Publishing changes impact the little guy
There are some changes sweeping the publishing world, and they have a lot of people nervous. One was recently reported in the NYT. It seems that HarperCollins is contemplating not paying new authors advances for their books:
Author advances and bookseller returns have long troubled the publishing industry. Best-selling authors can command advances so high that publishers often come away with slim profits, even for books that are significant successes. Publishers also sometimes offer high advances to untested authors in the hopes of creating new hits, but often those gambles do not pan out.
Interesting. That means that every book by a new author would be written “on spec”. Personally? I’m not opposed to this. With very few exceptions, all of the titles you’ll find here on Podiobooks.com followed that model. In the interest of full disclosure I was paid a modest advance to write both Podcasting for Dummies and Expert Podcasting Practices for Dummies. Would I have written those books without the advance? Nope. If that makes me a hypocrite, so be it.
The other interesting piece from that article was glazed over:
[A] new group [within HarperColins] will also release electronic books and digital audio editions of all its titles, said Jane Friedman, president and chief executive of HarperCollins, a unit of the News Corporation.
Now that’s huge news. I’ve pounded this pulpit for years: It’s stupid for publishers not to do this. Making an ebook version of a book you are already printing costs virtually nothing. And audio production is getting so cheap (see: US) and the public acceptance is growing so much that you almost can’t afford not to do it. Bravo, HC. Shake ‘em up! Maybe think about releasing the ebook and audiobook version first as a test to see if it’s worth the costs to make the dead tree versions?
Beyond that, Amazon stunned the POD market when they announced that they’d only be selling POD titles that are printed through their own POD presses. That freaked a lot of people out, perhaps rightly so. One of them was one of the “original” Podiobooks.com authors, Mark Jeffrey. He wrote about it on the Huffington Post:
[L]ast week, Amazon announced that authors would have to switch their books over to BookSurge *exclusively* — or else lose their ‘Buy Now’ button…
There are rumblings that iUniverse and Lulu.com are either close to signing — or have already signed — an agreement with Amazon BookSurge to take over the printing of all their books. They have no choice: Amazon is their primary distribution arm, and they are threatening to cut off their oxygen. They will have to agree to whatever terms Amazon.com dictates. This means BookSurge can charge whatever they want for the printing service — a cost which will likely be passed on to the artist in the form of reduced royalties.
With this move Amazon.com has effectively removed all competition in the Print On Demand universe.
No argument there, Mark. That’s exactly what they’ve done. And I’m not keen on the idea of reducing author profits.
(The remaining content of this blog post is my opinion and not an official policy of anyone else involved in Podiobooks.com. In fact, I’m quickly finding that I’m expressing a minority opinion. But so far, we’ve all managed to stay friends. Read on, if you dare!)
But in all fairness, Amazon is well within their rights to change the way this game is played. Will they dominate? You bet. Will authors suffer? Well, that’s hard to say. There’s a lot of middle men in the middle when you deal with a physical copy of anything, and we’ll have to see how they all work and play nice with each other, or not.
Bottom line: the publishing industry of tomorrow (and I use that figuratively to mean… TOMORROW) will be different than the publishing industry of yesterday. In all honesty, I see that working in favor of the little guy who’s not afraid to take risks and try new things. Or maybe I’m just an optimist.
April 10th, 2008 at 5:41 am
What are you talking about? Amazon has NO right to monopolize the market like that. They’re basically putting small printers out of business so they can line their own pockets with money. Monopolizing the competition out of the market by making unreasonable demands is not allowed in any other markets, so why should it be allowed in bookselling?
April 10th, 2008 at 7:32 am
Stijn,
I don’t see this as monopolization of “the” market. This is Amazon dictating the rules for their market. But I will grant you that Amazon.com has a disproportionate amount of marketshare, and changes they enact inside of their market will without question impact “the” market.
April 10th, 2008 at 10:44 am
Evo, I agree. You can’t blame a monopoly for acting like a monopoly. The problem for Amazon is that the more enemies it creates, the more likely it is that an alternative business will rise to challenge them (see: Microsoft).
April 10th, 2008 at 7:19 pm
We don’t have to take it lying down
or as dead cowards.
April 11th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
Hey, if Amazon wants to take away the “buy” buttons for my books, that’s fine by me - I get the same % of the wholesale price whether my readers buy through BN, Powell’s, AbeBooks, Amazon, Blackwell’s, their local book store… Whatever. In fact, I’d rather they order directly from me, because then I get the part of the price that would otherwise go to the retailer, as well. Amazon isn’t “the market” and they only have a monopoly within the virtual walls of the “amazon.com” domain. If small press, indie, and self-published authors choose to do business elsewhere, do point their links to other retailers, then Amazon will change its tune. Especially when “amazon sales rank” stops being the metric authors judge their success by.
Actually, with the current policy of leaving the book listings up on Amazon.com. only to be fulfilled by Marketplace sellers, I’m practically better off - Amazon has most of my books at full MSRP, but none of the Marketplace sellers do. If my buy button disappears, the default price on all my books drops!
April 12th, 2008 at 8:37 am
I’ve got to disagree with one of the comments here - you CAN blame a monopoly for acting like a monopoly. It is against the law for a monopoly to use its power to suppress competition. Now, it is an open question whether or not Amazon has the ability to use monopolistic power on this segment of the publishing business, but that is the key question. What’s more, the impact of this move is very likely to create something akin to a monopoly, even if it doesn’t exist now. That’s sort of the whole point. Unless other stores like B&N start refusing to accept BookSurge POD books, I would expect most POD publishers to wind up agreeing to have Booksurge print their books. It is - excuse the pun here - a textbook case for the justice department.
It is right? Will it wind up being better for authors in the long run? Who knows. I tend to doubt it. Taking away options almost never is in cases like this, despite the potential innovations that might be stimulated by it. But I don’t see Amazon backing down short of legal action, so I guess we’ll all find out. Me personally, I won’t be boycotting them per se, but I will start looking at Barnes and Noble before I look to Amazon.
April 12th, 2008 at 10:10 pm
I never thought I’d be defending Amazon on anything, but at least PART of Amazon’s statement explaining their decision make sense. *If* you believe that it is true, and the main reason for the changes. If not, well . . .
Amazon customers often order more than one book per order. So if one is from a traditional publisher, and that one is “in stock” - fine. But if the OTHER book on the same order is a POD from Lulu or some other POD outfit, then Amazon would have to order it, wait for production and shipment from the originating POD company to Amazon, then package the two books to send the order to the customer. Making that order take a week or more, or splitting the order into multiple shipments. Wasted time and/or shipping expense.
By forcing all POD titles to be produced in-house, Amazon saves itself, (and its customers?), days or more on fulfilling these split orders. Makes perfect sense if you are a corporate bean counter. (Note: Amazon heard the rumble, and later stated something to the effect that small presses including PODs may still voluntarily send in about 5 copies of each title to the Amazon shipping centers in advance to get around this new rule. That would cost the publishers upfront, of course, which is what POD is supposed to avoid.)
Also, self-publishers are usually free to make deals with multiple POD companies for the same title. An author could upload their book to Lulu, and Barnes&Noble, and make an Ebay Store, and a Amazon/Booksurge/CreateSpace account, and still make the book available through LSI to get access to the “Books in Print” network used by brick-and-mortar stores. Duplicates WAY to many steps, and only a few self-pubbers will go through all that grief.
As I said, this really does look selfish for Amazon, but selfish companies can win many battles. Whether they win the WAR for monopoly is not going to be decided here, even though it may be indicative.