Editorial by M.J. Rose
As we come to the end of 2009 there’s only one thing we know about the future of publishing—it’s going to keep changing. Like it or not, no matter what industry you’re in and how hard you try to hold onto the past, fighting change is not only futile, it’s often what kills you.
When Change is Pain
The changes we’re in the middle of are cause for alarm for many people:
Kirkus is gone.
Fifty-four percent of people now find out about books via online ads. (Yes ads! Not reviews.) Sixty-seven percent of people buying a book didn’t know what they were going to buy before they walked in the store.
There are millions of readers who post about what they’re reading on their blogs and social networks like Twitter, Facebook and Goodreads.
People can read e-books on their iPhones on line in the supermarket, go home, turn on their Kindles and be instantly synced up.
HarperCollins has an online slush pile called Authonomy. Harlequin has a similar testing ground called Carina.
And Steven Covey, author of the perennial backlist bestseller Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, just gave exclusive rights to his e-books to Amazon and not his publisher.
Bookstores are publishers and authors are publishers and publishers are bookstores.
And yet, the one thing everyone seems to fear the most is Amazon’s slashing e-book prices and selling them at a loss.
Last week almost all the major publishers announced they would be holding back e-book releases on select titles until three to four months after the hardcover release.
Now? The time to have gotten involved in timing and pricing was two years ago before when the Kindle came on the market. When experimentation would have made sense. When there were no precedents set. But to do it now?
Kassia Krozser, at Book Square, blogged that the way some agents and publishers are reacting is fetishistic: “We must worship the all-mighty hardcover,” she wrote, “without worrying about the actual impact to overall sales. Without even considering the reader. Of course, why would publishing ever consider the reader?”
Why indeed?
As someone who has spent her life in advertising doing endless research about the end user, I’m continually shocked by the lack of information publishers have about readers. And even worse their lack of concern about the info they don’t have.
E-books vs. Hardcovers
There is a lot of information about readers that is key to what the future holds and how it’s going to play out. And we need to be paying attention to it.
For instance, 40% of hardcovers are either resold online two or three times or lent to friend and family two to three times. Or swapped two or three or more times.
None of those transactions pay a penny to the publisher or the author.
But e-books can’t be resold. Or borrowed. (Barnes & Noble’s Nook offers publishers the option to lend once, but few allow it.)
So, on the one hand, you have an e-book that is priced to sell and sells more copies because of it.
On the other hand you have a hardcover few can afford that is re-read/re-sold or swapped several times at no profit to anyone.
Publishers say they are afraid that low e-book prices will devalue the “book,” so their solution is to hold back e-books and not release then when the hardcover comes out. Agent Nat Sobel, in a plea to publishers to hold back e-book releases said: “In just a few years we have seen electronic sales of bestsellers go from 2% to 12% to 15% of total sales. Next year, they may constitute 20%. Who knows where this will end once bestsellers are on cell phones, Blackberries and the like?”
Does that mean we should punish excited new readers?
And if we do, don’t you think they’ll notice? The consumer isn’t stupid. She knows the difference between a hardcover, a mass market and a digital file. She knows you’re withholding one version to try to cash in on another.
Moreover, from a marketing perspective it’s not smart to make her wait three or four months to buy the e-book because the e-book reader is part of a buzz machine that is one of the most potent we’ve ever seen.
Early adopters are also the first to talk up a product or service—or in this case—a book. That’s why movie companies have free screenings. It’s why publishers have always spent so much on reviewer’s copies. But media is fractured.
There are 60% fewer reviews than there were five years ago. Even Oprah is going away. We don’t have identifiable groups who set trends and talk up books, movies, and restaurants anymore—we have hundreds of thousands of savvy consumers.
E-book Readers Make Noise
People who read e-books are not only early adopters, they’re active online tweeting and blogging. They’re the social networkers who turn things viral, who make noise.
And noise sells books.
At a time when the marketing dollar has shrunk to mere pennies and few books get any meaningful advertising once co-op is taken care of, can we afford to keep the buzz machine quiet for four months?
Plus, if you hold back e-books, then you need to market hardcovers alone and then re-market the e-books four months later and then re-market paperbacks four months after that because we know you can’t count on the reader to remember books they heard about last week let alone three months ago.
My company, AuthorBuzz.com, recently conducted a poll with 200 people who own e-reading devices. Every one of them reported they were buying at least two times more books because of their e-purchases. Some reported a 300% increase.
No matter how bad at math I am, I know selling 3,000 books at $10 is better than selling 300 books at $25.
Don’t we want more people reading more books?
Be Not Afraid
The inescapable truth of doing business in the 21st century, according to author and CEO of BookTour.com, Kevin Smokler, is that you have to give the customer what they want. “There are more of them than there are of you. Should you choose to make it difficult for your own purposes, said customers will simply abandon what you are offering them and go elsewhere.”
Yes, it’s a scary time.
If we lose the one-two punch of hardcover releases followed a year later by a mass market or trade paperback release, it might affect our advances but that doesn’t mean we won’t be able to earn a living as writers.
It could mean we sell some work directly to readers. Or that our agents become entrepreneurial managers who help us find other kinds of paying gigs.
It might mean that more of us have to keep our day jobs longer.
But based on how much authors are doing now to market their own books, advances need to be re-adjusted and the royalty structure needs to be restructured anyway.
As Mike Shatzkin points out on his blog, authors might notice that the digital world offers alternative sales channels that don’t involve traditional publishing—especially at a time when traditional publishing isn’t so traditional anymore and publishers are expecting authors to do more and more marketing.
What’s not scary is that people haven’t stopped reading. They’re just embracing more ways to read the printed word—whether it’s ink or e-ink. And nothing matters more than that.
We won’t be facing apocalypse as long as we are forward thinking, embrace change and find a way to work with it. We will be doomed if we cling desperately the old models simply because that’s the way it always worked.
I’m a founding member of ITW—International Thriller Writers. In 2007, one of our board members, the amazing crime writer David Hewson, suggested we abolish dues and find another way to support the organization financially. At first the board balked. No writer’s organization had ever made it without dues. That’s how it was always done. How could we do something so crazy?
Hewson’s answer became ITW’s motto: “When we imitate we fail. When we innovate we succeed.”
ITW is succeeding and publishing can succeed, too, as long as we don’t try to preserve the past at the expense of the future.
In 1998, M.J. Rose was the first author to use the Internet to release an e-book that was picked up by traditional publishers. She is also the owner of the ad agency, Authorbuzz.com. Past Life, a dramatic series based on her bestselling novel The Reincarnationist, debuts February 11, 2010 on FoxTV.
VISIT: M.J. Rose’s Web site.
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Bob Mayer
7 months ago
Very good article. Publishing has always been an antiquated business. Pretty much every NY Publisher still uses the paper manuscript with post-its and pencil marks for editing– they apparently have never heard of track changes or electronic post-its.
I know MJ has been on the leading edge in e-books. A voice in the wilderness a decade ago.
I have the same feeling trying to get agents, editors and publishers to understand the need for formal training of authors– not necessarily in the writing but in the business and marketing aspect. I was actually told by an editor that publishers don’t hire authors, they contract for books. Then they need to send that 1099 to the book next year.
Publishing is almost unique in the business world in that the primary producers of the product, the author, receives no job training other than informal and what they do on their own. I started my Warrior Writer program to fill that gap in the business– and the fascinating thing is the people who get the most out of it are people who are ALREADY published.
And I love the point about ignoring the readers. In some ways, both ends of the publishing paradigm are being ignored: the writer and the reader. I notice numerous conferences coming up to wrangle about what to do in this new electronic age, but rarely do you see authors or readers on any of the panels.
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Tom Thompson
7 months ago
Great article–especially important to think about the whole picture w/buzz building. A quibble about that 54% number for online ad awareness, however: I believe it comes from the 2008 Bowker study released at the 2009 BISG conference. See the slide “Consumer’s Reliance on Internet for Information: Online v. Print Advertising” on slideshare, here: http://is.gd/5syt9
The universe of that slide is people who found out about a book through an ad. So it’s not 54% of ALL people who bought a book, but 54% of those who found out about a book through an ad. It is plenty astonishing that 54% of ad-influenced people found out about a book through an online ad versus 24.8% by store email (aka direct mail) and 5.8% by newspaper ad (including of course, the New York Times). But not quite as astonishing as 54% of all book buyers period.
Kim Richards
7 months ago
Great article MJ. I agree that people haven’t stopped reading. They’re considering other options which fit their lifestyle. Those of us who don’t go into the digital future only hurt themselves. We MUST take the books to where the readers are.
I also think the anonymity of ebooks is a part of the popularity. No one else can tell what you’re reading so you don’t have to hide it away. I’d bet this is part of the reason eroticas and gay fiction do well online.
Steve Hoefer
7 months ago
Purely as a reader (and a Kindle owner) I find it mind boggling that publishers are fighting so hard to keep my from giving them money.
E-readers are as significant a format change as CDs were to vinyl. Once you have an e-reader you will stop buying paper books. Since I bought my Kindle a year ago I haven’t bought a physical book–And I -love- paper books! I’ve spent a lot more money on books this year than I did last year. The e-reader has made book buing more convienient (and I live 2 blocks from a Borders) and I read much more because I’m always carying at least one book I’m in the mood for.
There are a lot of top selling books not available to the Kindle or Nook, and I can’t fathom why. I’m not going to go and buy the paper version. Instead I’m going to go and find another book that is available. Which has been great for smaller publishers and authors that I wouldn’t have found otherwise. I’ve bought a lot of self published books in the last year. Delaying the release wastes publisher’s advertising dollars because I’ve already moved on by the time its available.
And the article is correct, I’m an early adopter and I talk a lot about the things I love and hate. For example in the comments of articles like this. And right now I love the Kindle and the Nook. But I use some really abusive language toward publishers, their short-sighted approach and apparent inability to to take my money.
John Borchardt
7 months ago
Congratulations on a thoughtful and well-written article. I agree with very nearly all of your observations. When I was negotiating with my publisher in late summer 2008, I tried to persuade her to release my nonfiction book as an e-book. My reasoning was that it would be easier to keep it updated. New editions wouldn’t need to wait until nearly all the copies of the previous edition had been sold. New editions containing updated and additional material could be sold to registered buyers of the book at a reduced price the same way software updates are sold to previous purchasers of the program. There was a complete lack of interest.
I would think this approach would be an excellent way to keep science and engineering textbooks updated as new discoveries are made and new developments occur.
John Borchardt
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Anthony S. Policastro
7 months ago
Hi MJ,
Excellent article. You couldn’t have said it better. I’m exactly on the same page and see a great need to change the old ways of publishing. So much so that I started my own publishing company embracing the paradigm shift now occurring in the publishing industry.
Outer Banks Publishing Group is one of the first publishing houses to use the latest digital printing technologies, social networking, virtual marketing, and the Internet to publish, promote, and sell books in electronic formats as well as in print.
We publish books first as ebooks, see how they fare in the market, and then publish them in print if they sell well enough as ebooks. Take a look at our website at http://www.outerbankspublishing.com
While you are there, check out my piece, “Is our Literary Legacy Threatened by Electronic Books?” at http://www.outerbankspublishing.com
Amy Sterling Casil
7 months ago
MJ, Judy Tarr pointed me at this excellent article. I have good reason to believe that I have a Kindle under the tree (my daughter spewed!) and can’t wait to start using it. Thanks for your help in sharing how ITW developed its similar project, and . . .
http://www.amazon.com/The-Shadow-Conspiracy-ebook/dp/B002YD8BWK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261336337&sr=1-1
The second volume will be out in early 2010 and there are many more eBook and paper editions planned. We’re not ITW by a long shot, but we are Book View Cafe.
barbara
7 months ago
I was pointed to this by @mikecane and just wanted to add my 2 cents. I spend much of my entertainment budget on books and much of my entertainment allotted time on reading and anyone who can encourage publishers to pay attention and provide service for real customers (readers, not bookstores) deserves kudos.
Ebooks are easier and more practical in many cases than print (and certainly more comfortable than hard cover.) (and I need to parenthetically plug the ebook which is better than a dedicated ereader for a lot of reasons.
Book View Cafe is wonderful. I love hearing authors talk and getting a chance to find things I wouldn’t see normally.
I love the fact that I can get books like @MoriaJovan’s Proviso and Stay without hassle.
I wish author’s would take the rights to all of their back list stuff and get it back in print as e-versions.
Cory Doctorow did it RIGHT with Makers and I plan to by the print version right after Christmas.
Heck, I have even real Fern Michael’s Sisterhood series (all 15 books so far) and would never have done so if not for the ebook editions and Amazon’s kindle for the PC software.
Here’s to the E-pocolypse…may it keep progressing *crash*
Seth Godin
7 months ago
once again, MJ, you nailed it.
when will they ever learn…
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