Angela Eschler, my old editor at Covenant, and a friend of mine, pointed out that I left a cliff hanger in one of my recent posts. I never returned to the topic, but I’m returning now. I wrote:
“Does this mean publishers are pretty much worthless in this new model? Do they go extinct? No, but it does mean they have to adapt. There are several key things they must do in order to provide value to the process, and I may or may not talk about what those things are in a later post.”
The post talked about how the lower price of e-books, and the higher royalty rate to authors, will have a significant effect on the publishing business. If an author gets more money by selling e-books, and they can sell more copies because of the lower price, why do we even need print books? And if we don’t need print books, why do we need publishers?
Printed books will not be going away any time soon. The demand for real books is dropping, even as the demand for e-book rises, but it won’t go away, at least not in our generation. So publishers will always have a job printing and selling books, but it will likely look much different. However, just like the candle makers couldn’t ignore light bulbs, printers must develop a new strategy around e-books. I’m no expert, but here are my two cents on areas they should be aware of.
One benefit e-books provide to publishers is these books will take out a lot of the guess work publishers now face. Editors make assumptions as to what will sell. If an author has thrown up an e-book on Amazon, and it’s sold 100,000 copies, this is a good sign to the publisher that they have a winner on their hands. The publisher can safely assume that a printed version of the book would also do well.
I see editors and agents of the future watching e-books on Amazon, Smashwords, and iBooks very closely for the next big thing. Authors who can prove their books sell online will get query letters from publishers who ask to represent their print rights.
As authors become more aware of e-books, digital rights will become extremely hard for publishers to secure. We’ve recently seen one of the biggest literary agencies put a freeze on all of their client’s digital rights. For a print book an new author get’s 5-15%. For digital rights, they get 70%. Publishers must either pay higher royalty rates for e-books, or find other strategies.
Publishers should also not be afraid to use e-books as a way to drive sales of print books. Thorough studies, as well as less rigid experiments, show giving away electronic books drives up the sales of printed copies. This is the open model I’ve talked about. The model applies to low cost e-books as well. Sell the e-book for cheap, and then sell the printed version as people go looking for books to buy as gifts.
Finally, publishers should be combing through their decades of backlists, looking for books they already have the rights to that may sell well today. One of my favorite authors is Fredric Brown. Most folks have probably never heard of this author, but I think his books would thrive in an e-book format. You can buy a few his books in digital format, but somewhere, some publisher has the rights to classic Frederic Brown. Get his books online, generate excitement, and reap both the digital rewards, as well as maybe generating interest for new print runs.
Publishers have a tough row to hoe, but they do have the benefit of seeing how the music industry, the movie industry, the television industry, and the newspaper industry have weathered their own respective digital storms. They should look to these industries, study what has and hasn’t worked, then cross their fingers, treat their authors well, and hope for the best.
