By Edward Nawotka, Editor-in-Chief
In today’s feature story, “One Year of Translating, Selling Swedish Literature Direct,” Claes Ericson, publisher of Sweden’s Stockholm Text reflects on one year in business. Having published 15 titles exclusively as ebooks, one of his takeaways is the decision to begin publishing his books in print. Despite having sold between 50,000–100,000 titles in 2012, he believes that he may have sacrificed as much as 75% of potential sales because his books were not available in print.
Ericson notes: “We are going to change our distributor to Consortium, which means we will now publish all our books in print as well as digital. For our next crime novel we will print 10,000 copies to start, and these will be distributed to stores. Of course that increases our costs — it costs $15,000 to translate a book, and now with print that will be even higher. But the upside is higher also, in that we will have a greater retail presence.”
Publishing in print has a very strong potential upside: bookstore and library sales being the most obvious. But publishing in print and subsequent distribution raises the expense and complicates the process: you suddenly have to deal shipping and returns, new design and production expenses, additional workflow considerations, sales personnel, etc.
Is it, in the day and age of increasingly shrinking bookstore shelves, is print still worth it for small publishers? Of course, the very definition of a “small publisher” is fungible, but for the sake of argument, lets say a publisher that does 225 or fewer books per year.
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3 Comments
The qualifying phrase in the question is “For small publishers,….” Big publishers enjoy warehouses, distributors, offset printers on retainer, and a (dwindling but still significant) chain of bookstores. Certainly, eBooks are an important market for big and small publishers alike but the idea that small publishers should focus on one market over the other ignores the fact that without a retail pipeline, each book should be treated as a unique set of circumstances.
POD publishers, for example, enjoy the benefits of print distribution with comparatively little risk or expense. Moreover, they have an opportunity (though admittedly, far too few leverage this) to typeset to a much higher standard than than trade publishers who are compelled to use tiny type, tight leading, and narrow margins to curb expenses on huge print runs. Small publishers can produce higher quality books when not required to print (and assume risk for) tens of thousands of copies.
Also to be considered are the author’s circumstances. I have a client who, as a professional speaker, has sold as many as 1000 books at a single keynote event. Audience members line up to buy books after his speeches, but he hasn’t bothered with eBooks and he sells a bout a dozen copies on Amazon each year.
What age group is a book targeted to? Id hesitate to push eBooks to the geriatric crowd if they were my readers.
As a book typographer, I find that eBooks offer a truly second-rate reading experience. The quality of typesetting associated with printed books has fallen tremendously but eBooks treat a book as a mere container for text data. Yuck! Like a good cover design, a well-designed book presents typography that projects the tone and intention of the writer’s words. Ebooks ignore this and often diminish a book in the process. This 48-year old graphic and web designer still loves his printed books. I use my Kindle as a test platform. I do sell eBooks but I hate having my work look like that.
As a writer of fiction and non-fiction books that will likely never sell in huge quantities, and as a producer of books for others that may mostly appeal to niche audiences or prove to be mostly artistic endeavors, I find that eBooks are a secondary concern. The group of readers who still love the smell of ink and the feel of paper and even the heft of a good tome is still significant.
Is print worth the expense? Is publishing worth the expense? Consider how few books—even those from established trade publishers—make a profit and it becomes clear that the question requires clarification. The typical book has a $20 price ceiling and the typical retailer takes 50% of that. Printing and shipping expenses are deducted from that and the writer/publisher is/are left with crumbs from which they must recover their expenses before any profit is earned. Without the resources of mega-publishers, books are an insane proposition for anyone wanting to sell a retail product. And yet, thousands of people publish every year. For many of us, whether we sell books or not, publishing is worth the expense. And for many of us who publish anyway, print provides a special satisfaction that an eBook never will. See this thing in my hand? It’s my book. Yeah!
I’ve been a small publisher for three years. I went from 347 eBook sales in January 2011 to grossing well over a million and a half dollars since then. We do print through Createspace and it generates some income. But my focus is eBooks.
A key variable is fiction vs nonfiction. For fiction 98% of our sales are eBook. For nonfiction, it’s 50-50. People want an actual book for nonfiction.
I think print is great for those who sell in volume. Since Walmart is the #1 retailer of print, how many midlisters get racked there? It’s the top 5% who skew the data toward print. For the “average” author, digital is the way to go.
@Bob Mayer: Thanks for the breakdown Bob.