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Ebook pricing...and other ways publishers control the market.

10/16/2010

4 Comments

 
Now that the kindle store in UK is beginning to trade, amazon have alerted customers to an 'agency model' of ebook pricing. This is effectively a cartel of several major publishers who come to an agreement, rather than to compete, to fix their digital download prices at an agreed high rate. This is already happening in US and I believe amazon.com indicate books produced by participating publishers so readers can consider their option to buy.

At first sight, this may appear like a greedy way to ensure high profits. These publishers claim that their costs of editing, advertising etc are so high that it costs them as much to produce an electronic book as a print one. But I think it's more than that, I think it's about control.

Over the years, the biggest publishers have almost entirely gained control of the publishing industry. They've been able to do this because they buy not only advertising in the media but also virtually all the display space - and even shelf space - in high street bookshops. With very few exceptions they also control what books get reviewed in the national press. Very simply, the big publishers decide what books readers will buy and read (even though many readers don't realise this) by ensuring these are the only books readers get to see or to hear about. Of course, many more books are produced independently by author/publishers or small presses. But however respected these small publishers are, readers will find it a challenge to find their books, relegated as they are to the back shelves (if they are stocked at all). Similarly, the big publishers command the stock routinely bought by libraries.

Now, whilst the biggest publishers have control over the market of printed books, their domination of the ebook market is not guaranteed. For the first time, books from all sources are equally and affordably available. Readers are no longer restricted to the small percentage of books displayed to them in the high street, neither are reviews restricted to those written by the national press, any customer can write one.

The response of some of the big publishers to e publishing is to agree, among themselves, to fix their prices. And while this drives up the average price of an e book and raises the cost readers expect to pay, it also does something else. If their is no financial advantage to buying a book in electronic form then many readers will buy it in print. And if they can ensure the demand for a high volume of print books, the big publishers can maintain their control of the publishing industry.
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Would you want to be a member of a club that wants you as a member?

10/7/2010

3 Comments

 
Or, to put it another way, if you're an indie author, how tempted would you be to take a regular contract, if it were offered?

OK, so I know there lots of factors in this, with lots of different answers. So let's narrow it down a bit.
I recently read a blog that was talking about literary agents who were interested in taking on self-published authors. Sounds great so far. Then it seems they have a criteria of your having sold at least 5K books in the previous year. Hmm, a bit more difficult. I'm guessing if you're selling e books at 99c they're going to want to see considerably higher sales than that before they take an interest in you.

So, assuming I can sell that many books (sounds optimistic but with the e book market growing you never know) would it be worth my while going down that route?

Let's think about this from different points of view.

Let's assume they mean 5K sales at a price that gives you a royalty of at least £1 per book, ie an annual income of £5K. That allows for a slightly higher return at the magic price of $2.99 on 70% royalty but nets down allowing for expenses. That's still a higher royalty per sale than you'd get with most publishers. Let's assume your book is currently selling well. So, if you meet their sales criteria, to make it financially worthwhile, given that you'd probably have the book off the market for at least a year, and thinking about projected increase in e market and therefore your expected self-published income over the next 3 years etc etc, you'd realistically be wanting an advance of at least £20K.

This is without factoring in all the extra work you might be required to do on rewrites etc when you could be writing your next book which will earn you another £5k per year. Plus, you might not like how you are required to rework it. Not such a big deal when it was an embryonic ms maybe but more like invasive surgery further down the line.

So, what's in it for the agent/publisher?

Money. You've found a way to make it, you've already done all the hard work, so now they want some of it.
The book? Probably irrelevant, though if you've got more on the way you can give them more money.

Remind me again what's in it for the author.

Fame, fortune, national press reviews, book displayed in bookshops, reaching a bigger audience, being 'properly' published.

So, assuming you meet the criteria that a mainstream agent/publisher would be interested in signing you, tell me what your criteria would be to consider signing with them. 
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A publisher by any other name.

10/2/2010

4 Comments

 
I am an independent author and publisher and as such I'm proud of the fact that, with the help of friends, I've learned and put into practice the whole process of writing, editing, designing and publishing. And that includes setting up my own publishing imprint, Standing Stone Press, with ISBNs assigned to it.

Of course, before I started, I checked for other publishers with similar names and changed my original choice (Artefact Books) because there was already something like it in US.


I then went ahead and published my first book,  registered under my imprint, and with this name printed on the cover and the text inside. I set up a personal website (this one) but I didn't upload a separate site for my imprint because at this stage I'm only publishing myself (though of course this may change) and I didn't want to be accused of trying to pretend I was published by an established press.

So imagine my surprise when, a few days ago, I received an email from a friend in US, saying she'd been looking at the Standing Stone Press website! I googled it and sure enough, there it was, Standing Stone Press, an imprint of Ridley Park Books, offering a self-publishing service to authors.

At first I thought it was some sort of sick joke. There is strong feeling against independent authors by a few people, maybe even strong enough for something like that. But a quick investigation revealed that the domain name had been registered over a year ago, though it seems the site was uploaded very recently. Needless to say, I was more than a little concerned. Not only would potential readers be likely to see this site and assume I had published with this press, but being a self-publishing service, it was likely there would be little if any quality control.

However, I assumed that, although a very basic website had been uploaded, the chances were, no books had been published as yet, because surely Nielsen (the UK ISBN agency) and Bowker (its US counterpart) wouldn't register two publishers with the same name. I emailed Nielsen and told them of my concerns and waited for their reassurance.

But this is what I was told. Nielsen and Bowker link to one anothers' registered books and Nielsen had no record of another Standing Stone Press when I registered. However, they allow more than one publisher to register with the same name, distinguishing their accounts by country or city.

So if you happily register your long-awaited autobiography to Joe Blogs Books, thinking this will somehow make it unique, think again. Tomorrow, an unlimited number of publishers calling themselves Joe Blogs Books may appear. Otherwise, it seems you would have to somehow register or copyright your name as a brand (I believe Paul McCartney has done this) to prevent others from using it.

In the light of all this, I've hastily secured a domain name and uploaded my own imprint site. It will probably need tweaking and should be picked up by google in a few days time.

http://www.standingstonepress.co.uk

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    I'm Ali. I'm an author and musician, living in Devon, and I teach guitar.

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