It is an outrageous act of snobbery. Of short-sightedness. Of knee-jerk small-minded reactionary head-burying ignorance and, worst of all, not appreciating the fundamental tenets of today's marketplace.
In 2009, the customer is king. Unfortunately for the literary world, a few publishers have decided to treat their best customers like crap.
Last week, Simon & Schuster, Hatchette, and HarperCollins announced they will delay the release of leading e-books until several months after a hardcover version of said book is released. Essentially, this means that power-readers--who love books, and buy a lot of books, and tell their friends which books they should get, and influence purchasing decisions far and wide by spreading their opinions through Facebook and Twitter and blogs, and even shell out several hundred bucks for an e-reader so they can buy whatever they want impulsively whenever they want it, because they love books that much--cannot get the latest hot book releases on the device of their choosing.
That is a massive mistake.
Disclosures: my dad, David O. Stewart, is a happy S&S author. I'm a novelist, and, assuming they fix this--and I have to think they will--I'd be honored to sell a book to these publishers someday (my debut novel, The French Revolution, is coming out with Soft Skull Press in July 2010).
But they are defending the buggywhip here, and it's excruciating to watch.
Imagine if airlines gave their biggest frequent flier customers the worst seats on the plane. If iPhone owners had to wait six months to download the latest tunes. If owners of hybrid vehicles had to pay double for insurance. If loyal Starbucks customers had to pay more for bringing in their own reusable coffee cup. If people using electronic toll-paying had to pay a surplus and wait in a longer line.
These are all idiotic ideas, certain to ruin relationships with each industry's biggest advocates, devastate the bottom line, and get top-level executives axed. So why do these publishers think they're exceptional?
In short: fear, a dose of snobbery, and--the most discouraging component--a failure of imagination.
Right now, Amazon dominates the e-book marketplace. They're charging $9.99 per e-book, and selling them for a loss. Publishers rightfully fear that one day Amazon will force them to cut prices on e-books. Amazon has a reputation for driving a hard bargain with publishers, and these publishers would like to sidestep unfavorable terms where it can--an understandable position.
What's a lot less understandable is the publishers' guiding battle plan: that they'll avoid a reckoning with Amazon by making e-books less attractive and harder to get.
Anybody who has an iPhone can tell you about terrific apps and songs they've bought impulsively, with three clicks, which they never would've bought had they had to wait. By denying the value of e-books, S&S, Hatchette and HarperCollins will make it harder for their power-readers to buy from them, to champion their books, to spread literary joy quickly and easily.
That's right: they want to make it harder to buy their product.
Did nobody object when this idea was brought up? Seriously?
There's a serious snobbish tincture to this logic too--the assumption that when faced with no e-book, power-readers will buy the hardcover instead. That's a false choice. Sure, a few may write themselves a note to buy the book later, but the vast majority will just buy a different book that they can get easily, or download a movie or TV show on iTunes instead. There's more than enough terrific content out there to keep us busy without schlepping out to a bookstore or remembering to surf over to Amazon later.
In the meantime, it's common to see the publishing industry "hope" things will get better. That's not going to work. Don't deny the future--innovate to dominate it. Tap that imagination that makes you such good storytellers. Renegotiate with Amazon; work with Apple to make sure their impending digital store is fairer; launch the publishing equivalent of Orbitz, an industry-built platform to sell directly to consumers. Be proactive; use your tremendous brainpower to create rather than reject.
And, ultimately, create a viable business model that doesn't alienate your biggest fans.
Follow Matt Stewart on Twitter: www.twitter.com/mjfstewart
Jacqueline Leo: Digital Dieting
Why do we group so many things in sevens? Seven is more than a lucky number. It's the brain's natural shepherd, herding vast amounts of information into manageable chunks.
Never before have I seen so many authors and industry observers roll over so fast and allow terms to be dictated to them by someone who clearly has no long-term interest in the survival of the book. Amazon is more interested in selling toasters and vacuum cleaners and hamster food than they are in selling low-margin books and e-books. Frankly, it's embarrassing to watch.
I love what Stephen Covey is doing with Amazon - it's a try at a new business model: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/15/technology/companies/15amazon.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp
AND it pays authors more. I'm an author, so I'm rooting for this one. But interested to see what else people try.
Timed release is why movies don’t go immediately to DVD, Amazon sells one Kindle today with a new version later, and Apple sells nanos first then itouch. Business don’t just respond to available markets. They MAKE them too. Everyday. And it works.
Cell phones are a false analogy. A device is required to talk via telephony. Contrary to what you state, cells are an improvement and people wanted them—there was no resistance. A $300 ereader is not an improvement—in fact it’s a downgrade. You don’t own your ebook like a hardcopy. You can’t sell it. You can’t loan it easily. And when you can share it, you can only share with someone who has a compatible device. And that’s AMAZON’s business model, btw, not publishing’s.
Ebook readers are over a decade old and still in their VHS phase. No one's come up with an ap killer ereader like itunes. Ereaders will likely end up the betamax device of ebooks. Once someone integrates them into a useable, cost-effective device that the majority of people want, the Kindle and the Nook will be gone. Publishing is not fighting the future. They want to sell books. They’re acting like a business should—looking for the real market tinstead of catering to a very small, vocal minority.
-Building a market good, not delivering on promise bad. The nook sucks and is ruining the market. People already got hardcovers on ereaders - taking that away is a mistake.
-Timed releases are dying with instant releases, iphone downloads, life on demand. Market is changing; don't be a dinosaur
-Agree that current ereaders ain't beautiful. But they are hyperconvenient and people will pay for that, especially as they get cheaper/easier. Plus ereader owners buy more (because it's easy). Wish I had a Kindle when I lugged 8 guidebooks to China in May
-Disagree on cellphones. They were for doctors only; everyone else didn't see why they had to be bothered. Now people can't live without em. Massive change.
-Ereaders, or something easier/smarter than a dead, noninteractive book, are definitely the future. Newspapers as we know them are dying; books are next. Publishers ARE fighting that, and they'll sell more books if they don't.
Snobbery? People who pay $300 for a nonessential reading device are complaining that they can't have instant gratification?
Is a cell-phone nonessential? When it first came out, nobody could understand why anyone would want one - just call me at home. Now, most Americans report they can't live without it.
E-books are the future. So what if they're a small % now? At the beginning people thought Amazon was unsafe, that you could never buy anything without going into a store, that it would never work. Through convenience and technology, they now dominate publishing.
The "same old" is not going to work. Publishing isn't being compared to publishing - it's being compared to TV (instant next-day availability on Hulu) and music (super-easy downloading to iPod) and movies (major challenges being raised to DVD system).
Instead of the usual defensiveness, how about embracing some new ideas and trying to control the future rather than deny it?
Beyond the expense to the author (which I wholeheartedly agree with) and the expense to keep the publishing house open, where's the expense here....? They end up selling paperbacks at LESS than $9.99, so aren't they losing money on THOSE too?
It seems both the book publishing and News publishing world seem to be stuck in the same trap the music industry was (and to some extent still are) when Itunes, Napster came out... It took the music industry a long time and the loss of a lot of potential revenue before it stopped treating digital download format customers as second class citizens. it is a shame to see publishers make the same mistakes.