Sourcebooks CEO Dominique Raccah is not only a book industry leader but a book industry cheerleader, and she has plenty to rah-rah about. Here’s her open letter to colleagues. Email addresses and URLs are not hotlinked, but to link to any of them just copy and paste them into your email list or browser.
We thank Dominique for her sunbeams and hope they will shine on all of us as move into Q3-11.
Richard Curtis
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Dear Friends –
Like many of you, I’m an entrepreneur. Twenty-four years ago, I started off by myself, and what has become the Sourcebooks of today is entirely self-built. At a time like now – one of tumultuous industry change – I tend to believe entrepreneurs like us have an advantage. We adapt, test new ideas, innovate, bust down walls, and create new opportunities.
And we’ve been changing Sourcebooks so quickly that I realized you might not actually know who we are anymore. We’ve gone so far beyond the reference and non-fiction publisher you might remember. We’re a decidedly different company from the publisher we were even 3-5 years ago:
· In the first half of this year we’ve had 10 New York Times bestsellers, by different authors in different categories, by debuts and established authors alike.
· There was a week this spring when we had 3 of the 10 books on the New York Times children’s picture book bestsellers list!
· We’ve had 8 USA Today bestsellers this year, including several debut authors!
· We’re a bestselling publisher in categories we were not (or were barely) publishing in four years ago, including fiction, romance, picture books, humor, and memoir.
· We publish estates well too, landing the legendary Georgette Heyer on the New York Times list 37 years after her death.
And of course there’s digital, where we’re creating new opportunities with real revenue streams for authors. We’re making significant investments in ways that will change the future for a number of our authors.
There’s a negative (fear-based) vibe going on these days. When reporters call, they often ask me questions in the negative – “how much have you reduced your print runs?” “How much are your sales down?” and “How many people will you be laying off?” Our answers go in a different direction. We’re very much continuing to grow:
· We make long-term commitments to growing our authors – just this year one author hit the NYT list after 6 years and 4 editions, another on her 4th book with us, another after her 7th. Our goal is to build our authors’ careers. It’s how we measure our success.
· And we continue to add amazing authors at competitive advances. (And in fact right now we’re looking for even bigger projects for every one of our imprints.)
· We’re entirely self-distributed – in fact we have been for more than a decade – reaching a wide swath of retail and non-retail channels. Just 2 weeks ago, we were named Specialty Publisher of the Year by mass channel leader Levy Home Entertainment.
As a result, despite the loss of Borders:
· Sourcebooks’ sales through July/August of this year are up 25%.
· Our Bookscan POS is up 7.5% (industry down 9%) in a challenged retail environment that does not currently report ebook sales.
· And our market share is up over 20%.
And we’re growing in other ways too:
· Our April 2011 batch of royalty checks were again the largest in the company’s 24 year history.
· We’re adding staff as we continue to grow into new areas, including an entirely new division servicing education channels.
· Also, about six months ago we introduced a completely reworked and vastly simplified boilerplate publishing agreement – connect with Todd Stocke, our Vice President and Editorial Director, at todd.stocke@sourcebooks.com if you’d like to see it.
We’re still expanding our children’s, YA, fiction, and romance fiction lists. Our adult nonfiction list is vibrant and growing (with bestsellers in new areas like memoir and humor). Our marketing strength is an asset in the current cluttered environment.
At Sourcebooks, we’re continuing to take a leadership role in digital experimentation and in those discussions on behalf of authors amidst this ever-shifting business.
· We’re extraordinarily data-centric folks and we seek transparency, so you can find some of our data-crunching and analysis in periodic posts on our Next blog at www.sourcebooks.com/next/sourcebooks-next-our-blog.html
· I’m personally available so feel free to connect with me on Twitter @draccah.
· I also personally run the largest ebooks group in the country on LinkedIn. There are currently over 25,000 members. Feel free to join us: www.linkedin.com/groups/Ebooks-Ebook-Readers-Digital-Books-1515307?gid=1515307&trk=hb_side_g
· You can find our catalogs online at www.sourcebooks.com/catalogs.html
· Our acquiring editors and interests for agents are at www.sourcebooks.com/resources/agents.html
Finally, as Chair of the Book Industry Study Group, I’m in New York with regularity (my next trip is September 19-21) and am on the road all around the country. I’d be happy to talk about books, authorship, the future or anything else. Let me know if you’d like to connect!
Certainly these are disruptive times for our industry – we recognize that your business models are changing along with ours. We’re all going to learn and make changes. I think there may be an edge in agile models right now. We’re trying some things that seem to be working. And I’m excited about what we could be doing together!
Here’s to a successful fall for us all.
With warmest wishes,
Dominique Raccah
Publisher
Sourcebooks
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Literary agent
Nat Sobel’s challenge to publishers to hold back e-book reprints of hardcover books has flushed out position statements by two major figures in the trade book industry: Simon & Schuster CEO Carolyn Reidy and Hachette Book Group CEO David Young. They’re both in favor of it.
Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg, who covers the book beat for Wall Street Journal, has elicited that “Simon & Schuster is delaying by four months the electronic-book editions of about 35 leading titles coming out early next year, taking a dramatic stand against the cut-rate $9.99 pricing of e-book best sellers.” And “David Young, chief executive of the Hachette Book Group, said that Hachette, beginning in January or February, will delay the e-book publication of the vast majority of its titles for three to four months.”
Even Barnes & Noble’s Chairman Leonard Riggio supports the delay in spite of the fact that B&N’s Nook e-book reader stands to benefit from quick rollout of e-books tied to hardcover books. “The decision to delay the e-book titles is in keeping with the long-held practice of issuing paperback editions after the initial hardcover,” Trachtenberg cites Riggio as saying.
Not surprisingly, Amazon takes issue with the mounting reaction against simultaneous or near-simultaneous e-book reprints. Trachtenberg quotes an Amazon spokesperson: “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.”
You can read details of Trachtenberg’s article
here.
Resistance to quickie e-prints was first articulated by Dominique Raccah, CEO of Sourcebooks, who held back the e-book version of a YA novel to give the hardcover a chance to breathe. You can read her defense,
Are E-Books the New Cheap Paperback Edition?,
here.
Richard Curtis
Literary agent Nat Sobel, one of the most respected figures in his field, has issued an appeal to book industry leaders urging them to resist the temptation to release e-book reprints of hardcover books too early. Noting with alarm that movie exhibitors had recently pulled a film after learning that an early release of the DVD had been scheduled, Sobel draws the analogy with booksellers whose hardcover sales are cannibalized by early release of e-book editions.
Now Sobel is advancing Raccah’s argument with a plea for publishers to hold back e-prints to give hardcovers their moment in the sun without fear of being undercut by a cheap digital edition. “I suggest that the electronic versions not be made available for six months after initial publication, eventually being released when the paperback hits the market,” Sobel writes. “I’d like to believe that electronic book sales can and should be the mass market of the future.”
His reasoning is by no means theoretical. He recently demonstrated its correctness by asking Tor Books to hold back the e-edition of a series by the late bestselling fantasy author Robert Jordan. “Now,” he writes, “four weeks after its release in hardcover, The Gathering Storm has sold 24% more copies than the previous volume, even though the work was completed by another writer.”
Sobel told us that only one of the sixteen publishing executives he’d contacted had answered him. Because he feels that “the future of hardcover publishing is at stake” we believe it is incumbent on those executives to respond and make their views known. We are inviting them to comment on Sobel’s letter, which we reproduce in its entirety below, and we will publish their remarks on this website. Needless to say, we invite all writers, agents, editors, booksellers and book lovers to post their comments here as well.
Richard Curtis
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Subject: Before It’s Too Late
Dear Friends,
This week’s Variety has a story of the fight going on between the studios and the exhibitors about the too-early release of films electronically. The exhibitors pulled the film Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs on news that the studio planned a special quick release of the film prior to the DVDs hitting the market. The independent booksellers, even some of the chains, do not have this option, when it comes to instant releases of hard cover bestsellers
Why did that movie news remind me of what book publishers are doing to the lives of the hardcovers they publish, by making their top books instantly available electronically? We’ve lived for a year or two with the Kindle, but must now reckon with how the dissemination of books through some of the 140 million cell phones available, is going to change hardcover publishing?
In just a few years we have seen electronic sales of bestsellers go from 2% to 12 to15% of total sales. Next year, they may constitute 20%. Who knows where this will end, once bestsellers are on cell phones, blackberries and the like?
As someone who got his first job in publishing 40 years ago, working for a mass market paperback house, I have seen that area of sales rise and then nearly disappear. My first job was to open accounts and get a 64-pocket wire rack of Dell paperbacks into every imaginable outlet – variety stores, cigar stores – wherever there was foot traffic. At one point, there were more than 100,000 outlets for mass market paperbacks in the US. Those millions of customers didn’t disappear, but the racks and the distributers did.
I’d like to believe that electronic book sales can and should be the mass market of the future. For this reason, I requested that the bestselling Robert Jordan fantasy series not be available electronically until the paperback is released. Now, four weeks after its release in hardcover, The Gathering Storm has sold 24% more copies than the previous volume, even though the work was completed by another writer.
I have nothing to gain, personally, by urging all of you to consider postponing the release of the electronic version of your next bestsellers. As a first step, I suggest that the electronic versions not be made available for six months after initial publication, eventually being released when the paperback hits the market. There’s a clear line between the success of the mass market paperback and its electronic cousin – convenience and price.
The future of hardcover publishing is at stake. You don’t have a lot of time left to save it.
Sincerely,
Nat Sobel
Sourcebooks CEO Dominique Raccah is not only a book industry leader but a book industry cheerleader, and she has plenty to rah-rah about. Here’s her open letter to colleagues. Email addresses and URLs are not hotlinked, but to link to any of them just copy and paste them into your email list or browser.
