Is e-publishing a bubble?

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hughhowey

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A friend of mine (traditionally published, of course) seemed to take delight in sending me this link yesterday:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jan/30/self-e-publishing-bubble-ewan-morrison?CMP=twt_gu

Ewan Morrison has been writing about the shifting publishing landscape for a while. In this article, he points out the similarities between e-publishing today and other financial bubbles of the past.

Is he on to something? An interesting feature of bubbles is that the people riding high in each one all told themselves that "this time it's different." (Which is the title of an amazing book about financial bubbles).

My feeling is this: Independent authors are able to make money in this field primarily because the big publishers have chosen to stay out of it. As long as they charge more for an e-book than they do for a mass market paperback, it creates opportunity for authors who publish for less. Until they come to their senses and price their backlist down where we are residing, the "bubble" will remain intact.
 
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This isn't an article about epublishing. It's about self-publishing.

Once again: they are completely different things.

Epublishing = format.
Self-publishing = financial backing.

Yes, the article talks about self-epublishing, but the focus is on who pays, not which format the book appears in.
 

Terie

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Beyond what SP has already pointed out about your erroneous terminology (and you know what? you've been around AW threads now long enough to know the difference between 'self-(e-)publishing' and 'e-publishing').....

My feeling is this: Independent authors are able to make money in this field primarily because the big publishers have chosen to stay out of it.

How do you come to this conclusion? The big publishers are all over this field. Have you looked at the top Kindle paid list lately? Most of the 'top 20 paid' (which is as far as I looked) are from big publishers.

Not to mention, your very next sentence directly contradicts the one above:

As long as they charge more for an e-book than they do for a mass market paperback, it creates opportunity for authors who publish for less. Until they come to their senses and price their backlist down where we are residing, the "bubble" will remain intact.

If big publishers are seriously dominating the 'top paid' lists, how can you possibly conclude that 1) they're 'staying out of this field' and 2) they're not selling well? You might want to try applying some logic to your rhetoric.
 
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hughhowey

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This isn't an article about epublishing. It's about self-publishing.

Once again: they are completely different things.

Epublishing = format.
Self-publishing = financial backing.

Yes, the article talks about self-epublishing, but the focus is on who pays, not which format the book appears in.

You're right. I tend to use these interchangeably, when I shouldn't. I should have said: Self e-published, as I don't think the author of the article meant to include print books or professionally published e-books.

Thanks for pointing this out.
 

mshaw2268

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I don't think self-ePublishing is a bubble but I do believe the landscape will change. It has the bubble similarity because many see this as the current get-rich-quick scheme because of those self-publishers that have hit the big time. As they learn it actually involves work to create money-making content, they'll drift away to the next get-rich-quick scheme.

Also, the author of that article apparently doesn't know how publishing works... or maybe the angle is intentional to add weight to his story. Either way, to say Amanda Hocking's success is "due in no small part to what the industry calls "piggybacking" on a mainstream success," is to put blinders on and not see the big picture.

Did her eBooks take off because of the genre she was targeting? Probably. Is she the only one that targets specific markets because that's the new hot thing? Absolutely not. Even the traditional publishing houses are steering their authors towards writing paranormal romance and urban fantasy for the YA crowd. Are they 'piggybacking'?

Another interesting slant (almost finished ranting, promise) is the author of the article mentioning how Hocking abandoned self-publishing for the hallowed halls of the Big 6 but no word is mentioned about traditionally published authors either jumping into self-publishing with both feet or combining the two by letting the big house handle the print books while the author holds onto electronic rights. That door swings both ways.

Okay. Shutting up now.
 

hughhowey

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I don't think self-ePublishing is a bubble but I do believe the landscape will change. It has the bubble similarity because many see this as the current get-rich-quick scheme because of those self-publishers that have hit the big time. As they learn it actually involves work to create money-making content, they'll drift away to the next get-rich-quick scheme.

Also, the author of that article apparently doesn't know how publishing works... or maybe the angle is intentional to add weight to his story. Either way, to say Amanda Hocking's success is "due in no small part to what the industry calls "piggybacking" on a mainstream success," is to put blinders on and not see the big picture.

Did her eBooks take off because of the genre she was targeting? Probably. Is she the only one that targets specific markets because that's the new hot thing? Absolutely not. Even the traditional publishing houses are steering their authors towards writing paranormal romance and urban fantasy for the YA crowd. Are they 'piggybacking'?

Another interesting slant (almost finished ranting, promise) is the author of the article mentioning how Hocking abandoned self-publishing for the hallowed halls of the Big 6 but no word is mentioned about traditionally published authors either jumping into self-publishing with both feet or combining the two by letting the big house handle the print books while the author holds onto electronic rights. That door swings both ways.

Okay. Shutting up now.

That didn't seem like a rant at all to me. You make good points.
 

ResearchGuy

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IMHO, based on years of observation, experience, and book buying (mostly in e-form since I bought a Kindle in Sept. 2010):

1. E-publishing is here to stay. It is a major shift in the book business.

2. Self-publishing is here to stay (print and e-), and much facilitated by the e-book opportunity. (Much, of course, is not worth the paper or electrons required to print it.)

FWIW, most often, when I learn of a new book that I want (or at least want to sample) I look for it on Kindle, and depending on author, topic, and where I learned of it (reviews in NYTimes and the like and author appearances on certain favorite shows being most persuasive) I'll buy/download it immediately.

As a micropublisher, I am still dragging my feet getting books into e-form. I just published a book in paperback (it is leaking out weeks before official publishing date), but still have to get it out in e-form. But that is my own issue with other priorities, not that I think e-books are not where the market increasingly is. The one I just published should do well as an e-book. I just need to get off the dime and make it happen.

--Ken
 

veinglory

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It is an article about e-self-publishing (i.e. publishing that is both e- and self-) and while it is a bit overwrought, makes a fairly obvious point about what is going on in that arena right now. (That many will publish, but few will really profit).
 

shaldna

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Am I the only one who feels like they are stuck in some ever repeating cycle?
 

Terie

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But are all those authors doing as well as Amanda Hocking did/is doing?

Obviously not. But then, neither are most of the self-e-published authors in that (or any other) genre.

If you took all the commercially published authors in the genre, and all the self-e-pubbed authors in the genre, which group do you think would have the higher per-capita income? After all, virtually all of the commercially published authors will have got at least a several-thousand-dollar/pound/euro/whatever advance, while a substantial majority of self-e-pubbed authors are still struggling to break into triple-digit sales.

And if you take just the top one in each category, Stephanie Meyer's commercially published works are still beating the pants off of Amanda Hocking's self-e-pubbed ones income-wise. (According to Forbes, in 2009, Meyer made $50 million. According to USA Today, from April 2010 to February 2011, Amanda Hocking made $2 million.)

The number of self-e-pubbed writers earning more than peanuts is climbing, and that's great, but they still start out in the negative column (costs for self-pubbing) whereas commercially published writers start out in the plus column (paid an advance). And despite the climbing number, the majority still don't sell more than 100 copies.
 
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Izz

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Obviously not. But then, neither are most of the self-e-published authors in that (or any other) genre.

If you took all the commercially published authors in the genre, and all the self-e-pubbed authors in the genre, which group do you think would have the higher per-capita income? After all, virtually all of the commercially published authors will have got at least a several-thousand-dollar/pound/euro/whatever advance, while a substantial majority of self-e-pubbed authors are still struggling to break into triple-digit sales.

And if you take just the top one in each category, Stephanie Meyer's commercially published works are still beating the pants off of Amanda Hocking's self-e-pubbed ones income-wise.

The number of self-e-pubbed writers earning more than peanuts is climbing, and that's great, but they still start out in the negative column (costs for self-pubbing) whereas commercially published writers start out in the plus column (paid an advance). And despite the climbing number, the majority still don't sell more than 100 copies.
I took Kriven's point to be that commercially published writers in Hocking's genre are also piggybacking to a large extent, but without the success of Hocking.

I didn't see a comparison between all self-published authors and all commercially published authors in that genre, but perhaps i misread :Shrug:

ETA: and you'd expect Meyer's work to be outselling everybody else's, as she's the success other writers are piggybacking off.
 
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mshaw2268

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Am I the only one who feels like they are stuck in some ever repeating cycle?

Unfortunately, that seems to be the nature of the game. A publisher will finally stretch and try something new and then we get stuck with a billion clones of the same thing until someone else finally gets brave enough to try something new again... and then it starts all over again.

Personally, I'm waiting for vampires to lose their sparkle and become the blood-thirsty demons they're meant to be. There are still a few books like that out there but they seem to be in the minority.
 

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Random thoughts brought up by the thread. Two beers into the evening. Forgive me if this is a load of cobblers.

I think the Hocking phenomenon is an interesting one because it shows us a previously unsuspected niche in the market. It feels a bit like finding a puncture on a bicycle tyre - it's easier to detect if you fill it with water. Or something. Having trouble finding the right analogy. Anyways: I think a big unfulfilled demand had built up.

We had seen a new commercial fiction category spring up overnight: paranormal romance. Everyone scurried to supply that demand. We'd also seen ownership of e-readers spring up overnight: publishers were relatively slow to catch up to the early adopters, especially as people will burn through inexpensive genre fiction - pulp, if you will - with remarkable speed if you pipe it directly into their Kindles. (I know I do.)

Hocking supplied exactly what people wanted, at a bargain price. That previously invisible market - which possibly could have been discerned if publishers had been sufficiently plugged in to things - lapped it up. The same goes for writers like Konrath, in other genres. The economic danger in this situation, though, would seem to be that thousands of hopefuls rush in to do the same thing, and it's not clear that the market wants thousands of times more books. I read up to half a dozen novels per week, but I'm not sure I can manage six thousand.

So I worry that discovery of self-e-published authors will start to become difficult again. Amazon ratings and the like are all very well, but the more thinly spread the customers are over all the available titles, the fewer ratings you'll see per book. The fewer ratings there are, the less useful the average is, from pure statistical noise or attempts to game the system. With more noise in the data, it's harder for recommendation engines to work.

I can see similar problems with social discovery (word of mouth; what your friends recommend), with SEO and spammy marketing, with pricing strategies, or with simple polish. With thousands more entrepreneurs competing for attention, it seems like it could turn into a whole bunch of highly competitive arms races. Some of those authors might be better served, and less stressed, by partnering up with a trade publisher who can fight some of those battles more effectively. Some will do better without being teamed up with a publisher; we may be generally friendly giants, but we are occasionally clumsy and often stubborn.

I reckon what we'll see is a gold rush, followed by diminishing returns, and then the self-e-publishing trade starting to coalesce into something that looks rather like the current trade publishers, at least in terms of our core functions. People will always get paid to filter and edit and manage publication, but instead of one person in a publisher's office in London it might be two or three or more working at Amazon or on a blog somewhere. But I don't think we'll see much of a bubble bursting, just a process of reorganization - people aren't going to lose their shirts.
 

hughhowey

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I reckon what we'll see is a gold rush, followed by diminishing returns, and then the self-e-publishing trade starting to coalesce into something that looks rather like the current trade publishers, at least in terms of our core functions. People will always get paid to filter and edit and manage publication, but instead of one person in a publisher's office in London it might be two or three or more working at Amazon or on a blog somewhere. But I don't think we'll see much of a bubble bursting, just a process of reorganization - people aren't going to lose their shirts.

I think your 2-beer analysis has more to offer than the original article I posted.
 

J. Tanner

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So I worry that discovery of self-e-published authors will start to become difficult again. Amazon ratings and the like are all very well, but the more thinly spread the customers are over all the available titles, the fewer ratings you'll see per book. The fewer ratings there are, the less useful the average is, from pure statistical noise or attempts to game the system. With more noise in the data, it's harder for recommendation engines to work.

I'm not worried. A million books is already 'too much' to sort through. I still manage to find stuff to read. 10 million won't change that appreciably. The recommendation engines will still be able to find the 1% or so that's got traction. Other word of mouth methods will continue to function as they always have independent of the number of titles. Search and curation have not failed as the Web has grown by an order of magnitude and I see no reason to think e-books will follow a different path.
 

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I'm not worried. A million books is already 'too much' to sort through. I still manage to find stuff to read. 10 million won't change that appreciably. The recommendation engines will still be able to find the 1% or so that's got traction. Other word of mouth methods will continue to function as they always have independent of the number of titles. Search and curation have not failed as the Web has grown by an order of magnitude and I see no reason to think e-books will follow a different path.

We'll always find stuff to read; it's just that conditions for people publishing into this market feel like they are only going to get more difficult if the number of publishers increases by an order of magnitude or three. There's only a finite amount of a) demand, for sales purposes and b) attention, for discovery/marketing purposes.
 

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Let us take a look a classic bubble.

Beanie Babies.

No one thought they were really worth the amounts that people were charging for them, people were buying them because they thought that someone else would pay even more. Sooner or later that had to crash. People stopped believing that there was some sucker willing to pay even more, and with no one who really wanted them (at least not at more than retail), the Beanie Baby market crashed.

Beanie Babies were a hot potato, and those that didn't get out fast enough lost a lot of money. The dotcom bubble was big enough that people who had nothing to do with it got hurt. If there is a bubble around e-publishing, I don't think it is big enough to do much harm to anyone but the businesses themselves. If they close up shop, e-publishing will still go on strong, just with the weaker businesses folded.
 

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The number of self-e-pubbed writers earning more than peanuts is climbing, and that's great, but they still start out in the negative column (costs for self-pubbing) whereas commercially published writers start out in the plus column (paid an advance). And despite the climbing number, the majority still don't sell more than 100 copies.

Uh, the vast majority of self-published authors would have made nothing in trade publishing because they wouldn't have sold a book to a publisher. You're comparing apples to elephants here.
 
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