Editor’s note: We love to run thoughtful e-book-related essays from authors. Publishers, PR people, pundits, press—we hear from them all, but not the authors they’re talking about. This post is by an author, Luke Bergeron, who writes mispeled, where it first appeared in a somewhat different form. – Paul Biba.
I’m a writer—at least, I like to fancy myself as one. My first novella, Neither a Borrower, is on Scribd.com. I posted it there for free because no one buys novellas and I’m still learning how to write, so charging for it didn’t seem right. Neither a Borrower is a fair effort, but I’m still learning.
I hold a master’s degree in English, a degree I earned by completing a novel as a thesis: Disappearances. Although it earned me a degree, Disappearances will probably never see the light of day, unless I finally get sick of revisions, call it done, and post it on Scribd for free.
Now I am three-fourths through my second novel, and although I keep a fairly pessimistic view of my writing, this new project makes me feel as if it’s decent. Where to find a home for it?
Physical print is dying. It hasn’t died yet, but is well on its way. Amazon’s e-book sales are growing every month, and more and more companies are entering the e-book marketplace. For accessibility, green, and profitability reasons, print is going electronic. Good.
But what does that mean for the author? That’s what this post is about, viewed from my own stance as an author and a lover of technology. So here we go:
Assumption 1: E-books are the future. Everyone already knows this. No one is exactly sure what form they will take [read on a dedicated device, read on a computer screen, how to deliver content, etc.], but there is little disagreement that e-books are coming and will eventually rule the day.
Assumption 2: People prefer free content over paid content. You take a good app and put it up on the Apple app store for free and there’s a good chance you’ll find yourself ruling one of the tops slots, even if only for a few days. You take an awesome app and put it up for 99 cents, and the fight to the top is much harder.
Assumption 3: Advertising has traditionally funded free content. Television commercials. Websites. You get the point.
Assumption 4: Piracy is a problem that needs to be dealt with. This assumption needs a little more discussion. The problem with piracy is twofold:
1. Ease of Use: A big advantage of piracy is that it’s often easier to get content through pirate channels than official channels. Want to find that episode of LOST you missed? Why go to iTunes when The Pirate Bay is just as easy? Want to find a season of a show that’s not on Hulu? Too lazy to go to the store and buy the DVD? Mininova it. It’s easy. Piracy will be drastically reduced once all content is online and is just as easy to use as bit torrent, price issues aside.
2. Cost: No matter how easy and cheap you make your content, there are always going to be people who would rather rip it off for free, even if ripping it off is much more difficult than just paying for it, not to mention illegal. However, cost is still a factor, and when it comes to digital content, cheaper is better. You can’t get cheaper than free.
Assumption 5: Open communities mean a small percentage of good content and a huge percentage of craptent (I love me some portmanteaus). Youtube has tons of content and most of it sucks. It’s a great place for viral internet videos, but not a great place for professional caliber content. Why? No filters. So you have to figure out a barrier, and money is a good way to do that. Like Robert Heinlein said, if a man gives you his word, make him pay cash. Since you can’t charge for the content, instead, pay for its creation.
Assumption 6: Authors need to get paid. Constant devotion to a craft is what makes people better at it. I’ve heard that every writer has to write [insert X number] words of crap before they write something good. If I taught creative writing, the introductory class would be nothing more than a 5,000 word a week deadline for a semester. If students could pass that, then they’d have written enough to actually start learning things like characterization, good dialogue, and how to pace a scene. But that’s an aside. The point is, authors need time to get better. Money = Time. Before I got a job I could afford to write for eight hours a day. Now, two hours is very expensive. It wouldn’t take that much money for an author to be able to write full time. People will gladly make less money if they get to do what they love.
Thought Blender it all together: When you put all these assumptions together into a big thought blender, set the thing to high-speed whip, what comes out?
Sponsored e-books. This is already been done online, mostly in the IT sector, but I’d like to see it come to creative content, too. Here, let me explain.
Circumvent piracy altogether by making content free in the first place. People are going to rip it off or they aren’t, but why rip it off if it’s already free? Piracy becomes a non-issue. However, free content makes no money for the content creator (in the case of e-books, the author), so s/he doesn’t have nearly as much time to devote to the craft. This means content is crappier, if for no other reason than it can’t have enough time devoted to its creation. Free content also means no barrier of entry. There needs to be a way to offer free content, but still have a barrier of entry.
Enter advertising. What if e-books could be sponsored by advertising? Say, a logo watermark on the bottom of every page, or an index section about the sponsoring company, or something else. Of course, it goes without saying that the advertising must be very unobtrusive and must (absolutely must!) not have control over the content.
Since e-book distribution is basically free, the only costs incurred by the sponsoring company are for the content itself, that is, paying the author. The author makes enough money to have time to hone his/her craft, the sponsorship company gets 300 digital pages of (unobtrusive!) advertising, and the community gets content for free. Since the book is paid for and sponsored, the community is assured that this book is good enough that someone was paid to write it, rather than a bunch of craptent.
Before you read the riot-act about all the flaws and negatives of this idea, let’s address some of them:
Negative: Author Royalties – The traditional publishing model puts the author as a stakeholder in the book’s monetary success. An advance is paid against royalties, and royalties pay the author for the book. In the sponsorship model, the author is paid a lump sum when the book is finished and ready for distribution. The sum can be negotiated before the work is written or when the book is finished. That part doesn’t matter. What’s important is that the work is paid for by the company once, rather than over time with an advance and royalties.
The reason traditional royalty methods will not work are threefold:
1. Content distribution is very hard to track over the internet. As things go viral and spread, they move through different channels. It’s impossible to track them all. Thus, how would you pay an author for copies when copies can be made anywhere?
2. Advertising is nebulous in how much business it drives to the company. It’s difficult to say how much business is brought to the company from a singular source. This tracking difficulty would make a royalty-based system not feasible.
3. Advertising is an investment by the sponsor. The sponsor assumes that for a lump sum (the ad campaign) they will receive more business. The better the campaign, the more business, and the smaller overall percentage an investment in the ad campaign becomes. Royalties make an ad campaign into a flat percentage, rather than a diminishing percentage as more business drives more profits.
Negative: Content Ownership – Who owns the content? The sponsoring company or the author? This is probably the stickiest point, and the mess of current copyright law isn’t going to make it any easier to figure out. Obviously, since the work is being released to the public for free, ownership over the content itself is hard to figure out. What rights does an author have to sell the movie rights to a sponsored e-book? Or to try to sell copies (though I don’t know why anyone would want to buy this, since it can be obtained for free)? Can the sponsoring company make changes to the book without the consent of the author? All these questions would have to be answered, and I don’t know enough about how this theoretical model works to be able to given definitive answers, but here are the important things to note about this:
This model will not work if the sponsoring company has any say about the content aside from “I will sponsor that book” or “I will not sponsor that book.” “I will sponsor that book if the protagonist drinks Pepsi and praises it’s clear, crisp taste in chapter 3” should not be an option [note: this post is not sponsored by Pepsi, ha, ha]. Either Pepsi wants to sponsor the book or not. This means that edgier material will have a hard time finding sponsorship, but, alas, all sponsored art has always had this problem, and I don’t know how to solve it here. Sponsors should not be able to change the work in any form without express written consent of the author. This should be in the contracts.
Of course, you will have some authors who will get dollars signs in their eyes and sell-out, putting Pepsi in the hands of all their characters. There isn’t a whole lot anyone can do about that, but companies will learn that sponsored books by sell-out authors will not be read nearly as much. Companies would be well-served by maintaining consumer faith.
Other rights should stay with the author by default, unless agreed upon in the beginning. If McDonald’s wants to sponsor a book and they want the movie rights, they should pay more for both. If they sponsor a book and want the movie rights later, they should have to pay for them. Companies shouldn’t be able to “F” the author.
Negative: Finding an advertising balance: This is basically a stem of the sell-out and content ownership discussion, but the advertising throughout the book should be unobtrusive. A small watermark by the page number, an “about the sponsor” section – whatever, it just can’t interfere with the reading experience or people won’t read it. I also suggest graphical ads over text ads, since graphics can be instantly absorbed. You can’t guarantee that anyone is going to read text. Depending on the device the e-book is read on, time-based ads could be possible as well, though new tech would be needed for that. I strongly discourage this model, but it is an option. Keep in mind, however, the more obtrusive the advertising, the more likely some pirate will hack the sponsored e-book and release an ad-free copy. You want ads that are obtrusive enough to get the product noticed, but not so annoying that pirates remove the ads. It’s a fine balance, and one that should be studied.
Negative: Authors don’t want to be sponsored. Fine, they don’t have to be. They can continue publish through regular channels or not publish at all. Me, I’d rather be published than not, and I’d rather be paid for my work than not.
Anyway, those are the negative that must be overcome to this sort of system. Let’s briefly cover the positives:
Positive: Barrier of Entry for Content: Craptent content, like the majority of YouTube, can be prevented by sponsorship. If readers know that a company thought the book was good enough to sponsor, they know the book has some semblance of quality. Sure, as e-books get more popular, people will distribute free e-books (scribd is already doing this), but a sponsored book will receive more attention because it’s theoretically better. However, keeping content control in the hands of the author is an absolute must in order to maintain consumer trust in sponsored content. Product placement in a narrative itself will ruin any goodwill toward sponsored content and people will stop reading the book.
Positive: Free Content – Piracy not only made a boatload of content on the internet free (even if it’s illegal), it also popularized new methods of distribution. These methods, bit torrent especially, are a problem only if companies want to make money directly on content. If content is already free, these alternative distribution methods only serve to get the content distributed more widely. Also, free content has a much lower barrier of entry for people, since it costs them nothing but a few minutes to check it out.
Positive: Can be Lucrative for the Author: Depending on the lump sum for the book, authors stand to make more money for creating the content than with current distribution models. Currently an author will make only a small percentage of the shelf-price of a book. With sponsorship, an author can possibly make more, and make it all at once. This could also increase productivity, since authors see a looming and decent return on a project.
Positive: Hours of advertising for a low cost: If the content is decent, advertisers have hours of undivided attention to spend with consumers. It takes the average reader 6-12 hours to read a typical novel. All the time can be spent with unobtrusive advertising to a consumer. Companies would kill for that amount of time. And all it costs the company is the price of the content production (the author’s paycheck) and a little bandwidth.
So that’s the idea: sponsored e-books. Would the model actually work? I’m not sure. I think that it would, but a few things need to happen to find out:
1. E-books and e-reading devices need to become more prevalent. This will happen with sponsored e-books or not. It’s only a matter of time.
2. A company bold enough to give it a shot.
I mentioned at the beginning of this post that I’ve been thinking about a distribution method (and way to profit from my work) for my new novel, and sponsorship is something I’d like to try. It’s a way to get independently produced content to the public without relying on the arcane agent/solicitation/big publishing house system, and still reasonably profit from my work, since sponsorship would probably net me more than going with a small publishing house.
I’m not done with my second novel yet, but as I get closer to finishing it and start my revisions, sponsorship is something I will definitely be looking into.
Physical print is dead. Content wants to be free. Sponsorship could be the wave of the future.
Me, I like to make waves.
-mispeled out.
I’ve been promoting the idea of sponsored e-books for the past few years, myself… I think it would solve quite a few issues with e-book distribution and profit. I also expect the television industry is the closest medium to examine for clues as to how to do it, as they have been paying for individual items of content, and overall sources of content (such as the TV studio itself) for years.
One thing:
Tell that to Cubby Broccoli (or, rather, his widow): The James Bond series has always been a major hit, and merchandising has been a major part of it from day one (Smirnoff, Aston Martin, Walter firearms, etc). Merchandising can be overt or subtle, and it doesn’t necessarily have to cheapen or ruin the story. Authors should choose for themselves whether or not they want to add merchandising elements to a story, based on how badly they want or need that sponsoring.
For what it’s worth, I would be glad to take on a sponsor, but as I write science fiction, the in-story merchandising opportunities are significantly lessened…
How about trying the music industry/iTunes method first. Charge a fair price for a non-DRM copy. I refuse to buy an ebook that costs the same or nearly the same as a p-book when that “product”:
1) Can only be used on publisher approved devices
2) Terms of that use can change on a whim, and be enforced against my will through those devies (Hi Amazon).
3) Only lasts as long as the device or the publishers servers.
4)Has zero resale value
Your idea only solves #4 as the publishers will insist on some form of DRM so the ads don’t get filtered out of the free ebooks. I’d rather pay and control what I read instead of getting it for free and being bent over a barrel.
There are only so many ways of saying this, but I’ll say it over and over and over again if I have to: NO ADS IN EBOOKS! I will not read ebooks with ads intermixed with content. Not for a discounted ebooks, not for free ebooks. I will not tolerate ads under any circumstances. Authors who would allow ads are authors not worth reading.
I also doubt ads within ebooks would generate enough revenue for allow free content from professional publishers and authors. If a new ebook is $9.99, there would have to be enough ads to cover that cost. Now I’m not sure how much a sponsor would give for an ad in an ebook, but I’ll be generous and say $0.10 per ad, or about 99 ads per book. That means for a average length book on the Kindle, you’d get an ad about every 10 Next Page clicks, and that would cause me to stop reading.
I think people need to get over wanting free content on ebooks. If you want free content, watch TV, but you’ll need to pay for books or go to the library. The file-sharers will still steal at the pirate sites, but all businesses have some loss due to fraud and theft.
As for merchandising, there was an 80s trend in fiction called Brand-Name Reality where authors always mentioned the brand name of the characters’ clothes, cars, cigarettes, and what-not on the stipulation that a man who smoked Camels and wore Lee jeans was fundamentally different from the guy who smoked Marlboros and preferred Levi. I thought it was dumb then and it is even dumber if the author is taking kickbacks form marketers.
Greg,
I tried to be clear in my post, but maybe I wasn’t clear enough. The ads I’m talking about are very unobtrusive: small watermarks or a line of text at the top or bottom of the page, not ads ever ten pages or something like you’re talking about. I agree that anything which broke reading continuity would be a dealbreaker.
The other thing I want to address about your comment is the pricing structure. Why does an ebook cost 9.99? It’s a price set by the publisher and sold through a reseller. The author gets part of it, amazon (or other reseller) gets part of it, and the publisher get part of it.
With a sponsorship model, there is no reseller, since the content is free, and there is no “publisher” in the typical sense. So, the price of the ebook “9.99” doesn’t need to be covered by ads. Only the price the author charges for the content needs to be covered – but that price isn’t per copy, it’s for the entire work. So say that pepsi wants to sponsor an ebook. They approach an author (or ar approached, whatever) and offer to pay a lump sum to the author for the book. I’m not sure what they would be willing to pay, but let’s say its somewhere between 10k to 50k, just to throw some numbers around. The buy the book for that price, brand it, and release it on the net for free. As long as they are able to sell enough Pepsi to cover the cost of they paid the author, everything is covered. Thinking on a “per copy” basis is not going to work when the content is free or easily pirated.
See how this works? “9.99” per copy doesn’t need to be covered, just the lump sum price the author wants for the work.
Ack. Sorry for the typos. I typed my response fast and I can’t edit it.
Greg,
Don’t panic!
I understand your desire to avoid ads intermixed with content, but as I suggested, ads don’t have to be blunt instruments like gaudy animated ad banners at every chapter break. Books have been packaged with ads in the past, mostly in the back, but occasionally even in an insert in the center of the book, and the world (and books) didn’t come to an end over it. With a new medium comes new ways of doing things, which may include hitherto-un-thought-of ways to package ads that will be acceptable to readers. (Even you.)
Besides, this is only one suggestion. Not all books have to be subsidized by ads, it’s just another avenue to try.
How would advertisers find authors and vice versa? Will Pepsi now be employing editors to sort through the slush pile for advertising opportunities?
Given the exceedingly low rates of income that online advertising seems to be generating, why would e-book advertising fare any better, especially given the low number of people who actually read books? Can you really expect to support yourself on current CPM rates?
Of course, if Pepsi thinks it knows of a “shooting star,” there’s no reason why they couldn’t contact them directly (just as publishers do now)… and an author who was sure his material was worth Kellogg’s attention could always contact them directly as well. But I expect ad middlemen, possibly a web-based clearinghouse, would fill the void between authors and advertisers.
Making assumptions about rates, number of readers and potential profit margins may be premature, here. It took years for television, for instance, to work out its successful ad formulas… there’s no reason to expect the e-book field to figure it out in a year or two.
There are a number of ways companies could find authors. Agent services (like books are sold now); Middlemen services which find authors, edit them, and sell them (maybe this is what publishers will become when print dies completely?); website contests; scouts (cool-hunters on the net); or any number of different ways. It’s not difficult to think of ways for people to meet over the internet, which is all about connecting people.
If I was a company and I wanted to try this model, I would either:
a) approach popular, published authors, or
b) hold a contest on my website.
Either of those methods could find an author that could be willing to try it out and give companies an idea of whether the model would be profitable or not. There’s really no way to know until it was attempted.
As for supporting authors on ad rates: Well, I don’t know. It depends on whether Pepsi gets enough people to read the book and the book makes people want to drink more Pepsi. But that’s a question of whether advertising really works or not. It isn’t a question of using it as a possible money-making option for authors. That’s why I advocate a lump-sum from the sponsor, not a CPM-based method.
Luke,
A first time author for fiction is going to get about a $5,000 advance; selling 7,500 would be a big success. Having Pepsi shell out 5 to 10K isn’t going to happen on those kind of numbers. Maybe for a big name author with a track record of bestsellers; and I don’t think Pepsi will go for small watermarks ads.
What is in it for Pepsi? They’re not interested in supporting the arts. If they give you 5K they’ll want a return on their investment, maybe 6 to 8K in new sales at least, but probably more. Can your book sell that mush soda pop with just watermark ads? If you can’t show them the sales they’re not going to give you jack. (Not to mention that Pepsi might be upset if the watermark ad appears in a book with sex, swearing, violence, or other aspects that might offend somebody somewhere.)
Then you need to tell Pepsi marketing the kinds of people who will be downloading your book. “Well, to prevent illegal downloads, I’m going to give the book away for free, and people who would otherwise steal are the type who will see the ad.” Now maybe I’m dense, but the would-be-thieves-otherwise is not a hot marketing demographic.
The whole problem is trying to make the ebooks free. The idea that books (music or movies too) should be free grew from the minds of 13 year-olds who didn’t want to ask mom and dad to buy something for them.
The bottom line is I’m not going to read a book with ads, whether gaudily animated or small watermarks, but I will buy somebody else’s book without them.
Before we get too fixated on this: Not every potential advertiser is Pepsi.
Maybe we should use Tooth Decay Cola (TDC). 🙂
My point was: For-profit and non-profit organizations, public service organizations, social service organizations, philanthropists, art lovers, other books, other media, etc, etc… any of these could potentially sponsor an e-book. Not just multi-billion-dollar junk food suppliers. There’s no use condemning a good idea because of a few undesirable players out of thousands.
For instance: Patronage. Patrons could sponsor artists (which usually qualifies them for… drumroll, please… TAX DEDUCTIONS), and consumers get free e-books, and simple and unobtrusive “This product sponsored by…” ads.
So there are workable (and not heinous) ways to do it. It just takes some development of the models. That’s why I won’t dismiss the idea out of hand… I believe it has potential.
I’ve been trying to post another comment all afternoon, but for some reason it isn’t posting. I dunno, maybe the comment was too long. Anyway, here’s my comment:
http://mispeled.wordpress.com/2009/08/18/sponsored-e-books-followup/
I also believe digital reading (and thus digital publishing) is the future. I’m not sure sponsored books will catch on, though. Book publishing these days is something of a mixed fleet– bestselling yachts, mid list canoes, and some new author leaky rowboats. I’m not sure anyone is going to be eager to paint their name on the stern of a leaky rowboat. And the yachts don’t need anyone’s name but their own. Maybe the canoes could benefit, but I wouldn’t bet real money on it.
Just read your last comments, and I agree that there may be many, many publishing models. One size does not have to fit all.
However, in Assumption 4, you addressed the problem of piracy:
Since ad supported ebooks would be in market competition with the pirate site, it is, in my mind, rather obvious to deduce that this plan is at least partly going after the would-be thieves market in an attempt make them legitimate.
If people can’t or don’t want to buy an ebooks they can, indeed, go to the library. While I can’t say that all library systems offer ebooks, I know mine does, and when I still used my Dell Axim PDA as an ebook reader, I sometimes checked out those out. (Technically, I can still check out ebooks for my Kindle with a system hack, though that is probably illegal if I ever wanted to do it.) So there are option for those who don’t want to pay or own ebooks. If they don’t have library that has ebooks, then, yeah, they’re SOL, and will need to get their hands on a print bound book.
I don’t think ad-supported versions and non-ad-supported versions will coexist peacefully. One or the other will win. If publishers and ebook resellers think think they could make a few extra cents per book by inserting ads, then that will happen. I could see ads maybe generating $0.15 to $0.30 per book sold fairly easily; not enough for free content, or even a meaningful discount for the consumer, but a few $1000 to divide among the providers. So in the end you wouldn’t have free or discounted ebooks, you just have ebooks with ads. They might start off small but they would surely grow in size and frequency. The only sure way to prevent that from happening will be to completely reject the idea of any ads in any ebooks.
If I ever do come across an ad for third party consumer merchandise in an ebook (e.g., soda pop) then I will contact the company, explain that I’m instigating a boycott because they put an ad in a book, and put up a web site of boycotted products. If it is just me, then the effect will be insignificant, but if enough book readers join in the complaint and boycott, then the company may think twice about more ads. If you think the attempt at generating revuniue from ads is worth a try, then, equally so, would be the attempt to boycott products in the ads.
Also, to be clear, I consider “ads” to be for third party consumer products or services, for profit or even non-profit organizations. I don’t think a list of an authors other books listed at the end is truly an ad.
Greg, your comments sound inconsistent. You say you don’t want ads… then you go on to describe an ad which is okay because you don’t consider it a “true” ad.
Of course an ad for an author’s other books is an ad, and no different than if they were ads for that author’s collection of etchings, or their handmade model Conestoga wagon made out of toothpicks. An ad is an ad.
The key to ads, as always, is you use ads which are appropriate to your viewers, and the subject matter they apparently enjoy (as indicated by the book they bought). If you enjoy James Bond novels, you probably won’t object to an ad for Astin Martin or Smirnoff in the back of the book. If you just read a nature book, you probably won’t mind the ad to help save the rainforests at the end. And so on.
If I’d just read a sci-fi opus, then saw an ad in the back for the author’s Conestoga wagon made out of toothpicks, I’d consider that pretty silly, even cheesy. But if I’d just read a traditional western, the idea of buying that wagon may be very attractive to me. Properly targeted ads are more effective, mainly because viewers are more likely to respond favorably to them. They are also proven to be considered less obtrusive and objectionable when properly targeted.
If you refuse to buy a book with a single ad, that’s your choice. But history and human nature are already on the side of advertising: Most people will get used to them, won’t think twice about them, and will even occasionally order something from them, and the world will keep turning.
Don’t be ludicrous. There is a world of difference between listing an author’s other available works at the end of a book and ads for soda pop, vodka, or cars. My objection is to the placement of third party consumer ads in ebooks. I don’t really care if there is a textual connection between James Bond and Smirnoff, I’ll don’t need an ad for it.
Don’t fool yourself, if third party consumer ads ever make it into ebooks, they will not be relegated to the back of book on a digital equivalent of Jim Crow segregation, they will be interspersed in the text, between chapters and maybe even between paragraphs. What I imagine is something like the old cigarette ads in the middle of cheap mass market paperbacks, only manifold for other products, maybe a few dozen throughout. And I doubt they will be small watermarks: maybe in the beginning to test the waters, but I’d bet on full sized multipage ads difficult to click through or ignore would win the day.
Maybe you wouldn’t mind seeing that many ads in the middle of an ebook, but that would be enough for me to give up my Kindle or any other ereader. There will always be the print bound book
I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on this.*
*Translation: Okay, I take it back. You’re not being inconsistent. You’re being bug-nuts! You’re expecting ads between every paragraph… and you call me ludicrous? Climb down, man, before you hurt yourself! It’s an ad… not a used condom!