I'll keep this short and simple.
In a blog post by Hugh Howey, the data is clear. Hachette is ripping off authors and is fighting Amazon to continue to do so. Read it and weep.
So, Hachette authors in the midlist, how do you feel about that?
Michael J. Sullivan breaks it down so everyone gets the point.
I learned the meaning a new word this morning - fisking. A point-by-point criticism of someone else's blog post. That is what Joe Konrath does with Hatchette author, Charles Stross.
I fail to see why exactly Hatchette authors are so busy supporting a multinational mega-corporation that has only its best interests at heart. I know. Stockholm Syndrome. It's the same reason Patty Hearst was seen on camera in a bank supporting the very people who kidnapped, tortured, and turned her to the Dark Side. She identified with her captors because she saw the cessation of torture as benevolence on the part of her captors. She became a Manchurian candidate, brain washed to believe that black is white and day is night. Understandable that the mind would protect itself by creating and believing in a fantasy world that has nothing in common with reality, at least not the reality that most people live with.
I do see Hatchette's point. If they get Amazon to agree to their terms in negotiation, the consumer will be back with the old agency model fixing prices so the consumer will have no choice but to buy fewer books because they have to pay more for them. Isn't that what the Department of Justice declared was illegal back when Apple and the Big 5 (one of which was Hatchette) colluded to fix prices and keep them unusually high? It wasn't authors who won on that deal because they still saw less money than they should have since they were the motive force behind publishing and the reason for publishing's existence.
It seems that modern authors are less willing to go the route of Jane Austen, Anaïs Nin, Henry Miller, and thousands of others before and after them. Mark Twain went so far as to open his own publishing house to keep more of his earnings. It could be said that Mark Twain did that so he could spend more, and there is some truth to that, but ultimately it was because he wanted to write books on his own terms, terms he wasn't being offered by publishers. Publishers refused Henry Miller a change to get his words out because they felt his work was pornographic. Having read all of Miller's books, I'd have to say that the sex in the books, although somewhat distasteful, was germane to the story he told, which was essentially a memoir. Miller wrote what he knew.
Jane Austen self-published because there were few publishers willing to print books by women, hence one of the reasons why so many women published under male names: Georges Sand, the Bronte sisters, and Andre Norton (Alice Mary Norton), among others. C. J. Cherryh made up her name for the same reason and the Bronte sisters "...chose the neutral pen-names of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, not wishing to expose themselves to the prejudice or the condescension then often displayed by critics towards women writers, but scrupling to take names positively masculine." Thus they cloaked their identities. None of that would have been necessary had publishing been more catholic in their acquisition of writers of both genders.
The point is that publishers have a vested interest in keeping writers thinking like hostages and Amazon has changed that. Even in the 21st century, women are considered second class citizens despite their best selling status. Even Oprah chooses more male writers for her book club. But that is a topic for another time.
The point is that Hatchette wants to control the price to keep their bank accounts hefty and flourishing while forcing their biggest distributor, Amazon, to knuckle under and not discount prices. Hatchette hasn't thought very hard on this subject or they would see that if Amazon follows the policy of high eBook prices then their customers will go elsewhere for books, like remainder bins and secondhand bookstores and third party sellers since they won't be able to afford to buy the books at Hatchette's inflated prices. Now that is what I call bottom line thinking, which is all about greed and not about doing what's best for authors. Hatchette authors would see that if they would just take off the blinkers and be willing to go independent or force publishers to give them better terms. Joe Konrath said it best when he said that Hatchette, and the other members of the Big 5 Publishers, own their asses.
Signing a publishing contract means you will likely be relegated to the mid-list, which also happens to be the engine that keeps the Big 5 running, while they cater to and give the Cadillac treatment to a small cadre of authors, like Scott Turow, James Patterson (who is basically a cottage industry churning out books by the dozens), and others.
A few years ago a budding writer acquaintance submitted a proposal to a literary agent. She was intent on getting a specific agent to represent her work and sent her proposal and a letter to said agent who turned her down without a second thought. We put our heads together and reworked the proposal for the nonfiction book and submitted it to a small publishing house. She got the contract, which she then took and immediately went back to the agent who had turned her down and asked for another chance. She got her chance and the agent signed her -- for the same book she had proposed earlier and been refused. What did the agent have to lose?
Nothing.
The agent didn't have to pitch the book to anyone. She didn't have to work with the writer because the publisher's editor would do that. The agent didn't even have to break a sweat to sign on the dotted line to represent the author and take 15% of the profits for the life of the book because the author did all the work for her.
Hatchette is using the same tactic. They hold authors in bondage to onerous contracts that give them the rights to publish the authors' works and do what they will with them. Unless they are Turow or Patterson, the authors won't have control of cover art or marketing or anything but writing. Some authors find that an equable deal, but it's really not. They just sold their soul to the devil for 7-1/2 pieces of silver. Even Judas got the full 30 pieces first, but then he bargained for himself and didn't have a publisher taking 75% of his money for doing very little.
How many authors get the kind of media blitz that Patterson or Turow get? Especially in the midlist ranks? Andre Norton told me that her publishers never gave her more than a $35K advance because that is how many books usually sold. Of course, they didn't take into account that they were holding Norton's back list hostage and not reprinting the books and that Norton fans scoured secondhand bookstore shelves to own one of her books. Norton lived a good life, but she was by no means as wealthy as Turow or Patterson even though some of her books were optioned for movies. She just did not have the power and the publisher refused to let any of the power they did have slip through their fingers.
Publishing is slavery of a kind and Hatchette wants to keep its slaves ignorant of the facts and under the Hatchette thumb. Publishers tout their editing, marketing, cover art, and connections as the reason to stay with them since all of that would fall on poor authors' shoulders and take away from their time to write. Authors don't want to become publishers, they just want to write books. I guess authors haven't figured out they can hire someone to do the same thing publishers do for a small fee, or even a small percentage, and keep 85% to 90% of their profits. That is news that Hatchette and the other members of the Big 5 don't want authors to know.
The point is that Hatchette is just the first of the Big 5 to run this gauntlet with Amazon, not because Amazon is so powerful and putting the squeeze on Hatchette, but because Amazon keeps Hatchette in business by selling more books than any other outlet -- because Amazon keeps the prices low with deep discounts, discounts that Hatchette wants to control. And we are back to the same argument that the DOJ already ruled on 2 years ago. Hatchette still wants to fix prices and Amazon says NO.
If Hatchette wins against Amazon, book prices will go up and stay up and who really wants to pay $20 for an eBook when they can get 2 or even 6 books for the same price and buy Hatchette's authors' books secondhand or from remainder outlets? Even the math challenged can figure out that 2 and 6 are more than 1.
Hatchette is leading the charge for the rest of the Big 5. What happens to them will pave the way for the other publishers who want to keep fixing prices and keep them high. I don't think Amazon will lose this negotiation because Hatchette needs Amazon more than Amazon needs Hatchette and the rest of the Big 5. As that fact sinks into Hatchette's legal minds, they will be forced to negotiate and thus the rest of the Big 5 will fall into line. Ultimately, Amazon does not have to carry Hatchette authors, but Hatchette needs Amazon's consumers, and it has nothing to do with protecting their authors. They are protecting the usurious profits made on the backs of their authors.
The writing is on the wall.
Insight often comes from strange places. At least it does for me.
I was watching Cranford and one of the characters, Lady Ludlow, was opposed to young Harry being taught to read and write. She didn't want to end up like her cousins across the channel in France with her head lying in a revolutionary's basket beneath a guillotine because she had allowed her serfs, or retainers, to learn to read and realize they could have a better life with an education. Slaves, serfs, peons, and servants who could read could topple her from playing Lady Largesse, the magnanimous and gentle tyrant that allowed then to work for her for tuppence and have regular meals, wear nice clothes, and wait to serve her at her pleasure -- or be dismissed to a life of poverty without a reference.
Of course, all of this is going on in my head in about 2 seconds and I realized how much like feudalism is publishing, especially now that the masses who want to publish their own books have gained control of the presses -- virtual and real. How the aristocracy must have cringed when the printing press became a reality and religious institutions no longer had to illuminate manuscripts and keep safe the written word, often for monarchs and landed gentry that couldn't read. They had servants to do that sort of thing in the good old days.
As books became cheaper and easily available, revolutions began. The Catholic church, once a nearly global power and anxious to convert newly discovered savages to the worship of the Trinity and Jesus Christ, began to topple as people learned to read and question the status quo. Why should the clergy be the last word on who does and does not go to heaven? Why should the poor pay the wealthy to pray for their souls and sell candles to light so a loved one would spend little time in purgatory and ascend to heaven?
Feudalism is built on the backs of the working classes, the serfs, peons, and slaves, a lesson that Rome learned at the point of a sword when Spartacus, and several other slave leaders, rose and threw off their chains. Even when a slave is treated well, he remains a slave, the person who does all the work and gets none, or few, of the benefits. How is that different from publishing? Oh, that's right. It is no different.
Publishing has been the gatekeeper for centuries, built on the words and hard work of every person who ever wanted to write a book and was found worthwhile to promote. It's much like allowing a slave to serve in the main house instead of in the fields, as long as the slave learned his place -- beholden to the whims of his master.
Publishing is feudalistic. Think not? The feudal system is based on a 3-tiered pyramid. A lord, king, or ruler is at the top and determines the fate of everyone beneath him. Knights, mercenaries, and retainers keep the peace and protect the lord. Serfs, servants, and peons, the poor working class, do all the work and tend the land, livestock, and businesses that supply the lord; they are the base of the pyramid, without which the lord would be a deluded aristocrat ruling nothing and unable to work for his bread or even know how to mill and bake it into cake or bread.
In publishing, the publishers are the lords. Agents are the knights, the strong arm of the lord that protect the publisher's business and vet the more acceptable serfs (writers) to work as servants to the publisher, those chosen from among the poor who have some talent and ability that can be exploited to make more money for the publisher. And then there are the remaining slaves/serfs who buy the books produced by the servants for the publishers and pay for the lavish lifestyle to which the publishers have become so accustomed. Better to live on Park Avenue with a view of the park than to live in Alphabet City or Harlem among the poor.
Contracts that keep the lion's share of earnings in publishers's pockets so they can maintain their vast wealth polished and intact, are part of the chains that bind the writer in servitude. There are certainly writers that have made millions, even hundreds of billions, but who has stopped to ask how much the publisher made on the deal. If a writer is worth $200 billion and they get 12-15% royalties on net profit, what the publisher keeps is an obscene amount of money, even after they pay employees, marketing staff, and the cost of creating books, something much more profitable since the advent of pulp wood paper instead of the more expensive and longer lasting rag and hemp paper. Paper that crumbles and turns to dust in 5 years means selling more copies as readers replace worn out books. More books means more sales and more profit for the publisher, most of which the writer will never see.
With the introduction of POD (Print On Demand) publishing and electronic books, the game changed. Publishers continued to denigrate the vanity presses, but e-books changed things forever. A book that never goes out of style, takes up no warehouse space, and can be kept virtually forever undermines the whole structure upon which publishing was built. Writers finally had control and could strike out on their own and rise above the masses by writing and selling good books that had a shelf life beyond 3 months. No more remaindering. No more binding contracts to greedy publishers. No more supporting someone else's lavish lifestyle when a lavish lifestyle, or at least publication of books publishers turned down. The gatekeepers are out of a job, which is why publishers and Apple decided to fix prices on e-books at near or above the cost of paperback books. If a paperback book is cheaper or the hardback, when discounted, was not much more expensive, then books were safe and the e-book revolution would go away. Writers would get tired of doing all the work of producing a book, from cover art to marketing and sales. I'm sure the aristocrats felt the same way before the French revolutionaries arrested and led them up to Lady Guillotine. Look where it got them.
The revolution has come and the class war between the people who produce the books -- writers -- and the people who have profited the most from books -- publishers -- are at war. What we need is a truce and a coalition of forces that benefits everyone, just not with the 90/10 split that has ruled publishing for so long, or 88/12 split that currently passes for business as usual. Not everyone is J. K. Rowling or Danielle Steel. Most people have been relegated to the middle ranks, writers that produced good quality books in genres that sold well, but not spectacularly, the mid list writers that have been the bread and butter of the publishing industry, writers that never got fabulously wealthy but were upper middle class with a solid back list that still sold books decades after they were published.
Instead of struggling to the bitter end, publishers would be better served to give a hand up and offer their services as book packagers, marketing specialists, and sales teams to up and coming writers instead of trying to maintain a crumbling edifice. Publishers have vast resources that could benefit revolutionaries without all the rancor, price fixing, and game playing that currently exists. It's a choice of adapting or dying, and dying is a distinct option right now as more and more published authors are fleeing publishers for more lucrative deals that offer better benefits and more freedom creatively and financially. It's the choice of 12-15% or 35-70% of sales, and not net sales but gross sales.
The class war is waging with no end in sight. Emotions are high and at this point the results are volatile. Better to work with writers, those hard working people who dream in prose and are the only reason for publishers to exist, than to fight to maintain a system that no longer works.
The slaves, serfs, and servants have learned how to read. They have educated themselves and now know the score. I wonder if publishers have gotten the message yet or if they are still in denial as they climb the stairs to the guillotine while the masses surrounding them howl for blood and their heads.
A year or so ago, Amazon knuckled under to the big publishers and agreed not to discount their ebooks any more. It was a tough decision and Amazon hung out as long as possible, but in the eleventh hour there was nothing to do but bow the head and take it like a big corporation should. It was tough to see the end of that fight . . . but it's not over yet.
It looks like Apple and the Big Publishers are facing a lawsuit for price fixing. Imagine that. Apple and the big publishers wanted to keep Amazon on a leash because Apple and Steve Jobs were afraid that Amazon would get into the movie and music downloading business, and Jobs wanted that corner of the world for himself. Guess it came back to bite him in his nether regions and he may be forced to give up hsi dream of world domination.
A few days ago, Steve Jobs, looking very thin and ill and having some trouble navigating the stage, unveiled the Apple iCloud, which is similar to the Amazon Cloud Drive, and how even the Mobile Me, which Jobs admitted was a bust, would be incorporated and the annual price, which was $99/year for Mobile Me, was now free. It was a moving moment for the audience, as was the demonstration of what iCloud will do, and that is synch all input from the cloud to every device -- as long as you own Apple products (Mac, iPhone, iPod, etc.).
The thing is, in business you don't beat the competition by making them play on a different field or by taking them off the field completely, but by playing head to head and toe to toe and may the best man win. That is not what happened with Amazon last year and not what is happening now.
On forums all over the Internet, people are complaining about paying near hard cover prices for ebooks. The perceived value is that a file endlessly downloaded and formatted once should not cost as much as a hard cover, paper and board book, and even more than a paperback because there are no physical resources involved. Militant readers are calling for boycotts of the big publishers and waiting on books they really want to be remaindered or become available as secondhand books. Either way, publishers aren't paying attention and neither it seems is Steve Jobs at Apple. They can't see readers are beginning to fight back.
To further expunge all mention of Amazon or links to Amazon in ebooks, books sold in the Apple store through Smashwords must have no mention of Amazon, or any other bookstore, and no links are allowed, which cuts an author's chance to cheaply market their ebooks. Not everyone owns a iPhone, iPad, or Mac and authors know that. Making links to other bookstores is one way to provide access to books and offers a few alternatives for point of sale. When I submitted the revised version of Among Women to Smashwords I was told I had to take down all links other than Apple iStore links or my book would not be distributed at all. Apple's draconian measures affect all the bookstores where Smashwords distributes ebooks, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Diesel, Kobo, Sony, etc. Since when does one store have the right to determine what is and is not allowed for other stores? Never, until Apple got into the price fixing and smash Amazon game.
Add to that little titbit, the news that the big publishers' accounting systems are out of date and sales of ebooks are being under reported. In other words, more ebooks are sold than are reported and authors are not getting paid royalties for all ebooks sold. That's not news to authors. We know what is and is not going on with our money.
Publishers have been playing an end game that is going to cost them the reason for their existence -- authors. Self-publishing is looking better and better, even if an eStributor, as Joe Konrath calls agents to help package and manage sales of ebooks, is involved. Even though it was not their intention, it looks like the big publishers and Apple, under the guidance of Steve Jobs, who has not gotten over what happened in the beginning days of computers and operating systems, are going to have to pay for their price fixing and cavalier attitudes towards authors and competitors.
Every day is a new day and in the publishing word outside of the behemoth that traditional publishing has become, each new day hammers a new nail into the coffin. When you add in factors like literary agent, Andrew Wylie's railing against the 30% share of the market distributors like Apple and Amazon get from publishers and calling on publishers to stand firm against such tactics. The Jackal, as Wylie is called, said that Amazon and Apple should be willing to go quid quo pro and give publishers 30% of sales of iPads and Kindles to publishers if they wanted to protect the 30% they demand stating, "They [Amazon and Apple] have the device, but they cannot sell it without the content." Wylie's deal with Amazon to sell ebooks of his clients' back lists seems to fly in the face of his stand against Amazon and Apple, especially in the face of Random House publicly censuring Wylie by calling him a competitor instead of a deal broker between authors and publishers.
Yes, boys and girls, this is a volatile age we live in and the battles in publishing have just begun. Personally, not having to deal with agents and the ponderously slow time table of publishers seems more and more like a smart move, especially when my own publisher can't be bothered to send out quarterly statements quarterly and prefers to do it annually. Granted, the sales have been slow, but they have picked up and here we are in the third quarter without a single word from the publisher. At least Smashwords and Amazon pay every month without fail, no matter what royalties have been earned.
