Archive for December, 2009
posted December 15, 2009
Book Publishers are between a Rock and a Hard Place
Posted by Judy Piatkus in Publishing
It is always hard for any product when the marketplace for that product changes – seemingly overnight sometimes.
Book publishers are suddenly having to resolve a massive dilemma – what should they charge for an e-book and when should they release it onto the market.
Book publishers pay brand-name authors huge advances to write bestselling books, both fiction and non-fiction.
Now that consumers have the chance to buy these authors’ works to download onto their handheld readers or their computers, publishers are in a terrible bind.
They have given the authors very large sums to write their books. But if they sell new work as e-book downloads, at cheap prices – which is what the public wants – they are never going to be able to make a profit on their author investment.
Publishers, authors, literary agents and all creators and sellers of books, in any form, need to put their heads together to come up with a new model which is going to work for as many people as possible.
Will they be capable of doing this?
It depends how flexible and how fast they can be during the negotiations.
Everyone will have a reasonable point of view.
Everyone will be listened to.
But at the end of the day the demands of the market will be like a tsunami, moving forward very fast and overwhelming everything within its path.
Its a tough call for everyone.
I think the book industry will be very different in five years.
But I would not want to make a prophecy about how it will look.
That will depend entirely on the creativity of all the parties concerned.
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