A while back I was talking to an Australian who has been in the book publishing biz since Adam was on a skateboard. We were talking about other stuff, and I was bemoaning how it was that one industry (book publishing) didn’t learn from the recent mistakes of a similar industry (music publishing). Off the record (that’s why he doesn’t get a name here) he told me:
“Truth is, I know the major publishers in this country saw the ebook writing on the wall, but they’ve done everything they can to stave off the change. They knew it would come but they figured if they could hold it off for a few extra years, they could bank these massive profits off $30 paperbacks, which would bankroll the costs involved in swapping over to ebooks.”
Just stop and have a think about that. Keep in mind that this person is a straight-shooter and had nothing to gain my making this up.I believe this – not only because I’ve watched the moves (of lack thereof) of the local book industry over the last decade, and they fit. I also believe it because the person who said this clearly believed it, and he/she should know. He/she knows Australian publishing backwards, forwards, and from multiple angles.
Lobbying the government to maintain protectionist legislation, setting prices WAY higher than overseas vendors citing higher freight and other costs, scaremongering about change and the demise of the industry’s ability to “foster local talent” (without doing a hellava lot of, um, fostering local talent). Blind Freddy could see that many – not all – Australian booksellers thought this way.
But to have it spelled out to me as a strategic decision that many major publishers have taken, at the expense of the reading public (it has been demonstrated that at least some of whom, if not all, want to embrace ebooks), well that takes my breath away.
But to quote the great Newman, “There’s karma, Kramer.” Those companies that have sat on their hands and banked the big bikkies while the move to ebooks was something other people did, well they’re reaping what they’ve sewn now. In this country, that’s everyone except Borders, ain’t it, kids?
The industry is fragmenting. The barrier to entry from ebook publishers is miniscule, compared to that of the large-scale printing and distribution of p-books. New micro-publishers are starting up almost daily. Did you hear that? There’s a new one now: Naked Reader. With tiny overheads, you only need to service a tiny publishing niche to survive.
As well as an industry in fragmentation, a few companies – the ones that have planned and worked to embrace ebooks – are consolidating. Like Amazon and it’s various self-publishing portals. Even dead folk are awake to that fact that maybe they don’t need to give 40-70% of their work’s sales price to a publisher if they don’t want to. That’s why Andrew Wylie is the antichrist of publishing, to some. Even if the change-resistant publishers suddenly embrace ebooks tomorrow (stop laughing, please), they’re now too far behind to catch up. Their paper book cash cow is dwindling, and they haven’t got a piece of the growing new action. They’re screwed from both ends.
Old-school publishers, you’d better have made some mad bank in the last five years. You’ve certainly made a bit from me. You’re gonna need it to fight a few little companies you may have heard of: Apple, Amazon, Google …
Editor’s Note: reprinted, with permission, from journalist Jason Davis’ Book Bee blog. PB
Can’t say I’m surprised to hear it was a “strategic” choice.
Most of the BPHs are run by older execs close to vesting their golden parachutes anyway. So a strategy of “apres moi, le deluge” fits nicely with *their* goals. Letting those that might come after suffer the consequences of the tarnished corporate legacy is just fine as long as they got theirs. Why bother to learn new tricks when they could try to run out the clock and stave off the day of reckoning long enough to fade off into the sunset, cash in hand?
I do wonder if there might be documentary evidence that might serve in a shareholder lawsuit?
Probably not, but *that* would certainly be a nice expression of Karma.
Your Australian publishing industry is too right, as they say. It seemed likely, in the late 90’s, that it would take a generational changeover in the executive ranks of the major publishers before ebooks would be embraced and co-opted into a revenue source. And so it has.
Ingram, big book distrubutor/wholesaler, saw it coming and dived in from the start. Start-ups like eBooks.com (Australian, btw!) and Overdrive and FictionWise developed delivery systems and marketing methodologies that worked with or bypassed the publishers as the case may be. But things have changed.
Amazon and Apple are the change agents. If the publishers had looked forward in the 1990’s and thought about where small computers and smart phones were heading, they could have owned the countryside at this point. Instead, they have been reduced to sharecropping in their own industry.
I work for one of the major library suppliers in Australia and have been tracking responses to ebooks for well over seven years (yes, in the e-world, in Australia, that’s ancient!). Many of the local publishers have had to watch their overseas head offices take charge of the ebook program – and of course the Australian list went at the back of the queue if you compare market sizes of the US and UK. Many of the local publishers and distributors still don’t have rights to sell the ebook here – that is a sticking point in many contracts now. After all the nonsense with the Productivity Commission and territorial copyright, I just shake my head at the digital world “down under”.
But put it in perspective. Reference publishers and many scholarly presses moved to e because their main avenue for sales were the libraries. Digital reference, ebooks, library platforms like EBL, all play a major role for those publishers. EBL is well entrenched in the academic libraries here – with the majority of titles from Taylor & Francis, Cambridge University Press etc. The local publishers and distributors have lost these sales through suppliers like us – we order to our ebook vendor, which in turn pays the originating publisher, rarely based here in Australia!
For the general consumer Kindle wasn’t available in the Australian market until the end of last year. Sony didn’t release their ebook readers here (they didn’t think there was a market for it) The other ebook readers on the market like the Iliad were way too expensive. We didn’t have an ebook supply chain in place. We didn’t have the digital content – particularly local titles. In fact, apart from Ebooks Corporation (yes, an Australian company), the ebook vendors were all off-shore. Overdrive and Kobo are two key players. And Baker & Taylor’s Blio is receiving rave reviews (admission: I work for a B&T company but that doesn’t factor into the last sentence – the Blio platform is superb)
I’ve spoken fluent e for years and it’s only been since the release of the Kindle internationally and of course the massive response to Apple’s iPad that kick-started many local publishers. Some of them have digital directors, they have strategies in place, they are digitising content.
And they are still FEARFUL of what it all means. They have to get the business model right for their readers. They have to get the price right. Release dates. They’ve seen what’s happening in the US market and they are scared to death. Booksellers too. It’s a changing world and not everyone will survive it.
Great post Rachael. “It’s a changing world and not everyone will survive it.” You are so right .. and especially those who haven’t bothered to think ahead or invest in advance planning and tracking of market changes. When you don’t do those things then fear is the biggest driver in their business model. And when fear is the biggest factor then bad decisions are made and businesses go under (forgive the pun …LOL)