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The iPhone excitement and e-books: Pan Macmillan exec Sara Lloyd denies that publishers were cluelessly asleep
July 15, 2008 | 11:36 pm
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By David Rothman
Pan Macmillan‘s Sara Lloyd is defending publishers for not having jumped quickly on the iPhone as a platform—as both Kassia Krozser and I would have preferred. Too bad. Just in the first three days, a million units moved. But where were publishers? Rebutting Kassia and me, Sara notes among other things:
–The iPhone earlier came with PDF. I’d respond that PDF is hardly the all purpose solution—not to mention other issues such as Apple’s earlier rather backwards ‘tude toward third-party apps. Remote browsing is no substitute for easy downloading and storage.
–Publishers are not software developers. But, Sara, as I’ve noted, they could still have worked out cross-promo deals with major e-software publishers and have encouraged them to to be ready by launch—when the hype machine was cranked up all the way. Of 
course, agreement on the ePub standard and getting rid of DRM, the enemy of interoperability, would help. Then whenever new hardware came out, we wouldn’t have all this silliness—since a slew of reader apps from the start could handle publishers’ usual format, singular. I’m delighted that Pan Macmillan will be doing ePub, like other majors such as Penguin and Random House. I just wish Sara had understand the importance of ePub in the new-hardware context. She’s no dummy, and I hope she’ll come around.
–DRM isn’t the main issue, even though "most authors/agents still insist on it." Hmm. Given all the competition to be published, maybe it’s time for publishers in a tactful way to educate the DRM freaks. Sara herself is aware of DRM’s downsides.
–Maybe what the world needs is "cross-publisher platform for iPhone delivery, which enables clear consumer choice across a variety of titles." Isn’t another end of Macmillan working on Global Reader? Might this somehow influence what Sara has to say here?
–"Before you say it, I’m not sure Fictionwise is it [the platform] unless they make their terms a lot more attractive for publishers." I’d welcome specifics here. One distinguishing thing about Fictionwise is that it’s encouraged publishers to back off from DRM. I hope that is not what she objects to. Similarly I’d hope that Sara would understand the need to make E affordable to consumes, one goal that FW has worked toward.
–"I think many publishers have decided, as Adam Hodgkin argues today, to ‘wait and see.’" Ugh, follow the link and you’ll see Adam’s headline is "Dozing at the Wheel." Apt. But Adam softens it up with, "Not so much dozing at the wheel, as whistling in the breeze with barely one hand on the tiller." I think he’s a little too kind.
(Thanks to Peter Brantley for the spotting. Meanwhile I’ve changed the headline to reflect the topic better.)
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Comments:
A million moved iphones 10.000 moved public domain titles that amounts to a potential sale of what 1000 titles, yeah the publishers should have dropped all what they were doing and invested millions.
Sorry guys it dont work like that you dont have “the big one” the iPhone is not going to be the gizmo that single handedly makes ebooks a massively profitable venture. And this is the eternal problem, people dont just read commersially viable stuff on their multifunction devices.
Thanks, Dan, but that’s just part of the picture. Feedbooks enjoyed an instant spike, and I suspect that the number will grow over time as more people catch on. Remember, the Stanza program is new. And Apple itself has yet to get behind e-books. Just wait until that happens, as it will in time.
Meanwhile the eReader server distributing commercial books is swamped.
Single-handedly the iPhone may not do the job, just as the Kindle can’t on its own, but if publishers use ePub and avoid DRM, then the extra costs of each new device aren’t going to be that much.
We would be talking more about new marketing opportunities than about the costs of keeping up with hardware and eBabel.
Ideally iPhones and others will come with terrific reading apps installed, as well as sample e-books. If Apple won’t oblige, then other vendors will, inevitably. Meanwhile the iPHone serves as an example of the possibilities.
Bottom line: While there’s no guarantee that the iPhone will turn e-books into a mass phenomenon, publishers should have been much better prepared for it.
Thanks,
David
Since you asked for a response… many publishers, including Pan Macmillan, *are* preparing their books in .epub. We are also actively talking to agents and authors re the DRM debate and trying to educate them out of their paranoia. It’s a long, slow job though and it is veeeeeeery time-consuming. At Pan Macmillan, we have taken this one step further, too, and have been actively seeking authors who will support non-drm’d ebooks. As a result, I think you’ll find we’re the only UK publishers who will have a small (but hopefully growing) list of drm-free ebooks by the end of this year. On today’s count though, we still only have six books in this year’s programme where we have been able to do this. This is *not* for want of trying. You wanted to know specifically what I meant about fictionwise – it’s nothing to do with pricing or drm. I just think the discounts they demand essentially simply to hold and deliver a digital file are outrageous. Now, on the more general point that we could have all spent some time setting up relationships with the software developers to deliver our books for the iPhone. I would still suggest that this would have been (a) difficult for a very small department within a large publishing house and (b) quite possibly ultimately not a good use of our time. I think the better use of our time is still on the issues above. And there is still clearly quite a bit of shake-out to happen yet with the App Store, which frankly is a confusing mess right now. I don’t want my books buried in that mess. But see my colleague James Long’s more fully reasoned and somewhat wry response to Kassia’s objections on my blog post on all this, today at http://thedigitalist.net/?p=190#comments for more on all this
From a technical point of view, the barrier to entry was (and is) fairly low for the iPhone. (I say that as a developer.)
All they had to do was find a developer familiar with Mac OS X development (they must have someone like that somewhere in their organization if they do any software development) grab the (free) iPhone SDK, and do something simple. It wouldn’t have to even be something to read books. Just to show that they noticed.
Shoot – It could be a simple ‘catalog’ app that would let ordinary mortals browse their catalog (it must be online somewhere) and then (possibly) link them to an eBook vender (Fictionwise/whomever they prefer) to purchase/download it. (Okay, the purchase/download part wouldn’t be that simple…)
I can see how they might be leery of partnering with Apple for something like that (for reasons I’m sure are well trod ground around here). But you’ll never get wet if you don’t go near the water.
>>>I’m not sure Fictionwise is it [the platform]
That’s for sure! Publishers can count on lost sales from that fruitbat search engine!
Hey, David, maybe it’s time for *you* to start shoving in publishers’ faces how many of their titles are up on Google Book Search for FREE FREE FREE. Meanwhile, people like me who want to *buy* are left empty-handed.
http://mikecane2008.wordpress.com/2008/07/15/read-nathan-singer-like-a-thief/
>>>I just think the discounts they demand essentially simply to hold and deliver a digital file are outrageous.
Can it really be worse than the discounts for chain bookstores? (I am ignorant on this point.) Also, at what price do you intend to sell ebooks? Please avoid this self-defeating lunacy:
http://ebooktest.blogspot.com/2008/07/edward-bunker.html
I think what Sara is saying about the Fictionwise discount is not so much about the percentage they collect out of the list price for books sold at list price (which is pretty much standard). Fictionwise, however, has a number of programs (i.e., their discounts on new releases and their discounts for frequent customers) which they impose. They pay pubishers based on their actual sale price rather than on publisher list price.
I like Fictionwise, am very happy to be one of their publishers, and think that they provide a great service for small publishers–and for readers. As I offer standard introductory pricing on my eBooks, I also understand Fictionwise’s business model in encouraging customers to return every week to see what’s on sale. But I can certainly understand those who prefer a model (like Mobipocket’s or All Romance eBooks) where publishers rather than the distributo set introductory and sale discounts, or where, (as with the Kindle store) the publisher receives the full percentage of list price even if the distributor decides on a mark-down.
I think there is a lot of publisher interest in the Kindle because Amazon sought publisher interest. Maybe eReader/Fictionwise was sought out by Apple, but I certainly haven’t heard of Apple outreaching to publishers. If they had, I certainly would have been in line.
I’m a big believer in multiple platforms. I read on both dedicated and shared devices and I can see advantages to both. I certainly hope that Amazon does well with the Kindle and I enjoy the Kindle sales I make. I hope that Apple reaches a whole new group of readers–some of whom will stay with the iPhone for their reading and some of whom may migrate to a larger dedicated device.
Rob Preece
Publisher, http://www.BooksForABuck.com
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