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Lit agent Andrew Zack understandably skeptical of e-books—and his numbers help back him up
April 24, 2008 | 1:14 pm
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By David Rothman
For e-bookers are too smug about the status quo, I’ll share some all-too-revealing numbers from a veteran literary agent named Andrew Zack—along with his interpretation of them.
“I recently received a royalty statement for one of my client’s titles from HarperCollins,” he writes in his blog for the The Zack Company. “It’s seven pages long! This seemed a bit extreme to me, until I realized that pages 3-7 were all detail for e-book editions:
- 9 copies of the Adobe E-Book
- 8 copies of the Mobipocket edition
- 2 copies of the Microsoft Reader edition
- 6 copies of the Palm Reader edition
- 10 copies of the Sony Reader edition”
“Don’t hold your breath waiting for the e-book revolution,” writes Zack, a gungho bicyclist whose professional history includes time at major lit agencies and publishers such as Simon & Schuster. “Thousands of hardcovers were sold and only a handful of e-book copies…
“It somewhat amazes me…that a huge company like HarperCollins is creating all of these eBook editions and dealing with accounting for them. Think of the millions of dollars in extra paper and mailing costs for the royalty statements alone!”
Shaking his head “in wonder”
“Honestly, after all of the hullabaloo, agita, mishigas, and general bloodshed over the royalties for e-books, when I look at these statements, I have to shake my head in wonder. Was it really worth it? Did publishers really need to piss off authors and agents and maybe even lose deals over e-book royalties?
“Consider that most of the books published this year will be out of print before e-book readers are commonplace (are you dropping $300-$400 for one anytime soon?). So unless you happen upon the next Catcher in the Rye that will stay in print for decades and decades, was there really a risk in not getting e-book rights? I think not.”
Let’s hope that HarperCollins’ just-announced experimental imprint can help turn things around—through avoidance of DRM sales-toxins, ideally, and the offering of digital editions with hard cover copies. But as should be abundantly clear to TeleBlog readers, one publisher can’t do the job alone. We need not just cheaper and better hardware but also industry-level action among publishers.
Related: Information on Amzon’s financial results, from Publishers Weekly. Notice, though? No mention of Kindle e-book sales numbers. In fairness to Amazon, I expect some good news after the unit has been out a bit longer without the delays that until recently plagued shoppers. It’ll be interesting to hear what agents and publishers have to say further on the issue. Zack’s numbers from HarperCollins didn’t even offer Kindle stats—too early, I’d assume.
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Comments:
I remember similar criticism being leveled at the Raleigh, North Carolina News and Observer when “nando.net” was became of the first newspapers to publish on the Internet in the mid-90s. After all, it’s obvious that online newspapers will never be economically viable, isn’t it?
Er, make that “…when ‘nando.net’ became one of the the first…” Gotta fire my proofreader.
Hi, Todd. I think Zack’s a bit pessimistic, but still worth paying attention to–the e-book biz is a MAJOR underperformer, and DRM and eBabel are no small reasons for this. Thanks. David the Hardly Infallible
I’m wondering what the title/category of book is being referred to by Zack. I don’t doubt that the current demand for ebooks is eclipsed by print books. However, it seems that bestsellers are in demand at most ebook outlets.
Just this past month I have purchased 26 novels (Fictionwise was running an incredible sale and I decided to take advantage of it). I continue to purchase many more e-titles than p-titles…
Should I also mention that although Kindle is now back in stock (though no sales numbers) the Cybook is sold out again. So it would appear that there is a strong demand for the devices. And if the devices are being adopted by reading enthusiasts, the sales numbers should begin reflecting those numbers. Of course you don’t need a device for a p-book so there’s obviously a larger market (but also more expense per unit to publishers).
It’s a chicken-and-egg scenario. E-books won’t take off, except among hobbyists and techies, until there is an affordable and DRM-free reader for it. And there won’t be demand for that and e-books take off.
Until we know the book title and author, the ebook stats are simply meaningless. It could be a title that all of us would look at and exclaim, “Well, who would buy *that*?”
And I can’t *believe* a repuatble agent is squawking like this:
>>>“It somewhat amazes me…that a huge company like HarperCollins is creating all of these eBook editions and dealing with accounting for them. Think of the millions of dollars in extra paper and mailing costs for the royalty statements alone!”
Hello, if you were MY agent, I’d promptly tell you to STFU. That’s information — and MONEY — I want!