The World's Smallest Violin
There's been a lot of talk lately about the Amazon Kindle and other digital readers arriving on the scene, mostly from publishers that are hoping that the digital options will just "go away" so they can stick to business as usual and making money from it.
It's a complicated topic, but there's one issue that really makes me wonder if the major book publishers that are whining about digital books have their heads on straight. Traditionally, major book releases are staggered, with the hardcover edition coming out about a year before the trade paperback or mass market paperback. That makes sense; if you're patient enough to wait to read new books, you get to buy the paperback edition at a discount. (Or, put another way, if you're impatient, you get to pay a premium to read the hardcover edition early on. It just depends on how you frame it.)
Now, with the digital format threatening to change the game, one consideration I've heard thrown around is releasing the hardcover, then releasing the paperback, and then, after a wait period, releasing the digital edition.
Dumb idea. Let's say you look at publishing houses trying to break new authors: it depends on the publisher, but the general strategy is to find a bunch of authors, pay them as little as you can, push their books out there, and see which of them sell. It's like throwing noodles against the wall to see which one sticks.
If you're a traditional book publisher, still printing up books the way Gutenberg intended well over 500 years ago, then testing new authors is a very, very expensive process that requires a significant investment. Digital copies can be produced and distributed for almost nothing. The hardest part is getting talented writers to write them.
Given digital books, you can test as many new books and authors as you want, with a very small initial investment. The ones that sell well you can print up in hardcover and paperback form, and distribute them to bookstores. It probably depends on the book, but if people really liked what they read on their Kindle, many of them will buy the physical book when it comes out.
Seems to me the digital copies should come out first, not last.
Of course, they've been pissing and moaning about Amazon wanting to sell digital books at a price point of $9.99. The publishing industry claims that they can't make money on digital books if they're sold for that cheap per copy.
First of all, I don't believe that for a second. The production costs are still there, but the cost of raw materials, distribution, and carrying cost falls to almost nothing. The overhead is reduced so drastically that going from $27.99 to $9.99 is not, I don't think, taking a loss on each copy. Sure, I might believe that they can't make as much money as they did with hard copies (maybe), but they can't be losing money.
Second, and more importantly, I'm not sure we (as readers and writers) should really be too worried about what happens to the publishing industry. They want us to believe that if they all went out of business tomorrow that writers would stop writing, that the ideas would dry up, books would disappear and the world would turn into a Fahrenheit 451-style nightmare, and we'd all have only ourselves to blame because we all started buying digital books.
There are self-publishing sites out there for authors to get their books printed and sold that are making money, and in those cases, the authors get to keep most of it. Sounds to me like maybe the business model that traditional publishers are using might not be working so well if they can't seem to make money. In a world that's becoming increasingly full of digital goods, does it make sense to keep running a company that loses money on digital books?
Some very smart authors are even giving away their books on the Kindle, for free, hopeful that they'll turn people into fans who will later purchase books from them. Which brings to me to my final couple of points: one, there are a lot of smart authors out there who understand how to build an audience.
Two, the value in books is not in the paper on which they're printed, it's what's written inside of them. Scarcity creates value, and in a world where books are only available as physical things and not just anyone can start printing up lots of copies of books without a lot of money up front, it's very lucrative to be a book publisher. But now, anyone can share their writing on a blog, for free. There are too many other mediums available to writers to get people to read their work, that being able to print up books isn't necessarily scarce enough to get people to pay for them.
To clarify, I don't think that digital books will ever replace physical copies of books. But the existing book publishers that learn how to leverage the existence of digital books, instead of complaining about how they're ruining the industry, are the ones who are still going to be around in 10 or 20 years.
It's a complicated topic, but there's one issue that really makes me wonder if the major book publishers that are whining about digital books have their heads on straight. Traditionally, major book releases are staggered, with the hardcover edition coming out about a year before the trade paperback or mass market paperback. That makes sense; if you're patient enough to wait to read new books, you get to buy the paperback edition at a discount. (Or, put another way, if you're impatient, you get to pay a premium to read the hardcover edition early on. It just depends on how you frame it.)
Now, with the digital format threatening to change the game, one consideration I've heard thrown around is releasing the hardcover, then releasing the paperback, and then, after a wait period, releasing the digital edition.
Dumb idea. Let's say you look at publishing houses trying to break new authors: it depends on the publisher, but the general strategy is to find a bunch of authors, pay them as little as you can, push their books out there, and see which of them sell. It's like throwing noodles against the wall to see which one sticks.
If you're a traditional book publisher, still printing up books the way Gutenberg intended well over 500 years ago, then testing new authors is a very, very expensive process that requires a significant investment. Digital copies can be produced and distributed for almost nothing. The hardest part is getting talented writers to write them.
Given digital books, you can test as many new books and authors as you want, with a very small initial investment. The ones that sell well you can print up in hardcover and paperback form, and distribute them to bookstores. It probably depends on the book, but if people really liked what they read on their Kindle, many of them will buy the physical book when it comes out.
Seems to me the digital copies should come out first, not last.
Of course, they've been pissing and moaning about Amazon wanting to sell digital books at a price point of $9.99. The publishing industry claims that they can't make money on digital books if they're sold for that cheap per copy.
First of all, I don't believe that for a second. The production costs are still there, but the cost of raw materials, distribution, and carrying cost falls to almost nothing. The overhead is reduced so drastically that going from $27.99 to $9.99 is not, I don't think, taking a loss on each copy. Sure, I might believe that they can't make as much money as they did with hard copies (maybe), but they can't be losing money.
Second, and more importantly, I'm not sure we (as readers and writers) should really be too worried about what happens to the publishing industry. They want us to believe that if they all went out of business tomorrow that writers would stop writing, that the ideas would dry up, books would disappear and the world would turn into a Fahrenheit 451-style nightmare, and we'd all have only ourselves to blame because we all started buying digital books.
There are self-publishing sites out there for authors to get their books printed and sold that are making money, and in those cases, the authors get to keep most of it. Sounds to me like maybe the business model that traditional publishers are using might not be working so well if they can't seem to make money. In a world that's becoming increasingly full of digital goods, does it make sense to keep running a company that loses money on digital books?
Some very smart authors are even giving away their books on the Kindle, for free, hopeful that they'll turn people into fans who will later purchase books from them. Which brings to me to my final couple of points: one, there are a lot of smart authors out there who understand how to build an audience.
Two, the value in books is not in the paper on which they're printed, it's what's written inside of them. Scarcity creates value, and in a world where books are only available as physical things and not just anyone can start printing up lots of copies of books without a lot of money up front, it's very lucrative to be a book publisher. But now, anyone can share their writing on a blog, for free. There are too many other mediums available to writers to get people to read their work, that being able to print up books isn't necessarily scarce enough to get people to pay for them.
To clarify, I don't think that digital books will ever replace physical copies of books. But the existing book publishers that learn how to leverage the existence of digital books, instead of complaining about how they're ruining the industry, are the ones who are still going to be around in 10 or 20 years.