A number of authors who have books published by Macmillan have opined on their blogs that the authors whose books are no longer available on Amazon really need our support. We really need to go out to brick-and-mortar stores or to other websites and order their books. We need to do this because these authors are taking a major hit to their income since Amazon has removed Macmillan books from their website.
I certainly have sympathy for the authors whose work is caught in this catfight, but this call for readers to go out and buy their books right now is nonsense.
The appeals make it appear that if we don’t buy now, these authors will starve. If you believe this, you also believe that publishers want to break Amazon’s non-existent monopoly on ebooks to protect choice for readers.
You’d be a lot better off trusting that the tooth fairy will leave you money when you put teeth under your pillow.
This is how the economics of the industry works. If you buy a book today, right this very second, from any retail outlet, the author will get, on average, 10% of that cover price.
In October.
Yep, eight months from now.
And that’s if their advance has been earned out. See, authors work on “advances against royalties.” The publisher fronts us money to work on the book, and then the royalties pay off that debt first, before we see anything. Books can take years to “earn out,” or repay that debt. Plus, since books are sold into stores on a returnable basis (consignment), the publishers always hold back a “reserve against returns.” So, even if your book has earned out, the publisher doesn’t have to pay you money if they believe some of your books will be returned.
In addition to that, we have to factor in pay periods. Royalties are accounted semi-annuallly. So, sales in the January through June period are lumped into one basket, and then the publishers have three months to check their figures, figure out their reserves, and cut a check. Checks should arrive on the first of October. The seldom do. Within my career there have been several periods where publishers—none of them affiliated with Macmillan—have taken until the end of October or into November to cut checks. One even seems to have a penchant for delaying the payment until I call to complain.
So, in reality, a book sold today—a book that came out this month—won’t generate income for the author, at best, until October. And, given the rate at which books earn out, that’s probably October of 2012.
If an author right now is facing so dire a set of economic circumstances that he’s pinning his hopes on money he might get in October, he’s got far bigger problems than Amazon not selling his books.
But I don’t want to be hard-hearted here. What could these authors do to get more income for their writing?
They could take all the stories for which they own the ebook rights, prep them for publication on the Kindle, and set them up for sale on their own websites. Sales of material from their own websites will pay them today. Kindle sales will pay them in sixty days. Between now and October, an author could easily and fairly effortlessly, pull in $1000 to $3000 via such digital sales. If they work at it, even more.
Sure, the tiff between Amazon and Macmillan is going to cost some people some money. But any author who ignores the larger import of this battle—the collapse of the current economic model for publishing—is an author who has already decided he no longer wants to write for money.
Michael A. Stackpole is a New York times Bestselling author with over forty novels published including I, Jedi and Rogue Squadron. He was the first author to have work available in Apple’s Appstore. He has lectured extensively on writing careers in the Post-paper Era and is working on strategies for authors to profit during the trying time of transition.
Have you ever had a family mystery tale passed down through the generations. The story is usually elaborated on along the way. My southern Missouri family had one such mystery in the 1930’s.
The mystery was the disappearance of my mother’s aunt. Aunt Leona was the sister of my mother’s father. She was five years older than my mother. The two of them saw a lot of each other when they were growing up.
It was agreed by the family that Leona was very spoiled. She was born a few years after the other four children were about grown. Her mother gave her baby girl anything she asked for including nice clothes which were the envy of my mother who didn’t have nice things.
The mystery took place in the Great Depression. Leona and her mother spent a lot of time making quilts. By the time she was in her mid twenties, Leona had a closet full of quilts stored for her hope chest. When she fell in love with a trucker, her parents disapproved. What they had against him was not clear. Who knows if Leona really loved him or just didn’t want to wind up an old maid. Nothing they said could change Leona’s mind so they gave her a fancy wedding in their front yard. According to a niece, one of Mom’s younger sisters, she wore a lovely white dress and large straw hat which in Depression times was considered expensive.
A few days later, Leona’s husband brought her back to collect her closet full of quilts. They left and were never seen again. Did she leave of her own free will? Did he murder her? Was he the bad person Leona’s parents feared, and she just didn’t want to hear, "I told you so."?
About fifteen years ago, I wrote to the reader to reader column in Capper’s, asking if anyone could help me find descendants of Aunt Leona. While I waited for a reply, I began to worry. In today’s world, the type of person who might answer my ad or show up to visit as a relative might not be to my liking. What had I let myself in for? As it turned out, I didn’t have anyone answer my request.
A few years later, I wrote Specious Nephew, Book two in the Amazing Gracie Mystery Series. ISBN 1438248202 sold on my bookstore website http://www.booksbyfaybookstore.weebly.com
and Amazon
Let’s start with the word Specious in the title. This is the way my mother pronounced suspicious, but I was surprised to find that the word specious is in the dictionary. The pronunciation fits right in with my historical mystery. However, the word tends to give libraries the impression that I misspelled the word. I’ve seen my book acknowledged in a library notice where in the title the word had been changed to suspicious to help me out.
The premise of the story is that Moser Mansion For Women resident Melinda Applegate hasn’t any family close by to invite to a special wedding for the Moser Mansion owner’s back yard wedding. So she sends a plea to the reader to reader column. If she has relatives she would like to hear from them.
Unlike me, Melinda gets an answer. A young man, Jeffrey Armstrong, shows up just in time for the wedding. He claims to be Melinda’s nephew. She’s more than willing to believe him, but Gracie Evans is not. He appears to be a con artist after what little money Melinda has. Gracie tries to warn the Moser residents but not one of them listens to her so she is determined to prove the man is up to no good.
Next week, I’ll give you an excerpt to show you why Gracie thinks the man is dishonest.
When the Big Six publishers and Apple’s Steve Jobs began conspiring recently to raise ebook prices by 30 to 50 percent from the Kindle Store standard of $9.99 for bestsellers and many new releases, it may have looked at first like curtains for Amazon’s powerful hold on the fast-growing ebook market.
Amazon’s first move — referenced on the blog as its "Delete You" tactic against MacMillan titles — even seemed a bit petulant to some observers, especially when the retailer turned around a few days later and said that it would have to capitulate to MacMillan’s pricing demands.
The publishers are in a powerful position, and it may indeed hurt sales of the Kindle — and of the publishers’ own bestsellers — if in a few weeks we find that few ebook bestsellers are available any longer at that $9.99 price that has become so popular in the Kindle Store.
But it turns out Amazon has some arrows left in its quiver.
First, it is clear now that, whatever its intentions, Amazon’s "Delete You" play was very effective in educating Kindle owners about the pricing controversy that was going on behind the scenes. Among the first 1,032 respondents in the current Winter 2010 Kindle Nation Citizen Survey, 71 percent agree with this statement: "By dropping MacMillan books, Amazon took stand vs. high-priced ebooks."11 percent disagreed with the statement, and 18 percent didn’t know or didn’t have an opinion.
The importance of this customer education, with its obvious subtext that "it is the publishers, not Amazon, who are behind the price increases in the Kindle Store" is that it helps to preserve a special relationship between Amazon and those of its customers who are Kindle owners. Most Kindle owners are extremely loyal customers, and we buy a lot of books. You don’t just have to take my word on these matters, because they are quite evident from other data provided by respondents in our current survey:
88 percent have positive or very positive feelings about Amazon, but only 19 percent have positive or very positive feelings about the Big Six publishers.
70 percent agreed (and only 13 percent disagreed) with the statement that "Jeff Bezos & Amazon have my back, & I know they price things to sell."
33 percent said that since acquiring a Kindle they annually buy more than 30 Kindle ebooks that are priced between 99 cents and $9.99, while another 30% said they buy 15 to 30 such books.
What will Kindle owners do if the prices of bestsellers priced previous at $9.99 increase by the 30 to 50 percent threatened by the Big Six publishers? Currently, according to our respondents, only 3 percent buy 15 or more ebooks a year in the $10-and-up price range. For some customers, that will change: 37 percent agreed with the statement that "I will probably pay $10 to $14.99 for new ebook titles if necessary," while 54 percent disagreed.
But there are also some strong indications that this group of very active readers may be ready to make an interesting pivot in consumer behavior, one that may be reminiscent of changes in behavior in the audience for music and film in the past few decades. As these forms of entertainment became accessible in different formats and at different prices, and the costs of production and distribution declined, audience grew dramatically for music and movies with various forms of "indie" branding. In the current Kindle Nation survey, we found strong identification with the following statements:
With recent ebook price wars, I’ve become more price-conscious. 72 percent agreed, 22 per cent disagreed.
With higher bestseller prices, I’ll buy more backlist or indie titles. 60 percent agreed, 21 per cent disagreed.
I’ll look to buy ebooks by authors who provide Kindle exclusives. 48 percent agreed, 28 per cent disagreed.
It should come as no surprise, of course, that Amazon — and some other forward thinkers — are racing to keep up with, or in some cases help create a market for, changes in what we read and what is published. While Amazon is certainly not about to turn its back for long on bestsellers at whatever prices they are made available, there are some exciting channels opening up which will lead to expanded selection of unique content in the Kindle Store, including:
Authors, meanwhile, are beginning to organize to protect and advance their independent publishing interests through initiatives like the fledgling Association of Independent Authors that may inspire more and more creative work for direct publication through the Kindle platform and other new technologies.
New publishing ventures such as Rosetta Stone and Jane Friedman’s Open Road Integrated Media are making a major investment in helping both established and emerging authors and their representatives to protect and assert their ownership of their digital publishing rights so that they can bring their own work to the Kindle and other platforms under more favorable terms than the 17.5% of retail list price being offered by the Big Six publishers for ebook royalties.
Recent deals by Amazon to publish a growing number of Kindle backlist exclusives or new short fiction by prominent authors such as Paulo Coelho, Stephen Covey, Ian McEwan and, through the auspices of the Atlantic Shorts program for the Kindle, Curtis Sittenfeld, Edna O’Brien, Paul Theroux, Jennifer Haigh, Patricia Engel and Christopher Buckley and others.
The announcement this weekend by the British Library, courtesy Andrys Basten’s A Kindle World post, of a joint venture involving Amazon and Microsoft that will bring 65,000 works of 19th century literature to the Kindle, free of charge for Kindle users (although it is unclear if duties and wireless charges will be added for U.K. customers.)
Through initiatives such as Amazon Encore, the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, and its direct publication of public domain works for the Kindle, Amazon is beginning to venture beyond merely dipping its toes in the water of ebook publishing, so that within another year or two I will not be surprised to see hundreds or even thousands of new titles published directly by Amazon in the Kindle Store.
And last but not least, Amazon’s announcement on job boards this week that it is "seeking a uniquely-qualified individual to help drive selection of unique content for Kindle:
The position of Kindle Unique Content Specialist blends vendor management with creative and technical aspects of product development, and requires enthusiastic dedication to delivering to our customers unique, engaging, and multidimensional content designed especially for Kindle. To this end, the Kindle Unique Content Specialist will: Use customer feedback, industry news/trends, and Amazon data to identify categories and genres in which unique content will add key selection, amplify Kindle’s distinctive functionally, and further enhance/add value to the Kindle customer experience.
Where will it all lead?
We’ll see. We’ve just witnessed a strange and upside-down economic event where, in the hands of Steve Jobs and the Big Six publishers, "competition" has somehow led to higher rather than lower prices for the consumer.
What’s clear is that Amazon has no intention of biding its time while the publishers and Jobs do their dirty work. As often happens when the dinosaur sector of any industry goes head-to-head with cutting-edge, forward-thinking elements, the dinosaurs may convince themselves they are winning the battles only to discover later that the outcome of the war depended on other battles about which they never heard a word until it was too late.
Publishers and authors may be trying to convince each other that they are at war with Amazon, but they have been acting like they were at war with their own readers. Readers won’t stand for it, and Amazon is likely to do plenty to empower us by giving us more choices at better prices.
This post was written by Michael A. Stackpole. It originally appeared on his Stormwolf website on 2/3/10, is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission, and is the first in a series we’ll be reprinting in the coming days.
I’m not going to name any names, but as we move into the digital era, there is a spurious argument that gets brought up from time to time by authors who really ought to know better. It pretty much points out that a) most of us are not good dollars & cents kinds of folks and b) why publishers have been able to convince a lot of authors that the digital age will be an apocalypse that will destroy them and their standard of living.
The discussion centers around epub, the ebook format that all major readers, including the forthcoming iPad, use (the exception being the Kindle). Supporters of epub and publishing in it maintain that if they buy a book once, they should be allowed to transfer it onto any new devices they get. So, a story purchased now, will still be readable on a device manufactured twenty years from now, assuming epub survives that long.
A number of authors have stood up and announced that having an eternal format is a bad thing. Their rationale runs like this: if a reader buys a physical book he loves so much that he reads it until it falls apart, and buys another, they get paid again. With epub books, it’s buy once and never have to rebuy. Therefore, epub sales are going to cut into their income. And they get lots of other authors nodding in agreement.
So let’s break this little myth down.
1) While some authors do have books that does get read so many times that they fall apart, this is not a common phenomenon. We’d all love to think it is, and we cherish readers who tell us they had to buy another copy of a book because they read the previous to death, but the ratio of repurchase to one-shot readings is pretty darned low as nearly as I can tell.
2) A repurchased book, right now, nets the author 10% of the cover price. Let’s say that’s 80 cents on an $8.00 paperback.
3) Under the current agency model, that same $8 epub book will net the author $5.60. (And even with the publishers taking half the electronic money if they’re selling the book, It’s still $2.80 due the author.)
4) Now, since I wasn’t a math major, someone might want to check my ciphering here, but it looks like the purchase of any epub would cover 3.5 to 7 purchases of a physical book. So epub and digital publication, even though it’s only going to be a one-shot, will make the author substantially more money unless this author is someone who, with everything he turns out, has people buying four or more copies of each book. (Doesn’t happen, unless you have a PAC that purchases your books in bulk for contributors.)
Some folks, who want to get absurd, could point out that if we forced repurchase of ebooks (through proprietary software choices and device-linked DRM) we could make that huge cut each time an ebook is bought. But this is assuming your book is worth repurchasing. Since most books are read-once and shelved, loaned, discarded or resold, this just isn’t a realistic argument by any stretch of the imagination.
Authors can, when hoping they have a winning lottery ticket, miss the fact that there’s plenty of money right at their feet. They’d do better to scoop it up steadily, than waiting for that jackpot that just ain’t going to come their way.
Michael A. Stackpole is a New York times Bestselling author with over forty novels published including I, Jedi and rogue Squadron. He was the first author to have work available in Apple’s Appstore. He has lectured extensively on writing careers in the Post-paper Era and is working on strategies for authors to profit during the trying time of transition.
The recent e-book dispute between Amazon and Macmillan is far from over.
Macmillan books, both e-book and traditional paper, are still unavailable at time of this writing on Amazon.com, except through Amazon’s third-party sellers. And Macmillan e-books, and the iPad, are not yet available for sale from Apple, Inc.
Who will prevail? Will e-book prices go up? Will book pricing be controlled by a few publishers? Will consumers buy fewer e-books? Will this help authors? Is this even legal?
First, some e-books background
I’ve been watching the media coverage, blog postings, and comments over the past week, and it seems there’s a lot of noise and confusion among the facts of this issue. Even before the problem blew up and Amazon pulled Macmillan books from its inventory, authors and readers were weighing in on the question of fairness with recent e-book pricing and availability.
I’m just trying to write good books, earn a living and support my family like everyone else in this crazy world. Please give me a break.
Preston later posted a mocking take on the “shrill, angry posts by Kindle users here and elsewhere”:
I am the American consumer. I am entitled. I want it now. I want it at the cheapest possible price. And if I don’t get it I’m going to lash out in protest and I don’t care who I hurt just as long as those greedy publishers and authors take notice!
Perhaps some were shrill, but most seemed quite polite, while making their point:
Mr Preston,
I feel you are missing the point here. You are losing many more sales of your book because of your publishers decision to delay the Kindle version release date than because of a negative customer review on amazon.com.
These complaints and negative reviews and discussions stemmed from several publishers’ decisions late in 2009 to delay the release of the e-book by one or more months, as the Guardian reported:
HarperCollins is not the only publisher delaying release of its ebooks. Last year, leading publishers Simon & Schuster and Hachette Book Group both told the Wall Street Journal that they would delay ebook editions – which are generally priced significantly lower than the hardback – by up to four months for some titles in 2010. “We believe some people will be disappointed. But with new [electronic] readers coming and sales booming, we need to do this now, before the installed base of ebook reading devices gets to a size where doing it would be impossible,” Simon & Schuster chief executive Carolyn Reidy told the WSJ.
Amazon.com pointed out at the time that “authors get the most publicity at launch and need to strike while the iron is hot. If readers can’t get their preferred format at that moment, they may buy a different book or just not buy a book at all.”
Impact’s Kindle version was delayed by 4 months. While paperback readers are used to waiting for a smaller, economical version of the hard cover book, for the past 2 years most e-book releases have been simultaneous with the hardcover version. And many e-books have been priced by Amazon at $9.99, while discounted hardcovers sell for about $15 at Amazon, Costco, and Walmart. In December, several new hardcover releases were even sold for $9.00. So Kindle owners have been used to being able to read their favorite author’s new book at release time for under $10. Many refuse to pay more, and say that their alternative is the library or a used bookstore. When e-books are priced close to the price of a paper book, they can’t comprehend the logic:
The $9.99 price point made it so – for the first time EVER – I bought new releases with some regularity. I won’t spend more than that on ANY book, let alone one that I can’t re-sell/trade/donate for secondary benefit.
Raising the e-book price to $13 or $15, as reportedly contemplated in Apple’s discussions with publishers, isn’t the way to embrace the digital future. A price of $15, for instance, is close to the hardcover book price charged by discounters like Costco.
Publishers not happy
It seems the publishers have not been happy with this. In 2009, the “publisher’s list price” or “cover price” of e-books generally rose to match that of the hardcover, squeezing Amazon’s profit margins on e-books. Some speculate that Amazon is losing money on some e-book sales. But in retail, loss leaders are a competitive strategy, and price adjustments help move inventory and generate profits. Under a traditional contract, publishers still receive an average of 50% of the cover price. So increased sales should be a boon to publishers.
But publishers seem to be concerned with a loss of “apparent value” in their product. And they seem to have convinced authors that retail discounting will be the beginning of the end. Some have resorted to accusing Amazon of bullying:
This isn’t good for those who care about books. Without a healthy ecosystem in publishing, one in which authors and publishers are fairly compensated for their work, the quality and variety of books available to readers will inevitably suffer.
[…]
Amazon, it appears, overreached. Macmillan was a bit too big a foe, and Amazon’s bullying tactics were a bit too blatant.
True – but what is “healthy”? And who bullied who?
Some authors claim that publishers are not the good guys. They state that authors receive a small fraction of the selling price of a new book, publishers need to change their business practices, and that book authors should remember that the publisher is only trying to maximize their own profits, and not those of authors.
I’ll earn almost as much on a $2.99 download than I earn on a $24.95 hardcover.
Konrath has the e-book rights to some of his back-list titles, and sells them directly, without a publisher.
Writer Carolyn Jewel puts the pricing logic in further perspective:
There are several things wrong with this. The first is the assumption that but for the availability of the Kindle version, book buyers would buy the hardback. This appears to be an egregiously wrong assumption. There is, to my knowledge, no evidence that a Kindle owner would be a hardback buyer if she didn’t own a Kindle.
I think it’s much more likely that a Kindle owner, if she didn’t have the device, would wait for the MMP rather than buy the hardback. The MMP would be priced at $7-8. But the Kindle owner, instead of waiting for the MMP, pays a bit more for the book right now. Instead of waiting. By the time the MMP comes out, she’s not going to want to pay $9.99. So what’s actually happening is the Kindle buyers represent BRAND NEW customers with respect to this release. MORE people buy this brand new book because there are two formats. And the cheaper one comes with some well known and much hated limitations.
Twisted facts
But for every Joe Konrath, there seem to be dozens of authors with a contrasting viewpoint. Fast Company, a magazine I subscribe to and generally love, surprised me with this blog post by writer/author Kit Eaton titled Amazon Revealed: It Hates You, and It Hates Publishers that sticks up for authors and publishers while revealing scant business sense:
Amazon, of course, operates something like a supermarket giant does in the food industry–leveraging its huge size to force suppliers to sell to it at wholesale prices. This tactic has caused issues in the food market, and now its doing the same in the books market: Amazon refused, and without warning pulled all Macmillan books from its store.
Mr Eaton must have stayed with the J-school curriculum and missed the econ 101 class where kids learn that retailers indeed do buy stuff from wholesalers at wholesale prices, and then set their own retail prices. He confirms it with this gem:
Firstly it refused to see eye to eye with a key publisher–one of its major suppliers–and preferred to stick to its bullying tactic that eats into the revenue of the publisher, and subsequently authors themselves, by basically insisting that it decide how much to pay them for their product. (emphasis mine)
Wow! Such blatant disregard for basic business sense in a business magazine. Reading both Macmillan and Amazon’s public statements, Amazon never “insisted that it decide how much to pay” publishers. What seems to have happened was, Macmillan told Amazon, a retailer with a huge investment in online and warehouse infrastructure, customer base, and staff to keep it running, that it should act as a cashier, and leave the pricing to Macmillan.
I gave them our proposal for new terms of sale for e books under the agency model which will become effective in early March. In addition, I told them they could stay with their old terms of sale, but that this would involve extensive and deep windowing of titles.
[…]
Under the agency model, we will sell the digital editions of our books to consumers through our retailers. Our retailers will act as our agents and will take a 30% commission (the standard split today for many digtal media businesses). The price will be set for each book individually. Our plan is to price the digital edition of most adult trade books in a price range from $14.99 to $5.99. At first release, concurrent with a hardcover, most titles will be priced between $14.99 and $12.99. E books will almost always appear day on date with the physical edition. Pricing will be dynamic over time.
Agency means retailers simply sell the products as an agent of the publisher, with no say on pricing, discounts, etc.
Macmillan, one of the “big six” publishers, has clearly communicated to us that, regardless of our viewpoint, they are committed to switching to an agency model and charging $12.99 to $14.99 for e-book versions of bestsellers and most hardcover releases.
We have expressed our strong disagreement and the seriousness of our disagreement by temporarily ceasing the sale of all Macmillan titles. We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan’s terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books.
Perhaps worst of all, Amazon clearly doesn’t care what its customers think (despite thanking them in the blog post) because it acted to axe Macmillan’s texts without explaining why or giving any warning. And though it tries to portray itself as championing customer rights, what its actually doing is trying to manipulate an entire industry to working how it wants everything to work, squeezing everybody from authors to other booksellers.
And the final, most fascinating twist of all this, is that there’s likely to be one main beneficiary of Amazon’s shenanigans, and it’s one Amazon will deeply resent over the next year or so: Apple, with its new iPad.
I’m glad he mentioned Apple, because I was about to. But first, what DO Amazon’s customers think? Fortunately, Amazon’s discussion threads shed some light, with thousands of posts in the past few days:
J.P. = Reader: To me the issue is the Publishers price controlling across the board at the expense of the consumer. I will also vote with my dollars in protest of their tactics. Sadly, I have to believe the other Publishers probably aren’t far behind.
nabrum: So let’s say the list price of the print edition is $26. Under the old model Amazon paid the publisher $13 and sold the ebook for $9.99. Amazon takes a loss of $3.01. Under the new model the publisher sets the price of the ebook at $15 and gives Amazon a 30% commission. 30% of $15 is $4.50. So the publisher gets $10.50 and Amazon gets $4.50. Under the old model the publisher/author et. al. get $13 to split between them. Under the new model they get $10.50, or $2.50 less. How does the new model allow the publisher and author to profit more from their work than the old model did?
What got this started?
Interestingly, the mention of Apple and the $12.99 to $14.99 prices remind me of Apple’s iPad launch, where Apple announced iBooks would sell for – you got it – $12.99 to $14.99. And that was just a few days before all this kerfuffle.
Some speculate that there’s no coincidence here. And a telling video exchange between Apple CEO Steven P. Jobs and Wall Street Journal columnist Walt Mossberger suggests Jobs knew something about this before it happened.
Walt asks Steve, “Why should she buy a book for $14.99 on your device when she can buy one for $9.99 from Amazon or Barnes & Noble?”
Steve responds somewhat knowingly, “That won’t be the case.”
Walt says, “You won’t be $14.99 or they won’t be $9.99?”
Steve says knowingly, “The prices will be the same.”
Then the video cuts, then Steve says, “Publishers are actually withholding their books from Amazon because they’re not happy.”
How can Steve Jobs know something that’s happening between Amazon and publishers?
Apparently the agency concept was developed in discussions that Apple had with a number of publishers in January. And Macmillan seems to like it so much, they are asking Amazon to follow suit.
But if publishers control the retail price of e-books, is it legal? Under US laws, such as the Sherman Antitrust Act, some forms of retail price fixing, or collusion to fix or control prices, is illegal. This issue hasn’t been raised in reporting, but perhaps it should be explored.*
In fact, what the FTC should be looking into is the potential collusion among all the publishers to “set” the price of e-books at $15. They didn’t get in a room and collude but they colluded through their new “agent”, Apple, with one following the lead of the other. It’s an old story that we’ve seen many times over the years in many industries. But at the least the FTC should put these folks on notice that any attempt to fix the retail price (as opposed to setting a standard agency percentage fee) would be suspect if it appeared they were acting in concert.
Between them, it looks like Apple and the big publishers are keen to screw as much money out of the reading public as they can, even while they’re driving their own costs down by switching to electronic rather than paper books.
I’d bet that little, if any, of their increased profit will be going to authors; I know from one friend that he gets 5% extra royalties on an eBook that costs 20% more than the paperback.
And finally (although this isn’t anywhere near over yet) an apt prediction from the Washington Post:
My guess is that in the not-so-distant future, best-selling authors such as John Grisham and Malcolm Gladwell — along with unknown authors peddling their first books — will publish their own works, contracting with independent editors and marketers and selling directly to consumers as much as possible.
Other authors will turn to smaller, more specialized publishing houses that will offer smaller advances but bigger royalties and will be built, as they once were, around great editors.
In the short term, though, it looks like consumers are being asked to pay more, and Macmillan’s authors are seeing their sales plummet. It will be interesting to see how this falls out.
Previously, there have been comments and discussions here about the importance of characters to the story. They are intrinsically linked. Humans are interested in stories that include other humans (sci-fi excepted). A good story should have interesting, believable characters. So how do you make them that way?
My very good friend, Jacqueline Simonds of Beagle Bay Books, put a name to a convenient data base practice I use by calling it a “Bible.” As a story line begins to form in my mind, I begin to imagine the types of people who have parts to play in the story. I assign roles to them and start thinking up names. As I do this, I use a simple Works data base to begin keeping their aspects straight in my mind. There is no hard and fast requirement for that data base’s structure; however, you might want to include some of the following:
Motivations (why the person does or doesn’t do certain things)
Thinking quirks
Moral strengths and weaknesses, religion, or the lack thereof, mentors, and centers of influence
Habits
A possible short resume if applicable
Comments about where he or she fits in the plot line
No, you don’t have to use all of these, or you can also include other factors if needed. Remember, this is a working aid to help you, the author. Such a Bible can help your characters come alive for you and your readers. You don’t have to use all the stuff you write down and not all characters are equally important. You may want to include a lot of detail for your major characters, perhaps less detail for characters who make only short appearances in the story, and practically no detail for very minor characters
Names
Try to be realistic. Don’t be too cutesy with names such as Dudley Doright. Try to be accurate as to regions, nationalities, and ethnicities. I have had to include folks from various Middle Eastern countries, India, Pakistan, and China. To help me find appropriate names for these characters, I went to Wikipedia articles specifically on names and how and why they are formed in these specific cultures. I also Googled typical male and female baby name lists by culture.
Names can become very Freudian. Jacqueline Simonds content edited my first two mysteries. (She’s very good, by the way and I highly recommend her at http://www.beaglebay.com/contact.html ) She pointed out that every significant female character in the male protagonist’s family and close relationships had been given a name beginning with the letter “S.” After all that writing and rereading, I had never noticed it. It was an easy fix with global find and replace tools, but it was also unsettling to have it brought to my clueless attention.
Balance in All Things
Be very careful here. It simply isn’t realistic for a character to be all good or all bad. That is such a temptation, especially with the villains, but, people are more complex than that. In fact, when comparing a protagonist (hero) with an antagonist (villain) you may discover how much they have in common. What sets them apart in their respective roles are the choices they make and the actions they take. “There but for ___would go I.” These are the details that make a story so interesting. Getting down to the motivations of those light or dark sides makes for keen psychological studies.
Flexibility of Characters
Finally (no, there is no room here for a be all, end all treatise on this subject), are the degrees of flexibility in the main characters. The arc of the story is driven by what happens to and by characters and what they learn and how they change. Most readers are hoping to see characters that rise from the ashes of debacle, to overcome their weaknesses, their problems, and their challenges. No character should be perfect; however, characters that find the courage and wisdom to rise above adversity are preferred. I hate a story where nobody wins, all are destroyed, and nothing is learned except that life sucks. Sorry, that is neither entertaining nor uplifting to me. Of course, I’m just an old, set-in-my-ways man who knows what I like. And, well crafted characters I love.
In an earlier post about the parts of a book, I briefly discussed the title page:
Title page—Announces the title, subtitle, author and publisher of the book. Other information that may be found on the title page can include the publisher’s location, the year of publication, or descriptive text about the book. Illustrations are also common on title pages.
But title pages are more than a dry listing of facts. They are commonly the most decorative display page in a book, and are often used as the only location really suitable for expressions of design and graphics, since the rest of the book is devoted to transmitting the thoughts of the author.
Some consider the title page one of the least important parts of the frontmatter. This may be because the first printed books did not have title pages. Typically, the text would begin on the first page, and books were identified by their first words, rather than by a separate title.
Here are elements that are found on the title page:
Full title of the book
Subtitle, if any
Author’s name
Editor’s name, in the case of anthologies or compilations
Translator’s name, for works originally in a different language
Illustrator or photographer’s name, for illustrated books
Number of the edition, in the case of revised editions
Series notice, if part of a series
Name and location of publisher
Year of publication
Setting the tone for the book
But title pages have often been the canvas on which authors and book designers have painted a picture of what is to come in the body of the work. Here’s a title page from Mariah Jovan’s Stay, designed by the author (click on the image to enlarge).
Here we see all the required elements of title, author, note that the work is part of a series, publisher name and location. In addition, the typography helps to tie the cover and the interior together. The designer has also given this page a subtle resonance with the cover by “ghosting” the image of the buildings in the background. This lends it a very atmospheric quality, like a fine perfume.
Following it is a different style of title page, from the Chicago Manual of Style. This is a lovely and modern typographic design that emphasizes the fact that the Manual is updated regularly (click on the image to enlarge).
All the same elements are present, but used in a completely different way. The large number “15″ in the background is critical to regular users of the Chicago Manual, since the most recent version is usually preferred. This allows the book to be instantly identified as the 15th edition.
It’s Your Title Page—Make the Most of It
I’m going to collect some title pages from different eras and different design philosophies for a future post. But you can see already that, when it comes to title pages, you have a lot of leeway for creativity. If you use the same type fonts that are used for the title on the cover, and the text of the interior, you will help integrate the various parts of the book, making for a more harmonious reading experience.
But if you’ve got illustrations, artwork for your cover, or an idea of a bold typographic design, this is the place to use it.
Takeaway: As long as your title page conveys basic and necessary information, it can be an opportunity to set a visual tone for your book. Be creative.
A good way to sell more books on Amazon is to increase your book’s visibility in the Amazon.com search results.
Amazon customers typically search for books by author, title, or keyword. Like search engines, Amazon uses several criteria in deciding which products to display on the search results page and in what order to display them. Popularity (the number of books already sold on Amazon) and how well the book matches the keywords are major factors in determining the results of keyword searches.
The more books you sell on Amazon, the more books you will sell in the future, because your book will appear higher in the search results. In addition, many customers assume that the best-selling book must be the best one on the topic.
One way to increase your book’s popularity, and therefore its search results placement, is to direct all of your online book orders to Amazon.com rather than offering links to several online bookstores or selling directly to consumers.
It’s also important to make sure your book matches popular search terms entered by customers. If your book is not yet published, you can add important keywords to the book’s title and subtitle. Some publishers use long subtitles in order to pack in as many keywords as possible.
To capitalize on searches for keywords not contained in your title and subtitle, enter important keywords into Amazon’s Search Tag feature. About halfway down your book’s page on Amazon, look for " Tags Customers Associate with This Product." You can add a check mark next to existing tags and add new tags by entering keywords in the little box below.
You can’t use keywords that already appear in Amazon’s search function, such as the book title or author name. Word order matters, so create different search tags with variations on your most important keywords. After you enter a keyword, you must to tell Amazon why you think the book should be indexed under that particular term.
Amazon staff members approve Search Tags, so make sure your tag and your explanation are relevant and don’t sound like a sales pitch. It’s best to use the keyword phrase within your explanation. You can personally submit up to ten search terms for you book. If you have additional search terms to enter, ask a colleague to enter some for you.
Another way to increase your popularity on Amazon.com is do a virtual book tour or an "Amazon best-seller campaign," designed to push up your Amazon sales rank by generating a large number of orders on a single day.
There are a number of other ways to sell more books on Amazon, including getting lots of good book reviews on Amazon, writing reviews of other related books, participating in the Look Inside program, enhancing your book description, participating in Amazon forums for your book’s topic, and creating Listmania lists and So You’d Like To guides.
For a more in-depth look at how to sell more books on Amazon, I recommend reading Aiming at Amazon, by Aaron Shepard.
Herewith, I present an updated and amended cross-posting of my blog post on the Amazon v. Macmillan affair. Let me state up front, I do not agree with Amazon’s strongarm tactics, and it is not my intention to defend those actions in this post. Rather, I’m puzzled by authors’ nearly universal lack of criticism for Macmillan’s part in the matter. I can’t help wondering, if Amazon had quietly agreed to Macmillan’s requested terms, thereby depriving authors of an easy target and distraction, might they have reacted differently to Macmillan’s move?
This week, Amazon announced it will cave to Macmillan’s demand that it sell Macmillan Kindle books at up to $14.99 instead of the $9.99 pricetag that’s become standard for Kindle bestsellers. Per a report on Booksquare, Macmillan may have plans to price their Kindle books across a range, anywhere from $4.99-$14.99, and author royalties on those books may be based on an ‘agency model’ calculation which computes author royalty as a percentage of net, not a percentage of list price. See the linked Booksquare post for more information.
Macmillan authors are rejoicing, and I’m shaking my head. Would musicians cheer a decision on the part of their labels to raise the price of their music on iTunes by up to 43%? I think not. Yet despite the fact that their books may cost up to 43% more than other Kindle bestsellers, and their royalty on those sales won’t be even one cent higher, the Macmillan author “victory” dance continues apace on the interwebz. The Author’s Guild has come out on Macmillan’s side too, and I’m completely mystified by that stance since Macmillan’s change in terms with Amazon only stands to hurt authors and ebook readers alike.
The only reason I can think of for authors to be on the wrong side of this battle is that they don’t understand it. Let’s look at the facts.
1. Under pre-existing terms Amazon pays big publishers like Macmillan half the hardcover price on each Kindle book they sell: generally, that’s between $12-$17. This means Amazon is taking a loss on the sale of every such Kindle book, but the publisher is still getting its standard share, regardless.
2. Macmillan cut their standard author royalty on ebooks from 25% of the list price to 20% of the list price last October.
[UPDATE – THIS JUST IN, 2/4/10: According to E-Reads Macmillan is now saying that going forward, its standard ebook royalty in boilerplate contracts will be 25%, *not* the 20% it came out with last October.]
3. Amazon announced last week it will grant a royalty of 70% of the list price to U.S. authors and 75% to UK authors who sign Kindle book publication deals with Amazon directly. Ian McEwan, Martin Amis and Stephen Covey are just a few of the authors who’ve already signed on. A data storage/transfer/processing fee of .15 per MB will be deducted from list price prior to the 70% royalty split’s calculation, but Amazon states that on average this fee only amounts to .06 per Kindle book sold.
4. The author’s royalty in either case is/was based on the list price of a given book, not the price at which the book is/was ultimately sold. This means Macmillan authors used to get the same royalty on every sale whether the customer paid $14.99 for it, or $9.99 due to Amazon discounts.
5. Last week Macmillan informed Amazon that if Amazon wanted to continue to sell Macmillan books in Kindle format, Amazon would have to raise [or lower] the prices on them to Macmillan’s stated prices.
Recent reports have said Macmillan essentially asked Amazon to match the ‘agency model’ deal it made with Apple’s iBook store, which dictates a 30/70 split (70% going to the publisher) and allows the publisher to set the price at which each ebook would be sold. If Amazon did not agree to these terms, Macmillan would allow Amazon to continue to sell Kindle editions of their books under existing terms, but wouldn’t allow Amazon to release the Kindle edition of a new book for sale until 7 months after its initial release in hardcover and several months following release in Apple’s iBook store. I have yet to hear or read any report as to whether these delays would also hold for books intially released in trade paperback or mass-market paperback editions.
6. Amazon didn’t agree to Macmillan’s terms, and childishly removed the Amazon ‘buy’ links for all Macmillan books from its site in response to Macmillan’s demand for new terms.
7. Macmillan authors stormed the internet, posting angry diatribes against Amazon and drumming up support among their fans and followers for Kindle and Amazon boycotts. Yes, that’s right: they took the side of the party who demanded that Amazon raise the price of their Kindle books, or delay their release by 7 months, or reduce the price of their ebooks below Amazon’s $9.99 standard and pay their royalties based on an agency (net profit) model instead of the percentage-of-list-price model they’ve had on their Kindle books to date.
It was Macmillan which set forces in motion that ultimately resulted in the removal of ‘buy’ links, not Amazon, and while Amazon’s actions in this seem excessive, I still see plenty of reasons for authors to be irked with Macmillan. If the report stating that Macmillan intended to withold Kindle editions of their books for a number of months after those books were released in the iBook store is true, is that a move that would’ve pleased the thousands of readers who own a Kindle, or who use the Kindle reader app on their computers or portable devices? Seems like a rather diabolical move to pressure ebook consumers to buy their ebooks from Apple (at higher prices) instead of Amazon, no? And isn’t it very likely that by the time Macmillan books were released in the Kindle store following this Macmillan-imposed delay, Kindle-reading consumers would have forgotten all about those titles and moved on to other, more readily-available ebooks?
I don’t own a Kindle, but release delays and pricing impact my book-buying decisions, too. I rarely buy hardcovers because they’re so expensive, and there’s many a book I intended to buy if/when it came out in softcover or e or audio, but either the book was never released in those formats or—salient in this case—by time it did, I’d forgotten all about it. This same phenomenon among ebook fans is well-documented, and ebook fans have always clamored to have their preferred format released at the same time as any print edition.
Also, recall that Macmillan may be planning to offer Kindle titles in a range from $4.99-$14.99. This isn’t good news for their authors either, since Kindle books priced higher than $9.99 will be a tough sell and those priced below $9.99 will net the author a lower royalty. None of Macmillan’s intended changes in its Kindle books deal with Amazon stand to benefit Macmillan authors or ebook readers. The intended changes only stand either scare off sales (in the case of Kindle books priced higher than $9.99 or those delayed by 7 months) or reduce author royalties (on Kindle books priced lower than $9.99).
So while I can understand Macmillan authors’ anger at Amazon for having their buy links removed, especially in the case of authors of books offered in print editions only (since they don’t even have a horse in this race), I still don’t understand why Macmillan authors haven’t been publicly objecting to Macmillan’s actions as well. Macmillan presented Amazon with an ultimatum in which either option hurts authors’ and ebook readers’ current situation.
8. Macmillan authors will not receive one penny more in royalties on their Kindle books if those books are priced up to 43% higher, because their royalties were always based on the list price for their books, not the price at which Amazon ultimately sold them, in the pre-existing arrangement. Now their royalties will be based on 70% of the ebook retail price, and it’s a safe bet their books will be netting fewer sales if prices go up to $12.99-$14.99.
9. The upshot is a lose-lose-lose. Consumers lose reasonably-priced Macmillan Kindle books, and reasonably-priced Apple iBooks too, since according to this NY Times article:
With Apple, under a formula that tethers the maximum e-book price to the print price on the same book, publishers will be able to charge $12.99 to $14.99 for most general fiction and nonfiction titles — higher than the common $9.99 price that Amazon had effectively set for new releases and best sellers. Apple will keep 30 percent of each sale, and publishers will take 70 percent.
So Macmillan earns the dubious distinction of being the first major publisher to make calculated moves to drive ebook prices higher across all platforms. Thanks to Macmillan’s "victory" over Amazon, Macmillan, authors and Amazon all stand to lose sales. Macmillan stands to lose market share. Authors stand to lose readership.
10. Prediction: emboldened by Macmillan’s so-called win, other major publishers will likely follow suit. More “lose” for everyone.
[UPDATE – THIS JUST IN 2/4/10: According to this report on the Wall Street Journal, Hachette is already attempting to renegotiate its Kindle book terms to match its deal with Apple, too. But why are publishers so anxious to get out from under the thumb of Jeff Bezos, only to wedge themselves beneath Steve Jobs’ opposable digit? I don’t know the answer, but what I do know is that in very short order, big trade publishers will get what they’ve wanted—and we ebook fans have feared—all along: a higher standard price point for mainstream ebooks. Still in Macmillan’s camp on this one?]
So tell me again: exactly why, and what, are we supposed to be celebrating here? I can already imagine the one objection I hear raised in discussions on this topic again and again: Macmillan is staving off devaluation of the ebook. There’s much hand-wringing over the notions that authors can’t possibly earn their due on low-priced ebooks, and that authors (like me) who sell their ebooks at prices significantly lower than the $9.99 Kindle store standard are somehow doing a great disservice to our fellow authors and trade publishing overall. This is so patently untrue, and such a pointless distraction from more important ebook issues, as to call to mind the Chewbacca Defense.
Under the pre-existing deal between Amazon and Macmillan, Macmillan authors earn a royalty of about $3.19 on their Kindle store standard-bestseller-priced books, whether those books are sold at $9.99 or $15.99. Under the new deal, which is the same in both Apple’s iBook store and the Kindle store, authors would earn a royalty of just $2.10 on an ebook priced at $14.99: 20% of 70% of the book’s $14.99 list price, and about $1 less in royalties per copy sold than what they have earned on their standard-priced Kindle books to date.
At a 70% royalty, I can earn $3.50 per copy sold of my self-published Kindle novels if I price them at just $4.99. The higher retail price does not add value for the author or the consumer, and at this point, it doesn’t even increase Macmillan’s profit since they’ve always gotten half the hardcover price on all their Kindle books from Amazon.
It’s quite clear that Macmillan’s take on each Kindle book sale under the new deal will be less than what they’ve received to date on those sales (since they used to get 1/2 the hardcover price and will now only get 70% of the ebook list price, which appears to have an upper limit of $14.99 for the foreseeable future), but I guess they decided they were willing to take that financial hit in exchange for the freedom to set their own ebook retail prices. Of course, Macmillan was under no legal obligation to include authors in their decision-making process, even though their decision stands to reduce their authors’ Kindle book royalties by up to 33%; I’m just saying it’s mind-boggling to me that Macmillan authors don’t seem to be the least bit peeved at this outcome. In fact, they don’t seem to have noticed it at all.
Publishers claim they need to wrest pricing control back from Amazon for the sake of what Amazon might do someday if it becomes too dominant in the ebook space. What if Amazon eventually decides to tell publishers it will no longer pay them half the hardcover price for their Kindle books, for example?
First of all, that’s a bridge to be crossed if, and when, someday arrives. Second, perhaps the correct answer in the event of that scenario is for publishers to lower their wholesale ebook prices. They claim it costs them just as much—or nearly so—to bring an ebook to market as it does to bring a hard copy, and they are therefore justified in their current pricing demands. But if it really takes a small platoon of publishing professionals and tens of thousands of dollars to bring a Kindle book to market, how is it possible that authors like me, JA Konrath, Piers Anthony, and countless others are doing it by ourselves, in our homes, from our consumer-grade computers, in a matter of hours?
“Your Kindle books lack the professional layout and design a publisher can bring to their Kindle books,” some of you are no doubt answering. This is true. But the thousands of readers who buy Kindle books from me, Konrath and the many other self-publishing Kindle book authors don’t seem to care all that much. I suspect that if you asked them, they would tell you they’d rather have a minimally-formatted Kindle book that costs $4.99 (or less) than an exquisitely-formatted Kindle book that costs $14.99.
As I’ve stated before, publishers arguing in favor of higher priced ebooks are ignoring the customer’s priorities in favor of their own, self-imposed priorities. This is because the ugly truth is this: the only parties being hurt by low-priced ebooks are big, mainstream publishers. Their overheads cannot be sustained by $4.99 ebooks, but that doesn’t mean their costs to bring ebooks to market should be forcibly subsidized by authors or consumers. To quote Konrath, “It would have really sucked to have been a buggy whip manufacturer when Henry Ford introduced the Model T. But technology changes things, and it isn’t always fair.”
In the end, all the arguments I’ve heard and read about the devaluation of the ebook are toothless. There seems to be this notion floating around that books must be expensive in order to inspire readers to value literature, but that’s ridiculous. If I’m earning more on my $4.99 Kindle books than a Macmillan author earns on a $15.99 Kindle book, both on a per-sale and volume basis, how is my book’s low pricetag hurting me, the author? And if low-priced ebooks bring more literature and ereaders within reach of more consumers, how are the books’ low prices hurting literature and literacy? If anything, low-priced ebooks stand to benefit authors and consumers alike, and advance the cause of literacy overall.
Hasn’t it been wonderful to find short fiction and poetry collections—species on the verge of extinction in trade publishing—coming back into their own in the Kindle store? It seems readers are only too happy to take a chance on these supposedly ‘fringe’ books if the price is reasonable. Midlist authors are earning new royalties and new readers by bringing their backlists back into print on the Kindle as well. Most importantly, in my view anyway, the current indie author movement wouldn’t be possible at all without Amazon’s equal treatment of indie and mainstream authors.
So authors, indie authors especially: if you’re backing Macmillan in this flap, why? Has Amazon’s overreaction distracted your attention from the long term ramifications of Macmillan’s move, and the likely damage to be done to you and your readership? To put it another way, see if you can answer this question: what part, if any, of Macmillan’s revised agreement with Amazon stands to benefit you?
The Premise
A month ago I engaged in an interesting conversation with Luke Bergeron on his blog, mispeled.net, about copyright law. My interest was prompted in large part by Luke’s incisive generational examination of the question of piracy.
Here’s how Luke initially framed the issue:
The real issue goes beyond digital piracy to copyright itself. Now, I don’t believe that digital file sharing, even of copyrighted materials, is theft. That’s probably a generational thing, but we’re gonna do our best to suss out as much meaning as possible. Keep in mind, this entry is a fluid conversation, so comment if you wanna participate.
So, theft seems to me like it is inherently defined by the taking of something from someone else, depriving them of it. Theft is a physical concept, based on a starvation economy, that there is a finite amount of resources to go around, and possessing resources means someone else will not possess them.
In truth, I think it is clear that morally, the act of pirating a product is, in fact, the moral equivalent of stealing… although that nagging question of what the person who has been stolen from is missing still lingers.
Two days ago I read a post from Marian Schembari on Digital Book World, called A Gen Y Reaction to Macmillan’s Piracy Plan. In her comprehensive rant, Marian had this to say about piracy:
I’m not condoning piracy (sort of), but if major publishers are only going to look at the “legal” side of things and spend precious time and money fighting the inevitable, they are going to crash and burn.
I’m poor, I understand technology, and I guarantee I can find any book online, for free, in 10 minutes or less. You can delete and sue all you want, but at the end of the day the internet is a wide and limitless place, meaning it’s a waste of time, money and energy to fight it.
In response to Marian’s post, Debbie Stier of HarperStudio/HarperCollins wrote a post on her company blog, congratulating Marian for stating her overall case regarding Macmillan, and for giving insight into the Gen Y perspective.
Here’s the bottom line for me — whether you agree or not with Marian Schembari’s views on piracy, she has given us a glimpse into the psyche of a Gen Y reader. I appreciate her honesty. I believe this is a gift. I think we should listen.
I agree with Debbie. We should listen. But then we should reply.
The Response
To do any less is to treat Marian and Gen Y and Luke and anyone else who shares their views about piracy and content theft with condescension. We don’t pat seasoned peers on the head for showing us that they can put sentences together. We read those sentences, unpack them, take them apart — even hack them to bloody pieces — to see if they hold up.
Debbie’s right that it took courage for Marian to express her opinion, but the fact that Marian can express an opinion is not what’s important. It’s the resulting process of engagement — the conversation that takes place following the assertion of that opinion — that matters. And here I mean to single out not Gen Y but Gen X and the Baby Boom generation. Replacing wisdom and knowledge with the measuring of intelligence and facts may facilitate competition, but we lose something in that egocentric trade. While it’s true that some lessons have to be learned by each individual in each generation, it’s not true of all lessons. More importantly, it’s not true of the process of critical thinking itself, where critical thought can compound over time to produce generational benefits. (See also: penicillin; democracy.)
I also don’t think anyone should capitulate to generational opinion simply because a certain percentage of any generation has its fingers in its ears. If that was the right course of action we’d still have segregation in this country. It’s true that a certain percentage of every generation really does want to steal simply for the sake of stealing, but that doesn’t mean we should throw Marian and Luke or anyone else out with the Gen Y bathwater. What we should do is engage in a conversation so we can pass on the benefit of whatever meager wisdom we’ve accrued, while also testing our own assumptions. What’s happening with digital content is new in a very real way, which means we all need to talk this through.
I’ve stated my views on the question of piracy and content theft here and here. I’ve made the case that stealing is stealing: if it’s not yours, and it’s not being given away free, and you end up with it, then you stole it — and that’s true whether it’s a physical object, a digital file, or an idea.
But I also understand that it’s hard to make this case to Gen Y when massive corporations like Google are attempting to steal copyright authority from millions of authors covered by existing law. If Google can simply make a deal with another group (the Authors Guild) which obligates all authors under copyright to opt out of that deal, why can’t Marian make a deal with Luke to borrow his entire CD collection — and implicitly require the recording artists to opt out by imposing effective DRM? More to the point, is Google actually stealing anything when they scan a book and make it available online? Shouldn’t we actually applaud Sergey Brin for preserving the cultural history of Earth from fire and flood?
And speaking of the Amazon/Macmillan knife fight this past weekend, wasn’t Amazon actually stealing control of Macmillan’s products by selling those products at a price lower than Macmillan wanted? And even if they were, wasn’t that good for consumers? Didn’t it make books cheap?
The Conversation
My point here is that making Marian and Luke and Gen Y feel great about themselves because they can walk and chew gum at the same time congratulates them for meeting an absurdly low bar. These are serious people expression serious ideas and opinions. What they want is to be taken seriously, and to demonstrate the ability to think things through, and we should want that for them as well.
Look again at the conversation I had with Luke on his site. Look at the seriousness with which he engaged on the issues. That’s somebody who wants to know, and that’s someone who should be part of this conversation because in ten years Luke may be writing the books our grandchildren read. Or he may be setting public policy. Or leading a fight against a critical erosion of civil rights.
Why should Boomers and Gen Xer’s take the time to do this? Well, if you’re a consumer or consumer advocate, you can help Marian and Luke see that there are useful arguments against DRM that do not excuse theft or piracy as a cultural or generational right. Likewise, if you’re in publishing you can help Marian and Luke see that even though someone like Cory Doctorow is passionate about anti-DRM politics, his reasoning is a fraud*.
All of which would mean we could get on with the more important matter of finding a workable solution to the problems of piracy and DRM, as well as address the massive generational transition that is currently clouding both of those issues. I want Marian and Luke not simply to be assertive and confident, I want them to be smart and right and to prove to me that they’re right. I want them, in ten or twenty years, to be able to take apart the charlatans they run across, for their own benefit, for my benefit, and for their benefit of society. But they’re not going to be able to do that if we refuse to engage them on the merits of their ideas.
The Question
In the DRM debate the obvious point we need to engage on is the premise stated throughout the above quotes: that copying digital content is not stealing. If Gen Y is wrong, it needs to be proven through argument. If they’re right, the same requirement holds. It’s not enough to just say that theft is inevitable or that it can’t be stopped any more than it’s enough to say that it’s immoral and wrong. Both sides have to argue the case on the merits.
The reason this is important is precisely because these issues have never been dealt with before. Ownership questions regarding digital content and theft are so new as to be without precedent. While applicable laws have been added to the books, those laws, like all new laws, are an opening salvo in what will probably be a long-running legal debate. As with laws that used to exploit or abuse members of minority groups, new laws covering digital content may simply be an attempt by established forces to stop right from trumping wrong. Then again, they may actually protect individual rights and be good for society as a whole.
I think Marian and Luke are interested in being part of the answer to these questions. I don’t think they’re asking for a free pass. When they ask what is being stolen if someone takes possession of a copy of a digital file, they’re asking a serious question. And to their credit I think it’s exactly the right question to ask.
We all agree that stealing a can of beans from a grocery store is theft, for two reasons. First, there’s a can of bean missing from the store. Second, we have a can of beans in our hands that we didn’t pay for. On the other hand, when we copy a digital file the original file is still there, and we don’t actually have a new object in our possession. So what’s actually being stolen?
The problem here is that asking what is being stolen almost compels a response that describes a physical object. It’s the same problem you run into if you try to define right and wrong by asking if anyone got hurt. It implies physical injury or physical loss, yet I think we all agree that PTSD or emotional trauma can be as damaging as a broken arm. Just as someone can be hurt emotionally, economically and in ways other than through physical injury to the body, the theft of digital content may involve stealing things that are not physical objects.
To see why, let’s look at two situations in which, as with digital content, we see no physical object being appropriated. Maybe by looking at non-digital examples we can gain some insight into what a person is being deprived of if we avail ourselves of a copy of their digital content.
First, let’s say you live in an apartment complex. Across the hall your retrograde neighbor still has the local newspaper delivered each morning. You also know that he sleeps until noon. If you get up each morning and take his paper into your house, read it, then carefully reassemble it and put it back in front of his door, was anything stolen?
Second, let’s say you’re a huge RHCP fan. You know they’re playing at a nearby venue, but you don’t have the money for tickets. You gripe to a friend, who says he knows how to sneak in without having to pay. The concert takes place as scheduled, nothing is different except that you and your friend are there. Was anything stolen?
The answer in the first example is that you stole a service you didn’t pay for. The people who made the newspaper and delivered it were paid by your neighbor to make the contents of that paper available to him on a certain schedule. Even though you didn’t disrupt that deal, you profited yourself by not having to pay for delivery. In doing so you not only saved yourself money, you also denied the creators of the paper the right to control their content in a way that they determined, and that’s true even if you would not otherwise have paid to read the paper yourself.
In the second example you stole an experience. Everyone around you had to pay for that experience, but you got it free. You didn’t alter the experience by stealing it, and you didn’t leave with anything in your hand, but in the same way that you denied the newspaper creators the right to control their product, you denied the band the right to control the experience it created.
Are these examples convincing? Maybe, but maybe not. If the assumption is, as Luke first stated, that only objects can be stolen, then neither of these examples holds any weight precisely because they don’t involve the theft of objects. But I think there might be another way to show that they do involve theft.
As is usually the case when downloading digital content, in neither of these instances did you ask anyone for permission first. You had the social approval of your friend when you sneaked into the venue — which is analogous to the social approval provided by content pirates themselves — but you didn’t call the manager of the venue or the band’s manager and ask permission to sneak in, just as you didn’t call your neighbor or the newspaper and ask if it was okay to read the paper without paying for it.
The reason you didn’t do this is because you knew that they would mind, even if you yourself are convinced that you’re not doing anything wrong. Free newspapers and free concerts are announced as such: that’s how you know they’re free. Things that have prices attached to them, whether you agree with those prices or not, are not free. You can steal them — meaning you acquire them at no cost — but you can’t take them and not pay for them and then say you didn’t steal them any more than you can walk into a store filled with physical objects and declare them all free.
And you know this. And you know you know this. And I know you know this.
My Answer
Which means we’re not only having a conversation about theft, we’re also having a conversation about power. And that’s maybe the most important part of Marian’s post. It’s her declaration that Gen Y can’t be stopped, and she may well be right. At least, I don’t think anyone outside Gen Y can convince Gen Y not to strip the countryside bare.
What I am hopeful of is that Gen Y itself may recognize that there is a long-term cost to redefining content theft as legal, ethical, or even socially acceptable behavior. I’m also hopeful that it will ultimately be members of Gen Y who make this case to their peers. But none of that is going to happen (or happen soon) if we don’t engage the issue first. Today, right now, the obligation is on those people who believe that copying digital files without permission is theft to make that case. To that end the most important thing that can be said about piracy is that it is theft. There can be no equivocation on this point, because equivocation amounts to permission.
What Gen Y needs to be thinking about now, while they have all this power — and they do have an incredible amount of power — is that they are not simply exercising that power today. They are establishing a set of rules that everyone is going to have to live with in the future, and that includes their children. One day, maybe not too far down the road, Marian or Luke will have kids of her own, and those children may decide to create something (and it’s all going to be digital at that point). Maybe they’ll even try to start a small collective of artists and make a go of it in business, but that’s not going to be economically possible if the cultural norm says that copying digital content is not stealing.
Great generations aren’t great because they get away with whatever they can get away with. They’re great because they aspire to more than the minimum standard the law requires. To each member of Gen Y, and to anyone who is wrestling with the question of content piracy, I would simply say that you need to answer this question yourself, and to think about the long-term consequences of the answer you choose.
Don’t pass the buck and let someone else do your thinking for you. Luke isn’t doing that. Marian isn’t. Even the mysterious pirate confessor isn’t. Be your own compass. When civilizations do break down — as we’re seeing now in Haiti — ethics may become relative. But making ethics relative when there is no emergency simply reverses the equation, engineering a breakdown that would otherwise not have taken place.
If a crime is inflicted on you in the forest and no one can hear you scream, it’s still a crime. Even if nobody will ever know that you stole an MP3 or a e-book by downloading it from a website, it should matter that you know. And you should want it to matter, because the only people it really doesn’t matter to are sociopaths and psychopaths.
Doing the right thing takes more guts than flexing your generational biceps or kicking a corrupt corporation in the groin. It’s easy to take something for nothing, and Marian’s right that you can almost certainly get away with it. The odds are long that anything directly punitive will ever happen to you as a result of content theft.
The problem, however, is that you’re not just stealing content and you’re not just stealing from someone else. You’re also stealing from yourself.
This post, from James Melzer, originally appeared on his site on 2/1/10 and is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission. In it, he offers an author platform perspective on the Amazon vs. Macmillan fracas.
I don’t pretend to know a lot about the publishing world. Hell, we’re probably on an even playing field here. The fact that I have a book coming out in March of 2011 doesn’t make me some publishing guru or know it all. I’m a guy who writes books, sells them, and then does his best to promote them however he can. I’ve never been to NYC to visit Simon and Schuster, and I have no idea what goes on in those tall, ivory towers people seem to think they can’t break into. I write books. That’s about it.
Some of you may have heard that on Friday the shit hit the fan between Amazon and Macmillan. Macmillan wants to raise the price of their ebooks and Amazon said no, so they stopped selling all Macmillan titles in protest. Something like that, anyway.
Upon observing this pissing contest between two giants, I noticed something funny about the authors involved. I follow some of them on twitter, read their blogs from time to time, and I wanted to see their reaction to the whole thing, so my spidey senses were heightened during this whole kerfuffle (which still isn’t over yet, BTW), and I watched and read.
Here’s what I saw: Pretty much all of the authors that I know of who are involved were tweeting and facebooking and blogging about Amazon pulling their titles. They posted links to other authors and newspapers and bloggers who were talking about it, and how it’s all wrong.
For the record, I agree. It is wrong.
Pretend for a second that you’re average joe reader. You hear about a book, think it sounds good and want to buy it. You go to Amazon this past weekend and find that you can’t. It’s not there. WTF? You’re inclined enough to go check out the author’s website and find all this mumbo jumbo about Amazon pulling titles and not selling the author’s book. What a pity. The author has posted this big, long rant on how Amazon is the devil and blah blah blah.
Yet he doesn’t tell you where you CAN buy the book online.
Now, you just don’t care and go on to find an author whose book is listed and that you can get delivered to your home in a few days. Done and done.
The author that posted that big, long rant about how Amazon is the devil and blah blah blah just lost a customer. A reader.
My point to this whole thing is that most of the authors involved in this Amazon vs. Macmillan thing were bitching and complaining and linking here and there, but they weren’t telling their readers, their FANS, where they COULD buy their books. Amazon is not the only place online to buy books, yanna. There’s Powell’s, Barnes & Noble, Borders and if you’re Canadian like me, Indigo. Yes, people who are savvy enough know this and would have most likely gone over there to grab a title, but wouldn’t it be nice to hear it from the author who you’re giving your money to? No. Most of them just assumed that people knew.
A simple, “Hey, sorry you can’t buy my book on Amazon right now. Here’s where it can be found,” would have been nice.
Is that too much to ask of an author who wants his readers to find his books? More so, to attract new fans and readers? If someone who doesn’t know you or perhaps isn’t that web knowledgeable wants to buy your book but can’t find it on Amazon, then tell them where they can find it for goodness sake. The average joe reader doesn’t necessarily care about what Amazon or Macmillan are doing, they just want to read a damn book. Hopefully a good one. If they can’t find yours, they’ll go on to another author, and perhaps forget all about you.
The head of one of the big book publishers, MacMillan CEO John Sargent Jr., is out with an “open” letter about his dispute with Amazon over the pricing and timing of electronic books. It’s telling that this “open” ebook letter wasn’t released publicly and isn’t directed towards readers, book lovers and customers. It was placed as an ad in a small publishing industry trade rag and the message is for publishing industry insiders. Sargent’s message, despite a bunch of misleading surrounding verbiage, is simple: let’s strangle the growth of ebooks.
If you want to understand where Sargent and other major book publishers are coming from, I strongly recommend watching this online footage from a conference New York University hosted last September. Here you can see Sargent and a couple of fellow old media dinosaurs whine and complain about the digital world, dismiss Facebook, Craig’s List and Twitter as irrelevant non-businesses that will never make money and generally explain their plans to charge everyone for everything at every opportunity.
The real critical portions come towards the very end, in part three, as Sargent grows more animated about his opposition to giving away ebooks for free, even for promotional purposes. Despite being in charge of one of the largest publishing conglomerates in the world, he’s pretty pessimistic about the future of books. Challenged by Wired editor Chris Anderson to use digital distribution and new business models to attract new readers and expand the book market, Sargent is in full rejection mode:
“As the Internet grows, as all the other types of entertainment grow, it’s hard to imagine sitting here how we are going to convince everybody in this room to spend an extra six hours every week to consume another book. So in a way, if you look at the overall demand for books, it’s pretty hard to make that grow. We’ve tried. A whole bunch of people worked very hard to try and grow that. It’s pretty hard if you look at the demographics, how people read, to actually convince yourself that we have a growth business in books.”
In other words, what we have in books is a dying audience, a shrinking audience. And the way you extract the most revenue and profit from a shrinking audience isn’t with creative promotions and new ideas. It’s with ever higher prices. As Sargent says at a another point, in a barely veiled swipe at Amazon’s $9.99 ebook price:
“What we need is variable pricing. I think you guys would agree with this, variable pricing for content. You want a range of price points. You want to find a place — what you don’t want to do is give the consumer something for less than what they’re willing to pay for it in the rush to a new business model. Because once you get it out there it’s dangerous and hard to go back.”
Again, challenged to charge less because producing ebooks cost less, Sargent obfuscates, fixating on just one bit of savings, the printing costs of books (ignoring distribution, returns, overage, lost sales from out of print etc):
“Guys I can walk you through this. How much do you think a hardcover book costs us? A buck sixty. What are we saving? Not enough for the price point to drop from $22.50 down to $8.”
Amazon has been saying that its Kindle customers buy more total books – electronic and print – than they bought previously. It’s certainly been true in our household. I don’t have the figures at my finger tips, but I’d imagine that the whole creation and growth of Amazon.com has enlarged the book market, as well. But that’s not really happening in John Sargent’s world of mega-best sellers.
So keep in mind what Sargent was saying a few months ago when you read passages like this in his letter:
“In the ink-on-paper world we sell books to retailers far and wide on a business model that provides a level playing field, and allows all retailers the possibility of selling books profitably. Looking to the future and to a growing digital business, we need to establish the same sort of business model, one that encourages new devices and new stores. One that encourages healthy competition. One that is stable and rational. It also needs to insure that intellectual property can be widely available digitally at a price that is both fair to the consumer and allows those who create it and publish it to be fairly compensated.”
Leave aside for a moment the completely dishonest portrait Sargent paints of the old print book-selling world, and remember that he doesn’t believe the there will be any growth in book sales in the future. He’s not interested in a fair price for anybody — he’s interested in making sure that he never gives the consumer something for less than what they’re willing to pay for it. He wants to extract the big bucks from the big sellers and move on.
The great danger to MacMillan is that it’s the authors of those big best-sellers who are becoming increasingly able to cut him out. If ebooks really take off, an author like Stephen King or Nora Roberts can sell a lot more of their books direct to their audience with no publisher at all. And that’s why Sargent’s real goal here is not to increase competition or create a level playing field. It’s to squeeze as much profit out of a dying industry as quickly as he can and hold off the digital future for as long as possible.
Did Steve Jobs seduce you with that temporary “charge-whatever-you-want” speech? Well, Steve has been known to seduce people from time to time. Just imagine what will happen once Steve has put the Kindle out of business and Steve owns the ebook platform instead of Jeff Bezos. That’s right: You’ll get held up even worse than Jeff’s holding you up today. Just ask the music industry. Careful what you wish for. So, bottom line, John, take your $15 ebooks and shove them. We’re with Amazon on this one.
Good work.
About the author: Aaron Pressman is a professional journalist but wrote this on his personal blog. He lives in the Boston area with his wife, three kids and four Macintoshes. You can find links to more of his published articles here.
This is as good a "quick hit" as any for my first (but not last) blog post on Publetariat. not sure if this is better off in the forum, but I’ll do it here and stand corrected if I shouldn’t have. anyway. .
Literary Agent Kathleen Ortiz of Lowenstein Associates is having a query contest this week on her blog. Three winners will get a full critique of their query from Ms. Ortiz. It’s a great opportunity for your writers out there to get some professional feedback on the hook for your magnum opus.
More and more agents are doing things like this, and to my way of thinking it is valuable for just about any author. I am actually submitting to agents at the moment, but even if you’re going to self-publish, professional feedback about your hook is always helpful in figuring out how best to use it to promote your book.
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