In the last two or three weeks there has been a lot of buzz about the changing publishing environment. Kristine Rusch has been blogging about the changing conditions of Publishers contracts, e-Book royalties being under reported by big name publishers, and the scramble to try and save themselves. I highly recommend reading back through her posts, as she provides a lot of interesting information that I feel I am better for having read.
Bob Mayer posted this past May that its time Writers change strategies from the traditional route to publishing (Find Agent, Agent finds Publisher, Publisher gets book out there). Many other authors, even those with national bestsellers in their catalogs have seen the coming storm. E-Books are clearly the future of publishing, unlike the print-on-demand trend, e-Books seem to be here to stay, and allow a writer to reach a large market.
I think a model similar to DeviantArt.com Prints in function would work well for the publishing industry. Imagine being an author with a finished manuscript. You’ve edited and polished and you are ready to submit. You log into the website, say B&N or Amazon, go to the author submission page and add your book. You input the title, the description (think back cover copy) and any relevant data such as genre, length, audience (Childrens, YA, Adult), upload your manuscript as a .doc, and the websites secure script processes the manuscript and formats it into an epub for downloads. You can set your own price, and B&N/Amazon get either a low % of sales, or a fixed cost. Consider DA Prints, which allows me to upload an art piece, and I want to sell it as an 8 x 10 print. Lets say their base print cost is $2.00 for an 8 x 10 print, and you decide to set the sale price at $10. They send you a quarterly check for the $8 profit you earned. Additionally, buyers can also select framing options to have a finished ready to hang image delivered to them. With this format for publishing, a buyer could buy the e-Book, and then choose the option to have a print-on-demand paperback version printed, or for more, a customized hardback edition. This type of format puts the power into the hands of the author.
Will this be the route the industry takes? Not unless Publishers have a radical paradigm shift, but wouldn’t it be great if after uploading your new e-Book and getting sale after sale, Publisher’s queried you, the author for printing rights. Kristen Rusch suggested a radical shift in the standard practices of the industry in 2-5 years, so whatever Publisher’s do, it will probably happen soon.
Photo taken while waiting in line for the traveling Star Wars Exhibit in Seattle, WA. Yep, I'm a total nerd. I love Star Wars, Star Trek, and Battlestar Galatica. #nerd tag explodes.
2 Comments
Interesting concept. Still need editing and someone to do cover copy. Formatting is a pain, especially with all the different platforms. We’re seeing many traditionally published having their books thrown up by their publishers without being checked and the results aren’t pretty.
So far no publisher has approached me on anything despite my sales records. It’s business as usual.
I think that is where publishers could come in with this format. I’ve come to learn that as well as I can edit other people’s works, editing my own properly is nearly impossible. It would need some significant engineering to implement a system that could convert a .doc that is properly formatted in manuscript format into a compatible format for e-Readers, but I think it could be done. Editing could be an additional service for going through a publisher instead of DIY. Something like, “You could upload it yourself, but if you go through us, we’ll let you use our editing team and we’ll get some artists on the cover art.” I finished your Atlantis series a couple weeks ago, and I liked it, but I did notice occasional misspellings, or a dropped word periodically.
I’m a graphic designer by trade and I’ve played with the epub format and its tricky to get formatting to stick when the conversion is made. Any system created would have to be hands free for the author.