Peter Galen Massey

I am not a myth!

I don’t have a dog in the fight between Amazon and big publishers over eBooks – I’m just an irrelevant bystander — but I do think I can tell when someone is trying to sell me a bill of goods.

At least that’s how I felt about parts of “The Seven Deadly Myths of Digital Publishing” by Bill McCoy, which appeared on the Publishers Weekly website today. However, I agreed with other points in Bill’s argument and overall found the article well worth reading. Here are my notes:

Tablets and Large Screen Smartphones Are Transforming Digital Publishing

McCoy says that new devices along with new universal coding standards will allow electronic publishing to offer “highly-designed illustrated and enhanced digital books” as well as greater reader interaction and social engagement. He also believes that the differences between reading content on an eReader, a mobile phone app, or a website will be reduced, where as currently they are distinct formats. All of this will allow the eBook’s success to expand beyond their current domains in “novels and linear non-fiction”.

All this is interesting and cool and thanks to Bill for sharing. My problem is that his article implies that Amazon (the monster elephant in the room he doesn’t name) is vulnerable because they are reliant on a proprietary and outdated E Ink platform: that is the Kindle.

Which would be true if Amazon hadn’t launched the Kindle Fire in September of 2011, and wasn’t continuing to roll out enhanced versions at a fraction of the cost of an iPad ever since.

Plus, considering Amazon has a pretty decent on-demand video streaming service already live, I’d say they are thinking about how to deliver content through their own website.

Now this doesn’t mean that Amazon will be more successful seizing the opportunities of the future than big publishers; but I do think it shows that Amazon sees those opportunities as clearly as Bill does. And Amazon sure doesn’t look like it’s behind the curve.

Authors Still Need Publishers

On this one, I’d say Bill is on thin ice. If not swimming in open water. Anyhow, he makes several points. That writers will need publishers for their expertise in editing, cover design, typography, and marketing. That publishers can evolve into new roles as multi-media / multi-platform “producers” of content in collaboration with writers. And that publishers can find a role organizing communities around authors and readers interested in the same topics.

Well. Expertise is editing, cover design, typography, and marketing is not limited to publishers and there are an enormous number of experienced freelancers out there (many of whom used to work for the publishers’ until they were outsourced).  Literary agents have marketing skills and are at least as well positioned, maybe better positioned, to be creative collaborators with writers, not mention their business managers. And none of these folks are going to demand 90% of a book’s net revenue as compensation.

As for community creation, is a publisher going to want create a community around a topic in which they aren’t the dominant publisher? And if they are the dominant publisher, are people going to believe that community ISN’T a form of advertising run by a big company for which they are working as unpaid copywriters?

I ain’t sure.

Now Bill is right that authors still need publishers. But the authors who need publishers most are the unknown ones – ie, the ones least likely to make them money. Will Stephen King still need a major imprint in five years? Maybe not.

And Let’s Not Forget About Amazon’s Huge Sales Pipe

Last summer, Forrester research stated that 30% of all online shoppers begin with Amazon to research products. Not Google. Not Bing-Yahoo. Amazon. Yikes.

Why? Well, people know they can find a lot of stuff they want to buy, at reasonable prices, with convenient shipping on Amazon. Getting them to change their habits and say, buy eBooks direct from a publisher platform, is going to take some major heavy lifting – most especially, offering some new product or service of such compelling value the people have a good selfish reason to switch.

Otherwise, publishers can innovate eBooks all they want. But they are still going to need to sell a lot of them through Amazon, because that’s where readers want to buy them right now.

And Let’s Not Forget About 70% Royalties and the Power of Social Media to Bypass All the Old Gatekeepers

And while I’m walloping away at Bill – who is doubtless a nice man and doesn’t deserve it – let’s not forget about 70% net royalties from eBooks published through Amazon versus 10% give or take from publishers for print books. With those numbers, authors could sell fewer total units of just eBooks at a lower cost through Amazon and still make more money. Ouch.

Plus, social media can be a highly effective way to market books, but publishers really can’t do it for authors. Who would you rather follow on Twitter? Dan Brown or the marketing assistant assigned to tweet about Dan Brown books at Doubleday?

So Pete, You’d Never Sign a Contract with a Traditional Publisher Then, Right?

Are you kidding? In a second. I am one of the unknowns in desperate need of their help. I love you, Doubleday, you big beautiful handsome company you. Call me!