Google Books has been getting a lot of bad press in recent months due to its intentions to build the world’s largest library of stolen books. The controversy has centered around a clause in its agreement with prominent book publishers and authors over what to do with orphan works. The settlement will allow Google to profit from such works by selling them.
It’s hard to defend Google on this deal. Even large booksellers like Amazon are weighing in against the search monolith. Microsoft, too, have had words to say. Presumably, these companies are against the deal because it would shut them out of the competitive door, which is another reason to be against it. Anything that is counter-competitive, even if it’s a big guy vs. big guy sort of competition, is a bad deal. Consumers and authors are hurt either way.
But I believe in giving kudos where kudos are due. While Google is attempting to monopolize digital book sales, it is also opening up another door to affordable classic and antiquarian literature through print-on-demand technology.
I believe we are at a seminal and historic juncture in publishing. Call it a revolution, which is a bit of an overused word these days. Or maybe a second renaissance, which has a slightly more romantic flavor. At any rate, the world of publishing is never going to be the same – and we have Google to thank for it.
Why POD Is About To Get Better, And Worse
The Espresso Book Machine is pretty expensive. It retails in the range of $100,000, which means that some of us are cut out of the market. But that won’t always be the case. The principles of economics say that as more of the machines are sold the lower the price will fall, making the technology more available to more people. I can see a day, probably in my lifetime, when similar technology will be available to everyone for home use much the same way that laptops are today, and probably in the same price range.
If I’m right then all of us will be able to easily run a full-scale publishing business from our homes. If you think Lulu is cool, try owning your own Lulu.
But before you count your chickens, consider how good – and bad – this will be for independent publishers. First, the good:
- The provision of an affordable means of production
- More control over your own works
- Less profit sharing as you’ll be able to control more of the publishing process
And the bad:
- The provision of an affordable means of production
- More control over your own works
- Less profit sharing as you’ll be able to control more of the publishing process
How about if I restate that?
- Lessening the cost of production for independent authors will give the false impression that publishing is easy
- Since many authors will believe that POD is seemingly easy because they have such instant access to large publishing house technology, more authors will attempt to publish their own works without the necessary skills to market them properly
- More control = less profit; 100% of 0 is still 0
Marketing Is The Most Important Part Of The Publishing Process
I don’t mean to cast a pall on self publishing. For those authors who can act as writer, editor, and publisher and who know how to market their works successfully, this will be a great opportunity. Some will even make good money running their own publishing business. But most won’t. Here’s why.
The competition is stiff and consumers are demanding. Let’s face it, I like reading great literature. Don’t you?
But most of us don’t really care to read fluff. Or other bad germs. We just don’t like it. And so the challenge for all self publishers will be the same challenge that current large publishing houses have – how to market a book so that it makes money.
Marketing has always been the most important part of the publishing process. Indeed, it’s the most important part of any business. A good product won’t sell if no one knows about it. A bad product can sell millions of copies with great marketing. But a good product with good marketing can make an author rich. And there’s the hitch: You have to take the time to create a good product – not by your standards, but by consumer standards.
The problem? Most authors don’t know how to judge consumer standards of excellence in publishing. They don’t know now and they won’t 20 years from now.
This stark reality will result in a huge population of frustrated authors who own their own creative works, but who essentially own the equivalent of a city dump. And it will also result in independent authors who get filthy rich from publishing their own works of fiction and poetry. The difference will be made by a combination of two processes – editing and marketing. Those who do well at both will succeed. Those who won’t will flop.
What Print On Demand Publishing Will Look Like For The Winners
If you’re one of those authors who learn how to write great books people love to read, can edit your own work (or hire professional editors who make you look good), can print a book that looks and feels world class, and can take that book to market and sell it to hard-to-please consumers, well, you could make a good living. But what will that look like?
I can see a number of ways that independent authors can become independent publishers and make a decent living at it using technology similar to EBM by On Demand Books. Here are a few ways it could work (do your own math to subtract expenses):
- You’re a great writer and you know it. You’ve developed a solid, loyal fan base who will buy anything you put out. You’ve got a good mailing list and you know how to use it. You’ve published your book and it’s currently in digital format. You’ve spent thousands of hours writing and just as many editing. But you’ve spent no money. You write up a sales letter and e-mail it to your list of 1,000 loyal fans. Your book is priced at $9.95 and in just one week, you get a 50% response rate, earning just under $5,000 for a book that took you exactly 6 weeks to write. You take 20% of your earnings and promote your book through advertising, earning another $3,000 in sales within two weeks. Your two-month income is $8,000, but you’ve also made just over $1,000 in residual sales from previous books. This translates into a moderate, but livable income but you’ll have to adjust these numbers for future inflation.
- Instead of working toward a full-length project from beginning to end, you develop a list of readers who subscribe to a serial novel. Your commitment is to deliver a chapter every week by e-mail and you’ve designed a web page that gives readers a way to provide you feedback on what they’ve read. You’ve got 500 loyal readers who are active on your personal forum. Members pay you $20 a year for the privilege of helping you develop your novel, an ongoing income of $10,000 annually. These readers also get your printed novel at a 50% discount – another $2,500 after a 12-week publishing cycle (for a 12-chapter novel). You also have a 1,000-member list of interested readers and after your e-mail blast you sell 25% of them at full price ($9.95 X 250 = $2,487.50). An affiliate program that pays 50% of the full price offer also earns you an additional 300 sales for an income of $1,492.50. Your quarterly earnings (in today’s dollars) equal $8,980.
- In another scenario, you sell the print rights to your works by providing digital copies for download. No printing on your part. You sell digital copies of your poetry book for $100 and allow work-at-home publishers the right to print the books and sell them for whatever price they think they can get for them. With a loyal fan base of 1,000 independent publishers, you achieve an 80% success rate on every mailing. At 800 sales of the poetry book it took you 4 weeks to write, you’ve made $8,000 and no expenses.
- You belong to a writer-publisher coop. Each member contributes a work to be printed in one volume. You’ll share expenses and profits equally. The volume is a six-month project that ends with a large book containing five novels and one book of poems. It sells for $24.95 retail and $14.95 wholesale. To a combined list of 25,000 loyal readers and 10,000 book stores you sell 10,000 copies at retail and 4,000 at whole sale prices. It amounts to an income of just over $42,000 for you for that six-month period.
These are just a few scenarios off the top of my head. There is no limit to what excellence-oriented authors and self-publishers can accomplish. In your coop, you may have one author who is an outstanding editor, another who is an expert marketer-promoter, and one who is a fabulous book cover designer. Let each member contribute according to their expertise.
You may decide, as a self-publisher, that you don’t want to edit your own books so you hire an editor to do all of your editing for you. Add that to your expenses.
Or maybe you and another author-publisher agree to edit each other’s books on a quid pro quo basis. The possibilities are endless.
Are these numbers realistic? Perhaps. Or perhaps not. I suspect they are very realistic for some authors who can make their business run for them. For others, they’ll just be a pipe dream. Some of you likely could do even better. But this is the direction that I see self-publishing going. I have no crystal ball and I’m not a fortune teller. But I think it’s safe to say that someday an author may be able to walk into a coffee shop, make a pitch and sell 5 copies of her poetry book to the shop owner using her PDA and a portable printer to deliver the product on demand.
Am I a nutcase or do you see it too?
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