Comments on: Will eBook Exuberance Kill Publishing?

By: Moriah Jovan

Moriah Jovan — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:02:14 +0000

the premature demise of Quartet Books (”there are very few industry best practices“)

This. There *are* best practices and, IMO, Samhain Publishing, Loose Id, and Zumaya Books have already established them. Please see that Samhain Publishing is *also* behind a storefront that invites other e-publishers to list their titles, so it is one-stop-shopping for romance e-publishers.

And that's not even mentioning my own publisher B10 Mediaworx, which also specializes in formatting e-books for other micropresses and self-publishers.

I wrote a treatise on this here.

Best practices *are* happening. It's just that the people doing them are busy doing them and making money and not cussing and discussing ad nauseam.

By: Susan Doerr

Susan Doerr — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:57:24 +0000

Maria makes an important point that we need to “market and promote books”. (seems obvious, huh?) Publishing has long been based on marketing frontlist and spending less time, energy, and money on backlist. With ebooks we need to rework our marketing models to continually promote backlist with a strong focus on making books discoverable online. In the ebook biz model backlist is not scarce and does not go out of print and our traditional publishing model doesn't support this.

By: Dan Holloway

Dan Holloway — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 22:25:51 +0000

Wow, I didn't expect to agree with you, Maria, but I do. Ground-up is definitely the way. My personal feeling is that the paying models that emerge will grow, reader-generated, from the massive free-fiction portals that exist out there. At Year Zero Writers (http://yearzerowriters.wordpress.com/), we've nailed our colours to the freemium mast, and essentially written-off e-books as our calling card, because we believe high-quality free e-books placed in the sea of "questionable (sometimes editorially as well as just being porn)" are exactly what's needed to emerge as the most virulent strain of the e-book epidemic. In my opinion, the free and file-sharing market (there's a huge file-sharing debate going on in the music industry this week. Why are more authors and industry types not clamouring to get books included in air time?) is where e-books will explode. And against much opinion, I DO think quality will rise (new players will emerge bottom up, and I trust readers to have good taste, so if you put stuff in the melting pot, it'll get noticed), and that's where the players will emerge.

By: stacieberger

stacieberger — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 02:38:29 +0000

Totally agree x 2. Great post Guy.

By: Guy LeCharles Gonzalez

Guy LeCharles Gonzalez — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 03:15:01 +0000

Totally agree, and there are some publishers already making it work, like Harlequin and, as recently pointed out to me, Ellora's Cave. Beyond the editorial and marketing acumen, though, understanding the technology and what it costs to actually produce and distribute ebooks seems to often be overlooked and/or go unmentioned.

That latter point appears to be what sank Quartet, and it's definitely one of the obstacles traditional publishers are facing in trying to come up with direct-to-consumer models before that centralized store Adam noted becomes a reality.

By: Mike Cane

Mike Cane — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 00:15:16 +0000

Yes, that's exactly right.

By: Maria Schneider

Maria Schneider — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 20:28:39 +0000

What the epublishing business model really calls for, I think, is a bootstrapping solopreneur type, who has an editorial sensibility and understands how to market and promote books on the cheap. Building it slow from the ground up with hard work and low expectations starting out.

By: akaras

akaras — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 20:27:59 +0000

Publishing has the same problem as the music industry… some big players that made (past tense) too much money. They will keep their head in the sands until it is too late. Once you have a centralized store for all content at Apple/Amazon, publishers are only bringing what.. editing to the table?

By: Mike Cane

Mike Cane — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 18:43:44 +0000

>>>Is the publishing industry really ready for that transformation?

They can either have it happen TO them like music did or wake the hell up and make it happen FOR them.