Once again, old-media publisher pays big advance in order to chase "the next big thing" - which is probably already over and done with

MinnPost: "Amanda Hocking, aka the 'Kindle millionaire,' has signed a seven-figure, four-book deal with St. Martins Press ... "

HarperCollins's Open Letter to Librarians Shows That They Just Don't "Get It"

John Marwell's letter appears on Library Love Fest: "We spent many months examining the issues before making this change. We talked to agents and distributors, had discussions with librarians, and participated in the Library Journal e-book Summit and other conferences. Twenty-six circulations can provide a year of availability for titles with the highest demand, and much longer for other titles and core backlist. If a library decides to repurchase an e-book later in the book’s life, the price will be significantly lower as it will be pegged to a paperback price point. Our hope is to make the cost per circulation for e-books less than that of the corresponding physical book. In fact, the digital list price is generally 20% lower than the print version, and sold to distributors at a discount."

Will HarperCollins program print editions of books sold to libraries to spontaneously combust after 26 reads?

Another point: Setting aside the ridiculous notion of limiting usage on a sold edition of a book, the idea of digital prices being arbitrarily pegged 20% lower than hardcover or paper prices is equally absurd. In this way the cost of traditional print, paper and bind dictates the cost of e-editions? The tail wags the dog?

Authors Guild vs. The Free Market

PW: "To mark the one-year anniversary of what it calls 'the Great Blackout'--when Amazon pulled the buy buttons from Macmillan’s titles to protest the publisher’s adoption of the agency model--the Authors Guild is doing a series of member alerts looking at 'the state of e-books, authorship and publishing. ... " Want to survive the sinking of a ship? Swim away from it before the suction drags you down. The Authors Guild seems to like the Agency Model a hell of a lot more than does the British Office of Fair Trade.

There Is No New Media, Only New Consumption

This trenchant piece comes, somewhat ironically, from NYTimes.com:

The knee-jerk response from the television industry and media to services like Google, Apple, Amazon and Netflix is a typical reaction from institutions of the past century, and a result of limited and short-term thinking. Unfortunately, the broadcast industry aren’t the only ones.

Every so often, you hear executives bemoaning the demise of the newspaper business, the declining fortunes of radio networks and the crumbling of the television industry. There’s talk of the music industry being at the point of no return, and one could probably add Madison Avenue to this gloomy outlook.

When I look at these industries and the failure — or impending failure — of these institutions, I see a fundamental mistake on their part to understand their own core businesses ...

Paul Carr: A Modest Proposal For Authors Who Abandon Their Publishers — Give Me A Break

I actually don't agree with anything Carr says here, as he is basically knocking the indie movement. But he does it so engagingly. TechCrunch: "If I were a commissioning editor in a major publishing house, I’d be feeling a little unloved right now. Like the wife of a guy who runs over his neighbour’s cat: why does everyone hate me? What did I do? Maybe hate is too strong a word: hate is when you hope that someone will burst into flames and die. The current feeling towards publishers isn’t quite that: no one wants them to combust – it’s just that, well, they wouldn’t urinate on them if it happened. ..."

Requiem for Traditional Book Publishing in Crain's New York

From Crain's New York Business: Another requiem for dead-tree publishing, paired with a great discussion of Jane Friedman, her Open Road, and another interesting start-up, Dale Peck's Mischief and Mayhem.

... Apple's iPad, Barnes & Noble's Nook and new iterations of the Kindle have accelerated the e-book revolution, which is undermining traditional publishing's economics with lower prices than those for hardcover books. It's also threatening the foundation of the business: the humble brick-and-mortar bookstore.

Several weeks ago, Barnes & Noble, the largest bookstore chain, did the unthinkable and put itself up for sale. Independent bookstores, whose ranks have diminished by about half since 2000, continue to close.
The end of bookstores could be the final nail in the coffin for traditional publishing. The big trade houses rely on acres of shelves to sell their wide-ranging titles, from literary and commercial fiction to nonfiction that doesn't have a news hook or a celebrity's name on the cover.

And the end could come sooner than many people think. E-book sales have tripled in the past year, and now make up 8.5% of publishers' revenue. They'll hit 50% by 2015, according to Mike Shatzkin, chief executive of The Idea Logical Co.

At that point, the few stores left standing will sell just a quarter of all physical books, down from around three-quarters today, and big publishers will “come under threat,” he says. “Their value is based on delivering distribution.

... Through May, overall net sales for hardcover books totaled $713 million—a bump over last year's numbers but a decline of 19% from the same period in 2007, according to the Association of American Publishers.

“The hope is that e-book sales will balance out the decline in physical book sales,” says Jack Perry, a former Random House sales chief who consults on digital issues for publishers. “That hasn't happened yet.” ...

In the New Publishing Environment, Small/Indie is Beautiful

FT.com / Media - Wylie’s split with publisher seen as bad omen: "The severing of ties between publisher Random House and Andrew Wylie, one of the world’s most powerful literary agents, left many executives fearing the showdown over e-book rights would lead to the death of the 500-year-old publishing business as it is known. ... It is not the first omen about the potential end of the publisher’s role as middle man in the books business. The role of the music label, in much the same way, has been threatened by the internet. ... "

Here's my take: Publishers as a class are not in danger of extinction. But the enormous dinosaur houses who dominated for so long? They find themselves hobbled by new climate circumstances - crippled by their weight, this no longer an advantage.

Our Random Houses and Simon and Schusters - still carrying on standard (though declining) print/brick-and-mortar bookselling - labor under the burden of legacy expenses/infrastructure/corporate cultures wed to the old publishing model, a model which provides less and less sustenance every day.

It is somewhat easier for smaller players to adapt their businesses and evolve. (Survival of the fittest.) Also, the low cost-of-entry enabled by eBooks and POD allow new players, indie authors, and other upstarts to mount significant competition to the "majors" in a way they never could before.

The most important capital in this environment is intellectual capital: the smarts to assemble, promote and sell worthy publications.

The dinosaurs are long gone. But the birds remain. Small is beautiful.

Garrison Keillor and the End of Old Media

Garrison Keillor, speaking to a hoard of old media publishers and authors at the annual Authors Guild benefit last month, said: "I'm an older writer, so I have nostalgia about these occasions and always imagine that this might be the last one." Garrison likened the evening to a "1951 meeting of CBS Radio affiliates" or a "1982 convention of typewriter repairmen." Boo-rah.

Will eBooks Make Midlist Authors Extinct?

Of course not. Quite to the contrary. eBooks remove barriers. But I'll catalogue this essay anyway and file it under a new category: Luddites Whining.

This Just In: New York Times Objects to the Reading of Its Feed

Or so it would seem. Embattled reactionary old media Luddites trying to create false scarcity.