
E-books spark battle inside the publishing industry - carterschonwald
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/24/AR2009122403326.html
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JulianMorrison
The publishers are going to lose this one, and probably disappear as an
industry. They truly have no leverage. What can they offer to authors?
Editors? "I'll hire one", says the author. Advertising? "You make me pay for
that anyway", says the author, "and there's the web, and without paper and the
associated payola, advertising will be much cheaper." The sensual experience
of a physical book? "That doesn't put food on my table", says the author.

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motters
I imagine the way that it might work in future is that the author registers
their new book with Google or Amazon (or some other similar company acting as
a distributor), and they then make the book searchable and downloadable by
readers. The author selects what price they want to charge, with some
percentage going to the distribution company. The distribution fee might vary
depending upon whether the author decides to opt for additional
promotion/advertising, or just do that side of things themselves on their own
web site, or via their own social network. Authors retain copyright on their
works, and can at any time cancel an account with a distributor and go to a
new one.

~~~
JulianMorrison
I think any big-name distributor would want at minimum some sort of fixed term
contract. Or else, the author could pull their book (or series) to a private
site (and pocket 100%) the moment it took off.

Amazon and friends _do_ have something to offer: eyeballs, and their good
name. So they can negotiate.

I think you'll see newbies entering through what used to be called "vanity
publishing" via Lulu etc, getting picked as a rising talent by reviewers,
getting in the press, and finally being offered a contract by Amazon. This
latter will become the equivalent of the old status of "published author".

~~~
motters
In the sort of system I envision the author could pull their book as soon as
it became popular, but it's unlikely that an author using their own web site
or social network would be able to compete against the large marketing and
delivery potential of companies like Google or Amazon. Perhaps there would
need to be a minimum term.

Even so a system something like this would be a win-win situation for authors,
distributors and readers (and more arguably for the environment in terms of
reduced need to chop down trees and transport books around). The distributor
could also supply additional services at a cost, such as the ability for
readers to have their private libraries in "the cloud" as a dropbox type of
system. So I think the distributor would have sufficient scope to add value
around the product that an author may not have much incentive to leave
prematurely.

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electromagnetic
Personally I would rather use a ebook reader as target practice for taking a
squat than ever read a book on one, however that's personal preference and is
a world from an equitable arrangement on digital publishing rights.

Authors have the ability to score a 50/50 revenue share on digital
publications and make it a standard, which would be a phenomenal step in
bringing fair payment to writers. It would put a writer five times further
ahead than any artist selling on itunes, who's lucky to get 10 cents for a
sale.

The reality here is that publishers are trying to take a cut of a pie that
doesn't belong to them. I legally own digital publication rights to _all_ my
works, unless expressly stated in a contract that I'm signing them over, in
most backlist publications those rights were never even considered, unless the
contract stated the author was selling 'all' rights. The publishers here
legally have no right to be interfering, and so far (quite rightly) appear to
be losing the battle. If authors switch to fully digital publication to get a
decent revenue share, as a writer myself I'll have to back them and, perhaps
I'll have to pick an ebook reader off the floor and try to keep my pants on,
because as a reader I want quality works and they're only going to appear if
authors can continue to make a living. If the publishers get their way and cut
the profit the authors can receive, then we might as well abandon all hope of
another literary masterpiece.

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cstross
_Readers want books that are plentiful and cheap, publishers want to preserve
their profit, and authors want a larger share of revenue._

What this article misses out _entirely_ is the distribution chain.

Publishers aren't distributors. Amazon is a distributor and a retailer rolled
into one. Ingram is a distributor. The other wholesalers are distributors.

The distributors take 70% of the gross revenue from a book, leaving 30% to
split between authors and publishers. The reason the publishers are defending
their margins is that Amazon are trying to increase the already-silly 70% cut
that they're taking (by combining the retail and wholesale distribution stages
into one entity). Amazon are also trying to bootstrap ebooks by cutting
prices, and they don't want to run the whole process out of their own pocket.
So the squeeze is on.

The _smart_ publishers would be setting up ebook storefronts and selling
direct to the public -- establishing their own distribution arm, in other
words. But they're not used to thinking in those terms (if anything, they've
been moving in the opposite direction for decades, shedding direct sales
forces and outsourcing printing and low-level production work like
typesetting).

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motters
The other issue surrounding electronic publishing besides the cost is the DRM
issue. I should be able to transfer electronic books between devices without
restriction and without the possibility for some remote company or
organisation to delete purchased content from my reader.

I imagine that book publishers will eventually become what iTunes is to music,
but like the music industry they may have to go through a painful period of
denial, loss of old business models and restructuring. Google are also paving
the way for the future of publishing with their books service. It seems likely
that before long in addition to merely previewing a few chapters on Google
there will also be some convenient mechanism to purchase and download the
entire book to a reader device.

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sown
I wonder if anyone has thought about doing a typesetting/proof reading service
for self-publishing authors but no marketing

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JulianMorrison
Ebooks are "typeset" in the e-reader. Formats are necessarily reflowable.

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Calamitous
Proofing and editing the content would still be a valuable service, but I
don't know if you'd be able to get authors to pay a sustainable amount for
such a service.

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Calamitous
Overall I worry that all this squabbling is just accelerating the shrinkage of
an already diminishing market. I realize that the e-reader format is ideal for
technical works, but what about fiction?

Does anybody outside of us old fuddy-duds just read for fun any more?

~~~
harisenbon
As someone who has just finished reading the entire Discworld series on my
Kindle, I would like to say that while e-books on a screen are more suited
towards technical documents and "look them ups," any e-ink reader is just as
good as, if not better than the paper version.

People are constantly surprised at how paper-like the screen is, and I've
never noticed any eye strain or fatigue, even after reading my kindle for
hours.

I would seriously recommend checking out an e-ink based reader if you want to
try some fiction reading. Then head over to project Gutenberg for a metric
load of free, public, e-books.

