Peanut Press was the original name of the Palm platform, I believe.

Mike

I agree with your premise but this isn’t something all that new on the scene.  Arthur Klebanoff of Scott Meredith began publishing eBooks for his clients under the name Rosetta Books back in 2001;  Richard Curtis began ereads.com shortly thereafter.  But both of these were preceded by Joshua Bilmes of JABerwocky Literary Agency who started publishing his clients thru peanutpress.com as early as 1998.  While Joshua worked under the umbrella of peanut press, he was providing many of the services of a publisher for his clients for titles where the rights had reverted from their paper publisher.  

One important thing to remember: for the biggest authors with the most powerful agents, the advance is the payment. So royalty rates and speed of accounting and payment are moot.

Mike

At which you say – so what? there are lots more of these meat-heads out there. Publishers can trawl up another grateful bunch of bottom feeders, who’ll take anything and live on Ramen. True. But that discounts the fact that each meat-head is an investment, and the old meat-heads are talking to their friends who are higher up the food chain. And what they’re saying is ‘I can’t believe how good this is! You should give it a go. You’d make a fortune!’ And Joe who was cadging drinks at the last Con they went to, and sleeping in a friend’s room, is buying the drinks and has own room,  while Fred, who sells 50% more than Joe in the past, is wondering if someone might buy him lunch, because advances are down. Do you think he’s not listening? This is a classic exponential situation, Mike, and it’s getting close to the critical point, I think. It’s about 10-15% now I reckon. And there is a fixed pool of spend out there. Given a choice of meat-head they know and like, and new meat -head, which one is going to win most of the time? 

You predict trends and advise the industry and are far more knowledgeable than I will ever be about it, but I’d say the time has arrived to do things to make large publishing more attractive to authors in ways which compare to self publishing and offer better value than it does.  Finally, spend that money on accounting systems and introduce much overdue quicker settlement.  Accept that if you don’t reach a decision within the option period (which almost never happens, and authors grin and bear it) the author will have it up on Kindle the day after the option ends.  Every book just became an auction, because there is always another buyer. You’re the bright guy, you tell them the rest .

Mike

Mike

Making money from a percent of author advances and ongoing book revenue is very different from making money through professional services. Literary agents will need to consider different ways to leverage their time and expertise.

Just a few thoughts as always.

Everybody’s either learning or relearning marketing. It is likely that publishers and agents, working with multiple titles, will learn it better and faster than authors. When you read John Locke’s “how I did it” book, you realize that many of the techniques he suggests would work at least as well for a coherent list as it does for an author alone.

Mike