Controversy Rages: Amazon to Lend Books

E-books, Publishing No Responses »
Nov 172011

Click on the image above to learn more about Amazon's new lending program.

 

 

 

There’s been quite a ruckus in the book publishing world lately. Amazon.com has recently announced its long-anticipated foray into lending e-books.

Kindle owners who are also Amazon Prime members, in addition to getting free two-day shipping on their orders and “unlimited instant streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows,” can also borrow books to read without an additional payment (Amazon Prime membership costs $79 per year). There doesn’t appear to be any limit on how long a book can be borrowed but only one book can be borrowed at a time.

Amazon says its lending library offers over 5,000 titles including 100 New York Times bestsellers. This is a far cry from the millions of print titles available on Amazon or the hundreds of thousands of e-books available as Kindle editions, but it is a toe in the water and publishers, authors, and literary agents are nervous.

How’s it work?

Amazon Prime members who are also Kindle owners are now presented with a “Borrow for Free” button next to the “Buy” button on selected books. When the member chooses to borrow a title, Amazon credits the publisher’s account with the same dollar amount as if the e-book was sold rather than loaned. At this point, the Amazon Prime member gets to read the book as a part of his or her yearly fee and the publisher effectively gets a full-priced sale.

So, why the controversy?

This sounds fair to me. I’d sign The Write Thought titles up. So why the hubbub?

I think the concern from the publishers—most publishers with titles among those available for loan weren’t notified that their titles would be included in this program—is that they haven’t agreed to Amazon “lending” titles even if Amazon pays as if they sold it.

Also, apparently Amazon plans to report revenue from this program to publishers as a lump sum leaving the publishers to allocate this revenue their authors. Amazon is said to be basing this lump sum by looking at the 12-month sales history of titles included in the program. A rather nebulous reporting method at best.

I think the Authors Guild and the Association of Authors’ Representatives (literary agents), two groups that have spoken out about this, are concerned since most contracts between authors and publishers have a set royalty paid to the author based on revenue from each e-books sale, say 25% of net revenue and a different amount on revenue generated from rights sales, say 50% of net.

The question being, which is this? Revenue from the sale of a book or revenue from a subsidiary right? And, of course, how is a publisher to properly allocate each of its author’s revenue share if Amazon doesn’t supply a complete breakdown by title?

Another concern, of course, is if this is simply Amazon’s first salvo into the world of lending books; will Amazon attempt to morph the program into something else. For instance, can Amazon purchase one copy of an e-book and “lend” or “rent” it as many times as it likes? Pay the publisher once and rent or loan it many times. Libraries do this now and many years ago so did bookstores.

The world is still hazy when it comes to e-books.

Just a write thought.

 

Posted by Stephen Blake Mettee at 8:16 pm Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,

Google eBooks: Today, History Is Made

Books, E-books, Publishing, Writing No Responses »
Dec 062010

You’ll be able to tell your children’s children that you remember the day Google launched Google eBooks and changed the landscape of publishing.

Well, there may be a little hyperbole in that sentence, but today Google put more than 3 million e-books in reach of anyone in the U.S. Soon, I’m sure, availability within the rest of the world will follow.

Besides Google’s huge reach, Google e-books will be popular because:

  • Nearly every e-reader (not Kindle—yet), iPad-like tablet, and smart phone will work with Google e-Books. As will laptops and PCs
  • Books are stored online, so there is no limit, storage-wise, to the number you can have in your library.
  • Current best-sellers are available.
  • So are hundreds of thousands of other books including the classics.
  • Self-published books will be available.
  • Many out-of-copyright titles are free.
  • Since the book normally remains in the cloud, when you switch devices, say from your laptop to your iPhone, you can just continue reading at the place you left off.
  • You can download an e-pub or PDF version to read offline.
  • You can buy books directly from Google or from one of a number of independent booksellers.

Here’s a video of how it works.

Two reasons e-books are important to authors and publishers:

One of the biggest challenges every publisher has is distribution. Soon an author’s work can easily be made available from Jersey to Jakarta.

Instant gratification will drive sales. Say you are on the beach in Bali and the fellow on the blanket next to you tells you of a terrific thriller he’s reading. Within minutes, if that long, you can be reading your own copy.

There are a lot of good things about the digital delivery of books, but some rough spots remain to be worked out. Not the least of which has to do with how the sale price of an e-book will be split between the retailer (Google in this case), the publisher, and the author. This will, of course, be worked out to the satisfaction of all since, like water, economics finds its own level.

Just a write thought.

Posted by Stephen Blake Mettee at 4:41 pm Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Literary Agency as Book Publisher?

Books, E-books, Publishing No Responses »
Jul 272010

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.

Posted by Stephen Blake Mettee at 11:03 am Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,

Fair Use Abuse?

Fiction, Free Speech, Nonfiction, Writing No Responses »
Oct 052009

Here’s a twist. A copyright holder ends up as the one paying in a Fair Use dispute.

With the Fair Use doctrine—a part of the U.S. copyright law—an author is allowed to quote another’s copyrighted material for criticism, commenting, teaching, and other narrow uses. The actual limit on how much can be quoted isn’t defined by the law.

Disagreements are usually settled out of court, but, when a dispute goes to trial, the court generally looks at four things: the purpose of the use, the nature of the copyrighted material, the portion of the work used, and the effect of the use upon the market for the copyrighted material.

In this case, the Estate of James Joyce objected to Stanford University professor Carol Schloss’ use of copyrighted material in a book she was writing. Schloss claimed the material she wished to use fell under the doctrine of Fair Use but took the material out of her book when, she claimed, she was threatened with a copyright infringement lawsuit.

Subsequently she wished to use some of the material in a website and she enlisted the Stanford Fair Use Project to go on the offensive to establish her right to use the Joyce material.

In the end the Estate agreed to pay her $240,000 to settle the case.

This is a reversal of what normally happens when copyright holders attempt to protect their copyrights, and is being hailed by some as better establishing the rights of authors to use copyrighted material in critical works without fear of being sued. In many cases simply the threat of a lawsuit is enough to stop an author from using copyrighted material in any manner, including what may actually constitute fair use.

How does this apply to us?

All of this is interesting, but may lack practical application to the average writer. If you wish to use a large portion of another’s copyrighted material it is still best to ask permission.

To read more on this check out the Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society blog or this Publishers Weekly article.

For a good, simple explanation of United States copyright laws see the chapter on copyright by John Zelezny in The Portable Writer’s Conference. (Full disclosure: QDB is the publisher and I’m the editor of the Portable Writer’s Conference.)

Posted by Stephen Blake Mettee at 10:25 am Tagged with: , , , , ,

If You Are Interested in the State of E-books...

Books, Publishing No Responses »
Mar 272009

…Mike Zatzkin, a lucid observer of—and commentator on—the publishing industry, has an interesting dialoge on his March 18th blog regarding the current and future predicament of e-books. Check it out: The Idea Logical Blog.

Posted by Stephen Blake Mettee at 12:33 am Tagged with: , , , , ,
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