If Libraries Didn't Exist, Would Publishers Be Trying To Kill Book Lending?

from the making-life-that-little-bit-more-diffcult dept

Against the background of today's war on sharing, exemplified by SOPA and PIPA, traditional libraries underline an inconvenient truth: allowing people to share things – principally books in the case of libraries – does not lead to the collapse of the industry trying to sell those same things. But publishers really don't seem to have learned that lesson, judging by this article in the New York Times about the nonsensical attitude they have to libraries lending out ebooks:

In their eyes, borrowing an e-book from a library has been too easy. Worried that people will click to borrow an e-book from a library rather than click to buy it, almost all major publishers in the United States now block libraries' access to the e-book form of either all of their titles or their most recently published ones.

This suggests that if libraries didn't exist, and somebody tried to set one up, publishers would use the same logic to refuse to sell traditional books for that purpose. History shows that's an absurd position, but equally absurd are the efforts of publishers to make borrowing ebooks less convenient:

To keep their overall revenue from taking a hit from lost sales to individuals, publishers need to reintroduce more inconvenience for the borrower or raise the price for the library purchaser.

The article invokes the example of paperbacks published some time after the hardback edition as an equivalent situation. But that's about pricing: publishers don't try to make it "inconvenient" for people to borrow paperbacks from libraries by creating special low-quality copies that fall to pieces after a few loans (essentially what Harper Collins does with its ebooks), nor do they add surcharges to the paperback price to try to squeeze more from the libraries that lend them out.

Sadly, publishers really are thinking along these lines:

Ms. Thomas of Hachette says: "We've talked with librarians about the various levers we could pull," such as limiting the number of loans permitted or excluding recently published titles.

Publishers are so obsessed with stamping out this ebook sharing scourge that they are oblivious to two likely consequences of their current approach. One, obviously, is increased piracy: if potential customers want to try out an ebook before buying it, but it's not available for them to borrow at their local library, it will certainly be available somewhere online, if they look hard enough. The risk is that having procured an unauthorized copy, they don't then go on to replace it with an authorized one.

The other problem for those publishers boycotting public libraries is evident from a comment by a librarian quoted in the New York Times piece:

Ms. Nesbitt adds, however, that many of the library's patrons aren't aware that other publishers are withholding e-books from it.

If library users aren't aware that certain titles are being withheld, that means they haven't asked for them - probably because they haven't heard of those ebooks, or think they won't be interested. Keeping titles out of public libraries makes it less likely that readers will ever find out about them or change their minds. After all, as the article goes on to say, there is no lack of alternatives:

While many major publishers have effectively gone on strike, more than 1,000 smaller publishers, who don’t have best-seller sales that need protection, happily sell e-books to libraries. That means the public library has plenty of e-books available for the asking — no waiting.

A familiar pattern emerges. Small, innovative publishers who are ready to adapt, reap the benefits by meeting the growing demand for ebooks at local libraries – and doubtless picking up knock-on sales as a result. Meanwhile, big, sclerotic publishers resist trying out new business models, preferring to make the use of digital formats for lending as "inconvenient" as possible – in the forlorn hope that readers will just give up and buy something. We all know how that story ends.

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Filed Under: books, ebooks, lending, libraries, publishing

Does Amazon Want to Monopolize The Entire Publishing Chain?

from the how-much-is-enough? dept

The launch of Amazon's Kindle Fire at a price well below expectations has naturally focused people's attention on the e-book side of Amazon's operations, and the likely effect of the extended Kindle family on other publishers trying to go digital. But something else is happening at the other end of the publishing chain that could well disrupt the industry just as much, if not more: Amazon is becoming a major publisher in its own right.

Things began back in May 2009, when it launched AmazonEncore:

a new program whereby Amazon uses information such as customer reviews on Amazon websites to identify exceptional, overlooked books and authors that show potential for greater sales.

After this low-key start, Amazon added others imprints, including AmazonCrossing (foreign books in translation), Powered by Amazon (short books), Montlake Romance (romantic fiction), Thomas & Mercer (mysteries and thrillers) and, most recently, 47North (science fiction, fantasy and horror) - the last of these with some eye-catching authors:

47North launches with 15 books, including "The Mongoliad: Book One," the first in the ambitious, five-book, collaborative Foreworld series led by Neal Stephenson and Greg Bear. All of these books will be available to English readers in Kindle, print and audio formats at http://www.amazon.com, as well as at national and independent booksellers. 47North will publish original and previously published works, as well as out-of-print books.

Meanwhile, back in May this year, Amazon hired a publishing industry veteran to become VP, Publisher of Amazon Publishing’s New York office:

Amazon.com has taken its most aggressive step yet toward competing head-on with traditional publishers: It’s hired Larry Kirshbaum, a literary agent and the former CEO of Time Warner Publishing Group (now Hachette Book Group), to start a general trade imprint.

Until now, Amazon’s imprints have focused on genre fiction like mystery and romance. By hiring a high-profile industry veteran to focus on “quality books in literary and commercial fiction, business and general nonfiction”—and by releasing those books in both print and digital formats—Amazon is announcing itself as a serious competitor against the “big six” traditional trade publishing houses.

Put all these imprints together, plus Amazon's main sales sites around the world and the Kindle e-readers range, and you have a fully-integrated global publishing strategy.

It's hard to see how traditional publishers can respond. They may have impressive back catalogs, and established links with leading authors, but Amazon has the distribution network and growing success in e-book publishing. Above all, the trade publishing houses seem to lack Amazon's ambition: it looks like it doesn't just want to make money from the entire publishing chain, it wants be the entire publishing chain.

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Filed Under: ebooks, economics, publishing
Companies: amazon

Princeton Tells Its Academics Not to Hand Over Copyright When Publishing In Scholarly Journals

from the we-paid-for-it dept

Open access (OA) starts from the premise that the results of academic research conducted with public funds should be freely available to the public. In practice that means that scholarly articles arising from such research are made accessible online in some way – nobody expects physical journals to be given away for free.

Open access comes in two main forms:

"Green OA" is provided by authors publishing in any journal and then self-archiving their postprints in their institutional repository or on some other OA website. Green OA journal publishers endorse immediate OA self-archiving by their authors.

"Gold OA" is provided by authors publishing in an open access journal that provides immediate OA to all of its articles on the publisher's website.

Since it is hard for the publishers of academic papers to argue with the idea that the public has a right to access research it has paid for, the key issue has been the control of the copyright. Even when preprints or postprints can be posted online by authors, publishing houses often demand that copyright of the final article be assigned exclusively to them.

Against that background, this is significant move:

Prestigious US academic institution Princeton University will prevent researchers from giving the copyright of scholarly articles to journal publishers, except in certain cases where a waiver may be granted.

The new rule is part of an Open Access policy aimed at broadening the reach of their scholarly work and encouraging publishers to adjust standard contracts that commonly require exclusive copyright as a condition of publication.

Universities pay millions of dollars a year for academic journal subscriptions. People without subscriptions, which can cost up to $25,000 a year for some journals or hundreds of dollars for a single issue, are often prevented from reading taxpayer funded research. Individual articles are also commonly locked behind pay walls.

This essentially gives back to researchers control over the articles they have written – something they have lost in the past few decades. It by no means prevents publishers from accepting such articles for their paid-for journals, but it does make it easier for the final version of the papers to be made freely available without restrictions, something that Princeton specifically wants to see become more common:

Academics will also be encouraged to place their work in open access data stores such as Arxiv or campus-run data repositories.

Princeton is just the latest in a line of top US universities mandating open access:

Princeton will be the sixth Ivy League school to adopt an open-access scholarship policy, joining Harvard, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, Cornell and Dartmouth. Other institutions with developed open-access policies include MIT, Duke, University of California, Berkeley and the University of Michigan.

Similar moves in Europe and elsewhere have led to the situation where open access is no longer on the fringes of academic publishing:

DOAJ [Directory of Open Access Journals] is now over 7,000 journals, and still adding more than 4 titles per day. The Electronic Journals Library now lists more than 30,000 titles that are freely available. OpenDOAR [Directory of Open Access Repositories] now lists more than 2,000 repositories, and the BASE search engine searches more than 31 million documents in repositories. ROARMAP now lists a total of 300 open access mandate policies.

Princeton's high-profile move may well be a tipping point for others, and lead to scholars retaining copyright over their work as a matter of course.

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Filed Under: copyright, journals, open access, princeton, publishing

Oh Look, The Publishing Industry Is Growing In The Digital Age As Well

from the not-so-shocking dept

For all the stories of doom and gloom in various entertainment industry segments due to "piracy," the deeper you look, the more you realize that each of these areas seems to be growing quite nicely, contrary to what's being claimed. Remember last week, when we showed the US Chamber of Commerce's propaganda video in favor of the PROTECT IP Act, in which various artists claimed that their industries were being "hurt" by internet piracy? It included clips of the author Tracy Deebs (who also goes by the name Tracy Wolff), claiming that "piracy" had hurt the publishing industry badly and suggesting that she might lose her deal because book publishers don't believe she can sell enough books.

Well, tragically for Deebs/Wolff, the actual data suggests she and the US Chamber of Commerce are totally full of it. FormerAC points us to some new reports showing that the publishing industry is growing thanks to the rise of digital:

BookStats, a comprehensive survey conducted by two major trade groups that was released early Tuesday, revealed that in 2010 publishers generated net revenue of $27.9 billion, a 5.6 percent increase over 2008. Publishers sold 2.57 billion books in all formats in 2010, a 4.1 percent increase since 2008.

Deebs, who it should be noted, writes young adult fiction, and who markets her own young adult fiction book as "a paranormal romance," might be most interested in this particular line:

Juvenile books, which include the current young-adult craze for paranormal and dystopian fiction, grew 6.6 percent over three years.

Deebs uses the name Tracy Wolff when publishing "adult fiction." And thus, I'm sure she's also interested in the following line:

One of the strongest growth areas was adult fiction, which had a revenue increase of 8.8 percent over three years.

So, once again, we have to ask both Deebs and the US Chamber of Commerce who is exploiting her apparently false claims, exactly how was she a "victim"? It certainly looks like the market is thriving. If Deebs isn't capitalizing on that, it's probably because either her book is no good or she's not doing a very good job selling it. Perhaps the Chamber of Commerce can help her with that, rather than having her appear in ridiculous videos in support of a bad law that promotes internet censorship.

Filed Under: books, propaganda, protect ip, publishing, tracy deebs, tracy wolff
Companies: us chamber of commerce

Mystery Writers Of America: Real Writers Don't Self-Publish

from the 300,000-sold-and-still-not-a-'real-writer' dept

J.A. Konrath -- whose success as a self-published e-book author has been featured on Techdirt before -- recently kicked out a post concerning the Mystery Writers of America's submission policy as proof that the more things change, the more the "old guard" increases its efforts to pretend that things are still the same.

Konrath doesn't speak too highly of the MWA, which seemed to be a rather lackluster writers' association, even back in its heyday:

The only time the MWA got in touch with me was when they needed something--I lost count of the times I was called upon to volunteer for some task or another--or when they wanted me to pay my dues. The dues notices (both email and in person) became so frequent, not only for me but for many of my peers, that it is now a long-running joke in the mystery community. (A friend of mine was even approached during his signing slot at Bouchercon to pay dues, in front of several fans.)

The MWA, an organization that was supposed to exist to help writers, seemed to exist only to sustain itself.

After a few years of this, Konrath dropped his MWA membership and joined up with the International Thriller Writers group, which shockingly ("shockingly" added for the benefit of legacy artist representation groups) doesn't need membership dues to survive. Konrath states that the ITW runs such a smart organization they actually turn a profit.

Depsite his negative experience with MWA, he was intrigued enough by its recent press release announcing changes to its submission policy to take a look. Unfortunately, nothing had changed and the MWA is still running in full "legacy mode:"

Self-published books, whether they are published in print or as e-books, still do not qualify for MWA active membership.

At this point, another leftover from a legacy industry looks the future straight in the eye and says, "Not interested." And as far as Konrath's concerned, the MWA couldn't be more wrong:

[A]ccording to these rules, someone like John Locke, who has sold close to 1 million ebooks, isn't eligible for MWA membership.

How many MWA members have sold 1 million books?

I've sold close to 300,000 self-pubbed ebooks. But apparently that doesn't equate with "professional standards" according to the MWA.

Professional standards apparently mean "You're only worthy if you're vetted by the industry."

This shouldn't bug me. I gave up on the MWA years ago... So if it shouldn't bug me, why does it?

Because I see this same casual dismissal of the future of our industry from the Big 6. They don't see the threat self-pubbing has become, and they're going to go extinct because of their denial.

Seeing a similar attitude coming from writers--folks who should know better because they've worked hard and struggled and gotten screwed over and over again--makes me shake my head in absolute amazement.

There are a lot of self-pubbed authors earning more money than a lot of MWA members. Certainly the MWA could use this new blood to teach longstanding members how to thrive in this brave, new world. And they NEED this information. MWA members have backlists and trunk novels and are getting repeatedly shafted by the Big 6.

How much could John Locke teach them about ebooks and marketing? How about 200 John Lockes, attending banquets, speaking at conventions?

If the publishing world, as it exists now, has no interest in the talents and insights of thousands of hard-working writers, it's their loss. This kind of elitist attitude is commonplace with the gatekeepers of industries whose reactions to the destruction wreaked by a digitally-leveled playing field has been a whole lot of "too little" and nearly universally "too late."

The current MWA guidelines are elitist--they only accept those who are chosen by a few dozen gatekeepers in the establishment.

The majority of writers I know got offers from a single house, rather than competing offers from multiple houses. Eliminate that one house, and they would still be unpublished. That's luck. If the publishing gatekeepers really knew quality, a truly worthy book would get bids from every major house. That never happens. In fact, many houses pass on books that go on to make millions and win awards.

The gatekeeping system has long been broken, and it's a very poor determiner of quality. The fact that I'm on track to sell more of my rejected novels than I have of my legacy pubbed novels is more proof they have no idea what people want.

It's not hard to find details of massively successful authors who also had trouble getting published initially. The self-proclaimed arbiters of what is or isn't "real writing" can't even agree on what's worth publishing and yet they still feel they can set the rules and choose which formats are "worthy" of support. That's sad and ugly and more than a little pompous.

But there is good news: the MWA is still reaching out in its own way to aspiring (i.e., "non-traditionally-published") writers:

MWA also mentions in its mission statement that they accept: "aspiring crime writers, and those who are devoted to the genre." Which means newbies and fans. That's fine, but these people can only get an associate membership. Which means they pay, but aren't allowed to do many of the things that regular members do.

Can you say taxation without representation?

So, there you have it: if you're self-published, MWA is more than happy to take your money, but is completely unwilling to treat you as a qualified writer. That is, unless you decide to take their chosen route to being a writer, the one that runs directly through one of several publishing houses that are already nearing irrelevance or hanging on the ropes. How pathetic.

Filed Under: books, mystery writers, publishing, self-publishing

EMI Dumps ASCAP For Digital Licensing

from the ouch dept

Well, this is interesting. When Guy Hands had bought EMI years back, there was hope that, as an outsider, he might come in and shake things up in a good way. That didn't happen, and after a massive flop, Hands lost EMI to Citigroup earlier this year. And, yet, now it appears that EMI is finally making some interesting moves. First up: it's pulling back its digital rights from ASCAP and is going to license them directly. That's a huge hit to ASCAP (who will undoubtedly downplay the significance, though it really is huge). This also should ease the licensing of EMI's catalog, since it's all going through a single company, rather than having to involve multiple companies. I wouldn't be surprised to see others go in this direction as well. Of course, some musicians might not like it, as ASCAP tends to be a bit clearer in its royalty statements than many of the labels, but this is a big potential issue for ASCAP.

Filed Under: digital, licensing, music, publishing, rights
Companies: ascap, emi

Crossing Paths: Published Author Goes Self-Published, As Self-Published Author Considers Big Publishing Deal

from the which-way-do-you-go? dept

So we just wrote about best-selling author Barry Eisler's decision to turn down a half-a-million dollar book deal, in order to self-publish. In the conversation, some people pointed out that he could do this, since he'd already built up an audience. Of course, just a few weeks ago, we wrote about Amanda Hocking, an entirely self-published author who was making a ton of money, having built up her own audience with incredibly cheap ebooks.

Yet, as many people noted, the very same day that Eisler announced that he was passing on that big contract, lots of folks in publishing were buzzing about the fact that Hocking appears ready to sign a million-dollar-plus publishing contract, heading in the other direction. Some will suggest that this shows that self-publishing doesn't work. After all, if it did work, why would she sign such a deal? I'm not convinced that's actually true. There are plenty of reasons why she might be interested in this kind of deal, though, not all of them may be good reasons.

I think plenty of authors still think they need a big publishing deal to consider themselves to have "made it." Even if they're collecting tons of money elsewhere. On top of that, someone handing you a million dollars (or more) upfront sure must be difficult to ignore -- even if it comes with strings and may be less lucrative in the long run. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Honestly, though, if I were in Hocking's shoes, I'd realize that I have the leverage here, and that means a lot more than just getting the top dollar. She easily could be in a position to negotiate the key things she really wants/needs from a publisher, without giving in to the terms and strings that typically come with a publishing deal. The marketing support (if it works) could obviously help, even with the giant fanbase she's built up. But she could do a deal for just marketing, where she doesn't necessarily have to give up so much on the other side. Either way, this will be an interesting case study to follow over the next few years.

Filed Under: amanda hocking, authors, barry eisler, business models, publishing, self-publishing