Kindle Review – Kindle Fire Review, Kindle 4 Review

New Publishing is what we’re going to see emerge as technology, intelligence of the crowds, the Amazon Kindle, and other factors combine to democratize publishing and destroy the current publishing model.

Here are a few recent, important updates that show how the Publishing Industry is reacting to New Publishing’s relentless advance -

Hulu for Books, in Spain

Spanish Publishers are showing every other publisher how to do it (Publishing Perspectives via Teleread) -

Planeta, Random House Mondadori, and Santillana, which together make up some 70% of the market, are joining forces to set up a digital distribution company for ebooks.

major marketing effort starting with a splashy launch of e-books and e-readers this holiday season through at least one major retailer. They have set a goal of having every frontlist title able to be published simultaneously in both print and ebook form by mid 2011.

The details reveal that perhaps they don’t really get it -

1. eBooks priced at 80% of physical book prices (lest we get too excited).
2. 25% Royalty Rate. 
3. Booksellers offered a maximum discount of 50%. 
4. DRM on all titles.  
5. Only booksellers that agree to the terms set in the agreement will be given rights. They’re obviously not best friends with Amazon.
6. The most powerful literary agency in Spain (that has Gabriel Garcia Marquez and other authors) has refused to this agreement and wants a royalty rate of 40% for ebooks.
7. eBooks will be sold through retailers and booksellers, not by publishers. 

In many ways this is the anti-thesis of the democratized, lower priced model that New Publishing will be. This is publishers trying to build new walls to preserve their position rather than doing something for the benefit of customers. 

The First Publisher that gets New Publishing (partially)

OR Books is an independent imprint with a completely different approach. Take a look at their video where they talk about the paradigm shift happening in book publishing –

1. OR Books have a better than normal chance of success because they will have low costs and big marketing budgets – they plan to have (unconfirmed) $50,000 or so budgets for mid-level books.
2. I’d be very interested in finding out what percentage they intend to give authors and what their ebook and physical book prices will be.  
3. There’s a huge opportunity for a lot of people to become ‘new publishing publishers’ or ‘super-agents’.
4. This is actually a model that will fit-in well with New Publishing.

This is really, really big – even industry insiders are realizing that New Publishing is going to destroy publishing.

Kindle independent author gets a book deal

Boyd Morrison, an independent author who was seeing a lot of success in the Kindle Store, got a 2 book deal with Simon and Schuster.

Interestingly, he’s not the first independent author who was helped by success in the Kindle Store (John Rector, author of the Grove, says that his book deal with Tor might have been helped by his Kindle Store success).

This is Publishers trying to benefit from New Publishing and the Kindle Store 

1. The big change will be when authors no longer want to give away x% of their profits and movie rights and global rights for a book deal.  
2. Independent authors don’t fully realize that they don’t need publishers any more. Definitely not the ‘old model of publishing’ publishers.  
3. It’d be easy to argue that the Kindle Store played a big part in the success of Boyd Morrison. And that as Amazon Encore develops further it’ll be the one snapping up these authors.  
4. His first book will be published in hardcover in summer 2010. That’s a year away. A year ago, people didn’t even know twitter and Google Chrome was neither a browser nor an OS.

Amusing how everyone forgets the customer

Amazing to see authors wanting 40% royalties and publishers wanting 80% the price of physical books. Attitudes like these make it easy for customers to justify pirating books (not condoning it – just pointing it out).

New Publishing will remove the middlemen between authors and publishers.

Yes, you’ll still have enablers like Amazon and literary agents. However, they’ll be taking 10% or so each. And they won’t really control publishing like publishers and book sellers currently do.   

New Publishing Vs Competing Models

We see four competing models emerging -

1. Publisher’s vision of Publishing 2.0  - where they can sell ebooks for 80%-100% of the cost of physical books and solve their problems.
2. Amazon’s vision of Kindle Publishing – where 10 cents of every dollar go to Amazon (and that’s not half as bad as the 50 cents on every dollar of the old model). 
3. An idealistic model of ‘everything is free or cheap’  being propagated by companies that will actually make billions off of authors and readers. It’ll be Altruism as a strategy.
4. New Publishing – where the people benefiting are customers (with cheaper prices) and authors (with better earnings).

If an enabler, like Amazon, wants 10% or so of the profits – that’s pretty reasonable. Publishers are merely enablers in New Publishing.

An enabler or a middleman wanting more than 10-20% is impractical. If wikipedia, craigslist, and email can all be free, why would customers or authors buy the argument that publishers and middlemen deserve to be taking 70-80% of the price of books?

New Publishing is Inevitable

A lot of publishers and most authors still don’t get it – it’s inevitable. There’s no way to rebuild the walls, and no way to dictate to consumers any more.  

The two biggest threats to New Publishing -

1. A ‘free’ model that turns authors into penniless, powerless content creators.  Hopefully the fate of newspapers is enough proof to authors and publishers and they avoid this fate.
2. A ‘tightly controlled’ model that kills the book market itself by severely restricting ebooks.

The Kindle has accelerated the advent of New Publishing. All these reactionary developments are just signs of much bigger things to come.

Filed under: publishing Tagged: | future of publishing, new publishing