The change in publishing

I just wanted to take a moment and discuss what is happening in the publishing industry.  This blog is primarily for readers and I don’t want to get too bogged down in the business side of writing, but most non writers aren’t aware of the change going on in the publishing world right now.  With the public announcement of Pottermore by J. K. Rowling, however, the winds of change are starting to blow into the mainstream.  So while my fellow writers are no doubt aware of what is going on, many readers who aren’t trying to make a career in publishing may not understand the significance.

For decades the way publishing worked was simple, if slightly flawed.  Let’s look at a standard case example:  A writer would write a book then spend a year or more trying to get an agent to look at it.  Eventually, perhaps, an agent would look at it and ask to see more.  If they thought they could sell it they would sign a contract with the writer to represent them and then send it out to publisher they thought would be interested.  Then usually months if not years later the agent would sell it to a publisher.  From this the author would receive an advance.  Let’s use a good first novel advance number, say $10,000.  So the author would receive about half up front (minus agent fees of 15%) and then half 12 to 18 months later on publication.

Now this money was an advance on royalties they received on each book sold.  The problem here is that most books never earned back the advance and if it did it was still years later that an author would start seeing royalty checks (usually very small ones).  There are several reasons for this. 

One is books are sold to retailer on consignment, meaning whatever books not sold at the stores could be sent back to the publisher to be destroyed.  Yep, that’s right, returned paper backs were destroyed (hardcover were returned whole, but with shipping paid for by the publisher so basically all profit margin was gone).  Return rates of 55% were normal and expected (so yes that means for every book sold to a reader it really had to cover the cost of two books). 

Another reason is when a book is released it has about 3 months to sell.  When a book is out to retail stores it has just weeks to start selling in significant numbers or it will be returned to make room for the next one from some other author.  So your average book had a shelf life only slightly longer than a potato.

There were a lot of other reasons it was hard to make a living as a writer even if you were lucky enough to be chosen by a publisher and I won’t go into all of them here because I want to keep this post as short as possible.

The point I am trying to make is that this flawed system used to be the only way for an author to make a living writing.  There was no other way to get your book into the hands of readers.

But things have changed. Ebooks have come and are here to stay. While eBooks have been around for a long time the catalyst that surged them forward as a way to read was Amazon and their Kindle eReader. Soon Barnes and Noble and Apple were jumping on the bandwagon. However, it was not just eBooks popularity that is changing publishing, it was something even bigger.

Amazon did something that was a game changer. They allowed authors to sell eBooks on the Amazon.com website (and Kindle) and soon Barnes and Noble followed and a small company named Smashwords, which had been around for a while, could allow authors to sell their books through those two as well as other retail outlets like Apple, Sony, Kobo, and Diesel.

Suddenly authors could write, edit, get cover art and DISTRIBUTE their books at major retailers. I capitalized the word “distribute” because that was the strongest advantage that traditional publishers had and now it is disappearing. Oh, they still are the only players if you want to get a paper version of your books into bookstores, but you have to be willing to settle for about 15% of your eBook sales, wait years for the book to come out, and lose control of your rights for… well a long, long time.

At a glance it seems as if publishers don’t care. I mean sure an author can put a book out, but without a publisher everybody and their mothers can load a book of crap up on the big sites and nobody will ever know about it. Self ePublishers will be lucky to sell a few books a month. Sure 70% royalties are great, but still nothing if you are only selling a handful a month.

But…and this is a big but, that is not what happened. Previous unpublished authors could do one more thing that the big publisher couldn’t. They could set a reasonable price. Publishers are bogged down with overhead and protecting the fading print side of their business. So they were forced to price eBooks at $15 or $20, some as low as $9.99. Indie writers had no overhead and could make a profit margin of 35% to 70%, so good books were popping up at $4.99, $3.99, $2.99 and even $.99.

You had authors with great stories to tell that could sell a few hundred, then a thousand, then a few thousand books a month. And then you had Amanda Hocking, John Locke and others suddenly selling millions of books over the course of a few months. All without a publisher taking its majority cut.

Still the publishers are apparently not getting it (I say apparently based on their perceived actions, I don’t know what they talk about in meetings, maybe they are creating a strategy to deal with this). Those authors are outliers they say, they are not the standard self pub crap that is out there. And that is true, a large amount of self published work is crap, but not all and those really good books are making their way to the top without the help of the big 6 publishers.

And now you hear about traditionally published authors breaking out of the publishing cycle to self publish. First, starting with old back list books that their publisher doesn’t even want to touch and making them profitable by self publishing,  Then with new books that publishers wouldn’t touch because they were not like every other book that author had produced or were not in a genre they thought was “Hot” right now.

Then, as another testament to how viable self publishing ebooks has become, established authors are turning down six figure deals with traditional publishing to go it alone.

And now with the Pottermore announcement we have one of the biggest authors in the world takeing this fundamental shift to the mainstream.  J.K. Rowling’s move may be making the most noise, but rest assured there are many authors large and small, new and old making this shift to self publishing eBooks.

Some people are calling it a battle, a revolution, or even an evolution.  I just think of it as a potential solution to my problem of “How can I make a living doing something I love”. 

As a final thought I don’t want this to seem like I am against traditional publishing. I think it is still has an important part to play, but I do think the industry will have to change to survive and the only thing I am sure of is that in the end the big winner will be you, the readers, because in the end all a writer really wants is to be read, to entertain, and maybe touch upon some emotion.  So regardless of the methods there will always be books to read and authors to discover.

Now after going and buying all my books click on some of the links to fellow author and publisher websites on the side bar and visit some of the authors living through this change in publishing.