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Publishing and Pricing
Feb. 5th, 2010 10:04 amSo, as you may have heard, Amazon and Macmillan, a very large publishing company, are having a very public slap-fight. Macmillan wants to price their e-books at a certain level, while Amazon wants them cheaper. So Amazon pulled (and so far has not restored) the ability to buy any Macmillan title (e- or paper) via Amazon. Not surprisingly, the authors of those books are mightily pissed. I don't currently have a dog in this fight, but it's an interesting one to watch.
The online argument has devolved, like many arguments, into certain less-than-knowledgeable folks suggesting that the authors should just bypass publishers altogether. After all, "traditional publishing" is going away. Mister John Scalzi, Esquire, thinks not. Having committed self-publishing myself, I agree with Scalzi.
Another argument is that publishers should do like musicians do, and create "indie" labels. Well, besides the problems Scalzi pointed out, Susan Piver, a former music executive, says that the Amazon / Macmillan slap-fight is exactly what destroyed diversity in the music industry. The gist of her argument is simple: large national retailers don't want to deal with lots of small regional suppliers. Once you get rid of the small suppliers, the large guys can't and don't track regional or small-market tastes. The result - a focus on big hits. This has led the record industry to develop a business model of selling a huge number of units of a relatively small number of artists. Or, exactly the opposite of the publishing industry.
At the end of the day, this is an argument about what kind of book market we want - one even more driven by the best seller list or one that's more diverse?
The online argument has devolved, like many arguments, into certain less-than-knowledgeable folks suggesting that the authors should just bypass publishers altogether. After all, "traditional publishing" is going away. Mister John Scalzi, Esquire, thinks not. Having committed self-publishing myself, I agree with Scalzi.
Another argument is that publishers should do like musicians do, and create "indie" labels. Well, besides the problems Scalzi pointed out, Susan Piver, a former music executive, says that the Amazon / Macmillan slap-fight is exactly what destroyed diversity in the music industry. The gist of her argument is simple: large national retailers don't want to deal with lots of small regional suppliers. Once you get rid of the small suppliers, the large guys can't and don't track regional or small-market tastes. The result - a focus on big hits. This has led the record industry to develop a business model of selling a huge number of units of a relatively small number of artists. Or, exactly the opposite of the publishing industry.
At the end of the day, this is an argument about what kind of book market we want - one even more driven by the best seller list or one that's more diverse?
