E-Publishers: Why I don't take most of them seriously.

[seawasp]

This post was prompted by the recent announcement by shadowhelm  of his beginning a new publishing company, an E-publisher. Like most, if not all, it appears that Sky Warrior Book Publishing expects authors to submit stuff for payment via royalty alone. Even if I'm wrong on this, the following still applies overall to the E-publishing industry.


I have no problem with other people supporting these ventures. However...

... an Ebook publisher who's going to be serious -- to me -- has to work just like a regular publisher. That means no "speculative" publication of an author's work. If you accept for publication, there needs to be an advance, judged against your guess of potential sales, just like regular publishers.

If that's not the case, it sends a signal to me that the Ebook publisher is not serious, or at least not confident in their ability, to give me any more than I could give myself. I have the same access to the Web, I can either make, or have made, a sales website, I even have some small fanbase to spread the word. This is true of ANY published author. The ONLY thing that's being offered at that point is perhaps some of the administrative duties of running a site that sells stuff, but heck, Amazon does that too.

A publisher has to bring more to the table. That means money, editors/proofreaders, artists/layout people, and connections for distribution. THOSE are the things that make an author take you seriously. Advances are THE way of proving that a publisher seriously believes in what they are doing. They're sending the author money based on their evaluation of the value of that work, and betting not just that advance, but all the work they're going to do WITH that book to get it sold, that it'll make enough money back to pay off the advance AND all their efforts AND then at least a little more.

As an author, I'm putting many hours of my work on the table. I may have already done the work, but it was still time sacrificed from something else. What is the publisher offering me?

In the case of Real Books, the physical ones, a good publisher is offering me a lot; besides the advance, they have well-established sales and distribution channels to major markets. An E-Publisher doesn't, as a rule, have any better access to these than I do personally, unless the E-publisher is itself part of a larger publishing or media conglomerate, or otherwise has a LOT of fame associated with them that will naturally serve to draw people to THEIR E-publishing site rather than anyone else's.

So that's my take on it. If I want to offer my novels online (and they're not novels owned by Baen, which DOES have the connections and distributes a lot of Ebooks profitably), then an E-publisher needs to show me -- unambiguously and clearly -- what they offer me for my E-novels that I cannot do myself by putting my book on Amazon.

I have to trot off to work, but before I go, an example of what E-publishers COULD do to have value added: have people or organizations with POWERFUL online presences as major advertisers and front men/women for their publishing work. But that can't be "sometimes John Scalzi mentions our stuff" but "John Scalzi has a regular column all about our stuff" or "Slashdot features our stuff every week" or something of that nature.

Comments

[dsrtao]

Or, Tor spends enough on tor.com that they have significant readership every single day.

[laurahcory1.livejournal.com]

jimhines has a good post from yesterday about e-publishing:
http://jimhines.livejournal.com/554493.html

[muirecan.livejournal.com]

I agree an epublisher needs to bring all the tools a regular publishing house does or they are not really a serious publisher. Instead they are at best a vanity press, just an e version of a vanity press.

As you note a publisher brings editors/proofreaders, artists and layout people, additionally connections to distribute and advertise. It may not be all the same but many of the same tasks that a traditional paper book publisher engage in must also be provided by an actual professional epublishing house.

Basically a publisher should be bringing value added benefits to the party that make the end product better than what the author cranked out of his or her head. They provide editing, layout [and yes layout is important in ebooks you can't just throw a book into a converter such as say Calibre and call it published], distribution and advertising. An author needs exposure and just hoping that chance will link you is not a good way to go.

An epublisher should have a solid web presence akin to what Tor.com is or Baen. Even something like Nightshade's website. Basically they need an active and updating website to attract people. They need to be getting attention for their authors and luring in more people to try their authors books.

Just taking a book from someone, running it through an ebook publishing program and posting it on their website for sale or on Amazon is not epublishing, or at least not very good epublishing.

Also as you note an actual real epublisher should be paying for the book and not being paid to publish the book or again it is just a vanity press.

[shadowhelm.livejournal.com]

Hey dude!

Believe it or not, I am a value added service. I've got editors/proofreaders/cover artists and layout folks lined up.

Can I give advances yet? Hell no. But I pay quarterly. You read right: quarterly. And by god, you're actually going to make money. I know. I'm making money right now.

So, yeah, wonder about the value added. Ask questions. I have no slight of hand here. If it doesn't work, you're out 3 ebooks for 5 years, which isn't a lot of time, publishing-wise. Hell, that's about the time some places get around to sending rejections.

[julesjones]

I'm epubbed, and my publisher didn't pay advances initially and only pays them now on certain lengths (i.e. the ones they're trying to encourage us to write). So I'm a lot more sympathetic to royalty-only e-publishing than Rik is. However...

Paying quarterly drops you (general, not specific, you) to near the bottom of my list of publishers to consider submitting to. I expect to be paid monthly in return for not getting an advance, and if you don't pay at least every two months I start wondering if that's because it will cost you more to cut the check and post it than you're going to pay me. Someone saying "I pay quarterly" as if that's something for an author to get excited about is a red flag, because that suggests that the would-be publisher either doesn't know that monthly is standard in royalty-only e-publishing where you can expect more than beer money, or is hoping that the authors don't know that.

And my publisher takes rights for 2 years, renewable by mutual consent. I'm going to be leary of a royalties-only epublisher that wants much longer, unless they're bringing something else to the party (such as, for example, they're the e-imprint of Harlequin, and have *serious* promo resources to call on that make it worth putting up with Stuff.)

[seawasp]

Tor is also a Real Publisher, so to speak, and thus one presumes they're going to be doing E-books mostly as part of doing a book in all formats.

[seawasp]

Note: I'm perfectly sympathetic to the idea of royalty-only E-publishing. I did that some years back. But I'm a pro now and there's things I've learned since then. One of them is that if I'm accepting a reduction in one thing, something else has to increase -- probably a lot, if the thing I'm accepting the reduction in is large.

My publisher takes rights for 5 years. BUT they're a print publisher, and they pay me a significant advance for that privilege. They also have distributor connections and publicity and an established name to trade with, which are HUGE advantages.

My publisher pays biannually, as do most publishers. So the once-per-quarter is nice, but in no way makes up for sacrificing even a relatively small advance unless there's MORE to make up for it.

[baronger.livejournal.com]

I love how Baen does ebooks, and its how I got one of your novels.

Personally I still see publishers as giving us consumers one very important thing. That of being a gatekeeper. I first realized this when Baen, had that old promotion contest back in the 80's. It was then that I started looking at who published a book, when I was trying to decide if I should buy it.

The difference between just publishing it yourself as an unknown and doing it through a e-pub, has to be one of reputation.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

Agreed; as a Real Publisher they sell books, and the question of data file vs. dead tree bits is a delivery question.

For way more reading than anyone needs, Charlie Stross wrote about publishing and Slushkiller, a huge thread about why the world needs editors.