The world of heavyweight publishing is changing at a rapid as the widespread acceptance of e-books and new technology provide authors with more ways to publish on their terms.
Publishers have had to deal with a huge upheaval over the past ten years as they watched colleagues in print media flail with changing technology and information consumption. But in the case of books, “adapt or die” was the watchword that sparked a revolution in the form of electronic reading devices and e-books.
It is now standard for publishers to promote printed and electronic versions of any author’s work, with audio books often included in the mix. While print books are still considered the pinnacle (costing more to produce and leading to higher overall sales) of publishing for many people, there are now more books launched electronically than ever before.
Publishers have also found that e-books can be more lucrative than printed books, particularly when it comes to taking on new authors or pushing sales of a particular book. Research from PricewaterhouseCooper (PwC) shows there are often significantly higher margins for e-books.
But publishers are facing a number of obstacles when it comes to making the most of these potential profits and may need to change more than their strategies to deal with the digital revolution. “In many cases, publishers only have the marketing rights for the printed and audio content,” PwC reported.
“To enable eBooks to be distributed, further negotiations are necessary with the authors. This is frequently a time consuming and expensive process.”
This information suggests publishers need to update the standard contracts offer to authors, including details of electronic resources so that publishers can then “press on with developing the market”. To put it another way, publishers need to meet new consumer demands and prove that they are providing relevant content across all mediums in order to continue making a profit.
A Pressing Problem With Authors
The new world order that e-books and other content has created leaves many previously self-assured publishers with a range of decisions to make for both new and established agreements with authors.
Unfortunately these decisions are not always easy or as smooth as publishers would like, partly due to juggling different publication formats but primarily due to authors.
As the ways people read books changes, so too do the ways authors approach their creative and business processes. An increasing number of authors have taken the self-publishing route in recent years.
Some are even winning awards for their work, like US author Sergio de la Plava, who recently won the prestigious PEN/Robert W Bingham Prize for best debut fiction. These changes, and the media reports on them, have focused on how many self-starter opportunities authors now have.
But the result for publishers is that authors now have more leverage when it comes to negotiating contracts if they do decide to take a traditional route, and if things don’t go their way they can walk away and still make a profit. That scenario is exactly what played out for US author Hugh Howey. A regional publishing house managed his first novel in 2009, and Howey was quick to realise that he could utilise the same tools as them and maintain complete control over his work.
Howey’s next major project, the now-famous WOOL series, was published by the author on Amazon.com’s platform and earned him fame and fortune without any need for a middleman.
Howey has since partnered with a literary agent – Kristin Nelson – and signed a groundbreaking deal with Simon & Schuster that has kept a significant amount of control in his hands. “Most people in my situation (rightly, perhaps) had stepped off this ride long before this point. E.L. James did the correct thing by taking the millions and then making tens or hundreds of more millions on top of this,” Howey wrote in an article for IndieReader.
“I wasn’t after the millions, though. I wanted a contract that, when read, made me feel like a human being.”
After three rounds of meetings with top publishing houses around the world, Simon & Schuster crafted a print-only deal that Howey said “would augment the success I was having on my own by doing what they do best: bringing out a book and getting it in the hands of booksellers”.
While other publishers turned down Howey’s demands for greater rights and autonomy, in this case one of the biggest publishers in the world adapted to what the author wanted.
This case may be the way forward for publishers in the future, particularly if self-publishing authors are also keen businesspeople.
The focus for many publishers now is to get as much different content available as possible, including print books, e-books, audio, video and even games.
But these changing times mean that they may be doing that more as collaboration with authors – and splitting the costs accordingly.
The post Perils of Publishing Part 1: Publishers appeared first on Quid.