Digital Book World‘s Executive Editor Jeremy Greenfield recently released a document circulated inside the Hachette Book Group that was purportedly not intended to be seen by outsiders.  The report rebuts the commonly sounded criticism that legacy publishers are no longer relevant.

Subsequently J. A. Konrath, popularly acclaimed as the voice of independent publishers and legacy publishing’ s most articulate critic, issued a confutation on the DBW website.  Both debaters scored points. What are we to believe?

Right off the bat one thing I’m not sure I believe is that HBG’s internal memo was not meant to be seen by the public.  Nothing about it is confidential, nor is anything in it surprising. Though the arguments presented in their white paper are cogently assembled, there is nothing in it that we haven’t heard promulgated for the last decade. It isn’t as if a highly placed executive leaked a plot for HBG to launch a hostile takeover of Amazon.  The report looks like it was intended to be leaked.

Deliberate or not we’re glad it was leaked, for it forcefully reminds us of everything that Old Publishing has done for books, authors and literary culture for which we ought to be grateful (and many of us are).

Let’s hear the salient points of Hachette’s paper, then hear what Konrath had to say about it, then try to make some sense of both positions:

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Publishing [says the HBG paper] requires a complex series of engagements, both behind the scenes and public facing. Digital distribution (which is what most people mean when they say self-publishing) is just one of the components of bringing a book to market and helping the public take notice of it.

1. We find and nurture talent:

• We identify authors and books that are going to stand out in the marketplace. HBG discovers new voices, and separates the remarkable from the rest.

• We act as content collaborator, focused on nurturing writing talent, fostering rich relationships with our authors, providing them with expert editorial advice on their writing, and tackling a huge variety of issues on their behalf.

2. Venture Capitalist: We fund the author’s writing process:

• At HBG we invest in ideas. In the form of advances, we allow authors the time and resources to research and write. In addition we invest continuously in infrastructure, tools, and partnerships that make HBG a great publisher partner.

3. Sales and Distribution Specialist: We ensure widest possible audience:

• We get our books to the right place, in the right numbers, and at the right time (this applies equally to print and digital editions). We work with retailers and distribution partners to ensure that every book has the opportunity to reach the widest possible readership.

• We ensure broad distribution and master supply chain complexity, in both digital and physical formats.

• We function as a new market pioneer, exploring and experimenting with new ideas in every area of our business and investing in those new ideas – even if, in some cases, a positive outcome is not guaranteed (as with apps and enhanced ebooks).

• We act as a price and promotion specialist (coordinating 250+ monthly, weekly and daily deals on ebooks at all accounts).

4. Brand Builder and Copyright Watchdog: We build author brands and protect their intellectual property:

• Publishers generate and spread excitement, always looking for new ways make our authors and their books stand out. We’re able to connect books with readers in a meaningful way.

• We offer marketing and publicity expertise, presenting a book to the marketplace in exactly the right way, and ensuring that intelligence, creativity, and business acumen inform our strategy.

• We protect authors’ intellectual property through strict anti-piracy measures and territorial controls.

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J.A. Konrath argues:

Publishers should stop trying to convince themselves and others that they’re relevant, and start actually being relevant. Here’s how:

1. Offer much better royalties to authors.

2. Release titles faster. It can take 18 months after a book is turned in to be published. I can do it myself in a week.

3. Use up-to-date accounting methods that are trackable by the author, and pay royalties monthly.

4. Lower e-book prices.

5. Stop futilely fighting piracy.

6. Start marketing effectively. Ads and catalogue copy aren’t enough. Neither is your imprint’s Twitter feed.

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If I were refereeing this bout I’d award a draw.

• Gatekeeping. Legacy publishers unquestionably offer invaluable gatekeeper judgment and curatorial support to authors in countless ways.  But they also need to recognize the emerging populist culture that elects its own stars and superstars through a viral networking system that is alien to Old Publishing culture.
• Royalties. The traditional book industry offers half the royalty paid by independent e-book publishers, and about one third of that paid by Amazon and Barnes & Noble.  But traditional publishers have far higher overhead, and it goes to support the personnel, infrastructure, risk capital and a multitude of other services that self-published authors cannot easily find. The greater the investment the more return the investor is entitled to.
• Fast Release of Books. True, self-published authors can get their books out in a week, but seldom can they get those books into bookstores, or keep them there, because they lack the kind of sales, marketing, promotional and publicity resources that enable legacy publishers to “make” bestselling books and authors and create exciting events that are worth waiting twelve or eighteen months.
• Monthly Royalty Statements. Traditional publishers cannot issue royalty statements month or even quarterly but I’m not sure they need to.  Most authors are perfectly content to receive semi-annual statements as long as they are clearly and fairly accounted.  The fact that they often are not, and publishers continue to rely on a preposterously archaic returns-driven business model, is the tragedy of the book industry and one for which they have paid dearly. 
• High E-book Prices. Because they are afraid that cheap e-book sales will cannibalize print-book sales, legacy publishers must artificially keep e-book prices high. This paradox is inextricably ingrained in the book industry’s culture and there is not much to be done about it.  On the other hand, self-published authors who elect to issue their books in paperback via print on demand have discovered that the price of their books is twice that of books done via print runs by traditional publishers. 
  
• Piracy. Piracy remains the Number One threat to the future of book publishing both traditional and alternative, and must be countered by every author and publisher that values the right of creators to their own creations.

Perhaps the future of book publishing will draw on an amalgam of the best that the old industry and new one have to offer.  There is room for both models, but both models also have room to improve and thrive.

The original Hachette memo may be read here.  Hachette Explains Why Publishers Are Relevant

J. A. Konrath’s rebuttal may be read here. Konrath Responds to Hachette Document

Richard Curtis

A blog I posted yesterday, Do Authors Make Good Publishers?, generated a record number of hits and a storm of comments, many of them fiercely refuting my contention that the answer to the question is No.The controversy even found its way onto Huffington Post.

Among those taking exception was J. A. Konrath, one of three authors cited in the article and, ironically, the one whose approach to self-publication I described as “sensible”.  What provoked Konrath was a statement I quoted from his website that said in part: “Right now, the best way to begin a writing career is to find a good literary agent and sell the book to a well-respected print publisher. In other words, don’t do it on your own unless you completely understand what you’re doing.”

I did not realize that he subsequently repudiated that position. He has issued a response on his website, and with his permission E-Reads has reproduced it in its entirety below. You may also read it on his own blog. As he says some very important things I invite you to read it – and to read the comments posted on both his own website and on ours. Then I’ll have some thoughts.

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A Response to Richard Curtis

Yesterday, respected agent Richard Curtis posted an article he wrote called Do Authors Make Good Publishers?

His conclusion is: No.

He cited me as one of his examples, and quoted my website. I wish he’d contacted me personally, because the quote he took is out of date.

It’s my fault for not updating my website regularly, but I’ve since had a 180 degree change of stance on self publishing.

Authors should self-publish.

As ebooks continue to gain ground, and print continues to lose ground, and publishers and bookstores continue to report losses, this industry isn’t nearly as stable as it once was. In fact, I’m not sure the industry will survive.

In an ebook-dominated world, are publishers even needed?

I can’t think of a single, compelling reason to allow publishers to keep 52.5% of ebook royalties and give authors just 17.5%–especially when any writer can make 70% by uploading to Kindle themselves.

In December, I made over $24,000 self-publishing, and I’m currently averaging $1300 per day. But I’m far from the only one doing well.

Among other insights, Curtis said:

If your name is not familiar to the reading public, however, emulating Konrath will flop.

That’s an easy conclusion to jump to, but it’s wrong.

LJ Sellers sold 10,000 ebooks in December. No agent or prior large publishing contracts.

HP Mallory sold over 22,000 ebooks in December. No prior publishing contracts, and she just signed with an agent.

Michael R. Sullivan sold over 10,000 ebooks in December. No agent or prior publishing contracts.

Amanda Hocking recently turned down a lucrative offer from a Big 6 house to continue self-publishing. Amanda sold a staggering 100,000 ebooks in December alone.

Here’s a partial list of authors selling more than 1000 ebooks a month, none of who had any traditional publishing background (no deals, no agents.)

David Wisehart
B. Tackitt
Vianka Van Bokkem
Maria Hooley
Tina Folsom
C.S. Marks
Melanie Nilles
Robert Burton Robinson
Bella Andre
Lexi Revellian
Michael Sullivan
Victorine Lieske
H.P. Mallory
Lauren Saga
Terri Reid
Imogen Rose
Nathan Lowell
Ellen Fisher
Vianka Van Bokkem
David Dalglish
Sandra Edwards
C. S. Marks
Sibel Hodge
Julie Christensen
Holly A. Hook
David McAfee
Danielle Q. Lee
Valmore Daniels
Steven L. Hawk
Edward C. Patterson
William Meikle
Maria Hooley
M. Louisa Locke
Beth Orsoff*
Eric Christopherson
Monique Martin
Ellen O’Connell
Karen Cantwell
Stacey Wallace Benefiel
Aaron Patterson
Zoe Winters
Karen McQuestion
JR Rain

Those with * next to their names sold 1000 copies or more of a single book. And this is a very small sampling of authors doing well epublishing.

If you browse the Kindle genre bestseller lists, between 20% and 90% of the authors listed there are self-published authors. In some cases, because of the higher royalties Amazon offers, these writers are making more money than traditionally pubbed authors. I earn $2.09 on a $2.99 ebook. I only earn 82 cents on a $4.79 ebook published by my print publisher.

On top of that, I’m earning $100 a day on POD books through Createspace, selling through Amazon.

I really think it’s time the world stops calling me an outlier who is successful because of my platform. Here are three reasons why the outlier argument is poor:

1. If platform is the key, why are unknown newbies smoking me in sales?

2. If background and name recognition leads to huge sales, why aren’t my traditionally published peers who decided to self-pub (I can name a dozen) selling as well as I am?

3. And if my name is so gosh-darn golden, why weren’t any of my print novels bestsellers?

Change is scary. When it first starts to occur, people are afraid of it, and come up with excuses for it. Of course the industry wants to view me as an anomaly. If I’m not an anomaly, and others can do what I’m doing, the industry is in big trouble.

Guess what? Others ARE doing what I’m doing. And the industry IS in big trouble.

If you want to read about more self-pubbed authors doing well, check out this thread on Kindleboards, begun by Robin Sullivan.

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The number and passion of those who expressed themselves over these issues have made a deep impression on me and got me to thinking about my own role in the digital revolution. For those who know of me solely as a literary agent I need to remind them that in 1999 I founded E-Reads, one of the first e-book publishers and today one of the leading independent companies in the business. For many years before that I publicly raged against many stupid publishing industry practices and warned that a day of reckoning would soon be at hand as the new technology took hold.

My admonitions went unheeded and for many years the e-publishing company I started was considered a novelty if not a folly.

I’m telling you this so that you understand why I owe no apology to those who misunderstood my article as a defense of publishing’s Ancien Regime.

But here’s the thing about revolutions. Those who drive the locomotive today find themselves running after the last car tomorrow. As visionary as I flatter myself to be, I have to confess I could not foresee how profoundly the digital revolution would overthrow the concepts of “author” and “publisher”.

Some of the issues are semantic. We can no longer talk about “Authors” and “Publishers” without defining our terms. Thanks to the many comments contributed by caring authors to the issues we raised, both terms have been expanded and refined and will serve as the basis for defining the new world.  Good communications start with good listening. I’ve listened to your comments, and I’ve heard them.

I intend to stay on the train.  It’s a thrilling ride and it’s going to amazing places.

Richard Curtis

Do authors make good publishers?  The answer is No. But it’s fascinating to watch them try.

Years ago as the e-book revolution dawned, we said that in order to keep pace with the new digital culture, authors would have to become more like publishers. “As electronic technology hurtles too fast for even futurists to keep up with,” we wrote, “a generation of readers is emerging that will not accept text unless it is interactively married to other media.” (See Author? What’s an Author?)

Unfortunately, in order to master publishing skills, authors face the prospect of abandoning commitment to their muse.  Digital technology has given writers the key to the funhouse, and few have been able to resist the allure of all those glittering tools empowering them to steal fire from Simon & Schuster, Penguin and Random House.

In the past year a number of prominent authors have accepted the challenge with varying degrees of success. We’re thinking in particular of Cory Doctorow, Seth Godin and J. A. Konrath. Whether their move to the other side (as publishers ourselves we’re in no position to call it the dark side) proves detrimental to their writing careers is a question that will play out in time.  But because their experiments are being watched and emulated by other writers, these adventures are worth noting.

Cory Doctorow. Publishers Weekly has been chronicling Cory Doctorow’s noble self-publishing venture for a year, and only Doctorow himself is more relieved than we are to see the book he has labored over, With a Little Help, completed. Though he applied the full measure of his genius to beat establishment publishers at their own game, he has paid a high price to achieve that goal. For one thing, he has wasted time, taking over a year of it to bring one book forth while (by his own admission) neglecting others projects. He made numerous mistakes in the course of learning truths that just about any tyro at a publishing company knows. For another thing, even though he expects to make money on his book, when you amortize the time he’s spent you on it you will see that he could make far more had he turned the job over to a professional organization. He also reports that the ordeal has taken a toll on his body as well as his soul.

Here’s how Doctorow put it in his latest PW posting: “With a Little Help has helped me realize something: whatever I do next, I don’t want to be in charge of all these moving parts. I can’t be both a Zen, let-it-all-happen-at-its-own-pace writer and an aggressive, deadline-pushing publisher. If I were realistically going to keep up this publishing stuff, I would need to outsource every task that requires the virtues inherent in agents, editors, sales, marketing, distribution and retail, especially that willingness to tithe a large portion of my working day to logistics, follow-ups, and calls.”

You can read our monthly coverage of his tribulations in our Corywatch Chronicles here.)

Seth Godin. Godin has set out to redefine authorship, and he’s done it so radically he’s become a publisher. And not just a self-publisher; a publisher of other authors.

In August 2010 he posted an announcement on his blog that now that he has a direct relationship with his large audience, he would no longer “publish in a traditional way.”  The traditional way, he decided, creates unnecessary layers of infrastructure that hinder the process of getting his words directly to readers.

Amazon.com, which has partnered with Godin on other projects, recognized that his approach offers an ideal showcase for its author services. Collectively known as Powered by Amazon, this system “enables authors to use Amazon’s global distribution, multiple format production capabilities, including print, audio and digital, as well as Amazon’s personalized, targeted marketing reach.”

If Godin stopped at publishing only his own work it would probably turn out fine, as it’s kind of like what J. A. Konrath is doing (we’ll get to that in a moment). But the venture he calls The Domino Project is geared to helping other writers achieve what he has achieved. “My goal in working with authors,” he writes, “is to offer them a relationship that eliminates some of the frustrations authors feel when working with the traditional publishing world.”

This is a noble goal but accomplishing it is far easier said than done. Just whom does he plan to relieve of their publishing frustrations? Branded authors? They don’t need him to help them find an audience. So that leaves the self-published unknowns and wannabes for whom there already exists a vast network of self-publication facilitators like Author Solutions. (See: You Got That Right, Ecclesiastes!)

It’s hard to believe that Godin would set aside his valuable time and literary gifts to devote himself to discovering, assisting and promoting these writers, but if that is what he has in mind, we will not be surprised to learn one day that his operation has generated the same layers of infrastructure that his manifesto decries. Because whether or not you’re “powered by Amazon”, being a publisher is damn complicated, even when you’re not trying to be an author too. Ask Cory Doctorow.

J. A. Konrath. We wonder if Konrath has the most sensible approach. He packages his own works but unlike Godin he’s smart enough to be disinclined to publish the work of others. He has a large following that enables him to self-publish successfully but unlike Doctorow he doesn’t sweat the small stuff, sensibly leaving details of cover design, formatting, uploading and website maintenance to professionals. That undoubtedly cuts into his profit margin, but the time he saves enables him to write more books.

He’s made the publishing process look easy. And it is -  if you’re J. A. Konrath. If your name is not familiar to the reading public, however, emulating him will flop. You will become a publisher, yes: a vanity publisher. Here’s how Konrath states it on his website:

Q: You’ve had a lot of success with ebooks. Should I forsake finding an agent and a print deal and release my book as an ebook?

A: I get asked this a lot. I’ve done pretty well with ebooks, and my sales aren’t slowing down. But I also have a known name (two known names if you count Kilborn) and this is no doubt helping my ebook sales. So while I’m able to pay my mortgage with my Kindle profits, I don’t know of many other ebook writers who can say the same.

Right now, the best way to begin a writing career is to find a good literary agent and sell the book to a well-respected print publisher. In other words, don’t do it on your own unless you completely understand what you’re doing.

Then again, if your goal is to simply have your book available, and to maybe make a few bucks, then visit Smashwords.com. You can upload your ebooks for free, set your own price, and they’ll upload them to Amazon, B&N, Sony, Apple, etc. I recommend keeping your price under $3. I also recommend using pros to do the art and formatting. Expect to pay a few hundred dollars for cover art, a few hundred for ebook formatting, and a few hundred for print formatting.

For authors, the lesson to be learned from these examples is that you must distinguish between writing and publishing your writing and weigh the goals and satisfactions of those two vastly different processes. In this age of instant gratification and entitlement the idea of long, uncompensated apprenticeships seems to be a relic of another age, But the rigors of artistic achievement are no different from those of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance or the Age of Enlightenment. Talent and hard work will out, but they must be leavened over time.

Publishers too have a lot to learn from the efforts of these authors, particularly from Cory Doctorow who has more and fresher ideas than an army of old-line publishers. A review of his Publishers Weekly articles detailing his innovations will generously reward every editor young or old.

Richard Curtis

J. A. Konrath, creator of the bestselling Hyperion Press series featuring Chicago cop Jacqueline “Jack” Daniels, has upended convention by signed with Amazon for the latest book, Shaken.  After Kindle brings it out as an e-book,  a print edition will be released early in 2012.

Konrath is no stranger to Kindle, but because he’s bringing Shaken out as an original, the event marks a dramatic shift.

“I’m excited to be able to release the Kindle edition of ‘Shaken’ several months before the physical version is available to purchase,” Konrath writes in a press release. “Since it’s easier, faster and cheaper to create an e-book than it is a physical book, Kindle owners will get to read the seventh Jack Daniels before everyone else.”

In a Q and A conducted with himself, he asked “Aren’t you going to piss off traditional publishers?” His answer: “Traditional publishers had a chance to buy Shaken last year. They passed on it. Their loss. Their big loss. Their big, huge, monumental, epic fail.”

Konrath obviously exemplifies the motto, “Don’t get mad, get even.” Read the rest of his self-interview here.

Richard Curtis