Cynthia Cleto, Springer Science + Business Media; Joshua Talent, eBook Architects, moderator; Pablo Defendini, Tor.com; Jeffrey Yamaguchi, Knopf Doubleday
Cleto: in STM market things are different. First move was into electronic journals, so STMs tend to have their own platform for sales to scientists. Large proportion of business is sales to institutions and libraries. STM does everything in house cause already have platform and content is highly technical so it must be absolutely correct. Have 35,000 ebooks on their platform and is easier for the work flow to have everything in house. PDF and HTML formats. Library distribution: sign a contract with libraries and then open up access to whole university for simultaneous user access to both journals and electronic books. Paying for a license but get open access, but has to be for the entire collection. Launched ebook collection in 2006 and have massive adoption even before devices came along. For trade stuff have specific marketers and partner with retailers like Amazon. Also market trade stuff to libraries and actually have people who help librarians to market trade books. Want to keep usage high so that libraries renew the contracts. Have created some social networking through society portals, but since are working in a collection individual authors less important. In their market are DRM free.
Defendini: Tor has own print bookstore on line. Use Ingram for delivery. Haven’t found a consumer friendly solution to buying ebooks on the site, so that’s why print sales only. Macmillan-wide outsource ebook production to companies that have ebook production services. Very little QA goes on and allows a lot of crappy ebooks to hit the market. Personally believes that this QA process should come in-house. Tor deals with libraries through third parties, such as Baker & Taylor. Even for advanced users formats are barriers for sale and this doesn’t inspire confidence in readers. iPad may intermediate between publisher and consumer and may help this problem. When Tor.com launched released free ebooks and people thought were launching an ebook site and got backlash from that. People got upset that released first book in series as an ebook but not the later ones. Did create spikes in sales, though. Trade publishers don’t generally speak to readers, they talk to book buyers for the retailers and publishers need to shift to understanding that they need to interact with the end users. Can find communities on line and ask them what they want to see and publishers don’t understand this yet. Want authors to engage readers on their site, respond to comments, etc. The authors who are engaged seem to have better sales. DRM is a pain for publishers and producers as well and complicates matters.
Yamaguchi: not selling ebooks directly yet. Random House uses creation and conversion partners. Set guidelines for the partners, for example, where table of contents goes, where copyright notices goes, etc. QA is done in house and is absolutely key. Need to experience it like the reader to do proper QA. #1 Ladies Detective Agency – new book coming out and offered first book in series for $1.99 and it worked to help move sales. Still trying to understand how to market ebooks vs pbooks. Now trying to mention ebooks in their ads. Connection with the readers becoming even more important because need to understand how ebook readers are interacting as purchasers. Customer service departments starting to get questions such as “bought an ebook and it doesn’t work”. Tor.com is a model and worth checking out for the way it engages readers. Random House.com is a traditional site and all major divisions have a “front porch”. Set up their site on WordPress and are trying to engage readers with it. For example, will cook recipes from their cookbooks and blog about it and readers love it. If you have a “buy the book” link is a bit of a challenge because of all the options that are necessary. Not building a lot of author websites because doesn’t work if done by publisher. Needs to be an authentic voice and so is much better if the author sets up his own site.
Talent: thinks Epub will emerge as primary standard because all main retailers, except Amazon, are supporting it. But epub doesn’t work that well in the STM market because MathML isn’t supported. The major problem will be different forms of DRM. Feels market will get fleshed out in the future.
Two things stand out from the Random House quotes:
1- They are at least aware of reader community effects
2- Author sites by the publisher don’t work? The author needs to, in effect, do their own branding/marketing? Uh, didn’t that use to be a publisher’s duty? Part of their “added value”? So, what added value remains if ebooks and online marketing becomes the norm? They do less and less and charge more and more?
I see a tipping point coming.
@Felix: I believe the meaning in the author-website comment is that if the publisher sets up the author’s website too obviously, the customers don’t trust it. They view it as just more empty marketing. Modern consumers have highly evolved crap detectors. Not perfect, but highly evolved.
If the author’s imprint is strong on the website, readers believe what’s written on the site is the authors authentic opinion and information. I suspect the publisher could set things up behind the scenes, so long as their hand is invisible. Marketing only works if people believe you. Of course, I’m also sure the publishers feel that having the author do all the work is a cost savings.
Consumers are already skeptical about large publishers. If authors become skeptical (thanks to poor support, for example), large publishers are in very big trouble.
Regards,
Jack Tingle
@Jack Tingle: That last point is exactly what I’m wondering about.
A lot of what the BPHs have done in the ebook space (claiming retroactive rights, reduced royalties, poor quality ebook editions) has not endeared them to ebook savvy authors. *If* even RH, which shows glimmers of “getting” that online distribution is a genuine game changer, believes branding and outreach are primarily the author’s responsability, what are authors to expect from the truly reactionary Houses?
I’m thinking that the more authors have to take upon themselves, the less they’ll need the BPHs. At this point, the BPHs should be looking for ways to *add* value and author services, not looking for excuses (the site would look phony?) to offload functions.
As you point out, if the publisher does a good job of establishing an online vehicle (like a certain publisher’s, er, “bar”) then the consumer will accept the vehicle. Lots of companies have figured out how to build online communities and communications channels without turning consumers off with blatant shilling. (Anybody around here familiar with Microsoft’s Major Nelson Blog? It has both corporate authority and gamer credibility because it strives to inform honestly without resorting to hype.)
It *can* be done and *has* been done.