It’s hitting the industry like a rash: Major authors are ditching their publishers to self-publish their own eBooks. Seth Godin, Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, and even billionaire Mark Cuban have gone the DIY route, and now mega-bestselling author Jackie Collins is joining the ranks.
In our forthcoming So What Do You Do? interview with Collins, she reveals exclusively to us, that within the next three weeks she will be release an eBook for The Bitch, a complete rewrite of her previous version of the novel, with a price point of $2.99 or less.
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“If it does well, I probably will continue to e-publish, because I have a book of short stories and my publisher says short stories don’t sell,” she told us.
At least in the United States, we’re being barraged by advertisements for a new movie to be released on Mars March 9, John Carter.
What is not so widely known is that John Carter was a character created by Edgar Rice Burroughs (also the author of numerous Tarzan books) in a 1917 classic pulp novel entitled A Princess of Mars.
The John Carter series was an acknowledged inspiration for authors such as Robert Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke. Ray Bradbury used them as inspiration for The Martian Chronicles. George Lucas named the Banthas in Star Wars after Burroughs’ Banths in the John Carter books.
Ray Bradbury said, “By giving romance and adventure to a whole generation of boys, Burroughs caused them to go out and decide to become special,” he said. “I’ve talked to more biochemists and more astronomers and technologists in various fields, who, when they were ten years old, fell in love with John Carter and Tarzan and decided to become something romantic. Burroughs put us on the moon.”
Many of the John Carter books were collections of short stories that Burroughs wrote and published featuring the characters and setting.
Burroughs was very savvy about the business side of writing. He was the first author to incorporate himself, doing so in 1923. He was also a big indie author, publishing all his books under his own imprint after 1931.
Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc., is still in operation, located in Tarzana, California. (Yes, the city was named after Tarzan. Only in California.) A Princess of Mars was licensed by Disney from the corporation as a basis for the John Carter movie. Disney also licensed two other Burroughs books for a possible John Carter trilogy. Here’s a link to more about the corporation.
Author Michael Crichton also read Burroughs’ John Carter stories as a boy. Crichton gave the name John Carter to the Noah Wyle character in the television series, ER, in a tribute to Burroughs’ books.
For Joseph Campbell Monomyth fans, the first John Carter movie is supposedly the Call to Adventure .
“This first stage of the mythological journey—which we have designated the ‘call to adventure’—signifies that destiny has summoned the hero and transferred his spiritual center of gravity from within the pale of his society to a zone unknown. This fateful region of both treasure and danger may be variously represented: as a distant land, a forest, a kingdom underground, beneath the waves, or above the sky, a secret island, lofty mountaintop, or profound dream state; but it is always a place of strangely fluid and polymorphous beings, unimaginable torments, superhuman deeds, and impossible delight. The hero can go forth of his own volition to accomplish the adventure, as did Theseus when he arrived in his father’s city, Athens, and heard the horrible history of the Minotaur; or he may be carried or sent abroad by some benign or malignant agent as was Odysseus, driven about the Mediterranean by the winds of the angered god, Poseidon. The adventure may begin as a mere blunder … or still again, one may be only casually strolling when some passing phenomenon catches the wandering eye and lures one away from the frequented paths of man. Examples might be multiplied, ad infinitum, from every corner of the world.”
The Educational Development Corp., which announced today that it is pulling all of its titles from Amazon, plans to increase its sales by abandoning the major online retailer, according to the company’s CEO.
Amazon accounted for about 13% of EDC’s sales in 2011, estimated Randall White, CEO of the publicly traded Tulsa, Okla.-based children’s book publisher. The exact number is uncertain because EDC sells to Amazon through distributors who also sell through other channels and do not provide EDC an exact breakdown of sales.
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White said that bookstores lose sales of EDC books through customers checking book prices independently on Amazon after browsing in the store. Now that popular EDC books like Everyone Poops and How Big Is A Million won’t be available on Amazon, those sales will go more often to bricks-and-mortar bookstores, according to White.
White also expects to see a marked increase in revenue from books sold directly through the company’s network of sales reps, which struggles against Amazon as a competitor in a similar way.
The 75-person company generates nearly two-thirds of its revenue from its sales force of 7,000, which is mostly made up of independent contractors who sell to their friends and acquaintances, often in their own homes at gatherings – like Tupperware parties, but with children’s books.
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“When someone goes to one of our gatherings and pulls out the smartphone and says, ‘well, I can get that cheaper on Amazon,’ they don’t know how to confront that sales tactic,” said White. Many sales reps quit after losing too many sales to Amazon, he said.
This describes a classic channel conflict issue that many companies have encountered with internet sales.
EDC has 7,000 part-time, mostly female self-employed sales reps who only make money by selling expensive books at list price. EDC doesn’t think this is an expensive channel because (PG suspects) it sells to the sales reps, not the readers. PG doesn’t know if the reps have the ability to return unsold books for full credit, but he would guess they don’t.
The mention of many “distributors” selling in various places leads PG to suspect this may a multi-level marketing organization like Mary Kay or Nu Skin. PG won’t jump into the middle of a pro-MLM vs. anti-MLM argument, but these are cumbersome sales organizations to manage.
Also, PG will make a bet that some of the EDC sales reps or distributors will sell on Amazon despite what the company says. A rep or a rep’s spouse could sign up with Amazon as ABC Distributing, ship a case of books to an Amazon warehouse and sell to his/her heart’s content. PG just did a quick check on ebay and found lots of EDC books for sale for much less than Barnes & Noble charges for them.
PG suspects Amazon would not disclose seller information to EDC and under the first sale doctrine of copyright law governing hard copy books, once EDC sells a book, it has no control over what the purchaser does with it thereafter.
PG will say he doesn’t know of any company who has successfully faced an internet-based channel conflict by protecting the older, less efficient channel at the expense of the internet channel.
On Wall Street, where perception has an inordinate amount of influence on the stock price, the word “bookseller” may seem like an antiquated anchor on the company. What’s more, with the death of Borders last year, the company’s name, often reduced to B&N, has become a metonym for bookstores, in the way that Amazon has become a metonym for online shopping. In fact, if you look at B&N’s web site, the word “booksellers” is already absent, as it is from much of the store signage.
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Dropping “booksellers” would free B&N to explore new business avenues and opportunities without shame or insincerity. For example, the B&N closest to my house in Houston has a rotating selection of luxury cars on display in its parking garage (though any advertising revenue for this arrangement likely goes to the property management company and not B&N). Is there not an opportunity to further exploit their retail space?
Interviewer: Would you comment on the future of the novel?
William Faulker: I imagine as long as people will continue to read novels, people will continue to write them, or vice versa; unless of course the pictorial magazines and comic strips finally atrophy man’s capacity to read, and literature really is on its way back to the picture writing in the Neanderthal cave.
From Paris Review, Wm Faulkner, The Art of Fiction No. 12
The Association of American Publishers closes out calendar year 2011 today with a round of new stats on print and digital books. Publishers’ e-book revenues were up 117.3 percent in 2011, with hardcover, paperback and mass market sales declining sharply and affected in part by Borders’ closing.
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It was a bad year for mass market paperbacks, down 35.9 percent over 2010. Publishers’ revenues from e-books jumped 117 percent for the year, with the heavier growth in the first part of the year and some slowing into December.
From an Educational Development Corporation press release via Digital Book World:
Educational Development Corporation (EDC), which publishes Usborne and Kane Miller books in the United States, announced today that, effective immediately, the company will no longer sell any of its books on Amazon or to any entities that resell to Amazon. This follows a 2009 decision to stop selling the award-winning Kane Miller list via Amazon and now, by adding the Usborne line, it will include a full list of more than 1,500 titles.
According to EDC President Randall White, the decision comes in response to increasing moves by Amazon to “gain control of publishing and other industries by making it impossible for other retailers to compete effectively.”
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“I see this as critical to the long-term growth of EDC, and a way to demonstrate our support of the local booksellers, museum shops, gift stores, and others who sell our books to consumers. We also have an incredibly devoted direct sales force of independent sales consultants who make their living selling our books at home parties, to schools & libraries and via the Internet at www.usbornebooksandmore.com,” says White. “We want to support them in every way we can, and we’ve seen how, working together, not only can we survive without Amazon, but we can thrive.”
White reports that net sales of the Kane Miller books have increased more than thirty-three percent since 2009 when the list was pulled from Amazon. In discussing the decision, Kane Miller Publisher Kira Lynn says, “From my point of view as an editor and publisher, this is also about supporting the connection between booksellers and book buyers. Hand selling has always been a necessary, integral part of the business, particularly with children’s books. And it’s still the hand selling, the independent booksellers and word of mouth that can create a best seller. Amazon might sell them, but independent booksellers are the ones who create them.”
Passive Guy has never heard of this press, but “independent sales consultants who make their living selling our books at home parties” doesn’t sound like a strategy that many publishers could pursue. Often the ranks of such sales consultants offering all sorts of goods grow during times of high unemployment.
Sales are flat and margins are up at major U.S. book publishers, but how long can it last?
In the past two weeks, both Penguin and Simon & Schuster have reported their 2011 results with nearly no change in overall revenue. At the same time, profits are up at both companies.
There are many things that could account for that – operational savings like moving to a more efficient technology system or a cheaper office space, or realized cost savings from a restructuring several years ago, for instance. But I think it’s because of e-books.
As e-books sales rise by double and triple digit percentages year-over-year, and print sales slowly decline, overall revenues remain relatively flat. But because e-books give publishers a bigger profit margin, the flat revenue comes with an increase in profits.
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“Sales are down, margins are up. And that will last as long as they [publishing companies] can continue to pay authors the royalties they’re paying them [for e-books] and sell the books at the terms they’re selling them on,” said Mike Shatzkin, publishing consultant (and partner on the Digital Book World Conference + Expo).
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Booksellers may already be going after that additional profit. Rumors are that Amazon has already started renegotiating contracts with publishers. And last week, reportedly due to a stalled contract negotiation, Amazon stopped selling e-books distributed by the Independent Publishers Group, a large, Chicago-based book distributor for smaller publishers.
Shatzkin has a solution to this problem for publishers: Pay authors higher royalties on e-books.
In December, net book sales fell 3.5%, to $1.52 billion, as reported by 77 publishers to the Association of American Publishers. E-books, which rose 72.1% over December 2010, gained the most of any category, but continued to grow at a slower rate than the category’s triple-digit gains earlier in the year. Adult mass market had the biggest drop, falling 40.9% to the same period a year earlier.
For the full year, net book sales fell 3.2%, to $11.276 billion. As in December, e-books were the strongest category, rising 117.3% while mass markets fell the most, down 35.9%.
on Amazon.
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