Major publisher HarperCollins is responding to the crisis in publishing in this manner: In a radical departure from traditional book-publishing practices, News Corp.’s HarperCollins Publishers is launching a new business that won’t accept returns from retailers. In addition, the new entity intends to pay little or nothing in the way of advances to its authors.
Instead, the unit, which hasn’t yet been named, will share its profits with writers and focus much of its sales efforts on the Internet.
No returns? I welcome that as a man who has seen many of his books returned only to end up as pulp. [Weren't they pulp in the first place?-ed. Ah, a Tarantino fan.] But what interests me here is the second part of ths strategy – that the publisher will pay little or no advance and go into partnership with the author on potential profits with sales focussed, evidently on the Internet.
My question then is – what’s the point of the publisher?
Well, there’s editing (which one can get elsewhere) and the fancy publishing house imprimatur, maybe a little help with production and publicity (again available elsewhere – many authors pay for their own publicists anyway). It this really enough? The author can do much better on percentages, I am sure, by self-publishing. And that same author may know his or her way around the Internet better than the publisher, when it comes to publicity. So I am skeptical of this model. But I’m not surprised that it is happening – it is another symptom of the huge shakeout in the arts and letters instigated largely by the online world. I will be interested in the results.
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14 Comments
1. Charlie (Colorado):This is isomorphic to the changes in record publishing I wrote about the other day, Roger: whatever the artistic intent of the editors was, the business has always been centered around manufacturing and merchandising those 4lb bricks of paper and ink.
The new business model won’t be; between Kindle and print-on-demand, it’s not the bricks, but the bytes that have to be sold.
Apr 3, 2008 - 5:45 pm 2. Charlie (Colorado):Heh, I got to link to my piece on your PJM pages. hehe.
Apr 3, 2008 - 5:46 pm 3. srlucado:And the good news for print-on-demand authors (such as myself) is that we can now claim that we’re receiving the same advances as “big-time” authors get!
Apr 3, 2008 - 6:19 pm 4. Lem:I don’t know about you but reading on the internet creates one too many physical limitations. It can’t compare to the simple act of picking up a book. Not to mention how good they look on a shelf
The net needs to be more detached.
Apr 4, 2008 - 5:47 am 5. Charlie (Colorado):Even better, srlucado, you aren’t left holding a reserve against returns.
Lem, that’s the thing about print-on-demand: your experience is just like always, a nice hold in the hand book. Or else you get something like a Kindle and it’s a lot like a book except that it actually holds a thousand or so books, still looks like a printed page, and gets new books as if by magic about 2 minutes after you order them.
Apr 4, 2008 - 6:44 am 6. David W Justus:I think that this does (or at least potentially could) offer a signifigant service to the author, in that I am much more likely to pay for a ‘published’ book then a ’self-published’ book.
Presuming that HarperCollins is planning to perserve some quality and maintain a descent brand on this venture, just having the work be ‘published’ would probably promote sales a lot.
This might change in the future, as different networks develop around the book industry, and it wouldn’t apply so much to well known authors (who I don’t think are the targets of the new publishing business anyway.)
Apr 4, 2008 - 6:53 am 7. Ric Locke:The “point” of the publisher is quite simple: the interface to Ingraham.
What set this all up was the demise of the independent distributors. The vast, or half-vast, organization(s) resulting then abandoned the dribs-and-drabs markets; no more rotary racks in the drugstore, for instance. The original premise was disintermediation — with the jobber out of the picture, all the money flows to the publisher and thence to the author. What really happened was that the mega-distributor’s bureaucracy soaked up any savings not grabbed onto by the retailers with their newfound clout, as we got the megastores like B&N and Borders, because dealing with a big distributor with a big bureaucracy requires an equal and opposite bureaucracy that only a large organization can support.
But the real downside was artistic rather than financial. With, essentially, only one outlet — the big distributor — publshers too had to consolidate to get sufficient power to deal, and that resulted in a choke point for decisions on what to publish. Publishers then went to the Hollywood model for such decisions — if it ain’t a blockbuster it ain’t shit, and the way to get a blockbuster is to demand something exactly like the last one, only different. There is no place in that system for actual authors, except as ghost writers for the celebrities and politicians the publishers think will sell millions.
All of which comes, at the end, to homogeneity. There are millions of books out there, but they’re interchangeable — endless spinouts of series from established authors plus wonderful new discoveries which are as much like the old ones as can be achieved. Hey, the new one doesn’t have a black lesbian transsexual for a protag; it has a Native American lesbian transsexual! New! Startling! Edgy!
That’s dying, as well it should. There is no field or venue where you cannot find somebody who will tell you authoritatively that centralizing everything will be better and more efficient, and there is no field or venue anywhere in the world where that promise has been realized. This is just the latest example.
There’s no way to know how it’s all going to turn out. The biggest problem is finding ways to pay authors, so they can afford to take the time to pursue their perversion. I’m like Eric Flint on that — a way will be found, or not, and either way it’s what we deserve.
Regards,
Apr 4, 2008 - 7:12 am 8. Larry J:Ric
Instead, the unit, which hasn’t yet been named, will share its profits with writers and focus much of its sales efforts on the Internet.
Any writer who accepts such a deal and actually expects there to be “profits” is a fool. All the publisher has to do is inflate the costs to absorb all of the income and even a best selling author won’t see a dime in “profit.” The publishing industry is just taking a page from the well worn Hollywood model.
Apr 4, 2008 - 7:26 am 9. Shawn Levasseur:Sound a lot like comics publishing, especially how Image Comics handles matters.
http://www.comicspundit.com/2008/04/sounds-like-harpercollins-is-entering.html
Apr 4, 2008 - 8:12 am 10. ElMondo:“It this really enough? The author can do much better on percentages, I am sure, by self-publishing.”
Sure, but isn’t there a stigma on self-publishing? I’ve read through some self/vanity-published stuff – I live in the same town as Authorhouse, and know a few people that have worked there – and frankly, the stuff is embarrasing. Not merely trite, not just trash, but embarrasing, as in “Oh my God, I’ve seen better writing in 3rd grade!” And let’s not forget the grand treatment such self-publishing endeavors get in Foucault’s Pendulum.
Anyway, an author may be able to squeeze out an extra dime here and there by going the self-route, but possibly one thing going in HarperCollins’s favor would be the imprimatur of going out under a “real” publishing house’s name. Wouldn’t you agree with that?
Apr 4, 2008 - 9:38 am 11. Steven Mitchell:Assuming that this is a good faith effort by Harper-Collins, and that percentages to the author will be figured on gross, not profit, then this effort is aimed at people like my wife.
She is a stay at home Mom. She has written a book, and part of another–neither published. When our daughter gets a bit older, she will go back to writing. She is interested in writing, and then being read–not the “publishing part”. So yeah. She could figure out all this self publishing stuff. Or get me to do it, even though I’m not interested. She doesn’t need an advance, and she doesn’t need to make a killing. She just wants people to read what she has written, and get paid according to the people who are interested–whether that is 10 or 1000 or more.
BTW, she and I both agree that her writing needs work before being released into the wild. However, it is considerably better writing than some published books I’ve picked up recently.
Apr 4, 2008 - 10:53 am 12. Sgt. Mom:From this angle, it looks for all the world like they are following the POD model- except for not asking for set-up fees for the text and cover. Other than that… they might as well be Booklocker.com, or a small press like Whiskey Creek Press.
It’s not quite the same as what we used to think of as vanity publishing; you know, pay a bomb of money to a printer to do a ton of unsellably awful books that sit in the garage.
Of course, there are a lot of unsellably awful books put out by POD authors – I know, I’ve reviewed enough of them. But there are some very, very good and original books out there; for my money the ratio of dreck to good stuff is at least on par with the traditionally published product.
The best of them were written by writers who decided to go “indie” – have control of everything about their book, market the heck out of it themselves – and a lot of them had a go at getting their books published traditionally… and discovered that mainstream publishing was too interested in celebrity cookbooks, edgy and fraudulent memoirs, politically correct wankfests and the surefire best seller that was exactly like the last thirty or forty surefire best sellers. So what do you do, if all you have is talent, a great story and a couple of hundred bucks? You go to a POD publisher. Why not? Musicians and filmmakers have been going indie for a while, why not writers? I wonder if Harper Collins is just sensing the beginning of a paradigm shift.
Check out the “indie writers” website – http://www.independentauthorsguild.com. Note: I am a member, and I do have a book of my own on their books and members page.
Apr 4, 2008 - 11:41 am 13. JorgXMcKie:“Publishers then went to the Hollywood model for such decisions — if it ain’t a blockbuster it ain’t shit, and the way to get a blockbuster is to demand something exactly like the last one, only different.”
Yes, and like Hollywood, they publish work that might as well be vanity press. Think “Redacted” or any one of the anti-Iraq movies that critics loved and bombed at the box office. Publishers all too frequently push authors that no one really reads. (Although the book itself may sell.)
Face it. Harry Potter and the Whatever sold millions of copies that people actually read. Can anyone here tell me anything about Joyce Carol Oates’ latest opus? (I have reluctantly read some of her short stories, and they not only make me want to through the magazine they’re in across the room, one actually made me consider putting my eyes out so I wouldn’t ever accidentally start reading another. YMMV)
So, much like a great deal also of Popular Music, publishing is motivated by things other than profit, although it’s right up there.
I buy some magazines because I trust the editor(s) to, on average, publish stuff I’ll like to read. One magazine has not disappointed me for some 45 years now, and another has only occasionally disappointed in some 30 years.
Thus, I see ‘publishing houses’ as possibly making their money by being reliable identifiers of authors that someone wants to read. That does mean they’d have to change a bit, I think, and the money wouldn’t be so great.
Apr 4, 2008 - 12:27 pm 14. heather:I have used “Authorhouse” to publish a book, and they have come through for me: essentially, as people order copies, Authorhouse prints it, and mails it to anyone who orders it. My reward is definitely NOT in $$, but I liked making it, designing it, and it is of real interest to people studying West Highland history. More important, I have made available to a wider public the legal records involved in a ‘highland clearance’ that occurred back in the Argyll hills in 1848. Before I did so, this material was available only at the Edinburgh Scottish Archives in a box of unbound handwritten papers and letters.
The cover (which I designed) and the presentation was quite adequate for my purpose. In fact, I liked having complete control over my book’s appearance and content. In that sense, I guess it truly has been a ‘vanity’ production. However, it is a real addition to Argyll’s history during the Highland Clearances, and I am proud of the result.
We are at a time analogous to 18th Century Britain: little shops with printing presses ‘published’ pamphlets and broadsides authored by various local scribblers. Today’s publishing company, like those printshops, own a printing press that is too expensive for any individual to own or operate. More recently, it has branched out into distribution and advertising and thus justified its existence for some 2 centuries.
However, the times are changing. Just as individual calligraphers were pushed aside by the printing press, the computer and the internet is pushing aside the large publisher. Unless you have excellent connections in New York or Los Angeles, why would anyone bother with anything other than the ‘publish it yourself’ route? Life is too short to do otherwise.
Also, to respond to “ElMondo”, I am sure that most of AuthorHouse product is not great; but then I have been a librarian and lemme tell ya: MOST books published are pretty lousy. Check out any second hand book store if you don’t believe me.
Apr 5, 2008 - 1:25 am