Do publishers know what they're doing? We'll see. In a recent article the Wall Street Journal, reported that publishers such as Simon & Schuster and Hachette believe it is in their best interested to establish precedent regarding e-books by delaying electronic versions of bestsellers by four months. This strategy puts electronic books somewhere between hardcover editions and mass market paperbacks for release.
Obviously, the publishing industry is going through some rather curious times right now. The advent of friendly and usable electronic readers along with Amazon's significant clout have caused a feverish scramble to understand just how best to approach the new era of publishing. I see publishing houses like Simon & Schuster and Hachette Book Group experimenting with trying to find the best business model for them. But I also think it's a hard sell to continually tell the consumer that e-books cut into profits. This type of complaint rings of traditional minds being forced by circumstances to embrace a new way of life when they would rather just see it go away.
I don't want to see publishers' profits suffer. Certainly, their success is good for consumers and authors. But I wonder if they really understand the future and how best to approach it.
I like the feel of a book. There is something comforting about holding a book in your hand. People have told me more than once they would rather read a paper book than an electronic book. Okay, I understand that. I actually like reading a good old-fashioned book, too. But I also enjoy what an electronic reader has to offer.
The question is, what kind of a war will this create. Electronic reader manufactures and electronic book retailers will obviously suffer from any strategy to delay e-books, as will readers who are embracing the new technology. Now consider what authors are being told: "McMillan Lowers E-book Payments for Authors." McMillan recently lowered the percentage it pays authors on digital content to "20 percent of the proceeds it receives from retailers for each book, generally half of the list price of a book." This is less by five percent than other publishers contracts, but it just seems backwards that authors should earn less on their books when the publisher is putting out less expense in production costs. The article does dredge up that the reason for the lower percentage to authors is because of the industry fear that e-books will end up resulting in retailers demanding to pay lesser wholesale prices.
Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild, said that Macmillan was anticipating a time when Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other e-book retailers would try to push down wholesale book prices. “This is Macmillan’s attempt to pre-emptively squeeze authors.”
I'm not sure how much sense this makes lumping e-book costs in with how much retailers pay for wholesale print. But to further complicate the relationship between authors and publishers, the publishing rights of works that came under contract before e-books were in existence are in dispute. According to an article by Amy Hertz and Jessie Kunhardt in The Huffington Post, some authors are choosing to go with other publishing options. The argument was ramped up by Random House, when it informed agents it owned the rights to e-book publications for older works under contract even when the electronic medium did not exist. Authors, however, do not feel such a situation is in their best interests:
Authors have far and wide rejected Random House's terms, arguing that it is not in their best interest to distribute eBooks through the publisher because of too-low royalty rates and paltry publicity.
While I'm not a publishing economics guru, I can say from a personal perspective that I rarely buy the newest hardcover of any new release, even if it's written by my favorite author. I have enough good authors to keep me interested until the mass market edition. So, if I'm a typical reader, then delaying the release of the electronic version of a bestselling author will not help publishers' bottom lines, but it will irritate me, the reader. It won't make me by the newest release in hardcover because I wouldn't have done that anyway. They are far too expensive and don't really fit into my lifestyle. In other words, show me where it will hurt the publisher anymore than it already did to publish the same release in electronic format. At the Amazon-induced $9.99 price break, the publisher is still selling the book to me at a higher cost with virtually no production and shipping costs.
I have another question: If the publisher is going to wait four months to release the electronic edition, will the title be available for more, less, or about the same as the paperback edition? Remember, as a reader adopting the emerging e-book technology, I am not making you, the publisher, invest in raw paper product, printing and binding labor, and shipping charges. Do I get a significant price break for that? While I hear the complaint that e-books are undercutting publishing profits, how does that argument compare with profits from mass market paperbacks, which are priced lower than Amazon's $9.99 price point?
What I hope is that as a consumer I am not being sold a bill of goods simply because the publishing industry is having to wrestle with the same techno-toothed tiger the music industry failed to understand. Obviously e-books are here to stay, and they should be. Publishers should look for ways to enhance the medium and experience at a relative and fair value rather than try to diminish it.
