2009 has just staggered out the door...but left behind a massive footprint of electronic publishing inroads and positioning for future inevitable victories.
M. J. Rose, a successful author of numerous books, including The Memorist and The Reincarnationist, discusses this New Age of E-Publishing in an insightful article for Publishing Perspectives. She relates her own experiences in and prognostications for the publishing industry. M. J. Rose was the first author to use the Internet to release an e-book that was picked up by traditional publishers. She is also the owner of the ad agency, Authorbuzz.com. Past Life, a dramatic series based on her bestselling novel The Reincarnationist, debuts February 11, 2010 on FoxTV.
By M. J. Rose:
As we come to the end of 2009 there’s only one thing we know about the future of publishing—it’s going to keep changing. Like it or not, no matter what industry you’re in and how hard you try to hold onto the past, fighting change is not only futile, it’s often what kills you.
When Change is Pain
The changes we’re in the middle of are cause for alarm for many people:
Kirkus is gone.
Fifty-four percent of people now find out about books via online ads. (Yes ads! Not reviews.) Sixty-seven percent of people buying a book didn’t know what they were going to buy before they walked in the store.
There are millions of readers who post about what they’re reading on their blogs and social networks like Twitter, Facebook and Goodreads.
People can read e-books on their iPhones on line in the supermarket, go home, turn on their Kindles and be instantly synced up.
HarperCollins has an online slush pile called Authonomy. Harlequin has a similar testing ground called Carina.
And Steven Covey, author of the perennial backlist bestseller Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, just gave exclusive rights to his e-books to Amazon and not his publisher.
Bookstores are publishers and authors are publishers and publishers are bookstores.
And yet, the one thing everyone seems to fear the most is Amazon’s slashing e-book prices and selling them at a loss.
Last week almost all the major publishers announced they would be holding back e-book releases on select titles until three to four months after the hardcover release.
Now? The time to have gotten involved in timing and pricing was two years ago before when the Kindle came on the market. When experimentation would have made sense. When there were no precedents set. But to do it now?
Kassia Krozser, at Book Square, blogged that the way some agents and publishers are reacting is fetishistic: “We must worship the all-mighty hardcover,” she wrote, “without worrying about the actual impact to overall sales. Without even considering the reader. Of course, why would publishing ever consider the reader?”
Why indeed?
As someone who has spent her life in advertising doing endless research about the end user, I’m continually shocked by the lack of information publishers have about readers. And even worse their lack of concern about the info they don’t have.
E-books vs. Hardcovers
There is a lot of information about readers that is key to what the future holds and how it’s going to play out. And we need to be paying attention to it.
For instance, 40% of hardcovers are either resold online two or three times or lent to friend and family two to three times. Or swapped two or three or more times.
None of those transactions pay a penny to the publisher or the author.
But e-books can’t be resold. Or borrowed. (Barnes & Noble’s Nook offers publishers the option to lend once, but few allow it.)
Read the rest of the article here: http://publishingperspectives.com/?p=9346
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