Which is surprising considering that publishers and distributors have almost no brand recognition to the general public* when it comes to books. Of course there are prominent exceptions, such as in the field of technical books, but in fiction someone is going to ask when the new Joe Author book is going to come out, rather than what's coming out next week from Publishers Incorporated (Inc) next month. The focus of the publishers is for the sale to distributors and retail buyers, where their monthly output is important information (and the reason why they spend a lot of their advertising budget in the trade and out of view of the public). The problem is that the advent of new technologies has opened new avenues that can effectively bypass this established system. And the big publishers are making the same mistake the recording industry made when they attempted to preserve an outmoded business model (such as the idea of an album), by attempting to artificially restrict supply. And it will cause them more and more problems, especially when all this fuss, and a desire to learn the actual figures, means that the public will eventually figure out that it doesn't cost twice as much to print and distribute a hardcover book as a paperback, at which point their cash cow crashes in on itself. One of the reasons I like Baen (besides some of the authors) is they actually made the attempt to embrace the new technologies (even, I believe, looking at point of sale print-on-demand). However they created a wonderful idea in their Webscription service by inventing the concept of albums for books. By making it cheaper to pick up an entire month's output than each book individually, they have convinced the consumer to buy books that they didn't necessarily want. Brilliant. And people will read them, and perhaps a new author will gain a following that would have been impossible anyway. [And by calling it a Web-"scription" service they hint that you can subscribe** to it, creating a group of people that will buy their entire output. Did I say it was a brilliant marketing idea?] But most importantly, it creates the publisher as a brand in the eye of the consumer and generates an interest in "what's coming out next month" (something the public was probably quite ignorant about beforehand). * I have to admit that I do pay attention to publisher and distributor, but that's because the distributors in Australia are extremely bad, and it's important to keep track of if you want to grab books from your favourite authors (and match editions between US and UK publishers). Although this indifference, now that things like Booko exist, means that the distributors and retailers have been marginalised even further. Which isn't that helpful for the retail industry at least, which in turn will ripple back up the chain to the publisher and writer. ** Book subscription services are definitely making a come-back in this new era of direct sales made possible by the Internet, such as Paizo Publishing's Planet Stories, which gives you a new old pulp author each month.
I'm ambivalent - as an author - about POD. If it means the rights do not revert to me, (when I can sell it as a POD, or resell it to another publisher) then I'd say it's a pretty bad thing. As a reader, of course I'd love to buy another Eric Frank Russell NEXT OF KIN to name one.
Which is surprising considering that publishers and distributors have almost no brand recognition to the general public* when it comes to books. Of course there are prominent exceptions, such as in the field of technical books, but in fiction someone is going to ask when the new Joe Author book is going to come out, rather than what's coming out next week from Publishers Incorporated (Inc) next month. The focus of the publishers is for the sale to distributors and retail buyers, where their monthly output is important information (and the reason why they spend a lot of their advertising budget in the trade and out of view of the public). The problem is that the advent of new technologies has opened new avenues that can effectively bypass this established system. And the big publishers are making the same mistake the recording industry made when they attempted to preserve an outmoded business model (such as the idea of an album), by attempting to artificially restrict supply. And it will cause them more and more problems, especially when all this fuss, and a desire to learn the actual figures, means that the public will eventually figure out that it doesn't cost twice as much to print and distribute a hardcover book as a paperback, at which point their cash cow crashes in on itself.
One of the reasons I like Baen (besides some of the authors) is they actually made the attempt to embrace the new technologies (even, I believe, looking at point of sale print-on-demand). However they created a wonderful idea in their Webscription service by inventing the concept of albums for books. By making it cheaper to pick up an entire month's output than each book individually, they have convinced the consumer to buy books that they didn't necessarily want. Brilliant. And people will read them, and perhaps a new author will gain a following that would have been impossible anyway. [And by calling it a Web-"scription" service they hint that you can subscribe** to it, creating a group of people that will buy their entire output. Did I say it was a brilliant marketing idea?] But most importantly, it creates the publisher as a brand in the eye of the consumer and generates an interest in "what's coming out next month" (something the public was probably quite ignorant about beforehand).
* I have to admit that I do pay attention to publisher and distributor, but that's because the distributors in Australia are extremely bad, and it's important to keep track of if you want to grab books from your favourite authors (and match editions between US and UK publishers). Although this indifference, now that things like Booko exist, means that the distributors and retailers have been marginalised even further. Which isn't that helpful for the retail industry at least, which in turn will ripple back up the chain to the publisher and writer.
** Book subscription services are definitely making a come-back in this new era of direct sales made possible by the Internet, such as Paizo Publishing's Planet Stories, which gives you a new old pulp author each month.
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