Top Authors Make eBook Deal, Bypassing Publishers 297
RobotRunAmok writes "Home to 700 authors and estates, from Philip Roth to John Updike, Jorge Luis Borges, and Saul Bellow, the Wylie Agency shocked the publishing world yesterday when it announced the launch of Odyssey Editions. The new initiative is selling ebook editions of modern classics, including Lolita, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and Updike's Rabbit tetralogy, exclusively via Amazon.com's Kindle store, leaving conventional publishers out of the picture. The issue boils down to who holds digital rights in older titles published before the advent of ebooks, with publishers arguing that the ebook rights belong to them, and authors and agents responding that, if not specifically granted, the digital rights remain with the author. Publishers and authors are also at loggerheads over the royalty that should be paid for ebooks: authors believe they should be getting up to double the current standard rate of 25%, because ebooks are cheaper to produce than physical editions. (Amazon pays authors 70%.)"
A good idea (Score:5, Interesting)
What took so long? (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously I understand publishing a book in multiple languages and in multiple countries is a big deal but they should have saw this one coming for a long time now. If you are the middle man and technology rears it's ugly head prepare to be marginalized or bypassed completely.
I cannot wait for the day when this happens to Lawyers.
Sounds like valid argument (Score:5, Interesting)
>>>"with publishers arguing that the ebook rights belong to them, and authors and agents responding that, if not specifically granted, the digital rights remain with the author."
This is the same argument that the music industry made with DVDs. The songs were licenses for TV and Videotapes, not for dvd, and therefore the music industry demanded more money for each song used. Likewise I think it's reasonable to say: the authors only licensed for books and audio, not electronic editions.
I'm not Shocked (Score:5, Interesting)
To be honest how can anyone be surprised at this? When books were set free from paper and placed onto the Internet it was only a matter of time before authors decided to cut out the publisher. They no longer have a need for them. Publishers should get wise and start to provide real value to the authors. If I write a book and do not require your editing, marketing or printing services why exactly do you expect to keep 75% of the sale price?
Give it time and most large authors will just sell their ebooks directly via their own websites.
This is exactly what the Internet is supposed to be about. Giving the little guy the chance to eliminate the need for the big guy.
Cheers for these Authors!
Re:Good! (Score:5, Interesting)
Seems to me that the literary agents are already doing marketing for their clients to publishers, for ebooks they could take the same cut they are now and go right to the distributor. "Hey Jeff baby, I got this book that'd be perfect in eBook/PDF for your Kindle and bring you loads of moolah. Lets do lunch."
Re:A good idea (Score:1, Interesting)
They're still using a middleman (Amazon) and it looks like they're going to have an exclusive deal with that one single middleman. So instead of multiple middlemen having to compete to offer them the most remuneration, there's just one.
Worse, this particular middleman has a limited market for the books; these files will only be readable on Amazon products (rather than say, text files that anyone can read on anything), therefore the authors will only be selling to a fraction of the market that they could have had.
If you want remuneration to go to the authors then I would have expected you to say this is a disaster, rather than a "very good thing."
Maybe you're right in a long-term strategic sense, though. If the authors give a Fuck You to their dead-tree publishers and get away with it in court (backed by Amazon's deep pockets!), then after the retarded sales over the next two years, when the Amazon monopoly expires, a much more competitive/low-margin publisher market can develop. That's when the authors will be able to make some money.
Re:Good! (Score:2, Interesting)
all seem to have this idea that they are entitled to more of the profits
Just a small nitpick: taking a larger share of gross revenue != more of the profits. Legitimate expenses such as editing and marketing come into play. There isn't anything I know of that indicates that publishers are getting more of the actual profits. Otherwise I agree with your assertion.
What I do find interesting is how closely related all of this is to music piracy and DRM. Everyone on slashdot seems to think it is a crime to want to sell music with drm, and conclude that the artist deserves to be pirated for such an offense. However, I don't see that argument being made here with respect to ebooks.
The drm and copyright problem is more sinister and nuanced than most people realize. Many people argue that music artists shouldn't have the right to sell their music, they should give it away for free and perform live to make their livings.
What would the book authors do?
Re:Good! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I'm not Shocked (Score:3, Interesting)
Good for the authors, bad for consumers (Score:4, Interesting)
I imagine that many of the authors that this greatly effects are the ones that do this as a full-time job. If no one buys their books NEW, then they see no money, or maybe no future book deal. The profit margin approaches 100% after enough time and copies have sold. This allows the good authors to write full-time and not have to worry about asking if we want fries with our order. Book sales trail off after release, so the most money is to be made in that first year, though some books enjoy a long life of sales popularity. So, good for the authors.
This is a very bad deal for consumers, in the end. My copy of "Nothing: The History of Zero" was a fun read. Now that I am done with it, I can give it to a friend, sell it, trade it in at Half-Priced Books, etc. In this way, I can recoup some of my cost. And the book can be purchased and resold many times, profits staying in the hands of the seller each time. The author makes nothing. The DRM on the eBooks prevents you from selling it, or giving it away.
Thus, in a sly maneuver to make big publishing look like evil bastards (not a difficult task), the authors conveniently and quietly take control of book distribution and remove the freedom of the consumer to control the end product themselves. This is bad. Very bad.
Thus, I am conflicted. Yay for getting what you deserve to be paid. Boo for limiting my ability to resell the book.
What did Amazon offer? (Score:4, Interesting)
What did Amazon offer to get exclusivity for two years? My hunch is that Amazon agreed to heavily promote the books on its site, and wouldn't do so if they also went to BN and Apple.
Also, they apparently don't have the rights to decent looking book covers - the current covers are pretty ugly. Seriously - who thought it was a good idea to include quotations as cover art when it goes on devices like cell phones? Just the title and author in a decent font would do.
Re:Good for the authors, bad for consumers (Score:3, Interesting)
Honestly, I don't get this. If you live in the middle of nowhere, you have a point. But good libraries will have virtually any book worth reading, or at least the vast majority (including tech books), and its freeeeeeeeee.
So if you don't plan on keeping the book, why buy it in the first place? And if you're not sure, borrow it first, then buy it.
I mean, i understand this DOES remove an option from you, but most of the time, that option was worthless in the first place.
Re:I'm not Shocked (Score:3, Interesting)
The only issue is being able to "browse" for books as a consumer. I have NO idea where a website for an author that does not exist...exists. There has to be some way for me to know and word of mouth generally is not very efficient.
Re:A good idea (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm less concerned with the prices dropping and more concerned with passing more of the benefit straight to the person who deserves it. Publishers, in general, are simply too greedy and controlling.
Re:Good! (Score:4, Interesting)
Now, in the case of physical items, such as printed books, etc, there is the issue of mass producing it, distribution, deals with resellers, etc, etc. I can see where merely _creating_ the original can potentially pale in comparison to the work it takes to actually make/move/sell the item.
Obviously you have never written a book. My husband has been working on his fantasy novel for 10 years, tweaking it, changing it, improving it. Find me a single publisher that would spend 10 years developing the marketing or infrastructure to sell a book
Re:Good! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Good! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Good! (Score:4, Interesting)
10 years, or 10 'man-years'? Heh, I bet they spend a man-year just loading the books onto and off of trucks (lets see, 8 hours a day, 1 hour to unload per store... if they sell at ~3000 stores that seems valid), never mind printing, editing, promoting, and selling. Don't get me wrong, that your husband has worked tirelessly for 10 years shows that he has much more dedication than a publisher ever would, but in terms of cost the publisher's are going to be higher.
Re:A good idea (Score:3, Interesting)
Expanding your first point, you can read them on iPad, iPhone, iPod, Blackberry, MAC, and PC. I like the way they look on my iPhone better than on an actual Kindle, but I can see why most people prefer the bigger screen.
As soon as I saw this article I cheered that the publisher of my only story is the same as these famous authors
E-Junkie.Com provides PDF hosting. On our stuff there, has some DRM (can print I forgot how many copies, can copy and paste too) but we are aware that those measures can be sidestepped.
Scribd.Com is a new place he has posted his free book and all of our stuff is available in paperback. They also sell eBooks in multiple formats.
As for "no DRM", if we wanted our works out there totally free, that is the way we would do it. His second book is and it still gets Amazon and paperback sales, but lower than the others. On Scribd.Com it has been read thousands of times, lots of free downloads from E-Junkie.com.
All of the stories are priced low, most below $4, except for one that is a collection of the first four books. Kindle has a preview function and they are also on Google Books where 20% (or 30%, can't remember) can be browsed without having to buy.
Re:Good! (Score:3, Interesting)
Though there are a lot of books that need a publisher/editor that people think are ready and just aren't. So we'll have to see if that's a good thing.
Re:What took so long? (Score:3, Interesting)
Um no I disagree they are middle men that are between us and the law. We can choose to represent ourselves if we decide thus making them middle men and not required although highly recommended and by current standards necessary.
Re:Good! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I'm not Shocked (Score:1, Interesting)
I met a bloke in Cambodia who made and sold illegal copies of Western books by scanning them into his computer, printing them on his printer and binding them himself. He used much better quality paper than any book (hardback or paperback) I've bought in the UK recently. And selling them for $2 each he made a profit. Which makes me think that a fully automated printing and binding process on the shittiest paper money can buy must cost considerably less than $1 per book (perhaps ignoring setup costs).
So I'm curious. How much do offset printed books cost?
Re:Good! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Good! (Score:3, Interesting)
It seems that you think marketing consists only of consumer-level advertising. The B&N Unbound Blog is marketing. Their Friday giveaway is marketing.
You could write the best book in the world, but until someone other than yourself knows about it you are not going to sell a single copy. As soon as you tell someone, you have begun marketing it. Next, it does no good at all to have thousands (millions?) of people clamoring for your book if they can't buy it anywhere. So before you have consumers wanting your book, you better convince the retailers that this is going to be a best-seller so that they can stock up on it. That is marketing (and is in fact the real heavy-duty marketing as far as books are concerned).
Re:A good idea (Score:3, Interesting)
Because DRM doesn't work. I have a kindle. One of the first thing I did was crack the drm on my old mobi ebooks that I had and put them on there. One of the first things I did on getting a new phone, before the kindle app was released, was to crack the drm on my kindle ebooks and toss them on there. It's not perfect yet, only about 75% of them were able to be cracked. But I consider it almost impossible that this will still be the case when I'm ready to try a new device.