The thing about the end of Agency is that it’s not over. That is to say that the rearguard action by the legacy publishing establishment isn’t finished. And make no mistake, Agency Pricing and the rules and agreements that supported it were an attempt to stop the clock and buy the established players a breather against the tide of innovation. That the establishment chose to work with one of the greatest innovators in another sphere doesn’t make the move any less defensive, Apple certainly didn’t break too much new ground in the digital book world (though the game is a long one and they may yet).
For the record, the legacy establishment is almost duty bound to protect its position and I don’t resent the position it held. In many ways I have been a beneficiary of the legacy publishing system. Legacy publishers are in the position they are in because they were successful in an age that valued their corporate skills and in which scale was important and profitable. Agency was about protecting that model, that profit. It was couched in language that suggested it was about protecting the value of writing and the incomes of authors (and to be fair, many of those offering those lines do honestly believe them), but really it was about protecting company revenues and shareholders profits. I’m fine with those goals, I’m not fine with pretending or convincing myself I’m being noble when I’m not and I’m also not fine with the reader paying the price for that protection.
Readers were by far the biggest losers in the Agency world. Thus the actions of the big six ran directly counter to their most important stakeholders. The big six hadn’t yet realised that readers had become their biggest stakeholders. They still answered to other management.
The problem is that the publishing system as it stands is being ripped to shreds by digital change. We do need a publishing industry, we don’t necessarily need THIS publishing industry, the legacy one. There is no reason why any individual publisher MUST survive or that quality publishing won’t happen if the legacy publishers do fail.
The Agency battle was and is not really one over the creation or publishing of quality works nor even one over the price we might charge for those quality works or who sets that price, it is over the allocation of profit/revenue within the system that allows for the creation and publishing of quality works.
Authors will get paid if the big six fail, books will get published if the big six fall, books will get written, published and read if everyone currently in the industry somehow stopped being in the industry tomorrow. Sometimes publishers forget that.
The shame of it all is that if the big six publishers accepted the inevitability of change and directed their efforts towards the new opportunities and the radical restructuring that’s required rather than trying to fight, what I believe is a hopeless and misplaced rearguard action, they would have achieved more AND kept the audience with them.
That’s the key, because resisting puts them on the wrong side of the fight. Resisting the shift towards digital distribution and the attendant earthquake in industry structure makes publishers the bad guys. After Agency, suddenly publishers are not the nurturers of talent but the maintainers of high prices, not the finders of new voices but the conniving capitalists, the slick backroom dealers, not the men and women who live for the written word. Their companies are known worldwide for being sued by the US Government and for alleged collusion rather than for being companies with iconic brands and valuable legacies.
There IS a danger that an non-agency world might (though I think the possibility unlikely) have resulted in an Amazon monopoly, but even if it had and even if the changes being imposed DO lead to some form of monopoly, then at least publishers would have been on the RIGHT side of that monopoly, calling for action, on the side of the readers, the writers and the general wave of opinion rather than falling, as the record labels did before them, into the arms of fear and foolish resistance to change that they cannot control.
So the legacy system made a calculation that Agency could be gotten away with, and they were wrong. It might have boosted their revenues, given them a huge sense of control and power (attractive in a publishing world that has been so buffeted by change recently) but now, as the tide of blood rushes back out of the head and calmer times (populated by longer more reflective periods of courtroom drama and negative headlines) lie ahead perhaps the big six and those who favoured Agency might reflect not on the loss of Agency and it’s ‘possible’ negative consequences for their business models but on the loss of the moral ground, the real loss of the audience’s goodwill and the battle, not to maintain not just profitability, but, more importantly, legitimacy and to rebuild their image among readers the world over.
It has been a long week!
Weekend Abú!
Eoin
(Via Eoin Purcell’s Blog.)
Excellent article. Many readers acknowledge that it has been tough times for the publishing industry. Sadly a few large companies chose to battle their customers rather than innovate. I much rather invest in stock for a company which puts creative solutions in place for their customers.
The agency model has cast a bright spotlight on the publishers not only for the agency e-book pricing but also the accessibility and pricing paid by public libraries for e-books.
The publishers forgot the authors were their suppliers; the readers, their customers and they were just distributors,
And first tier of distributors at that, middlemen, warehousers. And in the digital world (today) distributors are at risk because distribution is quick and easy and there is no economy of scale for distributors.
You see, the publishers acted as suppliers with bookstores as their customers.
They forgot what business they were in and have been fighting an expensive but losing battle, angering the readers, the libraries, the bookstores, and the authors. Tho some authors are still in the 19th century. Just ask Baen and Cory.
Good points, Elizabeth. I’ve been a keen reader for 50 years, and previously thought of publishers as people who made good books widely available. I appreciated that: I had a very positive image of publishers. Geographic limitations and then Agency completely changed my view.
Prior to geolims, I never even looked to see who published a book. I was aware of some imprints (e.g. Collins Crime Club, Penguin Classics, Tor SF), but my eye passed happily and approvingly over the publisher name on the flyleaf. I just wanted the book, and as far as I could see, publishers were all trying to get the book to me.
With the sudden imposition of geolims, I had to try and work out why I wasn’t allowed to buy most of the ebooks I wanted. For some reason (which has never been adequately explained, despite my persistent questions) some publishers no longer wanted me to read their books. Even more oddly, as businesses, they didn’t want my money.
So I learned to avoid those publishers, and to give my appreciation and money to the publishers who did want me to read their ebooks (e.g. Baen, Samhain, Smashwords). My reading habits changed. I spent so much of my time trying to find out why I wasn’t allowed to buy most ebooks anymore, that I became accustomed to reading ebook blogs, rather than the ebooks themselves. I read a lot more public domain books (thankyou Project Gutenberg!), investigated library ebook-lending, and lost contact with (and interest in) many good authors whose work I’d previously been buying assiduously.
Agency made that all worse: the big publishers appeared greedy, irrational and out-of-touch (an ebook has less than 25% of the costs of a paper book, and no resale or transfer value, so why are we paying paperback prices?). Then, just before Christmas 2011, Hachette and HarperCollins doubled the prices of ebooks for Australians. We are now being asked to pay more than TWICE the paperback price for an ebook.
All of this is even more offensive for me, because I am disabled and can’t read paper books. I’m a huge buyer and reader of ebooks, when I’m allowed to buy them. Why would any publisher in its right mind want to alienate people like me?
It strikes me that we should note here how the publishing industry actually created the most astonishing image for themselves through the course of the 20th century. They managed to build a world wide distribution network, sell billions of books and make very substantial profits, while at the same time creating an image of themselves as precious curators and nurturers of quality writing and writers, making profits almost accidentally. That was quite an achievement.
One thing is for sure, this whole saga over the last few years has been a complete fiasco for that long nurtured image. It is amazing what you can destroy in such a short time.
A few things I want to pick up on in Eoin’s article:
“For the record, the legacy establishment is almost duty bound to protect its position and I don’t resent the position it held …. but really it was about protecting company revenues and shareholders profits”
The fundamental weakness of the Agency 6 group management and strategy has been that they have been focussed exclusively on ‘protecting their position’ for SHORT term profit, rather than aiming at success in the medium/long term and therefore greater earning for their shareholders. And so they have actually managed to betrayed those very shareholders as well as the readers. At the same time they have managed to push readers, en masse, into discovering a whole new world of indie publishers and self published authors. Quite an achievement.
Personally I don’t place much importance on the ‘image’ thing with the public. It is the other ‘achievements’ that really matter. The vast majority of readers, imho, neither know nor care much about publishers, who or what they are. The real damage is to their market presence and solidity and strength, and to their investors confidence.
All the while they have sat back and allowed Amazon to trundle on gaining market share.
These publishers, some of who are multi billion dollar multinationals, have totally failed to tackle Amazon head on with any meaningful online presence. Where are the partnerships ? the joint ventures ? to enter this market and the device and app market ? Where is the actual competition ? They are no where to be seen! Another damming indictment of the management and strategy of these companies who spend so much of their time whining about Amazon’s monopoly in a market they have failed to enter.