As many of you know, I have just returned from Book Expo America, the annual book show - this year in New York City. Since I am not the cocktail, autograph, roundtable, or buzz party attendee type, I had a little time each evening to consider what this trade show was all about, and ponder the more global meaning of life in publishing and where we all fit into the picture. And I have decided I don’t think it is a very pretty picture - which is why I am taking the time to express myself - today, in a more serious vein.
As those of you who know me know, I am the eternal optimist, things are always great and getting better, and I always see the glass half full - (and am asking someone to fill it!) - so it is with a heavy heart that I expose deep concerns and feelings in this essay.
Agree or disagree, make your comments as public as mine by registering them here, or simply quietly soak in what I am saying, and draw your own conclusions. Don’t shoot me, I am only the messenger, but DO take the time to read this essay. I believe there are some serious changes afoot, and not all good ones. They will impact you whether you like it or not, or accept them or not, and some may actually succeed in taking money out of your pocket if you’re not careful.
First, and I’ll write a separate article about this shortly, is the cover story and lengthy section in The Futurist magazine, March-April, 2007, titled “The New Media Age-End of the Written Word?” Now this isn’t some “New Age” publication making psychic predictions, but a well respected magazine with regular articles written by future thinking professionals of all stripes from think tanks, major corporations, authors, organization executives, and the like. The question they ask is:
What does the world look like after text?
After text? You can’t possibly suggest - Ok, you might respond, they’re talking about in the next two hundred years - No, actually, they are talking about in the next twenty to forty years. Yes, yes, the demise of the book is not imminent, but consider what I SAW at BEA that ties in.
Affordable machines were being promoted in more than one place to allow you, as publisher, to digitize books at the rate of thirty pages a minute, faster if it is just black and white text. A number of service companies were also offering the service. And, we all know about Google’s Orwellian desire to own every last book ever written in digitized form. Let’s not just go after Google any more - there must be something to the idea - Microsoft now has its own initiative rivaling Google’s. I am missing the monetization of this concept, but that’s not the point of this essay.
What I didn’t miss was a line of publishers begging to speak with Google reps - giving them info, offering to digitize their books in their hotel rooms to have them handed over to Google by the next morning; remember this, as it is a really important piece of the puzzle. You wouldn’t think publishers would be running into the arms of Google’s project, but they are. It took me a while to figure this one out!
Consider that one book was completely missing at BEA, yet it will outsell every, yes, every book that was touted at BEA. And the next biggest seller was exhibited completely without fanfare in a tiny single booth, under a relatively unknown publishing banner, by a man to whom I am going introduce you in a moment.
Of course, the big book… the biggest book possibly of all publishing history (other than reprints of the Bible) is the last installment of Harry Potter. Expectations range from TEN to TWELVE MILLION books will be sold in the first 24 hours of its release date this July. Every last retailer on the English planet will carry it… from WalMart to drugstores, to bookstores, and anyone else who wants to drive some ‘one day only’ traffic to his/her store or place of business. No promo necessary, but trade distribution will play a large role… though neither an exclusive one nor possibly the largest dollar one.
Now, let’s consider the next biggest seller… a book called The Secret. I have mentioned it before, when talking about how a book (and DVD) gets hours of Oprah’s time AND not one mention of the trade since every referral on her show was to an 800 number or the website. Yes, I have been told that hundreds of thousands have been sold through the trade… but MILLIONS have not. What does it mean? Well, before I tell you my thoughts, I do want to introduce you to the publisher, Richard Cohn.
As mild mannered and quiet a man as I have met in a long time… and I only spoke with him for five minutes at the show and quite by accident as I was meeting someone else at his booth. The other person was running a little late and, seeing the rather smallish poster for The Secret, I was more than ready to learn something. For a man who has sold a number of millions of books and DVDs in the last eighteen months, my estimate-not his, he was mighty quiet about it… just thankful for the opportunity to bring the information to the public. I did not get a chance to meet his partner and spouse… she was busy with a customer, but I got the distinct impression that here was a couple, not unlike my wife and myself, who wanted to produce quality materials and earn a living in publishing… and through hard work, luck, skill, the lottery, call it what you want, he has hit the publishing world’s version of a major Superball drawing.
I subsequently learned a bit of his story from my lunch partner and my respect for him grew even beyond that which he projected at his booth to a complete stranger in five minutes. I make this sidebar only to tip my hat to a lifetime publishing professional who deserved and got to grab the brass ring. If you get an opportunity to meet this man, and his wife, do it. If only as a reminder that 1) the Superball drawing takes place regularly, and every single publisher has a shot at the Holy Grail, and 2) professionality, humility, and integrity still exist in publishing. (See, I’m not so cynical after all.)
But I digress.
Let’s add some more factors to the discussion. The front page article on the Day 1 Publisher’s Weekly Show newspaper wasn’t about bestsellers, or attendance, or the future of the industry (they wouldn’t dare… trust me), but was:
“Distributors Play Musical Chairs”
Yep, the whole page plus continuation spoke about which publishers had gone with the new PGW/Perseus, which ones had gone to NBN, and the cloak and dagger of who would be going where to recapture distribution lost when PGW went under at the end of 2006. Like it matters. Other than the specific publishers and specific distributors, why does ANYONE in the industry give a damn who is distributing whom?
OH! I forgot… when customers walk into Borders, their first question is always: Is the publisher of this book distributed by NBN? …’Cause if not, I don’t want the book!
(Pause inserted to allow for guffaws, chuckles, and rolling on the floor.)
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but PW gets it. Without constantly reminding mid and small publishers that trade distribution is a serious issue, and should be treated as front page news (not the pointed, irrelevent gossip and innuendo it actually is) then publishers may forget they NEED trade distribution and figure out other ways of selling their books and DVDs.
It doesn’t take a CPA to figure out that trade distribution is a losing proposition… count the number of distributors still standing against the number who have gone out of business in just the last ten years. But if PW makes it a major issue, then small and mid sized publishers will still believe it is a necessity, just like accepting returns… we’ve been doing it forever and no one can change the way the industry does business!
And one last factor… the one that impacts me personally the most, gave me pause to think when more than one of my meetings, after greetings and salutations, began with:
“Marty, I’ll bet your brokerage business is huge right now from all the publishers getting out after PGW.”
Well, so far it isn’t. But, after hearing that remark over and over, I began to sort out why not. Well, my off the cuff answer has been that it happened at the end of 2006. The first and second quarters of 2007 saw the proceedings, the acquisition of the bankrupt company, and a lot of what PW spoke about in its article of soliciting publishers away to new distributors. Here we are at the end of the first half of 2007… and most publishers in this mess haven’t taken the time yet to figure out exactly where they are. (While I am aware this isn’t true, what I mean is they are in shock and not really thinking completely clearly… just trying to replace what they have lost… and get back to business and creating some deal that creates revenue streams.)
Along about the end of next quarter, in September or October, before the end of the year and after things have settled down a bit… these owners will start to tally up the damage.
It is my strong belief that, when they do, the few other professional publishing brokers and I will get many more telephone calls about newly reconsidered exit strategies, before things get any worse for each individual company. I would estimate that between 50 and 100 extra publishers will be ‘on the block’ by the end of the year, just from the fallout of PGW AND other publishers considering their own fates with their current distributors.
All this talk and I haven’t said a word about anything “global”. So, before I put the whole puzzle together for you (and for those of you who think you have it already together, hang on a few more minutes) let me add some “global” stuff.
The American economy, despite what the government is telling the media, is in deep shit. Sorry, no other way to say it. The dollar is falling, and rapidly. Petrodollars, the dollars earned by oil producing countries and invested in dollar denominated bonds and instruments for safety of investment, are now rapidly becoming petro-euros. There is a major move afoot to move the euro into the position of the dollar as the world’s primary reserve currency. What does this mean… well, in simple English, when China, Saudi Arabia, and other ’surplus dollar’ countries stop investing in dollar investments, it has been estimated by economists that our economy will take a huge hit, and that our currency could fall another 20-30%… the impact of which in our ‘house of cards’ superheated investment community would be a meltdown of disastrous proportions.
Ok, I’m no economic expert, so enough of this, but I will tell you that as a resident user of two currencies on a daily basis… it has only been in the last few months that the Canadian dollar has gone from 82 cents US to today’s 95 cent US quote. I took a 15% pay cut and wasn’t even asked about it. And the rest of you will, too, depending on how far down the US dollar goes.
Have I mentioned a war we aren’t able to finance? Have I mentioned the US is the world’s largest debtor nation? And have you seen the line up of potential Presidential candidates? The whole economic picture looks grim in the short to medium term. What does that matter… well, from my research and personal experience, during downturns, and particularly at the beginning of “announced recessions”, publishers who have been thinking of selling, start to sell. ** Too late. **
As the economy gets worse, prices for publishers do not tend to go down, they tend to evaporate. That is, prices go down for the best 20% of companies for sale, and the rest simply don’t sell at any price. This is common to all industries.
So… let’s pick up the pieces and see what we can assemble.
Global economic position of US, bad. Dollar support, bad. Largest debtor nation, bad.
Personal prediction for US economy… downhill starting in fall or winter 07-08, and continuing through about mid 2009, early 2010. My guess is eighteen to twenty four months of downturn.
Now let’s get more specific… you know how I feel about trade distribution (and in a smaller way, returns) as dinosaurs of an industry moving at glacial speed. Further consolidations will happen over the next two years. Actually, I see major publishing players (not necessarily the largest, but maybe the best known brands) in specific fields becoming quasi distributors for the rest of the publishers in that field, much as my company did through the 80s and 90s… and in different ways.
Prediction: more publishers will stop looking at trade distribution and start looking at treating their companies like companies… selling books any which way they can. MAKING MONEY FIRST. The less publishers doing the distribution route, the less profits for distributors… thus my prediction of further consolidation. Remember, for distributors, it is all in the numbers… they could truly care less WHO they represent, as long as there are lots of them and they PAY.
*** One more major bankruptcy in distribution might end the practice of large scale distributors altogether and move publishers to actually THINK about how they want to sell and to whom they want to sell.***
Now, let’s assume that publishers discover that more than half their future market of readers are truly nothing more than monitor viewers. This might cause them to digitize their titles and monetize them via ebooks, Google/Microsoft programs, and the like. Hey, wait a minute, who’s buying books in old fashioned bookstores? Thankfully, for the next 10-20 years, boomers who were brought up to read ink on paper… in hands… in a chair… in a quiet place… not doing six other things at the same time. But, remember, this group will be getting smaller each year until it disappears altogether.
After… while it sickens me to say this… twenty years from now, probably far less considering the delta rate of change in society, maybe starting ten years out… I agree that there will be a severely reduced if not completely obliterated printed book publishing industry. Those who don’t find alternate ways to sell the information they now own, will be severely reduced or obliterated in the process.
It sickens me because a society without books isn’t a society at all. Yes, we’ll have even greater access to even more information, but it won’t be the same. It may be even better, I can’t say, but I am one of those purists who sit down in a big overstuffed leather chair and open a book and read it and find that activity one of the most enjoyable of my day.
The scales of life always balance back to ‘normal’. Excesses are temporary and don’t last, bringing the excessive behavior back to a “norm” at some point. When I saw what steelworkers were earning in Pittsburgh in the mid to late 70’s, I told my wife it couldn’t possibly last. Pittsburgh would take a terrible hit when the mills finally figured it out.
We left in 1981. There hasn’t been a steel mill in Pittsburgh for many years now and it took the city almost ten years to recover.
Gold was held artificially at $35 an ounce. When it was finally let go of these restrictions, it moved, and excessively, to $800 an ounce, and then came back, excessively, to $250 an ounce. Its real world value average is around $550 an ounce (my opinion). But I wouldn’t bet against it going well over $1,000 an ounce before it bounces back to a more ‘normal’ value.
Those who don’t study history, and learn from it, are doomed to repeat it.
How many more distributors and publishers have to hit the wall before someone, and important someones in the industry, say, ENOUGH!… let’s start looking at the whole model ’cause it is broken, and if we don’t fix it, we’ll be going the way of the buggy whip… you’ll find us in second hand and antique stores?
How many more will abandon printed words and follow what appears to be the trend of digitized information and protect their futures, at least for the next round of technological advances? Better to make some money than be out of business.
And, as they abandon the trade system, and others go out of business, how long will it be before the whole system crumbles under the weight of failure? Oh, don’t tell me the top 20 will hold the system together… not when they figure out it is cheaper to sell direct.
How many of you have read Atlas Shrugged? Do you remember how quickly the society disintegrated? Narrow it down just to publishing and that is one very possible scenario.
As less companies want paper, paper mills go downhill, less mills, less paper, then paper gets more expensive, giving publishers even more incentive to go digital or ebook or into some other as yet unknown potentials.
As more retail book stores, offline or online, sell books at 35-45% off direct to the public, discounts have to get higher to keep old fashioned stores in business, or they fall off the map like most independent bookstores. When the Amazons and online, low overhead mini players start selling at 45-50% off and earning 5-10% margins… then what does a bookstore do? Quit. What do the biggie book chains do? Squeeze another 5-10% out of the publishers. How? Not to worry, the trade distributors will just do it… with or without their publisher/customers permission. What happens then… publishers who were making a dollar on $20 books now make nothing… and quit distribution models altogether.
Are you noticing the same theme here as I am? I thought it might just be me.
Well, enough chat. Ten years out… you will be in one of the following four categories:
- Sold out at the first opportunity after being hit on the head with reality.
- Still in the business with a huge content driven website, ebooks and echapters, podcasts with authors and experts, and basically an electronic publishing company.
- Still in business with a substantial web presence, a substantial direct to end user selling program, a substantial premium and custom program, a substantial reseller program for non book trade retailers and web tailers, and some safe, nominal investment risk trade distribution plan.
- Dead from a heart attack, or bleeding to death from a self inflicted letter opener wound (yes, if you are in this category, you are probably still using letter openers), after being notified that Ingram, the only wholesaler/distributor left, has declared bankruptcy, leaving you holding the bag for roughly a Million $ in A/R and a Half Million $ in print cost Inventory, which you can’t access because you didn’t change your wholesaler agreement when I advised you to, back in 2007.
Which category will you be in?
Martin Foner, President, NPL Publishing Consultants
P.S. Yes, you’re welcome to comment… in fact I hope we get hundreds of comments and get a conversation going that results in some changes, or at least deep thought about the future of the industry and your own company. No profanity, no naming names unless you’re the name, and you must sign your comment, but if you want to remain anonymous, we can do that on the site.
P.P.S. No, you’re not welcome to borrow parts or pieces of this essay without my express written permission. I am not interested in answering for four half sentences taken out of context and put into some other newsletter. While I am overjoyed to share this essay, no charge, please respect my wishes and get permission first. In fact, I’d like to see every publishing related newsletter, online, blog, magazine, and communication tool of any stripe reprint this essay to get everyone in the industry thinking before only the top 20 are left on the playing field.
14 Comments, Comment or Ping
Ludo Wurfbain
Your web pages a bit rinky dinky but you make some good points. US economy will not collapse like you say; it is more resilient than you think, although the current path is not sustainable, agreed on that one.
I think printed book will be around longer than you think cause certain books do not lend themselves well to e-books. But potboilers and information dispensers at 19.95 will go the way of the Dodo.
As for selling direct, yep been doing that over 22 years and it gets us 60% of our revenue. Bookstores get our books too but not exclusively, best to have your eggs in several baskets.
Keep up the good work but you will not see me sell the company in a panic at the end of this year. Our sales doing quite well and have been for several years. We will see more of the same in 2008.
Jun 8th, 2007
Janet Hill
I may sound like I’m bragging, and I probably am, when I say I have long resisted pressure to sign with a distributor. It never made since to turn over complete control of the market to someone who doesn’t care about my books like I do, while giving away most, if not all of my profit to do so. However, I am quickly humbled by the realization of the fact, that even without going the distributor route, I have dug a deep, deep hole, that may be very hard to climb out of by proceeding blindly, learning as I went, financing large print runs with my IRA and loans, in the belief that one of those books would become a best seller or make a blockbuster movie and make me rich.
Jun 9th, 2007
janet Hill
I was at the BEA and saw a lot of things this article cites. Far fewer bookstores and libraries represented than publishers. It supports the fact that there are far fewer readers than there are authors writing books. What can be done? It saddens me to think that books one can hold, feel, smell, and get lost in, will be replaced with electronics. Putting aside the economic considerations for a minute, (I know. I have to think about those, too, if I’m to become financially viable.) I am concerned for the future generations of kids who may never know the joy of sitting down with a good book, which you say is the most enjoyable part of the day. It is for me, and many others of my genertion, too. We’ve got to somehow share that joy with kids; get them to cherish hard copies of great literature or at least good stories, as we do. Is that possible? Maybe on an individual basis. Maybe through schools, as long as their are teachers who share the passion. Many questions were raised in your article. The future of the book looks as bleak as the future of this nation under the present administration; a nation on the fast track to self-destruction. Yet, optimist that I am, I believe there has to be a way to keep the book—and the author’s voice—alive using available technology as a platform with the freedom we still have.
Jun 9th, 2007
nameEdwin Fontanez
Hi there, thanks for your on-target observation. Actually, I consider it a breath of “fresh” air. I recently dumped my publisher (exactly because of the patterns you disclose in your article, including the “friggin” ridiculous return policy,) It is very comforting for me to hear your comments because, up to now I’ve been thinking I’m not a “team player” and I just simply want to continue creating out of the system! Little that I knew, it was my instincts warning me. I truly appreciate your attempt to bring these topics into the light, I believe, like yourself, instead of continuing feeding a system that only perpetuates hopeless dependency, we should start thinking ways to grow stronger and create new defense “weapons”.Your comments make me feel, that there’s somebody on my side.
Jun 9th, 2007
Charles Wibel
Thanks for a great article on the state of the industry. Basically it is more a statement on society. Being both a writer and and antique dealer I live in a world of liberal actors who, beginning with the line in the sand in the mid 60’s have through their actions pulled the world in on top of them and now can’t figure out why it has happened. Though it does affect my income stream to a certain extent, being a conservative among all the liberals, I have an atvantage. I can see what is happening and I have the creative genius to get out of the way as it all falls down. One can not spend 50 years trying to destroy the sytem in the name of “fairness” and equality and they whine that their part of the system is also being negatively affected. There are unintended consequences to your actions.
Jun 9th, 2007
Kenneth S. Benjamin
Martin,
I’m not sure how I got on your email list but I read your comments/plea with great interest.
As a American manufacturer for 40 plus years, you are experiencing the same vision of doom we experienced begining in the late 1950’s.
Japan and then others changed forever the way we did business, what we did and finally the level of profit for the investment in manpower, facilities and machinery.
We resisted, bitched, and generally began to understand we had to deal with those things we could control and disgard issues out of our control.
Although, what I gather you came home with from your BEA convention has frightened you, I also suspect sooner or later as we did, regroup and make the decision that this business you are in is all you know and damm it, we will make the necessary course corrections to use years of experience to your advantage (as we did) and quit fighting a battle that can’t be won due to new methods of communition (or manufacturing in our case).
We as company several decades old, who in reality are a seven year old company fighting for our piece of the pie.
Those manufacturers who did not, would not accept the required changes to do business (like the steel industry we use to service) are long gone.
Now at 73 years of age, still working every day, it is clear our decision to learn, use the new ways, not fight for the old ways, is the only way to survive and grow the business or industry!
I use Detroit as my latest example of an dominate domestic auto industry that chose(to this day) to fight to retain the comfortable way they have always done business, refusing to read the new needs of it’s customers, while year after year they lose market share, complaining of unfair trade practices, high health costs, poor work ethic’s, etc. all factors they allowed while on their watch.
I’m not a publisher but you are now experiencing earthshattering changes in your traditional business as we have, and you and your associates must engage the new ways to your advantage or step aside as the train (the business you so love) roars by without you?
You may say our situations are totally different, but in truth they are much the same issues for survival!
Good luck on your course of action.
Respectfully,
Kenneth S. Benjamin
Jun 9th, 2007
Mark Binder
As both an author and a small publisher, I’ve been observing this movement for a while. I’ve got a novel coming out next year, which will hopefully sell a few thousand copies. In less than 2 months, however, almost 2,000 people viewed the video promo for an audio CD I recorded. I currently make more money from iTunes downloads than I do from book sales.
Jun 9th, 2007
Jerry Halberstadt
Big point here is the conflict between traditional modes of publication and distribution, and new modes. New modes basically favor models like Google: they distribute what someone else has created. Becoming a new kind of super-publisher. Google makes money by selling advertising. Like, in a way, Radio and TV, that gave away broadcast content for free and charged the advertisers for aggregating viwers. Google has such a monopoly position that they won’t tell you what your share of the advertising dollar is!! AND they get hold of your content and can, at some future time, sell it to someone else.
It was once thought that the internet would be a democratic medium; any small person could broadcast to anyone and everyone for little or no cost. As the massive amounts of broadcast made it hard to hear or find anything relevant, the search engines took on the doorkeeper/librarian role. They enabled people to find what they wanted. THEN they started to sell target advertising. It is very clever. Between amazon and google, one hardly needs to leave home for a bookstore or a library.
The downside for a publisher is that the old distribution model–highly dysfunctional to begin with–is about to disintegrate. As bad as it was, it helped pay the bills. A decade ago one of the gurus of publishing pointed out that even if you wanted to distribute through non-trade channels, you still depended on trade sales to pay the bills.
We still don’t see clearly how new ideas and content will be rewarded under the new model.
We would need a highly efficient aggregator and distributor. Content would be sold from one or more central digital warehouses,the price per unit would be very low, and the old publisher/content creator will get a low unit compensation. Aggregators of long-tail content will do very well and hold a very strong position as gatekeepers, much like the old publishing system. But the creators of content will have a tough time getting compensated.
Present examples are what has happened in the music industry: wild, free, uncontrollable distribution of music….music distribution system cracked…a few strong new distributors like apple i-tunes, charging a low enough fee to compete with “free.”
The point by Martin Foner which I found on topic was that to survive a publisher will have to use internet & electronic distribution, alone or with some paper products, and will have to find ways to go direct to customers insofar as possible. At least not to depend on what is left of trade book system. And Ken Benjamin–right on, and age does have an advantage in adapting to the new!
Jun 9th, 2007
Al Mechling
This is the first time I have read one of your articles. I enjoy your comments but don’t share the gloom and doom. (I don’t go to book shows and now I have a good reason not to)
I believe a lot of the books being published today just arn’t worth being in print - maybe not even worth digital. With computers today everyone can suddenly become an “author”.
If distributors and bookstores go out of business it will be from their own stupidity and unwillingness to change the way they have always done business.
For example - I own a very small bookbinding and printing company (and there are a lot of others like us out there)unrecognized by people “in the business”. We only have published about 400 titles mostly on local history. We have been in business only 12 years and for that entire time we have tried endlessly to get distributors and chain bookstores to carry our books. We have sent sample copies, we have had store managers ask to be permitted to carry our books and always get the same answer. WE CAN ONLY PURCHASE BOOKS FROM OUR AUTHORIZED DISTRIBUTORS. How stupid is that to ignore requests by customers for books that are available from companies like mine? I hear it all the time from book buyers. I can sell directly to bookstores at a price even lower that they could buy it if my titles were being sold by a distributor.
OK, started a deal with a small distributor. They took 56% off the top, didn’t promote the book or even let the stores know about these. They were given 60 days, the took 360 days to pay for sold books, Returned some unsold books that were beaten to deth by bookstore customers or poor warehousing expecting full refund on books I had to destroy.
With the way this system operates at the present time it is no wonder Amazon, Google Books and others are doing well. This method is able to give the customer what they want in a way that we can still make some money.
I say goodbye to these distributors and bookstores; let them wither die!
Jun 9th, 2007
Wynette Hoffman
Bravo on your article. I’m sending the link to all of the independent publishers I work with. So many of us stand on the fringes of what is essentially the dinosaur field and feel like little mammals the big guys want to stomp on and the medium-size guys want to disown - and that’s if we’re feeling self-confident.
I write and publish fiction. Due more to a lack of capital than an understanding of the industry, I stumbled upon Lightning Source, Ingram’s print-on-demand arm, about five years ago when I decided I had seen too many rejection letters because my manuscript was too long and not the desired flavor of that particular publishing season. Since then, I’ve sold over 3000 copies of that first rejected book, both through online retailers such as and through brick and mortar stores. My current series is selling 400 copies a month through an equal mix of those markets. I do not have a warehouse full of books, I do not handle fulfillment, and I do not deal with distributors (honestly, my price margins are so tight I can’t afford them - mainly because on demand printing per unit prices are high, which is offset by the lack of fulfillment/distribution/warehousing expenses - go figure?). If Ingram and LSI went out of business tomorrow I would be out $48 for the current year and the set up fees for the books - less than $750. I am very thankful I was business-savvy enough not to fall for a POD publishing firm’s claims every time I see some other “self-published” author with a bad cover, poor editing, and a book priced out of the market. I did truly self-publish: I established a company, I purchased my own ISBNs, I applied for a LOC account, I set my own prices, I contract with my own service providers, and like most new writers, I handle my own promotions. Yet, there are still many people in this industry - especially authors oddly enough - who will tell me that I am not a professional writer or a publisher. This kind of ‘dinosaur thinking’ is what I feel will drown a good portion of the industry as you predict.
Ingram’s LSI is currently the biggest player in the market, but I feel in time they will not be the only game in town. Right now, going with LSI - and thus getting the listing with Ingram - serves as a bridge for independent publishers between the trade industry and direct sales through the Internet and other retail locations. Whether anybody likes it or not, the Internet is here and though we baby boomers vary in our friendliness to it, the generations after us know nothing else. Since I am not a traditional print-run-six-months-in-advance-of-street-date publisher, I was not really in a position to go for the traditional review routes. Instead, I have found even bookstores use the reviews on Amazon to decide what to buy. Having blogosphere buzz is key to my books selling. I am now experimenting with Google Adwords. Next, I will experiment with Google’s book-on-demand options. As I get the capital I intend to experiment with audio books.
My goal is to get my stories to as many “readers” as possible, in whatever form those “readers” want, and get paid for it. There are a lot of authors like me out there. We see what the publishing industry is undergoing as a chance at democracy. No longer will the fate of our words be left to other people having to decide whether or not to take a monetary risk. We can do it ourselves, and let the best stories win.
And I don’t think books will ever go away, though perhaps they will become collector items. If a reader really likes a book they read on their PDA, smart paper “book”, computer monitor, or whatever device or means technology develops to display text, then they might buy a copy for permanent record. When that phase hits the market, I figure I’ll be doing limited runs of embossed leather-bound hardbacks and selling them through my web site.
Jun 9th, 2007
Sallie Lowenstein
Hi Martin,
I had to sleep on your essay about the state of the book business because it is such a complicated issue and there are so many things to think about in what you have said.
I agree that returns are the devil incarnate for many small publishers, independent bookstores and perhaps surprisingly, for authors as well. But because, many people will address this issue, I want to address a different one, and that is the cultural aspect of what you have written.
We are a society peculiarly vulnerable to believing what we are told, what is spooned out to us by a world far more interested in where it can make money than our cultural and creative health. And in the U.S., we view the quick, the new, the next technological advancement as always being better than anything we have been presented in the past. Hence, the attempt to make us all jump into the fired-up enthusiasm of a few for digital books.
Interestingly, the effort to make e-books dominate paper and print books has basically failed over the last 10-15 years. And it seems to me, that the effort to put the world’s library on the internet is ironic, as it is as if the promoters of internet books are now trying to reach back and pull our history of literature and knowledge into the digital realm, since it failed with the contemporary writing scene, in hopes that our cultural attachments will give them clout.
I for one am not convinced that they can destroy Book with a capital B. You see, it’s engrained in many, not all, but many people, almost biologically, that to read, to hold a book, to relax with one, is good. Perhaps the whole population is not devoted to it, but plenty of people are including lots of children!
I’m an author, artist, publisher (who has never done returns in over 10 years of doing business and never will, nor used a distributor, only wholesalers) and I get letters from kids and work with kids all the time, and I’m telling you, they love real books and they hate reading on the computer or their cell phones, etc. Sure they use them for information, but not for real reading.
So, I do think that in general the business of books, especially corporate book publishing, is so top heavy and so vested in making big bucks, instead of the cultural significance of books, that there are going to be a lot of publishers that fall by the wayside. There are so many books being produced and shot out like buckshot, that people can’t sort through them, reviewers can’t cover them, so that good and bad are lost in the forest.
Our obsession with technology is not going to vanish. But the idea that fewer people read books is perhaps a misconception based on the mis-notion that we ever lived in a time when everyone was an avid reader. Not so. Never was. Never will be. I promise, no more people will read because the world’s library is available to them on the internet than do now. In fact, it may be fewer if books really vanish, because reading is relaxing, pleasant, intriguing, and informative when we can take a book, open it, and just interact directly without having to have electricity, or a computer between us and a page.
I recently asked elementary aged kids what they thought kids would do if they couldn’t use the computer or video games or have TV for a month. Answers in order of importance:
1. Read 2. Play with friends outdoors 3. Write stories 4. Do art
So yes, the business world is in trouble, but I’m not going to fall for the idea that books will all be digitalized and no one will read real books because the business world thinks they can make more money from new endeavors, anymore than small publishers should believe they need distributors because Pub Weekly tells them they do. There is far too much at stake to give in. Instead, we need to reform and readdress why profit is what determines what we read, whether on the computer or in print books.
Jun 10th, 2007
Bob Follett
I have been recommending “The Culture and Commerce of Publishing in the 21st Century” (Greco et al, Stanford University Press, copyright 2007) to the students I teach in various publishing courses. The book points out that 96% of all the 210,000 books published annually in the US sell less than 1,000 copies. 79% sell less than 99 copies. This suggest that the business model for publishing is very badly broken. I suspect the new model will have to include electronic distribution of most content, with printed books being a medium for a small subset. There will be a painful time of transition. Many old, established companies will die, like dinosaurs. It cannot yet be clear who the survivors will be. Thanks for your take on this transitional period.
Jun 10th, 2007
Tena Bastian
As an author of horse related books,and someone who spends a great deal of time in the great outdoors, I strongly feel the beginning of a new movement of returning to the love of a good book and the solitude and enrichment of curling up with a good book. I believe people miss that in their lives and will drift back to it. I own a small publishing house but have two books due out by Howell books, a division of Wiley publishing that were there at the BEA but was unable to attend this year. Both books celebrate the readers return to simpler times and although I appreciate your experience, I must say that I find your take on this transition a bit cynical. I say hang in there and we are about to see a drastic change for the better. Thank you for your thoughts.
Jun 11th, 2007
Ron Pullins
Martin.
Thanks for the report. I know the impetus to seeing the bleak side of things. Who couldn’t be in business for themselves, a small company in a world dominated by large ones, etc., without exploring the downside. Who could dream without having an occasional nightmare.
But let me give you my take on some of your thoughts.
1. We live in a world where change is increasing exponentially over time. I remember when I first got into publishing as a book “traveller” I met some of the old timers who actually travelled by train, were gone for weeks, to go from one school to another with their books. Somehow we are now doing email “blasts” — egad! — instead of face to face calls with our markets. One has to learn to live with change or be buried by it.
2. We are apt to be hurt if we continue to think in terms of books. Mind you, I love books. I love the smell of ink. I frankly confess I even like the taste of paper. But I see my career as obtaining rights, and then managing them carefully and profitably through the process we call publishing. I don’t own a printing press. I’m not in love with the local paper salesman. What I like to imagine I do is manage well the information that has been granted to me. I am sure that I am not going to cut a deal with Burger King to co-promote my next been Hegel translation, but my job isn’t prescribed by getting the book done. Publishing the book is simply the first, easiest, most obvious task in the 75+ years I have the the rights to this stuff. If everything goes on line (in a way that makes sense), then I will have to be there publishing in that format.
3. There will always be a demand for the new. If the material hasn’t changed, the consumers of it have, and matching the material with the market is my job. Google is doing some interesting things, but Google is doing pretty much what Dover once did, picking up what is free and repackaging it. But what is free has its limitations. I mean, Linux is free, but I haven’t seen Microsoft collapse, or even Red Hat for that matter. New and protected information will always be in demand. Even Shakespeare requires a 21st Century makeover. I am fairly confident we are not going to see much of that work done without some incentives that come with copyright and sales.
4. We live in a technological culture where anyone can publish almost anything. If you can’t afford five spiral bound copies from Kinko’s, you can always do a blog. There are a gazillion sources of information; and yes there are more playwrights than theater goers, some literary journals get more submissions than subscriptions, and I don’t even pretend to include the dribble that goes on on the web. But our job as publishers has always been, not to keep the presses running, but to engage the whole process from beginning to end as a response to a need in the market. We need to know how to put a roof on our house; we need to know how to understand history and our culture; we need to know the consequences of war and national debt. Advertising, sonsumer economics, corporate short term thinking, accounting for the short term stock market, have and continue to have a major negative impact on our lives and culture and politics. I like to think that despite the proliferation of books, there are probably about as many intelligent readers out there today as there were a hundred years ago, and about as many intelligent writers, and we need to keep them (and us) from being buried in pop culture.
I could go on, but these I think are some of the premises under which I work. They help me keep in mind there is a future.
Jun 12th, 2007
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