The Business of Publishing

Nutshell analysis of the “New Think for Old Publishers” panel at South by Southwest 2009: there was a not a single new think in the room. Let me be clear. Absolutely clear. Not one word spoken in that session, either from the panelists or from the audience, was new or innovative. (This is ironic given the fact that Penguin UK/Six to Start won two awards for the brilliant We Tell Stories project later that night. Congratulations to everyone involved, with a special shout-out to Jeremy Ettinghausen!) Let’s back up. The panel — fronting a room of about 300 people — […]

Used to be that working the d-book (digital book) beat was an easy gig. You could go years without any news of note. Lately, you can’t go to bed for fear of missing a story. Digital books might not be a major revenue item on the P&L, but they’re the hottest story in Pub Town. Competition is good for books, devices, retailers…and readers. (Benefit: the press, blogosphere, Twittersphere, and other spheres are talking about books. A lot.) Hot on the heels of the Kindle 2 and its (silly, pointless, and, frankly, reader-unfriendly) controversy came the long-rumored Amazon Kindle iPhone app.

As controversies go, the Authors Guild vs. Kindle didn’t last long. Last Tuesday, Guild President Roy Blount, Jr. was fuming about infringement of digital audio rights in the New York Times. By Friday afternoon Amazon announced that it would allow publishers to disable Kindle’s text-to-speech (TTS) feature on a title by title basis. Some fear that the Amazon caved too quickly to the Authors Guild’s demands. On the contrary, I think we will one day come to see this decision as a big win for Amazon and not the Guild. Amazon may have given up control over one feature, but

I have been thinking for days, weeks, months, heck, years about ebook pricing and traditional publishers. Just for fun last week, I ran some numbers using the general figures from Bob Miller in the comments on his ebook pricing post*, plus a guesstimate of 12% general overhead (high or low, doesn’t really change the bottom line on a per unit basis), and they’re not pretty if you’re a publisher. After modeling various scenarios, two words come to mind: creek and paddle. Amazon isn’t setting a table for one, they’re throwing a dinner party. Especially if you are trying to port

I’d like to note that Digital Rights Management has won the “Big Bad” title at the O’Reilly Tools of Change Conference for three years in a row! In today’s market and economy, that’s a major accomplishment. Congratulations to DRM for being the most hated aspect of digital publishing in 2009! You’d think the DRM folks out there would be feeling some shame by now. They’re not, and maybe it’s because there is a lot more fun in playing the DRM Blame Game than in tackling the problem (acknowledging here that players in the Blame Game have legitimate points). Here’s the

Some people go to Disneyland, Booksquare goes to New York for the Tools of Change conference. This year, I’m especially excited because I’m moderating the best panel of the conference: Smart Women Read eBooks, featuring the fabulous Angela James from Samhain Publishing, Malle Vallik of Harlequin, and Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. I’m just going to sit back and let them roll. (Before we get into the good stuff, I’d like to congratulate Teel McClanahan III of Modern Evil Pres on winning our ToC conference guest pass. And a special thank you to Fran Toolan and Doug Lessing

If you’re in the publishing industry, today’s news about cuts and layoffs and reorgs and whatnot was devastating. Nobody was safe. Not Thomas Nelson, not Simon & Schuster, not Irwyn Applebaum. You start to look around. Who’s next? At Random House, it was clear that saving the imprints was key. Markus Dohle talked about aligning “existing strengths and publishing affinities” and how this imprint or that will be better, stronger, safer. As if that matters. Who really cares if Crown or Knopf or Ballantine or Bantam Dell survives? I’m serious. Who. Cares.