Publishing analyst Mike Shatzkin, back from Digital Book World, has an interesting piece on his blog looking at the effect that non-publishers getting into the publishing business could have other publishers. He talks about a discussion he had with a distinctly non-tech-savvy publisher of renown who was now running his own smaller operation. This publisher felt that the advances in reducing the cost of small-scale publishing should make it that much easier for him to publish books. He wasn’t concerned by all the self-published stuff he would be competing with, since 99% of it would be dreck, but as...

EBookNewser has a report on an ongoing disagreement between publishers and agents as to the nature of a “fair” e-book royalty percentage. It seems publishers think that the percentage is 25%, while many agents think it should be 50%. This comes by way of a survey presented yesterday at Digital Book World by Mike Shatzkin of the Idea Logical Company and Constance Sayre of Market Partners International. Apparently as many as 1/3 of agents claim to have negotiated 50% royalty deals. Furthermore, 90% of agents have clients who are potentially interested in self-publishing. Certainly, authors such as...

eBookNewser has some coverage of a children’s book panel from Digital Book World today. One consensus to come out of the panel is that children’s book apps lack curation to weed out the 90% of lousy apps to make it easier to find the 3,000 or so good ones. Whereas in the print world there are stores and book clubs that help readers determine these things, it is a lot harder in the world of apps. Of course, this kind of holds true for adult books, too, at least to an extent. And the star rating system on the...

FutureBook has a look at the Digital Book World digital territorial rights panel that Paul also covered earlier today, going into a little more detail on some of the discussions between the posters and also bringing in some comments earlier in the day from Mike Shatzkin about the globalization of e-books (though, oddly, entirely leaving out any mention of Jean Arache’s part in the panel). The discussion between American publisher Carolyn Savarese and UK publisher Andrew Franklin is interesting to me, as it presents a sort of microcosm of the positions of the US and UK publishing industries...

Mike Shatzkin’s blog has an interesting essay about putting together an advisory council for the Digital Book World conference, and some of the challenges that come with running such a conference. One challenge has to do with knowing some change is going on or about to go on in digital publishing, but not knowing who is a part of it or whether those who are will talk about it. The other has to do with with publishers being willing to discuss things privately, but not publicly—e-book royalty rates, for example. And as with any business, nobody...

From the press release: F+W Media announced today the launch of its Digital Book World Community, a new industry resource for book publishers and publishing professionals offering educational and informational resources designed to help them successfully navigate the digital transition. The Community springs forth from the successful inaugural annual conference which was held last week. Guy LeCharles Gonzalez, Director of Programming and Business Development, will continue to head the community, in close collaboration with a newly formed Community Advisory Board. A conference recap, schedule of upcoming seminars, WEBcasts and weekly roundtables; and regularly updated news and commentary from industry professionals can...

Untangling and understanding the ebook supply chain Peter Balis, John Wiley and Sons; Niel Del Young, Hachette Book Group; Leslie Hulse, Harper Collins; Andrew Weinstein, Ingram Digital; Mark Coker, Smashwords Ingram: in ebook supply chain a lot of posturing going on and in a gawky stage. Roles are still shaking out. Still a role for wholesaler in the supply chain. They provide multi-publisher aggregating platform for retailers. They keep track of all the retailers selling the publishers' books. For majority of US publishers, enforcing territories by the billing address of the purchaser seems to be becoming the standard. Adobe...

Ebook Challenges: Competing with free and getting the timing right. Mindy Stockfield, Hyperion; Robert Gottlieb, Trident Media Group; Steve Ross, formerly of Harper Collins; Michel Tamblyn, Kobo; Brian O'Leary, Magellan Media Partners. Publishers' margins are very small. Products releases should be windowed. Same question arose in the '50s when introducing mass market editions. Decided to release them later. Same with DVDs. Represents authors and so asks if you give it away for free what is author's share of zero? Be careful on innovation in pricing because you can create a market expectation that you...

Tim McCall, Penguin Group USA; Michael Tamblyn, Kobo; Kassia Lrozser, Booksquare; Ginger Clark, Curtis Brown, Ltd.; Laura Dawson, KNJ Dawson Ebook pricing: what they should cost and why Penguin: have to start with the intrinsic value of the material and the format. Need to look at cost - from the time its bought to the time it goes to the consumer. Ebook should not be looked at on its own, especially since ebooks are such a small point of the total market (...

Larry Kirshbaum, LJK Literary Movement; Ken Cader, PUblishers Lunch; Ken Brooks, Cengage Learning; Evan Schnittman, Oxford University Press; Mike Shatzkin, moderator If you were publishing a book this month and did an ebook simultaneously what percentage of total sales would it sell?: They answer: 17% at highest to 5%; 10% now and 35% lifetime; 6% to 15%; 10% Apple and Google enter the market, what will this do?: They answer: good news for publishers because add big players to compete with Amazon; Amazon will continue to grow but its share will fall; Apple is just an experiment at this...

Liza Daly, ThreePress Consulting, discussed problems often found with current ebook production. Typical problems with current ebooks: plain text cover as opposed to photo; often have to step through blank pages, irrelevant copyright info, wrong ISBNs, table of contents with chapter numbers that are irrelevant content and readers hate this (if use samples then up to half of sample is often irrelevant pages), misspellings, bad line breaks (in some cases the pirated version is actually better than the professionally better one)....

Angela Bole, Book Industry Study Group; Kelly Gallagher, Bowker. First presentation of data from a major industry survey ofebook consumers. 95% confidence level Demographics: male 51%, female 49%; income over 75K 37%, 35K to 75K, 38%, under 35K, 25%; 23% RURAL, 24% URBAN, 43% suburban Whey e instead of P?: in order 1. affordability, 2. easy to download, 3. readability, 4. instant access, 5. portability 34% decreased their purchase of hardcover books What extras would you pay for: in order 1. connect with other readers, 2. color photos graphics, 3. give/lend 4. wireless access 19% now purchase ebooks exclusively and 25% now purchase...