Book Buyers Shifting from Culture of “Ownership” to Culture of “Access”

The future of the printed book is looking more dire than ever. The increases in the percentages RE digital book sales have surpassed all expectations...this has fostered a shift in consumers culture of book ownership to book content access.

What the hell, access to digital IS ALSO ownership, though, is it not? You have to pay for that access; and you can always convert it to print (for those who still desire).

Me thinks people make far too much brouhaha over written content formats...

I have posted often before that I feel the printed book will never go away completely...and it won't...It just will not be the only kid on the block anymore AND it will wear a different suit of cloths (a different business model for getting into print and distributed).

These interesting details on The Future of Books provided by L. K. Sharma in the Business Standard: 

As the great new digital wave dawns upon them, publishers ponder over the challenges and opportunities.

The London Book Fair last year was held under the shadow of the volcanic ash. This time it was gripped by existential fears about the future of the printed book and of the fair’s venue, Earls Court exhibition centre, which faces demolition and development. The dire forecasts of the death of the printed book and the physical book shop were dismissed by some experts who tried to calm the fears sparked by two ‘e’ words — ‘e-publishing’ and ‘e-retailing’. The developing e-environment in publishing has excited the device and platform developers and the digital natives. This in turn made the publishers talk of new “challenges and opportunities”.


A related issue that is more likely to be discussed by an NGO rather than at an industry fair is whether the people could let their digital future be controlled by powerful corporations. Ordinary book readers also have stakes on how the digital publishers’ dispute with public libraries will be resolved. In the US, library e-book downloads have been shooting up and some digital publishers are refusing to sell to libraries.

The tipping point
The future of the printed book and of independent booksellers has been a topic of seminars for some years but this time experts at the fair agreed that the tipping point has been reached. E-books have arrived. One-third of publishers say they would get more than 10 per cent of revenue from e-books next year. As a result of the advances in digital and communication technologies and the appearance of new platforms and devices, e-books already account for 10 per cent of the book sales in the US. That country now boasts of 40 million e-readers and many of them come in the category of core readers — those who buy more than 12 books a year. Some e-books had a 50 per cent share of total sales during the first few months of publication. Thus a US publishing executive did not hesitate to call it “a watershed moment for the trade”. A British executive referred to the decline of physical book retailing. In Britain, e-books account for 5 per cent of book sales but the latest research shows that it will also see exponential growth in the number of people buying e-books. What the US does today, some countries are bound to do tomorrow.

Some turmoil in the book business has also been caused by the growing stronghold of the mega retail chains and the overall decline in the book sales because of the current economic situation. Individual booksellers have been hit hard. The trend of the closure of distinctive small bookshops has accelerated so much that many towns in Britain will be left without any bookshop. It is not that the mega chains can rest on their laurels. With heavy book buyers preferring to buy digitally, even their brick-and-mortar outlets are under siege. Borders of America could not survive in the UK. Ottakar’s, James Thin and Dillon chain have disappeared from the British high street, though Waterstone’s is still in business, holding on to some 30 per cent of the book market.

Naturally, the thought of future haunted the book fair participants. Companies tried to buy and sell future. Many participants were keen to attend workshops and seminars on FutureBook! The Digital Pavilion attracted larger audiences than the Russian book market on which the fair had focused this time. The optimists tried to boost the morale by talking up the market but it was hard not to notice the undercurrent of anxiety.

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Printed Books Resurge Due to eBooks!

Many authors are enjoying renewed sales of their backlist books due to the increased interest in reading spurred by ereaders and ebooks...And, after reading the ebooks, or portions thereof, people are buying the printed versions as well...And other novels by these authors only available in print.

The printed word will be with us forever...For many other reasons besides the aforementioned surge in sales!

Jennifer Havenner, Publishing Director for an independent LA publisher, wrote this in the Huffington Post:

More than once a week this year, headlines crossed my desk about the death of publishing, the demise of books, and the cold-blooded murderer that is the eReader. The Chicken Littles of the publishing world have clucked about lost points in retail sales of books and the increasing digital format trend. This is partly true. Book sales were actually up 3% last year and increased even more in online stores. eBooks exploded with sales over 175% compared to 2008.

Books are not going anywhere. Neither is publishing. Since Gutenberg made his epic contribution to the human race, publishing has secured a place as one of the largest and most profitable industries in history. In that time, publishing has adapted to major technological changes, survived economic meltdowns, persisted through political censorship, and made it to the other side of catastrophic price wars. The likes of Simon & Schuster and Random House are not going to lay down simply because more than 25% of their potential customers bought electronic version of books instead of much more expensive, hard to warehouse, and returnable physical books. If the mainstream publishing world's enthusiastic embrace of eReaders is not evidence enough that they are doing fine, than their stable sales through the largest economic disaster in our nation since the Great Depression should be.

Small publishers need not worry either. They are vanguards in this new trend, innovating and competing in ways the big boys can't catch up with. Like the music and movie industries have experienced, independent book publishers are on the cusp of transitioning into the very lucrative mainstream market.

If anyone should be concerned, it is the bookstore. Amazon's healthy five-year trend indicates that the flight from brick and mortar is not subsiding anytime soon. Couple that with the middleman-eliminating eReaders than bookstores have a great deal to worry about. And their 15 point drop last year is only the beginning. It is the bookstores that need to break into the market with a bullhorn explaining the value of the printed book, not the publishers.

And so then, what is the value of the printed book? eBooks are cheap to produce and cheap to buy. They have negligible environmental impact. They are easy to store, tote, and transfer. They are interactive. What does a printed book have that eBooks don't?

Permanence.

The role of the printed book is still critical, if not for the publishing industry, but for the human race. Our permanent record, whether through artistic expression in fiction, or through knowledge in non-fiction, is kept on printed books, not on electronic signals. Without the printed book, there is no record of our time, place and civilization.

Bookstores are repositories of our most important examples of human wisdom, knowledge and art. The role of bookstores is to protect and promote that. Publishers can reserve eBooks for all those billions of dollars worth of fluff they put out every year, but should keep the important works in print and in bookstores.

In this new frontier, bookstores will be the ultimate source of vetted high quality material. We as book readers will know that if it was important enough to make it into print, it is important enough to buy. That's a hard case to make for an online shopping cart.

The Evolution to Digital and a Brief History of E-Book Costs and Pricing

Digital Burnout!

Much has been tossed around of late RE new publishing models (think wholesale and agency), who should set the price of e-books (think publishers or retailers) and the "all shook up" transitioning, publishing landscape in general :)

It can get awfully confusing! So, to promote a better understanding of how we got to where we are today, a little history of digital publishing, including e-book models/pricing all the way up to the DOL investigation into the alleged price-fixing attributed to the big six publishers and the agency model is offered here.

This history is by no means complete --- but is heavy enough to hopefully be informative to many.

"Only time will tell where in the pricing spectrum--from best-selling $25-plus hardbacks at one end to 99-cent music downloads at the other--e-book prices will settle."

By Narasu Rebbapragada of PCWorld:

UPDATED: E-Book Prices Fuel Consumer Outrage

The Department of Justice is preparing to sue Apple and five major e-book publishers on charges that they worked together to push up e-book prices industry-wide.

UPDATE [March 8, 2012]: The Department of Justice said yesterday it plans to sue Apple and five of the largest e-book publishers in the US on charges that they acted together to push up the price of electronic books, the Wall Street Journal reports.

As discussed in this PCWorld investigative feature from last May, e-book publishers deeply resented large retailers like Amazon selling their e-books at deeply discounted rates under a "wholesale model." Apple introduced a new model--called the "agency" model--where the publisher sets the price of the e-book and the retailer sells it for that price, taking a 30 percent fee.

The Justice Department believes that Apple and the publishers may have colluded to keep the prices of all e-books high, which, if true, would be a violation of anti-trust laws. The publishers have denied the allegations of collusion, and believe that the switch to the agency model has enhanced competition by allowing more e-book publishers to survive.

Following is our investigative feature from last May describing how e-books are (over) priced.

An e-book that costs the same as a printed book doesn’t feel right. No trees died to make it. No heavy machinery ran to print it. No planes flew to ship it. You might need to buy one of those new $139 Barnes & Noble Nooks, announced this week, to be able to read it. So why should you have to spend as much as you would for a heavy hardcover book to own it?

Blame the latest phase of the digital content revolution, now more than ten years strong. As first happened with music, then movies, then print news, the book publishing industry is experiencing a shake-up of rules and roles. In particular, the changing relationship between the book publisher (the company that creates books) and the book retailer (the company that sells books) is causing a chain reaction of confusion, mistrust, and price hikes.The good news is that this phenomenon is inspiring enterprising startups to rethink aging models of book pricing.

The bad news is that it’s pissing people off.

Need proof? Look up Emma Donoghue’s Room: A Novel on Amazon. You can get a new hardcover copy for $14.49, while the downloadable Kindle edition costs slightly less at $11.99. Scroll a bit down the product page, and you’ll see that the average customer review out of 829 (at this writing) is a favorable 4.2 stars out of 5. People like the book.

On the Kindle Store page for the book, scroll some two-thirds of the way down to the “Tags Customers Associate with This Product” section, and you’ll notice that nine out of the top ten tags for this book have nothing to do with its page-turning storytelling. The book, last time I looked, had 105 tags for “too expensive for Kindle,” 85 tags for “9 99 boycott”, 65 tags for “overpriced-kindle-version,” and so on. People don’t like the price.

The 9 99 boycott tag, in particular, was created by Kindle e-book users to express their outrage that the prices of some e-books approach if not exceed the price of their hardcover versions. So far, 5892 Amazon users have tagged electronic Kindle books 36,704 times with the 9 99 boycott tag (here’s how to use the tag).

This reader revolt comes at a tipping point for the book industry. According to the Association of American Publishers, e-book sales reached $164.1 million for the months of January and February 2011, a 169.4 percent increase when compared with the same period in 2010. For the same period, sales of combined categories of print books fell 24.8 percent, with $441.7 million sold.

So while print book sales still exceed e-book sales in absolute dollars, we’re seeing their final glory days. The bankrupt Borders bookstore chain, closing 30 percent of its brick-and-mortar stores, has reported a $24.3 million loss for March. Barnes & Noble executive Marc Parrish said at the GigaOm Big Data conference that the book business was shifting to digital faster than the music, movie, and newspaper industries.

Amazon announced in January that Kindle books have overtaken paperback books as the most popular format on Amazon.com (not so much information on sales of The Kindle), and Forrester Research expects e-book consumers to spend nearly $3 billion on e-books in 2015.

Big book publishers are experiencing the shift to digital. “We've gone from a 90/10 physical and e-book split last year, to closer to 80/20, and expect that to increase again next year to 70/30,” says Maja Thomas, senior vice president of Hachette Digital at the Hachette Book Group, via e-mail while attending this week’s Book Expo. “It is too early to tell how the different paper formats will be affected--although I would expect most mass market buyers to migrate to e [e-books].”

Hachette is referred to as a big-six book publisher, along with HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Group, Random House, and Simon & Schuster. Its suspense imprint Mullholland will be producing many digital-only titles, and it is making illustrated children’s books available on the Barnes & Noble Nook Color.

Publishers Strong-Arm Retailers

The move to digital has traditional book publishers scared, which has resulted in a power struggle with book retailers for the right to price books. The score right now is “advantage book publisher,” but the consequence is that e-book prices don’t reflect the normal laws of supply and demand or the current costs of producing a digital book.

“The pricing is a little wonky right now,” says James L. McQuivey, Ph.D., vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research, about e-books. It didn’t start that way. When e-books were new, retailers set their prices the way they wanted, but lower than print books--generally at $9.99 for new book releases.

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E-Books Are Alive ! And Posing As 'Big Brother'



We Know What You Read     

 Whether the ability of digital books to "drill down" analyze how a reader reads a book is good or bad (I'm sure it's great for marketing strategy) --- I am uneasy with a 'Big Brother' reading me as I'm reading something --- Scary as shit, know what I mean?

Privacy is a wondrous thing, and, I'm afraid, taken way too much for granted. We're losing it big time --- Actually, we're throwing it away in our pursuit of the glitter of new gadgets offering immediate gratification and convenience.

Damn if I want someone or something analyzing what I highlight in a book or how I mark it up or notes I make in the margin.

Give me the good old privacy of a printed book or should I say 'print privacy'.

In fact, in the future, this just might be one of the things that will reinvigorate the relevance of the printed word.

Alexandra Alter writes this insight in the WSJ:

Your E-Book Is Reading You

It takes the average reader just seven hours to read the final book in Suzanne Collins's "Hunger Games" trilogy on the Kobo e-reader—about 57 pages an hour. Nearly 18,000 Kindle readers have highlighted the same line from the second book in the series: "Because sometimes things happen to people and they're not equipped to deal with them." And on Barnes & Noble's Nook, the first thing that most readers do upon finishing the first "Hunger Games" book is to download the next one.

In the past, publishers and authors had no way of knowing what happens when a reader sits down with a book. Does the reader quit after three pages, or finish it in a single sitting? Do most readers skip over the introduction, or read it closely, underlining passages and scrawling notes in the margins? Now, e-books are providing a glimpse into the story behind the sales figures, revealing not only how many people buy particular books, but how intensely they read them.

For centuries, reading has largely been a solitary and private act, an intimate exchange between the reader and the words on the page. But the rise of digital books has prompted a profound shift in the way we read, transforming the activity into something measurable and quasi-public.

The major new players in e-book publishing—Amazon, Apple and Google—can easily track how far readers are getting in books, how long they spend reading them and which search terms they use to find books. Book apps for tablets like the iPad, Kindle Fire and Nook record how many times readers open the app and how much time they spend reading. Retailers and some publishers are beginning to sift through the data, gaining unprecedented insight into how people engage with books.

Publishing has lagged far behind the rest of the entertainment industry when it comes to measuring consumers' tastes and habits. TV producers relentlessly test new shows through focus groups; movie studios run films through a battery of tests and retool them based on viewers' reactions. But in publishing, reader satisfaction has largely been gauged by sales data and reviews—metrics that offer a postmortem measure of success but can't shape or predict a hit. That's beginning to change as publishers and booksellers start to embrace big data, and more tech companies turn their sights on publishing.

Barnes & Noble, which accounts for 25% to 30% of the e-book market through its Nook e-reader, has recently started studying customers' digital reading behavior. Data collected from Nooks reveals, for example, how far readers get in particular books, how quickly they read and how readers of particular genres engage with books. Jim Hilt, the company's vice president of e-books, says the company is starting to share their insights with publishers to help them create books that better hold people's attention.
The stakes are high for the company as it seeks a greater share of the e-book market. Sales of Nook devices rose 45% this past fiscal year, and e-book sales for the Nook rose 119%. Overall, Nook devices and e-books generated $1.3 billion, compared to $880 million the previous year. Microsoft recently invested $300 million for a 17.6% stake of the Nook.

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Publishing Industry On The Cusp of “Transformational Growth”

At least that's what Barnes & Noble chairman, Len Riggio, thinks and I tend to agree with him...and have said so numerous times on both my blogs.

There has definitely been a resurgence in reading, and, by natural extension, bookselling...due primarily to the new digital e-readers and peripheral tech gadgets...but, a surprising growth in printed book technology and sales has also been hooked to all this new digital enthusiasm.

And printed book sales are also up among the younger, eReader-exposed generation.

My related posts on this topic are listed together here (Publishing/Writing: Insights, News, Intrigue Blog) and here (Writers Welcome Blog).

These latest details from Publishers Weekly by Jim Milliot:

Riggio Tells Publishers 'Transformational Growth' Ahead

In an upbeat and optimistic keynote speech about the book market at the annual meeting of the Association of American Publishers, Barnes & Noble chairman Len Riggio said the industry is on the cusp of “transformational growth” led by the sale of digital content, and he urged publishers to produce different kinds of e-books ranging from novellas to books that can be updated. He said it was wrong to view bookselling and publishing as a “zero sum game” in which the only way to grow is to grab market share, with a limit to the number of books people will buy. Riggio said he sees the digital marketplace expanding at a greater pace than many analysts, and said the sale of e-books is adding new customers and is just not replacing bound books. With the addition of e-books, B&N’s long tail is getting even longer, Riggio said. He noted that during the peak two-week holiday period not only did digital sales soar but comp sales of print books rose as well.

As bullish as Riggio is on e-books, he told publishers B&N remains committed to operating its network of stores. He reiterated comments that the bricks-and-mortar stores are crucial to the retailer’s strategy of selling the Nook family of devices and related content. “Our members who own a Nook are buying more than 60% more book units in total, and are spending an average of 120% more with Barnes & Noble,”. Riggio said. Customers have bought “millions of devices,” Riggio said, explaining that some customers come in to a store, browse the shelves and buy an e-book and sometimes buy both an e-book and print book.

He was glad publishers had come to value the importance of full service bookstores and once again predicted that as the mass market paperback fades mass merchants will either downsize or abandon their sale of books. The new bookselling landscape will likely feature, in addition to B&N, smaller format stores and specialty stores as well as independents. Riggio said, telling publishers that he is more confident than ever that booksellers and publishers are aligned.

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Information Overload on Writing, Agents and Publishing!

Welcome to my blog! My name is John R. Austin and I'm a writer. I am starting this blog because of the info overload "out there" relating to writing, getting literary agents and the state of the publishing industry in general!

Check these stats from an article by Walt Shiel. Are they true or not?

The “Hard Truths” About Book PublishingArticle by Walt Shiel

Let’s consider some of the “hard truths” about the publishing industry.If you’re at all serious about publishing, whether self-publishing or not, you really need to be aware of some basic statistics about the industry. They aren’t pretty and may tend to be discouraging. But would you rather jump into these treacherous waters with a head full of platitudes and myths… or with a clear-eyed view of how things really are?I think you are far better off understanding what’s really going on and what you, as an author and would-be self-publisher, are really up against.

So, without further belaboring the point, here goes.Book publishing in the U.S. has exploded over the past few years. Here are the number of new English-language titles published per year in the U.S., as reported by R. R. Bowker (the keeper of U.S. ISBNs and publisher of Books-in-Print):

195,000 titles in 2004
295,000 in 2006 (a 51% increase in two years)
411,000 in 2007 (a 39% increase in only one year)

In 2004, there were just under one million books in print (new and backlist). Last year, there were almost three million in print. Offset printing (the traditional method using the large roll- or sheet-fed printing equipment that is cost-effective for larger print runs only) accounted for only about 1% of the 411,000 new titles printed in 2007; the rest were printed using digital printing technology (print-on-demand) that is only cost-effective for short print runs.Why do you suppose the number of new titles more than doubled in three years? Can you spell subsidy publishing (in the guise of the plethora of self-proclaimed “self-publishing companies”)? Three decades ago, there were only 357 publishers with books listed in Books-in-Print. Today, there are only six major (New York) publishers, maybe 400 mid-size publishers, and almost 100,000 small publishers (which includes the large number of self-publishers). More than 10,000 new (mostly small) publishers go into business each year. Of course, many of those small publishers fail every year, too, but that’s common in most businesses (lots of new start-ups quickly fail).The six major New York publishers are Random House, Penguin Putnam, HarperCollins, Holtzbrinck, Hachette (formerly Time Warner Books), and Simon & Schuster. Of those, only Simon & Schuster is still American-owned. Ever wonder why more and more foreign authors are being published by major “American” publishers? Now that you know how many new titles are published and how many publishers are publishing them, you might wonder how many are being sold? That is a far more difficult question to answer reliably, since publishers are notorious for overstating actual book sales. However, we can turn again to Bowker for some statistics:

93% of all titles sell less than 1,000 copies
Overall average sales for all titles is about 500 copies
7% of titles account for 87% of sales (mostly from the big NY publishers)

So, where are those books actually sold? If you guessed mostly in bookstores, guess again. Here’s the breakdown (the ranges are because it depends on what source you rely on):

Chain bookstores account for 25-33%
Independent bookstores (including used book stores) account for 3-10%Online book retailers account for 21% (almost all Amazon.com)

That means 36-52% of all book sales come from non-bookstore outlets. What’s a non-bookstore outlet? Gift shops, grocery stores, drug stores, “big box” stores (Wal-Mart, Costco, etc.), book clubs, back-of-the-room sales, direct-to-consumer sales, and on and on. The opportunities are limited only by your imagination and marketing efforts.You can choose to self-publish and compete in the bookstores for that 28-43% of the total market, which means you’re competing against Random House, Simon & Schuster et al who can afford to buy those end-cap and front window display locations. Or you can choose to compete primarily in the online and non-bookstore markets that represent the remaining.The choice is yours and should be driven by your detailed marketing plan for your book. You do have a detailed marketing plan, right? Trying to sell books without a marketing plan is like taking a long trip into unknown territory without a map — you might reach your destination but the odds are against you.If you don’t really know where you’re going, how will you know when you get there? Or when you’re way off course?
7:44:00 PM
by John Austin
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Merely Digital Authors May Not Have Clout To Establish Big Name In Writing

GAME-CHANGING technologies are upon us 

We all realize, of course, change is in the air RE publishing. Written content is being delivered by new tech media formats, content itself is morphing into a 3-dimensional entity containing videos, interactivity, real-time updates, graphics dripping with dynamic reality, new biz models are rapidly replacing older ones, etc., etc., etc. ...

But, big house publishers are fighting the tsunami change tooth and nail ... AND they still retain a big bargaining point:

"The technology and the devices are with someone else but the publishers have the content and the authors."

For how long though?

Here is an insightful view by Indian author, Binoo K John, in Tehelka, India's Independent Weekly News Magazine:

A new world of books is upon us

Indications are that the book in printed form is nearing an end. The wonders of a digital world and its commercial lure may be too much to resist

GAME-CHANGING technologies are upon us before we can adjust to their presence. We dread them and often we pretend that the game would not change. Closing our eyes to change is an old human habit. We have no answers so we remain smug. This is happening to the publishing industry worldwide. Technology has changed, the devices have changed, the economics has changed, the rules have changed and so has the scale.


So will the book, the printed and bound book, be a thing of the past?

Can the digital library, the Kindle store, the Apple Store, the many e-readers and tablets finish the book and the wooden bookshelf that decorated our studies and occupied our minds?

It’s possible. The only reason why the printed book might survive for a while is that publishers do not want the traditional model to vanish so fast. The brick and mortar world of publishing is too quaint and too good to be closed so fast and forever. Also, reader habits do not change that quickly. But the change is upon us. How do we cope? When Julian Barnes, while accepting the Booker Prize, sounded a clarion call to keep the bound book alive, he was pointing once again to the imminent danger: the printed book is no longer viable. That is why he wrote a short novel and was duly awarded. This year’s Booker Prize was a business award as well for it wanted to tell publishers the 1,000-page novel is over in printed form.

So, how will it pan out? School texts, either subsidised by the state or privately, would survive for many years. That is a huge number and form the majority of all books printed. The hardcover has almost disappeared. Fiction and nonfiction, including comics and graphic novels, would be printed in small numbers just to give it a physical feel. Actual sales would be in digital bookstores.

The pattern in India would be the same as in the West, because devices used for reading or downloading books are available here though not all books are. So, books would be bought digitally. Libraries in India too would have access to huge digital warehouses. The cost of digitally downloaded books would be lesser than printed books even if the payment is in dollars. Books are bought by the elite or educated classes in every society so they would have easy access to digital sources and have the money to pay as well.

PUBLISHERS WOULD still retain a big bargaining point. The technology and the ...

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Digital Age Presents an Opportunity Not Threat for Printed Matter

Printed books (including non-academic books) are not dead. In fact they are growing by 15% to 18% per year in India, China and other Asian countries...And Asian countries are cutting edge in new digital tech, which encompasses all the new eReaders, eBooks and ePublishing platforms.

"Technology is merging things, but the book is still at the center"...Indian critic Sunil Sethi.

Some key, insightful and juicy perspectives are jumping forth from the Asia-Pacific's largest annual literary event, the DSC Jaipur Literary Festival, taking place right now between 21-25 Jan in Jaipur, India. This event is attended by literary giants from all over the world.

Want to publish a printed book to a large market? Go global and publish in India!

This from Reuters by Henry Foy:

The book is dead? Long live the book, authors say

Rubbishing those who hail the digital age as the end for books, publishing industry players and best-selling authors on Saturday hailed a new dawn for publishing, with India's voracious readers at its forefront.

Book sales have been squeezed in recent years by e-books and the huge success of Amazon.Com's Kindle reader, but India's booming publishing market is proof of the physical book's staying power, said participants at Asia's largest literary event, the DSC Jaipur Literary Festival.

"You read something on Twitter and you know it is ephemeral," said Patrick French, a best-selling historian and biographer who has written extensively on Asia. "Yet the book is a solid thing. The book endures."

Regional language novelists and poets rubbed shoulders with Nobel laureates and Booker Prize winners at the seventh festival to be held in the historical pink-tinged city of Jaipur, the capital of India's northwestern Rajasthan state.

Hundreds of book lovers attended a debate on the fate of printed books in the sun-drenched grounds of a former palace as part of the free five-day event.

"The idea of the book dying comes up all the time. It's wrong. I think this is a wonderful time for books, to enlarge the audience of the book and draw in more readers," said John Makinson, Chairman and CEO of the Penguin Group of publishers.

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How Much Does It Really Cost to Produce an E-Book ?

Someone is making a ton of money!

How far apart are print book and ebook production costs ?

I ran across an interesting article from a favorite source the other day and encountered some production cost figures that I'm not so sure are telling an accurate story.

Left me a little confused [nothing new about that :)] --- I was dog-tired when I first scanned it and pounded out this post, so I may not have interpreted all as well as I should.

Key excerpt from article:

“We still pay for the author advance, the editing, the copy-editing, the proofreading, the cover and interior design, the illustrations, the sales kit, the marketing efforts, the publicity, and the staff that needs to coordinate all of the details that make books possible,” said Bob Miller in February 2009 on the HarperStudio blog (which has been defunct since April 2010 when the publishing start-up folded) when he was president and publisher of that company; he is now president and publisher of Workman Publishing. “The costs are primarily in these previous stages; the difference between physical and electronic production is minimal.”

That so ? From my initial research I had reached a different conclusion.

Perhaps it's in the way Bob miller is splitting his hairs or framing his parameters.

I do believe that content is king and should drive cost/value, but ...

This from Digital Book World by Jeremy Greenfield: 

Consumers Upset and Confused Over E-Book Pricing

Publishers are making a killing on e-books because they cost nothing to produce, distribute and sell and are almost 100% pure profit. At least, that’s what many consumers think.

“E-books cost almost as much as printed books but are phenomenally cheaper to create,” said Trevor Doyle, 39, a teacher from Ione, Calif.

“There’s so much less cost involved – no material, relatively low distribution cost, no inventory costs, transportation,” said Michelle Barrineau, 42, a sales analyst from Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.

While consumers understand the basic costs involved in the bricks-and-mortar retail world, they don’t understand the costs involved in selling something that is, well, much, much smaller than a bread box.

“With today’s pricing, the profit in e-books is crazy,” said Greg Harris, 49, who lives in San Carlos, Calif., and is a vice president of sales and marketing for an electronics company. “Without the need to stock inventory and move paper all around the country, there should be a significant discount in the pricing model.”

“When I saw how much these e-books cost, I was amazed,” said Heidi Barron, 48, a public relations professional from Atlanta. “There is no printing, no shipping, no warehousing, no retailer. There is simply the transmission of the content through the Internet. Someone is making a ton of money.”

On that last point, Barron may be on to something. Publishing companies that publicly reported earnings for 2011 followed a similar pattern: flat sales, increased income. Digital Book World and others have speculated that higher profit margins on e-book sales are the culprit.

With the recent news about the Department of Justice lawsuit against some of the largest U.S. publishers and Apple alleging an e-book a price-fixing scheme, consumers are more aware than ever that there is a price battle going on in the e-book world. They just may not be aware of who is on what side, what each party wants and why, and what is really at stake.

“Why the frick-frack do these major publishers think it’s okay to put out a paperback at half the price of an e-book they can upload and forget?” said Diane Castle, 36, a writer from Dallas. “To me, this defied logic – until I stumbled upon a news article about the Justice Department’s price-fixing law suit yesterday. Now it all makes sense.”

“I do read e-books and am disgusted with the price that is usually charged,” said Sarah McGill, 37, a freelance writer from San Antonio. “I truly believe that the larger companies participated in some sort of price-fixing.”

So, How Much Does It Cost to Produce an E-Book?

Read and learn more

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The Scant Economics in Book Publishing

So few bucks!

First of all tonight, I want to wish all my readers a very happy and safe Fourth of July celebration. Happy Birthday, USA!

In this post I want to discuss a topic that we all probably know a little about - at least in part: The cash flow (or lack of it) in the current publishing landscape.

I just LOVE IT when I hear someones first person experience in publishing their first book. Especially from an experienced journalist or writer.

This scenario allows us to relate and learn from another's first-hand endeavors and will, hopefully, encourage questions and/or recommendations from others depending on their own past experience and position in the publishing food chain.

This from Thomas Lee, a San Francisco Chronicle Business Columnist:

Are there brutal economics in book publishing? Let me tell you...

Writing a book was like disappointing my parents all over again.

Like many Chinese immigrants, they wanted their only son to be a high-earning doctor or lawyer. Instead, he became a newspaper journalist who valued career satisfaction over dollars and cents. (Don’t worry, Mom and Dad, I sometimes wonder if I’m related to you, too).

So to my surprise, my mom was unusually excited when I told her two years ago that I was taking some time off to pen a book.

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “You make lots of money!”

I suspected she was confusing my project — a niche business book about retail and technology called “Rebuilding Empires” — with the work of J.K. Rowling: “Harry Potter and the Resurrection of the Big Box Store.”

Little did she know, there are some brutal economics underpinning the book publishing industry. As I would soon discover firsthand, most books — even those published by major houses like Random House, Hachette and Simon & Schuster — don’t make much money or any at all.

Blame it on a number of factors: the low-cost dominance of Amazon; competition with other entertainment venues like Netflix, cable TV and cineplexes; or the fact that I picked a niche topic in the business world.

In any case, an unknown first-time author like myself pretty much assumes nearly all of the financial risk.

I was actually one of the luckier ones — at least my publisher offered a modest advance. Many authors don’t even get that.

Not surprisingly, that advance disappeared quickly when I took a three-month unpaid leave to research the book. How else would I find the time to work on it?

Unless you’re independently wealthy, the choice comes down to begging your employer for a leave or not sleeping for the next 12 months. (Which happened anyway).

The publisher agreed to print about 5,000 copies, which it distributed to Barnes & Noble, Amazon and various independent bookstores and wholesalers. In order for the publisher to recoup its advance, “Rebuilding Empires” needs to sell 2,000 copies. After that, I get paid a percentage of the list price of each book sold, a royalty rate that gradually goes up the higher the sales.

That doesn’t seem so bad. But here’s the thing that most people don’t really know: Publishers have near-zero marketing budgets to promote your book.

It seems counterintuitive. To make money, you must spend money. Yet the author is ultimately responsible for spreading the word.

But maybe the book will build some momentum after positive reviews, right?

Think again. Outside major names like the New York Times and Los Angeles Times, the media hardly reviews any kind of book these days — never mind nonfiction business books like “Rebuilding Empires.”

The publisher recently sent me some sales data: since December, net sales for “Rebuilding Empires” (that is, sales minus the number of copies retailers ultimately shipped back to the publisher) totaled about 1,500 units and 100 e-books. Those figures also include international sales, from Great Britain, France, Canada, New Zealand (of all places) and Japan.

I’m actually pretty pleased with the results. Despite the lack of marketing muscle, “Rebuilding Empires” is considered something of a success, selling about a third of its printed run in just seven months and about 80 percent of the target set by the publisher to recoup the advance.

All in all, “Rebuilding Empires” will probably turn a profit, though I really can’t say when.

Until then, my mom will have to temper her expectations.

Read Thomas Lee's original article (with comments) in the San Francisco Chronicle.

The Writers Welcome Blog is available on your Kindle here :)

      

Research/Resource article: http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Are-there-brutal-economics-in-book-publishing-6363578.php

Inside Random House's New Digital Transition Team

Ever wonder how the BIG publishing houses are organizationally structured to deal with everyday publishing tasks? Especially in the present upheavel and transition turmoil? Good preview for those who want to enter the more formal publishing industry. John's editorial note: This writer sees the publishing industry as becoming de-centralized and more individual-empowered.

Today's post gives an insight into Random House's (RH) personnel structure and decision-making process through two high-ranking memos.

Jim Milliot, Publishers Weekly, reports on the memos:

In memos distributed to Random House employees Thursday, chairman Markus Dohle and Madeline McIntosh, president of sales, operation and digital, detailed new plans for the publisher's digital operation while also announcing new homes and leadership for the audio and information group units that had been part of the old Crown Publishing Group.

Random House Audio Publishing and the Fodor's Travel Group will now report to Nina von Moltke who has been promoted to v-p digital publishing development, a newly created position. Amanda D'Acierno publisher of RH Audio, and Tim Jarrell, Fodor's publisher, will report to von Moltke. RH's large print operations and Living Language brand will be overseen by D'Acierno. The other parts of the information group--The Princeton Review, Sylvan Learning and Prima Games--have become part of the Children's Book division. Tom Russell, head of TPR and Sylvan, and Debra Kempker, head of Prima, will report to children division president Chip Gibson.

In explaining the moves, Dohle said TPR, Sylvan and Prima "share a core consumer base" with the children's group and will benefit "from the educational orientation and consumer-marketing focus" of the children's group. Moving RH Audio and Fodor's under von Moltke will let them continue to further develop their digital capabilities.

Von Moltke's appointment to v-p of digital development is one of three appointments made by McIntosh to create a senior leadership team that will direct new digital units that will support digital initiatives within the Random House publishing groups. In addition to von Moltke, Amanda Close has been named v-p ditgital sales and business development. She will lead a team that will establish strategy, terms, policy and programs relative to new business models, identify new business opportunities and mange existing digital relationships with different partners. Pete McCarthy has been appointed v-p, online marketing charged with developing online methods to fulfill his mission to "partner with our sales reps, our publishers, and our retailers to ensure we're maximizing our ability to convert consumer interest to incremental purchases." All three report to McIntosh.

Matt Shatz, who as v-p of digital had been a primary spokesperson for Random's digital efforts, has left the company to join Nokia.

The memos, which contain a number a new appointments, are printed below.


MARKUS DOHLE

CHAIRMAN AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER

MEMBER OF THE EXECUTIVE BOARD OF BERTELSMANN AG

February 25, 2010

TO EVERYONE AT RANDOM HOUSE, INC.

We want to share with you today our next steps forward in accelerating the company's transition to digital, growing our physical book sales, and increasing the efficiency of our customer- author- and publisher-support services. To best position ourselves to accomplish these strategic priorities we are making a number of changes and appointments in our Sales, Operations and Digital areas under Madeline McIntosh, which she presents in accompanying memos. We also have completed the new lines of reporting we began undertaking in December for the Audio division and for the businesses that have comprised the Information Group.

Madeline is announcing the formation of new teams that will be fully dedicated to digital-content development, digital sales development, and online marketing. I am very excited about these moves and about the additions she is making to her senior leadership team. Their mandate is to create and to catalyze publishing and entrepreneurial opportunities, both self-starting and in partnership with our publishing divisions. The e-publishing and online marketing activities originated and executed by the Crown, Knopf Doubleday, Random House, and Random House Children's Books Publishing Groups will be indispensable to our authors and to our creative and commercial growth, and I am confident that the new support provided to those groups at the corporate level will be key ingredients in ensuring our success during and after the digital expansion.

Among Madeline's new executive team, I have worked most closely with Nina von Moltke, who has reported to me as Vice President, Corporate Development. Nina's new responsibilities as Vice President, Digital Publishing Development, are a natural progression from her previous role in which she applied her tremendous understanding of the evolving digital-publishing financial models to evaluating new corporate and divisional business opportunities. Aside from her new task of supporting the development of our digital content offerings across the divisions, Nina will also oversee the Random House Audio Publishing and Fodor's Travel Groups. Both groups provide excellent models of successfully transitioning from analog to digital businesses, and I know that they and our traditional trade publishing groups will benefit by having them integrated into the corporate-level digital publishing team.

Amanda D'Acierno, Vice President, Publisher, Random House Audio, Books on Tape, Random House Large Print, and Tim Jarrell, Vice President, Publisher, Fodors, will continue to run their respective businesses, setting and implementing their publishing priorities and choices, reporting to Nina. We will further integrate the publishing activities under the Living Language brand into the digital content group, reporting to Amanda D'Acierno.

We also foresee expanded opportunities for The Princeton Review, Sylvan Learning, and Prima Games imprints as we bring them into the Random House Children's Books division. Tom Russell, who leads TPR and Sylvan, and Debra Kempker, who heads Prima, will report to Chip Gibson. The former two businesses will complement and benefit from the educational orientation and consumer-marketing focus of Chip's publishing teams. Prima and the Children's Group share a core consumer base as well as a like focus on brand management and strong license partnerships. The combination of this considerable expertise will benefit them both.

Children's Books will further expand to include the Tricycle Books young readers publishing program under Nicole Geiger, currently part of Crown's Ten Speed Press. Tricycle now will be a Berkeley-based imprint of Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers and its frontlist and backlist will continue to be sold by Children's Sales.

These new homes for Audio, Fodor's, The Princeton Review, Prima, Sylvan Learning, and Living Language; our newly established digital-development teams; and Madeline's appointments in Sales and Operations will help us grow sales and foster greater collaboration internally and with our authors, customers, and readers. I thank you for your support of these growth initiatives and for all our colleagues who will implement them.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________MADELINE MADELINE McINTOSH

PRESIDENT

SALES, OPERATIONS AND DIGITAL

February 25, 2010

TO EVERYONE AT RANDOM HOUSE, INC.

Since returning to Random House in December, I have had the great experience of re-engaging with many of my former colleagues in Sales and Operations. I've been gratified to learn more about the ways in which the teams led by ANDREW WEBER, Senior V.P., Director, Operations and Technology, JOAN DEMAYO, Senior V.P., Director, Children's Sales, and JACI UPDIKE, Senior V.P., Director, Adult Sales, have risen to the various marketplace challenges presented in the last few years. Of those, one of the greatest has been to create new systems, policies and programs to harness the opportunities presented by the explosive growth of the digital channel.

While everyone in my group has played a part in "managing digital" over the last year, the time has come to be more explicit regarding those individuals to whom we will look for digital business leadership in the future. The great news is that, in working with Andrew, Joan and Jaci to map out our needs for our digital and physical businesses, we have found that the people we need are already here at Random House: we have been able to realign our group to provide the resources required to ensure healthy digital growth while also continuing to invest in maintaining our leadership position in the print marketplace.

It is in this context that I'm delighted to announce the new leadership structure for Random House Sales, Operations and Digital. Andrew, Jaci and Joan continue in their current roles. Joining them as my direct reports are: NINA VON MOLTKE, V.P., Digital Publishing Development; AMANDA CLOSE, V.P., Digital Sales and Business Development; and PETE MCCARTHY, V.P., Online and Digital Marketing. Their new roles and departments are detailed below. A number of related changes within Andrew, Joan and Jaci's departments are described in a following memo.

Digital Publishing Development

As V.P., Digital Publishing Development, NINA VON MOLTKE will have two key areas of responsibility: partnering with our publishing divisions to help accelerate and broaden their own digital programs, and oversight for those Random House, Inc. publishing lists for which digital distribution and web-enabled commerce are already the core business.

Reporting to Nina will be ANDREA SHEEHAN, formerly V.P. & Director, Digital Strategy and Business Development at the Random House Publishing Group, now in the newly created position of V.P., Digital Publishing and Product Development, which she will take on upon her return from maternity leave. In Andrea's time in the Random House Publishing Group, she has provided critical leadership in the area of digital product innovation: together with her team, Andrea has spearheaded various initiatives around e-book format development, e-only content, IP development, redesign of online presences and mobile applications for major brands and authors, and innovations in digital marketing tools.

A Random House hallmark and point of pride has always been our decentralized approach to publishing entrepreneurship, and that will not change for our expanded digital mandate. By acting as facilitators and catalysts, Nina and her team's role will be to help each publishing division bring its own unique vision to market as successfully as possible. Initial examples of services to be provided by this team include: strategic support in driving digital growth for key content categories; expertise in alternative business models (such as serializations, subscriptions, and advertising), content bundling or disaggregation; and start-up support for original digital publishing programs. The team will also be responsible for the ongoing backlist conversion project.

Also reporting to Nina will be AMANDA D'ACIERNO, V.P., Publisher, Random House Audio, Books on Tape and Living Language; TIM JARRELL, V.P., Publisher, Fodor's Travel Publishing; FABRIZIO LAROCCA, V.P., Creative Director; and SUSAN LIVINGSTON, newly appointed as Director, Digital Business Management and Planning. All four are crucial "digital veterans" who will now be able to share their expertise more broadly.

To ensure that our digital efforts receive the appropriate publicity support and that we communicate effectively to our internal and industry stakeholders, SHEILA O'SHEA is named Director of Publicity, Digital Initiatives, reporting to Nina. She will work closely with the publicity departments across the divisions, as well as coordinate publicity efforts for the Fodor's Travel group. Stuart Applebaum will continue to be our main media contact for any major corporate announcements and inquiries.

Digital Sales and Business Development

AMANDA CLOSE, currently V.P., Group Sales Director, Crown Publishing Group, will now become our V.P., Digital Sales and Business Development. Amanda earlier served as our V.P., Online Sales, and she stepped in with great agility when Jaci and I asked her to coordinate the cross-functional team evaluating Apple's new e-book program. Her expertise, infectious enthusiasm, and astute analytical, technological, and product instincts will be invaluable in maintaining our position as the market leader in digital sales.

Reporting to Amanda will be JEFF WEBER, formerly Associate Sales Director, Amazon, now Director, Digital Sales; RANDI ROSENKRANZ, Senior Manager, Digital Channel Development; and LILLY KIM, Account Manager, Digital Sales.

This team's responsibilities will include: establishing strategy, terms, policy and programs relative to new business models; identifying and prioritizing new opportunities for sales or licensing; connecting potential partners with the appropriate internal stakeholders; developing expertise in activities in other media categories that might apply to our own; and crafting programmatic merchandising support for our publishers' new lists of original digital content.

They also will manage the overall digital relationships with our existing partners, including Amazon, Audible, Barnes & Noble, Google, Ingram Digital, Overdrive and Sony. Selling and merchandising our publishers' lists will continue to reside within Jaci and Joan's existing Online Sales departments, thus providing our publishers and accounts with sole points of contact at the product level. By focusing entirely on the opportunities and challenges of the digital channel, Amanda's team will ensure we are maximizing volume and profitability, embracing innovation, and learning from our experience.

Online and Digital Marketing

PETE MCCARTHY, V.P., Online Marketing has been leading Random House's corporate consumer online marketing efforts for the past two and a half years. During this time, he and his team have partnered with divisional marketers and with Chris Hart's Applications Development group to create increasingly innovative approaches to reaching consumers online. While his department was originally created to explore direct-to-consumer sales, they have found their greatest success in driving consumers directly to retailers' shopping carts - whether on the web or in bricks & mortar. Their recent work with Doubleday on the "second wave" campaign for Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol is an excellent example of the sales magic that can be created by combining corporate technology and analytics expertise with the publisher's stellar creative campaign.

To be successful in connecting our books with the largest audience possible, it is exactly this type of innovative, retailer-aligned approach that we believe will help to set Random House ahead of our competition. Therefore, we are now formally repositioning and expanding this department. As a member of our digital senior management team, Pete's mission will be to partner with our sales reps, our publishers, and our retailers to ensure we're maximizing our ability to convert consumer interest to incremental purchases.

Newly reporting to Pete will be CHRISTINE MCNAMARA, currently our V.P., Director, Adult Sales, Borders Group and Books-a-Million. Taking on the newly-created role of V.P., Partnership Development, she will be fully dedicated to integrating our online marketing efforts with those of our retailers and vice versa. We can look forward to having her bring her deep understanding of sales and publishing (as well as her excellent sense of humor) to bear in these new efforts.

Continuing to report directly to Pete is CHELSEA VAUGHN, Director, Online Marketing Operations. Chelsea will oversee the project management and analytics components of the campaigns in which her highly creative team, which includes Senior Managers Erica Curtis and Joanne Korn, is involved and ensure the dissemination to marketers throughout the company of any new techniques or tools created or discovered at the corporate level. Her team has continually helped us improve our ability to precisely and efficiently spur frontlist and backlist sales.

Pete's department will continue to have oversight for randomhouse.com, corporately-managed e-mail marketing lists, and our activity on Facebook, Twitter, and elsewhere on the web. They will be working to further develop category-based online communities such as suvudu.com, the highly successful science fiction & fantasy site launched last year. Making all these efforts possible are CAMILLE COLLETT, Director, Web Production and JINNY KWON, Creative Director, newly transferring from Crown online marketing.

As with Nina von Moltke's digital publishing department, Pete's team will act as incubators and catalysts, adding extra creativity and support to the excellent title and category marketing programs that will continue to be anchored at the divisional level.

As you may already know, Matt Shatz, until now V.P., Digital, has accepted an exciting new opportunity as Head of Strategic Content Relationships at Nokia, where he will be working to develop and grow Nokia's digital content business. Matt has been instrumental in advancing the Random House digital strategy and initiatives since 2007. While all of us are very sorry to see him go, we do take comfort in the fact that we'll be able to work with him as a partner as he establishes Nokia's publishing related initiatives.

Please join Andrew, Jaci, Joan and me in congratulating Nina, Pete, Amanda and their teams on their exciting new responsibilities as we expand and advance our digital-publishing opportunities.

The Keys to a Barnes and Noble Book Signing

Getting book signings at major bookstore chains is a real plus in marketing and selling your book. However, if you are self-published or have a print-on-demand (POD) book, it is more difficult to arrange these type of book signings.

But, do not despair! There are ways around the obstacles to obtain major bookstore signings AND other means available to you: independent bookstore signings and speaking engagements with backroom sales that allow you to keep more of the retail price, to name two.

Sallie Goetsch, a writer and small business consultant, has written an insightful article on ezinearticles.com explaining how to best obtain book signings, what the major chain book stores have to go through to provide you with one and what you need to have in place to land a major signing. I present her article here for your information:

Dan Poynter wrote in Successful Nonfiction that authors should never host autograph parties. Instead of merely signing their books, the thing to do was offer "mini-seminars." In an August 27th, 2006 interview with Tee Morris for "The Survival Guide to Writing Fantasy," Annie Hololob, Community Relations Manager for the Harrisonburg, VA Barnes & Noble, confirms the value of making your book signing into an event. (Tee himself apparently has a habit of staging sword fights during his book signings, which definitely livens things up.) If you want to have an event at a Barnes & Noble, the Community Relations Manager is the person to talk to. This is the person who knows whether the store's customers are the right market for your book, or whether you'd do better at a store in a different city. (My local Barnes & Noble, for instance, doesn't even have author events, just a children's story time.) This is the person whose good side you want to get on.

There are two important things you need before you start assembling your press kit and cultivating the CRM at your local Barnes & Noble, however. Without them, there's no way the store can carry your books. Large chain bookstores have to operate by certain rules in order to stay in business, and those rules may exclude you and your book for reasons that have nothing to do with your merits as a writer.

Distribution

In order for BN to order, stock, and sell your books, they have to be available through a wholesaler or distributor such as Ingram or Baker & Taylor--one BN already has a relationship with. That means BN can buy the book at a wholesale price, usually 40-60% off the cover price, without going to extra trouble to special-order it. If your book is traditionally published, there should be no problem with this. One of the reasons for choosing to go with a major publisher or established small press is that they are already BN Vendors of Record. The traditionally self-published, those like Dan Poynter who start their own publishing companies, can become Vendors of Record by filling out the BN Publisher Information Form.

The authors who run into real trouble in the distribution department are those with POD books. These books may be good-looking and high quality. They may even be available through Baker & Taylor or Ingram. But unless ordered in very high quantities, they are offered only for the retail price. BN's standard order when dealing with a new publisher is two copies of every title. Even an order of 30-50 books for a signing isn't going to provide enough of a profit margin to make it worth the bookstore's while. And because Print on Demand books are literally printed only when ordered, each copy is much more expensive to produce than a comparable mass-produced book.

Returns

The other thing that keeps POD books-and their authors-out of chain stores like Barnes & Noble is the lack of a returns policy. Bookstores expect to be able to return all unsold books to a publisher, and not to pay the publisher for any of the books until after they sell. Unsold books aren't even returned intact: the covers get ripped off and they're sent away to be pulped. (I kid you not. I was horrified to learn this, even after reading all those warnings about not buying books without covers.)

POD houses don't warehouse books and can't provide that kind of returns policy, and very few self-published authors are going to want to. But no matter how barbaric a practice pulping is, it's a fact of life at all major book outlets, and Barnes & Noble didn't invent it. Nor does a Community Relations Manager have the power to bend the rules about this, however flexible s/he may be about the form your signing takes if you can meet the store's requirements.

Alternatives

If you're a self-published or POD author and touring the major chain bookstores is something you can't live without, you can try to interest a traditional publisher in your book, though you need to make sure that you really own the book in its current form before you do this. (Most POD houses lay claim to the final, formatted version of your book, though the content remains yours.)

Or you can skip Barnes & Noble altogether and hold your book events elsewhere. Independent bookstores are often in a better position than large chains to take a chance on an author, though they, too, need to be able to buy the books at a low enough price to make a profit. Public libraries are almost always willing to accept the donation of a book or two and host a reading.

And, of course, if you make your living as a speaker, back-of-room sales may be your best bet and an opportunity to take advantage of the plus side of self-publishing and POD: getting to keep a far greater percentage of the book's retail price.

The Digital Reader, Digital Book Price Switch Strategy :)

From left,the Kindle Touch, Kindle Fire tablet and new Kindle displayed…

My theory on the strategy of e-reader and e-book pricing is that it was mapped out prior to public knowledge or acceptance of either.

You know ... sell a new well marketed hardware product (e-readers) at a premium at first (to recover initial research & manufacturing cost) ... but stuff it with a large assortment of low-cost content (cheap e-books consisting of backlists, old titles with expired rights, works by hungry new authors etc.) to sweeten and increase sales ...

THEN, when the consuming public gets hooked on the new reading media device, DROP the e-reader price and UP the e-book price (content price).

I like it because it will give writers more value for their work ... and properly align reward for creativity.

Just thoughts running through my crooked mind. I love being an armchair quarterback :) It's not as if this strategy is a new concept.

This from The Wall Street Journal via Chicago Tribune:

Readers getting cheaper, but rising e-book prices causing sticker shock

Cheap new e-readers are expected to be one of the hottest gifts this holiday season. But new owners of Kindles and Nooks may be in for sticker shock on Christmas morning: The price gap between the print and e-versions of some top sellers has now narrowed to within a few dollars -- and in some cases, e-books are more expensive than their printed equivalents.


When Amazon.com Inc. introduced its first Kindle e-reader back in November 2007, the $9.99 digital best seller was a key selling point. Today, the price of a Kindle has plummeted to under $100 -- from $399 back then. But e-book prices for some popular titles have soared.

Take Ken Follett's massive novel "Fall of Giants," for example, which costs $18.99 as an e-book. On Wednesday it was selling for $16.50 as a paperback on Amazon.

The digital price increases are the result of a decision by the six biggest publishers to set their own consumer e-book prices, a move that effectively bars retailers from discounting their e-books without permission. No such agreement exists for printed books -- where retailers are free to set their own prices. So while a best-selling e-book price is often less than half of the hardcover price, heavy discounting of the print version closes the gap.

Industry executives say this new state of affairs may already be hurting e-book sales, which have skyrocketed over the past three years and are today 15 percent to 20 percent or more of major publishers' revenue.

"Some people who see $12.99 and $14.99 for e-books may find those prices a little expensive," says Scott Waxman, a literary agent and digital-books publisher.

Read and learn more

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Frequently Asked Questions About the ISBN

Everyone sometimes has questions about the good old International Standard Book Number so I will give some pertinent information about them right here right now.

You may be surprised what you didn't know about ISBNs.

Frequently Asked Questions about the ISBN

What is an ISBN?
What is the purpose of an ISBN?
What is the format of the ISBN?
Does the ISBN have any meaning imbedded in the numbers?
Why do some ISBNs end in an "X"?
Who can assign ISBNs to a publisher?
Who is eligible for an ISBN?
How long does it take to get an ISBN?
How much does it cost to get an ISBN?
What do I do when I receive the ISBN and where is it printed?
How & where do I register my ISBN?
Can a publisher have both an ISBN & ISSN?
How can I find an assigned ISBN?
How are ISBNs used in a Bar Code & how do I obtain one?
How do I select the correct amount of ISBNs?
What is the format of the new ISBN-13?
Does the ISBN-13 have any meaning imbedded in the numbers?

What is an ISBN?
The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is a 10-digit number that uniquely identifies books and book-like products published internationally.

What is the purpose of an ISBN?
The purpose of the ISBN is to establish and identify one title or edition of a title from one specific publisher and is unique to that edition, allowing for more efficient marketing of products by booksellers, libraries, universities, wholesalers and distributors.

What is the format of the ISBN?
Every ISBN consists of ten digits and whenever it is printed it is preceded by the letters ISBN. The ten-digit number is divided into four parts of variable length, each part separated by a hyphen.

Does the ISBN have any meaning imbedded in the numbers?
The four parts of an ISBN are as follows:
Group or country identifier which identifies a national or geographic grouping of publishers;
Publisher identifier which identifies a particular publisher within a group;
Title identifier which identifies a particular title or edition of a title;
Check digit is the single digit at the end of the ISBN which validates the ISBN.

Why do some ISBNs end in an "X"?
In the case of the check digit, the last digit of the ISBN, the upper case X can appear. The method of determining the check digit for the ISBN is the modulus 11 with the weighting factors 10 to 1. The Roman numeral X is used in lieu of 10 where ten would occur as a check digit.

Who can assign ISBNs to a publisher?
There are over 160 ISBN Agencies worldwide, and each ISBN Agency is appointed as the exclusive agent responsible for assigning ISBNs to publishers residing in their country or geographic territory. The United States ISBN Agency is the only source authorized to assign ISBNs to publishers supplying an address in the United States, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam and Puerto Rico and its database establishes the publisher of record associated with each prefix.
Once an ISBN publisher prefix and associated block of numbers has been assigned to a publisher by the ISBN Agency, the publisher can assign ISBNs to publications it holds publishing rights to. However, after the ISBN Agency assigns ISBNs to a publisher, that publisher cannot resell, re-assign, transfer, or split its list of ISBNs among other publishers. These guidelines have long been established to ensure the veracity, accuracy and continued utility of the international ISBN standard.

As defined by the ISO Standard, the ISBN publisher prefix (or "root" of the ISBN) identifies a single publisher. If a second publisher subsequently obtains an ISBN from the assigned publisher's block of ISBNs, there will be no change in the publisher of record for any ISBN in the block as originally assigned. Therefore, searches of industry databases for that re-assigned ISBN will identify the original owner of that assigned prefix as the publisher rather than the second publisher. Discovering this consequence too late can lead to extensive costs in applying for a new prefix, re-assigning a new ISBN, and potentially leading to the application of stickers to books already printed and in circulation.

If you are a new publisher, you should apply for your own ISBN publisher prefix and plan to identify and circulate your books properly in the industry supply chain. You may encounter offers from other sources to purchase single ISBNs at special offer prices; you should be wary of purchasing from these sources for the reasons noted above. There are unauthorized re-sellers of ISBNs and this activity is a violation of the ISBN standard and of industry practice. A publisher with one of these re-assigned ISBNs will not be correctly identified as the publisher of record in Books In Print or any of the industry databases such as Barnes and Noble or Amazon or those of wholesalers such as Ingram. If you have questions, contact the US ISBN Agency for further advice.

Who is eligible for an ISBN?
The ISBN Agency assigns ISBNs at the direct request of publishers, e-book publishers, audio cassette and video producers, software producers and museums and associations with publishing programs.

How long does it take to get an ISBN?
Allow 15 business days for non-priority processing from the time an ISBN application is received at the agency (not from the date sent by the publisher.) Priority processing is two business days from the time an application is received at the agency. Express processing is 24 business hours.

How much does it cost to get an ISBN?
There is a service fee to process all ISBN applications. Service fee information is contained on the application. Priority and Express processing involve an additional fee.

NOTE: The processing service charge is NON-REFUNDABLE.

What do I do when I receive the ISBN and where is it printed?
An ISBN should be assigned to each title or product, including any backlist or forthcoming titles. Each format or binding must have a separate ISBN (i.e. hardcover, paperbound, VHS video, laserdisc, e-book format, etc). A new ISBN is required for a revised edition. Once assigned, an ISBN can never be reused. An ISBN is printed on the lower portion of the back cover of a book above the bar code and on the copyright page.

How & where do I register my ISBN?
Once ISBNs have been assigned to products they should be reported to R.R. Bowker as the database of record for the ISBN Agency. Companies are eligible for a free listing in various directories such as Books in Print, Words on Cassette, The Software Encyclopedia, Bowker's Complete Video Directory, etc.

NOTE: Receiving just your ISBNs does NOT guarantee title listings. To ensure your titles get in the Books in Print database you must submit your title information.

Book titles should be registered with Books in Print at www.bowkerlink.com

Can a publisher have both an ISBN & an ISSN?
Both numbering systems are used for books in a series and with annuals or biennials. The ISBN identifies the individual book in a series or a specific year for an annual or biennial. The ISSN identifies the ongoing series, or the ongoing annual or biennial serial. If a publication has both, each should be printed on the copyright page.

How can I find an assigned ISBN?
The Publications (hard copy listings) in which the assigned ISBNs appear are Publishers, Distributors & Wholesalers of the United States, published by R.R. Bowker, and Literary Market Place, published by Information Today.

How are ISBNs used in a Bar Code & how do I obtain one?
The ISBN can be translated into a worldwide compatible bar code format. Publishers who wish to have their ISBNs translated into worldwide compatible bar codes can now make their request directly online at www.isbn.org or www.bowkerbarcode.com . Bar code scanning is a required step required for many retailers in the sales transaction process for book publications and book-related items. We hope that offering this service will save you time and enable you to meet all of your transaction partners' requirements.

How do I select the correct amount of ISBNs?
ISBNs are sold in blocks of 10, 100, and 1000. When purchasing ISBNs, we recommend that you estimate the amount of publications you will be publishing within the next five years, and select the block that best suits your needs. It is always best to select the block that will last you for a few years because you will be able to maintain one publisher prefix, and minimize the unit cost per ISBN. When purchasing a larger block of ISBNs, the price per ISBN decreases.

What is the format of the new ISBN-13?
Every ISBN will consist of thirteen digits in 2007. The thirteen digit number is divided into five parts of variable length, each part separated by a hyphen.

Does the ISBN-13 have any meaning imbedded in the numbers?
The five parts of an ISBN are as follows:
1. The current ISBN-13 will be prefixed by "978"
2. Group or country identifier which identifies a national or geographic grouping of publishers;
3. Publisher identifier which identifies a particular publisher within a group;
4. Title identifier which identifies a particular title or edition of a title;
5. Check digit is the single digit at the end of the ISBN which validates the ISBN.

Apple’s Prices for E-Books May Be Lower Than Expected

More intrigue and drama coming from inside the meetings between Apple and publishers re eBook pricing. Motoko Rich, New York Times, reports:

Maybe e-book prices won’t be rising so much after all.

Since Apple announced plans to sell digital books on its forthcoming iPad, it has been cast as something of a savior of the publishing industry for allowing e-book prices to go above the $9.99 that Amazon charges for e-books on its Kindle device, a price that publishers say is too low to sustain their business.

But as more details come to light of the actual negotiations between Apple and publishers, it appears that Apple left room to sell some of the most popular books at a discount.

When Steven P. Jobs showed off the iPad last month, he announced agreements with five of the six largest publishers to offer their content through a new iBooks application. Those publishers — the Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan, the Penguin Group and Simon & Schuster — agreed to terms under which they would set e-book prices and Apple would serve as an agent to sell the books to consumers. Apple would take 30 percent of each sale, leaving 70 percent for publishers to split with authors.

Publishers indicated that e-book editions of most newly released adult general fiction and nonfiction would sell in a range from $12.99 to $14.99, under a complicated formula that pegs e-book prices to the list prices of comparable print editions. Publishers liked Apple’s deal because it resulted in a marked increase above Amazon’s $9.99 price for most new releases.

But according to at least three people with knowledge of the discussions, who spoke anonymously because of the confidentiality of the talks, Apple inserted provisions requiring publishers to discount e-book prices on best sellers — so that $12.99-to-$14.99 range was merely a ceiling; prices for some titles could be lower, even as low as Amazon’s $9.99. Essentially, Apple wants the flexibility to offer lower prices for the hottest books, those on one of the New York Times best-seller lists, which are heavily discounted in bookstores and on rival retail sites. So, for example, a book that started at $14.99 would drop to $12.99 or less once it hit the best-seller lists.

Moreover, for books where publishers offer comparable hardcover editions at a price below the typical $26, Apple wanted e-book prices to reflect the cheaper hardcover prices. These books might be priced much lower than $12.99, even if they did not hit the best-seller list.

Tom Neumayr, an Apple spokesman, declined comment.

While e-books still represent a relatively small proportion of total book sales, they are the fastest-growing part of the industry. How they are sold and priced has become a matter of fierce debate within the publishing industry.

For Amazon, the $9.99 price on new and best-selling e-books helped it market the Kindle device — which now sells for $259 — and build market share quickly. But Amazon has effectively lost money on each sale at that price because it buys and resells e-books as it purchases printed books, by paying publishers a wholesale price generally equivalent to half the list price of a print edition. That means that on a $26 hardcover book, Amazon would typically pay the publisher $13, losing just over $3 on a digital edition it sells for $9.99.

Under the agreements with Apple, both the publishers and Apple should make money on each book sale.