Trying to explain publishing, or understand it, often remains a great challenge
From veteran publishing consultant Mike Shatzkin:
I went to the In Re Books conference at New York Law School last Friday and Saturday in hopes of curing some of my ignorance about the law and publishing.
. . . .
I’m afraid my major takeaway was, once again, that the legal experts applying their antitrust theories to the industry don’t understand what they’re monkeying with or what the consequences will be of what they see as their progressive thinking. Steamrollering those luddite denizens of legacy publishing, who just provoke eye-rolling disdain by suggesting there is anything “special” about the ecosystem they’re part of and are trying to preserve, is just part of a clear-eyed understanding of the transitions caused by technology.
. . . .
[W]hat is concerning is that Amazon will restructure the pricing of books so that the profit for publishers is squeezed out, robbing us of a publishing ecosystem that invests in unwritten books tens of thousands of times a year. My argument and fear is that a restructured ecosystem will deny us books like Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography or Ron Chernow’s George Washington. Books that take years to write and require hundreds of thousands of dollars of financing to be written will never see the light of day if publishers can’t earn a profit by investing in their creation.
This is an argument and a concern which the attorneys on the platform at this conference made explicitly clear they never entertained. I don’t think the ones in the DoJ did either. Perhaps this has no bearing on the law, but I wish they’d stop trying to tell us the concerns of the industry are just the same old crap coming from a different source when they haven’t taken on board what we’re actually saying.
. . . .
The old publishing case was Bobbs-Merrill versus Straus from the first decade of the 20th century. It seems that Macy’s, the department store that sold just about everything, also sold books at at discount. Bobbs-Merrill posted a notice in its books that the retail price was set at one dollar and that selling below that price constituted a violation of copyright. The Straus brothers, who owned Macy’s, insisted on selling these books for eighty-nine cents.
Both the trade association of publishers and the trade association of booksellers supported Bobbs-Merrill’s position, but the courts did not.
. . . .
1. The trade book business is quite different from other segments of the book business and has little in common, as a business, with school or college text or academic or professional publishing. Thompson made it clear that knowing one segment doesn’t mean you know another. After two days of hearing librarians complain that publishers were dissing their “biggest customers” because of the big houses’ concerns and restrictions on ebook sales to libraries, it was good to have somebody explain that publishers were different. In fact, libraries — relatively speaking — are not very large customers for general trade book publishers.
2. Thompson also emphasized — and this was critical insight coming, as it did, from the single speaker most knowledgeable about the transition trade publishing is making from print to digital reading — that nobody knows the future course of ebook adoption. Will it remain, as it is, in the 20% range for general trade reading? Will it go to 30%? 50%? The fact that nobody knows the answer to that question means that publishers’ policies have to accommodate uncertainty about a critical component of the publishers’ future commercial reality.
A couple of other points Thompson made bear repeating. One is that he sees big Anglo-American publishers fighting off threats to their margins. But he thinks the main source of margin erosion for American publishers is the agents, who exercise their power to drive up the cost of acquisition for the most desireable books; whereas for British publishers the source of the biggest problems are the big book retailers, particularly the supermarkets. It is ironic that America’s Robinson-Patman Act, which by requiring manufacturers to offer the same terms to like customers aims to protect small merchants, is actually the shield which protects American publishers from facing ever-escalating demands for margin from their largest accounts.
Link to the rest at The Shatzkin Files
Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter borrowed the term, “creative destruction,” to describe one of the core components of a capitalist economy. Schumpeter wrote:
Capitalism, then, is by nature a form or method of economic change and not only never is but never can be stationary. And this evolutionary character of the capitalist process is not merely due to the fact that economic life goes on in a social and natural environment which changes and by its change alters the data of economic action.
. . . .
The fundamental impulse that sets and keeps the capitalist engine in motion comes from the new consumers, goods, the new methods of production or transportation, the new markets, the new forms of industrial organization that capitalist enterprise creates.
. . . .
The opening up of new markets, foreign or domestic, and the organizational development from the craft shop and factory to such concerns as U.S. Steel illustrate the same process of industrial mutation–if I may use that biological term–that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one. This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism. It is what capitalism consists in and what every capitalist concern has got to live in.
. . . .
But in capitalist reality as distinguished from its textbook picture, it is not that kind of competition which counts but the competition from the new commodity, the new technology, the new source of supply, the new type of organization (the largest-scale unit of control for instance)–competition which commands a decisive cost or quality advantage and which strikes not at the margins of the profits and the outputs of the existing firms but at their foundations and their very lives.
The established structures of the publishing business are undergoing creative destruction. The chief components destroying the old order are disruptive changes based upon low-cost and widely-available digital technology – personal computers to create ebooks and tablets and ereaders to read them – combined with a powerful communication medium – the internet – which makes distribution of digital goods almost cost-free and opens up opportunities for new retailers like Amazon.
The current structure of traditional publishing developed by destroying the publishing structures that preceded it – small publishers, often family-owned – which, in turn, had destroyed the publishing structures that preceded them – printers that would create books for authors for a fee. Today’s big publishing conglomerates used their superior financial strength to either drive the earlier small publishers out of business or force them to sell out. In their day, the big publishers represented a superior way of doing business, but that day is past.
In its present form, big publishing imposes a huge cost on books. Those costs are collected from two groups: 1. From readers in the form of high book prices and 2. from those people who create the books – authors – in the form of a low percentage of the sales price of the book (less an agent’s fee).
How high are those costs? The combined revenues of two large publishers that just announced a merger – Random House and Penguin - totaled nearly $4 billion last year. Of course, these were not profits. There were the costs for thousands of employees, office rent in Manhattan, London and elsewhere, warehouses, Barnes & Noble, etc., etc., but readers and authors definitely paid most of those costs.
The new model of publishing includes far lower costs. The new model allows a reader to purchase an ebook for $2.99 with the author receiving a little over $2.00 and Amazon or another etailer taking a little less than $1.00 demonstrates the benefits accruing to readers and authors from an alternative model that excludes publishers and their associated costs.
The growing number of authors moving from the old model to the new model and the steady increase in the numbers of indie authors appearing on ebook bestseller lists demonstrate that both the readers and the authors appear to be satisfied with the new model.
Mike says, “My argument and fear is that a restructured ecosystem will deny us books like Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography or Ron Chernow’s George Washington.” PG respectfully replies that great biographies and great histories and great novels were written long before the advent of the media conglomerate model of publishing and will continue to be written and read after the last big publisher disappears behind a cloud of bankruptcy filings.
The only essential components for great books are great authors and readers who appreciate what great authors write. Everything else is just whatever the current method of connecting authors with readers happens to be.
, Amazon will pay Passive Guy a small affiliate commission on any of your purchases.
And Mike Shatzkin respectfully replies that the fact that great biographies were written before big publishing is a non-answer to my point. A very high proportion of the bestselling non-fiction required substantial investment in research, staff, and time to create. No doubt there will be great bios and non-f requiring heavy research done regardless of financing. Also no doubt there will be a lot less of it. Defending the destruction of the industry is not doing any favor to writers.
Mike, I understand you directed this to PG, but I’d like to respond.
I want to start by saying that I very much agree that great biographies and non-fiction are not only valuable but essential to the culture. So, contemplating that there would be less of them would be comtemplating a great loss.
However, if there is a need to fund research, the current publishing industry, as it stands, is not the only way to accomplish that goal. If the publishing industry fails, then something else will arise to fill that function. Private donations, kickstarter, corporate sponsorship are all possiblities. Other options would probably be created, as well.
I think it’s also important to weigh and balance the books that have not been able to get through the Publishing firewall, not only in the last century, but ever. The industry has been one of connections; most books are published because people know someone in a position of power. In addition, publishing has been highly selective, authors who did not fit a certain profile have always been shut out from publication. Women, people of color, older adults (or younger, depending on the trend), lower classes, less educated classes, even those who did not live in New York, have always found publication to be difficult, and often impossible to acheive.
The loss to our society of all of the authors being blocked from publication is enormous and incalcuable.
So, although it is true that the Industry supported certain types of books, it also blocked other types at a great loss. This is a system that needs to change.
Thanks for visiting and commenting, Mike.
Here are a couple of additional comments from Mike that inadvertently were sent by him to PG:
Whether the biographies are “entertainment” or not is really beside the point.
And whether other authors — particularly those who write literary fiction — can get publishing contracts is also beside the point.
The “industry spokespeople” might not say the things you want to hear, but I’m waiting for the first person to challenge the logic that a very specific kind of very popular book — high-concept, high-cost, and high-research non-fiction — won’t get funded in a publisher-less world. If we can agree on that, then we can choose sides about whether that’s good or bad, or whether the presumed benefits of the publisher-less world compensate for the loss.
Up to now, the responses are non-responsive.
Mike
. . . .
First of all, I speak as a reader of both of these books. If they hadn’t existed, my life would have been poorer. And I’m not in a small group. LOTS of people bought and read these books at substantial prices.
The fact that Isaacson and Chernow are established writing stars is not surprising, nor is it relevant. They might well have not been able to afford the cost of doing the books we’re talking about here. Isaacson is more likely to have been able to afford it but he also can earn money other ways. Why would he take two or three years of his life when he could be earning six figures each of those years and cover the significant travel and staff expenses to create a book like this out of his own pocket? Not only is there substantial risk, the world where publishers can’t afford to invest it is also one where ebook prices are low. Could he have recovered his money selling an ebook for $1.99 or $2.99. Who knows? Why would he take the risk to find out?
Look, you can — if you want — take the position that these books don’t matter and a world rid of big publishers is a better world, even without these books. If the lawyers on the panel I saw had taken that position, I wouldn’t have agreed with them but at least I would have felt they understood the import of what they were suggesting. But they didn’t. You appear to understand the “value” publishers bring but, for whatever reason, figure it isn’t worth having them around for that value. They didn’t take the actual value of publishers into account. (And I suspect you didn’t either until I made the argument you couldn’t wait to ridicule.)
Mike
How is the fact that other authors couldn’t get publishing contracts beside the point?
He’s defending a system because he says that without it books he values won’t be published. But the fact that there are already books that aren’t being published under the current system is irrelevant?
I sense that this is a more personal issue for Mike. I think he loves this type of book, and worries this genre (non-fiction that needs funding to be fully researched) will fail if Publishing fails.
I don’t know how to reassure him, but I wish he would consider that in human society, where there is a need, people have found a way to meet that need. Other resources will fund these books. These books are big money makers. Someone will want to fund them.
And second, it is highly likely that the digital giants (Amazon, Apple, etc.) will take on the role that the current publishing Industry fills and give advances to books that are likely to make alot of money, that are supported through government grants or are likely to win prizes and bring prestige. They are also likely to develop their own research teams.
And, in addition to that, I repeat, there is Kickstarter, corporate donations, private donations, and, I would add, government grants, and think-tanks.
The important functions that this current Industry fills can and would be filled by others. The standard would be passed to the next bearer.
I know that’s pretty upsetting to those who work in the current Industry, and I completely understand that. But there really won’t be a loss of these types of books.
I’m in complete agreement with you, Mira.
Thanks, Anthea!
I agree. We are finding many new ways for funding writing projects. Authors who are well known but who can’t get a contract or don’t want to be part of the system are successfully raising funds through a number of crowdsourcing initiatives. New, unknowns are also managing to do the same.
I don’t believe the big 6/5 will disappear for quite a while but if/when they do it will be because better/other solutions have been found.
Mike Shatzkin said: “I’m waiting for the first person to challenge the logic that a very specific kind of very popular book — high-concept, high-cost, and high-research non-fiction — won’t get funded in a publisher-less world.”
Well, first, it isn’t logic. It’s simply an assertion and a projection of outcome.
As I understand, Mr. Shatzkin is making the assertion that – absent the current publishing industry – he does not foresee high-concept/multi-year/high front-cost projects happening.
PG (and others) note (factual, versus an assertion which is an opinion) that such projects have occurred in the past – prior to the rise of the modern publishing industry. And they likewise assert (based on this prior history) that such projects will likely find a way even absent the current publishing industry.
I concur.
I’m sure that the projects that are picked won’t be the same ones or funded in the same ways. But these projects with high front-end costs are undertaken in the first place because they have a good probability of making a return on investment. There have always been plenty of avenues to fund projects when the outcome is projected to exceed the front-end costs. And as others have noted, new avenues are cropping up (like Kickstarter). Heck, Obsidian Entertainment just built up a $4 Million Kickstarter for “Project Eternity” ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Eternity ) because it will “let us make a game that is absolutely reminiscent of those great games [Infinity Engine's games], since trying to get that funded through a traditional publisher would be next to impossible.”
I don’t see Mr. Shatzkin’s point, other than his fear that nothing can fill the void for funding such niche books justifies preserving the present system. In which case, I’ll simply say that things change and the publishing industry – as he’s extremely familiar with – has been no exception, even prior to the advent of e-books. I don’t think a single decade of the past 50 years has resembled any other decade except in part.
Rather than fretting that an un-imagined future system won’t be able to accommodate high-concept books that have for years (actually, for centuries – let’s also include Edward Gibbon’s “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”) been able to be produced under a variety of systems and circumstances – how about if he imagines that things may not turn out so dire and look upon precedent beyond the past decade or so. It frankly doesn’t matter whose deep pockets funds these ventures, and as Kickstarter and other such programs demonstrate, the “deep pockets” can arise from an accumulation of smaller pockets. That’s frankly how the concept of businesses expanded beyond sole wealthy ownership – going public and aggregating smaller contributions into a larger pool.
I think a Richard Bach quote (and I hope he’s recovering from his recent accident) is valid: “What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.”
Mike Shatzkin said: “I’m waiting for the first person to challenge the logic that a very specific kind of very popular book — high-concept, high-cost, and high-research non-fiction — won’t get funded in a publisher-less world.”
Mike’s got the cart before the horse. Publishers DON’T pay large advances in order to fund the research for a book. They pay large advances because they think they’ll make money on the book (usually because the author already has a bankable name).
What’s more, whether a book requires years of expensive research or none at all has no bearing on whether or not they’ll pay a high advance.
I’ll give you an example. I pitched a book concept to my NY agent. He likes the concept and think it will sell–maybe even become a NY Times bestseller. But, as it’s outside my “niche” (investment) he added: “As you’re not a Harvard or whatever professor I’ll need to see the whole manuscript first.”
In other words: my name isn’t bankable in this non-financial niche. And the high-powered concept was not enough by itself.
And if my agent had gone around to publishers saying: “Here’s a great book concept but I need a high advance for it as it’s going to take the writer 10 years to do all the necessary research” he’d have been laughed at!
Most serious, heavily researched nonfiction books are written by academics for relatively small advances. Many such books are also published by university presses. In mmany instances, they are deemed uncommercial. Edmund Morris wrote the first of his trilogy of Theodore Roosevelt for a small advance. You are evading my point. Isaacson and Chernow got big advances because of their status as authors, not because they convinced the publishers that they needed the big advance, otherwise they couldn’t manage to subsist while writing their books. If Chernow hadn’t had a stellar track record, literary prizes, and bestsellers behind him, he might not have gotten a contract at all, not matter how good his book promised to be. Advances aren’t allocated by what an author wants or needs. If they were, every writer would be a millionaire.
What you are defending is celebrity publishing. Fortunately for your reading tastes, celebrity books, whether the celbrity is the subject or the author, or both, is unlikely to be going away. As others here have pointed out, Amazon or other well-funded entities which have entered publishing or will enter it in the future will be able and willing to pay for celebrity books if they think thet’ll earn out.
Here we go again with the bipolar mind set: it’s either trad publishing, with all it’s inefficient and often irrational business practices, or it’s self-publishing, with nothing in between. Lot’s of sky-is-falling hysteria is evident in your comments, Mr. Shatzkin.
I don’t think major publishers and big name authors are going to disappear when ebooks become the dominant means for disseminating text. For an analog, look at the music recording business. The major labels survived the transition from CDs to MP3s. So will the book business.
Mike Shatzkin wrote: “Isaacson is more likely to have been able to afford it but he also can earn money other ways. Why would he take two or three years of his life when he could be earning six figures each of those years and cover the significant travel and staff expenses to create a book like this out of his own pocket? Not only is there substantial risk, the world where publishers can’t afford to invest it is also one where ebook prices are low. Could he have recovered his money selling an ebook for $1.99 or $2.99. Who knows? Why would he take the risk to find out?”
Well, obviously the publisher fronting the cost projected that the profits would exceed the projected costs. That’s why they funded the project.
If Mr. Isaacson (or others like him) are capable of self-funding (as Isaacson may have been) and believed in the viability of the project, it would only be a question of whether they wish to invest in their own project rather than shift the risk to another. That’s the kind of financial decision people do all the time, and particularly those with enough capital who have a *choice* of whether to utilize borrowed capital or self-fund.
Just as the publisher calculated how many units they needed to sell at certain price points, so would anyone else (whether self-funding or an alternative funding source) make similar estimates. This is the fundamental core of investing – and Mr. Shatzkin appears mostly concerned that *profitable investments* won’t be funded in the future. Or, he’s arguing that profits might be degraded by lower pricing points (which is a valid consideration) but this is also balanced against market size and the potential to sell more at a lower price, as well as reduced overhead costs which free up more pricing flexibility in the first place.
I had a college professor once who compiled very small print runs containing extremely detailed geological information that he sold to the petroleum industry for tens of thousands of dollars. The information gathering and travel cost him up-front, but he had the certainty (based on his experience and estimate) that he would derive a profit.
Not everyone is correct in their estimates (even publishers), fickle market events can intervene, some project funding happens because of a random luck factor, and people have varying degrees of risk-aversion or risk-willingness. But as many have noted, such books (and all KINDS of projects) have been undertaken for a very, very long time.
In Isaacson’s case, let’s imagine another possibility. Isaacson has the access to Steve Jobs, but he decided that traditional publishing isn’t the right route. Or perhaps a traditional publisher refused (as they often do) to fund such a project because they did their estimates or had a similar project or an editor who didn’t like Isaacson or whatever reason. Isaacson lacks the self-funding capability or the self-assurance to finance it himself. What was to stop him from seeking alternatives? Perhaps he might have even gotten Jobs himself enthusiastic about coordinating such a book through Apple’s iBooks in exchange for a share of profits. Given the upward momentum of Apple, I’m rather certain Isaacson could have lined up funding.
As far as Mr. Shatzkin’s projection that Isaacson might have foregone potential future profits from the project in favor of a lower (but certain) cash-flow of six figures annually, that’s basic opportunity cost. Every human engages in this all the time, to varying degrees and in all sorts of ways. The advantage of an external funding source shifts some uncertainty elsewhere. But there is still a requirement to deliver a product, and failure to sell enough would severely impact the writer’s future projects and lifestyle, so there is considerable pressure to perform.
I can’t buy too much into “what if” arguments. Well, what if? Humans are rather good at finding ways to do things they believe matter. That isn’t faith – it’s observation. It means that while I can’t be certain of the specifics of method or outcome, I can certainly have confidence in the process itself.
Excellent analysis.
“Look, you can — if you want — take the position that these books don’t matter and a world rid of big publishers is a better world, even without these books.”
That is some straw man! If this whole publishing thing disappears, you definitely have a future as a political consultant.
Your Isaacson example is awful. He was basically commissioned by Steve Jobs himself and if no publishers financed the writing, the Jobs family could have. There was no risk in being the official Steve Jobs biographer.
As far as other big, research-heavy projects go: A vanishingly small amount get the type of advances you’re talking about, and those that do could almost certainly find alternative financing. They’re done by big name writers (which actually is relevant, you know) and on popular subjects. Hmm, surely there’s a billionaire with a thing for George Washington…
Via Bloomberg:
“David Rubenstein, co-founder of the Carlyle Group LP private equity firm, donated $7.5 million to fix the Washington Monument…”
PG
Loved your summary – and agree with it. Maybe we should rename the ‘publishing industry’ to the ‘author to reader’ industry. Writers of all stripes used to need Publishing Houses to connect to readers – we don’t now. That trend isn’t going away anytime soon IMO. And will only accelerate.
It’s happening in other industries – why is ‘publishing’ so special that it won’t happen there?
JJ
So we need to allow publishers to engage in anticompetitive practices so that Walter Isaacson or Ron Chernow can get six or seven-figure advances to write their books? That’s a ridiculous argument. Most authors of nonfiction books research and write them for considerably smaller advances than what Isaacson or Chernow received. They manage to get by financially through the support of a spouse or family members or with grants. Isaacson and Chernow aren’t typical of nonfiction authors. Isaacson is a well-connected media guy: protege of Henry Kissinger, former hairman and CEO of CNN and the Managing Editor of Time, and President and CEO of the Aspen Institute. He got the advance that he received because he had access to Jobs, and because Isaacson himself is an uber-connected mucky muck. Chernow is a graduate of Yale and Cambridge who became the director of director of financial policy studies at a New York think tank called the Twentieth Century Fund. His first book won the National Book Award. Even if he wrote that one for a small advance, winning that award boosted him into the big leagues.
Mr. Shatzkin, you are again making the specious argument that traditional publishers foster and support literary culture, when the facts don’t support your argument. The vast majority of authors, whether they are writing fiction or nonfiction, are getting very low advances, and the publishers don’t care how they support themselves during the time they write their book.
I think you are absolutely correct. It’s interesting that the biographies Shatzkin cites could easily fall into the category of entertainment, a distinction made by a commentator on his site. The publishing industry has distorted the market with its overemphasis on advances to celebrities and best-sellers which then require much larger revenue streams to support an increasingly bloated infrastructure. The Jobs, Chernow, and McCullough and even Caro works would never have been picked up or supported by today’s industry had those authors not already been famous because the industry counts on fame achieved elsewhere to sell their books. They don’t make authors famous; they hope to ride on the fame that already exists. That mindset actually hurts new authors and the idea they support and nurture new talent is fallacious. The New Yorker had a great piece at least a decade ago, *before* the digital boom, about how literary fiction was suffering because publishing would not support authors who managed only 10,000 copies or so in sales (and without library sales the literary fiction market would dry up and blow away.)
But you know an industry is in trouble when their spokesmen, in concert, simply say, “if only they understood us,” everything would be wonderful. Maybe it’s because what they are saying doesn’t hold up. That great sucking sound you hear is authors moving to the digital world.
I found the reference to the New Yorker article: MOBY DICK IN MANHATTAN by James B. Stewart June 27, 1994, page 46+ about James Wilcox.
Here’s the full article, for those interested.
http://philip.greenspun.com/samantha/FAQ/wilcox.text
Fortunately, there was a happy ending for Mr. Wilcox. He’s the director of creative writing at Louisiana State University.
http://www.lsu.edu/ur/ocur/lsunews/MediaCenter/News/2011/08/item34179.html
“Even so, the current state of publishing has consigned him to a life of near poverty.”
Mike’s right, we should all defend the old time religion. I hear that the rich have a hard time getting into heaven.
Very true. Thanks.
Peter: Ah the beauty of the digital world. Clicked on your name, was intrigued by your book, bought it, and had it delivered to my device in under 30 seconds.
Why thank you so much for your enthusiasm. Many thanks.
OTish or personal ramblings so skip if you’d like.
I wanted to write the history of the soda fountain. I wanted it to be a large coffee table type book with the fantastic images of the Victorian and Edwardian fountains and pharmacies. By the time my agent finally got Chronicle interested it had become a 5″ X 7″ gift book priced around $9. The accounting department then decided it was too expensive to produce.
You can find the remnants of this project as The Ice Cream Parlor as a Kindle now. The accurate, historic recipes are from a request from Andrews McMeel I think. Everyone who looked at it wanted something else and the book was skewed in that direction then rejected many times.
It seems to me that tradpub can easily decide that all that research and photo licenses are too costly for them to foot the bill for. If the writer does the project out of love and out of their own pocket, then the outcome may be different.
As for my knitting book with Alpha Penguin, I bore the costs for the camera, yarn, illustrations, knitters, two artists and editorial assistance. In other words I got a $16,000 advance, that I had to beg for when my dog required cardiac surgery and Penguin refused money due me. After paying the agent and everyone else, I got nothing. I still owe them $16,000 because they missed the peak of the knitting craze, never got the books into the chains like they promised me and did everything possible to make it the worst publishing experience of my life and I made all the lunatic deadlines imposed on me. 10 weeks. They wanted a book with 100 projects and all the photography (not in the contract) and all the writing and knitting completed in 10 weeks. I admit I had to ask for a 2 week extension. I made that. Then the book took over 18 months to come out.
Personally, I don’t see this whole tradpub circling the drain thing as a big loss.
10 weeks to complete a book? That’s insane. As to the rest of your unfortunate experience, I feel your pain.
Wow, Barbara, that is just awful! So, sorry!
Just wanted to point out that if you’re pricing your eBook on Amazon for $2.99, you’re only get a dollar of that. You have to hit the $3.50 mark before you get the 70% revenues. Before that it’s only 35%.
Actually, no. The 70% royalty at Amazon kicks in at the 2.99 pricing point. And at Kobo, at the 1.99 point. Elsewhere, it can be anywhere from 40-80%, depending on the retailer. But Christopher, do get your facts straight.
“USD List Price Requirements for Amazon.com
70 % Royalty Option $ 2.99 -$ 9.99″
information found here: https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A301WJ6XCJ8KW0
Well that’s good to know. I’m always happy to be proven wrong when it’s in my favor!
When trying to explain something one must be sure they are explaining the subject as it truly is, and not how they wish it to be.
Those who fight change almost always miss out on a great opportunity, and usually get left behind.
I have a lot of respect for Mike and his knowledge of the business, I hope he survives the current change.
“the main source of margin erosion for American publishers is the agents, who exercise their power to drive up the cost of acquisition for the most desireable books”
An interesting point, following yesterday’s post, and reinforces why US agents keep trying to sell the value [sic] of their services in their blog posts.
Perhaps those American publishers who currently only accept submissions through agents could save themselves some money by cutting out the middle person (I’ve even heard of a couple of cases where an editor has told an author ‘we like your book, now go and get an agent so we can sign you’. Surely, at that point, the author needs a IP lawyer, not an agent?
After all, if the ‘most desireable books’ really are that desireable, the author will win out in royalties, and by not having to pay the agent’s 15%.
Publishing is first and foremost a business. If people want to buy Fifty Shades of Grey they’ll buy it. If the audience wants to read the heavily researched and painstakingly written Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang, they will.
If I misunderstood the whole dynamic of publishing as a business and they actually support writers who write things no one wants to read, I certainly appreciate learning how misinformed I’ve been.
Can I get in on this part somehow?
It’s essentially impossible to argue with Shatzkin in any productive way because he will simply refuse to accept any facts that don’t fit into his view of the world. I don’t say that lightly. I have engaged with him repeatedly on his site on the topic of the “high-concept, high-cost, and high-research non-fiction” and many others. His assertion is that there will be “a lot less” of this category of book. He has zero facts to back up this assertion. His reasoning appears to be as follows:
1. Big publishing funds “high-concept, high-cost, and high-research non-fiction”.
2. If big publishing disappears, no one will fund “high-concept, high-cost, and high-research non-fiction”.
But why wouldn’t some other type of entity step in to fund this type of book? We know there is a market for this type of book. The real question is why are the big publishers the only entities who fund this type of book today?
The answer to that one is easy. Distribution. Until very recently no other entity had access to the wide distribution system necessary to enable a big selling hit book in this category.
But we know that that is no longer true. Nowadays, everyone has access to the distribution networks large enough to support profitable books in this category. [Now, Mike doesn't believe that, but it is still true. Essentially everyone who would buy a book in this category has an account at Amazon or some other online book seller.] Now anyone with access to a large pool of cash can be a publisher of this type of book.
So, the scenario for having even more of this type of book than are published today is pretty simple. Any angel investor or venture capital firm can run the numbers and see that money invested in a book of this type is a better bet than your average software startup. People who write this sort of book have exactly the type of passion that the VC folks are looking for. And eventually they will figure out that they can get a better deal from this type of arrangement than they get from big publishing.
Here’s a spoiler alert: This is going to happen even before big publishing goes away. Indeed, in a few places (tech books, obviously), it’s already happening. This isn’t some wild-eyed scheme that I thought up. It’s almost inevitable. Far from being a casualty of the death of big publishing, “high-concept, high-cost, and high-research non-fiction” will be an accelerant to its demise.
Having been at the edge of the high tech/venture capital world, I wonder if writers forsaking traditional publishers & their inadequate advances for venture capitalists are simply jumping from the frying pan into the fire.
On the other hand, I agree with much of William Ockham’s analysis: Shatzkin is defending a publishing system that simply doesn’t exist any more, if it ever did. The current system for supporting freelance writers is an improvement over previous systems — I’m thinking of how writers in the 18th century & before made their living — but that’s not saying much: authors in those days usually received a lump sum for their writing — regardless of how well the published book sold — & writers without a fortune of their own more often than not angled after the patronage of either the king or aristocrats to lift themselves out of poverty.
Setting aside such examples as scholarly non-fiction (funded more often by grants, fellowships, & academia than the benevolence of publishing companies), & obvious labors of love (which will find their way into publication no matter which system prevails), the “high-concept, high-cost, and high-research non-fiction” I can think of come from journalists who decide to take time from their day jobs to write a book on a larger theme. For example, Randy Shills’ “And the Band Played On” or Anthony Sampson’s “The Sovereign State of ITT”. While Shills’ book did make the best-seller list, most of these kinds of books are midlist titles which suffer the same fate as the other midlist titles, written either out of love or passion. And does anyone seriously expect one of the Big Six publishing houses to provide an adequate advance for an experienced journalist to properly investigate & present a subject as controversial as Shills’ or Sampson’s book were in their day — say the effect of the Citizen United court decision on the 2012 election?
Another comment Mike Shatzkin forwarded to me via email:
Don’t know if you’re evading my point or missing it.
Amazon is doing everything they can to drive the prices of books down. They see no reason for there to be any profit except what is necessary for the author and the retailer. Their investment in books right now is largely to take away the oxygen from their publisher “competitors.”
They won’t give Chernow or Isaacson or whoever succeeds them a mlilion bucks — which is what doing one of those books might well require — to write them because a) they won’t have to; the incremental return isn’t worth the incremental risk, and b) they won’t care because they’ll assume (perhaps correctly) that Mike Shatzkin will just read some other book if the one they won’t pay for isn’t available.
I don’t see how anybody can argue that if the profit is removed that pays for the speculative funding of books that there will be less speculative funding. And then I don’t see how that doesn’t lead to fewer books being written. I agree that those sponsored as academic endeavors will continue to exist, but, look around you. Those sources of funding aren’t getting more robust either. The university presses are more severely financially challenged right now than the Big Six (or Five) are.
The comments about advances being based on commercial reality, rather than what an author wants or needs, are a great straw horse construction being knocked down. I know that. Both the books I cited were good commercial risks, in the current publishing environment. Take prices down by half and they won’t be.
Obviously, the commenters on the post see clearly what I don’t see at all. Congratulations on your vision.
Mike
Publisher profits don’t pay for the speculative funding of books. That is just false. Advances come out of expenses. All speculative investments are made based on the chances of a future payoff. Big publishers aren’t the only source of those kinds of investment funds.
There is a huge difference between the actual research costs for a book and the kind of advance that someone like Isaacson gets. Both of those books were great investment opportunities, even if the books were half the price. The Jobs bio sold 379,000 copies in its first week, according to Bookscan. That book listed for $35. Let’s cut that to $17, list. So, lets say that the publisher gets $8 a copy. That’s over $3 million in the first week! So, there’s a million bucks for Isaacson, a million to cover expenses, and a million for the publisher. Remember, this is Shatzkin’s example. He claims that no one will fund a book like this in the future. I call bs. I will be happy to get in on that type of investment. If the big publishers can’t make money like this, they’re doing it wrong.
I’m confused. Why does he keep e-mailing you, PG, rather than talking to us directly?
Anyway, to respond to his point – Amazon makes ALOT of money. They make money on alot of things other than books. They could give an author a million dollar advance, if they wanted to.
You don’t have to be making the profit directly from books in order to spend it on books. Amazon has already proven they will take losses in some areas in order to spend it in others. Bezos is ambitious, he will do this, he will spend it on speculative fiction. He will want money, prestige, and Pulitzer prizes.
And even if he doesn’t, and even if all the other options I continue to mention (Kickstarter, corporate and private funding) don’t work out, I think Mike is under-estimating the author here. The author is not a pawn, who writes a book only when he or she is given enough money and support. If an author feels a drive to write a book, they have something to say, and have an avenue for publication, they will find a way to write the darn book. If they have to, they will serialize the book, they will go into hock, they will hit up friends and families for donations. Or they will start a bidding war between Amazon and Apple.
Anyway, it seems to me there may be no reassuring Mike on this topic, which feels alittle sad to me, because it’s clearly painful for him. But he seems to be determined to believe there is no other way on earth, no possible way, for these projects to happen unless the current publishing industry funds them, and so the books he loves may disappear, forever.
I don’t know how to reassure him that they will not disappear. Mike, they will not disappear.
But perhaps, this is a case, Mike, where you will have to be surprised by the future. Because the future will include this type of book, Mike. These books will continue to be written.
Oh, I’ll add one other point.
You can make MORE money by pricing something lower and selling ALOT of it, than you can by pricing it high and selling ALITTLE of it.
Just because Amazon is lowering prices, doesn’t mean it’s not making money by the bucketful.
Oh, and another point. Let’s say Amazon doesn’t do it. Then Apple will. Or let’s say Apple doesn’t do it. Then Google will. etc., etc., etc.
Oh, and one final point. The fact that the author stands to make ALOT more money under the new royalty system may mean the amount of the advance may not need to be as high, depending on what other books the author already has on the market. The author may need less funding.
I know it’s sad to see an Industry you love fade away. I know there is loss there. But the loss does not mean less books. Digital will bring an explosion of books, any and all sort will be written, including this type of book.
Again Mr. Shatzkin is making assumptions that risk-taking based on profit incentives will cease to exist.
Mr. Shatzkin wrote:
“They won’t give Chernow or Isaacson or whoever succeeds them a mlilion bucks — which is what doing one of those books might well require — to write them because a) they won’t have to; the incremental return isn’t worth the incremental risk, and b) they won’t care because they’ll assume (perhaps correctly) that Mike Shatzkin will just read some other book if the one they won’t pay for isn’t available.
I don’t see how anybody can argue that if the profit is removed that pays for the speculative funding of books that there will be less speculative funding. And then I don’t see how that doesn’t lead to fewer books being written.”
First – perhaps Mr. Shatzkin or anyone else can tell me the actual number of projects as well as percentage of overall non-fiction research projects that receive pre-funding multi-year investment to the tune of 6 figures, let alone 7 figures.
Second, Mr. Shatzkin keeps “evading or missing the point” that many commenters have already brought up – that publishers invest based upon a risk-return assessment – and that the high-dollar investments are disproportionately more likely to go toward those with already proven track records of success.
So what he’s arguing is that bestsellers won’t attract attention and further investment from anyone (by “anyone” he appears to believe that “anyone” will in the future only consist of Amazon, which is a rather limited view of things and highly unlikely given the lack of constraints for the endless sources from which capital is deployed).
He’s also basing that upon the low selling price of many self-published books when he says: “The comments about advances being based on commercial reality, rather than what an author wants or needs, are a great straw horse construction being knocked down. I know that. Both the books I cited were good commercial risks, in the current publishing environment. Take prices down by half and they won’t be.”
Mr. Shatzkin wants it both ways. First, he wants to say that without publishers, there can be no big investments on profit-likely projects. Secondly, he wants to say that without publishers, overhead costs will remain exactly what they are right now. That’s a great straw horse construction being knocked down.
Let’s look at the overhead just simplistically. Mr. Shatzkin is concerned because e-books are priced so cheaply. There are several reasons for the cheap pricing, but the overhead cost is a fundamental one. (Lest Mr. Shatzkin be concerned I’m glossing over the other reasons, here are some: Amazon trying to gain market share by reducing prices and increasing sales volumes; emerging authors unwilling or unable to be published within the traditional structure; self-published authors utilizing price competition in a micro version of what Amazon does on a macro level; etc.).
Mr. Shatzkin seems to be arguing that the overhead costs of a traditional publishing infrastructure will persist even after the traditional publishing infrastructure ceases to exist.
I disagree.
Books have been priced the way they’ve been to accommodate the cost of producing the books. This isn’t done on a book-by-book basis, either, but as a basket of goods. Traditional publishers understand that it’s prohibitively difficult to true-price every single book – and doing so would probably erode potential sales of the poor-selling books to the point that *only* bestsellers and the safest bets would be produced.
Same with music. Same with frozen vegetables in the supermarket. Does anyone really need to wonder why an 8-ounce bag of frozen sweet peas costing 99-cents is coincidentally the exact same price as the 99-cent bag of frozen carrots, frozen grean beans, frozen corn, frozen lima beans, frozen black-eyed peas, frozen spinach, etc.?
So publishers have priced hardcovers and paperbacks in a very defined range – no matter how profitable (or not, which is often the case) they actually are. As a basket, it works out.
Overhead costs in traditional publishing are endless, but predominately include salaries (editors, staff, etc.), rents, printing costs, transportation and storage costs, factoring in costs of distributors and retailer-returns, etc.
A self-published book is priced cheaper *because* it can be priced cheaper, because it doesn’t have that considerable overhead to overcome before returning a profit.
Again, I’m not sure what arguments Mr. Shatzkin is really making.
If he’s opining that traditional publishing will continue to exist but profits will be squeezed such that advances will be reduced – well, that’s been happening for a while now. And still, there are high-value investments being made for certain profit-likely projects, just as there have always been. In fact, one of the projections that I’ve seen made is that the current shakeup may concentrate the provable and likely big projects with traditional publishing while the industry cedes more of the slim-margin or unprofitable (given overhead costs that lend themselves to certain sales requirements) toward self-publishing.
Personally, I tend to think traditional publishing will be around a while yet. The music industry has persisted despite its own disruption, and we’re still seeing megastars with mega-profits. What we aren’t seeing are as many smaller acts receiving as much monetary support as once was, and more small acts going indie for that reason and others, as well as opportunities that weren’t as readily available 30 years ago.
For that reason, I also tend to believe traditional publishing may see the proportion of bestsellers in its basket to increase. That’s a concentration risk, of course. But I suspect there’s been a skew toward bestsellers representing a disproportionate percentage of profits for a while now.
The industry itself has gone through plenty of disruptions in less than a century already, with the rise of pulps, the massive consolidation in both publishers and bookstores, and now e-books and a new distribution system.
I really find it hard to believe it costs $1 million to write the books. I will believe that they get $1 million advance. If they spent that amount on research and living expenses during the writing of the book they would be very foolish as their is no guarantee they will sell enough books to earn royalties (only paid after advance is paid off). So yes these poor favorite authors of yours might have to consider a more realistic lifestyle change if they have not been smart and creating a large nest egg with those advances for the eventual time when a book contract does not sell out to the advance and they don’t have a book contract anymore.
I read, back to back, this piece and a recent one by Dean Wesley Smith basically saying ebooks will max out at 30% and may not become the dominant delivery mechanism in our lifetimes. I find myself more frequently reading the works of these guys, who I both respect a great deal, and having to preface any thoughts with “I like their work very much, but…” I just don’t see how either of their opinions have much of a basis in reality.
Shatzkin is correct that if the current publishing hierarchy falls, certain types of books will suffer or fall by the wayside. But other books that never would have seen the light of day will become successes. And I totally agree that, if there is a buck to be made, someone will step up with financing. Smith’s assertion that brick and mortar booksellers have any kind of future comparable to recent history strikes me as wishful thinking. There’s no reason to believe a massively expensive and inefficient system like print books will thrive as digital continues to progress, and it will, far beyond the 30% figure. There’s just no reason to think it won’t that isn’t based on nostalgia. Consolidation of the type we’re seeing with Random House and Penguin is far less a savior maneuver and more a short term profit seeking move. Sure, the layoffs certain to result will lead to increased profits in the near term but there are consequences, namely it’ll cause the quality of the product itself to suffer, especially long term. Consolidation’s positive bottom line effects are almost always temporary and the inefficiency bred into the system will rear up again, now in a significantly larger company needing ever larger revenue streams just to stay solvent.
Smith is correct that big publishers have weathered the initial burst of digitization because of egregiously bad contracts that severely short change writers. But a business built on profit seeking through cutbacks and ripping off your principle content suppliers when they have alternatives increasing almost daily does not make for a stable industry or one that I would bet on surviving long in anywhere near its present form. Besides, there’s a bit of a conflict considering Smith’s assertion that publishers are thriving by exploiting writers and Shatzkin’s assertions that writers will suffer if those same publishers saving their own bacon on the writer’s dime fail. 8
It is mildly amusing to watch the comment string like a game of telephone, where what I whispered (either on my blog or in this comment string) is turned into something that people heard (read) which sometimes bears some, but not complete, resemblance to what I actually said or wrote.
I do my extensive writing and commenting on my own blog, and I’ve learned my lesson about wandering into other people’s lairs, so I’ll leave you all to interpret me however you wish after this last word and attempt to summarize.
1. Amazon’s intention — clearly — is to reduce the price of books and ebooks to consumers. They have made it clear by their policies that they think the “acceptable” price band is $2.99 to $9.99.
2. This works great for authors who can publish directly successfully and don’t need any marketing help they can’t provide for themselves. Plenty of money for them and for Amazon.
3. IF Amazon is successful at a) becoming the totally dominant bookseller (not just “online” bookseller), b) then is able to harvest content for themselves exclusively, further weakening any competition, and c) keeps relentlesly driving prices down for the consumer, then there will be little margin to provide both author royalties and profit for a publisher. That’s good for Amazon. And not bad for an author that doesn’t need any marketing or can do their own.
4. If a) print in store sales largely disappears from the equation and b) ebook prices are steadily lowered, then there will not be margin for an investor (publisher or Kickstarter or anybody else) to justify a substantial investment to get a book written. (Let’s remember that not all those invested in actually even GET written! And that’s with professional editors — not arms-length investors –deciding what to back.)
5. Fiction will continue to get written, particularly by bestselling authors whose brands assure sales. So will memoirs and how-to books by experts who are selling their expertise. So will books backed by magazines (maybe Malcolm Gladwell will be subsidized by The New Yorker) and by academic institutions. Lots of books will continue to be written because the authors will go ahead and write them anyway. There will not be any shortage of books.
6. But those I identified as threatened will be threatened. And all the blather that suggests that I am claiming that publishers give writers what they “need”, or help the starving, or whatever is blather. I am not saying that. I am saying that books that are good investments in the current commercial ecosystem will not be anymore.
7. This is not an argument that can be advocated, defended, or debunked based on empirical evidence. It involves making some assumptions about Amazon dominance, the end of bookstore shelf space, and the consequences of a very particular part of publishing (general trade) being hobbled and eventually eliminated because their path to market (bookstores) was taken over by a player which has a different idea about how the commercial book ecosystem should work.
8. I am amused by many people who obviously know nothing about me seeing me as a luddite defender of the status quo. Perhaps you might look at a speech I gave in June 2007 called “The End of General Trade Publishing Houses” to burnish my credentials a bit as an independent thinker. I am not nearly always right, but I am stoutly independent. The fact that I know all the major players on a first name and friendly basis should not be confused with any notion that they carry my water or that I carry theirs.
But I want to close by saying this. The people running the big houses are neither stupid nor evil. And the fact that you can find authors who are displeased by their publishing experience is no big accomplishment. If you haven’t found any self-publishers who have failed, then you aren’t looking very hard. In fact, the self-publishers who have succeeded largely fall into two groups: those who started and got some brand recognition by being published by a traditional house and those who didn’t, but who chose to sign with a traditional house when their independent work raised their profile enough to get them a decent deal. That makes a lot of sense to me.
Mike
Mike,
You mention marketing twice in the reply above. And yet marketing is the one thing publishers expect you to do on your own. Most say clearly you have to have a platform already before they will even consider you. So what marketing are you talking about?
I won’t even bother to answer your comments that the traditional publishers nurture talent in the non-fiction domain, as many others have already done so. I will add: Very few non-fiction authors make a living from writing, and need a day job. So much for the “nurturing” that will be lost.
And you claim to be “independent”, and yet you end your reply by saying that the only successful self publishers are those who have been published traditionally, or are planning to. Seriously? Obviously our defintions of what an “independent thinker” differ.
Finally, I would like to end with a reply to one of your comment:
“If you haven’t found any self-publishers who have failed, then you aren’t looking very hard.”
Actually, self publishers are used to being called failures, the way you just did at the end of your reply. I will say that, there are no failed self publishers, only those who haven’t succeeded yet. And that is a big difference.
Of all the lairs to wander into, this is probably one of the better ones. Honestly, I welcome the regular posting from people who think more along your view. It keeps the place from getting too hivemind-y – not that this particular blog is as prone to it as many (which is why I stick around here).
The pure trolls don’t stay long and those who have their minds closed tight don’t tend to stay either. The regulars here are generally bright, thinking sort of people whose minds aren’t entirely closed, no matter how it may appear. If you treat them with respect and are willing to explain yourself clearly, you can go a long way.
Of course, if you treat everyone like idiots and insult them and get all defensive about being challenged…
Kobo and Apple are becoming bigger players worldwide. I think you give Amazon too much prominence as authors are starting to see more sales coming from other platforms.
I don’t believe anyone can predict the future in publishing and anyone who thinks that the changes are going to kill their favorite kinds of books to read is jumping the gun and worry way to much. Take some deep breathes the sky is not falling. The world is not going into Armageddon. The publishing world is going through growing pains but we’ve been through this before and survived and I’m sure we will go through it many more times while the human race exists. Change is a part of life. The only way to end change is to die.
“This is not an argument that can be advocated, defended, or debunked based on empirical evidence.”
Actually, it can be debunked based on empirical evidence. You just refuse to accept the evidence presented.
1. In a publishing world where all books are ebooks, and publishers are unburdened of the costs of printing, wharehousing, transportation, and returns, a publisher who couldn’t make a profit on a $9.99 ebook is simply incompetent.
2. There’s enough profit in said ebooks to offer a healthy enough advance to writers to fund time and labor-intensive works. It may not be enough for writers like Isaacson or Chernow, who are accustomed to commanding stellar advances, but still enough to attract plenty of competent writers used to getting by on far less. There are plenty of good writers who would have leapt at the opportunity to be Steve Jobs’ annointed biographer who could quite easily have done a bang-up job for a $100,000 advance, or considerably less.
Characterizing the comments here that were written in response to your post (excepted by PG from your blog), especially those that questioned your premise that all weighty, serious nonfiction books can only be undertaken by writers given monstro advances––which is demonstrably false––as “blather” is emblematic of the condescending and dismissive tone of your replies.
Wow. The assumption that ebooks would stay at $9.99 in an all ebook world; the assumption that there’s plenty of room for profit without knowledge of prevailing prices or the necessary investment…and double wow that you could just recruit a writer from the hordes to be Jobs’s biographer. And you want two years of work plus expenses covered by $100,000 (“or less”). I think you’ve made my case for the quality we can expect in the future book world.
It is hard not to be dismissive or condescending when confronted by contentions like this that are described as empirical evidence.
I had sworn off further answers, but the idea that there are lots of writers just hanging out who could have done what Isaacson did with Jobs for $100k is worth swearing back on for. The suggestion is ridiculous.
Mike
Mike, thanks for responding directly.
Okay, I’ve decided I think you are right, in that as we transition from one way of doing things to another, there are books that may fall by the wayside in the gap. That would be sad. And it occurred to me, there might be a opportunity for someone to fill a role there, in terms of guiding those books to publication.
I think the future will hold something we haven’t seen in awhile: Patronage. Books that will be sponsored, either by individuals or groups, because those individuals or groups want to see the book written. Kickstarter can be a type of patronage; there are many who give ALOT of money on Kickstarter to projects in return for a signed copy of a t-shirt. They expect no other return on their investment than helping it come to fruition.
I think that’s what I’ve been getting at in my comments. I think these types of books will be sponsored, if not for profit, then because someone believes in them. This could be a consulting opportunity, actually, helping these books find funding.
As for thinking that Publishers are stupid, I do not. I suspect they are very intelligent people. But I do think they are acting sort of dumb.
Excuse my tone here, but I feel alittle frustrated. I know that good people are scared and worried, and I really wish that Publishing would save itself. Because I don’t actually think the demise of Publishing is inevitable.
I believe there is one thing, and one thing only, that will allow Publishing to survive, but they are not doing it. I don’t really know why they aren’t doing it, but they are not. Publishers can save their businesses from extiction if they do one thing:
Gain author loyalty.
Treat the author like a valued customer, give them a fair royalty rate and provide top-notch services to them. Stop the bad press. Make authors feel like a valued member of the family.
Publishing needs to become a business that values its suppliers.
If they do not do this one thing, sadly, they will not survive. If they do this one thing, however, they most likely will.
And then they can continue to sponsor these types of books.
Mira, sponsored books have always happened and I agree that corporate and cause money will be backing more and more of them in the future. That’s not a good thing, but it is a true thing and to the extent that writer’s get paid, it has benefits. But it really isn’t a preferred future.
As for author care and relations, I can absolutely assure you that it is a top priority at EVERY major publisher. How effectively they do it is, of course, variable and debatable. But they definitely see it as important. I had a meeting yesterday with a Chief Digital Officer of a Big Six firm and this person listed author relationships and services as one of the top corporate priorities. And that was not responding to a prod or suggestion.
Mike, well, I definitely hope the future holds a variety of options then!
Re: the CDO making author relations a top priority, that is wonderful news!
This has been a difficult, but, I think, an important discussion. And certainly a very interesting one. Thank you!
Just to finish off this discussion, I am going to point back to the first comment I made:
Now look at what he said:
I rest my case.
Ockham, that works for me. I’ll rest mine too.