This Electronic Business: Are Authors Being Sidelined? By Richard Lewis

Richard Lewis has some further thoughts, and information, about where authors may be going with the spread of electronic commerce. He asks, how are authors going to cope with this? So far, they don’t seem to be doing much.



e-books : Plan B


There is an interesting article in the Financial Times (11 Feb 2009), which offers a coda to my last post. Here are some highlights -- the figures refer to the US market:

'Amazon may well be on the way to creating a USD 1 billion a year electronic books business by as early as 2010, but publishers are ... fearful of a disastrous cannibalization of the USD 25 billion books market ...
'It is a scene replayed throughout the media landscape: traditional companies dragging their heels to meet the demands of younger consumers keen on spending more time on digital devices ...'

Simon & Schuster CEO Caroyln Reidy:

'The biggest challenge for us is [that] consumers expect things like digital content to be free. There isn't a model yet.
'More troubling, perhaps, is a concern that [amazon's e-book reader] Kindle's runaway success could fortify amazon.com as the book publishing sector's Apple, whose iTunes service and iPod model holds a veritable chokehold on the music business ...'


HarperCollins CEO Brian Murray sees digital sales climbing from 1% of total currently to 5-7% over five years:

'Whether it's Apple or Sony, we'd like to see as many entities [sic] come in to build this market.'


I find Reidy's comment dismaying -- "There isn't a model yet." If our publishers are sitting around waiting for someone else to invent a business model, rest assured they -- and we -- will be sidelined economically in the model that eventually does emerge.

Clearly, paper books and e-books are going to coexist for quite some time before digital finally takes over. At the very least, authors should now be doggedly holding on to their digital rights when negotiating contracts. That way, for a time, writers can enjoy the best of both worlds, allowing their publishers to build an audience for their books and then offering the digital version direct. That would seem to offer some small recompense for the hit we are taking on discounted sales through the physical book trade.

Does anyone have any thoughts about this except me? ...