Killing us softly

KMTolan

No drama
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 22, 2009
Messages
236
Reaction score
12
Location
Near Austin TX
Website
www.kmtolan.com
My books on both Amazon and (now) B&N have been dropped down to almost nothing in price, and I'm sure this is the same for most other authors published with an Indie. B&N keeps Fictionwise prices up near retail, of course, as to continue serving the slow poison to a child they meant to kill off from the start.

I was wondering how the old guard industry was going to take back control and limit distribution to themselves in this day and age. Guess I don't have to wonder anymore. Anyone counting the stars as they wink out? Ah, how history repeats itself.

Kerry
 

nkkingston

Bemused Girl
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 11, 2008
Messages
1,116
Reaction score
67
Location
UK
Website
www.solelyfictional.org
Depending on what kind of deal you've got with Amazon, it shouldn't matter if they discount or not. The price they pay is based on the price you set minus their fee. Whether you're with an epress or self-publishing, if the list price of your book is $9.99 then you'll see however much of that has been agreed, regardless of whether they're selling it for $9.99 or $0.99. (zpeteman started a celebratory thread on this very basis)

The problem as I see it is when Amazon discounts the large, commercial publishers' books to match epress prices, effectively giving the commercial publishers free money and rewarding them for overpricing their books. As a consumer I dislike the Agency model as it removes the opportunity for retailers to place discounts on the books (though being in the UK it's actually not applicable, and retailers can still charge what they like!), but as an author published by an epress I'm really quite enjoying watching them shoot themselves in their own feet.

They're obviously trying to slow the growth of the market until they can catch up (I highly doubt they're trying to stop it altogether; they'd have to be complete idiots to think that was remotely possible), but in the meantime it's a bit of a boost for all the smaller publishers willing to offer lower prices on their books as standard. The bad times will come when the big boys start buying out the smaller pubs and taking them on as imprints. Then we're back to square one in terms of market dominance and control. In the meantime, though, enjoy it while you can!
 

KMTolan

No drama
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 22, 2009
Messages
236
Reaction score
12
Location
Near Austin TX
Website
www.kmtolan.com
I am a bit ignorant in this matter as I don't get involved in these things and prefer to let my publisher do what they know is best for both of us. I agree that there would be NO problem if Amazon or the rest ate their discounts. My perception is that this isn't the case. I'd love to be wrong. Really.

Kerry
 

KMTolan

No drama
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 22, 2009
Messages
236
Reaction score
12
Location
Near Austin TX
Website
www.kmtolan.com

Just ranting, C. Hopefully in ignorance, but I have an eye toward what happened back in the early days of "pulp fiction". That's the history I was referring to when so many Indies were crushed or bought out after the NY stopped denigrating paperbacks and took over.

Kerry
 

Torgo

Formerly Phantom of Krankor.
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 7, 2005
Messages
7,632
Reaction score
1,204
Location
London, UK
Website
torgoblog.blogspot.com
The bad times will come when the big boys start buying out the smaller pubs and taking them on as imprints. Then we're back to square one in terms of market dominance and control. In the meantime, though, enjoy it while you can!

I'm not entirely sure that = bad times. I've seen big houses take in small presses before as imprints and in my experience it is invariably a good thing for all concerned. Small presses being what they are what we're basically talking about is the big company hiring the people from the small one. It's acquiring a passionate / experienced / specialist publisher to run their own list, and giving them a support structure that might entail more monitoring but which has significant advantages:a big staff of production, design, sales and marketing experts, and all the attendant economies of scale.

Did you mean to imply in your question that this sort of deal is done primarily for the purposes of increasing control and dominance over the market? I think the only way a big house is going to care about a small e-publishing imprint is if the little guy is doing something profitable that the big guy doesn't have the right personnel to pull off. The smart play is usually to hire the little guy, give him a nicer office in a building full of smart creative people, and let him do his thing with more resources.

(I realize I occasionally sound like a total corporate shill where publishing is concerned.)
 

Old Hack

Such a nasty woman
Super Moderator
Absolute Sage
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jun 12, 2005
Messages
22,454
Reaction score
4,956
Location
In chaos
It has always been the case that the larger publishers take in the successful smaller ones. It often works well, to varying degrees. So much depends on the deal that is struck, and the people involved. It really doesn't always end in disaster: often it rejuvenates a flagging independent and allows them to remain in the market, publishing quirky, difficult books but this time with the huge corporate backing that rockets niche books towards best-sellerdom. Consider The Friday Project, which went belly-up a few years ago: it's now part of HarperCollins, publishing books which other publishers wouldn't touch and doing very well with them, too.
 

nkkingston

Bemused Girl
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 11, 2008
Messages
1,116
Reaction score
67
Location
UK
Website
www.solelyfictional.org
I am a bit ignorant in this matter as I don't get involved in these things and prefer to let my publisher do what they know is best for both of us. I agree that there would be NO problem if Amazon or the rest ate their discounts. My perception is that this isn't the case. I'd love to be wrong. Really.

Simple solution: email your publisher and ask what kind of arrangment they have. If Amazon inflicted price changes on publishers without their permission I don't imagine many people would still sell through them. When I worked in retail we could offer discounts to our customers if we wished (for example, to clear out old stock), but we couldn't simply refuse to pay our suppliers less as a result.

Did you mean to imply in your question that this sort of deal is done primarily for the purposes of increasing control and dominance over the market? I think the only way a big house is going to care about a small e-publishing imprint is if the little guy is doing something profitable that the big guy doesn't have the right personnel to pull off. The smart play is usually to hire the little guy, give him a nicer office in a building full of smart creative people, and let him do his thing with more resources.

It's just my bleeding heart leftiness coming out :) I like the idea of lots of little independent publishers more than a handful of large publishers with lots of imprints. If the little guy is doing well, why shouldn't s/he have the opportunity to become big themselves, rather than being bought out before they can become competition? Besides, if you were Random House buying up epresses (before your competitors can) once you've bought Ellora's Cave and Loose Id and Cobblestone, why keep them as separate imprints when they're putting out broadly similar products?
 

Torgo

Formerly Phantom of Krankor.
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 7, 2005
Messages
7,632
Reaction score
1,204
Location
London, UK
Website
torgoblog.blogspot.com
If the little guy is doing well, why shouldn't s/he have the opportunity to become big themselves, rather than being bought out before they can become competition?

Ah, but they don't have to sell, do they? They won't end up with horses' heads in their beds; they have every opportunity to compete and prosper.n And as I said, being 'bought up' isn't the same thing as being annihilated. If people want to stay independent, there's nothing to stop them from doing so. But there are advantages to partnership.

Besides, if you were Random House buying up epresses (before your competitors can) once you've bought Ellora's Cave and Loose Id and Cobblestone, why keep them as separate imprints when they're putting out broadly similar products?

I don't know much about those cases and I should clarify that almost all of my experience is in print children's books rather than in digital publishing; but since you mention Random House I note two children's imprints acquired fairly recently - David Fickling and Tamarind Books. Fickling is still based in Oxford I believe and continues to publish outstanding and distinctive books, like the Dark Materials trilogy, say; Tamarind are a terrific multicultural imprint which for years was one formidable woman, Verna Wilkins, who brought her list under RH's auspices a while back. They provide extra depth and breadth of publishing to RH and are powered by talented individuals with strong personalities. I don't think anyone's worse off for those deals. But of course YMMV.
 

KMTolan

No drama
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 22, 2009
Messages
236
Reaction score
12
Location
Near Austin TX
Website
www.kmtolan.com
Simple solution: email your publisher and ask what kind of arrangment they have.

And they responded by saying that Amazon is eating the discount (not us) thanks to some brilliant foresight on the publisher's part. It is nice to have someone watching my back so well.

Kerry
 

HapiSofi

Hagiographically Advantaged
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 16, 2005
Messages
2,093
Reaction score
676
NKKingston, I'm sorry you don't like the agency model, but publishing runs on very thin profit margins, and a surprising amount of trade publishing's total income is earned during the early rush of readers to buy and read a small number of hot new books. Amazon wanted to sell those hot new titles at its uniform ebook price: great promotion for their ebook program and for the Kindle, no doubt; but over time it would have gutted the publishers.

Amazon doesn't read slush. It doesn't acquire promising authors, coax their careers along, pay advances, publish the early books that gradually win the author an enthusiastic audience, or do sixteen different kinds of advance promotion on the book that looks like it'll finally be the breakout title. If you think authors would be better off in a world where no one did those things, certainly not for free -- well, you're entitled to your own opinion.

As for the wonderfulness of small presses: There are wonderful small presses. Frequently, what's best about them is their editing and occasionally their art direction. Those can continue to be wonderful if the small press becomes a subsidiary of a larger publisher. What they get out of the deal are the parts of publishing that don't scale down, like the sales force, the advertising, promotion, and publicity staff, the distribution channels, and the advantageous supplier contracts.

You may have a sentimental attachment to the idea of lots of little publishers, a pastoral idyll of editorial dedication and love; but I don't think you can have met the real bottom-feeder small houses that must be counted among that class. I don't mean vanity presses and related species; I mean sharp-dealing hardscrabble little houses whose profit margin would come uncomfortably close to zero if they paid everyone they owed and came through on everything they promised.

I've worked with some of them, including one publisher whose standard procedure for paying an invoice was literally triggered by threat of lawsuit, and who had to change office supply vendors every few months because he never paid them. And then there was the publisher whose idea of acquisition was to cheaply buy up the rights to bad old books published in the 50s and 60s, then hire underpaid freelancers to rewrite them to his specifications. His take on the intellectual property rights of the original authors was "Who cares? They're probably all dead by now."

You say you're a bleeding-heart leftist. Ever read George Orwell on how the worst landlords are often the ones who own a single building they can't afford to fix? Small isn't necessarily beautiful.
 

Old Hack

Such a nasty woman
Super Moderator
Absolute Sage
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jun 12, 2005
Messages
22,454
Reaction score
4,956
Location
In chaos
Indeed. And just to add ballast to HapiSofi's post (not that it needs any), in the last couple of weeks I've been watching a small press work to the "payment on lawsuit" principle. It's continuing to sign up new writers; but a good number of its current authors haven't been paid for over two years.

Despite this, it has an absolutely stellar reputation--probably because it has published a good few shortlisted or prizewinning books. What it doesn't have is any real distribution, or a budget for marketing and promotion. I have no doubt that if it were to be acquired by a larger press, it would do much better--it's books would get out there more, and it would be able to pay its authors. But the people who own the business won't even think about what they consider to be "selling out". Which is a terrible shame, as they're going to have to close down soon, I think.
 

valeriec80

Got the hang of it, here
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jun 12, 2009
Messages
388
Reaction score
33
Um...I don't think it's necessarily leftist to think that a larger number of competing businesses is a better model. I think it's capitalist. And I think that when everything gets consolidated into one large business, it's called a monopoly.

I think it was a little condescending to refer to a basic economic principle as sentimental and a pastoral idyll.
 

nkkingston

Bemused Girl
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 11, 2008
Messages
1,116
Reaction score
67
Location
UK
Website
www.solelyfictional.org
The leftist part of me tends to overlook the "competing" bit. My actual politics (as in, how I vote) is far more realistic about the world we live in compared with me 'if only' politics that leave me sketching out vague sequels to Utopia in the knowledge that People Don't Work That Way. In my ideal world, there are lots of little niche publishers, none of which are publically traded* and all of which make enough money from their loyal customers to survive using the current business model predominant among epresses. In the real world, I acknowledge that large publishers often put out superior products, and that for any publisher the bottom line is the profit margin and to make ends meet sometimes corners will be cut and invoices only paid on final demands. I acknowledge the difference, but it doesn't mean I have to like it :)

The thing about the Agency Model is that though it may be legal in the US (for now), in many other countries it isn't. As a non-US customer, I'm already frustrated when I encounter ebooks I can't buy because the rights for countries other than the US haven't been purchased, or because something is out of copyright in the country the retailer is based in but not in the UK. When you add to that the fact that some of the big publishers are now forced to follow different pricing structures in different countries, the whole system teeters on being too complicated to follow. How does one comparison shop in a market where half the publishers have 'come to an agreement' on pricing? The iBooks store is half empty and Amazon are only just launching a UK Kindle store this month despite trying to flog me a Kindle for over a year. Google Books fell foul of the same problem when they tried to grab all those orphan works; they're another US business with a strong internet presence that overlooked the fact that the internet is international. I mean, is it legal for me to comparison shop for ebooks between Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk? What are the tax implications of that? What if a US customer were to do the same and buy books from Agency publishers in countries where the agency agreement doesn't stand?

I don't think Amazon's stranglehold on the market is a good thing, and if the Agency model helps relax it, then that's a definite positive. But I object to the pricing of ebooks as comparable to hardbacks, because I'm not receiving the same rights for my money. With a print book you have the right to sell the book on; with an ebook you obviously don't. It's not a huge thing, but add it to the fact that under cloud models like Amazon's you're only leasing the book in the first place I can't see why I should pay that much for something I don't even own. And especially not where I see epresses offering products of similar quality for half the price.

This is me-the-customer thinking here, not me-the-writer or me-the-overly-interested-in-the-nitty-gritty-of-publishing. It's instinctive. I wouldn't want to pay as much for a paperback as I would a hardback, and I definitely don't want to pay as much for an ebook. The publishing industry has worked very hard to convince me that hardbacks are a luxury item, good quality and high priced, to be purchased only on rare occasions (well, they probably weren't aiming for 'rare occasions', but some of those hardbacks cost as much as my week's food budget). The computing industry has worked hard to convince me electronic goods aren't as valuable or reliable as physical, that they are cheaper due to the lack of paper/real estate/equipment/employees and require regular backups on multiple devices**. Many industries are trying to overcome this perception now, but the problem remains that as long as there are niche publishers selling good quality books cheaper and cheerfully surviving then it's hard for me-the-customer to accept that the big publishers can't do the same. I have a basic understanding of why, but that doesn't make me feel charitable enough to actually buy their books.

It's like the newspapers trying to erect paywalls when there's free sources of news online. Sure, I admire The Times and appreciate its history. I might pick up a paper occasionally. Am I going to pay for it online? Not when I can get the same news for free from the BBC. I like The Times, but not that much.

I don't know if publishing can overcome this perception. I know that part of the Agency model is about preventing it growing any stronger as new customers enter the ebook market. Fair enough. They're under no obligation to favour early adopters over customers-to-be, and I'm under no obligation to ensure they and their business models survive the recession. What concerns me is if they buy up the small epresses, then they will come under the business models of the big publishers, and I won't be able to afford their ebooks either.



*several companies I admired and patronised made some, IMO, bad decisions once becoming publically traded as the new drive to increase profits alienated their loyal customers. Because there's nothing like driving your original paying customers away in an attempt to attact new ones to increase your profits.

**the computing industry has failed to convince me cloud computing is a remotely good idea. Sorry, but you can't spend the better part of two decades selling me floppies and CDs and pen drives and external harddrives only to tell me I should trust some server on another continent. It makes a nice additional way of backing stuff up, but it's not something I'd trust as my sole source of data.