Jul
27
Literary Agency as Book Publisher?
Filed Under Books, E-books, Publishing | Leave a Comment
There has been an interesting brouhaha since last Thursday when the Wylie Agency announced plans to launch a digital book publishing venture called Odyssey Editions.
Wylie is no slouch of an agency.
Odyssey Editions plans to publish e-book editions of some of Wylie’s author’s backlist titles that have yet to be published as e-books. These include books by literary heavy-hitters Salman Rushdie, John Updike, Philip Roth, and Norman Mailer. Wylie is said to represent more than 700 authors and author’s heirs.
Agency founder Andrew Wylie, is apparently frustrated by two things:
1.) The stance Random House and other publishers have taken that e-book and other digital rights are included in older contracts signed before digital rights existed and thus were not explicitly listed in a contract. (Most contracts spell out exactly what rights the author is licensing to the publisher, such as hardcover, trade paperback, mass market, or foreign language, and retain any rights not mentioned for the author.)
2.) What Wylie sees as e-book royalty rates that are too low to be fair to authors.
Is this ok?
Beyond the contract and the royalty rate issues, there is a lot to question about an agency becoming a publisher.
First and foremost is the appearance of a conflict of interest, if not an actual conflict. How will the agency-publisher-author split be figured?
Will there be advances paid? Is the agency prepared to do all the things a publisher does? Will the e-book be an exact duplicate of the printed book if the final editing is done by the print book publisher?
How likely is the printed book publisher to aggressively promote and market the printed versions knowing some of the cream of its endeavors, in the form of e-book sales, will be skimmed off the top?
Wait, it gets weirder.
Wylie further confused the issue by saying he planned to give Amazon.com exclusive rights to Odyssey titles for its Kindle editions for two years.
It is commonly thought that Amazon isn’t paying for this exclusivity since that would likely trigger “favored nation” clauses present in contracts Amazon has with other publishers. So what benefit does the author receive by limiting the titles to one e-book edition? What benefit does Wylie receive?
IMHO
Publishers should remain publishers and literary agencies should remain literary agencies and never the twain should meet.
A word about e-book royalties
It’s my experience that royalty rates on e-books appear to be settling in at about 25 percent of net proceeds. I don’t think this will stand.
Our plan for The Write Thought’s “Classic Wisdom on Writing” e-book series of reissued writing titles, to be launched in 2011, is to pay authors 50 percent of net proceeds.
With pressures from the big authors and their agents, I imagine a figure closer to 50 percent than 25 percent will eventually prevail in most publishing agreements.
Just a write thought.
Jul
20
E-books Already Outselling P-Books?
Filed Under Books, E-books, Publishing | Leave a Comment
Funny how headlines morph as stories move from one newspaper or online media to the next. I usually spend a few minutes each morning reading the Slatest Morning Edition, a daily e-mail that offers a headline and the first few sentences of a dozen top news stories of the day from Slate, a Washington Post company.
Often I only read the headline, a perilous habit. Today, a headline announces “E-book Sales Outnumber Traditional Hardcover Sales.” From this one could mistakenly assume that e-books were outselling printed books everywhere. Particularly if one misinterpreted the word “hardcover” to mean “printed.”
The story is a rehash of a New York Times article with the headline, “E-Books Top Hardcovers at Amazon.”
In the New York Times article, we learn that Kindle (Amazon.com’s e-reader) editions have outstripped Amazon’s sales of hardcover editions of books—this doesn’t include paperbacks which, it is safe to say, outsell hardcover books by a huge margin. A milestone to be sure, but not the same as is perhaps suggested in the Slatest headline.
Other interesting tidbits gleaned from the NYT article:
• Over the last three months 143 Kindle editions were sold for every 100 hardcover editions sold by Amazon.
• The pace is accelerating with Kindle editions, in the last four weeks, selling 180 copies for every 100 hardcovers sold.
• Acute industry observer Mike Shatzkin predicts, “within a decade, fewer than 25 percent of all books sold will be print versions.”
• According to the Association of American Publishers, hardcover sales are up 22 percent this year. (Now that is a surprise and one wonders if it could be correct.)
• E-book sales have grown 400 percent this year through May.
• Sales of Kindle have tripled since Amazon lowered the price to $189 from $259 earlier this year. (The increase may not be completely price-driven. E-readers and tablets like Apple’s iPad have gotten great press lately.)
IMHO e-books are in the process of leveling the book-publishing playing field. Smaller publishers and lesser-known authors will benefit.
On another note, I’ll be presenting at the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival in Bali in October and at the Space Coast Writers Conference in January. And, at the end of this month, the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference. Tough duty, but I’m up to it. Be sure to say hello if you’re at any of these.
Just a write thought.
May
24
Books Can’t Be Free
Filed Under Books, E-books, Free Speech, Publishing, Writing | Leave a Comment
Amazon.com has plans to split their bestseller list into two, one for free titles and one for paid books. This will likely please authors and publishers and add a tenth of a basis point or so to Amazon’s bottom line.
It also points out that “free” isn’t the price point for delivery of content. Authors, publishers, and retailers need to make money if readers are going to have a robust selection of informational and entertainment material available to us at any price.
Just a write thought.
May
13
Can You Buy Your Way into Being a Published Author?
Filed Under Books, Promotion, Publishing, Writing | 1 Comment
Yesterday an elderly gentleman was in my office asking what he should do with his fourth book. He’d paid a “publisher” out of Southern California $25,000 to publish his first book and $5,000 to publish his second. The publisher published the third for free. None of them sold any copies to speak of even though the publisher said he sent out a bunch of review copies.
To make matters worse, my visitor had heard that millions of books were sold on the Internet so he paid to be included on a book-selling website that told him he would “earn consistent income from the site selling 4,000 to 5,000 books a month.” He sold 21 copies. He thinks friends bought most of them.
A member of the hope-springs-eternal crowd (as we all are), he was there to ask if he could pay me to publish his book.
If you are an author, and you are paying to get published or for services that guarantee to sell your books, chances are you will have a bad experience. Is this always the case? Almost. What can you do about it? Learn the industry—learn what works and what doesn’t—before you open your checkbook.
Just a write thought.
May
6
Something to Shoot for when You Make Your Book Trailer
Filed Under Book Marketing, Books | Leave a Comment
I’ve been researching do-it-yourself video for a presentation I’m giving later this month at the Independent Book Publishers Association’s Publishing University.
This is hardly an example of what most indie publishers will attain, but it is an example of what you can do with clever people, a home studio, a somewhat hefty budget, and two minutes and ten seconds.
Much of the actual videotaping is quite professional and may be beyond most publisher’s expertise, but many devices used in this video, like the simple title cards (some on masking tape!), the replaying of parts of scenes, and the sound effects (most available free on the Internet—Google “free sound effects”) could be used pretty easily.
It is inspiring, does give us a target to shoot for and besides, it’s fun to watch.
Just a write thought.
Apr
30
Dust Already Settling: Microsoft’s Courier Tablet a Fatality. HP’s Slate too?
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The weeding out of the e-reader/mobile device field has started (continued?) with Microsoft announcing it is canceling further development on its book-shaped, two-page device codenamed Courier.
HP’s Slate is rumored to be on the chopping block too. Perhaps something to do with HP bailing out Palm last week. According to this rumor, HP didn’t like the Windows 7 touch screen technology and felt that Palm’s webOS was better.
Does this mean eventually there will only be one or two players on the field? Nope. The market is too big and there are still a number of heavy-weight companies with product in the pipeline including Dell with its 7- and 10-inch iPad-look-alikes named “Streak.”
Perhaps even Microsoft is still in the game. According to Frank Shaw, a corporate vice president, quoted in a Business Week aritcle, “[the courier’s] technologies will be evaluated for use in future Microsoft offerings.”
What is the eventual impact for authors and publishers? Virtually every book—self-published or not—will be available to download to virtually every reader from dozens of sources. This broadens and levels the playing field for authors and independent publishers who today have to battle the many gatekeepers in the distribution chain.
Just a write thought.
Apr
25
Heady Times in E-Book Publishing
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As I read the April 19th edition of Publishers Weekly, which has a number of articles touching on e-books, I’m reminded of the 1970s when Gottschalk’s, a Fresno-based department store chain, was offering free lessons to housewives on how to use a new-fangled device called a microwave. I’m also reminded of when Beta was battling VHS for dominance in our living rooms. And of the mid-1400s when Guttenberg put his big toe into the river that today we call the “information highway.”
The e-reader or mobile device—it’ll do a lot more than allow you to read text—is analogous to the microwave. We still don’t understand quite what it is or what it will do for us but we are anxious to learn.
And today’s technology battle is among competing e-book formats (Amazon’s Kindle, Apple’s iPad, Adobe’s Digital Editions, and the soon-to-be-released Blio, just to name a few frontrunners), each vying to be the leading, if not the exclusive format.
Finally, the Guttenbergs of the day are giving us many new ways to receive information beyond ink on paper, often richly interactive ways Guttenberg could never have envisioned.
It’s fun to watch, but it’s difficult to know where to place your money.
What should an author or publisher do at this stage? Learn what you can, participate when it makes sense, but don’t fret. Content is still king and when the dust settles, the king may have a queen, a few princes or princesses, and maybe even a consort or two, but it’ll still be king.
Just a write thought.
Apr
11
Naïve Self-Publishers often Taken
Filed Under Book Marketing, Books, Promotion, Publishing | Leave a Comment
[Under the "everybody needs an editor" category, the following paragraph was left off this post. Ooops.]
There is a huge industry built upon the dreams of would-be published authors and startup publishers. Look around a little and you’ll find any number of dubious opportunities. For instance….
For $305 ForeWord magazine will write a review of your book and give you the opportunity to have it placed on their website and distributed to other online sites.
Is this worth $305?
Conventional wisdom holds that paid reviews offer little value in terms of selling books. In many instances you can have a colleague write a review and distribute it to the same sites. If your colleague has a name or title people respect, the review may be better received than one from a little-known magazine. Why pay hundreds for something of doubtful value?
Wait, it gets worse.
For $195 more ($500 total), iUniverse will send your book to ForeWord for you. What is the postage on a book today anyway?
Are there better ways to spend one’s money promoting a book?
Here’s a fun idea: The $500, Three-Day, Three-City Book Blitz.
Arrange for three presentations on your book’s subject or, if you are a novelist, on some aspect of your story, in three different cities within driving distance of each other over three days. Think beyond bookstores to Friends of the Library groups or senior centers or fraternal organizations. Be inventive.
Be sure books are available for sale and signing at each event. Alert the media in each city. Mention it in your blog—both before and after. Have pictures taken of you speaking and the crowd and post them on your site and around the Web.
Now for the $500.
Use $300 to pay for lodging and gas. Treat yourself and a companion to a gourmet dinner each night of your trip with the other $200.
Not only will you have more fun, you’ll likely sell more books.
Just a write thought.
Mar
16
Churchill on Writing Books
Filed Under Books, Fiction, Nonfiction, Writing | 1 Comment
The quote below—which I’d never heard until Bill Secrest, Jr., a QDB author and friend, sent it to me—is worth its own blog:
“Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him out to the public.”
—Winston Churchill
Hot tip: Want to make your writing tighter? Take a look at each time you have used the word “that.” Most can be deleted to your reader’s benefit.
Just a write thought.
Feb
27
Three Things I “Knew” Before the O’Reilly Tools of Change Conference
Filed Under Book Marketing, Books, E-books, Publishing | Leave a Comment
One of the reasons to attend conferences is to confirm that your current beliefs and practices are valid. If you are anything like me, you, on occasion, make business decisions and take actions based on gut feelings or past experiences—feelings and experiences that are, as Nixon’s press secretary Ron Zeigler might have put it, inoperative.
There were at least three things I “knew” before I attended the TOC conference. I was pleased to find they were in fact still “operative.”
1. It isn’t time yet to abandon all the marketing efforts that have worked for years. Book events, speaking engagements, printed reviews, and interviews on radio and TV still have a place. Support your non-social media marketing with social media marketing and vice versa.
2. An app for an iPhone or other device isn’t a replacement for a book, but can both support your book sales and be profitable on its own.
3. The author, rather than the publishing company, is the social media marketer of choice. This is true for at least three reasons: Authors are usually more passionate and knowledgeable about their subject than a publishing company’s employee; social media is about personal connections, not corporate connections; and authors offer star appeal.
One thing I was surprised to learn was pointed out by Tim O’Reilly in his conference-closing address: The top ten blogs according to Technorati.com often include large organizations that are, in reality, publishers in that they are involved primarily in news gathering and distribution. Examples are The Huffington Post, Mashable and Boing Boing.
A side note: When my friends turn up their noses at reading books on a Kindle or other mobile device (like I used to), I’ve been smugly telling them there is an e-reader in their future. Now, after seeing what’s about to hit the landing strip, I’m going to tell them it is in their near future.
Just a write thought.
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