Well, it seems the Kindle and Kindle owners and Nook owners are winning some battles.
J. A. Konrath has an interview on his blog with NY Times bestselling author Barry Eisler who turned down a $500,000 2-book deal.
This makes no sense -
- An indie author just signed a Publisher deal for $2 million that covers 4 books.
- A NY Times bestselling author just spurned a $500,000 deal that covers 2 books.
Is this a ‘grass is greener on the other side’ type of situation? Does Barry Eisler know something Amanda Hocking doesn’t know? Does Amanda Hocking know something Barry Eisler doesn’t know?
The interview is well worth reading in its entirety. Here are my thoughts on some interesting snippets.
Reasons Barry Eisler turned down $500,000
AKA Half a million dollars of Guaranteed Money.
It’s interesting/amusing to know that his 11-year-old daughter put the idea in his head -
(About a year ago) And my then eleven-year-old daughter said, “Daddy, why don’t you just self-publish?”
And I thought, wow, no one would have said something like that even a year ago.
He points out the contrast between paper books and ebooks -
… everything about paper represented a static defense, while everything about digital represented a dynamic offense. Not hard to predict how a battle like that is going to end.
If you ask the wrong question, the right answer to that question isn’t going to help you. So the question isn’t, “Will paper disappear?” Of course it won’t, but that’s not what matters. What matters is that paper is being marginalized.
Those two snippets actually capture everything that Publishers don’t fully realize about ebooks. You can’t hide from reality. Borders is going out of business. B&N can’t sell itself. Meanwhile eBooks are doubling in sales and millions of eReaders are being sold. There’s a very rapid shift going on.
Barry Eisler and Joe Konrath also talk about the difference between a delivery medium and what is being delivered -
But print is just a delivery system. It gets a story from the writer to the reader.
Barry: Yes. There’s a saying about the railroads - they thought they were in the railroad business, when in fact they were in the transportation business.
Likewise, publishers have naturally conflated the specifics of their business model with the generalities of the industry they’re in. As you say, they’re not in the business of delivering books by paper–they’re in the business of delivering books.
It’s this distinction that no one seems to be noticing. That paper books are just a medium. A great book doesn’t need to be printed on paper to be great. So far, it has needed to be printed on paper to be effectively distributed – However, that’s changing.
Finally, someone pointing out the truth
It’s tiring to have people not admit that Publishers are trying to kill eBooks. So, hopefully, now that authors are pointing it out, more people will accept reality -
The wrong conclusion is: I’m in the paper business, paper keeps me essential, therefore I must do all I can to retard the transition from paper to digital. The right conclusion would be: digital offers huge cost, time-to-market, and other advantages over paper. How can I leverage those advantages to make my business even stronger?
Publishers are trying to kill ebooks and eReaders. There are no two ways about it.
You are either in -
- Camp A which believes the theory that $14.99 for ebook versions of new releases is some sort of necessity, or some optimization of pricing.
- Camp B which sees it for what it really is, i.e. a way to kill ebooks.
It’s literally a war between Publishers, who are trying to kill ebooks, and readers and platforms, who are trying to protect the rise of ebooks. The only hope for Publishers is to fool readers into believing that ebook prices which kill the growth of ebooks are needed to save books themselves.
Here’s another nice snippet -
Joe: … I have reams of data that show how ebooks under $5 vastly outsell those priced higher.
Barry: This is a critical point. There’s a huge data set proving that digital books are a price-sensitive market, and that maximum revenues are achieved at a price point between $.99 and $4.99. So the question is: why aren’t publishers pricing digital books to maximize digital profits?
Joe: Because they’re protecting their paper sales.
Barry: Exactly.
Again, its Publishers not taking care of their customers.
Would readers get to read more of the books they wanted to read if prices were reasonable?
Yes. Of course.
Then why are so many ebooks priced higher than paperbacks? Why are some priced higher than hardcovers?
The Slow Speed at which Traditional Publishing works
Authors can’t wait for Publishers to improve their processes. Authors have to survive in 2011 – They can’t wait for Publishers to step out of 1980.
Barry Eisler has this to say -
The book is nearly done, but it wouldn’t have been made available until Spring of 2012. I can publish it myself a year earlier. That’s a whole year of actual sales I would have had to give up.
How can you expect to compete when your business process adds an entire year of delay to your product ship date?
The interview is well worth reading.
So, who’s making the right decision here?
I think they both are.
If you’re an indie author and you’re not sure if you’ll ever hit it big again, then taking $2 million is a good decision. It might also be a good decision if you’re very confident you can be the next James Patterson or the next Stephen King.
If you’re a bestselling author with an established brand and are tired of Publishers making more money from your books than you are, then going indie is a good option. Let’s say you sold 200,00 books at $10. If your work is good, and your brand is strong, you should be able to sell at least 200,000 books at $3 – and make more money than before. In fact, you might be able to sell 2 million books at $3 and make a lot more money than before.
The thing that both parties might be missing is – knowledge of the downsides of the approach they are choosing. There are obviously negatives to working with a Publisher and there are obviously negatives to being an indie author – Are these two authors factoring them in properly?
Which brings up a very interesting question -
The most lucrative market is providing services to authors. Why are there dozens of companies doing nonsensical things like lending sites and Scribd, but not a single company providing services to authors?
The real market is authors now.
If you look at it in aggregate – You can’t make that much money when ebooks are being sold between $0 and $5. Amazon and Apple can use economies of scale and lock-out smaller companies. However, the market for authors is wide open. Each and every author needs a cover, needs editing, needs technical help, and needs marketing. There is not going to be a YouTube of Books. There is, however, going to be an eBay of Publishing. Are there any companies building the latter?
Filed under: publishing Tagged: | future of publishing, independent vs published
I read this article when it first came out and they are exactly right.
“Again, its Publishers not taking care of their customers.”
Wrong. Readers are NOT the customers of the publishers, bookstores and libraries are. That’s why they are so tone deaf about ebooks and pricing.
What happens when all of the brick and mortar bookstores are out of business? Do publishers really think they’ll be able to sell literature at the grocery store? No, you get the genre bestsellers, maybe. So where will all those authors go?
Great point. Publishers don’t consider readers as customers. And for all real purposes they aren’t. Publishers are only talking to and only listening to bookstores and retailers and distributors.
I agree-I don’t think publishers are deliberately being stupid about ebooks–I really believe they don’t recognize what is happening, because they are so removed from their customers.
I see risks for both Eisler and Hocking simply because the future is uncertain (at least for authors’ ability to generate income).
As a freelance editor on the side, I’ve certainly seen a big demand–but most organized outfits are still stuck on paper design. In fact, it’s hard to find a good designer who understands the new needs in a cover.
Scott Nicholson
Liquid Fear
There are tons of outfits springing up, offering services to authors. Some do it on a fee-for-service basis, others want to take the traditional (i.e. agent-type) cut of 15% of revenues.
Any writer who has enough business sense to understand that the latter type of deal isn’t in his best interests would be the sort of person who’d be a customer for the “eBay of Publishing,” I would think. However, such writers tend to already follow the leading bloggers in the self-publishing field (e.g. Konrath), and those bloggers as a group seem forthcoming with the advice and anecdotes.
My impression of writers is that they respond better to the one-on-one experience/interaction provided by communicating with others on those blogs and in other writer communities, than they would to an eBay type of experience.
That might also partially explain the success of agents over the last 30 years in traditional publishing — though of course the off-loading of the slush pile from publishers to agents would appear to be the primary explanation. But the typical author personality, particularly the needs for validation and for an authority figure as guide to the business side of authorship, does seem to lend itself to that personalized sort of interaction.
There are *lots* of outfits offering services to authors, always have been. That’s essentially what “selfpublishing” had been for the past hundred years. The trick is finding ones that aren’t scammers, because those are very thin on the ground.
I just learned some very good information about publishing, self- and otherwise.
I am currently writing a book and have been looking at all options.
This article post was very helpful.