[AnemicOak]

Samhain will be staying open...

Samhain tells its authors that the doors will stay open: Chris Brashear informed Samhain authors that expense cutting strategies are keeping the publisher afloat, and they hope to re-open submissions (internally at first) by fall. They’ve also enlisted a PR service to market and promote their titles, so hopefully they will continue on the road to robust financial health.

http://dearauthor.com/features/indus...-hisham-matar/

[birdbrainbb]

Samhain staying open is great! But apparently Samhain is now trying to gaslight everyone into thinking they never actually meant to close despite saying they were back in February.

Here's an open letter from Samhain author L.A. Witt:

You were one of the good guys, but that's changed now. Authors who, by and large, were happy and even proud to be published by Samhain are angry, scared, and exhausted. For nearly six months, many of us have been sitting back and watching our books on at best a sinking ship, at worst a roller coaster. We've alternated between cringing that it's going to derail at any second and raging because the damn thing is still going when people really just want to get off.

I for one want to get off.

http://gallagherwitt.blogspot.com.es...ublishing.html

[Josieb1]

Originally Posted by birdbrainbb

Samhain staying open is great! But apparently Samhain is now trying to gaslight everyone into thinking they never actually meant to close despite saying they were back in February.

Here's an open letter from Samhain author L.A. Witt:


http://gallagherwitt.blogspot.com.es...ublishing.html

I follow LA Witt on Facebook. She had confirmation in writing that they would be closed by the end of 2016 so she spent money on re editing nearly 26 books, getting them ready for self publishing and commissioning new covers. She couldn't wait until they had finally closed as she needed the books available to purchase asap once Samhain closed.

I can understand her position.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by birdbrainbb

Samhain staying open is great! But apparently Samhain is now trying to gaslight everyone into thinking they never actually meant to close despite saying they were back in February.

Originally Posted by Josieb1

I follow LA Witt on Facebook. She had confirmation in writing that they would be closed by the end of 2016 so she spent money on re editing nearly 26 books, getting them ready for self publishing and commissioning new covers. She couldn't wait until they had finally closed as she needed the books available to purchase asap once Samhain closed.

I am no expert on Samhein, but to me as innocent bystander it surely does feel like a self fulfilling prophecy was set in motion. The PR stunt of convincingly declaring that they will close, then by some unexpected miracle found money to stay open, and then trying to sweep the affair under the carpet surely does not look very good. Either they were never in financial trouble and simply wanted to retire, or the future is so grim that it was unsure if the found money is able to reverse course. Saying to please forget it all happened only does strengthen the belief that the future is unstable and public announcements from Samhein cannot be trusted any more. And in turn it is a setup for failure.

[cfrizz]

Sounds like a class action lawsuit in the making!

[AnemicOak]

Looks like they're closing down after all...

Greetings, Samhain Readers.

It's with a heavy heart that we announce Samhain Publishing will be closing at the end of February. Due to the declining sales we’ve been experiencing with this changing market we’ve come to the sad conclusion it’s time to call it a day.

The last of our new titles launch February 21st; I hope you will check them out and support them as you have so many other Samhain titles through the years."

Our site will go dark at the end of the day, February 28th. Please take a few moments and visit, buy what you might have been planning on getting someday in the future, but download and back up your bookshelf because you won’t have access to it after February 28th.

Thank you for all your support through the eleven years we’ve been open. It’s been a pleasure to bring to market new voices in publishing and new works from familiar authors. From start to finish, we’ve always kept what the reader wants in mind and hope you enjoyed what we had to offer.

https://www.samhainpublishing.com/

Christina Brashear | Publisher

[BearMountainBooks]

Given what I've seen in this market and read about the various small publishers, I was shocked they even got enough funding to make a go of it a bit longer. The market has changed drastically (along with Amazon's algorithms). I hate to see the small guys going. It doesn't bode well.

[Pajamaman]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

Given what I've seen in this market and read about the various small publishers, I was shocked they even got enough funding to make a go of it a bit longer. The market has changed drastically (along with Amazon's algorithms). I hate to see the small guys going. It doesn't bode well.

What's been happening, BearMountain? I value your observations as someone who knows what's going on.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by Pajamaman

What's been happening, BearMountain? I value your observations as someone who knows what's going on.

First, thank you. You are too kind!

Second, I often make guesses based on observations--that may or may not be meaningful "at large" so don't take anything (or anyone) too seriously. But Samhain is the third small but relatively "known" publisher to go under in the last two years. (All Romance, which was mismanaged and nearly a ponzi scheme, but still. Samhain and also Elora's Cave...and I think it was 3 years ago, Frank Tuttle got the rights back to All the Paths of Shadow from a small publisher that also went under. I can't remember the name of the publisher, but I remember asking my library to order the book and it was under a small publisher then.)

Some of these small publishers used to sell well on Amazon. Some were shoddily run and probably deserved their demise (ARe and possibly Eloras). BUT they were making money partly because of ebooks and partly because Amazon showed their books frequently in their various algos. Amazon had a lot of incentive to show small publisher and indie books for quite a while. Amazon wasn't getting as much advertising dollars from the big guys and they were busy fighting with those big publishers over pricing. Indies filled in a lot of holes and gave Amazon negotiating power.

The latest negotiated contracts with the big publishers (starting about 2 and 3 years ago) appear to include advertising and placement dollars, which tends to crowd out indies. There were rumors for a while that the big six even negotiated specifically to EXCLUDE indie books from being mentioned alongside big 6 titles or excluded them from being shown in certain spots. This is a rumor and could be bitter beans, so take it with a grain of salt. We authors are storytellers after all. But even non-writers have noted that Amazon's search engines have changed, their ads are different, etc.

One of the biggest changes in the industry is that blogs are not as popular with readers as they once were. Blogs are closing down now due to lack of revenue opportunities--SFF.net, which was quite popular in the day, just announced it is closing. FicFact is doing surveys that indicate to me they are probably considering closing down or at least struggling. I can think of two others that were important sites for authors/readers.

Blogs are in trouble partly because shoppers now order direct from Amazon via Dots and Echoes and Fire kindles--rather than creating an associate/referral link that pays the blog for referrals and keeps blogs in business. Less blogs, especially less book blogs, is very bad for indies (although it's also bad for all authors).

If readers aren't reading blogs...that means writers don't have easy ways to advertise to readers. Facebook and Amazon ads simply aren't as effective as blogs were. "Bargain Book" sites are a dime a dozen--and most depend on a long list of customers who sign up for the free books. These sites are unable or unwilling to cultivate enough of a "buying" base customer to justify their ad prices (in the past, book blogs could sell enough of a given book to generate considerable income AND sell books for authors taking out ads. It's a dying industry. There are plenty of sites trying to do it, but very, very few move/sell books.)

In other words, people are shopping differently and it affects ALL authors -- big 6 or indie. We simply have a harder time reaching readers. Overdrive and the ability to get books for ereaders via libraries has grown immensely. To some degree this shuts out indies because libraries simply aren't as interested in indie books.

Amazon has its own publishing arm and can get great placements for those books. That too has cut into indie sales.

The industry is constantly shifting. I do see hope for indies in the pricing of the big 6 lately. On my blog, I often post bargains (and I try to vet the books at least a little) so I watch prices pretty closely. The latest releases I've seen from MacMillan and Random house were 12.99 to 15.99 FOR EBOOKS. Two years ago, I could post a popular author with a new release (we're taking Patricia Briggs, Ian Rankin, etc) and I could still sell a copy or two at 7.99 or even 10.99 on occasion. Those books are now releasing at 12.99 and UP. And I've yet to sell one via my blog. The latest J.D. Robb came out this week. Just for grins, I listed it on the blog. It was 14.99. No takers. I put up a boxed set that had 5 books in it for 7.99. No takers (an unknown author, so that might prove nothing, but it's not a bad price for that many books. Lots of clicks.). New cozy books at 7.99? Those were selling 2 years ago and even last year. In the last six months, those get a yawn.

My blog traffic is actually up and I still sell books--when the price, description and cover are just right. But if publishers continue to price at 12 and up, it's only going to push readers to libraries and make impulse buys at 99 cents and 2.99 more common. This is a good thing for indies who have low expenses and can hold on.

I know that books aren't true "commodities." If you want to read Ilona Andrews, reading Maria Schneider is no substitute. But you'll notice that Ilona Andrews has a self-published series. (She does have a distributor/arm/publisher type of thing, but it's not big six. It's to handle some of the various aspects of publishing). So does Rhys Bowen. Why? Because the Big 6 can't deliver on certain things (or is unwilling to do so at certain prices). And authors can. Rachel Aaron is another author gone indie (it's probably more correct to say she is a hybrid author). She has some very interesting posts at her blog on the subject.

The biggest problem is that Amazon isn't terribly friendly to indies right now--they want us to take out advertising (and there's nothing wrong with that--but we don't have access to the most valuable advertising like we used to. It used to be that selling 100 books a day meant your ranking zoomed and your book would be "seen" via automatic algos). It's much more difficult to find a way to be included in Amazon's algos.

Those are just some raw thoughts/speculation. I don't know if it answers any real questions, but those are the trends I see.


But it should be noted that Amazon has a lot of power--to make or break various products or books with what it choose to show. They have made it tougher to get noticed and get the sales. That part is going to continue. Competition is stiff and reaching readers is more difficult. It's very much pay to play right now and the big 6 are better positioned to take advantage of that.

[fjtorres]

The problem for small publishers is one of scale.
Big publishers put out thousands of titles a year and they have tens of thousands of backlist titles trickling in revenue. So even though their overhead is very high the sales rate of any one title (barring the now-rare lotto winners) has little direct impact on the bottom line. They have a lot of margin to work with to cushion the vagaries of the market. They are gamblers who spread their bets all over the place.

Self-publishers, on the other extreme, typically have but a handful of titles to promote. They also have extremely low overhead and are effectively venture capital operations in ramp-up mode, surviving on investor funding (the author's "day job") so the level of incoming revenue by itself doesn't determine their fate. Their support is determined by their success in growing the one brand; the author's name. Vagaries in sales are fretted but won't necessarily discourage the "investors".

In the middle there are the medium and small traditional and not-so-traditional publishers. They lack the resources of the big boys but like the big boys they need a minimum level of income to stay afloat. They all have cushions and, in some cases, actual venture cspital support or bank lines of credit but with smaller blacklists and maybe dozens of titles per year they have much lower margin for error. Performance of specific titles definitely impacts the bottom line.

The outfits that have been failing all come from the low end of the scale in this middle group. Most have had managerial failings. Some were running in the red *before* the downturn of 2016. They just ran out of margin.

The one thing to consider is that the "print is back" and "independent bookstore resurgence" cheerleading is all fake. Misreading of data. In actual fact, *everybody* lost new *book* sales in 2016. Well, everybody except Amazon...

Some lost a little, some lost a lot.
Some are able to hide their decline behind price hikes, format shifts, and non-book sales (calendars, journals, art supplies, etc) but everybody suffered. Bestsellers lost sales. Newbies lost sales. Overall, the limited growth being reported is Amazon growth. Everybody else combined is stagnant at best. And in stagnant businesses overhead is a killer.

The industry tracks sales in dollars more often than not and by total sales at specific types of outlets. This hides a lot of uncomfortable truths that make the problems of the small players look worse than they are because it hides the quiet retrenching going on with the big ones. The reduction in advances, in number of titles published, in employee reductions, in employee benefits reductions. The big guys are hurting. And if the big guys with the cushion are hurting it should be no surprise the smaller players are bleeding and the smallest dying.

The trade publishing businesses (plural) are by nature low margin businesses. The big boys squeeze double digit margins out of them by squeezing staff, suppliers, and consumers. None of those are tactics that small publishers can use. Those live and die by sales rate.

And lately, dying is coming a bit more frequently.

Hopefully, things will readjust as we move forward and growth will resume for *some* players. But as the ebook evolution rolls on and the markets keep developing the gold rush aspects are fading and giving way to basic economics. And right now economics are saying that the long term survivors are more likely to be the very small and the very big. And even the latter will be greatly diminished.

[BearMountainBooks]

The point, of course, is that even badly mismanaged those small publishers were making it the prior 10 years or so--and are unable to do so now. The same is true of blogs. Some of the blogs that are closing shop have been running for 10 or more years. Some author blogs were never monetized and in this climate, it's 1. too late to do so and 2. the time commitment makes it almost impossible to do a blog UNLESS it is monetized (see Rachel Aaron post on the subject).

[fjtorres]

Yup.
As many have pointed out the gold rush phase is over. The adoption curve is finally hitting phase 3.
The markets are starting to take their long term shape and the marginal players will be shaking out.