Amazon Creates New 'X Factor' or Crowdsourcing Offer

This week Amazon added another layer to their offer, a new ‘crowdsourcing’ book submission one, which as with all things Amazon today, immediately polarised many. The lure is to attract would be authors into what some would call a digital slush pile 'X factor’ competition, where readers vote and those works that get the votes, win and potentially get selected for stardom and the recognition their authors want. Under the new service Authors will be asked to submit never before published works. Amazon will then make available a preview of the work and enable readers to review and nominate their favourite and the books with the most nominations will then be reviewed by the Amazon team for potential publication. It is unclear when and if an author can flip a non-selected submission into KDP, but we suspect that will be on offer and provide an added author bonus.

So does the following have an impact on readers, an author, an agent, a publisher and Publishing?

• Guaranteed advance & competitive royalties: You will receive a guaranteed $1,500 advance and 50% royalties on net eBook revenue.
• Focused formats: We acquire worldwide publication rights for eBook and audio formats in all languages. You retain all other rights, including print.
• 5-year renewable terms, $5,000 in royalties: If your book doesn’t earn $5,000 in royalties during your initial 5-year contract term, and any 5-year renewal term after that, you can choose to stop publishing with us.
• Easy reversions: After two years, your rights in any format or language that remains unpublished, or all rights for any book that earns less than $500 in total royalties in the preceding 12-month period, can be reverted upon request – no questions asked.
• Early downloads & reviews: One week prior to release date, everyone who nominated your book will receive a free, early copy to help build momentum and customer reviews.
• Featured Amazon marketing: Your book will be enrolled into the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, Kindle Unlimited as well as be eligible for targeted email campaigns and promotions.

What is different about this new offer to those offered in the past by some publishers and 3^rd parties? Is it any different to say Author Solutions? What does Amazon offer that others don’t?

We may need to step back and stop seeing these offers from Amazon as individual offers and start to see them as part of an overall offer which may even go further than just books.

They already have the market share of physical and digital books and in doing also have the largest known customer base and information on their buying, browsing and taste.  They have the largest digital self-publishing share with not only KDP but also Create Space and Audible. They make money on KDP and have probably done more for self-publishing than all the exploiting services that went before and can even boast some significant successes. Authors love it because it is transparent, rewards are high and they have a huge potential audience they can reach.

What this new move potentially does is move Amazon into a strong position to exclusively capture new talent and win their publishing rights, provides a feed to KDP as well as Publishing and adjusts the reward and rights benchmark both in terms of reward and importantly term time rights. The later can’t be overlooked as it is a major move away from the exclusive and some would suggest ‘in perpetuity’ aspects of the traditional model. Couple this with Amazon’s ability to make all activity transparent and remove those old Chinese royalty walls and there is a certain appeal for all.

Can others follow? We doubt that anyone today has the market vision and offer, reach, breadth and ability to leverage money on top of existing money in this way.

Blame it All On Amazon

The papers are full of anti-Amazon rhetoric which some may suggest is being whipped up into a feeding frenzy within the publishing marketplace. Amazon is being portrayed as the biggest bully ever to have stepped into the publishing arena. But is this the case or is it another attempt by the publishing majors to wrestle back some of the control they happily gave the Seattle company, or a genuine grievance? How do consumers feel about the latest public spat, do they really care and how do they actually perceive Amazon? Do authors side with the retailer who has more than any single entity extended their market, or do they side with the publishing majors and those A list authors  who may be suffering in this conflict? 

The issues facing the ebook publishing marketplace are wide ranging and often interrelated, but often these only get raised and discuss as individual issues. Some would suggest that the book supply chain is adversarial by nature and can often be seen not as a supply chain, but as a ‘blame chain’. Yesterday it was the book chains and their greed to secure additional discounts, today it is Amazon’s same battle at a time when some major publishing houses are declaring profit rises due to digital sales and growth. It’s somewhat ironic to wind to the clock back just a few years to when publishers were claiming the true costs of digital were far greater than many envisaged and they were losing out and couldn't pay authors more.

The digital market has shifted significantly and mainly thanks to Amazon and its continual exploration of the marketplace. They have given us and invested in Marketplace, Creative Space, KDP, Audible, ABE, Goodreads, Singles, Kidsspace and much more. They have raised the bar re author royalties and whilst many publishers have started to raise the digital royalties, they all too often pale into insignificance compared to those offered by Amazon and followed by their competitors. Publishers claim that they can make the difference and ‘make a book happen’, but although this may be true in the physical market the digital one is effectively owned by Amazon. Interestingly Amazon have also opened up the digital honesty box through KDP and in doing so have given authors transparency on daily sales by title and region and paid them monthly, again with total transparency.

If we step back and look at some of the digital issues some would suggest that we often have little appetite to change and more easily accept the status quo, often letting others take the risk and waiting to see if they fail or succeed. We have lurched from knee jerk to knee jerk with the likes of the ill-conceived Google book Settlement and Agency moves. Some would suggest that these were primarily aimed at bringing in Google and Apple to compete with Amazon but on their terms.

Today we have a marketplace that is still fixated with front list in a digital world of virtual shelves that provide equal space to all content, irrespective of its age. We have no, or few price points that are recognised by consumers and this just promotes discounting across titles that should not be discounted. We have continue to pour the physical into the digital container and believe the job is done and in doing so undermine the physical product and marketplace. We have generally failed to create new digital content that encourages reading and compliments the physical book as Charles Dickens and others did in the early age of mass reading and have choosen instead to stick with the 256 page model fits all?

There are only two entities that truly matter in the value chain; the author who puts in the creative content and the consumer who puts in the cash. All the others have to add value and not just cost but also have to often co-exist to maximise the efficiency across the chain.

Another Day at The Races

This weekend my wife read a friend’s self-published book on Kindle. Yes, there were a couple of typos and a couple of other mistakes one would expect a proof-reader to have picked up, but she enjoyed it and found it well constructed. Coming from a lady who selects, buys firm and then reviews and sells hundreds of titles and thousands of units every month, this is a compliment. And she suitably gave the work a review on Amazon.

When we read about the debate about self-published versus traditional published works we often hear the continued posturing over who makes the most money and also who is just destined to remain in the ‘long tail’ of books and who can make something happen just by their adoption, process and marketing clout that can go automatically into the bestseller ‘short head’ of books. It starts to beg the question, so what and are we looking at the situation and opportunity the right way? 

Today the blogs and industry continues to debate the new breed of self-publishing alternatives. The establishment viewpoint often remains the same as it ever was. It’s undeniable that money can buy a hit and that the trade also can select their winners. Some say it’s like a day at the racers and placing bets in a crowded field. Like all gambles the bets don’t always come home or deliver the odds expected of them. But there again, you wouldn’t expect to see a donkey in the Grand National, or a thoroughbred steeplechaser on the beach at Blackpool. It’s about picking the right horses for the right courses.

Too many times today we hear consultants and industry watchers who have grown up in the old world, supporting it, even when it would appear to contradict what they say about the new world. Maybe it’s more a case of saying what the client wants to hear and like many pundits on the course they keep their hands in their pockets.

Perhaps we should stop thinking and talking corporate and start thinking and talking author. The author profile is already being raised with literary festivals, writer’s conferences and even though some of the higher profile events are being corporatized, many are not. Self-publishing is just getting more authors to question whether corporate suits them best, or whether it’s the right way every time.

Much of traditional publishing is outsourced with often only the money and control remaining in-house. 

Amazon, Wattpad, Sourcebooks and many more are now starting to offer both the author services and the channel to market and publishing has to take note. 

Some publishing houses have started ‘collection boxes’ for the great unpublished. Some have bought up smaller operations who already do it. But have these forays into the unknown been token gestures, or are they genuine initiatives to harness the growing masses? Can the traditional publishers truly accommodate more, or is it inevitable that they cut to the chase and limit themselves to only backing their favourites.

Perhaps we should not be focusing on the end delivery, the published book, but on the total author relationship, development, communication and reward system. Is it good enough to pay royalties after months when others pay after weeks? Is it good enough to give someone one liners on a royalty statement and expect it not to be questioned? Is it good enough to have only one development process and approach and not offer multiple options? Is it good enough to buy and retain a wide berth of rights and only use the minimal? Are non-compete and first nation contract clauses the way to go? 

There are many more questions and some are applicable to some and not to others, but the questions are increasingly more about the needs of the author and consumer and less about the maintenance of the corporate machine.    

Digital Warming and Self-Publishing

Today there is much debate over the value and size of the self-publishing channel. Yesterday this channel was restricted by the physical supply chain, which effectively remains owned by the traditional publishing channel. This is no longer the case with the digital channel and works are only restricted by all the other works that they compete with on their virtual shelf and the money spent in promoting and marketing a title.

Self-publishing was once seen by the market as vanity publishing and being the books that publishers didn’t want and therefore unworthy of the attention of consumers. The digital market has changed that and now self-publishing is growing in respectability. There are still poorly written and edited books, but some would suggest that also applies albeit to a lot lower extent to the traditional channel. Both now sit side by side on the same virtual shelf.

Platforms such as Kindle Digital Publishing (KDP) have made it possible for anyone to publish at relatively little cost and receive a large proportion of any revenues generated. Some will argue that there still are costs which are largely forgotten by the author. Others will claim that these tasks can be outsourced at a very low rate to professionals who don’t carry the corporate baggage. Some would suggest that publishers have the ability to generate more sales which even at a lower royalty will generate more money for the author. Others that self-publishing is more transparent, pays quicker and puts the author in charge of the price.

The self-publishing channel is now not restricted to new works, but is increasingly available to those published authors who have been able to revert their works when the publisher didn’t want them anymore, or digitally publish works that never had the digital rights licenced in the first place. The author are now able to republish these themselves digitally via the likes of KDP and others.

We now have a virtual shelf brimming over with old and new, self and published works and the challenge for all is now coined as ‘discoverability’. Marketing spend can still by the bestseller, but those without that backing now have to increasingly compete head to head with the self-published.

In his Report on self-publishing Hugh Howey draws his conclusion that the self-publishing channel is far greater than many think and he makes some claims which others dispute. The reality is that no one really knows the answer and the data today is incomplete and the analysis often more subjective than factual. Amazon, do not disclose and make the detail public and as a result there are many who make assumptions based on their opinion and bad data.

Counting the volume of total works published becomes a futile exercise as many self-publishing ones don’t have ISBNs, let alone bother to register them. So how many ‘new’ titles were published last year becomes an guessing exercise for some and largely irrelevant to many. The slice of market share achieved by some is as only as good as the data collated and what is often outside of that is ignored. Even the definition of a work and the number of renditions starts to be questionable.

Like global warming it would be somewhat naïve to not accept digital warming is happening and one aspect of this is that self-publishing is not only growing but that some authors are making a return off this route. Self-publishing will not cannibalise the traditional channel and as we have said, it can’t compete with others marketing and promotional spend, but it can be a viable first step to many, provide a longevity of a work for others and if dismissed by the traditional players may well come home to haunt some.

2012 Digital Perspectives: The Author

It is easy to predict that 2012 will see us celebrating the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, see the US presidential elections and enjoy the London Olympics, but it is not so easy to predict the winners and the losers of each and every Olympic event. When it comes to complex issues such as; the stability of the Euro, Syria, Russia, North Korean we often recognise that they are influenced by many forces that are even more difficult to predict.

In digital publishing we can obviously see trends and understand the direction in which issues are heading, but identifying individual milestones, their relevance and timelines is often impossible. The other issue is that we all may look at the same issue, but see it from a different perspective. That doesn’t mean that we are right or wrong, we just see it differently. It’s like looking into the same house through what are often different windows – it’s the same house but we all see different rooms and perspectives.

We have written a series of short articles titled, ‘2012 Digital Perspectives?’ which we shall publish this week. These will look at what we believe are the short term issues, challenges, potential game changers and outcomes across the digital publishing value chain. Today we look at the creators – The Author.

2011 often demonstrated that Authors were starting to ‘do digital for themselves’.

Many authors continue to be tied to relatively new digitally inclusive contracts, but many of those who had retained their digital rights or reverted their back list rights, started to realise that it is easy to do it themselves and potentially earn more as a result. Some choose Amazon, Pubit or Smashwords whilst others took a more conventional route with the likes of Open Road. Some separated their back and front list and realised that they do not need the ‘digital serfdom’ of perpetual licences with fixed royalties and where the vast majority of earnings go elsewhere. The challenge authors and their agents now face, is how to avoid those digital handcuffs. It like taking on a business lease, you want break clauses, rent reviews and a fixed term deal and not life plus 70 years in a marketplace that is still in its infancy and unpredictable.

We envisage that more published authors will ensure old physical rights are reverted and that their digital rights are treated separately to the physical ones. Many may still choose to be tied to their print publisher and many will treat their digital rights separately, but all will be doing so with increasing digital market awareness.

We believe that at least one trade publisher will wake up and see the benefit of offering a significantly better digital royalty deal on back list and potential digital orphans in line with the likes of Open Road. We envisage that this will be tied to a fresh approach to proactively promote back lists and not just place them on virtual shelves. As publishers become more aware of the need to be seen as a trusted business partner, we seen ‘Author care’ becoming the ‘flavour of the month’ and offering greater transparency of information to authors and maybe even speedier digital royalty payments.

Promotion and marketing authors within a growing social direct marketing network will remain a significant challenge. This isn’t just about engaging with current fans but finding new ones and growing the base. It is also about publishing collaborations to create genre groupings which cross publishing houses and channels.

The key driver for change is digital awareness and we see increased media coverage on digital author options being a major catalyst.

We are not only in a digital age but also and importantly we are now entering a golden age for writing. Accommodating this creative explosion of new as well as old material is the real challenge. Managing authors expectations and ensuring that they are fairly rewarded and recognised is now the goal for all.

The Suppression of Writing

More and more authors are now considering digital publishing opportunities and are taking control of their own works. New ventures such as Unbound, are inviting them to submit their unpublished work to into a social media lottery. Barnes and Noble Pubit, Wattpad, Lulu, and Kindle publishing, are among others all offering new ways to get published. We now even have agents embroiled in heated debate, as some of their numbers are starting to wear two hats and become publishers. We also see the publisher now creating new digital ways to socially capture and sift through the mountain of submissions. Although these routes may not offer the financial rewards of the more traditional one for authors, digital is now importantly enabling everyone to be published. The democratisation of writing and storytelling is arriving.

The old world has a series of gatekeepers which conveniently stand between the hoards of aspiring writers and the infamous ‘slushpile’ and the author goal of being published. However these roadblocks are now being increasingly questioned, tested and removed, but even in this new digitally evolving world, the old world of suppression, narrow selection and often closed ‘who you know’ circles still exists and are still supported by some in the establishment as the right way to do business.

We recently attended a new literary festival and were intrigued to listen to a talk from a leading literary agent and UK publishing personality. The subject was on how to get published, but the reality was that it should have been titled ‘why you are not going to get published’.

We heard many anecdotal stories about why agents matter, the difficult task they, or their interns face, in sifting through mountains of submissions. The fact that less than 1% of their submissions they receive actually even get to the consideration phase of selection. This poor agent already has a backlog from an obvious holiday in August and basically is in shutdown with Frankfurt for ‘two months’ and then no doubt Christmas will have its impact. It was hardly surprising that they had only taken on one new author and the last few years and were clearly focused in working their existing lucrative stable. Apparently, even agents get upset when they get knocked back from publishers at the next gatekeeper post!

It appears we have built a risk adverse approach to publishing.

There are, and always will be, good and bad agents and those which are more appropriate for an author than others. However, this image of ‘X Factor auditions’ would be fine if they at least promoted writing and worked in this digital, switched on and networked community, but the reality they don’t promote but suppress writing and are still clearly based on the physical book world, lengthy lead times to market and the 256 page economic model.

‘Don’t publish digitally and expect an agent or publisher to be interested second hand,’ was delivered, not so much as advise, but as a veiled threat. ‘Every clause in a contract should be reviewed by the agent,’ was then countered by the claim that boilerplate contracts are the way forward and many clauses can now be waved through. ‘Digital royalties should be greater than the 15%,’ but the figure suggested was still somewhat shy of what many believe is appropriate.

The point is that, if we were aspiring writers then the contradictions and ‘holier than thou’ plaudits on offer would have been more of a switch off than an encouragement to write.

Agents have many valuable contributions they can make a real contribution to the creation of more works and support new talent, but this talk demonstrated what some would suggest is how out of touch some are to the world today.

Related recent articles
Agents In A Digital World June 13th 2011

Can Authors Now Do It Digitally Themselves?

Is this is the long-awaited dawn of creative writing, where digital not only redefines the book, how it is created, developed, promoted, distributed and rewarded, but also stimulates writing and creativity itself? We have seen the generation shift from watching film and listening to music to making them, so are we going to see an equally significant shift in writing? Some will say it has happened and everyone now can express themselves and communicate with others without paper and the need of a publisher. Others will say that there is still the need to be ‘published’. Relationships are already starting to change and the disintermediation that many predicted is now starting to take some interesting twists and turns.

Whatever happens there will always be two key entities – the authors who create and the readers who consume and pays. The gap between them is now narrowing.

Music, film, TV, newsprint have all see intermediaries hang on, but in all the landscape has changed around them and the reality is that they have had to adapt to the fact that their world’s no longer revolve around them. In the late sixties, George Martin claimed that the album was the menu and the concert was the meal. How little he probably realised that he was predicting the music industry 50 years into the future. There will always be those artists who need a support system and are happy to just be artists, but there is now a growing band of artists who want to control their own brand and make their own decisions. Evolution is happening.

Digital technology and network communications start to create a level playing field and one which many authors can do more, control more, earn more and importantly get closer to their readers. It may not be for all but it will be for an increasing number of authors of all levels.

In the world of print, few authors could afford the money, time and effort to support the publishing process. Publishers were manufacturers offering editing, cover design, marketing support, accounting and reward in the form of royalties. However, they often outsourced much of the back end distribution to others, merely retaining the ‘creative’, sales and marketing control and also the rights management.

Physical books still dominate and authors still find they needed the publisher’s clout and resellers and fulfilment agent’s infrastructure in this channel. Self publishing has to date been in the hands of aspiring authors and has been looked down on by many as the great unwanted slush pile. However, digital has the potential to turn publishing on its head. The charts will still matter to those whose model demands high volume but will matter less to those who seek different goals and have a different model. Tomorrow’s self publishing could become tomorrow’s reading list.

We have seen authors such J.A. Konrath and Seth Godin and estates such as Ian Fleming and even agents of lucrative back lists start to take control of their rights, self publish or control their own publishing and sign up with better economic models that offer them more reward. Why shouldn’t an author start to collect 70% of the sale price, compared with the current model’s offer of figures often less than 80% of that? Once an author takes control of their back list, what stops them doing it to their front list? The publisher’s fixation on new titles may well become their Achilles’ heel.

We have seen creative authors such as Kate Pullinger and Michael c Milligan, who change how and what they create and develop their novels and even use a collaborative creation approach. If publisher’s eat took control of such creative processes would we face new and complex questions as to exactly what rights belong to whom?

Amazon's Digital Text Platform and Barnes & Noble’s PubIt are examples of platforms that now let authors sell their works through major digital bookstores. The author can receive anywhere between 50 and 70% of the sale price.

Digital books are still only a small fraction of the market but by positioning themselves now authors may find a freedom that will not be available under a tethered contract in which the publisher demands both physical and digital rights.

Neil De Young, executive director of Hachette Book Group's digital division is quoted in the LA Times, Book publishers see their role as gatekeepers shrink,‘We continue to be the venture capitalist for authors, helping them to distribute their works as widely as possible. Now we do that digitally as well as physically.’ Some businesses need venture capital, some don’t and many want to only use it for a specific period and not for life. Authors are no different and publishers may wish to reappraise how they see their relationships if they want their books not to be viewed as commodities and themselves as mere gamblers.

Social networking has only just started to influence the book world but if it were to replace what some see as the manufactured bestsellers that often exists today and create social demand and connection with titles this could remove yet another layer of support provided today.

The Internet is opening up new ways for writers to connect with readers and potentially redefine the relationships that exist today. The big question is who will add the value to stay as an intermediary, or will the authors simply bypass them all and connect direct with their readers?

Will Authors Make the Digital Translation?

So you are an established author and have a healthy following, but feel lost in the midlist with reducing advances and hard battles to get published. You feel that you have something to say and more money to make. Can the new digital era offer you a way forward, or will you simply get lost in translation?

J.A. Konrath’s blog claims a way forward and also shows that authors can make it by themselves with some digital application. He's not a new author and has built an established following as a writer of mystery, horror and sci-fi. He has a backlist and has taken the wise move of owning his digital rights. His digital sales aren’t huge but respectable and growing.

Amazon is about to make him richer as they will allow him to soon earn 70% royalty. He is pumped up as he is already making reasonable Amazon, but the agency model certainly works in his favour. He is now getting his ebooks up on other sites and expects much more and is full of the enthusiasm that only doing yourself can generate. He firmly believes he can sell more ebooks at lower prices than a publisher and earn more to boot. He prices his ebooks $1.99 and $2.99 and has even moved one up to $4.99. Under the 70/30 split things suddenly get a whole lot better!

He thinks the $2.99 could become the new bargain rate for authors such as himself and one that which will look very attractive against the ‘safe’ publisher pricing. We would recommend all authors to read Joe’s blog and maybe ewalk alone.

The Three ‘Rs’: Authoring in the Digital Age, No. 2 wRiting.

This is the second part of the presentation given to the Swanwick Writers Summer School, 11th August,2009. It is based on The Three ‘Rs’: Authoring in the Digital Age.

Writing is the most controversial perspective and questions the work itself.

For the last couple of hundred years Books have been ‘straight jacketed’ between two pieces of card. The reason was simple and down to economics. The most economic format was what we see all around us today, 250 to 300 pages or around 75,000 words.But a digital age doesn’t have the same economics or constraints. The digital age has the potential to explode the spine and free writing from its current economic straightjacket.

Will it happen tomorrow? Will all books change?

It is already happening albeit slowly.

What do these authors have in common?

First we have the Keitai novel which is huge in Japan. This is a new bread of authors who are write books for your keitia, or mobile phone. These are written in instalments and in 5 years have jumped from zero to a $82 million and growing business.

Yoshi who wrote the very successful keitai novel ‘ Deep Love’ was turned into a book, which sold 2.7 million copies.

Mieko Kawakami, who is pictured, is a blogger who has been heralded as Japan’s biggest literary star. Her blog enjoys a staggering 200,000 readers every day and her third book won the prestigious Akutagawa literary award.

Next is Kate Pullinger, an established writer who I interviewed, who is now fully engaged in creating multi media stories that often evolve in instalments. It can be a shock to first see her work and you may not like it, but she recognises that stories are not exclusive to text, sound or visual and can be multi media.

Next author Stephen King, who in 1999 published his book ‘Riding the Bullet’. He did so over the internet and produced and sold one chapter at a time as he wrote it. Many derided the experiment and said it was a failure but the reality was he sold hundreds of thousands of chapters, broke new ground. Today he continues to experiment with digital and is to write an exclusive Kindle novel.

Next is our good friend Duke Redbird who is an Ojibwee Shaman and who wrote a poem ‘I am Canadian’ which he read to the Queen in 1977 to celebrate her jubilee. Scholastic have now published a book with just that one poem in it which is now going into all Canadian schools. If one poem can be a book it can easily be a rendered into many digital formats.

Poetry is no longer straight jacketed into economic collections and each poem can digital stand in its own.

Next is Kurt Vonnegut who died in 2007. His estate has just announced that 14 of his unpublished short stories are to be published as individual ebooks and then secondly as a printed collection.

Apparently Mr. Vonnegut is claimed to have told an interviewer in 1995 that he would “welcome” being called a Luddite. I think his estate has clearly taken a different stance.

Finally, let’s remember Charles Dickens. I borrow the following extract from his Wikipedia entry.

Much of his work first appeared in periodicals and magazines in serialised form, a favoured way of publishing fiction at the time. Dickens, unlike others who would complete entire novels before serial publication commenced, often wrote his in parts, in the order in which they were meant to appear. The practice lent his stories a particular rhythm, punctuated by one cliffhanger after another to keep the public eager for the next instalment

But it not just about how or what you write but also how you publish and promote it.

Today you need to be familiar with online content sites such as Scribd and Wattpad. These are the new generation of self publishing; they are not based on print on demand, but are online and attract huge audiences. Publishers, are also now experimenting with sites to let aspiring authors post their work on, in a hope to get noticed. I recognise that to many, this may be today’s slush pile, but we must also acknowledge that to others, it may be tomorrow’s reading platform.

Keep your minds open and decide on the basis of knowledge not ignorance. Digital writing is and will be different, will it replace tradition requests for 75,000 words and it it may suit you and your readers...

The Three ‘Rs’: Authoring in the Digital Age: No. 1 Relationships

This is the first part of the presentation given to the Swanwick Writers Summer School, 11th August,2009. It is based on The Three ‘Rs’: Authoring in the Digital Age.

…The Number 1 ‘R’ is about Relationships

What is the most import relationship you have today?

The agent, the editor, the production department, the marketing team, the PR department, the sales force, the warehouse, the wholesaler, the book chain, the independent, the bookclub, the supermarket, Amazon, Google, Apple, the library, the school, the teacher, the student the consumer.

I would suggest that the most important relationship yesterday was that or those closest to you, the agent, the editor and the development process. Readers always are important, but if the amount of effort expended related to the importance, the answer was clear.

Many of the relationships I listed were outsourced to others and mainly the publisher. It wasn’t the time that dictated this, but often it was the effort and inability to do it effectively.

What is the most important one to you tomorrow?

I would suggest that the digital world potentially turns much yesterday’s relationships on their head. Agents, editors and publishers will still be important but now you can connect with your readers in ways that were never possible yeaterday.

If we look at your Readers.

What do you know about them?

How do you get closer to them?

You may want to write and nothing more.Shun your readers and delegate the task to someone else, or neglect it altogether.

But remember what Ray Hammond said about it being your business. Some of the most successful media creators today have joined those digital dots that connect them to their audience. They may be musicians, writers, artists, cartoonists, TV media personalities, whatever. They have learnt how to use today’s digital tools; websites, blogs, twitter, podcasts, social network sites etc. They have learnt which works for them and they are making it happen.

How do you now connect to those readers you don’t know?

Last night Ben Crystal spoke about Shakespearian actors engaging with their audience in a theatre with the lights on. Digital now offers you the same opportunity, the same thrill, emotion and reward. Importantly the opportunity to switch on the lights and connect to your audience…

Carpe Diem

It’s the aspiration of the vast majority of the population to write a book. So has digitisation made it easier or even harder to get published today and what are the dependencies, relationships and rewards in this dynamically changing environment?

The publishing trade is shifting from one where publishers looked to cultivate long-term relationships with authors and develop their stable, to one where the greater emphasis is now to sell books. Some would suggest that it’s not a bad thing to focus on moving books rather than merely printing them. However, does that change the relationship and with it the contract between creator and producer?

Some see digitisation as just a change in output format whilst others recognise it challenges the traditional relationships. In a world where print on demand can effectively remove the term ‘out of print’ , we now have to understand rights reversals, term contracts, the line between promotional material and content itself and much more.

The changing marketplace is being driven by global economics, network connectivity and technology. Territorial boundaries that existed in the physical world are now questioned in the virtual world. Roles that controlled the physical world are being challenged by networks and what once was a unique, or highly skilled operation is becoming commodity available to all. Define an; agent, publisher, distributor, wholesaler, reseller, library and digital aggregator, then ask what the following are; Amazon, Google, Ingram, Barnes and Noble, Apple, Sony, FPD, Lulu, Scribd? Are we seeing the divergence of the market into more highly focused vertical segments or richer flatter horizontal ones? Which is better, volume through a supermarket, book club and internet sales or the traditional trade channel? Is publishing becoming more a ‘department store’, or niche and boutique? Are ‘special sales’ becoming a little less ‘special’ and what is the impact of all the above on the author?

So where does the aspiring author pitch their manuscript? Do they go the traditional route and hunt the agent? Do they put their manuscript up on the many social slush piles and hope to get spotted? Do they self publish and pay to achieve their ambitions? Digitisation certainly helps in both the availability of options and the lowering of the economics, but is it enough? The fact is that the number of titles ‘published’ by whatever means and in whatever format is going to continue to grow. The number of ‘best sellers’ are going to reduce and the traditional bookshelves will get smaller. The digital world enables consumers to be more discerning, eclectic and virtual and it also increases the potential for more consumers to read what they would never find today.

The biggest challenge is not digitisation, but its impact. We may focus on the consumer, the latest devices, even the price of books, but unless we pay equal attention to the authors of yesterday, today and tomorrow, we may find as with other media sectors, it is they that hold the keys to many digital doors. What is the appropriate royalty expectation on digital sales? In a world where pricing is ill-defined, should royalties be based on list price or net sales? When digital removes ‘out of print’ should contracts be term based? Musicians, sportsmen, entertainers have all started to take control; is this now possible in the world of the book?

The one thing that is certain about tomorrow is that the aspiration to write will not go away and irrespective of how it is achieved, neither will the reward sought for doing it.

Authors Aren't Just For Christmas

We all are very cautious about generalising and are very aware of the huge variations in the services offered by agents and their individual performance. In some cases the agent is little more than an estate agent, a football agent or a dating agency, merely connecting parties and agreeing terms, in others they are akin to mangers and take care of the author’s life. Somewhere between these two extremes lies the vast majority.

Today the roles and relationships are changing. We now have the ability to connect authors with the market in ways that were not possible only a few years ago. The world is no longer publisher centric it is consumer centric and this dramatically challenges much of how we worked yesterday.

Recently we have even seen an agent trying to position themselves as ‘publisher’ and take on rights reversals on a print on demand basis. Today we read in Publishers Weekly that Simon and Schuster are setting up a speaker bureau. This joins the ranks of other major US trade houses and is focused on finding its authors speaking engagements. Also today’s Bookseller tells the same story albeit from a different angle, with PFD agency stating that they want to develop their brief to cover public speaking, presenters, exhibitions and manage their client’s careers. It will be interesting to see where the role of the agent goes tomorrow.

So can we now envisage a minor scramble for the author, with offers of marketing, publicity, brand building, blogs and websites, tours, exhibitions and slots on the speaker circuits and television? We can imagine everyone scurrying around the author all asking, ‘Can I carry your books for you?’

The question is who is best equipped and who has the longer term interest in the development of the author, their brand and development of their fan base? Do either agents or publishers, as we see them today, have the skills and long term commitment? Do others enter the market to fill any void and in doing so create a new social community, or do authors have to do it all themselves?

The Times they are a Changin

The media and technology industries are all currently struggling through accelerating and constant change. Those who once controlled the respective channel may no longer be guaranteed the same position of status in the new world. This is most relevant in the middle of the chain where today power is often centred.
Everywhere the middle man has to find new ways to innovate, add and deliver value.
Creative power is no stronger than in the music world where artists want more control of how their music is heard, distributed and how they interact with their fans and we have witnessed the recent Hollywood writers strike and the major contract revolts from musicians.

‘Will authors be driven to stop writing?’ was the headline the Times asked this week on the changing fortunes of authors and whether there were new payment models to secure their author earnings. Are authors different to other creative artists? Are they an endangered species? Do they need special funding and government support?
Creativity will always be there and money, or the lack of it, will never stop it. The people may change, the rewards may change but the creative juices will still flow. So the change we are debating is not authoring but the change of the model that currently supports it.

The polarization of talent is likely to increase, with top earners demanding and getting rewards and then a huge gulf to those who do not have the same financial clout. In music many now have to make their monies through performing, merchandising and where the music may have to be subsidized by other means. What we are seeing is a huge battleground in the mid and backlist areas in all media sectors. Will the rewards remain the same – highly unlikely? Will some be driven back to a dependence on other income – highly probable? Is this a good or bad thing – its change?

The important thing to remember is that it’s not just the creators that face these issues and we would be far more concerned if we were publishers, agents, retailers or intermediaries between the author and the reader. The days of publishers putting any price on the jacket, as long as it covered costs and maintained margin, are coming to an end and digitization is likely to bring in sharper price points just as it did in other media. We have all witnessed new marketing and channel innovation and the need to create and grow sales.

Will consumers demand more for free and greater options to see what they are buying before they purchase – almost certainly? Will best sellers be born out of marketing budgets and ‘X Factor’ awards – yes?

Another change that is happening is the blurring and also the divergence of markets. Consumers demand choice, new, old, used and bargain, but the digital environment removes the barriers that have long separated these false divisions. Again music has broken free of its fixation on the top ten to recognise hundreds of top tens. The download chart no longer respects release dates. What this could mean is that there will be less new titles and greater access and consumption of older ones.

Some believe that the threat of more for free is a bad thing. That the music industry was undermined by illegal downloads and the same could happen to authors. We would argue that the music industry got in a mess as it didn’t understand the changes and tried to fight them by suppressing them and remaining in their old world. Illegal downloads were merely a battleground in what was a far larger war. The lesson we should all learn is how to adopt and adapt to change and that the author and reader are the two constants throughout all this change.

Write to Earn

We must always remember that there are only two players that count, the author who creates the work and the reader who pays for it. All the rest are intermediaries who should add value and invariably also cost. If value is not seen then just like in other sectors no one’s position is safe, agents, publishers, printers, distributors, retailers etc.

Yesterday, The Bookseller reported under its title ‘Radical Change Required’ about last week’s author payment model discussion at the British Library’s Intellectual Property round table debate, "Authors and Publishers in the Digital Age". The debate questioned how authors would secure a living within the emerging digital market.
It is fair to say that all media creators face similar challenges. In some cases the form is changing, in others it’s the audience,or the channel and all too often it’s the existing business model, but in publishing many would argue,that its the above.
Of course it’s a threat if you look at the glass as half empty, but we would argue that it’s a far greater opportunity for all.

The real challenge is separating the myriad of different works that we are guilty of seeing collectively as books. The reality is that they have been merely joined together by a single format – the book, which has merely provided a straightjacket between two pieces of card.

Children’s book writers will have different opportunities to poets, to novelists, to text book authors, to travel writers, to reference contributors, to biographers etc. This means that they all could have potential different business models and rewards. The problem is that we all too often generalise. We see publishing as one industry and not as different ones, once joined by merely a common format – the book. The problem in generalising is that you loose the specifics and often dilute the argument to the lowest common denominator.

Authors are the creative heart of publishing, but again we all ten to generalise here too. The average author publishes less that two books and there is a vast gulf between the successful ones who publish many titles and earn a living doing so and those that are less successful, maybe have one title published and for whom it is a secondary means of living. How do you create a standard way of sustaining creativity across the varies different forms and levels of need? The reality is that market forces will always prevail, but here the trick is to at least give the creators a fair return on digital sales and in doing so, encourage a ‘win win’ publishing environment for all.

Double Agents?

This last couple of weeks has shown us how easy it is to forget or pay token gestures to authors. Nobody would be as bold as to stand and say a bad word about them in public but often actions speak louder than words.

We wrote last week about the ‘landgrab’ by a literary agency to revert rights and secure them in ‘safe keeping’ in the long tail print on demand channel. No marketing fees or promotion incurred here, just a one off conversion cost and every sale results in an additional bonus. Will authors and their estates get 90% of any revenues earned, or will they end up with a lot smaller percentage and the usual babble about investment and risk and the cost of redesigning the jacket! Will they get a second publication opportunity - highly unlikely - as to many, this is in fact their last publishing opportunity! They may well have done it themselves and in doing so also colected all the revenues raised. Mind you the agent may still have wanted their cut!

The question of who offers authors what advice, is interesting. Some may agrue that an agent who offers backlist print on demand under their label, a clear conflict of interest. They may say that it is may be praying on the vulnerability of some in this new uncertain world and obviously betraying their position of trust. You would not expect your account or tax advisor to recommend you to invest in their own company or schemes, so why accept this ‘bad’ advice.

We must always remember that there are only two players that count, the author who creates the work and the reader who pays for it. All the rest are intermediaries who should add value and invariably also cost. If value is not seen then just like in other sectors no one’s position is safe, agents, publishers, printers, distributors, retailers etc.

Authors deserve guidance and good advice and they afer all are the ones that create the content that is publibishing.

Can you hear me, Mother?

We argued in “Brave New World” that the audio book would lead the digital revolution. The consumer experience was the same, MP3 technology was available and being used by all and the experience was complimentary and not substitution to reading. There are real obstacles; Audible’s proprietary DRM, their book club commercial model, their exclusive iTunes relationship, the lack of effective standardized DRM, etc. It is also clear, that market demand can’t be created in a vacuum and today there is certainly a vacuum of digital audio content.

So it was disheartening to hear news that, at the Association of Authors’ Agents recent AGM, there was disquiet raised at the perceived low levels of royalties being offered by publishers for digital downloads of audiobooks. The question should not be one of increasing individual percentages, but one of how we all maximize the opportunity and grow the pot for all. The adversarial stance on percentage points does nothing to getting more titles into the market, changing the stranglehold of some on the channel or sorting out the question of DRM.

Why does everyone want more out of the digital pie before it has even been established? The publisher is often seen as wanting to sell and distribute direct, cut others out and enjoy greater margin. The retailers wants to do it, but don’t have the infrastructure or Internet visibility to deliver. The author wants a greater slice before the pie is even mixed, let alone baked.

Why can’t everyone work together to establish the market based on today’s model and channels?

After all, it is better to have the same share of a bigger pie than a bigger share of a smaller one. Volume is the key and in a market segment where prices are perceived as high, volume must be the way forward.