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.    

Joseph Esposito's Concentric Publishing Circles

Today we read what we believe is a very interesting viewpoint from our friend and US publishing consultant, Joseph J. Esposito and immediately ask and received his kind permission to share his thoughts with you. A lively discussion on ebook pricing and releases has ensued within the community ever since Sourcebooks said that they would hold back the ebook of ‘Bran Hambric’ until after the hardcover had had its sales opportunity. Joe’s view:

‘There are many things that are taken into account in setting prices, formats, venues, etc., just as consumers have a wide range of choices. This is simply to say that the environment is competitive. Over-the-top example: Someone who wants to buy Robert Darnton, offered at $20, is not likely to buy Danielle Steel, offered at $10, at least not on the basis of price alone. But if Darnton were $200, the needle begins to move for some portion of Darnton's prospective readers. At $1,000 it moves further. But there is no price at which Steel takes ALL of Darnton's readership. (Darnton, for those outside the US literary world, is a distinguished historian and now head of the Harvard library. If you don't know who Steel is . . . . ) All of this was true before there were digital books; what ebooks does is create greater options and complexity (including pirate sites).

For a publisher, a useful metaphor is to think of the market as concentric circles. At the inner circle (for a particular book) is the hard core readership that will put up with any indignity, any price or format, to get that book. My daughter was in this category for the Harry Potter novels, my son for Lord of the Rings. (For me, say, Italo Calvino, and when I was a kid, it was all Asimov all the time.) At the next circle out from the center, the consumer exercises some discretion ("I will wait for the paperback"). Move another ring out, and there is more discretion ("I'll only purchase this if it comes in the Kindle format"). Any publisher can make up their own typology to define each circle--in effect, an algorithm covering price, format, options, timeliness, alternatives, etc. And this typology gets adjusted for every book.

When someone says, that they will only purchase something if it is in a specific ebook format and costs under ten bucks, to a publisher that prospective customer is in an outer ring. The question for a publisher is how to maximize the return across ALL the rings, which means that some rings compete with the others (aka cannibalization). For Grisham the inner rings are potent; for O'Reilly books perhaps the outer rings are more important. And in five years the relative weighting of the rings (the formats, etc.) may be very different. Indeed, the weightings are changing as we speak.

The reason that legacy publishers with legacy brands pay unequal attention to legacy formats and legacy channels of distribution, is that the legacy world is still generating more money than the world of new media for certain kinds of books. Again, that is changing every day. A smart publisher has to play the game with skill; there will always be catcalls from the bleachers. Mike Shatzkin's idea of debut pricing is one way to play this game. If you are a customer out in the outer circles, you won't like this. But it is not a publisher's job to make you happy. A publisher's job is to make shareholders happy (and to abide by applicable law, including contractual commitments to authors). Part of the skill is in not hurting the people in the outer ring too much as revenue is extracted from the circles as a whole.’

The problem is that there are no silver bullets to digital book pricing and what works for one will not work for all. Perhaps the concentric circles are more like Venn diagrams in their appearance. In the end, we believe that we live in a consumer centric driven market and pricing and availability of content, in whatever form, will be ultimately driven by them.