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Living on the Long Tail: Intellectual property and the e-publisher’s world
March 24, 2007 | 2:03 am
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By Rob Preece, founder of BooksForABuck.com
Moderator’s note: Photo is of Maxwell Perkins, who, as an editor for Charles Scribner’s Sons, added value to the works of such immortals as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe. – DR
I’m as fond of free books as anyone. Project Gutenberg is a wonderful service, and I am grateful for all of the volunteers and contributors who’ve made this resource possible.
So many great works of the past were either inaccessible or available only in high-cost collectible books until Gutenberg began its epic construction of the new universal library.
The glories of the weed-out
That said, I’m also a publisher. It’s my job to weed through a vast host of not-so-good books and pick out the ones that stand out, that represent story-telling at its best. It’s also my job to work with the authors of these very best books, to help them hone their talents, to strip out the fluff, and to then convert the polished novels into a variety of formats (primarily electronic but also paper).
In addition, it’s my job to help these select and talented authors earn money for all of the hundreds of hours they’ve put into their novels by marketing their works, by arranging distribution for their works, and by paying them regularly. For every book I publish, I probably reject a dozen. For me, every book I publish represents a hundred or more man-hours of research, editing, and production—and then there’s marketing.
E compared to P
In the traditional world of paper publishing, a book went on sale, remained on the shelves of bookstores for a month or three, and then vanished. Velocity was key and “out of print” a meaningful and painful prospect. But we in the e-publishing world live on the Long Tail. Our books remain on sale indefinitely—something we believe is an advantage to authors and to readers who can now buy the entire work of an author rather than hunting fruitlessly through used bookstores for early works. Every quarter, I pay out royalties to authors for works I published for them years ago, as new readers discover them, and as word of mouth allows them to gain in popularity.
So I’m a big believer in intellectual property. Just as a mason who builds her own home has an ownership over her work, so an author has an equity stake in her creation; and so, too does the publisher who represents this author to the world. Constitutionally, the government offered a bargain—it would help preserve our rights to our work, but only if we accepted a limited period of monopoly, after which time these works would become available for free to all. That seems fair, although certainly one could argue over the period of exclusive use of rights (I personally think the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act took things too far, but certainly an author should have exclusive rights for decades, at least).
The bottom line
Here’s the bottom line—neither I nor any other e-publisher could stay in business if my author’s rights expired after a year or two. I couldn’t afford to market these works, negotiate distribution deals, or pay my editors to help perfect the novels. Living on the Long Tail, I find that the majority of my sales take place after the first year of publication. It’s oh-so-tempting to wish that wonderful books could all be free, but authors have to eat too. E-publishing is a radical innovation that means books can be published without being approved by huge conglomerates, that you don’t need to be rich to get out your message, and copyright is the primary protection we small publishers and our authors have. Advertiser support, the major means of offering “free” content generates to the lowest common denominator–is this really what we want out of our literature?
Moderator’s note: Rob runs BooksForABuck.com
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Comments:
I envision a different scenario where the author has the freedom to remove a work for sale at will. If publishers need to recover their sunk costs, they can set up a pricing/royalty structure that takes these costs into account.
Mobipocket lets the author keep 60% plus remove the ebooks for sale at any time they want. (I think lulu has a similar deal with ebooks at 75%). Editorial & promotional services can be sold a la carte (and yes, that means authors paying more upfront costs).
The issue of “too many books and authors” can still be a godsend for distributors. More authors are out there now who are willing to publish–that’s good, isn’t it? Works with better marketing/packaging can stand out that much more. But overall, I think the relationship between authors and publishers have changed radically in the last 10 years. Authors are viewed less as “talent” than as “customers.”
A lottery is sometimes cruelly referred to as a “tax on stupidity”. A large lottery entices gullible participants with dreams of massive prizes obtained by simply purchasing inexpensive tickets. Mathematically, the expected value of a lottery ticket is smaller than its cost; hence, lotteries often attract the mathematically illiterate and the desperate.
How are long-term copyrights related to lotteries? The number of books that continue to earn money “fifty years after the author’s death” or “seventy years after the author’s death” is vanishingly small. The super-extended copyright terms are similar to a “tax on stupid authors”. How many credulous authors work for a pittance while dreaming delusively of creating immortal works that will provide monetary security for themselves, children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren?
Worse, the “lottery” of books is sometimes rigged. For example, Stephen King consistently generates best-sellers; however, when he secretly released horror novels similar to his best-sellers under the penname Richard Bachman the sales were dramatically reduced. When King’s surreptitious authorship was revealed the sales skyrocketed.
Of course, lotteries can be a form of entertainment in which the ticket purchaser knows the odds of success are small. Further, good authors actually have a positive “expected value” for their literary output, and it is possible to earn a living as a writer or an artist. Nevertheless the super-extended copyright terms are a malicious deception that exploits auctorial vanity.
(One final point, this comment is not a criticism of Rob Preece’s worthwhile article. Preece does say “I personally think the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act took things too far, but certainly an author should have exclusive rights for decades, at least”.)
Thanks for the comments, Robert and Garson.
Robert, there is an important distinction between book distributors like Mobipocket and book publishers like, uh, me. Book distributors take what books are offered them and sell them. They’re like a bookstore rather than a publisher, with no editorial or even formatting (except what formatting may be done by their software). It’s no skin off their nose if an author withdraws his work. Not so with publishers–I think I’m fairly unique in the industry in how easily I let authors withdraw, should they find a more lucreative outlet.
Garson, a point I may not have made clearly enough is that I agree with you with respect to the traditional publishing industry. Books go on the shelf, then vanish. Rights should revert to the author after the book goes out of print at which time they can do what they want with them (including selling them to me for re-publication). But eBooks don’t go out of print and sell forever–the long tail. It’s a different business model and one, I think, that is better for lesser-known authors who rarely win the best-seller game.
Rob Preece
Publisher, http://www.BooksForABuck.com
Rob, you note that if you lost your monopoly rights after a year or two, you couldn’t stay in business.
How then did the traditional p-publishers survive, and grow into the massive enterprises they are today, when their books went out of print after ‘a month or three’?
Indeed, how do traditional p-publishers survive today who publish works in the public domain? I go to a bookstore and see no lack of Dickens, Shakespeare, Darwin, Austen, and the like. Even with only minor editorial costs involved (choosing typeface, cover design and the like), the costs of pulp and shipping (and the cut the bookstore takes) surely would add up to more, a lot more, than your editorial costs on any given book?
Hi Pond,
Good question. The pPublishing business model is different and largely based on the best-seller. If you’re an author trying to sell to traditional publishers, you’ll often hear discussions of ‘the midlist is dead.’ What that means is, the business makes its money on a few home run books. Nora Roberts, Stephen King, J. K. Rowling, Tom Clancey, John Grisham and a few others constitute a huge percentage of sales–and profit. Then there are publishers like Harlequin which have adopted a magazine model–sell books for a month, then they’re gone.
There’s nothing wrong with this business model as a model–it works for magazines and newspapers, after all. But there is something wrong with it when it comes to readers and authors. The model relies on extensive investments in getting books on shelves and moving them quickly. The model doesn’t allow for slow builds, for word of mouth advertising, or for authors to be discovered. It also means hitting the lowest common denominator.
The ePublishing model is the long tail model–because our ‘bookstores’ don’t have to worry about shelf space, books remain on sale and continue to sell. I can take a chance on authors who are unknown, help them grow.
There certainly are publishers who make their living selling public domain books. Some do so by adding value (e.g., a glossary for Shakespeare), while others (e.g. Barnes and Noble, because they have access to shelf space–the rarest commodity in the book world). There are even ePublishers who sell public domain books that can be found on Gutenberg and Manybooks. I think helping connect new authors with readers is a valuable service, and enough readers agree with me that they pay for that service. If they didn’t, I’d go out of business. As I said, though, those sales occur over time in my model, rather than all at once in the first month.
Rob Preece
Publisher, http://www.BooksForABuck.com
“Here’s the bottom line—neither I nor any other e-publisher could stay in business if my author’s rights expired after a year or two. I couldn’t afford to market these works, negotiate distribution deals, or pay my editors to help perfect the novels.”
I’m not so sure about this Rob.
Take your book, Kingmaker. I see I can buy that on Fictionwise in any number of formats that would make it trivial to redistribute in about 5 minutes. You may have some legal rights to go after people who did so, but practically if people started ripping Kingmaker and posting it to Rapidshare, etc., there’s not a whole lot anyone could do about it. I think the RIAA has done a good job of demonstrating that even the most well-financed efforts to actually enforce copyrights in our Internet age has almost no effect on illegal distribution channels.
I notice, however, that Kingmaker is currently not easily found on any filesharing network, so I conclude that a) the demand for the novel is poor or b) its probably cheaper if I want a copy to pay you $3.99 for it than waiting for it to show up in a torrent or rapidshare link (and it could be that your customers are happy enough with the product and price that they wouldn’t think of pirating the novel)
At some point, publishers of all stripes are going to have to recognize that, at least for that part of the audience that is technically savvy, copyrights last functionally for about 15 minutes after you publish, and you’re going to have to incorporate that into your business model.
> Here’s the bottom line—neither I nor any other e-publisher
> could stay in business if my author’s rights expired after a
> year or two.
You shouldn’t make definitive bottom lines like that. In general it’s unwise to state that “there is no possible way around X”, as history has shown us that most such Xs have been circumvented, sooner more commonly than later.
I bet there are hundreds, or even thousands, of business models that don’t rely on copyright and yet would work well in practice. Just because we haven’t found them or dared to try them doesn’t mean they don’t exist. (In fact, I recently wrote here about one candidate I came up with, but it swiftly vanished in the mysterious “half the site is gone”-thing a week or two ago.)
Just because something can be done, doesn’t mean it should be done.
Just because ebooks can be pirated easily, doesn’t mean they should be.
Because pirating is easy, we should all just give up?
Murder is easy, too. Should we make that legal now, too?
Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad that music companies now have to offer consumers the choice of buying a single song, as opposed to a whole album of songs.
Change is good. But if authors NEVER make money from their efforts, guess what? They’ll quit writing. Or quit making their work available to anyone.
No one asks lawyers, doctors, store clerks, etc. to give their services for free. While they may occasionally donate their time, it is THEIR CHOICE.
Creative/intellectual property is as much a real property as the house you live in, the car your drive, the television you watch.
I have no problem with readers who use libraries, lend their print books, or shop used bookstores.
I do have a problem with someone stealing my work. And I have a right to leave that work to my heirs, if that is my choice. Everyone else gets to leave the fruit of their labors to their heirs. Why should authors be considered vain for wanting to do the same?
Being an ebook/print small press, I am in agreement with Rob here. The copyright extension recently enacted is ludicrous and not beneficial to the literary world nor society. However, if you are saying that authors, and publishers, shouldn’t maintain the rights to their works for more than a few years, then why should people be able to patent their ideas? Both copyright and patents are designed to protect the creators. Without them, people cannot survive. You are also assuming that authors spend a short period of time writing these works. Some authors have spent 10 years or more doing the research, writing, revising, then submitting, resubmitting, and so on, not to mention all of the promotion that goes into getting a book/ebook out to the public. And even if they haven’t spent 10 years writing that particular book, they have created something of value that others want to read, they have done something that not everyone can do. If authors/publishers cannot maintain the copyright, what incentive is there for people to create anything?
Let’s take a different example: Most people have jobs which pay them a salary/hourly wage. Suppose that after a year or two, the law said that the company no longer needed to pay you for your services. After all, you are doing the same job pretty much every day. There is no reason to continue paying you for the work you have done or continue to do.
You may not think it is the same thing, but it is. When you work, you are being paid for your contribution. The same thing can be said for an author, musician or any other artist/creator. Why shouldn’t they be able to maintain the rights to their creations? To deny them this because you wish to have something for free is unrealistic.
Marci
Pauline: “Murder is easy, too. Should we make that legal now, too?”
Many people treat piracy as simply an enforcement issue. Then it simply becomes a matter of punishment and technical countermeasures.
But it’s really a matter of compliance and disincentives. Raising the penalty for murder from 10 years to 20 years is not going to reduce murder. With piracy, the central question is NOT how can punish as many infringers as possible. It is: how can we can make consumers feel good about paying for content? And how can we increase the net amount of money that changes into the hands of content creators?
I’ve written here and here about why I think past pricing strategies don’t work anymore. Pbooks are initially sold at ridiculous prices, and then discounted until people start buying them. When they are discounted (and ultimately sold used), the profits go not to the creator but to everybody BUT the creator. (To see what I mean, read my horrifying account of how NOT to compensate an artist ).
The one thing I love about Preece’s books for a buck is that it incorporates a “chump change” pricing strategy rather than a price maximization strategy. I would argue that the “price maximization strategy” is inherently vulnerable to piracy. I would be willing to bet that there is almost NO piracy for the ebooks on Preece’s site. That to me is a sign that booksforabuck.com is doing something right.
I recently sold e-rights to Rob for a book I spent just under a year writing and submitting. I appreciate him for taking the effort to make good suggestions for re-writing and being a terrific editor, also for having the gumption and the initiative to start a publishing business.
About the same time I was getting contracts from Rob, I found on a free download site all EIGHT of Jim Butcher’s “Harry Dresden” novels in MS Reader format. Piracy of an entire series of Jim’s books, I know he works for a living–hard to break out of the midlist and write a successful series of books that is now coming out on the SciFi channel. I reported the piracy to the website manager, and I reported it to the author, within 24 hours the link was down. I check that site every couple of days and report every single book piracy I find–to the author, the publisher, and various writer’s websites. I found books by Nora Roberts, Steven King and several other authors on that site and I reported each and every one.
Piracy may be easier and easier, but it is still theft from people who work hard to create the content so many of us avidly read.
Recently an Indian publisher was selling e-books of the Harry Potter series. Ms. Towland never sold e-rights for any of those books, the website is under litigation by Rowland’s publisher and they certainly have pockets deep enough to hurt that pirate badly. I hope they do.
Regards,
Scott
> Because pirating is easy, we should all just give up?
Well, people have traded their natural right to copy for there being more authors and/or higher quality works. If the people would want to quit making this tradeoff, maybe only partly, then the laws of a democracy must be modified to reflect this.
It seems that a large portion of the population of some countries indeed want to retain their right to copy music, at least to some degree.
> if authors NEVER make money from their efforts,
> guess what? They’ll quit writing.
First of all that’s evidently not universally true. However, it’s very likely that without any kind of compensation a lot of authors would quit writing. IF we want there to be a lot of writers, and many do, then there must be at least one way of compensating them. There can be many, and most are dependent on the surrounding culture to work, and the culture changes over time. With the rise of the internet we have seen many new business models, and certainly we’ll see many more as the various cultures adapt.
> No one asks lawyers, doctors, store clerks, etc. to give
> their services for free.
Of course not, because each of those services requires labour. However, absolutely nothing is required of a musician for me to copy an album that the musician made and sold to my friend. If I could get “service” from a doctor without the doctor having to do anything (possibly not even noticing it) then it should indeed be legal.
Your comparison is completely apples and oranges. A more fair comparison would be that if your friend goes to the doctor who teaches him to make a mitella out of a scarf then it should be illegal for your friend to teach this to you (and thus you might not have to go to the doctor yourself).
> Creative/intellectual property is as much a real property
> as the house you live in
No, it’s not. At least not by its nature. Some people want to force it into the “property” mold so that it can be more easily treated as tangible property for which there are various trading-, ownership- and exclusiveness-related laws, customs and values.
Your right to keep someone from breathing is just as much a property by nature as your right to keep someone from copying a book, i.e., not at all.
Furthermore, the only thing that all different kinds of “creative/intellectual property” have in common is their intangibility. Something intangible is naturally limitless, and thus can’t be natural property.
> I do have a problem with someone stealing my work.
Stealing? How is anyone stealing your work? E.g., if you write a book and publish it and someone else copies it without your permission, then it, as such, could under no circumstances be called “stealing”.
“Intangible property” and “copying is stealing” is a kind of newspeak (in this case rhetorically redefining terms to further some agenda) that just makes discussing these issues much harder, or even impossible.
> However, if you are saying that authors, and
> publishers, shouldn’t maintain the rights to their
> works for more than a few years, then why
> should people be able to patent their ideas?
What you imply is absolutely correct. They shouldn’t.
> Both copyright and patents are designed to
> protect the creators.
Umm.. not really. Patents are a limited monopoly regarding an invention in exchange for describing that invention. Copyright is the public trading their natural right to copy for there being more authors and/or higher quality works.
> Without them, people cannot survive.
Certainly you are joking, or whose life do you think depends on patents or copyrights? Well, perhaps some former artist who now is disabled and lives in a country with poor social security and has no other income than royalties and no relatives and no chance of getting a job.
> Suppose that after a year or two, the law said
> that the company no longer needed to pay you
> for your services. After all, you are doing the
> same job pretty much every day. There is no
> reason to continue paying you for the work you
> have done or continue to do.
Um.. that’s how it’s now. Nobody forces an employer to pay people for doing work, but if they don’t then they won’t have employees. If are you suggesting that agreements and contracts would suddenly be void then the analogy is grossly invalid.
> Why shouldn’t they be able to maintain the
> rights to their creations?
Why should they be allowed to dictate what other people can and can’t do? Of course they should have the right not to create, or to create but only give copies to particular people, but why should they have a right to dictate what those people can and can’t do with what they’ve been sold/given? Now, the producers and the consumers (if there ever was a distinction) could come to some sort of agreement, but then it’s perfectly fine since everyone involved agrees, right?
> To deny them this because you wish to have
> something for free is unrealistic.
To deny the people’s natural right to copy just because the authors want something (namely that the people give up this right) for free is unrealistic.
I have never seen anyone successfully argue that authors have a moral right to dictate how anyone he gives or sells copies to can or can’t do with them. People can agree to do or not do certain things in exchange for other things, but that has nothing to do with morals or natural rights.
> With piracy, the central question is [...]
> how can we can make consumers feel
> good about paying for content?
Very true.
The business model I outlined here a while ago (and which was lost in the big accident/malfunction/whatever a few weeks ago) would encourage paying and discourage pirating.
> And how can we increase the net
> amount of money that changes into
> the hands of content creators?
Ah, more words of wisdom. I think there are many ways around many middle men of the traditional arrangements in many fields. We just have to find them, instead of making laws forbidding any progress that isn’t more of the same old.
> Piracy [...] is still theft from people who
> work hard to create the content
It most certainly is not, the same way littering is not theft.
Piracy […] is still theft from people who
> work hard to create the content
It most certainly is not, the same way littering is not theft.
>
Yup, theft.
What have you created that you wish to just give away with no recompense? And why should I not expect recompense for my labor?
When my work sells, the individual buys one copy and he may do what he wishes with that copy, including give it away. Copyright law demands that he not make copies and give THOSE away.
The public has no right to my books unless they pay for them, and they do not exercise the right to copy the work for distribution to others just because they bought it from me.
I will continue to check all the free sites routinely and every book I find there I will report to the authors so they can take whatever steps they choose. I do not download pirated videos or music OR books.
Regards,
Scott
Marci Baun mentions patents. Blog readers may find it useful to compare patents and copyrights. “Under current U.S. law, a patent is valid for 20 years from the date the patent application is filed” according to the online Encarta encyclopedia. The first federal copyright act allowed a total term of 28 years. Specifically, the Copyright Act of 1790 allowed “a term of 14 years, with the right to renew for one additional 14 year term should the copyright holder still be alive” according to Wikipedia. The term for patents has been largely stable historically, but the term for copyrights has grown enormously.
> > > Piracy […] is still theft from people who
> > > work hard to create the content
> >
> > It most certainly is not, the same way littering
> > is not theft.
>
> Yup, theft.
>
> What have you created that you wish to just
> give away with no recompense? And why
> should I not expect recompense for my labor?
Huh?!
If someone copies your book without your permission they have not taken anything from you.
> The public has no right to my books unless
> they pay for them
So just because something is unlawful (or wrong) it is theft? So since littering is wrong it is theft?
If we’re allowed to make up new definitions of things then I say that copyright is killing. It absolutely kills my natural rights to copy. Don’t be a killer.
Seriously, you have not provided a single argument for calling copyright infringement “theft”.
> The term for patents has been largely stable
> historically, but the term for copyrights has
> grown enormously.
Maybe that’s partly because patents were so much more evil from the get go?
I mean, with copyright I’m at least allowed to write the same thing as someone else, as long as I haven’t copied it. With patents someone else can suddenly more or less destroy my business if they have patented stuff my business relies on and I have come up with independently without ever even hearing about those patents. (In fact, as a programmer I bet I’ve already violated many patents I don’t know about. I know about some trivial patents I’m violating right now, although they wouldn’t stand up in court (not that I could afford to go to court, so that doesn’t really matter).)
“neither I nor any other e-publisher could stay in business if my author’s rights expired after a year or two.”
Very well-said, Rob.
Thank you,
Jacki Bentley
Theft is the unauthorized confiscation of property. Copyright is intellectual property. Unauthorized confiscation of intellectual property is theft.
It should be obvious.
Patents and copyright are evil? By what definition?
Regards,
Scott
The original claim was that piracy is theft. Piracy is generally understood to be the unauthorized copying of works. That is not the same as “confiscating copyrights”.
Then get a real job.
> Theft is the unauthorized confiscation of property.
OK
> Copyright is intellectual property.
It’s not property by nature. See my post above.
Also note that the following is circular reasoning and would, if proven sound, show equivalence, but it still can’t be used to prove anything true or false: “Because copyright is property breaking it is theft, and since breaking copyright is theft it must be property.” (I’m not saying that this is how you think, I’m just telling you not to go there since it would be pointless in this particular discussion.)
> Unauthorized confiscation of intellectual
> property is theft.
Exactly what is confiscated, according to you, if I copy a book that my friend bought? And remember that it can’t be something for which there is an analogy with littering, as my statement was that piracy is theft only if littering is also theft.
> It should be obvious.
Actually I think the opposite is obvious, but I can’t be more accurate as long as you refuse to say what it is you think has been taken from the author of the book that has been copied without permission.
> Patents and copyright are evil? By what definition?
I just told you. Are you at all reading what I write? Again, patents are particularly evil, and generally anti-progress, because they can be, and are, used to force people and companies to not use their own innovations against their will. (They also greatly hinder innovations to build upon previous innovations, but that’s irrelevant here since copyright has the same problem.)
So far I have pointed out most of your inaccuracies and you have not shown any of my reasoning to be (or even seem) inaccurate at any point. I have no problem with being proved wrong (it’s in fact a very nice and highly teaching experience), and I hope you will also be reasonable on this point if that is where this is going. Let’s just try to find the truth together.
> but I can’t be more accurate
Eh.. rather “[...]more precise”
Please excuse my bad English.
The original definition of “Piracy” is robbery on the high seas. The derived definition of “Piracy” is copyright violation. Robbery is defined as theft.
Therefore copyright violation is theft.
“I just told you. Are you at all reading what I write? Again, patents are particularly evil, and generally anti-progress, because they can be, and are, used to force people and companies to not use their own innovations against their will. (They also greatly hinder innovations to build upon previous innovations, but that’s irrelevant here since copyright has the same problem.)”
This is a particularly naive notion. Yes, patents can be used as a bludgeon, but the excess of this kind of usage is much better controlled these days than in the day of Thomas Edison and the motion picture industry. The motion picture industry survived even though Edison tried to misuse patent law.
Edison’s misuse does not constitute “evil” in the concept of intellectualo property.
That being said: It has nothing to do with copyright law since copyright does NOT apply to ideas, only to the text of a particular book. Want to use somebody’s literary idea? Join the club. The author you borrow the idea from probably borrowed it from someone else. But do not steal the actual text. That is a violation of law. It is theft.
Laura K. Hamilton took the idea of modern-day vampires from Anne Rice. Anne Rice took the idea from Dracula, and Bram Stoker took the idea from previous penny dreadfuls. None of that constitutes copyright violation. But if I steal the text from one of Laura K. Hamilton’s vampire books and distribute it without her authorization that is theft.
By the way, I have read every word you have said, and you are mistaken in your reasoning.
Regards,
Scott