Some thoughts on the industry, from the Melbourne Writers Festival [18.09.2009]

During this year's Melbourne Writers' Festival, there were some very well organised industry sessions that invited all SPUNC members, and lots of other publishing people, to take part. There was, as is the current trend, a lot of discussion about digital publishing and the future of the book. By way of christening this here little blog, I'm posting below a summing up of thoughts and ideas garnered from these talks.

• Preamble One of the things that was most apparent in being part of the discussions on the future of the book and digital publishing, etc, is that if you have invested any time in investigating this already, then there are no great surprises here. What’s interesting is how many more people are buying into the discussion and putting up their hands for staying informed. There are more and more industry people paying attention now, and this will of course increase exponentially. But if you have been looking into this area already, then there may be no new information here. It’s all cause for further scrutiny though, so from that perspective I found the sessions at the festival very helpful.

Also, much of what is written about below is a result of my own analysis. I’ve extrapolated on discussion points based on my own interpretation of them. Therefore, the best thing to do after reading these notes is, of course, to go and conduct investigations of your own.

Finally: a list of URLs is at the bottom of this document to help with further investigation.

Speakers you may like to investigate further: Elizabeth Weiss (Allen and Unwin); Victoria Nash (Pan Macmillan); Bob Stein (from a Think Tank in the US, Institute for the Future of the Book) and Kate Eltham (Queensland Writers’ Centre and Australian arm of Institute for the Future of the Book)

• Thoughts on the ‘Ebook’ – and the future of the book Rather than seeing the development of e-publishing as an either/or thing, think of the Ebook as ‘another edition of the book’. In the immediate future at least, this is what we are looking at. It doesn’t mean that one is going to replace the other, but it certainly means that you should be considering the prevalence of electronic publishing in terms of how you attract authors, what you can offer them in your publishing deals, and how you provide content to readers.

The price point of eBooks is obviously the most confronting prospect to traditional publishers. Price points at $9.99 vs. the print version, obviously makes a print book more expensive, and while many consumers in the next 10 years or so will continue to purchase print books, as more and more contemporary writing becomes available at more than half the price of a print book, and more sophisticated devices are developed, this becomes a massive threat to the traditional publisher. Of course small press publishers are already dealing with a miniscule market, so in many ways we are best prepared to deal with this shift in the way books are consumed. Although there is a greater cost involved in setting your press up to deal with digital production, that is, without the resources and skills to justify the shift, and make it work financially.

One of the significant areas of the market to consider with ePublishing is libraries. Already there is a massive take up from libraries in offering eBooks. They let the file out for a couple of weeks, after which point it self-destructs. The issue here is why, arguably, would someone want to buy the file permanently? But then, this has never affected the way in which print books are bought. That is, libraries don’t necessarily threaten bookstores in any measurable way. But will people want to collect and keep electronic files in the same way that we collect and keep print books? Possibly. This is another area that wasn’t really discussed. Many people like to display their favourite books and current reads on their blogs, and facebook, and myspace etc. This is a virtual space that users like to decorate and display their personalities in much the same way as one would with one’s home. If you think about it in this way, then eBooks do not threaten our relationships with the physical object of a book. Reading is a social act, and just because it’s happening on a screen doesn’t change that. In some ways it will become far more social. However the fact remains that a print book can be a beautifully designed object, and in the area of the industry concerned with purchasing books as gifts, then this may not necessarily change all that much in the near future.

• Sales and Marketing US & UK affects here and trying to claw back money What happens in the US and UK markets obviously affects how the market will deal with change here. And because the market over there is struggling to claw back money lost to Amazon and cheaper price points on eBooks, this may explain a little as to why things are moving slowly here. The good news there is (possibly) that when they make sense of it, we can take it up here. However, the digital world doesn’t operate territorially, so that may be a furphy. When the code is cracked in one spot, we’re not really in the position to do it, as if for the first time, in Australia.

• Selling direct to libraries (sell a whole list of files) And this goes the same for individual readers too. If you are selling electronic files directly to libraries, then you sell them a whole list. All your fiction for that year for example. Or a volume of issues in a magazine series. Presented in this way it makes for a more appealing package, and does compete somewhat with the way in which Amazon, for example, might provide a written work.

• We don’t have high profile as a local provider of devices and book files This is one of the big issues that’s holding Australia back at the moment. There has been little, or slow, development in the manufacturing sector for eReading devices. Other than laptops or PCs or iPhone type set-ups, there’s little available on the market, and the prices are too high. A lot of Australians are using Stanza (via their iPhone). This is the most prolifically used eReading device on the Australian market to date.

• POD – Print on Demand (Lightening Source considered the most sophisticated POD provider world wide) The developments in Print on Demand technology has lead to a massive resurgence of out of print titles. What this means now is that new releases are competing with out of print books in the market. No book can ever go out of print. However print on demand means that books are cheaper to produce, so potentially, while the unit price on a book may go up, there’s a lot more product for you to continually promote and sell (providing you’re not relying on a bricks and mortar bookseller to sell those old titles). The potential for things to work especially well here is in a subscription model. For example, via your website, or another website, your publishing house offers subscriptions to a year’s worth of your titles, and those titles are POD produced, and sent out directly to the consumer. Interestingly this is how a lot of traditionally printed books started out in the first place. This is sort of a return to the publisher as provider of the book. As opposed to the book going from the publisher to the printer to the distributor to the bookseller to the consumer!

• Google and Amazon willing to upload self published authors. What this means in the future is that the current stigma attached to ‘self-published’ authors may no longer apply. If an author wants to benefit directly from the sales of his or her books, then they can publish their files electronically to Google or Amazon (or future providers) and bypass the publisher entirely. The editorial quality of the work notwithstanding, this could mean that publisher’s would need to offer something very handsome indeed to compete with that.

• Difficult to overcome your DNA (in terms of patterns of publishing model that’s existed up until now) This is an interesting concept and one that requires quite a bit of head scratching. What it means is that buried deep within our cultural values and preferences is a desire to publish the book just as we have been doing for 600 years or so. The relationship we have with physically making a book, and everything that goes with that process, is embedded in us and in our connection with publishing as an industry. It’s not a matter of deciding that you’re going to go into ePublishing over traditional publishing because that’s where the future is going, since that may not be the right way of satisfying your inescapable desire to publish. This issue doesn’t necessarily have an answer, but it’s intriguing and something we collectively should be thinking about. The idea of cultural or artistic DNA as running through a society.

• IPhone – will there be MORE reading? Australia’s massive growth in mobile phone usage over the past couple of years is second to none. And it’s growing all the time. People are using their phones for reading, for emailing, for web browsing, for shopping, for all sorts of things. And the mobile phone is always in your pocket. For people who wouldn’t ordinarily have a book on them wherever they went, this means that people now, potentially, have a book on them wherever they go.

• Most growth is happening in the developing world, arguably, as that’s an area that doesn’t already have established models and a culture of maintaining the status quo. Interestingly, we may see the eBook and more technological advances like this happening in developing worlds as opposed to the western world. Countries like India and China are experiencing massive growth, and the way in which those countries are dealing with these sorts of issues isn’t so much a ‘how do we prepare for this’ rather than a ‘we’re building this for the first time and this is where the technology is already at’.

• Marketing Stuff and online community, etc

• Apparently 84% of readers have more trust in user generated reviews than critics/journalism reviews – suggesting that a lot of reviews are being written and read online – importance of creating and maintaining regular content online to help increase sales and publicity.

• Note: the digital campaigns that you generate work globally, so no matter who is selling or publishing the book around the rest of the world, you can all work together in making an online campaign work for you. So in the event that you’re sharing rights with other territories, rather than seeing this as a threat, you can work together in generating an audience.

• Something Random House authors sometimes do is have characters in books interacting via Twitter, blogs, etc – generating content to support title. This depends on what the author wants to do – how much they want to do beyond writing the work itself.

• User generated content is really strong in Australia – there’s a lot of it.

• Partnering with other websites that do have forums and online chats, etc, to get things talked about – as opposed to investing huge amounts in your own infrastructure – piggy back on someone else’s. The idea here is that there are a of blogs and online discussions, and bookstores are generating a lot of this too. Rather than thinking about what you can do in terms of your own infrastructure, be in tune with what is already happening in that sphere and how you might be able to partner up with them.

• Do you build your own community or tap into an existing one?

• Other

• Author as having a clear view of what they want, how they want to market and position the book. When you have those initial discussions with authors, this is a good conversation to have early. Establish what the common intention, marketing-wise, is.

• A digital campaign is not always the best way to promote a book, there’s no point in investing time and money and building a whole lot of whiz bank online stuff if it doesn’t suit the book or the target audience.

• NOTE: a publisher website is more for the bookseller, the media and libraries and teachers, etc than it is for the individual consumer. Don’t necessarily structure your website content directly towards the individual/consumer – capture them in other ways, via blogs, etc.

• Direct Rights Management Stuff – details to bear in mind when drawing up contracts (Legal advice is obviously preferable to what I’ve included here, but may accelerate your intentions to address these issues)

• Authors will soon insist on retaining digital rights and may walk away from a publisher because of that. Something to be aware of when negotiating contracts.

• NOTE: ebook rights versus digital rights (which covers all sorts of things). In a contract, stipulate the difference, cause an eBook is just another book, where as digital rights include numerous things, some of which hasn’t been invented yet.

• You should include a digital rights strategy (even if you’re not doing anything yet) in your biz plans, contracts, etc – royalties based on the RRP model won’t work in this instance, so think about how you’re going to structure it.

• Keep eBook rights with the print rights (when you’re buying rights)

• In contracts, refer to it as ‘a work’ rather than ‘a book’ and this covers content other than ‘the book’

• Compare to contracts around film options – not tied up for too long, flexible enough to absorb variable in future developments for the area.

On connecting with audiences and consumers directly – keep audiences permanently tuned in to what you’re doing, daily/weekly reviews, lists of favourite books, etc Bear in mind cross pollination opportunities with other organisations, not necessarily publishers, or book people. (And there will be specific places you can do this depending on the book to make it most relevant.)

• Events

• Tin House hold a lot of events, as well as a mini festival once a year, which although may not be sustainable in a market the size of the one here in Australia, behaves as an example of how important connecting with humans and community really is. The digital age has done one fundamental thing – it has given license to communicate distantly and ineffectually. A big email list does not a strong marketing campaign make. Emailing out occasional newsletters and updates, or advance information sheets is not the be all and end all of your communication with consumers when you have a new book. Engaging with people personally, face to face, or over the phone, or via blogs and a regular online presence is the best way to build brand and audience.

• Other Resources

-http://booksquare.com/

-http://www.futureofthebook.org/

-http://www.electricalphabet.net/

-http://smallbeerpress.com/ (Good example of a small press website, loaded with content and interesting stuff, although sometimes it’s a bit hard to navigate)

-http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/ (UK competitive with Amazon – doing a good job, great content, book-centric)

-http://therumpus.net/ (good online magazine)

-http://www.graywolfpress.org/ (A very successful small publisher in the US)

-http://www.mhpbooks.com/ (Melville House – great content, updated blogs, video content, etc)

-http://www.tinhouse.com/ (lovely little publishing house, doing around 15 books a year, started on a magazine that is still published)

-http://www.eblib.com/ (eLibrary for eBooks)

-http://www.lightningsource.com/ (for Print on Demand)

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