The new opportunity to publish a book without printed inventory has been popularized primarily by self-publishing authors and by new fledgling publishing enterprises like Entangled and Byliner following in the footsteps of earlier pioneers like eReads and Ellora’s Cave and, more recently, Open Road. This changes the economics of publishing substantially, taking a very large […]
There’s no level playing field without agency pricing, and not in the way you think
In the 1990s, Bernie Rath was the head of the American Booksellers Association. (Bernie was not a popular man across the industry. Lawsuits about trading practices that troubled publishers really began with him.) He pushed the idea that publishers should stop printing prices on the books. Bernie’s logic was very simple. He pointed out that […]
Don’t drown walking across the river
An aphorism that I picked up years ago that crosses my mind frequently in my professional life is that “a six-foot tall man drowns walking across a river that’s an average of three feet deep.” The point is that aggregates and averages might mask important truths. I thought of this when I read the news […]
Holding back the ebook
The tactic of keeping the ebook off the market to “protect” hardcover sales, first executed by Sourcebooks this month on behalf of Bran Hambric, is becoming more widespread. At the same time that Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol was released simultaneously in cloth and digital, Ted Kennedy’s posthumous True Compass was released in print with the ebook withheld. […]
Is the ebook and POD combo a viable publishing strategy yet?
There’s a new publishing model afoot, which is to lead with the ebook and just print what you need. That might be POD, and it might be press runs, if you can sell out whole press runs. If the ebook becomes a substantial chunk of sales and if ebooks maintain their prices, this looks like […]