Well, I'm back online and thought I'd open up the topic of eBooks. I've been reading today about how the agent Andrew Wiley has decided to create his own all-digital imprint publishing the works that he has rights to. He's offering exclusivity on those items to Amazon, who'll sell them at very low prices. He has a favourable back catalogue: link

We looked at this a bit ago in this article. That article looked more at publishers than agencies, but there was a little note in there that basically said "What's to stop agencies publishing directly." It seems we weren't the only ones thinking this. So Andrew Wylie's gone and done it.

Now, the publishers are saying it's madness. They believe that you can't just push a book to market nowadays without a campaign. True enough for the big sellers, but I'm sure Wylie has that under control somewhere. A lot of marketing at the big publishers is probably outsourced anyway, and the face of marketing is really changing at the moment with social networking being the latest concept for getting your product sold - as an aside, publishers really aren't making the most of this. Saying all that, if I want to buy a Nabokov eBook, I don't need a marketing campaign to help me. A very large portion of Wiley's clients are dead and already well established.

There's also the notion of cannibalisation, where the sale of a product affects the sales of closely-related products; each eBook sold is a printed book still sat on the shelf. That may be true, but why would Wylie be bothered about that? He'll make more from the eBooks than the printed books, so that's good.

Further to all this there's the concept that you can't have the eBook without the printed book, insofar as one spawns sales of the other (parasitic as one commentator puts it). Now, I'm not 100% sure about this but personally I think it's more a case that this hasn't yet been done. Now, Mr Wylie, to prove your worth can you pull off a successful marketing campaign without the physical product? Of course, this is nothing new. It's not yet been done in the book world but the software world virtually lives off it (no pun intended). The last piece of software I bought I bought without receiving anything but a couple of files. There is really very little difference nowadays between buying a physical product and a non-physical product in the eyes of the consumer. In many ways it's preferable as it's instant, requires no physical storage and is secured.

So, in short, it seems that publishers are clutching at straws for reasons why Wylie should fail. What they should be looking at is why Wylie has decided to bypass them entirely. Is he the megalomaniac he's made out to be? Is he just craving power? Or is he lashing back at publishers expecting authors to be given the same royalties for electronic sales as for physical sales? Wylie would probably meet with most success if he could get the publishers on-board in this venture, drive the paradigm shift through them and utilise their market expertise. But he probably wouldn't want to, and what's to say he's got any confidence in the publishing world's prowess in the digital world.

Or perhaps it's like John Makinson of Penguin said, [it's] not a cosmic issue? I would tend to disagree in general, but Penguin do seem to be one of the large publishers who are clued up in the digital age, so perhaps they have their own ideas. And Wiley hasn't (yet) severed ties with the publishers, he's just releasing some of the Wiley back catalogue digitally. I'm sure printed editions will still make it to the shelves...for now.

• Comments

• 27/07/2010 19:29 aickman
  This sort of changes the game in a major way if it works. The royalty rate is better for the author. But if you're Nabokov or his estate you can't be hurting that badly anyway. It reminds me of Radiohead's free album giveaway.Technology changed the way product was delivered to market. It seems that both of these models, the Radiohead and the Wylie, will work because the artists are well established and in some cases iconic. No introduction necessary for Mailer or Nabokov! It's the young author that benefits most from a traditional publishers marketing department and worldwide reach. Even viral marketing as good as it's becoming gets sped along by acceptance from publishers and the established media. I'm all for author's getting a bigger chunk of cash from new media forms but I wish author's and publishers would realize they will benefit from a closer rather than strained relationship. Still this whole affair tells me one truly worrisome thing, paper books are still in the cross-hairs.
  

• 27/07/2010 21:14 hollygolightlyplus1
  My 2p worth:
  • Wylie (+ estates he reps) are keen to rake in the dosh any way they can.
  ebks are just one more platform.
  • There will prolly always be tension between (many) authors and their pubs in the same way as it'll likely continue between agents and their authors.
  • One obvious analogy: itunes and DAT/ cd / vinyl -- many predicted that downloads spelt sayanora for physical audio media, but as yet this hasn't happened.
  • It may be that people use digital stuff and physical stuff in slightly different ways. While some items may well be digital (or paper) only, others will have more than one life in more than one medium.
  • This suggests that aikman can perhaps relax about books being in the cross hairs -- over time it may just be that they become more collectable.
  x
  

• 28/07/2010 02:36 aickman
  Thanks Hollygolightly1. I'll try and relax now with a glass of wine and a dartboard with Bezos and Wylie on it. Seriously, your comments have been echoed before and make sense and I believe you will probably be proven correct. Yet still that nagging paperbook OCD mentality...

• 28/07/2010 05:50 Simon
  Yes, I agree, fewer books is a good thing for us. Personally, I'd love to see small presses take over the physical market and the big publishers drive the digital market as marketing behemoths.
  
  And yes, CDs haven't gone anywhere yet. Sales may be down proportionally I guess.
  
  Just think how great, as a collector, it would be though If printed books were limited editions. The objects themselves would be quite odd but very desirable.

• 02/08/2010 20:54 Holden
  Publishing rests too much on its legacy. The digital age has killed some very established companies. I read recently about a company in Japan I think, that went bust a few years ago. It was established something like 1500 years ago! A family business, only the 21st Century could break it!

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