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I was surfing around the 'net the other day and ran across a couple of discussions about how publishing really needs to change, and SOON. After all, stores are closing all around us, and formerly stable companies look less stable. People are holding on to their money because they don't know what might happen. The market is changing.
I think it's time to change the model that publishing uses. I realize that publishing houses are now owned by conglomerates and so forth, but they're about to feel some pain, I'm afraid, from this economic slowdown. I found some GRAND ideas in the various discussions I was reading, and I think publishing would be well advised to take a look at the ideas that people are bringing up. These are not MY ideas--I'm simply synthesizing the ideas that I've read during my websurfing--so I won't be hurt if you find flaws or tear my model apart. This is a place for discussion!
So what would be a better 21st-century model?
I think we all know that the "returns" system left over from the 1800s or whenever is RIDICULOUS. And being able to tear off the cover to send back for credit while pulping the actual book? Outlandish! So that needs to change.
Why not send only ONE copy of each book that a bookstore decides to order? Stores could be set up such that customers would have access to the one copy (or two copies, for popular books) of the book that the publishing house has sent. There could be shelves, just like now, but they would hold only "sample" copies that you couldn't buy--they're for previewing. Or you could have electronic previews of books, allowing the shelves to be replaced with computer screens where a buyer could page through the book in the same way you "page through" the latest Penneys or Target mailing on their websites. That would mean that bookstores wouldn't need all that space or all those shelves; it's anyone's guess as to how they would ultimately look, but they might be more like comfy coffeehouses or soda shoppes.
The store can then become a browser's haven. Browsers can look through that copy and decide whether they want to buy a copy of the book. They'd take the list of books that they want to buy to the POD counter, where the printing machine (they're available now, according to the Web) would print and bind their copy in about three to five minutes. [Pause for mind-boggle; it used to take longer than that to photocopy our school newsletter.]
As I understand it, these machines produce the larger-sized softcovers. I think some will also do hardcovers. I don't know what they cost, but probably less than maintaining a huge stock and all those stock-persons to load and unload the boxes. Onward. . . .
Okay, the customer has paid for his or her book. The machine would download the electronic image from the publisher, pay the fee(s) electronically, and then print the book for immediate take-home. (There would be exceptions for large art books and Bibles and other similar books that might not lend themselves to being printed on-the-spot, but this could work for most novels, memoirs, and a lot of nonfiction.) I'm not sure how those machines handle color illustrations and lots of diagrams (such as textbooks might have), but this could work well for many tomes.
If a customer wanted an e-book, that would be even easier. Assuming the customer wants it NOW and doesn't want to go home and download the book through some other service, the clerk could take the customer's e-reader device and connect it via USB to their computer (or whatever) and deliver the e-text right there.
This would save SO MANY TREES. Wouldn't it be neat?
So what's the major problem? The publishing houses don't lose any money, as every book they sell is, um, a sale. There are no returns. There is no remaindering. Cool, right?
Maybe, but I predict that the publishing world would fight this to the bitter end. Why? The big houses would lose their power.
Yes, that's right. When this model takes effect, then ANYONE who can get his/her text listed with Ingrams or whatever distributor takes hold in this fantasy world can then have his/her book(s) delivered to any store, even if the book is out from a small press or is (horrors) self-published. The concept of a print run becomes meaningless. Every text stays in print forever, until the author withdraws it or it enters the public domain. You can get copies of out-of-print classics for a college course--anything that you want your class to read, from the Greeks to the Beats, could be thumped right out into their hands. The cost of the classic novel might be little more than the cost of producing the book, assuming that the e-text comes from a place such as Bartleby or Gutenberg (two large repositories of public domain texts) and gets formatted at a small cost.
If (say) XLibris hooked up with whatever system provides the e-text and image data for the books, then any XLibris title could be out there. The author might pay a fee to have bookstores print one copy of the book to put on the shelf, and then the book has a fighting chance (if the author can publicize it well enough). Browsers might pick up the book and choose to buy it. If this proved to work well, it would erode the power of the centralized publishing houses . . . royalties could go directly to the author electronically, and there wouldn't be any question of whether a book "could get published." Because it could.
I can't help it if that would allow "bad" books to get out there. Wait--they already ARE out there. So anyway, the model might well work better than what we have today.
Would books cost more? I don't think so. I realize that a mass market paperback costs around $7 or so, whereas the larger softcovers are around $16, but once this system gets going, prices might stabilize at a lower price point. The books would be fairly good quality, as good as those paperbacks that tear apart while you're reading them (the covers fall off, pages fall out, etc.) And just think--your selection would be SO much wider. There wouldn't be a space constraint. You could browse ALL of Heinlein, Westlake, Dickens, Austen, or whoever to find the book you were remembering from childhood. You could see ALL the books in a series instead of never being able to find #1 and #2 by the time #3 is out. Wow!
The cost of fuel is coming down a bit, but shipping heavy books around is still expensive. We're killing too many trees. It's time for change.
The market is fragmenting now. We're going to see some kind of change. I do not believe that people ALL want to read on an electronic screen all the time. I love the weight and heft and smell of a "real" book, and my eyes can't take the constant reading on the screen, so I print things out or choose a printed book very often over an electronic copy. I think books are still a viable concept. I just feel that we need to move toward a model like this one, rather than sticking with the present system and fighting a losing battle.
Thoughts?
(Yes--you ARE allowed to speculate, suggest, and think about these things. You won't have an anvil dropped on your head for just SAYING this stuff, surely. This does NOT mean that we want publishing to crash down or tank. It only means that we anticipate the need for change, and we're trying to drag the system into the 21st century, if we possibly can.)
January 18 2009, 06:42:56 UTC 3 years ago
I have no problem with a publishing house offering books that haven't been edited, but only if they're in a substantially different tier from those that have, and for those, I'd far prefer them in an electronic format. I prefer it anyhow, to fix the inevitable typos;I suspect the problem would be anywhere from mildly to massively worse for self-edited material. (Yes, there are plenty of works that are decently edited without pros touching them -- but for each one of those, there are between ten and one hundred that aren't. This also doesn't preclude -- in fact, I acknowledge -- the existence of professionally edited works that still or again need serious editing.)
Print on demand technology is currently approaching the point where booksellers can in fact do as you describe, printing new copies as needed. It's not there yet, though. Also, there are legal ramifications, because one of the considerations for whether a book is copyrighted is, I believe, whether it's still in print or not, and if not, for how long. This system would allow a legal department to argue that books which ought to fall into the public domain are technically still in print (especially if the company sends a shill to buy hir copy just before the deadline).
As it happens, I do mainly read from screens these days, and while I'd like a larger and better resolution screen to read from (I'm currently on a Motorola q9h smartphone, and prior to that, a Sony Clie T27 PDA), I'm not about to shell out for a dedicated book reader. Also, I won't buy anything with DRM or copy protection both as a matter of principle and because I have seen too many cases of it going wrong (e.g., the Sony rootkit debacle, and several music servers being taken down in the past year, which then precludes the "owner" of the music from transferring it freely among hir own devices).
A centralized book server not owned by the major publishing houses would be a great idea; of course, preventing works with copyrights held by someone other than the uploader from getting onto it, and the financial end, are two major headaches I'm glad I don't have to deal with.
January 18 2009, 21:08:48 UTC 3 years ago
>>if books were strictly electronic, their price would likely come down approximately $2 for mass market paperbacks (and proportionately more for the larger/fancier versions).<<
OK, so it wouldn't save the consumer much money, so the consumers themselves might not go for the idea. There could be an outcry and a backlash at the pilot stores where this idea was be tried out. That's a possible roadblock, for sure. People would NOT understand or comprehend that they are paying for intellectual work, editing work, and so forth--not in the same way that they understand paying for a brick of paper and ink. Most people, anyway. They wouldn't WANT to take time to think it out. (Judging from what I see around me all day, anyhow.) So we'd have to figure out some way around THAT.
The problem of returns still has to be solved, as they can't go on like that.
>I have no problem with a publishing house offering books that haven't been edited<
That wasn't really what I was talking about. I meant deliver books in exactly the same way they've been done for years, all edited and copyedited (well, to some extent, anyway) and proofed and so forth, but send them in electronic form and have the printing done by the end user. That would be the only diff. I would still expect the authors, editors, and copy editors to be doing things the same way, except using electronic media.
When you publish a book through a place such as XLibris, you get page proofs as a .pdf file, and it's got formatting in it for the machine. That's what I would expect to be different--the page proofs wouldn't necessarily HAVE to be electronic, but it might happen with the new system. The final copy that goes to a printer is the last step for publishing houses, rather than the printing of the book. They still would do all the people things the same way.
That said, I do feel that MANY books go out with either NO copyediting or editing or with (and I know this is politically incorrect to say) shoddy editing. Some readers don't care because they were never interested in grammar and punctuation in the first place and they have no ear for cadenced prose, but other readers DO notice and care. Not that it makes any difference to publishing, as they must figure a few typos/groaners per book don't hurt. (At least that's what I guess they are thinking.) You never used to see this level of mistake-making even in magazines and newspapers. But I mustn't digress into an old fogey argument.
>>one of the considerations for whether a book is copyrighted is, I believe, whether it's still in print or not<<
Not the way I read it--of course, copyright law might have changed a little, but last I looked at it, it says for new works (1978 on) it's the author's lifetime + 70 years, no renewals allowed. For older works, it's different--before 1923, now in public domain; for works in between, you got 28 years and then could renew for an additional 67 years before the work passed into the public domain. This is all dated from the date of first publication. It doesn't mention whether the work is in print at all, AFAIK. I last looked at University of North Carolina for that, and that page was last edited in 2003, so it could have changed. They probably would NOT change it to say "keeping it in print retains the copyright," though, to prevent the exact situation you describe. *grin*
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January 18 2009, 21:39:19 UTC 3 years ago
P.
January 19 2009, 03:07:49 UTC 3 years ago
January 18 2009, 21:09:19 UTC 3 years ago
continued....
(continued from previous rock)>A centralized book server not owned by the major publishing houses would be a great idea; of course, preventing works with copyrights held by someone other than the uploader from getting onto it, and the financial end, are two major headaches I'm glad I don't have to deal with.<
I think a centralized server would not work well. Each house needs its own server with its own products on it.
I was thinking that the book-making (ha) machine would be connected to a local computer that knew which server to call for each publishing house. Penguin/Putnam and TOR/Forge would be on the same server, I'd imagine (same parent company, IIRC), but Algonquin or Random House would be on a different one, and so forth. Each house would have to be held responsible for what was on its server, and each house would be assiduously protecting its server such that only their works that are "in print" are available. There'd have to be a password protection scheme and a way to identify which bookstore was calling you and so forth, but it would be up to the individual server personnel as to how that's done. The only uniform thing would be the way that the bookstore calls you and gives the info, and the format of the product.
Universities that now maintain an archive of e-texts that are public domain might set up a way for THOSE to be sold this way, as well, and the money could go to maintaining the archive. Bartleby and Gutenberg also have copies of lots of good texts.
I wasn't seeing it as a centralized server because you can't get that many people to cooperate *grin*, AND you would want to distribute processing somewhat because of the load of heavy demand during the weekends and when people shop. Each house would probably have a server array or something. The details are for the people with a passion about networks (such as my husband) to figure out, though. We're just designing a Better Way for books to be delivered without so much waste.
I truly feel that consumers would adapt to this concept, assuming the price point issue could be worked out. If a person wants a forever copy of a book, that might still be something you would order from a publishing house. Maybe it's like a Franklin Mint version. One you would get autographed, a first edition, or whatever. But for the everyday "I heard this was good" and "I wanted to read this once" book, this method would be so cool. . . .
I don't know what's right. I just know that it's going to become more and more expensive for them to do what they do now.
January 18 2009, 20:52:15 UTC 3 years ago
I'm pretty sure that we don't do this in the UK. We have the remainder system instead, which I don't know quite how it works, except that it means that copies of books can end up in Hay-on-Wye where you can go and buy heaps of books for about 1 UK pound each.
Heaven...!!!
January 18 2009, 21:14:22 UTC 3 years ago
I know that most bookstores tear off the covers of softcover books and do returns that way. I thought that it was the publisher that'll remainder a box of hardcovers that didn't live up to the print run. Not quite sure, but I do know that at least some stores are allowed to return only the covers, and that means the publisher never gets paid for that book it produced and a bunch of paper gets wasted.
Wouldn't it be better for the industry to prevent such piles of remaindered books, though? We need a change in the way things are done, I believe.
January 19 2009, 03:30:35 UTC 3 years ago
Textbooks and other types of higher quality print runs are still beyond the capacity of these machines. The high gloss bond, or acid free papers are going to be very expensive to stock. High quality inks, in color, will be expensive for the bookstores to maintain.
I suspect that the only way to accomplish the transition that we all want, is to follow the model of the indie music publishers. Perhaps local printers using a micropayment system (PayPal?) from authors or smaller publishers to print off an ebook or the like. (There are mini fab shops where people can come in and use the equipment, and pay cost for materials, to make parts that they want. Usually they work on a subscription basis for access, like a gym.)
We also need to beat back the metering on the internet for usage or bandwidth. You buy the pipe, and you get to put whatever fits through it. Large ISP pricing models will kill your idea dead, fast.
We need to make a change. I think it will be easier to watch the music and news industries take the hit first. Publishers like to live comfortably. They will fight like fiends to continue living comfortably. They also have the most solid lock on their market right now. It hasn't budged in the internet age. The infrastructure technology still needs to fall some more in cost.
I still like to buy the sewn, acid-free-paper books when they are available. sometimes I can find them leather bound. I have perhaps seventy such tomes. I like to think my great grandkids will like having them. I don't want to lose such technology. I have a few books from my great great grandfather that I treasure.
January 19 2009, 13:53:40 UTC 3 years ago
I wonder whether books might go the same way? Good-quality editions for those who like the tactile experience, and downloadable versions to lead on a device or print cheaply for the folks who don't care as much about the carrier.
I really like a nice book myself, and I don't think it's a function of my age--I think some people enjoy the tactile experience of interacting with the artifact, the way the kids I know who like records really enjoy handling the records. Or the way some people like to do handicrafts or work with tools.
I can see where some sort of compromise may be reached--maybe accepting the idea there are different kinds of readers, and providing the kind of interaction with the material that different types of readers prefer.
It's interesting to speculate on and will be fascinating to find out what happens next!
January 19 2009, 16:45:49 UTC 3 years ago
My main point is that technology is not nearly at a place where products are interchangeable. Personal preferences are reasonably rooted in ease of use, display resolution, use in a harsh environment, availability of power, and a few other good reasons to stick with paper over electronic books. Those need to be overcome before there will be any type of tipping point to a new format. There will always be personal preference involved, but most of us will follow convenience over personal preference. (Maybe it is cost over preference?) It is not so much a matter of compromise, as it is the presentation of a better alternative. (CD's killed vinyl because CD's presented a better sound AND allowed more music in a smaller format. Same thing for DVD's and VHS. Blu-Ray really doesn't have the pull because the advantages over DVD are not clear.)
I believe that
January 19 2009, 13:47:21 UTC 3 years ago
I remember when iUniverse was charging less than a hundred dollars for its basic "publishing" package. You could read the first couple of chapters on the site. I spent part of a lunch break there one day and everything I checked out was unbelievably, eye-gougingly, "oh my GAWD" bad. Seriously. I'm not being a snob here, just a reader. There are an awful lot of people who think their first draft is a completed novel, so I could not possibly get behind this plan unless you PROMISED me the vanity publishers' rates were not going to go down. It weeds out the first level of people with half a mind to write a book.
I can see where this could work pretty well for writers with a book of local interest. It seems to me that it wouldn't do a whole lot to help the vast majority of books that get ignored because nobody has ever heard of them--in fact, they might get choked out even further. However, I guess there are always perils to any kind of publishing. I do wonder, however, whether putting that extra layer between the reader and the book might lead to a little more "oh forget it" and people not bothering to get the book after all. And when the machines go down (which they will, machines do that) it would pretty much bring sales to a standstill while they were being rebooted or otherwise fixed.
I've been hearing about these POD book-vending-machines since I was in library school, about a dozen years ago, and I would really like to see one in action! They sound very cool.
January 26 2009, 20:25:11 UTC 3 years ago
Another slight hitch
Hi Shalanna!Another slight problem with that "one display copy" idea is that it eliminates two positive customer needs - impulse buying and postioning effects. First, if there's only one "no-buy" copy in the store, you're not walking out with anything. (Cuts 30% or more of store revenue.) When POD reaches the quality standards of offset, this won't be as much of an issue.
Second, the psychological effect of being able to perceive the level of organizational confidence in a work, seeing a stack of books -- wow, THIS guy I've never heard of must be big! -- versus the flatness of every book being equal to every other book. (If POD gets good, the bookstore may be able to blend the two strategies, by, say, printing a few hours' or days' sales of the better books, then having replacements automatically print out as each copy is bought.
One of the biggest problems with the whole "any writer can pay $300 to have his book e-typeset" business is that the low barrier-to-entry encourages production of low quality drek works. Do you really want your book sitting in a row next to the typical stuff from PublishAmerica? Who is going to look at each book and find yours?
Dal Jeanis
(In answer to your question over on my blog, it's not short for anything and not a family name. There are a number of Dals out there, including Dal Curtis who wrote Rex Morgan MD in the funny papers, a Dal Lee who's a children's writer and another Dal Lee who's an occult writer. Often it's short for Dallas, but not in my case.)
January 27 2009, 07:38:37 UTC 3 years ago
Re: Another slight hitch
Thanks for coming by and adding to the discussion!>if there's only one "no-buy" copy
Well, but that's the display copy. If a customer wants the book, all he or she has to do is walk over to the counter where the POD machine is ready to print and bind a copy of the book in about three minutes (or so I am told) and walk away with a spanking new copy. The no-buy copy would remain on the shelf, but the customer would buy a copy exactly like it right there and have it printed up, and would leave the store with it. The quality of POD softcovers is fairly good now--or at least the ones I've handled have been sturdy--so I would think that by the time this scenario comes to pass, the books customers would get should be pretty much the same as a trade paperback from a publishing house. So the customer IS getting the book right there and can do an impulse buy, to my mind.
This just eliminates the huge inventory that bookstores now have, and gets rid of the problems of wasteful returns and remaindering.
>the level of organizational confidence in a work, seeing a stack of books -- wow, THIS guy I've never heard of must be big! -- versus the flatness of every book being equal to every other book.<
To me, THAT would be a MAJOR benefit--it would level the playing field. No longer could the publishing industry dictate what is to be on the next best-seller list by making it a self-fulfilling prophecy as it is now. Nowadays they do huge print runs for the books they're pushing (for various reasons--sometimes to recoup a huge advance, sometimes not because of the intrinsic quality of the work) and this kind of effect happens: people buy a book because everyone else seems to be buying it. I think that's wrong. I think people should be trusted to know what they like and given wider choices. This way, ANY book could break out and become a good seller. No book would have the unfair advantages of being stacked in every WalMart and Costco. My method would help every author to have the chance he or she deserves, for his/her book to be run across in the store and recognized as a goodie.
Of course, marketing will see it differently. *Grin*
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January 27 2009, 07:39:38 UTC 3 years ago
Re: Another slight hitch
CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS ROCK>the low barrier-to-entry encourages production of low quality drek works. Do you really want your book sitting in a row next to the typical stuff from PublishAmerica?<
I don't mind. After all, if your book is next to a bad book that comes out from a small press or a major house, it doesn't "catch" being bad, and it shouldn't influence people ("EEW! That book was sitting next to the Ugly Book!"), at least not people who are sensible. (Wait a minute . . . you may have a point here. *grin*) I'm sure that the PA authors did their best and don't think of their works as low-quality stuff that they just cranked out, and I know very well that some books published by the major houses were not worth killing trees over. Even if most of what we see from POD isn't ready for prime time, I feel that the authors are worthy of being given a chance. 99% of everything is junk, after all. If when we pick up a copy we see that it's junk, then we give it a pass . . . the same as now. The market speaks.
Seriously, I don't see why everyone should not have an equal chance. If, as everyone claims, the wheat rises to the top and the chaff falls down, then that would happen in this scenario. It doesn't matter what my book happens to be next to if people have the discernment to find quality when they see it, and declare that something is or isn't appealing to them. I mean . . . maybe it would be a bit more work for the casual reader who now goes by whatever's selling or what the Book-of-the-Month club sends. But it would give readers a way to discover midlist authors and books they would otherwise not have heard of. Perhaps people would have a list of books they've heard are good (on the 'net, from friends, whichever) and take that to the store, the way I do now. If they browse and find something they like that WE might not like or might not choose, then it's their privilege to buy the book we think is junk. I think the _Da Vinci Code_ is not only junk, but is poorly written. I can't MAKE people read the books I like. Not everyone is going to agree as to which books are good, so why not give them a choice? The market is turning into a splintered vertical market anyway, with the genres as distinct as they are.
>Who is going to look at each book and find yours?<
:) That was kind of the idea. Instead of having marketing and positioning and promotion be so influential, let the quality speak for itself. Let people look at each book and find the ones they love. That's how it USED to work in libraries when I was a browser.
But that was years ago, and besides the wench is dead. . . .
I don't know what will happen to print publishing, but I do believe there will have to be some kind of change. And soon. It's the market--you have to respond to changes in the market.
Thanks for writing!
January 27 2009, 20:42:11 UTC 3 years ago
Re: Another slight hitch
This is my marketing and business analysis experience talking. The human interface.Remember, I was talking about benefit for the consumer, not for the writer. Sure, you'd love being equal in some sense to Stephen King and Dan Brown. So would I. But that's not a benefit for the reader - not when it eliminates the ability to distinguish between books that have reached level X in quality/readability and those that haven't. If I had to browse through ten PublishAmerica level books to find one that meets current mass-publishing quality, I wouldn't do it. I don't have that much time. And the sad truth is, it would probably be more like a hundred to one.
(Despite your intention to be kind to strangers, please don't make any assumptions about the quality of PA books, or how well their authors met standard publishing criteria, until you've browsed ten or twenty at random. Remember, they got to PublishAmerica by not doing their homework about the industry and/or not meeting the professionalism for standard publication. Impatience is not a recommendation for the quality of an author. And, yes, sitting next to PA books, or sharing any other imprint, does rub off on how your book is framed and perceived.)
When I do shop in a bookstore -- just like when you browsed in the library -- I'm browsing selections that are already in the top five percent of everything produced, and I still have trouble finding books that I consider to be both high quality and interesting to me. "Network effects" and "popularity" -- the ability to detect that numbers of other people have found value in a particular book -- is a service to consumers. Your attempt to remove that information will not work, because consumers don't want to lose that information, and won't shop at a store where ninety percent of the offerings are drek, before even addressing their personal taste limitations.
The playing field is non-level for a reason. That reason encodes lots of information of varying types, including fame, literary merit, gatekeeper opinions, marketing muscle, and so on, into display space. That stuff isn't going away. Stephen King's current books will still sit in stacks where browsers can see them, and the next JKR or Stephanie Meyer - whoever it turns out to be - will be right alongside.
This delivery method might rock for consumers who walk in with lists - or fax them in prepaid, or whatever - for unstocked backlist books to be printed POD. This will result in higher marginal profit per book sold, since you don't use any floor space, and assuming returns aren't allowed. But for current titles, stores don't stock more than one to three copies of typical midlist books anyway, so what would the store be saving? Transportation costs for the physical books, that's all.
* * *
It would be interesting to experiment with different publishing contracts at bookstores, though. Suppose you agreed the store may print a display copy at each location for $x, and then each further copy is $y. This contract might be on a store by store basis, so that they couldn't print 100 copies at one store and aggregate their discounts. After the store determines to remainder the book, the cost per copy goes up to the backlist price $z. $x could even be a negative number, but you'd always want z higher than y to discourage remaindering.
Independent booksellers might be the vanguard of this kind of contract for small authors, so it could be proven in concept.