Why the Demise of Traditional Publishing is the Best Outcome for Authors

[Gary_Robson]

This thread is interweaving two very different questions.

1. Is the demise of the agent-publisher model good for authors?
2. Is the advent of the ebook good for authors?

As to question #1, I’d say it’s a very bad thing. This is coming from someone who self-published two books, and then had books published by a trade association press, a historical society, a small publishing company, and a very large publishing company.

Most authors, whether multi-talented or not, excel in one thing: writing. When self-publishing, time is taken from writing to handle all of the things that a publishing house traditionally handles, from layout to marketing. If you’re good, a publishing house with good editors, copyeditors, and proofreaders will make you better. In a traditional publishing environment, people can judge a book by the publisher. You have less competition, but the competition you have will be better, too. It raises the bar, and if you can still reach it, you will be rewarded accordingly. In a self-published (or vanity-published) world, there is far more crap for readers to wade through before they find your book; everybody with $600 and a copy of Microsoft Word can get their deathless prose in print.

As for question #2, I think ebooks can be a good thing for authors. A lot depends on the next few years. Amazon has hurt things badly, and I’m hoping that competing ereaders will diminish their near-monopoly power. Ebook versions of traditionally-published books help everybody (except distributors and brick & mortar bookstores). The models publishers want to use (which Amazon has fought) basically eliminate print costs and retailer profits and pass the savings on to the consumer. Authors and publishers make the same amount per book as they do for printed books, and publishers still have a marketing budget. Amazon’s model drives the prices down farther, provides more money for the middleman (Amazon), and reduces revenue to the publisher (who doesn’t have money to market the book anymore) and to the author.

@Exapno_Mapcase

Authors now have to do all of the work of writing - AND - all of the work that publishers and bookstores used to do for them - AND - do it in a market that went from 50,000 books a year to 250,000 books a year. Thanks heaps.

I believe your numbers are very low. The last study I read said there are over 50,000 books per MONTH being published now.

@Justin_Bailey

Many of the larger Print-On-Demand publishers (Lulu, iUniverse, even the dreaded PublishAmerica) make their books available through the same wholesale channels as real books.

Sure they do. My bookstore can buy PublishAmerica and iUniverse books from the same distributors as Penguin or Random House books – if I want to accept half the profit margin, non-returnable products, poor-quality printing, slower delivery, and books that haven’t been professionally edited. When I make decision about what books to stock on my shelves, there have to be some seriously compelling reasons before I’ll stock a book from PublishAmerica.

[Gary_Robson]

@RealityChuck

Not a blockbuster, but to sell enough copies for them to cover the costs of publishing the book. A book with a potential national audience of 2000 people is not going to pay for the cost of marketing it (including things like paying editors), though self-publishing it can make it a success.

Self-publishing changes the very definition of success.

One of my niche-market books done by a major publisher is unlikely to ever see a second printing. In several years on the market, it has sold only 4,000 copies or so. It barely paid out the advance. If the book hadn’t been so expensive (and the advance so low), it wouldn’t have even done that. The publisher does not consider that a success.

On the other hand, one of my self-published books sold “only” 1,200 copies. Any publishing house would consider that a disaster. But since I was making $20 a copy, I think it worked out pretty darned well.

Interestingly, my most successful books to date have been the ones I did through a small regional press in Montana. My royalty per book is a lot lower, but we’ve sold around 300,000 copies, so I’m not complaining.

@RealityChuck

And while vanity and self-published works can look much more like commercially published books, people don’t buy books because they look good. They buy them because the want to read what’s inside.

Slight correction: they buy them because the covers make people think they want to read what’s inside. People buy a lot of horrible books because of great titles and cover designs.

[Athena]

@Eve

Not for *me *it won’t. I write biographies–with photos in 'em–that do not lend themselves well to eBooks. And I have already seen my residuals drop. I get 10% of gross for my books, which means I get a lot less for an eBook that “rents” for a couple of bucks than I do for a book that *sells *for $25. If the tide turns much further, I will have to give up writing, as my income from my books will fall so badly.

@Eve

. . . writers who are making a few *cents *on each eBook you rent.

What is this “renting” you’re speaking of? I know of no place that you can “rent” an eBook, unless you’re talking about libraries that loan out eBooks. Library eBooks are treated (as far as I know) like real books; if I library buys 5 copies of e-Book x, they pay the retail rate for those books, and can only lend out 5 copies at a time.

I have a Kindle, and if I want to read a book on it, I buy it. Typically the prices nowadays are on-par with buying the physical book. Sometimes they’re a little cheaper, but often they’re the same price. Looking at your books, Eve, I see that there’s 3 available as Kindle books, one for about half the cost of the hardcover, one for a few bucks cheaper, the other about 25% cheaper. Are you saying that you’re getting only pennies for the Kindle edition whereas you get a lot more for the hardcover? If that’s the case, it’s the publisher screwing you, not the popularity of eBooks. I would hope that if I bought the $29 Kindle version of one of your books as opposed to the $32 hardcover, you’d get a very similar royalty.

[Eve]

@Athena

What is this “renting” you’re speaking of? I have a Kindle, and if I want to read a book on it, I buy it.

And you can keep it, forever? Go back in five years and reread it? Loan it to a friend? I honestly have no idea, I don’t own a Kindle.

@Athena

Are you saying that you’re getting only pennies for the Kindle edition whereas you get a lot more for the hardcover? If that’s the case, it’s the publisher screwing you, not the popularity of eBooks.

And everyone else’s publishers are screwing them, too; that’s how the business works now. Maybe in ten years when books and bookstores no longer exist, publishers will have to divvy up more money to the author for eBooks.

[Gary_Robson]

@Eve

And you can keep it, forever? Go back in five years and reread it? Loan it to a friend? I honestly have no idea, I don’t own a Kindle.

[ul]
[li]Yes - you can keep it forever (as long as Amazon is still around).[/li][li]Yes - you can go back and reread it in five years (as long as you still own a compatible e-reader and Amazon is still around)[/li][li]Sort of - This is a new feature and it varies by company. I believe Amazon’s policy is that you can loan it out once, and only once.[/li][/ul]

@Eve

And everyone else’s publishers are screwing them, too; that’s how the business works now. Maybe in ten years when books and bookstores no longer exist, publishers will have to divvy up more money to the author for eBooks.

Two of my books are out in ebook format now. The self-published book is out at $2.99, and I get about a buck royalty. The traditionally-published book is supposed to be paying the same royalty as the original print edition, but I haven’t received a royalty statement since the ebook was released, so I don’t know for sure yet.

[Justin_Bailey]

@Exapno_Mapcase

Today’s lesson: CAN is not WILL.

Alternate title for the lesson: I’m wrong, but here are twenty reasons why I’m technically right. But I’m still wrong.

I didn’t say anything about the merits of POD books over real books nor did I say B&N stocks POD books regularly. All I said is that they can buy them from the same distributors as regular books and that your average B&N will have one or two POD books in stock. That’s it. And both of those statements are true. I’m sorry that you want to stuff me with straw and use me for your “POD books are evul!” screed, but I never argued against any of the points you’re making.

@Athena

What is this “renting” you’re speaking of? I know of no place that you can “rent” an eBook, unless you’re talking about libraries that loan out eBooks. Library eBooks are treated (as far as I know) like real books; if I library buys 5 copies of e-Book x, they pay the retail rate for those books, and can only lend out 5 copies at a time.

That is exactly how it works. There’s no renting involved. Ebooks are purchased by libraries just like regular books. But some people snidely refer to the practice of buying an ebook as “renting” because all you’re buying is the license and technically Amazon/B&N/whoever could take it back. It doesn’t happen (except for that one time, which had a perfectly rational explanation), but it doesn’t deter the snarkers.

[RealityChuck]

[quote=“Gary “Wombat” Robson, post:42, topic:598680”]

Slight correction: they buy them because the covers make people think they want to read what’s inside. People buy a lot of horrible books because of great titles and cover designs.
[/QUOTE]
Yes and no. People do judge books by their covers (I started reading Christopher Moore because of the wonderful cover image on Fluke), but that’s only the first step. A cover merely announces what the book is about, and makes the potential reader want to pick it up. Then you look at the blurbs, the synopsis, the quotes to see whether you want to read more. This is especially true when faced with a book whose author you don’t know.

That’s one reason why electronic books and amazon.com are a problem, since they cannot recreate the browsing experience. You discover a lot of new books and authors by seeing them on the shelves, and online bookstores can only show a limited number of books on a page.

[Gary_Robson]

@Justin_Bailey

That is exactly how it works. There’s no renting involved. Ebooks are purchased by libraries just like regular books. But some people snidely refer to the practice of buying an ebook as “renting” because all you’re buying is the license and technically Amazon/B&N/whoever could take it back. It doesn’t happen (except for that one time, which had a perfectly rational explanation), but it doesn’t deter the snarkers.

Actually, there is such a thing as renting. Here’s an example. My Closed Captioning Handbook sells for Kindle for $57.56, but rents for $26.42.

For the consumer, this is a good thing. For the author, it’s not. People who used to buy my book to answer technical questions about a project they’re working on can now rent it instead, and I don’t get paid.

[Shalmanese]

I had to double check this wasn’t a zombie thread dug up from 2005. Where have you people been?

First of all, you should all look at this graph of traditionally published vs self published titles in the last 5 years: http://wordsofeverytype.com/the-publishing-frontier/self-publishing-versus-traditional-publishing . In 2006, there were 20K self published books vs 275K traditionally published titles. In 2009, there were 760k self published vs 275K traditional. Self publishing is undergoing a quiet sea change of gigantic proportions as we speak.

Secondly, in April of this year, ebooks overtook all print books on Amazon.com after just 4 years. Given that [url=Latest Consumer Goods & Retail Stock Analysis Articles | Seeking Alpha] Amazon is set to reach 50% of all book sales by the end of 2012, this means kindle ebooks alone should comfortably hit 25% of all book sales and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was at 50% in another 2 years.

Both of these trends represent unprecedented change in the publishing landscape and the situation is still rapidly evolving.

@RealityChuck

Publishers have an important role in a writer’s success. They act as gatekeepers; you know any book they publish is going to be of publishable quality.* They can publicize a book far better than you can. They can get the book into far more bookstores than you can.

The only bookstore worth getting into in a few years is Amazon and getting into it is trivial enough that you don’t need a publisher for this anymore. Publicity is a legitimate role but it’s largely divorced from the other functions and can be separated out as more of a PR style service which authors can optionally choose to engage in. This opens up the space to a far more diverse range of different players who can service authors better than traditional publishers.

@RealityChuck

The issue with rejection is a red herring. Good books have been rejected in the past, but the the rejection can be for many reasons that have nothing to do with the publishing industry. And a publisher might reject a perfectly publishable book for reasons that have nothing to do with its quality; you just keep submitting until you find someone who is willing to buy it.

Yes, it’s hard to get published, but that’s because you have to be better than 90% of the other authors out there to do so. Just because you write 70,000 words doesn’t mean that anyone wants to read them. 90% of authors just don’t write anything well enough for anyone to want to read them**. Bypassing the publishers won’t change that.

Instead of being rejected, crappy books now just get ignored. The crucial difference is that this happens post-publication, not pre-publication. It’s really difficult to predict what will be popular unless you release it and see. Do you think any publisher would have accepted a proposal for a book “My dad says funny things some times, I’m going to write them down”? Even the original author didn’t think anyone would have been interested in it, never in a million years would he even have approached a publisher about it. But he threw it up on twitter and it got so unexpectedly popular it made sense for him to go down the traditional publishing route and he got not only a book but also a crappy tv show out of the deal.

@RealityChuck

Self-publishing never worked in the past**. Why should it work now? How is the new model any different from going to Vantage Press 30 years ago?

This little thing called the Internet, maybe you’ve heard of it.

Even nowadays, people still seem to have a hard time truly understanding what the internet does to content and make the same ill-informed judgements that get proved wrong over and over again. The two major forces at play are: 1. It democratizes the means of production which fosters a dramatic rise in the size and scope of content available and 2. It allows for more powerful and sophisticated filtering mechanisms which allow the best content to be surfaced.

The average content of the internet is always awful which is completely ok because nobody looks at the average content. Instead, because there’s thousands or millions of times more content, the very best of it challenges and often exceeds the very best of traditional media.

@RealityChuck

Ah, yes. I should have mentioned reviews. Try getting your self-published online book reviewed anywhere credible. (Amazon.com reviews don’t count, especially those for self-published books are usually filled with sock puppets.)

Nowadays, “credible” is not the New York Times Review of Books, it’s niche blogs, reddit, facebook & twitter friends, your own home page and even Amazon.com reviews from names that you recognize. All of these are eminently possible for self-published books.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

@Justin_Bailey

All I said is that they can buy them from the same distributors as regular books and that your average B&N will have one or two POD books in stock.

Name them.

[Justin_Bailey]

[QUOTE=Justin_Bailey]
All I said is that they can buy them from the same distributors as regular books and that your average B&N will have one or two POD books in stock.
[/QUOTE]

@Exapno_Mapcase

Name them.

Now you’re just being difficult. Did I say it was the same POD book in each store? No. I just said that are likely a few of them in stock because I’ve noticed that before. I’ve been in my local B&N and picked up a book that looked interesting and saw Lulu or PublishAmerica printed on the back. This happened. I’m sorry that it seems to break your brain.

[CalMeacham]

@Tom_Scud

You didn’t post that from your morning paper. You linked to an electronic version of the words. Which isn’t the same thing, per Sendak.

I didn’t post it on a piece of paper, either. What’s yer point?

[An_Gadai]

An interesting post there Shalmanese.

@Shalmanese

Publicity is a legitimate role but it’s largely divorced from the other functions and can be separated out as more of a PR style service which authors can optionally choose to engage in. This opens up the space to a far more diverse range of different players who can service authors better than traditional publishers.

For someone who is used to a traditional publisher though, this reverses the typical revenue flow. In order for a self-published individual to get the PR they need they’ll have to pay the PR companies. Traditionally publishers paid their authors (albeit fuck all usually, right?) an advance, and dealt with the PR end of things.

[Tom_Scud]

@CalMeacham

I didn’t post it on a piece of paper, either. What’s yer point?

You’ve totally ruined the experience. The crinkle of newspaper between my hands, the black smudges on my fingertips. It’s a crying shame.

[kiz]

@RealityChuck

Not a blockbuster, but to sell enough copies for them to cover the costs of publishing the book. A book with a potential national audience of 2000 people is not going to pay for the cost of marketing it (including things like paying editors), though self-publishing it can make it a success.

Exactly. The only caregiving book I know of that broke out of that very small niche is The 36 Hour Day, which is now considered the niche bible. The other caregiving books I’ve read? Probably much like ours, except they were published mostly by small and/or regional presses and have long since gone out of print.

I think we’re close to 100 sales now, and our book came out a few months ago. Most of those sales haven’t been to family members/friends. I’m happy with it, but I know my husband and our other male coauthor would be happier if it sold much more.

[Gary_Robson]

@An_Gadai

For someone who is used to a traditional publisher though, this reverses the typical revenue flow. In order for a self-published individual to get the PR they need they’ll have to pay the PR companies. Traditionally publishers paid their authors (albeit fuck all usually, right?) an advance, and dealt with the PR end of things.

Traditional model: all money flows toward the author. The author writes a good book and gets paid for it.

New model: Author pays for editing/copyediting/proofreading (although I believe the overwhelming majority of self-published authors skip this step); author pays for cover design; author pays for layout; author pays for website; author pays for advertising; author pays for advance/review copies; author pays for format conversion; author pays for POD setup; author pays for indexing; author pays for catalog listings; author pays for posters promoting book signing events; author pays publicist…

Yeah, it’s the “best outcome for authors” all right.

[LavenderBlue]

[quote=“Gary “Wombat” Robson, post:56, topic:598680”]

Traditional model: all money flows toward the author. The author writes a good book and gets paid for it.

New model: Author pays for editing/copyediting/proofreading (although I believe the overwhelming majority of self-published authors skip this step); author pays for cover design; author pays for layout; author pays for website; author pays for advertising; author pays for advance/review copies; author pays for format conversion; author pays for POD setup; author pays for indexing; author pays for catalog listings; author pays for posters promoting book signing events; author pays publicist…

Yeah, it’s the “best outcome for authors” all right.
[/QUOTE]

Worse. No one buys the book because it still isn’t as “good” as your average Danielle Steel novel. Most would be writers would be better served if they spent time paying for writing classes or even a copy of *The Little, Brown Handbook *instead of investing in self publishing.

I have to admit a certain contempt when someone I run into on the net claims to be a published author and then I find out by published they mean self published via lulu or similar mechanism.

[Eve]

@LavenderBlue

I have to admit a certain contempt when someone I run into on the net claims to be a published author and then I find out by published they mean self published via lulu or similar mechanism.

I have a friend who is a really, *really *brilliant writer. She recently self-published a novel, and of course I made all the appropriate noises about how good it was. But I was thinking, “Oh, honey, why? This is a book Doubleday or Knopf could have really *made *something out of, *why *did you waste it?” Even with her self-promoting, it will sell a couple of hundred copies, tops.

[Gary_Robson]

@LavenderBlue

I have to admit a certain contempt when someone I run into on the net claims to be a published author and then I find out by published they mean self published via lulu or similar mechanism.

Worse yet, I’ve run into people who introduce themselves as “published authors” because they had a poem printed in one of the poetry.com scam books.

[Sigmagirl]

@LavenderBlue

I have to admit a certain contempt when someone I run into on the net claims to be a published author and then I find out by published they mean self published via lulu or similar mechanism.

@Eve

I have a friend who is a really, *really *brilliant writer. She recently self-published a novel, and of course I made all the appropriate noises about how good it was. But I was thinking, “Oh, honey, why? This is a book Doubleday or Knopf could have really *made *something out of, *why *did you waste it?” Even with her self-promoting, it will sell a couple of hundred copies, tops.

Yes, much as I shudder at the self-published crap I read, I must say I am even more dismayed by the rare good examples, because I know that the author could have done much better than PublishAmerica/Author House/Xlibris/Tate/Dorrance and, even if he/she does write another and tries to go the traditional route, that first book will always be there on his resume like a sex tape of a politican’s wife.
If these people had spent one hour on Absolute Write they’d have saved themselves that fate.