Found via BoingBoing, a New York Magazine article (single-page, multi-page) examines the various crises currently facing print book publishing. Said crises include the practice of paying out advances that are far too huge, the declining number of serious readers, clashes of personality, the huge amount of influence being wielded by megastores such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and so on—but there are some words spared for Amazon’s Kindle as well.
The article trots out the "iPod of e-books" expression that is rapidly becoming a cliché, and then gets to the heart of the matter:
The ultimate fear is that the Kindle could be a Trojan horse. Right now, Amazon is making little or nothing on Kindle books. Lay down your $359 and you can get most books for $9.99. Publishers list that same Kindle version for about $17.99, though, and—as with all retailers—charge Amazon roughly half that price for it. Which means that Amazon keeps only a dollar on each book, while the publishers make $9.
But Amazon may be offering a sweet deal now in order to undercut publishers later. If their low, low prices succeed in making e-books the dominant medium, they can pay publishers whatever they want. “The concern is they want to corner the market,” explains one books executive, and then force publishers to accept a genuine 50 percent discount. “If they took over as little as 10 to 20 percent of the market,” says an agent, “publishers simply would not be able to exist.”
Other e-book vendors, such as eReader and Fictionwise—or the entire existence of e-books at all apart from Kindle editions, for that matter—are not even mentioned.
Correction, 11:16 p.m.: The original source was New York Magazine, not the Times. Fixed.
Tis is exactly why the e-book movement is so important, imho. It has the potential to do for books what the indie movement did for music. You don’t *have to* go with a major publisher to get out there and get fans and have a career. Look at the Eragon books, bought by a major publisher *after* its home-schooled teenaged author sold them out of a truck at local bookstores for years. Or the Vegan Lunchbox cookbook author—it started as a blog, she sold out her first self-published run, then got picked up by a major publisher. Or the podcasting author (I forget his name) who signed a six-figure book deal after podcasting his first book. You have to think outside the box a little, maybe, but new technology offers tons of opportunities for authors who want to go the indie route!
This article is from New York Magazine, not the New York Times – different publications. Great article, though!
Thanks for the alert, Kevin! Fixed. David
Agree this is an excellent article. Like many publishers, I want the Amazon Kindle to succeed wonderfully–but not uniquely. Whether it’s Amazon, Fictionwise, Sony, or Apple, a single monopoly distributor could put the squeeze on both publishers and end customers.
Amazon currently lists my Kindle books at below my list price (below the price I sell them for on my own website). But they continue to pay me 50% of my list price. I can’t argue with their strategy–if I were selling a hardware device, I’d want to offer discounts to encourage people to buy the device. At least for BooksForABuck.com books, the discount they offer is smaller than for best-sellers, meaning Amazon actually makes money. As long as there are plenty of active competitors, Amazon selling books cheap sounds like a good thing to me.
Rob Preece
Publisher, http://www.BooksForABuck.com
One thing publishers seem to forget is that despite what many claim, the Kindle does not lock you in to only buying books from Amazon. Baen publishes their own ebooks for sale on their site. There really isn’t very much standing in the way of anyone developing their own Kindle friendly storefront, allowing people to purchase through the Kindle’s web browser.
Granted, you may not get the visibility you would through Amazon’s store front, but you can be sure if I want to buy your book and it’s not on Amazon, but is for sale on your website in a format I can use on my Kindle, I won’t think twice about buying it from you (unless the price is unreasonable, but what’s fair for ebook pricing is still up in the air as far as I’m concerned)
Rob, Feedbooks and manybooks supply oodles of books for the Kindle; my own, for example (plug, plug):
http://www.feedbooks.com/author/323
http://manybooks.net/authors/herleyr.html
I’m sure Kindle won’t come to dominate. There is too much activity elsewhere in the display market.
As for the article, surely the penny has dropped with publishers by now — e is changing their comfortable little world for ever, and not before time.